Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Nicole Lampert: The Palestinians have played the West for fools, and here’s the awful proof
These countries insisted they believed – naively? stupidly? wishfully? – that, when Abbas said he wanted a democratic state that would live in peace with Israel, he meant it. It is rather inconvenient that this wasn’t true. Abbas, who also cancelled elections in 2021, has fallen at the first hurdle.Jonathan Tobin: The foreign-policy establishment’s war on Israel finds a target
The UK’s expectations were slightly different. It had demanded that the Palestinians organise (but not necessarily hold) an election within a year of a ceasefire taking effect (which it did on Oct 10, 2025). By giving a new election date of Sept 11, 2027, the Palestinians might be able to claim to Labour they have just about done that. But it should have been less easy to fob off the other countries. France, for example, had suggested that elections should actually take place within a year after a ceasefire under international supervision.
What has been the response? On Tuesday afternoon, more than 48 hours after the elections were called off, the foreign ministers of the UK, France, Canada, and Australia issued the weakest of statements denouncing the move. They said they “deeply regret” the decision and it would be “deeply disappointing” to the Palestinians who wanted to vote. A feeble statement for breaking a core pledge for their statehood, it is little wonder the Palestinian leadership knows it can run rings around Western powers.
And what needs to happen for these nations to realise that the two-state solution they demand – of two democracies that live next to each other in peace – is a pipe dream? That as much as we all wish it – and goodness, I wish it could be true – that is not what the Palestinian leadership has ever seemed to want.
That the Palestinian leadership doesn’t appear to believe in a two-state solution is something many in Israel learned when, in response to the Oslo peace process which would have given them a state, Hamas, with the acquiescence of the Palestinian Authority, began a wave of suicide bombings known as the Second Intifada. For those dreamers in Israel who still believed in peace, October 7 buried their hopes in the ground.
Abbas claimed he was cancelling the elections because of the instability in the West Bank and Gaza, but that is unlikely to be fixed within the year. We must surely assume he has once again cancelled these elections because he knows he would lose. Rivals within his own Fatah ruling party, sick of the 90-year-old man’s rule, have been trying to create broader coalitions for both the presidential and legislative elections.
But another of the parties due to take part in the elections is Hamas, even though all the Western nations dreaming of a peaceful Palestine insist the terror group cannot be in control. Abbas’s former Fatah rival Mohammed Dahlan was in talks to create a coalition with Hamas and fellow terrorists Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Dahlan has attacked the cancellation of the elections as an “attack on democracy”.
Abbas himself was likely to be replaced. The most overwhelmingly popular candidate for president is Marwan Barghouti, who is in Israeli prison after being convicted of the murder of five people during the Second Intifada as the co-founder of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. As much as there has been a PR push for Barghouti to paint him as the Palestinian Mandela, the suspicion must surely be that he is loved in Palestine because of his violence not his lack of it.
A few days ago, another Fatah official, Basel Abu Shahab, who runs the group’s movements in Lebanon, was forthright about the two-state solution “trap”. Threatening more attempts to overrun Israel, he was reported to have said: “Israel understands why it does not want to give us a state: it knows what the future could hold ... the establishment of a Palestinian state would mean the disappearance of the Israeli entity and the end of global Zionism.”
Perhaps there are voices for peace in Palestine but they cannot emerge when Western nations continue to reward corrupt politicians and terrorists. It would be good if, just once, our country would acknowledge what the Palestinian leadership actually is. That pointing this out would be too costly at the electoral booth shows not just how democracy itself is challenged by the Palestinians, but how this issue has damaged our own electoral processes.
Palestinian statehoodDoes the West really need a Palestinian state?
That was to be expected prior to Trump becoming president and in the interregnum between his first and second terms when Joe Biden was president. This was also a time when the promotion of Palestinian statehood and the belief that Jewish communities in the territories were illegal was official American policy.
That’s not the case now, but many permanent State Department employees and diplomats who continue to work in U.S. embassies and consulates, including in Israel, are still drinking the two-state Kool-Aid. The notion of repeating the failed experiment in which Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005—and allowing the creation of a Hamas terror state there in the far larger and more strategic Judea and Samaria—is regarded by most Israelis as not so much ill-advised as insane. That was already true before the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks in Israeli communities in the south on Oct. 7, 2023. After that, it is nothing short of perverse for Americans to be trying to impose such a suicidal plan on their ally.
Like the Hamas-run enclave in Gaza, a Palestinian state elsewhere would simply be another terror state whose goal would be Israel’s destruction. It would further serve to destabilize neighboring moderate Arab governments, leading to a disaster not just for Israel but for U.S. interests as well.
In addition to still trying to preserve the notion of forcing Israel out of the territories, many staffers, with the aid of a small minority of left-wing Israelis, have been promoting the “settler-violence” narrative about Jews living there conducting pogroms against their Arab neighbors.
This flips the reality of life in the territories on its head. While some Jews have been guilty of violence—and labeled by Huckabee as “terrorists” who deserved prosecution—the overwhelming majority of incidents there are acts of violence and terror against Jews. Most such cases of “settler violence” are really about Jews defending themselves against terror or engaged in non-violent conduct in places where Palestinians and other enemies of Israel wish they weren’t allowed to go, such as Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
That many embassy staffers working on Palestinian affairs still hold such views is not surprising since most come out of the same liberal academic institutions, think tanks and other bastions of foreign policy groupthink about Israel and the Palestinians shared by left-wing journalists, such as those who work at the Times.
They’re also angry that the current Israeli government has been willing to allow the Jews in the territories to build more homes and to expand their outposts in parts labeled as “Area C,” as referenced in the Oslo Accords. The article claims that Huckabee and Milstein’s refusal to designate such building activity as against U.S. policy contradicts Trump’s stated opposition to Israel annexing or extending its law to that area.
But that is untrue. Since Trump has signed off on an official change in policy that rightly rejects the notion that Israeli settlement in the territories is illegal (contrary to liberal conventional wisdom, international agreements guaranteed the Jewish right to “close settlement” in Judea and Samaria more than a century ago), there is no contradiction.
Enforcing Trump’s policies
It should be pointed out again that the sources claiming that Milstein had acted wrongly were anonymous embassy employees who are obviously upset that under Trump, the United States has rejected the two-state mantra and effort to demonize the Jewish presence in the territories.
Rather than acting to protect the Netanyahu government from the wrath of Trump, Milstein is, as the anti-Israel and anti-Trump Quincy Institute Washington think tank labeled him in 2025, “Trump’s pro-Israel enforcer.”
He’s serving as a check on diplomats and bureaucrats who are still acting as if Biden or Barack Obama were president. Under their administrations and many of their predecessors, the purpose of the ambassador and other U.S. diplomats in Israel was to act as imperial proconsuls whose jobs were to force the Jewish state to bend to the will of foreign dictates that undermined its security.
Whether some who work for the State Department or liberal media outlets agree with it or not, that is no longer U.S. policy.
It’s also possible that some working in the current administration have been seduced by the Tucker Carlson/groyper wing of the Republican Party and, for entirely different reasons—back an isolationist U.S. foreign policy that would discard support for Israel and be indifferent to the increased power of anti-American Islamist states like Iran and its terrorist proxies. They also wish to promote discord between Washington and Jerusalem.
Under Friedman and Huckabee, in addition to current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the embassy, which is now properly relocated in Israel’s capital, works to facilitate better relations and security cooperation between these democratic allies, not to promote conflict between them. And the old consulate that acted as a bastion of anti-Israel activity is no more.
It is clearly part of Milstein’s job to keep those who want to promote Palestinian statehood in check, rather than allow them to clog up the flow of reports from Jerusalem to the State Department with documents seeking to boost policies the administration opposes and fuel conflict with Israel’s democratically elected government. Doing so isn’t a violation of his oath as a U.S. official or an act of censorship. It’s actually what any responsible person in such a position at this time ought to be doing.
Seen from that perspective, the flurry of stories about Milstein has nothing to do with his alleged misconduct and everything to do with an attempt to thwart current U.S. policy.
But rather than resign and advocate a reversal of Trump and Rubio’s policies, some staffers—with the support of members of the U.S. foreign establishment at think tanks, universities and liberal media outlets—want to undermine it from within. And in order to accomplish this task, they are out to discredit someone who is actually doing his job to carry out current American policy, which just so happens to be far more rational as well as more attuned to what is best for the United States and its allies.
That Milstein is related to Levin and close to Huckabee makes him an even more attractive target. Still, that is no excuse for an anonymously sourced smear campaign aimed at undermining Trump’s and Rubio’s trust in them.
We can only hope that Trump and Rubio will, as Huckabee has already rightly done, stand up for a devoted public servant doing what is best for the United States and the administration.
This disturbing effort should serve as a warning to everyone who follows U.S. foreign policy about what depths the establishment will sink to enforce groupthink orthodoxy. Their pursuit of policies rooted in myths about the Middle East and the Palestinians that sane people know were proven to be failures decades ago isn’t just an obsession. They think it’s a license to destroy the reputation of anyone who stands in their way if it will make it easier for them to retake control of American foreign policy.
The reasons the Palestinians do not want their own state are as heterogeneous as the Palestinians themselves. The supposed state was conceived along the lines of U.N. Resolution 181 (II) of 1947. It was to exist alongside a Jewish state “in peace and security” and, in another, mostly forgotten paragraph, allow a Jewish minority to live “in security” on its territory—a precaution taken by the United Nations to protect Palestinian Jews.
Thus, the Jews’ presence in the “territories” of the envisaged Arab state is by no means “contrary to international law,” as claimed by the European media and European politicians, especially of the left. On the contrary, the presence of Jews is required by international law, as “close Jewish settlement” in the entire British Mandate territory of Palestine was the actual purpose of the Mandate, which was granted in 1922 by the League of Nations and confirmed in 1947 by the U.N. Founding Assembly as applicable international law.
The coexistence with a Jewish state demanded by the United Nations is one of the reasons many Palestinians do not want their own state according to the U.N. model: They would have to make do with only part of the territory that, in their view, belongs to them “from the river to the sea.”
There is a reason they cannot accept this. According to Islamic law, conquered Muslim land, including the entire territory of the Ottoman Empire, is forever Muslim. Thus, the State of Israel (or any other non-Muslim state in the Middle East) is “illegal” in their eyes.
Many Palestinians reject a Palestinian state for another reason: It would be corrupt and inefficient. There are no guarantees of interior or personal security under the corrupt crony networks of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas or a similar figure.
The Palestinian Authority led by Abbas, which was intended to create the necessary conditions for statehood according to the Western model, by no means fulfills the conditions of a state authority or state power: clear “state territory,” a clearly defined “state people” and a “state authority” in possession of a monopoly on the use of force. In fact, the Palestinian Authority would certainly collapse if Israeli troops were to withdraw from Judea and Samaria. It would suffer the same fate as it did in Gaza and be overthrown and eliminated by a fundamentalist movement like Hamas.
In 2006, in the last parliamentary elections in the “Palestinian territories” to date, Hamas won the most votes. It then took over Gaza in a brief but bloody civil war and brutally executed every Palestinian Authority and Fatah official it could get its hands on. In Judea and Samaria, only the presence of Israeli troops has secured the power of the Palestinian Authority, which is hated by the population it rules and, according to estimates by its Palestinian opponents, wastes and embezzles 70% to 80% of Western aid funds.
Under such circumstances, a Palestinian state is difficult to imagine unless the West would like to see another Hamas state (and the wars emanating from it), or Israeli troops and settlers remaining to protect the alleged “state authority.”
The other criteria of statehood according to Western ideas are also not fulfilled by the Palestinians: There is neither agreement on the borders of the state territory nor the minimum of internal solidarity of a loudly declared but not consistent “people of the state.”
The only cohesion between Palestinian Arab groups and clans is their shared hatred of the West, and the common intention to extract as many billions in aid money from the despised and frightened Western states as possible. Arab religious fighters and terrorists of all stripes immigrating to these states provide the bloody actions to create the necessary level of fear to persuade governments and the electorate to continue financing Palestinian corruption.
On all issues beyond this, the positions of Palestinian Arab groups diverge to the point of incompatibility.
A state under the presence of Israeli troops or other foreign forces of order would not be tolerated by radical Palestinians. Nor would they demilitarize and disarm their militias, as we can see in the case of Hamas, which refuses to disarm even though the organization has lost any real power. Such groups would do everything imaginable (smuggling, secret weapons production, etc.) to achieve the actual purpose of a state as they see it, which is religious war or jihad.
Moreover, Palestinian “independence” would remain constrained by dependence on massive foreign aid. If a Palestinian state were established, many Palestinians would lose the refugee status that underpins billions in current assistance, primarily from the corrupt U.N. organization UNRWA and the European Union. Aid would likely come from other sources, such as Iran, which receives billions from China for crude oil. Other powers might also seek influence over the strategically important territory of “Palestine.” Moreover, the state would remain “fragile” or “failing,” marked by violent internal conflict; attacks on neighboring states; and lawless areas where criminal gangs and terrorist networks operate.
The question is why European governments insist on creating a state of this kind. It would most likely be a terrorist state similar to the Hamas regime in Gaza that not only keeps its own population in poverty and ignorance and invests international aid money in rocket building and global terrorist activities, but will also likely trigger another regional war. Does the world really need such a state?
Deadly blast on school trip exposes lurking explosive threat after years of war
Years of war have left Israel with a potentially extensive and poorly quantified threat from unexploded bombs and other munitions. Despite public-awareness campaigns and clearance operations meant to minimize the lurking threat, a cluster munition found by teenagers on a school hike in a northern Israeli forest exploded Monday, killing a student and wounding two dozen others.Israeli student killed in hike blast named as Elazar Yair Wilensky
Estimates by Israeli security bodies suggest that there may be potentially hundreds or even thousands of pieces of unexploded ordnance scattered across nearly all of Israel, left there by various rounds of fighting over the years.
During the recent war with Iran, Hezbollah launched several Grad rockets containing dozens of BRB1-type (also known as A-09) submunitions at northern Israel.
The rockets spread the cluster munitions, which often fail to explode on impact, over wide areas. Images from Monday indicated this was the type of ordnance encountered by a group of students and teachers from the ORT Ma’alot school who were hiking the Naftali Mountains Forest scenic trail in the Ramim Ridge area, a route on the Lebanon border that had been approved by authorities.
During the walk, one of the students spotted the Hezbollah submunition lying on or near the trail, and picked it up. At some point, the bomblet exploded, killing 9th grader Elazar Yair Wilensky, 13, and wounding 24 other students and teachers, some of them severely.
Aside from Hezbollah, Iran and its Yemeni proxy group, the Houthis, have also launched hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel carrying cluster bomb warheads in recent years. Some of the submunitions do not explode upon hitting the ground, and they can still pose a danger to anyone who happens upon them, though disasters like Monday’s deadly blast have been rare.
Unlike landmines, which continue to pose a danger in the Golan Heights and West Bank, authorities cannot fence off areas containing unexploded cluster warheads, which may sit unnoticed for years before being found by an unsuspecting victim. There is no reliable way to estimate how widespread the danger is.
Unexploded ordnance can take many forms, and while some may be identifiable as rockets, grenades or conical warheads, others may appear as deceptively harmless as small metal containers in a variety of shapes. The munitions will often bear signs of wear, including dents, cracks, scorch marks or other damage, and could also be rusted. Some may be partially buried in the ground.
Their explosive power varies widely depending on the munition itself, but even small bomblets from a cluster warhead are capable of causing fatal injuries.
Unexploded ordnance left for decades can still be lethal, and can be triggered with just a light touch or by being picked up, which is why authorities urge those who encounter suspicious objects to keep their distance and report it.
Elazar Yair Wilensky, a ninth-grade student at ORT Ma’alot Yeshiva High School, was identified as the fatality caused on Monday when unexploded ordnance detonated during a school trip in northern Israel. The Israel Defense Forces’ preliminary assessment indicated that the device was likely an unexploded Hezbollah cluster munition left in the area.Students made tourniquets out of belts, socks after ordnance exploded during hike
The youngest of five children, Wilensky was remembered by his family as “a boy who loved life, intelligent and wise, full of joy, a good and beloved friend who had his whole future ahead of him.” He was a promising fencer who ranked among Israel’s leading athletes in his age group. His older brother, Dov, is an accomplished épée fencer who has represented Israel internationally.
The explosion occurred near Mitzpeh Pe’er on Ramim Ridge in the Upper Galilee, close to the Lebanese border. Approximately 50 students and teachers from ORT Ma’alot Yeshiva High School were participating in the school’s annual outing for seventh- through ninth-graders.
According to preliminary investigative findings, a student picked up the unexploded munition and placed it in his bag before it detonated. The precise circumstances of the explosion remained under investigation.
The blast killed Wilensky and wounded 23 other students and a teacher.
The 61-year-old teacher underwent surgery overnight at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. As of Tuesday morning, he remained in serious but stable condition in the hospital’s general intensive care unit.
Netanyahu visits students wounded in northern Israel explosion
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Education Minister Yoav Kisch visited students wounded in the explosion at Rambam.
Netanyahu instructed the commander of the IDF’s Home Front Command to strengthen public warnings about unexploded munitions, emphasize the prohibition against touching them and conduct extensive searches for additional devices, the Prime Minister’s Office said.
Eitan Masauri, 14, who suffered a shrapnel wound to his neck, described how another student handled the explosive device before it detonated.
“He unscrewed it, and then it exploded,” Masauri said. “The guys were thrown into the air. There was a moment of shock for about two seconds.” He added, “I realized I was hurt; I saw that a friend was injured, and I tried to help him.”
The dozens of students who were on a school trip near the Lebanon border Monday when a piece of unexploded ordnance detonated provided each other with first aid as they awaited emergency services, they recounted.Hezbollah’s Cluster Munitions Are Still Killing Israelis, But the Media Won’t Name the Perpetrator
One made a video call to his father, who instructed him on how to apply a tourniquet on himself, after he took shrapnel to the leg.
“He called me right away, we scrambled the [Israel Defense Forces] and Magen David Adom [paramedics] and explained at the same time how to make a tourniquet,” recalled Dvir Klein of his son, according to Haaretz.
One of the teens wounded in the blast was Yair Frankenthal, 15, a youth volunteer for MDA, who provided CPR and first aid to his more severely wounded classmates.
“After the big explosion I heard, I felt that I was injured too, but I immediately started checking who needed medical help so that I could help using the knowledge I had gained in the first aid course I took as a youth volunteer with the MDA,” a MDA statement quoted Frankenthal as saying.
He said he noticed one boy was seriously wounded and did not have a pulse, so he did CPR on him until an ambulance arrived.
One of the first MDA medics who arrived at the scene said afterwards that he was impressed by the students’ efforts to help one another after the blast: “Despite the difficult scenes and distress, the boys cooperated with me in an extraordinary way. Each one tried to help his friend as much as he could, some even making tourniquets to stop the bleeding.”
Tamir Duadi, a member of the civil defense squad for nearby Kibbutz Manara, choked back tears as he spoke to Channel 12 about what he saw when he arrived at the scene.
“It was a group of young people, kids. They were sitting there, holding their friends, taking care of them, making them tourniquets,” he said.
“Awesome kids did great work with me, until MDA arrived.”
Yedidia Atia, one of the students on the hike, told the TV network that a friend of his — apparently Elazar Yair Wilensky – the 9th grader who was killed in the incident — spotted the submunition off-trail, and went to check it out.
A preliminary investigation of the incident in the north suggested that the munition was launched at Israel between mid-March and early April 2026. Hezbollah’s use of cluster munitions on March 4 and again on March 15, 2026, resulted in a rare condemnation of the terrorist group by Human Rights Watch. The IDF reported approximately 50 submunition impacts from March 4 alone, all of which were around civilian homes.
While Lebanon is a signatory to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, the treaty does not formally bind Hezbollah as a non-state terrorist organization. Being that Hezbollah’s mission is the destruction of Israel, the terrorist organization has little incentive to abide by international agreements designed to protect Israeli civilians. However, it is still bound by international humanitarian law, including the obligation to distinguish between civilian and military targets – a distinction that Hezbollah has repeatedly failed to make as it seeks maximum casualties.
The danger of these weapons becomes revealed again when months after the initial attack, their explosive power remains deadly.
The Iranian regime similarly used cluster munitions repeatedly as it struck civilian locations in Israel. At the time, CNN made the false moral equivalence between the regime and Israel for its use of munitions against Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon War. The piece went without mentioning that Israel was not indiscriminately targeting civilians – which is the reason both the Iranian regime and Hezbollah use these munitions. Yet now, when these munitions have taken more civilian lives, CNN fails to give the terrorist group any deserved scrutiny.
The weapon that took a teenager’s life and left several others injured was planted several months earlier. Hezbollah’s responsibility for the casualties is no less substantial because of the time it took for the consequences to emerge. While the unexploded cluster munitions scattered across northern Israel should make the threat Hezbollah poses to civilians all the more clear, the failure of major outlets to name the terrorist group responsible only further obscures that threat. When the perpetrator disappears from the headlines, so does accountability.
Elazar Yair Wilensky went on a school trip and never came home. The IDF says the teen was killed by an unexploded bomblet from a Hezbollah cluster bomb. Cluster bombs are illegal because they scatter bomblets over a wide area, and the ones that don’t explode can kill anyone who finds them, sometimes years later. Hezbollah fired these weapons indiscriminately, targeting civilian areas and IDF bases alike. So why won’t the media name who did it?
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 13, 2026
Bomb threat grounds second Delta plane from New York to Tel Aviv in one day
A Delta Air Lines plane scheduled to depart from New York for Israel has yet to take off from John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York following a bomb threat. Flight DL234 was scheduled to depart at 10:40 p.m. Israel time.Little if any progress on Jew-hatred at United Nations, Jewish staffers say
The aircraft was denied clearance for takeoff after police received a phone call claiming that a bomb had been planted on board. Authorities suspect that the caller may be the same individual who earlier claimed that a bomb had been placed on a Delta flight that landed at Ben-Gurion Airport on Tuesday morning. That aircraft was searched, and the incident ended without any unusual findings.
The flight, currently on the runway, will be permitted to depart only after US security authorities complete their inspections and Israeli security officials and the Transportation Ministry grant clearance.
Earlier incident on Delta flight landing at Ben-Gurion Airport
The incident follows a similar bomb threat earlier Tuesday, when a Delta aircraft arriving at Ben-Gurion Airport from New York was moved to an isolated parking area after the Israel Airports Authority received an anonymous report of a suspicious object on board that could contain explosives.
All passengers were evacuated from the aircraft, and security personnel conducted searches to rule out the possibility of an explosive device.
No suspicious objects or explosives were reported. Although security officials assessed the threat as likely a hoax, they decided to thoroughly inspect the aircraft as a precaution.
The Israel Airports Authority later confirmed the incident was resolved, stating, "The incident ended with no unusual findings."
In March 2024, four United Nations employees told JNS that after Oct. 7, they have been “very uncomfortable” at work as Jews and that they had to listen silently to anti-Israel propaganda that is “completely organized and supported at the highest level.” About a year and a half later, two of the four talked again with JNS anonymously, and both said that the global body has done little to improve conditions for Jewish staffers.UN adopts Durban resolution despite antisemitic legacy of anti-Zionist declaration
“Things have continued to deteriorate in relation to anti-Israel bias,” one of the two told JNS anonymously. “It’s just that now it is both outspoken and indoors.”
The staffer was referring to a June 2026 conference of the International Labor Organization, a specialized U.N. agency, in Geneva, in Switzerland.
Israeli diplomat Waleed Gadban was forced to cut short his address, as government ministers, including Turkish ones, and trade union representatives and other delegates banged loudly on their desks. The president of the conference failed to restore order.
The first Jewish U.N. employee told JNS that “I prefer at this point not to share more and not to be identified in any way.”
The second Jewish employee, who works in the development sector and does not have an identifiable Jewish name, told JNS that from her perspective, things have not necessarily gotten worse at the global body for Jews.
That’s mainly because “we have a new conflict, and it has a little bit shadowed the situation in the Middle East, which is in a way good,” she said.
The Iran war, which has been consequential for the United Nations, “has a little bit pulled aside the issue of Jews,” the staffer said.
It’s become clear over the last couple of years exactly which U.N. staff members emphasize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and which go about their business, according to the staffer.
“Half of the people I work with are from Latin America, Asia or Africa. These people really, seriously—they don’t give a damn,” she told JNS, of what her coworkers think about Israel or the conflict.
She thinks that is the way it is for “more than 60% of 70% of the staff of the U.N.”
The staffer recalled a recent conversation with a coworker from Southeast Asia about the Jewish High Holidays, during which the coworker asked to come next time to the Jewish staffer’s synagogue.
“It’s not even the Arabs that are the problem,” the staffer said. “Besides the Palestinians, the problem is the Europeans and the leftists, promoted by NGOs. They are the most dangerous.”
The UN adopted a resolution calling for the full implementation of the 2001 Durban Declaration, despite arguments that it platforms antisemitism and hatred of Israel.
On Monday, the UN General Assembly formally adopted the new political declaration and draft resolution (A/81/L.4) with 95 countries voting in favor, five against, and 37 abstaining. Argentina, Australia, Canada, Micronesia, and Israel voted against. The United Kingdom, Austria, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and various members of the European Union abstained.
The draft calls for the comprehensive implementation of and follow-up to the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA). The core focus is on “reparatory justice,” “national anti-racism policies,” and “protections against racial profiling and structural bias embedded within contemporary technologies.”
During the debate, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, condemned the attempt to grant further legitimacy to the Durban Conference, 25 years after it took place.
Danon recalled that images of Hitler were circulated during the conference, Zionism was equated with racism, and Jewish participants were physically assaulted. He also noted that during this year’s gathering, Iran’s representative described Zionism as a “doctrine of supremacy.”
Durban Conference became a platform for antisemitism, hatred of Israel
“The Durban Conference was supposed to combat racism, but instead became a platform for antisemitism and hatred of Israel,” said Danon. “25 years later, the United Nations continues to celebrate this disgrace and attempts to rewrite history.”
“Israel will not support a resolution that legitimizes antisemitism under the guise of fighting racism. Durban’s legacy deserves no further recognition, no further celebration, and no further legitimacy. It is time to remove this stain from the United Nations once and for all.”
This follows recent 25th anniversary celebrations of the 2001 Durban Conference at the United Nations.
As a result of campaigning by Danon and Israel’s Foreign Ministry, a record number of 46 countries boycotted the 25th-anniversary events.
According to Mike Waltz, US ambassador to the UN, the US walked out “in protest, as we did at the original conference in 2001.”
Norway doubles down: days after Hamas cheers the Nobel Peace Prize award to Navi Pillay by a committee appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, Oslo breaks with the democratic world by voting to celebrate the anti-Western and antisemitic Durban conference. Quisling would be proud.
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 13, 2026
“The most sickening and blatant display of hatred toward Jews I have seen since the Nazi era.” This is how Congressman and Holocaust survivor Tom Lantos described the 2001 Durban Conference. 25 years later, the UN continues to perpetuate the Durban Conference’s toxic legacy, passing a resolution calling for the full implementation of the Durban Declaration with the support of 95 countries. We will fight antisemitism and hypocrisy at the UN. It’s time to put an end to this festival of hate!
— Danny Danon 🇮🇱 דני דנון (@dannydanon) October 12, 2026
Navi Pillay’s Nobel Peace Prize is an insult to Jewish communities
The decision to award the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay demeans a prestigious institution and sends a troubling message to Jews around the world: our human rights are negotiable, our suffering is ignored, and those who dismiss our concerns can receive the highest international honors.A disgraceful decision by the Nobel Peace Prize committee
A prize intended to advance peace has instead deepened the alienation of a people who know the consequences of hatred that is left unchallenged.
The Nobel Peace Prize carries an extraordinary responsibility. It should reward moral courage, encourage reconciliation, and honor those who reject violence without qualification. Its authority rests on the conviction that human dignity is universal.
Yet in this case, the Nobel committee celebrates someone whose record includes defending a colleague’s rabid antisemitic rhetoric. By doing so, it undermines that conviction and insults previous recipients who pursued peace through an uncompromising commitment to the humanity of others.
When Pillay defended Miloon Kothari, her colleague on the three-person United Nations commission investigating Israel, that alone should have disqualified her from even being considered for this award.
Kothari claimed that the “Jewish lobby” controlled social media and questioned whether Israel should belong to the United Nations. Rather than treating these remarks as an affront to the commission’s integrity, Pillay defended him.
Jews recognize this language immediately. Claims about Jewish control, Jewish money and hidden Jewish influence have accompanied centuries of persecution. Dressing them in the vocabulary of international diplomacy makes them no less dangerous.
That same question hangs over the commission’s accusation that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Its approach resembled a kangaroo court – the appearance of legal authority without the confidence that comes from demonstrable and meaningful impartiality.
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay is a disgrace. It flies in the face of the values and principles the award is supposed to uphold and celebrate.UN adviser Albanese says Hague court should weigh prosecuting Israeli media figures
It rewards a woman with a long and demonstrable record of hostility towards Israel, whose public positions should have disqualified her from ever chairing a supposedly impartial UN investigation into the Jewish state. It rewards an official who defended the UN’s unique and obsessive institutional targeting of Israel, who had publicly accused Israel of apartheid and campaigned for sanctions against it before being appointed to investigate it, and who defended a fellow commissioner after he invoked the antisemitic trope of a powerful “Jewish lobby” controlling social media.
Worse still, it rewards her in the name of precisely those qualities her record calls most seriously into question.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee praises Pillay’s “independence”, “integrity”, “judicial rigour” and “firm moral compass”. It specifically cites her chairmanship of the UN Commission of Inquiry into Israel as part of the record for which she is being honoured.
The obscenity of the contradiction is difficult to overstate.
A woman who had already publicly judged Israel was subsequently appointed to investigate it and is now rewarded for her impartiality. A woman who campaigned for Israel to be sanctioned before chairing an inquiry into its conduct is celebrated for her judicial rigour. A woman who defended a commissioner invoking the “Jewish lobby” is lauded for her moral compass. A woman who defended the only permanent country-specific agenda item in the UN Human Rights Council is held up as a champion of universal legal principles.
This is not simply another questionable Nobel Peace Prize. It is the validation of everything that has gone wrong with the international human rights establishment: the institutional obsession with Israel, the grotesque double standards, the abandonment of even the appearance of impartiality and the extraordinary conceit that those who invoke international law are somehow themselves above scrutiny.
Pillay’s award is particularly revealing because none of the evidence was hidden. The United Nations knew her record when it appointed her. The Nobel Committee knows it now. What should have raised serious questions about her suitability for such positions has instead become part of the career for which she is being celebrated.
Pillay’s fixation with Israel stretches back through her tenure as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights between 2008 and 2014. An analysis by UN Watch of every statement published by her office between September 2008 and June 2010 found that nine of 21 country-specific statements concerning the entire Middle East and North Africa were about Israel. During the same period, according to the analysis, Pillay issued no country-specific statement concerning 34 countries then classified by Freedom House as “Not Free”, including North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Cuba and Eritrea.
Almost 43 per cent of her country-specific statements concerning an entire region containing some of the world’s most barbaric regimes were devoted to Israel.
Francesca Albanese, United Nations special rapporteur on what the global body considers “occupied” Palestinian areas, wants Israeli media figures to be prosecuted for inciting what she calls a “genocide” in Gaza.UN Watch: Legal Analysis of Francesca Albanese’s October 2026 Report to the General Assembly
“The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court should investigate direct and public incitement to commit genocide by government officials and media figures as part of the ongoing Palestine investigation,” Albanese wrote in a July 21 report, which was released last week.
The International Criminal Court, which is an independent body in The Hague that is unconnected to the United Nations, issued arrest warrants for Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The role of the Israeli media in inciting this genocide, by helping to foster an unchecked genocidal climate, ought to be examined judicially, as has occurred in other contexts,” Albanese wrote in an October 2024 report.
In the new report, which runs 29 pages, she states that “the Israeli government’s communication strategy has significantly manipulated media discourse, building on a long-standing pattern of dehumanization of Palestinians across Israeli media.”
The Israeli press “does not merely relay or amplify these narratives. In many instances, it explicitly incites to violence, including genocide, contributing to the normalization of mass atrocities.”
Albanese has drawn frequent criticism from Israel, the United States and Jewish leaders of antisemitism. Washington sanctioned her in part for that reason.
In her new report, she accuses Israel of killing 300 journalists in Gaza since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. Organizations that track the deaths of reporters have revised their counts after Hamas has claimed slain people, often listed as journalists, as among its martyrs.
The Israeli military recently released a list of what it said were 170 Palestinian “journalists” who were, in fact, “active members of militant or terrorist organizations.”
Albanese repeatedly invokes international criminal law to transform speech, journalism and commercial activity by private actors into components of genocide. But the authorities she cites do not support the conclusions she draws from them.
Her reliance on the Rwanda “Media Case,” Prosecutor v. Nahimana, is one example. Albanese claims that statements by Israeli presenters and commentators amount to direct and public incitement to genocide and says that their being “unchallenged and unrepudiated” engages the responsibility of the media organizations themselves (paras. 61-62). But Nahimana does not establish such a sweeping rule. The Appeals Chamber stressed that the specific crime requires a direct public appeal to commit genocide, made with the intent to incite genocide. It expressly distinguished such incitement from hate speech and incitement to violence, holding that speech must amount to more than a “vague or indirect suggestion.” The tribunal examined the specific broadcasts, the intent behind them and the individual defendants’ responsibility for their dissemination.
The facts of Nahimana also bear little resemblance to Albanese’s allegations against Israeli media. The case concerned RTLM broadcasts that directly incited the killing of Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide. Albanese, by contrast, relies on a handful of selected statements by Israeli presenters and commentators, without adequately examining their context, meaning or the intent of the speakers. Instead, she characterizes them as direct and public incitement to genocide and invokes Nahimana to suggest that media organizations bear responsibility for statements left “unchallenged and unrepudiated” (paras. 61-62). But the judgment provides no basis for drawing such sweeping conclusions from isolated statements without establishing the required elements of the crime.
Albanese makes the same legal leap when accusing social-media companies of potential complicity in international crimes. She says Google and X accepted Israeli government advertising that disputed famine claims and other allegations against Israel (paras. 50, 85). From there, she jumps to the possibility of criminal complicity (para. 88), citing Furundžija, a war-crimes judgment from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
But Furundžija does not establish criminal liability merely for accepting payment to publish an advertisement. It requires assistance that had a “substantial effect” on the commission of a crime, together with knowledge that the assistance facilitated the crime. Albanese establishes neither. She identifies no international crime that was substantially assisted by a Google or X advertisement, no evidence that carrying the advertisement facilitated such a crime and no evidence that the platforms accepted it knowing that it would do so.
According to the world's most famous U.N. human rights official, Jews living in Israel are guilty of settler-colonial apartheid, and if they move to Europe, they are guilty of settler-colonial apartheid. This antisemite is cited by world academics and media as a moral authority.
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 13, 2026
Is there anywhere you think Jews should be allowed to live? Northern Cyprus is literally occupied by Turkey, but Qatar’s propaganda machine and Hamas’s de facto UN Rep are trying to paint Israelis as the attempted occupiers🎪
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) October 13, 2026
It seems that Vanessa Frazier, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, doesn’t think it’s necessary to include Hamas’s recruitment of child soldiers in her reports. Ms. Frazier, if you can’t account for your failure to address Hamas’s crimes, how can anyone take your reports seriously?
— Danny Danon 🇮🇱 דני דנון (@dannydanon) October 13, 2026
UN panel member admits he, colleagues accused Israel of ‘genocide’ without verifying facts independently
Chris Sidoti, a member of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Israel and the Palestinians, admitted last week that the U.N. panel reported that Israel intended to commit “genocide” in Gaza even though the commission never collected direct evidence to that effect.
The Australian jurist made the statement during a public debate with American military law expert Brian Cox at Caulfield Hebrew Congregation, an Orthodox synagogue in Melbourne.
Proving genocidal intent is “a very, very high test,” which is “higher than the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt,” Sidoti said at the event.
The U.N. panel member told attendees that “if we accept that the goal of the Israeli authorities in Gaza has been the destruction of Hamas, that does not preclude the possibility of genocide being the strategy by which their goal is going to be attained.”
Even if Israel aimed to destroy Hamas, it could still be using “genocide” as a strategy to that end, he claimed.
The U.N. panel’s conclusion that Israel was guilty of “genocide”—a charge which the Jewish state has repeatedly denied—was based on evidence on “reasonable grounds,” which is “not a high standard,” Sidoti said.
“We are not a court,” he told attendees. “We are not even prosecutors. We are an investigative body.”
The Genocide Convention requires specific intent, or dolus specialis in Latin, to destroy a group at least in part for a finding of genocide.
Navi Pillay, an anti-Israel activist and former chair of the commission who won a Nobel Prize last week, told a German newspaper that the panel “essentially worked like a court” with “all the instruments of the separation of powers.”
“Every fact was verified by us,” she told the paper.
Navi Pillay's fellow commissioner Chris Sidoti is a very confused man. He just addressed a Melbourne synagogue in Arabic. At the U.N., sitting next to Pillay, he unwittingly declared: “Recognize the State of Israel!” https://t.co/W0a54zftmT
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 13, 2026
Super interesting that @AnitaAnandMP is using the words “Palestinian Authority” and not “State of Palestine.”
— 𝔼𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕠𝕥 𝕄𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕟 (@ElliotMalin) October 13, 2026
Priorities: 56 UN rapporteurs condemn U.S. over ICC sanctions. Yet on the same day, only 24—less than half—joined a call on Iran to stop executing civilians. Shame on “experts” @FranceskAlbs @profbensaul @gkatr @UNSRVAW & Zeina Jallad for throwing Iranian victims under the bus.
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) October 13, 2026
Reem excuses high levels of child marriage in Gaza because… Israel. There’s no other people on earth aside Palestinians whose own depravity is washed away to blame another. A Special Rapporteur for “Violence Against Women and Girls” no less. Well… *some* women and girls.
— Joo (@JoosyJew) October 13, 2026
The Collapse of Hamas's Concept of Victory and the Erosion of the "Armed Resistance" Ethos
Recent Palestinian public opinion polls indicate a significant weakening of the "resistance is winning" narrative and reflect a profound conceptual shift. While the Oct. 7 attack was initially perceived by large segments of the Palestinian public as a historic achievement, over time, the destruction of Gaza, the heavy human toll, and Hamas's lack of any political or military horizon have forced this public to confront reality.Bassam Tawil: Middle East Gains Must Not Be Squandered
One month after the outbreak of the war, 70% of Palestinians in Gaza, Judea and Samaria believed that Hamas would emerge victorious. By August 2026, that figure had fallen to 20%. In Dec. 2023, 63% believed the preferred strategy for statehood was Hamas's strategy of "armed struggle." In August 2026, that figure was 27%, the lowest rate recorded in the past four years.
While Palestinians in Judea and Samaria generally maintained more hawkish positions (due to their distance from direct fighting), residents of Gaza, who experienced the destruction and humanitarian suffering firsthand, led the decline in support for Hamas and its actions. As the collapse of civilian infrastructure intensified and disillusionment with the resistance's ability to protect the population grew, Hamas's legitimacy as the vanguard of the national camp eroded severely.
This shift moves the center of gravity from supporting Hamas's strategy of resistance toward a pragmatic approach that is acutely aware of its costs.
At the same time, the ethos of armed resistance remains deeply embedded in the psychological foundations of Palestinian society, even as Palestinians confront the painful experience of its failure. There is very strong opposition to disarming Hamas; 50% believe that armed resistance has benefited the Palestinian national struggle.
As of August 2026, the Palestinian public presents a picture of despair, but also of growing disillusionment with Hamas's hubris of victory. It understands the price of the destruction and expresses a greater willingness than in the past to pursue diplomatic channels and negotiations.
The Palestinian public's recognition of the devastation brought upon it by Hamas serves as a foundation for the demand, shared by both Israel and Abbas, that Hamas must not be integrated under any circumstances into the new governance mechanisms being established in Gaza and that it must be fully disarmed, without compromise.
Israel, increasingly encircled for decades by an Iranian "noose of fire" on seven fronts, inflicted severe damage on its enemies' military capabilities.Biden's Hamas Hostage Negotiator: After Oct. 7, Israel "Will Never Allow Hamas to Reconstitute....Those Are Legitimate National Security Aims"
The U.S. finally demonstrated its willingness to use military force against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and a U.S.-backed agreement brought home all the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas.
Nevertheless, Hamas continues to resist disarmament, Iran remains a major threat, and Hizbullah's armed presence in Lebanon continues to undermine the authority of the Lebanese state.
Trump's 20-point plan provided a framework for a different future for Gaza. It envisioned an end to Hamas's rule, the disarmament of armed factions, a transitional Palestinian administration, an International Stabilization Force (ISF), and reconstruction.
Hamas has suffered substantial military loses, but it has not disappeared as a political and armed force.
Can Gaza really have a new beginning while the organization that launched the Oct. 7 massacre retains the ability to launch more massacres?
Civilian institutions cannot function effectively when an armed faction retains the power to threaten and overrule them.
The task ahead is to turn the gains already made into a strategic reality in which Palestinians in Gaza can live under civilian government rather than an armed factional rule, in which Israel's security is strengthened, and in which Iran and its Middle Eastern allies can no longer threaten its own people or the region in any way.
In August 2024, Brett McGurk, point man on the Middle East for President Biden, was working to reach a deal to end the war in Gaza when he received a call from William Burns, director of the CIA. Six Israeli hostages had been found slain in a tunnel under Rafah, all of them shot multiple times. These deaths were not a tragic accident. After the bodies were found, Hamas released propaganda videos showing some of the hostages speaking their final words.Iran fortifies nuclear sites, rebuilds missile arsenal as it prepares for the next war
The deal was doomed - and McGurk realized that a major shift would now be required for the war to end. The Americans should "walk away until [Yahya] Sinwar is dead," he told Biden. As long as the Oct. 7 mastermind was alive, there would be no agreement. In his new book, Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages, McGurk brings us the first draft of this history.
He ran the Hamas hostage negotiations for Biden. "You're nearly there, then Hamas puts another crazy demand on the table." When the war's first ceasefire and hostage exchange ended on December 1, 2023, it was because Hamas refused to release the young female hostages that were due to come out next. On other occasions, Hamas refused to provide complete lists of which hostages it was willing to release.
Today, Sinwar is dead, while Hamas is heavily depleted and no longer in total control of Gaza. But it is not defeated. "So long as they are clinging to power, there is no way forward on a political horizon, or tragically for the people of Gaza," says McGurk.
"What you need to appreciate is that, after October 7, Israel will never allow threats to gather on its border again. It will never allow Hamas to reconstitute, never allow Hizbullah to mass 30,000 troops on the border. I wouldn't defend all their actions, but those are legitimate national security aims."
There is a growing line of argument for the U.S. to distance itself from Israel. McGurk disagrees. "I believe that to influence Israeli conduct, the better approach is to be working with them, because the threats are there regardless, and they are going to act on them."
Satellite images show that Iran is fortifying various locations as it may be preparing for renewed war, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.Hizbullah's Explosives Smuggling Signals Preparations for Renewed War with Israel
“Iran is fortifying its defenses, rallying loyalists and threatening a wider, harsher response against the US and its Gulf allies as it prepares for potential American attacks after the midterms and seeks to deter them,” the article noted.
This comes amid a flurry of other reports suggesting that the US or Israel could return to fighting Iran.
Maariv said over the weekend that the United States had pressured Israel to carry out strikes against Iran. Both Israel and the US have upcoming elections. Any strikes could affect the elections.
PBS reported on Sunday that “Iran has continued to reject a deal with the US. The head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council says Tehran finds the latest response from the United States ‘insufficient’ as efforts at negotiations to end the war and fully open the Strait of Hormuz limp along.”
The picture being painted is of an Iran that continues attempting to rebuild its missile and drone program.
During August and September 2026, Syrian security forces and the Lebanese Army announced the seizure of rockets, RPG rounds, and automatic rifles, magazines, and ammunition.Hezbollah explosive smuggling, illegal finance network leads to calls for probe by Lebanese PMs
On Oct. 7, a Lebanese army checkpoint on the Damascus-Beirut road foiled an attempt by two members of Hizbullah to introduce 800 kg. of C4 and TNT military-grade explosives to Lebanon.
Routine skirmishes and smaller tactical seizures occur regularly. Is this signaling that Hizbullah is preparing for an internal confrontation in Lebanon or preparations for a renewed conflict with Israel?
Extensive Israeli air campaigns targeting underground Hizbullah infrastructure in the Bekaa Valley, Southern Lebanon, and the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut have destroyed significant stockpiles of pre-stored munitions, causing severe disruption and forcing the group to rapidly attempt replenishment via smuggling routes along the porous Syrian border.
A renewed, sustained military confrontation with Israel is the primary strategic driver behind moving high explosives at this scale.
The attempt to push bulk C4 and TNT across the border reflects an urgent effort to replenish degraded defensive stockpiles, support local weapon fabrication, and prepare for a long-haul military clash with Israel.
Hezbollah has remained largely silent amid growing public anger and evidence of an explosives-smuggling plot believed to have been intended to facilitate political assassinations in Beirut, making an announcement on Tuesday that only addressed the issue of compensation funds for displaced individuals.Palestinian terror suspect caught filming Bnei Brak light rail
Lebanese forces seized 500 kilograms of explosives from a vehicle at a checkpoint in Dahr al-Baidar in the Bekaa Valley late last week, arresting two individuals connected to Hezbollah during what some reports are claiming was an accidental discovery. Embedded within the explosives were metal balls and nails, which are used to maximize damage.
Though credit was given to the Lebanese Military for locating the explosives, in addition to another nearly 200 kg. along the Lebanese-Syrian border earlier this week, some Lebanese officials and media have reported that the explosives were uncovered when the vehicle transporting them was involved in an accident.
The Alma Education and Research Center noted that the Dahr al-Baidar checkpoint, where the explosives passed through, is a permanent and well-known Internal Security Forces checkpoint, and they questioned why Hezbollah would feel bold enough to risk such a hefty shipment if it had reason to believe the vehicle would undergo inspection.
Based on this observation, the center concluded that Hezbollah was certain that there would be no significant inspection, which raises the possibility that similar shipments had previously passed through.
Security cameras smashed, possibly linked to explosive smuggling
Former judge and Lebanese Parliament member representing the Zahle district, George Okais, also confirmed that he had complained back in March that security cameras in the Chtoura Municipality and in the town of Jalala had been repeatedly smashed, in what he now believes to be a series of incidents connected to the smuggling of explosives.
Alternatively, the center suggested, Hezbollah might have always intended for the shipment to be discovered with the aim of sending a threatening psychological message to the political and security figures working to disarm the organization. Hezbollah’s leadership, set against both disarming and Beirut’s negotiated ceasefire with Jerusalem, has frequently threatened civil war over the past few months.
MP Najat Saliba claimed to Al Jadeed News that the same type of explosives located in the van had been used to assassinate former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, killed by Hezbollah on February 14, 2005, in Beirut, after a massive truck bomb targeted his motorcade. The attack killed 22 people and wounded over 200.
A Lebanese political source told Kan News that the Iran-backed terror group had been mounting pressure on the Lebanese government to bury the incident. However, both Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salman and Lebanese Justice Minister Adel Nassar have committed to full investigations going ahead without delay.
The Israel Police said on Tuesday that it had arrested a Palestinian suspected of past involvement in terror attacks who was in Israel illegally, posed as a citizen and filmed inside a light-rail station.
Security guards at the Aharonovich station in the central city of Bnei Brak spotted the man on Monday morning and called police to the scene.
The suspect first gave them an Israeli ID number and claimed he lived in Tayibe, an Arab city in central Israel, according to the force.
Further checks showed he had given false details and had been involved in “past security incidents,” police said.
“The suspect, 32, a resident of Judea and Samaria, who was allegedly involved in carrying out terror attacks against Israeli targets, was arrested and transferred for questioning at the Bnei Brak station,” the police statement added.
He was set to be brought before the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday for a hearing on extending his detention.
Four Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives who were allegedly planning a terror attack were apprehended by Israeli troops in the northern West Bank this week, the military says. The IDF says that following intelligence provided by the Shin Bet, troops carried out two raids in the towns of Qabatiya and Arraba and nabbed four Islamic Jihad operatives who planned a terror attack in the area. In a separate raid this week in the village of Beit Rima, the army says troops captured a Palestinian arms dealer. The suspects were handed over to the Shin Bet for questioning.
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) October 13, 2026
Five terror operatives were killed in Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip in recent days, the military announces. The IDF says that one strike on Sunday in southern Gaza's Khan Younis killed three members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as they gathered to plan attacks on troops. They are identified by the military as Muhammad Abu Hajjaj, an engineering operative, Yousef Abu Razak, a deputy squad commander, and Abdelhamid Jadallah, a rocket operative. A separate strike yesterday in southern Gaza killed Salah a-Din Iyad Abd al-Hamid and Izz a-Din Iyad Diab Barhoum, identified by the army as member of Hamas's elite Nukhba Force in the terror group's Rafah Brigade. The IDF says the five had been advancing attacks against troops and civilians and attempting to restore the capabilities of the two terror groups, "in systematic violation of the ceasefire.
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) October 13, 2026
2/6 Hamas kidnapped Israeli civilians, starved and abused them, and denied Red Cross visits. Spoljaric: Visiting them was “much more complicated.” But on Palestinian detainees in Israeli custody? Geneva Conventions. “Moral obligation.” Torture. Why was that language reserved for Israel?
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 13, 2026
4/6 Spoljaric insists there has “never been total victory” in war and says no war is necessary. Was defeating Nazi Germany unnecessary? After Hamas massacred 1,200 people, abducted 251 and vowed to repeat Oct. 7, was Israel supposed to leave its hostages, allow Hamas to attack Israel again as they said they would?
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 13, 2026
6/6 Hamas held Israeli hostages for years. The Red Cross never gained access to them during captivity. It later handled exchanges in which Israel freed convicted murderers to recover its hostages. The ICRC admitted it “lost its moral compass” during the Holocaust. Yet confronted with that failure, Spoljaric insists neutrality must not be compromised. When questioned about Palestinian detainees held by Israel, suddenly it's about “moral obligations” and torture. That’s the staggering hypocrisy at the heart of this interview. Neutrality when pressed about Hamas's victims. Moral certainty when the questions turn to Israel. Has the Red Cross learned nothing from its own history?
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 13, 2026
CNN Has No Red Lines When It Comes to Gaza Sources
Taken together, CNN’s choice of sources reveals a disturbing pattern.BBC under fire for hosting influencer who called Jews ‘bunch of lying scumbags’
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry supplies the casualty figures. The Hamas-run Civil Defense provides estimates of the missing. Its spokesman, whom Israel has identified as a Hamas operative, supplies accounts of recovery efforts. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor provides allegations about potential Israeli wrongdoing, Medical Aid for Palestinians offers commentary on the psychological toll, while a highly contested UN inquiry supplies the genocide accusation.
CNN never seems to have a problem with implicitly or explicitly pointing out an Israeli interest or agenda. But when it comes to the other side? Not so much.
Journalists have a responsibility to identify interests and agendas accurately and subject claims to appropriate scrutiny.
CNN’s failure to do so is particularly troubling given how extensively the aforementioned organizations and individuals have already been investigated and publicly challenged. The information is available. The allegations are documented. The controversies are hardly new.
A reader unfamiliar with Gaza’s political institutions or the backgrounds of these organizations could finish CNN’s article believing that its central claims rest on a collection of independent, credible and largely impartial sources.
That is the real danger of this kind of reporting. It does not necessarily require an outright falsehood to mislead an audience. Sometimes, the most consequential distortion lies in what the journalist chooses not to disclose.
CNN’s report devotes considerable attention to the yellow line separating areas of Gaza under Israeli and Palestinian control. Yet when it comes to the credibility of the sources on which its reporting depends, the network appears to have no red lines at all.
The BBC has faced fierce criticism for giving airtime to an influencer who previously described Jews who moved from Europe to Israel as “a bunch of lying scumbags”.
Bushra Shaikh, a former contestant on The Apprentice, appeared on BBC One’s Sunday Morning Live to debate whether full-face coverings should be banned in public.
But her appearance has sparked anger among Jewish campaign groups over her past comments about Jews and Israel, as well as her reported support for the Iranian regime.
According to The Telegraph, Shaikh previously described Jews who moved from Europe to Israel as “the biggest charlatans on this planet”.
Hours after the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, she wrote: “Palestinians have done more in 5 minutes than Zelensky has done with 75bn. Humiliation is an understatement.”
In October 2024, she posted: “One state solution. Palestine. And send this European problem back to f***ing Europe.”
Following the Manchester synagogue terrorist attack last October, which left two people dead, she shared a video blaming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The Manchester attack is on Netanyahu. He has Jewish blood on his hands,” she wrote.
In another social media post, Shaikh appeared to respond to a report that at least 2,000 protesters had been killed in Iran over 48 hours by writing: “The real number is 6 million.”
The figure matches the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust, although it is unclear whether Shaikh intended to make that reference.
Layla Bashar al-Kloub should not have been allowed near this topic. From calling Israelis "terrorists" to praising the work of an Al Jazeera host disciplined over Holocaust denial as "exquisite journalism", how was @LaylaAlKloub trusted to report on Gaza casualties for the BBC? https://t.co/jPrqgP8bLk
— CAMERA (@CAMERA4Truth) October 13, 2026
Channel 4 platformed activist Roba Attallah without disclosing her background. Her social media record includes eulogizing a terrorist who murdered 3 Israelis on a bus as a "martyr," affectionately calling a Hamas colonel "Uncle," and posting photos with an activist who celebrated Oct. 7.
— CAMERA (@CAMERA4Truth) October 13, 2026
This is the same well-sourced Sky News reporter who was instrumental in spreading the Hamas propaganda lie of the “Al-Ahli Hospital Massacre,” which led to the torching of synagogues around the world. https://t.co/9TQCwFspCX
— Saul Sadka (@Saul_Sadka) October 13, 2026
