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Tuesday, September 29, 2026

09/28 Links Pt1: Holocaust inversion is obscene; Eleven Ways NAZA Misleads Viewers; US Identifies Three More UNRWA ‘Teachers’ Who Participated in Oct 7 Terror Spree

From Ian:

David Harris: Holocaust inversion is obscene
In the decades after the Holocaust, outright denial remained largely beyond respectable Western discourse. Its proponents faced public condemnation and, in countries such as France, legal consequences. But distortion took other forms: trivialisation, rationalisation, mockery, and supposedly historical explanations that excused or diminished the crime.

At Babyn Yar itself, Soviet authorities hid the victims’ Jewish identity. The monument erected there did not identify Jews as the targets of the September 1941 massacre, but spoke generically of the “victims of fascism”. The Kremlin denied Jews recognition of their tragedy. The struggle over memory was already under way. Although Soviet forces had liberated Auschwitz, Moscow was part of the emerging problem. Anti-Semitism as a political tool trumped historical truth.

Still, living witnesses were able to confront falsehood with personal testimony. Survivors, rescuers, and liberators could describe what they had endured or seen. The overwhelming documentary record reinforced their accounts. Alas, time has steadily deprived us of those voices. The evidence remains, but fewer people can stand before an audience and say: I was there.

That growing distance creates opportunities for those determined to deny the factual foundations of the Holocaust. And directing old – and new – anti-Semitic tropes against Israel offers another route: the hatred can be presented as political argument, even when its substance remains all too familiar.

To those who invoke their Jewish identity to lend credibility to anti-Semitic arguments, whether in London, Ottawa, or Washington, take note. Jewish ancestry does not make an antisemitic argument less anti-Semitic.

The danger extends beyond forgetting what happened. It includes the deliberate distortion of that history through the ghoulish phenomenon of Holocaust inversion: casting the one Jewish-majority state as a modern-day Nazi Germany, the embodiment of the evil that nearly destroyed the Jewish people.

The truth be damned. Never mind that Israel is a liberal democracy fighting for its survival against jihadist forces openly committed to its destruction. In a post-truth world, history can be hijacked, turned on its head, and repackaged beyond recognition. Consider Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, whose doctoral thesis in Moscow advanced Holocaust denial and distortion.

In 2022, in Berlin no less, Abbas accused Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” against the Palestinians. Amazing! Fifty Holocausts, yet he continues to travel around the world while he lives comfortably in Ramallah, his sons prosper in business, and, miracle of miracles, the Palestinian population has grown substantially over the very decades in which these supposed fifty Holocausts occurred.

The obscenity of such Nazi imagery, circulated increasingly today by reckless politicians and unaccountable influencers, should be self-evident. It appropriates the systematic extermination of six million Jews, nearly two-thirds of European Jewry, to portray Israel as the successor to Nazi Germany. Such rhetoric turns the memory of murdered Jewish people into a weapon against the country, portraying it as having no moral legitimacy, no right to exist.

If words are to have any meaning and if history is to be a guide, then Holocaust inversion must be called out for what it is – premeditated dishonesty in the service of anti-Semitism.

The 33,771 Jewish people killed at Babyn Yar, and the millions of their murdered brethren, are not here to defend the truth of their lives and deaths. That responsibility falls to us.
Daniel Rubenstein: When Talking About Gaza, Start With This One Fact
“What do I say when…?”

This is the most common question that I get as a prominent advocate for Israel.

“What do I say when someone accuses Israel of genocide?”

“What do I say when someone accuses Israel of being an apartheid state?”

“What do I say when Israel is accused of colonialism?”

When people ask me these kinds of questions, what I really hear them saying is:

How do I play defense?

How do I remain in the frame that my opponents have set?

How do I use the vocabulary that my opponents want me to use?

This is a strategy for losers.

Sure, it’s important to understand the g-word, the a-word, and the c-word on an academic level so that you are able to have productive conversations with people who approach you in good faith. But I am not going to allow people who operate in bad faith to decide the terms of the debate.

I refuse to play defense.

If I’m on television and I’m asked a hostile question about the war in Gaza, I will reframe the debate by starting my answer with the following sentence: Hamas is the government of Gaza. Once this is established, I can begin to paint an accurate picture of the situation.

Most people don’t know, or they deny, or they like to avoid saying that Hamas is the government of Gaza (after three years of war!) and has been the government of Gaza since 2007. Israeli officials often respond to accusations about Israeli tactics in Gaza by saying something like “Hamas is responsible” – which of course is the conclusion that we’d like people to reach, but it’s an opinion, not a fact. If more people understood that Hamas was the government of Gaza on October 7, 2023, then there would be a greater understanding about who was responsible for what followed – and why Gaza looks as it does.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas had been the government of Gaza for 16 years. What does it mean that Hamas was the government of Gaza? Hamas controlled Gaza’s border crossings. Hamas determined who could enter Gaza and who could leave Gaza – whether through the Egyptian border at Rafah or through the Israeli crossings at Kerem Shalom and Erez. Hamas collected taxes. If goods entered Gaza, which they did – hundreds of trucks per day – Hamas got a cut. Hamas taxed fuel, electricity, and building supplies. Hamas taxed goods that Hamas smuggled into Gaza via its vast network of tunnels. Businesses in Gaza could operate only with Hamas’s permission and protection. Hamas controlled Gaza’s television networks, radio stations, and newspapers. Hamas controlled the mosques. Hamas appointed the imams. Hamas approved the sermons.

The Hamas government of Gaza controlled the education system in Gaza. Hamas managed its own network of schools and determined the curriculum that would be taught in those schools. At United Nations schools in Gaza, Hamas made sure that its own members (or friends and family members) were principals and teachers.

The Hamas government of Gaza ran a network of hospitals and appointed the directors of the hospitals. There is a children’s hospital in Gaza City named Al-Rantisi Hospital. It is named after Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, a Palestinian pediatrician and a co-founder of Hamas. v The Hamas government of Gaza ran summer camps where children engaged in social activities alongside military-style training and indoctrination.

The Hamas government of Gaza had a police force that violently cracked down on dissent.
EXCLUSIVE: US Identifies and Blacklists Three More UNRWA ‘Teachers’ Who Participated in Oct 7 Terror Spree, Kidnapped and Held Israeli Hostages
The State Department formally added three more United Nations Relief and Works Agency school teachers to a first-of-its-kind blacklist after an ongoing U.S. investigation concluded that the teachers participated in Hamas's Oct. 7 terror spree and held Israelis captive, the Washington Free Beacon can reveal. It's the latest embarrassment for the United Nations, which has delegated most of its Gaza relief work to UNRWA even though the agency is fully infiltrated by Hamas.

The Trump administration's September 24 order bars the three UNRWA staffers from working on all U.S. taxpayer-funded aid projects for the next decade, blocking them from circulating into other U.N. humanitarian groups.

The three UNRWA teachers—revealed as Rami Mohammad Sabbah, Mamdouh Husain Al Qaq, and Yusuf Zedan El Hawajri—doubled as Hamas footsoldiers who entered Israel on Oct. 7 to kill and capture Israeli citizens, according to a nonpublic investigative summary prepared by the United States Agency for International Development's independent inspector general and obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon.

The State Department has now added a total of four UNRWA staffers to a still-growing federal blacklist that will prevent them from joining any U.N. agencies involved in the Gaza reconstruction project. The USAID inspector general's office, a law enforcement entity separate from the largely defunct USAID, has referred more than 100 current and former UNRWA staffers for similar action, and U.S. officials familiar with the matter told the Free Beacon that further additions to the blacklist are likely forthcoming.

While UNRWA has fired a total of 70 Gaza-based employees, largely in response to the USAID inspector general's probe, its administrative action does not prevent them from moving to other U.N.-backed humanitarian groups that are working on American aid projects in Gaza. The State Department's blacklist—built as a result of the USAID inspector general's landmark findings—ensures that Hamas-linked UNRWA staff will not be eligible to work inside Gaza, benefit from American funding, and infiltrate the massive reconstruction project the United States is now standing up.

"The USAID inspector general's continued investigation, finding definitive links between UNRWA and Hamas, has opened the eyes of the international community as to why Secretary of State [Marco] Rubio deemed UNRWA a 'subsidiary of Hamas,'" a senior U.S. official briefed on the ongoing investigation told the Free Beacon. "This was quite evident last week at the U.N. General Assembly. The winds are finally shifting."


Yisrael Medad: 'NAZA' and the broader campaign to stigmatize Israel, Zionism
Especially since October 7, three years ago, we have witnessed a coming-together phenomenon of a social and political epidemic that is pulling that tipping point closer. This formation of the necessary critical mass incorporates not only an acceptance of the idea and justness of a Free Palestine but its parallel facilitators: the dislike and hatred, and even a contempt, for the Jews.

Remove the Jewish factor from the support for the cause of a liberated Arab Palestine, and we are left with situations such as occupied Northern Cyprus, the Uyghurs in China, the Kurds in Turkey/Iraq/Syria, and a dozen other national or ethnic struggles that no one pays attention to for long, if at all.

Moreover, similar to the remarkable ignorance and lack of rational thinking that is required to be an antisemite, we see the same unfamiliarity with 100 years of Arab terror, the continuum of Jewish presence in the Land of Israel for 3,000 years, and the truth about the Arab Muslim conquest and occupation of Judea in 638 CE, among other myths and balderdash.

On one side, there are the Marxist progressives and cosmopolitan ideologues, and on the other, right-wing or Christian nationalists. In Manhattan on September 11, members of the Neo-Nazi National Socialist Party were seen giving a Seig Heil salute while chanting “Heil Hitler” and “Free Palestine.” Bright red swastika symbols adorned their armbands.

Dan Bilzerian ran for a congressional seat, and Candace Owens employs “Satan synagogues” and other foul antisemitic language and imagery. Nick Fuentes has written how, supposedly, “Zionists have started amplifying anti-immigration, anti-Muslim rhetoric to distract right-wingers from the Iran War” back in March.

We are in a renewed era of mass shallow thinking. The institutions of higher learning have been captured, and it is not that so many are uneducated, but that they are miseducated as well as denigrating those who suggest there is another version of the narrative.

Personalities with an outreach of millions have become those who control the media and distribute corrupt messaging. Tucker Carlson is one example of the stage-managing of a resurrected medieval disputation framework between a church figure, even if the person is non-religious or even Jewish, and the Zionist representative, always non-present.

At least Nachmanides merited confronting Pablo Christiani, a French Jewish convert, in Barcelona protected by King James of Aragon. Now, Israelis and Jews can’t freely walk about there safely or in many other European locations.

These fanatics will yet regret their contempt, and we will see their defeat. That, however, depends to a great degree on the counter-campaigning of Israel and those who identify with her.

Unity, coordination, and commitment are required, as well as a grasp of what is at stake.
Eleven Ways NAZA Misleads Viewers
One of the film's central distortions is its deliberate, often illogical conflation of distinct steps: locating a person through intelligence, establishing that a person or site is a military target, estimating possible civilian harm, planning the strike, approving it, and carrying it out. These are different stages, handled by different people. Unit 8200 intelligence officers do not authorize strikes. They see part of the picture. The film presents that partial view as the whole.

Establishing that someone is a military target is one step in the process, not permission to strike. The weapon, timing, method of attack, and risks to civilians still have to be assessed, as did the risks to hostages during this war. In the processes I knew, commanders, specialists assessing the civilian population, air force personnel, legal advisers, and others were involved. Any of them could change the plan or stop it.

Another recurring distortion concerns numbers: a collateral damage ceiling of, say, 20 civilians, or a building occupancy estimate of 25 percent after evacuation. The film treats these figures as if they showed what had actually been approved. The substantial review that followed those initial figures changes the picture entirely.

Protecting a source's identity does not remove the need to corroborate what they say. Here, the lack of corroboration is more than a gap in the reporting. It is what allows fragments of information from one part of the process to become an indictment of the entire system.

One final point before turning to the claims: I have left out substantial amounts of classified information because of its sensitivity. In my assessment, that information could further rebut the filmmakers' arguments and expose additional manipulations. I hope the relevant authorities find ways to make it public soon.

Three Concepts the Film Conflates
NAZA and collateral damage estimates
NAZA is a Hebrew abbreviation for collateral damage. In the discussions examined here, it refers to an advance estimate of potential civilian harm. That estimate is not an actual death toll or automatic permission to cause that harm. A collateral damage ceiling is the upper limit used when reviewing a proposed strike; it is distinct from the estimate for that strike. Target validation
The intelligence checks used to establish that a person or location is a military target. Locating someone is part of the process, not a decision to attack them. Battle damage assessment (BDA)


The assessment of a strike's results and the damage it caused. The film mentions BDA without explaining where it fits into the process. Eleven Key Manipulations in the Film
- A strike was approved despite an expected toll of 500 civilian deaths
- The IDF moved Palestinians south so they would have nowhere to return
- The IDF never checked how many people its strikes killed
- The IDF destroyed buildings knowing that 25 percent of residents remained inside
- A system with 85 percent accuracy decided who would live or die
- NAZA 20 meant permission to kill 20 people, and therefore proved genocide
- The home-tracking system automatically triggered a strike when the target arrived home
- Hamas did not use civilian areas to protect its operatives; the IDF chose to fight there
- No one in the system questioned the strikes
- The IDF bombed an entire neighborhood to kill one person
- Unit 8200 authorized a strike without knowing who the target was
‘NAZA’ documentary fails to show IDF efforts to prevent civilian casualties, former officer says
A former senior IDF officer who helped develop procedures for warning civilians ahead of military strikes disputes claims made in the documentary “NAZA,” telling JNS that the film fails to reflect the Israeli military’s efforts to prevent civilian casualties and does not sufficiently address or acknowledge the steps taken to do so.

“NAZA,” whose title is derived from the Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage,” has drawn international attention since winning the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on Sept. 12. The Israel Defense Forces has vehemently denied the film’s central claim that it systematically targeted Palestinian civilians during the war against Hamas in Gaza.

Lt. Col. (res.) Sarit Zehavi, founder and CEO of the Alma Research and Education Center, which focuses on Israel’s security challenges along the northern border, helped develop procedures and establish a framework for warning civilian populations about 20 years ago while serving in the IDF’s Northern Command.

Zehavi told JNS that there are two types of targets: those targeted to neutralize immediate threats on the battlefield, and intelligence-based targets; she handled the latter as an officer. Intelligence-based targets can be tactical, operational or strategic, with each requiring approval from a commander based on its nature and an assessment of potential collateral damage.

“The goal of the collateral damage assessment is to reduce it as much as possible,” she said. “Once we’ve calculated the assessment based, for instance, on the size and nature of the building and the number of people inside or around the structure, we then have to think about what to do with it.”

Once this step is completed, the target is sent for planning, which does not necessarily mean it will be attacked. If there is a risk of high collateral damage, the relevant teams consider ways to reduce it, including whether to use different munitions, whether and how to warn the population, who will carry out the attack and under what circumstances, Zehavi said.

After a decision is made to strike, the assessment is conducted again.

“There are many people in the IDF whose mission is to prevent or reduce collateral damage as much as possible. These are intelligence officers, operational staff, and artillery and air force personnel. My mission was part of creating the procedures to warn the population,” she said.

“That includes how to phrase the warning, what kind of warning to send, what to evacuate, whether to call for the evacuation of a building, an entire street or a whole town, and what the best timing is. It includes how to warn the population, whether through leaflets, cell phones or social media; how to monitor population movements to know whether people successfully evacuated and whether it is safe to attack; and how to relay the situation on the ground to the IDF’s command-and-control systems,” she continued.

“If we didn’t care, we would not invest so much effort in doing this, and it was done on both fronts, Gaza and Lebanon,” Zehavi added.

In wars such as the U.S. campaign in Iraq, foreign armies learned warning procedures from the IDF, she said, because the field was not as developed at the time.
NAZA’s claims about IDF conduct in Gaza are grave. So are the film’s journalistic flaws
Serving a narrative
Discussed in some detail during the opening minutes of the film is the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, during which thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 251 to Gaza.

The discussion focuses largely on the experience of Israeli society during and after the attack and on interviewees’ descriptions of how they felt Hamas had “beaten” Israel. It examines the idea that the belief that there were “no innocents in Gaza” became widespread in Israel after October 7 and within parts of the military, including the Intelligence Corps, influencing soldiers’ actions.

The idea that everyone was infected with this type of thinking comes through in the film’s stereotyping of Intelligence Corps soldiers as “elitist” left-wingers who allegedly still participated in war crimes.

Another example comes in the film’s final section, which focuses on a unit described as “Bibi’s department” and its alleged efforts to pursue Palestinians who filed cases at The Hague against Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the Negev Conference in the southern city of Dimona, July 17, 2026. (Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90)

The section presents allegations that Israel is seeking to stymie Palestinian diplomatic efforts at Netanyahu’s direction.

“We are thwarting peace,” one interviewee says.

The film does not clearly establish whether the unit is part of the military and provides few details about its structure or role.

What context the film does provide comes in the form of a discussion of colonialism that seems to have little connection to the film’s allegations about the conduct of the Gaza war.

The section discusses the founding of Tel Aviv, where it was filmed, challenging the description of the city as having “sprung from the sand” and linking its establishment to the displacement of Palestinians from the area in 1948.

An old house in Jaffa is shown, identified as the only Palestinian home to have survived from that period.

Some of today’s Gazans were indeed displaced from the Tel Aviv area during Israel’s War of Independence, but the majority originated from southern parts of Mandatory Palestine, largely within 40 kilometers of the Strip, according to UN documents.

What any of this has to do with Israel’s policy of assessing the number of civilian casualties in strikes against Hamas in Gaza is unclear.

Other sections draw comparisons between life in Israel and the war in Gaza, putting a dark tinge on Israelis’ simple desire to survive and thrive. One sequence shows construction work in Tel Aviv before cutting to a discussion of demolitions in the Strip.

At another point, a soldier argues that, just as the Nazis “lived with what they did,” Israelis can carry out bombings and then continue with their daily lives.

A couple of scenes later, the film shows Israelis standing still, marking Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Israelis in NY protest, display Oct. 7 images outside sold-out North America premiere of ‘NAZA’
Dozens of pro-Israel protesters in New York City on Saturday afternoon picketed the North American premiere of “NAZA,” about the alleged AI-assisted killing of Gazan civilians, accusing the filmmakers of ignoring the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the Gaza war.

Organizers of the rally outside Lincoln Center, where the documentary was playing as part of the New York Film Festival, parked several vehicles with LED screens showing images of people who were abducted on October 7 and held hostage by terror groups in Gaza.

“Context is not censorship. It’s responsibility,” the trucks said, alongside messages about Israel’s measures meant to mitigate civilian deaths in Gaza.

Protesters held Israeli and US flags as well as placards with images of the massacre in southern Israel. “Learn the facts. Know the truth,” the signs read.

The protesters were joined by Rom El-Hai and Shalev Bitton, who both survived the massacre at the Nova music festival, along with Yunis Alkarnawi, a Bedouin Israeli who saved people from the festival.

The film, whose name is the Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage,” purports to show that the IDF used artificial intelligence for Gaza targeting and accepted high numbers of civilian deaths in the early stages of the war.

The IDF has denied the film’s main claims, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has backed legislation to strip Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the filmmakers, of their Israeli citizenship. Government supporters have also picketed the home of Szor’s parents, railing against “traitors.”

El-Hai also said at the rally in New York on Saturday that Abraham and Szor were “traitors,” and that “liars” like them existed in Jewish communities since the time of the Bible.


Rubio says foreign actor involved in RAF Fairford bomb plot, Trump criticizes release of suspects
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that a foreign actor was involved in a foiled bomb plot targeting the UK’s RAF Fairford airbase on Sunday, in an interview with Fox News on Monday night.

Rubio declined to clarify exactly which foreign actor was involved.

"Suffice it to say that what happened, what almost happened, what could have happened in the UK over the weekend is a very serious situation. It's one that clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor," Rubio said.

Separately, he stated that Iran had "openly threatened to attack American interests globally. We're going to always take that very seriously. There will be repercussions for that if it ever were to happen or even attempted."

The Fairford airbase is used by both US and UK forces and was used by the US to launch attacks on Iran.

Rubio also said that many were "disturbed" by the news that the five suspects arrested in connection with the plot were released on bail.


spiked: A haven for Islamists | Why Britain gave citizenship to a suspected Hamas terrorist
So a Hamas operative was granted British citizenship. Not only that, he’s now on trial for allegedly plotting a Jew-killing terror spree in Germany. As Tom Slater explains in our latest polemic, this shocking case is only the tip of the iceberg. For decades, Britain has been a haven for Islamists who have exploited our demented hospitality – claiming asylum, gaining citizenship and even living at the taxpayers’ expense. When will our rulers wake up to the Islamofascist threat in our midst?




Record number of states boycott UN event for 25th anniversary of anti-Israel Durban conference
More than 40 countries boycotted a U.N. event on Monday marking 25 years since the 2001 anti-Israel Durban Conference. That set a new record, surpassing the previous high of 38 countries that skipped the event in 2021, according to the Israeli delegation to the United Nations.

The boycott followed a diplomatic campaign led by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which encouraged countries around the world to avoid the event.

The anniversary should serve as a reminder of what happens when the fight against racism is politicized, according to Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador to the global body.

“The lesson of Durban is that a noble cause can lose all credibility when it is hijacked by hatred and political agendas,” Danon told JNS. “The fight against racism must never become a vehicle for antisemitism or for singling out the Jewish state.”

“Twenty-five years later, the growing number of countries boycotting the event shows that many members of the international community understand where Durban went wrong,” he said.

“The United Nations must now demonstrate that it understands as well,” he told JNS. “That means confronting antisemitism with the same seriousness as every other form of racism, rather than providing it with a platform and calling it human rights.”

The 2001 World Conference Against Racism took place in Durban, South Africa, under U.N. auspices. It was intended to address racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance but drew criticism from Israel, the United States and Jewish organizations over antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric at a parallel nongovernmental-organization forum.

A U.S. State Department report to Congress said anti-Israel rhetoric at the conference was “pervasive” and cited South Africa’s then-deputy foreign minister, Aziz Pahad, as acknowledging that the forum had been “hijacked” by participants with an anti-Israel agenda and turned into an antisemitic event.

Then-U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell said that the United States was withdrawing from the conference on Sept. 3, 2001, since its declarations contained “hateful language,” revived the discredited “Zionism equals racism” formulation, suggested that apartheid existed in Israel and singled out Israel for condemnation.

Evan R. Bernstein, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, which sent a large delegation to the 2001 conference, told JNS on Monday that B’nai B’rith representatives witnessed firsthand “how a United Nations conference meant to fight racism became a platform for the very hatred it was supposed to confront.”

“Durban’s legacy is 25 years of legitimizing the demonization of Israel and the Jewish people, and the record boycott shows much of the world is finally refusing to celebrate it,” Bernstein said.


King Abdullah’s UN attack on Israel overlooks Jordan’s own troubled history
On September 23, King Abdullah of Jordan addressed the UN General Assembly. He devoted much of his speech to lambasting Israel. He maintained that what he called “one of the world’s longest-running occupations” broke international law, and that the world had ignored it for decades.

Of course he had nothing to say about the Jordanian monarchy’s unhappy relationship with the Palestinians, with its own history of violence, repression, and unresolved grievance, nor of the several charges of flouting international law that Jordan has been accused of over the years.

In the 1948-49 war, for example, Jordan’s Arab Legion took control of the West Bank. On April 24, 1950, the Jordanian parliament approved its annexation, declaring “complete unity between the two banks of the Jordan” in a single Hashemite kingdom ruled by King Abdullah’s great-grandfather, Abdullah I. Arabs resident in the West Bank became Jordanian citizens.

The Arab League refused to recognize Jordan’s annexation. So did the rest of the world, with the sole exception of Britain and, it has been suggested (though details remain unclear), Pakistan.

The UN characterized Jordan’s annexation as lacking international legal validity. International law does not recognize the acquisition of territory through force as a lawful basis for acquiring sovereignty.

If Jordan flouted international law when it annexed the West Bank, it compounded its disregard for the legal niceties when it reversed its decision.

Until July 31, 1988, most Arabs living in the West Bank were, as a matter of Jordanian law and practice, Jordanian citizens. On that day, King Hussein, Abdullah’s father, announced that Jordan was ending its legal and administrative relationship with the territory effective immediately.

Loss of Jordanian nationality
Under the disengagement regulations, some one million Arabs resident in the West Bank were suddenly stripped of their Jordanian citizenship. All at once, they were no longer Jordanian.

Human Rights Watch describes them as becoming stateless Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Over time, their Jordanian passports were replaced with temporary Jordanian travel documents that did not confer citizenship.

Loss of nationality had serious legal consequences. They had no right of residence in Jordan. Non-citizens could not vote or stand for office. They were excluded from state employment and faced serious obstacles in accessing work, education, health care, and other services.

International human rights law prohibits the arbitrary deprivation of nationality. Article 15(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality.”

The fact that Jordan’s 1988 disengagement stripped a defined population of its existing nationality without an individualized process and without a replacement nationality makes the charge against Jordan of arbitrary illegality a powerful one.

In his speech to the UN, Abdullah called on world opinion to denounce Israel for Palestinian deaths. He might also have acknowledged that Yasser Arafat once accused King Hussein, his father, of killing 25,000 Palestinians – a figure generally believed to have been wildly exaggerated for propaganda purposes.

The episode is usually called Black September, although it lasted from September 1970 until the following July, and the death toll remains disputed. The commonly cited estimate of Palestinian deaths is in the low thousands, including both fighters and civilians. Jordanian soldiers also died.

What is not disputed is that the events of 1970-71 left a deep and bitter Palestinian-Jordanian legacy.
Israel Foreign Ministry: UNmasked: When Agenda Masquerades as Authority
Institutions cannot speak for themselves. They need people to speak in their name.

Every UN report and public statement is shaped by people whose judgments are bolstered by the credibility of the institution behind them. Once published under the UN official banner, their claims can be repeated as impartial fact, by journalists, governments, international organizations and individuals around the world.

Part one of UNmasked exposed the machinery and infrastructure behind the UN’s disproportionate and obsessive focus on Israel. However, this machinery does not operate on its own. It elevates particular voices, amplifies particular narratives and gives individual officials extraordinary power to shape how Israel is perceived globally.

The Faces of the System
Every institution is ultimately defined by the people it chooses to elevate. There are few individuals who embody the UN’s credibility crisis more clearly than Francesca Albanese.

Appointed as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, she was entrusted with one of the organization's most sensitive mandates, which demands independence, impartiality and public confidence.

Instead, her tenure has been defined by controversy. Critics, including UN Watch, have pointed to statements in which Albanese outrageously compared Israeli government policies to Nazi Germany and the Third Reich. These comparisons on their own are false and incendiary, but also fall within the IHRA working definition's examples of antisemitism. Albanese has often faced accusations of prejudgment and questions about whether her public advocacy is compatible with the impartiality expected of an independent UN expert.

In 2025, the United States sanctioned Albanese over her efforts to pursue legal action against American and Israeli officials through the International Criminal Court. Still Albanese remains the UN Special Rapporteur, and continues to produce reports and communications under the UN official banner.

That raises a question the institution cannot easily escape: how did someone facing such persistent questions about bias become one of the UN’s most authoritative voices on Israel, and remain one?

Another troubling example is Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls. Alsalem has faced criticism over her inappropriate and emotionless response to the horrific violence inflicted on Israeli women during Hamas’ October 7 attacks. In 2025, Alsalem falsely claimed that no independent investigation had found that rape occurred during the massacre, despite a UN mission having already found substantial evidence that sexual violence took place during the attacks, and indisputable information that hostages had been subjected to sexual violence.

Similar concerns extend across other UN mandates. In 2024, Tlaleng Mofokeng, then the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, publicly declared that “Hamas are not terrorists” and defended what she described as the legitimacy of armed struggle. She later characterized Israel’s response to the October 7 massacre as a “war on the right to health”, reframing a war started by a brutal terrorist attack as a deliberate, intentional assault on healthcare.

These are only a few examples of a much broader pattern across the UN system.

It exposes a system deeply compromised by politics: officials entrusted with distinct mandates, from Palestinian rights and violence against women to global health, advance the same political narrative while minimizing, dismissing or excluding any evidence that directly challenges it.

The result is the institutional equivalent of junk science: faulty political conclusions presented beneath the UN emblem as impartial expertise.
Albanese apologizes for misinterpreting Nazi camp term away from original meaning of Jews
UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese issued an apology on X/Twitter on Monday, retracting a statement she made during an interview with the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of State Workers (CLATE), in which she claimed that Jews were referred to as Muslims.

Albanese's original assertion was that “Jews were called ‘the Muslims,’” which she made as part of a broader argument that antisemitism originally encompassed discrimination against the broader category of “Semitic peoples,” rather than Jews specifically.

"I misread the term "Muselmann" (Muslim) used in Nazi camps for prisoners at the brink of death, wrongly inferring that the term antisemitism originally meant hatred of all Semitic peoples. In fact, it was coined specifically to denote hatred of Jews," she wrote.

In her original statement, she said, “In fact, when they were being taken to the gas chambers, there are some accounts of life in the concentration camps saying that Jews were called ‘the Muslims.’”

“When the word ‘antisemitism’ was coined, it referred to anyone who was not European and who came from the Middle East,” she continued. “So there was a racist hatred of the non-white, of the non-pure, of the non-Christian, which then crystallized into antisemitism as hatred of Jews,” she said.

Auschwitz victims labeled 'Muselmann' marked for death, execution
According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the term was coined in 1879 by German journalist Wilhelm Marr “to designate anti-Jewish campaigns [and] was spread through use by anti-Jewish political movements and the general public.” The IHRA notes that the term has “since its inception referred to prejudice against Jews alone.”

The term "Muselmann," German for “Muslim,” was used at Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps to refer to prisoners in a state of extreme exhaustion or suffering severe symptoms of starvation, according to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. The term, whose etymology “has not been definitively explained,” referred to prisoners in this physical state and was not a Nazi racial classification identifying Jews as Muslims.

According to the Memorial, prisoners categorized as Muselmänner often died soon afterward or were chosen to be executed.

Yad Vashem released a statement, saying: "Her use of the term “Muselmann” is also historically inaccurate. "Muselmann" was not a term specifically for Jews and it does not prove that Nazi antisemitism connected Jews and Muslims. The term developed among the concentration camp inmates, not the Nazis, to describe prisoners, Jews and non-Jews, who were near death and appeared as walking skeletons.

"By misusing this term as evidence of a racial category, Albanese fundamentally distorts its historical meaning."


UN aid chief Tom Fletcher criticized over gesture to Iran’s foreign minister in New York
The United Nations General Assembly may have ended over the weekend, but a photo taken during a meeting on its sidelines has continued to draw attention around the world. The image shows senior U.N. official Tom Fletcher appearing to bow before Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

The photo, which drew headlines in Iranian media, angered Israeli and Jewish figures. Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, wrote: “Shame. Former British diplomat Tom Fletcher, now head of the UN's relief agency, bows to Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi whose regime just massacred tens of thousands of protesters in January. Fletcher often echoed Iranian regime talking points against the US and Israel.”

Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Danny Danon, also criticized Fletcher, asking: “Did the regime’s 'humanitarian work' against its own protesters come up, Mr. Fletcher?”

24 meetings, including with major powers
The Iranian delegation sent to the General Assembly had an exceptionally busy diplomatic agenda. The Islamic Republic was represented at the gathering by President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Araghchi. According to a CNN review, Araghchi met with representatives of at least 24 countries during his visit to New York, including the foreign ministers of leading European powers.

Araghchi met, among others, with European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and his counterparts from Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Ukraine. He also met with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, shortly after Iran attacked U.S. targets inside the Hashemite kingdom. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and spoke with representatives of Western media.

But the highlight of Iran’s diplomatic activity during the General Assembly was Araghchi’s meeting with Steve Witkoff, an envoy for U.S. President Donald Trump. After the meeting, Araghchi told Western journalists that he had presented a new proposal in negotiations between Tehran and Washington. Reports overnight said Trump had rejected the proposal and was preparing for further military strikes, but from the Iranian perspective, the significance lay in the fact that the meeting took place at all.

Araghchi also heard tough messages directed at his country in other meetings. According to the BBC, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told his Iranian counterpart of “Britain’s unwavering determination” to confront threats on British soil from Iran-linked actors, including attacks targeting the British Jewish community.

Other foreign ministers urged Araghchi to reach understandings on freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and stressed the need for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict with the United States.


Iran at the Epicenter
REVIEW: ‘Stolen Revolution: Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran’ by Yeganeh Torbati and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

A recurring problem with contemporary books about the Islamic Republic is that authors often deny Iranians the agency they deserve. Especially on the left, Western and Iranian journalists and scholars can embrace this crippling sentiment since it’s been a way to cast off blame for the ugliness—the primitiveness—of the Islamic revolution and the theocracy that followed.

How many times, for example, do conversations on Iran quickly gravitate to the 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, either saying or suggesting that if Mossadegh hadn’t fallen, that if the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain’s MI6 hadn’t conspired against him (ignoring the wide array of his domestic opponents), his downfall and the Islamic revolution would never have happened? Rewrite that moment, as guilt-ridden progressive revisionists are wont to do, and Iran would be what no other Muslim country in the Middle East is today: a functioning, rather liberal democracy. A right-wing version of this, not uncommon among expatriate Iranian monarchists and American conservatives, also exists: America (Jimmy Carter) and Britain (the BBC) actually gutted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi when he needed them the most.

For better or worse, Iranians have been agents of their own destiny. Under the Pahlavis and especially under the mullahs, Iranians, like the postwar French, have punched way above their weight. They have been among the most consequential Third Worlders in great part because, even when they have been mired in conspiracies, they haven’t been helpless. And since 1979 they have seized history and done their damndest to bend the arc toward them—now much to the displeasure of a vast majority of Iranians who surely would prefer to lead less eventful lives.

Stolen Revolution: Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran does a fine job of showing Iranians who were intent on making a difference, first through the Islamic revolution or later in opposition to ever-worsening despotism. There aren’t any "buts" in this book, digressions about American "misunderstandings," and foreign-policy malpractice. Nineteen fifty-three passes in a paragraph. The CIA gets four fleeting mentions. The book’s coauthors, the American-born Washington Post-turned-New York Times reporter Yeganeh Torbati and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, who left Iran in 2008 and now writes for Iran International, give us an unapologetically Iranian story about practical idealism slamming into Islamist autocracy. They capture well the complexity of the Islamic Republic, its contradictions where good and evil can so closely reside, sometimes in the same people. In Stolen Revolution, the hope of Iranians who tried to make their homeland better gives way to regret and reflection and, at least with some, a perdurable belief that they, or the next generation, will finally overcome.


Netanyahu received three warnings from Egypt about Gaza threat including in days before October 7
Egypt conveyed at least three separate warnings to Israel ahead of the October 7 massacre, including a secret visit to Israel just two weeks before and a phonecall to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, days prior to the attack, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing officials in an Arab government.

According to the WSJ report Egypt’s intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, had already given Netanyahu several warnings that there were signs of an impending attack from Gaza, but to no avail.

A report from the Atlantic on Saturday revealed that Kamel secretly visited Israel 11 days before October 7, to meet with the prime minister and warn him of the attack, however the new WSJ report found that even after that meeting Kamel conveyed an additional warning to Netanyahu, calling him in the days before the massacre.

Netanyahu has previously denied personally receiving advance knowledge, claiming that security chiefs did not adequately warn him.

The call from Kamel was not the only warning that Netanyahu received in the lead-up to October 7, the sources told the WSJ, Netanyahu and other Israeli officials received multiple advanced warnings.

These claims come with just under a month until the first Israeli elections since October 7, 2023, drawing renewed attention to the already divisive issue of government handling of October 7 and information regarding it.

Kamel's warnings at the in person meeting
Israeli, Arab, American, and European officials briefed after October 7 on the visit said Kamel warned that Hamas appeared to be preparing for a major attack, the report mentioned, adding that he urged Israel to take economic steps to reduce tensions in the Gaza Strip.

A former Israeli official briefed on the meeting described the Egyptian message this way: “If you don’t change course, Gaza is going to explode in your face.”

The investigation noted that Kamel did not provide a date for a possible attack, identify targets, or share concrete details about the nature of the threat. It remains unclear who exactly he met with during his hour-long visit to Israel.

At the time, most warnings focused on the possibility of escalation, rocket fire, or renewed violence in Gaza, rather than the coordinated, multi-front assault Hamas carried out on October 7.
Gallant says Shin Bet received Sinwar ‘quake’ warning before Oct. 7, but misread its meaning
Former defense minister Yoav Gallant said Sunday that Israel received a broad warning from Hamas before the terror group’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, but that security officials interpreted the message as relating to a possible prisoner exchange rather than preparations for an attack.

Speaking to Army Radio, Gallant said sources in Hamas passed a message to the Shin Bet in September 2023 that then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar “will cause the prisons to quake.” Gallant said it was the only such message to reach the domestic security agency in the lead-up to October 7.

According to Gallant, the security establishment assessed at the time that the message concerned a possible prisoner exchange involving Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israeli-Russian researcher who had been kidnapped by a Shiite militia in Iraq earlier that year.

Gallant told Army Radio that he was unaware at the time of a reported Emirati warning to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a subsequent warning from Egypt, and said the recent coverage was the first he had heard of them.

“I heard about these warnings for the first time from the media,” he said, adding that if the reports were accurate and the information was not shared with the security establishment, it would amount to “a very serious flaw in the overall assessment.”

“If the prime minister receives a warning from the leader of a country, it is not his political asset; it is a security asset of the security establishment,” Gallant said. He argued that the information could have changed the way senior defense officials evaluated the situation immediately before the attack.

Gallant pointed in particular to discussions held by then-IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi on October 6 and 7, saying that had Halevi known the prime minister had received an earlier warning, it could have affected how he interpreted the signs emerging at the time.

He said senior officials had held numerous security discussions in the weeks before the war, including on the Iranian threat, but that he did not recall Netanyahu mentioning during those meetings that he had received such a warning.

Gallant also said no warning from Egypt had been brought to his attention before October 7. “It was not said; not to me, not to the chief of staff, and in my opinion not to the head of the Shin Bet either,” he said.
‘I want to kill you’: Ben Gvir films himself berating terrorist behind deadly 1996 bus bombings
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir on Sunday posted a video of himself berating Hassan Salamah, a Hamas terrorist jailed for orchestrating a pair of 1996 Jerusalem bus explosions that killed 45 people, telling him: “I want to put you to death.”

Ben Gvir has repeatedly posted videos of himself taunting Palestinian inmates and touting his policy of worsening their prison conditions. Some of the videos have been removed amid criticism from rights groups and the Central Elections Committee saying they constitute illegal use of government facilities for election propaganda.

Ben Gvir, flanked by armed masked guards, says he feels “closure” because he protested as a teenager against the bus attacks Salamah orchestrated and now, as an adult, he can “lead a policy that has turned his life into hell.”

He tells Salamah in the video: “These are the [prison] conditions I gave you. But it’s not the end. I want to kill you. I want to put you to death.”

Ben Gvir has successfully passed legislation instituting the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of deadly terrorist acts, though nobody has been executed under it yet, and some observers say it will not be used in practice.

Ben Gvir adds that Salamah will go to hell in the afterlife, “but here, I’m responsible for hell.”
New film reveals previously undisclosed details of Mossad's Hezbollah pager operation
A new film titled Paging Hezbollah has revealed details about the Mossad’s 2024 explosive pager operation that killed or wounded some three thousand five hundred Hezbollah operatives.

The film, directed by Justin Polk, comes as censorship laws regarding the covert mission are lifted, and details that had remained undisclosed are now permitted for publication.

The Jerusalem Post spoke earlier this year to “Adam Feyn,” a Mossad operative who participated in the operation and published a book in Hebrew, Hoda’ah Goralit (Fateful Message), that made a series of stunning dramatic reveals about the operation.

The film portrays how Israel penetrated Hezbollah’s communications network through device engineering and infiltration of the terrorist organization’s supply chain.

It also depicts how the process of getting the beepers to Hezbollah, from designing, marketing, and smuggling, was carried out, all while convincing the terrorist organization’s members that they were safe and reliable to use.

The operation, the movie shows, was carried out following years of planning.

One of the film’s revelations is that Israel eliminated a Hezbollah operative who had suspected that the pagers were bugged and worked to inspect them. The terrorist was killed alongside another individual, who Israel said was the target, while labeling the real target as collateral damage.

As suspicion grew, Iran sent a special X-ray machine to check whether there were explosives in the pagers. Israel also bombed the machine, creating the impression that it had meant to target something else.

Details from Gallant interview had remained undisclosed
Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant revealed these details in his own words in an interview with N12 shortly after the operation. At the time, what was discussed in the interview had remained censored.

Among the most shocking was that the timing of the operation arose out of necessity. “In the first week of August, we discovered that there was someone who suspected the pagers,” Gallant told N12.

“I do not really want to get into the details, but look at the list of those eliminated, because we eliminated him, alongside someone else, under various pretexts. Later, we discovered that inspection devices were arriving that were supposed to examine these pagers, and we eliminated them along with additional things.”

"In the middle of the operation, it turned out that somewhere, the pagers were being inspected," he continued.

"The result is that you find yourself in a position where you either have to act or risk being exposed, and that could happen very quickly. There's only one question on the table: if you try to play around with it somehow, maybe you'll end up carrying out the full operation, starting with the radios and so on."


IDF braces for Hamas kidnapping attempt along Gaza’s Yellow Line
The IDF and Shin Bet are preparing for the possibility that Hamas will attempt to abduct an Israeli soldier in the Gaza sector in the near future, following intelligence warnings. The alerts have led the military to raise the readiness level of the two divisions deployed in the Strip, the Gaza territorial division and Division 99.

Senior commanders in every unit were instructed several days ago not to leave their sectors and to conduct readiness and vigilance checks among the forces under their command. The troops are deployed at 40 positions inside the Yellow Line and another 10 positions beyond the perimeter fence.

The absence of a physical barrier along the Yellow Line has heightened concern that a Hamas terrorist cell could approach one of the positions near an IDF outpost, seize a soldier and drag him deeper into the Gaza Strip.

The IDF fears such an attack could pull Israel into a renewed escalation, this time under U.S. constraints that military officials believe could limit Israel’s ability to respond at full force against the backdrop of elections in Israel and the United States.

The concern over an attempted abduction is not theoretical. In recent weeks, reports have described IDF preparations for possible Hamas revenge attacks following a series of targeted killings in Gaza. Among the scenarios examined were attacks on Israeli forces and attempts to abduct soldiers near the Yellow Line.


Médecins Sans Frontières under scrutiny by British commission for alleged terror ties in Gaza
The Charity Commission for England and Wales has opened an investigation into Médecins Sans Frontières (UK), aka Doctors Without Borders, following a report raising concerns about alleged links between the medical charity and terrorist organizations operating in Gaza.

The report was submitted by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI).

The Charity Commission, which regulates charities in Britain and Wales, confirmed to UKLFI on Sept. 23 that it had “opened a regulatory compliance case to consider matters relating to the Charity [MSF] and will assess and consider the concerns you have raised as part of this case.”

A UKLFI spokesperson said, “We welcome the Charity Commission’s confirmation that it has opened a regulatory compliance case concerning Médecins Sans Frontières UK and will consider the serious concerns raised in our report.

“Our investigation has identified deeply concerning evidence of individuals employed by MSF who have been linked to terrorist organizations. We have also raised serious questions about MSF’s relationships with Hamas-controlled institutions in Gaza, the safeguards governing the transfer of charitable funds and the responsibilities of its U.K. trustees,” the spokesperson said.

On Sept. 1, UKLFI submitted concerns to the commission about MSF’s ties to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

UKLFI’s report identified a number of individuals employed by MSF in Gaza who are alleged to have belonged to terrorist groups or publicly glorified terrorist attacks and the organizations responsible for them.

One case highlighted by UKLFI is that of Fadi Jihad Mohammed al-Wadiya, an MSF physiotherapist killed in Gaza in June 2024.

The Israeli authorities identified al-Wadiya as a Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative involved in developing the organization’s rocket capabilities. MSF initially disputed the allegation. But in February 2026, Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s “military” wing published material identifying al-Wadiya as a commander and deputy head of its military manufacturing unit.

MSF then said it had no idea of his military involvement and that it would never knowingly employ anyone engaged in terrorist activity.

UKLFI’s report raised concerns about other MSF employees, among them a driver identified by Israel as a Hamas sniper, and a doctor allegedly linked to the PFLP, who published social media posts extolling terrorist attacks.
CPJ “Reviewed” Its Gaza List. Just Three Names Satisfy Its Own Global Criteria
The Committee to Protect Journalists has completed its latest review of journalists killed in the Israel-Gaza war, removing 22 names, reinstating four Palestinians, and reclassifying 12 others names. Three of those reinstated names have terror ties, including one confirmed PIJ fighter. But beyond who CPJ added or removed lies a more fundamental question: Do the people who remain on the list actually meet CPJ’s own methodology, irrespective of any terror ties?

CPJ claims it has a “longstanding policy” of including media workers affiliated with terrorist organizations, provided they are “not engaging in combat” or otherwise “participating in hostilities.” Yet that policy raises an obvious question: Why CPJ’s database does not include ISIS “media workers,” an al-Qaeda “cameraman,” or “reporters” from Boko Haram.? Yet in conflicts involving Israel, affiliation with a terrorist organization does not, by itself, appear to determine whether someone is excluded.

In addition, CPJ has acknowledged applying a unique standard to Palestinian journalists. A presumption that the deaths of Palestinian journalists are work-related unless evidence establishes otherwise. In its published methodology, CPJ does not state that this presumption applies to journalists killed in other conflicts. In fact, it states that evidence they were killed in relation to their work.

A case by case review of the 191 names remaining on the Committee to Protect Journalists’ list of journalists and media workers, 172 (90%) have documented ties to terrorist organizations, including 102 either identified as combatants or working for a terror-linked “media” organization.

But even setting those terror ties aside entirely, only three of the 191 appear to meet CPJ’s own methodology as it is applied worldwide: no evidence of military activity, and deaths reported as occurring while they were actually carrying out journalistic assignments or in retaliation for their work.

Another 77 names appear to qualify only under this more permissive Palestinian-only standard, including 43 people who worked for terror-linked “media” organizations.

And even if CPJ is given the benefit of the more permissive standard it applies to Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza, including its presumption that their deaths were work-related unless evidence shows otherwise and its inclusion of media workers affiliated with terrorist organizations “unless they participate in hostilities,” 111 of the 191 names, or 58%, still do not appear to meet even CPJ’s “Palestinian only” criteria. So the question is not simply how many people CPJ says were journalists. It is how “rigorous” its latest review could have been if 111 names remain on the list despite apparently failing even the standard CPJ applied to Palestinian journalists
CPJ’s “Rigorous Review”: The Mohammed Washah Case Shows How Its Methodology Gets Tossed Out
The IDF had provided a specific explanation and evidence for why Washah was targeted: his Hamas military activity. Under CPJ‘s own standard, the relevant question was whether there was evidence that the actual reason for the killing was not his journalism. And that is the question CPJ’s initial assessment does not want to answer, instead it deflected from that basic standard to “Hamas denies Washah was Hamas.”

Then came CPJ’s new review, and the evidence it now presents is notably different from what appeared in its original assessment.

The original account said a source close to Hamas told CPJ that Washah had never been affiliated with Hamas’ brigades and that the Israeli images were “likely fabricated.” CPJ also cited Washah’s brother, Ahmad, who said he “was not engaged in military activity.” Both of those pieces of evidence have now disappeared from CPJ’s updated profile.

The removal of Ahmad’s statement is significant. Ahmad Washah was himself an Al Jazeera cameraman killed in an Israeli strike on June 20, 2026. But Ahmad was also a sniper of Hamas’ military wing. Ahmad was killed alongside Siba'i Abu Hasna, a member of Hamas' Shadow Unit, the organization’s branch responsible for guarding hostages. In other words, the brother CPJ originally cited as a source for the claim that Mohammed Washah was not engaged in terrorism was himself later identified as a Hamas snipper while also working for Al Jazeera.

The change is significant for another reason. CPJ no longer tries to claim that Washah was never affiliated with Hamas, nor does it repeat the claim that the images were fabricated. Instead, its revised review says that two new independent sources confirmed that Washah had been affiliated with Hamas’ brigades before 2023, while saying that the images “were outdated.” The new sources told CPJ that he “had not been a member” of an armed group or “participated in combat-related activities” since 2022. Who are the sources? Why does CPJ consider those new sources more credible than the first?

But more important: CPJ’s position effectively changed from “he was never affiliated” and the evidence “may have been fabricated” to yes, he had been affiliated, but “that was in the past” and “the images of him with rockets are old.”

And that brings us back to the question CPJ still has doesn’t want to address: why was Washah killed?

CPJ’s revised assessment says that the evidence of his continued journalistic work qualified him as a journalist under its methodology, and therefore it retained him in its database. But that again answers the wrong question. Working as an Al Jazeera correspondent establishes that Washah was a journalist, under CPJ’s definition. It does not establish that he was killed because he was a journalist.

The relevant question under CPJ’s own Gaza-specific presumption was whether there was evidence that he was killed for reasons other than his journalism. The IDF said it targeted him because of his Hamas military activity and provided evidence of his affiliation. Washah working for Al Jazeera, by itself, is not enough to satisfy CPJ’s methodology.

Under CPJ’s own standard, the question was not simply, “Was he a journalist?” or “Was he an active member of Hamas’ military wing?” It was also, “Was he killed in connection with his journalism?” And CPJ’s revised explanation still deflects from the fact that the evidence points to a clear answer: no.

Mohammed Washah is not an isolated case. What makes his case noteworthy is that CPJ has given us an unusually detailed window into how it reaches its conclusions. The original explanation said he had never been affiliated with Hamas and that the Israeli evidence was “likely fabricated.” The revised explanation acknowledges that he had been affiliated with Hamas’ brigades, but shifts the focus to the how he “worked as a journalist.” Meanwhile, the central question CPJ’s own methodology is supposed to answer, why was he killed?, remains untouched. That is what makes Washah important, it gives us an detailed window into how CPJ reaches its conclusions.


Israel not conducting genocide, not guilty of apartheid, new academic study shows
A new academic study published last Thursday examines legal and historical evaluations of charges labeling Israel as an apartheid state, a settler-colonial project, or guilty of genocide, concluding that “apartheid and genocide are not established and that settler colonialism is an inadequate classification, including in the settings where each accusation is strongest.”

Authored by Philippe Karpe, a Senior Researcher and International Expert at CIRAD, and Gunther Jikeli, an Associate Professor at the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University Bloomington, the paper was published on SSRN.

Study acknowledges that 'racism' persists in Israeli society
The authors examine the legal definitions governing apartheid under the 1973 Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute. According to the study, while “racism and substantial disparities persist” within Israel’s citizenship regime inside the Green Line, Arab citizens participate in national elections, litigate in courts, and serve in the Knesset.

The authors state that applying the apartheid label here “equates ethnonational inequality with a system of legally enforced racial segregation and political exclusion that does not exist there.”

Regarding the West Bank, the authors note that prolonged occupation, settlements, and unequal administrative arrangements present “the strongest case” for the accusation. However, the study states that the evidence does not establish the required purpose or intent to maintain “systematic racial domination and oppression.”

The authors point out that the West Bank’s administrative divisions originate from the negotiated Oslo Accords, noting that “Palestinian non-citizenship and Palestinian Authority jurisdiction supply a national-territorial explanation for part of the legal differentiation.” Furthermore, the study notes that Gaza’s distinct internal governance and subsequent military actions “must still be distinguished analytically from an institutionalized racial regime.”

Turning to settler-colonialism, the authors evaluate the framework across pre-state settlement, the 1947 to 1949 displacement, and the post-1967 West Bank settlement enterprise.

While acknowledging that the framework illuminates aspects of land acquisition and settlement expansion, the authors argue it fails to account for “Zionism’s national and refugee character, Jewish historical attachment, or the absence of a conventional or functionally equivalent metropole.”

The study notes that, even within the West Bank, “divergent territorial strategies and negotiations over withdrawal complicate the claim of a continuous project of permanent incorporation.”

Additionally, the study notes that the survival and incorporation of approximately 160,000 Arab residents who remained inside Israel after the 1948 war “complicate the claim that state formation was conceived and executed as a preexisting comprehensive program of Indigenous removal.”
Eugene Kontorovich: ICC Prosecution for Turkish Crimes

Musician sentenced to 74 lashes for hijabless performance as Iran continues entertainment crackdown
An Iranian court rejected Parastoo Ahmadi’s appeal against her sentence of 74 lashes and a two-year ban on all artistic activities last week, Iranian media reported, just days before it was announced that the Islamic Republic was seeking to take action against other entertainers over conduct related to their creative work.

The court upheld the Qom Provincial Criminal Court’s conviction of Ahmadi, musicians Ehsan Beiraqdar and Soheil Faqih Nasiri, and six members of the production team, finding that her hijabless performance had violated “public decency through the production and publication of obscene and immoral content on cyberspace platforms.”

Ahmadi was arrested after her performance was broadcast on YouTube last December.

Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code criminalizes the performance of any “open religious taboo” or acts that offend public decency, such as appearing without a hijab. Article 743 criminalizes the promotion or encouragement of corruption, prostitution, or acts deemed offensive to public morality via digital networks.

The Islamic Republic also opened a criminal case against a production company after two actors, playing siblings in a drama titled Tehran Paris Tehran, embraced on stage. The minor physical contact between actress Fatemeh Masoudifar and Mehrdad Sedighian was recorded by a spectator.





 


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