Friday, October 16, 2026

10/16 Links Pt1: Netanyahu to Obama: ‘Our land isn’t stolen,’; Bret Stephens: Going Back to To Jerusalem and Back; Seth Mandel: Anti-Semites Waste So Much of Our Time

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: Going Back to To Jerusalem and Back
Current events books tend to age poorly. Controversies fade. Trends that seem unstoppable in one decade are unexpectedly reversed in the next. Predictions based on extensive data and careful analysis nonetheless prove wrong. It’s hard to make sense of one’s time, or of its direction, while living within it.

Yet to read Saul Bellow’s To Jerusalem and Back a half century after its publication feels remarkably, almost disconcertingly, current. On a visit to Kiryat Arba, the Israeli settlement next to Hebron, Bellow is distressed by the sight of Jewish kids playing so close to the Palestinian town: “It’s when I see the children on their bikes that I feel most uneasy, knowing how much madness there is just over the horizon.” (Remember: This is the mid-1970s.) Speaking of settlements, Bellow worries about “ultra-Orthodox zealots who insist that to settle on the West Bank is their God-given right.” The occupation, he says, “is costly and embarrassing. Israel, born out of a national liberation movement, now seems to be denying the Palestinians their political liberties.” But the attitudes of Israel’s enemies aren’t far from his mind, either. He quotes Syria’s minister of defense urging his troops not only to butcher Jewish foes but to eat them. “Egyptian and Syrian leaders speak of the founding of Israel as ‘the original sin,’” Bellow writes. “Is this sin so great that it justifies not only slaughter but cannibalism?”

Turning to global perceptions of Israel, he relates a conversation he had over lunch with Yitzhak Rabin, then the prime minister. “The Arabs have succeeded in winning worldwide public support,” Bellow warns, and “Israel had better give some thought to the media intelligentsia in the United States.” Rabin, like Israeli leaders before and after, shrugs.

In Europe and the U.S., far-left critics of Israel “are not overtly anti-Semitic” but discuss the country using “the Marxist-Leninist categories: finance capital, colonialism, and imperialism.”

The Ford administration, along with prominent commentators who speak for it, are growing weary of what they see as Jerusalem’s recalcitrance in the face of American diplomatic maneuvers, leading Israelis to fret constantly about whether their only true ally is about to turn on them.

Then there’s the problem of historical ignorance, particularly of young people passing judgment on Middle East affairs. “Very few Americans,” Bellow writes, “seem to know, for instance, that when the U.N., in 1947, proposed the creation of two separate states, Jewish and Arab, the Jews accepted the provision for the political independence of the Palestinian Arabs. It was the Arab nations which rejected the U.N. plan.” Many French intellectuals agreed with the Arabs, Jean-Paul Sartre most of all, leading Bellow to note: “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

As for the Israelis with whom Bellow spends time—not just political figures such as Rabin or Shimon Peres or Abba Eban but also kibbutzniks, Soviet émigrés, fellow novelists, Holocaust survivors, academics, masseurs and barbers, people of the left and others of the right—they were in 1976 very much what they are in 2026: brimming. Brimming with anxieties and hopes, recrimination and self-recrimination, opinions on every subject, profound doubts about the future matched by that unmistakable Israeli resoluteness. “Life in Israel is far from enviable, yet there is a clear purpose in it,” Bellow writes. “People are fighting for the society they have created, and for life and honor.”

If Bellow’s experience of Israel feels familiar, it’s a reminder that while much has happened in the intervening 50 years, little has changed. Threats from Egypt, Syria, and their proxies may no longer keep Israeli generals awake at night. Threats from Iran, Turkey, and their proxies do. The social tensions and splits that Bellow saw then—between the religious and secular, Israelis and Palestinians, critics of the occupation and defenders of it—remain more or less unchanged. Unchanged, too, is the volcanic hostility Israel arouses from its critics, so completely disproportionate to its place in the world or, even on the most invidious reading of its actions, the comparative scale of its alleged crimes.
Seth Mandel: Anti-Semites Waste So Much of Our Time
You have to laugh at the “can spill over into hostility towards Jews” when the post is about encouraging anti-Israel “resistance” anywhere in the world one sees an Israeli buying a house. And of course the post ends with praise for the United Nations.

Back in J Street’s early days, its founder Jeremy Ben-Ami told the New York Times that the organization’s mission was to help Barack Obama, who was trying to put daylight between the U.S. and Israel: “Our No. 1 agenda item is to do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president’s blocking back.”

There are various practical effects this “blocking back” strategy has. One of those effects is to waste lots of everybody’s time.

I’ll explain. When a political figure emerges as a harsh critic of Israel, there is an instinctive circling of wagons around him, even when he don’t exactly radiate good faith.

Organizations like J Street that exist to point out Israel’s flaws don’t want anybody on their side of the aisle accused of anti-Semitism, because smart anti-Semites (I know, I know, that’s an oxymoron) will use the arguments already advanced by such groups. It gives them cover. They can say, “I’m just saying what these Jewish groups have already said.”

But anti-Semites obsess over Jews and Israel. And before long, that fixation asserts itself. They continue using the kind of rhetoric that a group like J Street might use—but they start using it all the time. Pretty soon they can talk about nothing else but the evils of the world’s one Jewish state. It’s a clear red flag that this person has an unhealthy concept of Jewish power in his head and self-pitying resentment in his heart.

That’s an explosive combination, and eventually it blows up. When that happens, crass anti-Jewish comments and actions start to show in place of the previously-measured “just anti-Zionism.” When that rhetorical escalation is criticized, the anti-Semite will toss aside all pretense and embrace the fame of podcasters and influencers who rally around them.

It will become obvious that those who initially raised concerns about them were right all along. At that point, partisan pressure groups will throw in the towel. They will condemn the rhetoric, after months (or years) of either silence or running interference for the now-obvious-anti-Semite.

Zohran Mamdani seems to finally have hit that point after his ghoulish statement and behavior on October 7. In the opinion of many liberal Jews in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed is getting there, too. The defenses of Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo—his Nazi tattoo—went on for months, during which time we were expected to pretend the Nazi tattoo didn’t have a very obvious explanation.

It is into this illustrious company that I guess we can finally place Francesca Albanese. For well over a decade Albanese has been making openly anti-Semitic comments. But her cheerleading for Hamas after October 7 really crossed a line for the Biden administration, which called her an anti-Semite. Even the secretary-general of the United Nations admitted she was “a horrible person.” Now there appears to be no one left with a sliver of mainstream legitimacy to defend her.

And all that was lost is time. What a waste of everyone’s time.You have to laugh at the “can spill over into hostility towards Jews” when the post is about encouraging anti-Israel “resistance” anywhere in the world one sees an Israeli buying a house. And of course the post ends with praise for the United Nations.

Back in J Street’s early days, its founder Jeremy Ben-Ami told the New York Times that the organization’s mission was to help Barack Obama, who was trying to put daylight between the U.S. and Israel: “Our No. 1 agenda item is to do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president’s blocking back.”

There are various practical effects this “blocking back” strategy has. One of those effects is to waste lots of everybody’s time.

I’ll explain. When a political figure emerges as a harsh critic of Israel, there is an instinctive circling of wagons around him, even when he don’t exactly radiate good faith.

Organizations like J Street that exist to point out Israel’s flaws don’t want anybody on their side of the aisle accused of anti-Semitism, because smart anti-Semites (I know, I know, that’s an oxymoron) will use the arguments already advanced by such groups. It gives them cover. They can say, “I’m just saying what these Jewish groups have already said.”

But anti-Semites obsess over Jews and Israel. And before long, that fixation asserts itself. They continue using the kind of rhetoric that a group like J Street might use—but they start using it all the time. Pretty soon they can talk about nothing else but the evils of the world’s one Jewish state. It’s a clear red flag that this person has an unhealthy concept of Jewish power in his head and self-pitying resentment in his heart.

That’s an explosive combination, and eventually it blows up. When that happens, crass anti-Jewish comments and actions start to show in place of the previously-measured “just anti-Zionism.” When that rhetorical escalation is criticized, the anti-Semite will toss aside all pretense and embrace the fame of podcasters and influencers who rally around them.

It will become obvious that those who initially raised concerns about them were right all along. At that point, partisan pressure groups will throw in the towel. They will condemn the rhetoric, after months (or years) of either silence or running interference for the now-obvious-anti-Semite.

Zohran Mamdani seems to finally have hit that point after his ghoulish statement and behavior on October 7. In the opinion of many liberal Jews in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed is getting there, too. The defenses of Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo—his Nazi tattoo—went on for months, during which time we were expected to pretend the Nazi tattoo didn’t have a very obvious explanation.

It is into this illustrious company that I guess we can finally place Francesca Albanese. For well over a decade Albanese has been making openly anti-Semitic comments. But her cheerleading for Hamas after October 7 really crossed a line for the Biden administration, which called her an anti-Semite. Even the secretary-general of the United Nations admitted she was “a horrible person.” Now there appears to be no one left with a sliver of mainstream legitimacy to defend her.

And all that was lost is time. What a waste of everyone’s time.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury says Israel is ‘the land that God promised’
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has said that Israel is “the land that God promised, and we must hold on to that”.

Speaking to a mostly Jewish audience at an event in Westminster, he said: “I think that the pattern of the history of God's people is that the nature of the land [of Israel] is embedded in who they are, and if we lose sight of that truth, we lose sight of why the situation there now is so difficult.”

The speech was for an event organised by Repairing the Breach, a group which works to “build healing relationships” between the UK and Jewish people who suffered under the British Mandate, especially in the post-Holocaust.

Addressing the current situation in the region, he said: “I'm not commenting on what's going on at the moment.

“It doesn't mean everything else is fine, you can do anything – but it does mean that place and promise, journey and return, are utterly and deeply embedded in the story of Israel, and we have to listen to that truth, and recognise that we must live in that truth.”

Guests heard from speakers who as small children had boarded the Exodus, a ship which carried more than 4,500 Holocaust survivors towards then-Mandate Palestine in 1947, and which was attacked and seized by the British Royal Navy, with passengers forcibly removed and sent back to Europe.

Others spoke about their relatives’ role in the Bricha movement, the underground network that helped Jewish refugees escape post-war Europe and make their way towards the land which would soon become the state of Israel.

“There are no reflections that are adequate in the face of those stories,” Welby said.

“Listen to the truth as to what the British did. Listen to how we kept people from going to the land which they were intending to make sure was the one place of safety in the world, and how we stopped that.

“It’s very easy for institutions to do the wrong thing because the rules say X or Y, or because we've been given orders to do it.

"But the lesson for me and the reflection I hear is that we must act according to what is right, to love justice and do mercy and walk humbly with our God.

“Where we have gone wrong, as the British nation, in our recent history and in our further history, it is a cause for repentance and sorrow and acknowledgement.”

Welby, who served as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury between 2013 and 2025, also spoke positively about the “people of Israel”, and of his reaction on encountering the opposite sentiment.

“One cannot look at the history of the people of Israel in any place without realising that wherever they are, they bring blessing,” he said.


‘Our land isn’t stolen,’ Netanyahu says after Obama accuses Israel of stealing land, losing moral ground
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to claims that former U.S. President Barack Obama made in Ireland recently, including that it was “undeniable” that Israel stole other people’s land.

“The fact is that the Jewish people, for millennia, were oppressed, discriminated against, killed. Europe was responsible for much of it. They understandably sought a refuge,” the former U.S. president said, according to the Belfast Telegraph.

“That is undeniable. What is also undeniable is that they took land off people and they were expelled,” Obama said at Queen’s University Belfast, where he received an honorary doctorate. “Those people understandably said, ‘This is injustice, and I want my land back.’”

In his remarks at Belfast’s O2 Arena, Obama said that Israel’s approach is that “now that we are the strongest, the most technologically advanced in the region, then our security will depend on us simply doing whatever we need and taking whatever we want and not making any concessions to anyone.”

“That may work short-term,” Obama said, “but you have ceded moral ground if that is the position you take.”

On Friday, Netanyahu said in an English-language video that he heard a “regrettable” comment about Israel stealing land and losing the moral high ground. He didn’t name Obama.

“Jewish people are not foreign occupiers in the land of our forefathers,” he said. “Our history is not a colonial enterprise. Our land is not stolen land. This is our homeland.”

“It’s called Judea. That’s where Jews come from,” Netanyahu said. “We’ve been attached to it for thousands of years. We’re not the Dutch in Indonesia. We’re not the Belgians in the Congo. We’re Jews in Judea.”

The Israeli prime minister said that the Jewish state isn’t the obstacle to peace.

“It’s the refusal of our enemies and America’s enemies to recognize the Jewish people’s right to a state of our own in any boundary,” Netanyahu said. “That’s why they chant, ‘death to Israel.’ ‘Death to America.’”

“We’re defending our common civilization,” he said.


Israeli gov says ‘serious questions’ about whether Israelis or Palestinians attacked ‘Washington Post’ photographer
A Washington Post photographer was injured on Friday during a violent confrontation in Samaria in which she was “attacked by Israeli settlers,” the newspaper’s executive editor stated.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office cast doubt on that claim and said that there are “serious questions” about whether Israelis or Palestinians were responsible for the attack.

Heidi Levine, a photojournalist who has spent three decades covering Israel and the Middle East, was “wearing visible markings clearly identifying her as a journalist” during the incident, according to the Post.

“While we are relieved that Heidi has received medical care and is safe, we are outraged by this unwarranted attack on a journalist doing her job and urge a thorough investigation and follow-through from authorities,” stated Matt Murray, the paper’s executive editor.

The Israel Defense Forces confirmed that “a female journalist was injured” during a confrontation near Khirbet Abu Falah.

“Upon arriving to the scene, the forces acted to disperse the confrontation using riot dispersal means,” it stated. “At another location where the confrontation took place, IDF soldiers initially fired warning shots into the air and then fired toward a suspect who ran toward them, carrying a sharp object and posed a threat to them.”

“The confrontation was dispersed,” the Israeli military said.

The IDF also said that “violence against innocent civilians is a grave and intolerable phenomenon” and condemned the incident. It said that Israeli police forces from the Judea and Samaria district would “collect findings and evidence, as well as take testimonies” as part of an investigation.

The IDF did not identify the suspects as “settlers.” Khirbet Abu Falah is a Palestinian village about 10 miles northeast of Ramallah in Samaria.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said that the circumstances in which Levine was “allegedly assaulted” are “unclear and are under investigation.”

“Reports indicate some 200 Arabs and far-left activists confronted approximately 40 Israeli youths,” it said. “Footage shows masked individuals on both sides hurling objects, amid reports of fireworks fired at Jewish youths.”

“Other footage appears to show Levine knocked down and immediately helped to her feet by the same unidentified individual,” the prime minister’s office said. “We will not allow disputed incidents to be exploited to demonize the hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria.”

In an interview she gave from a hospital bed in Ramallah, Levine was unequivocal that she was attacked by Israelis, who she said kicked her “probably 50 times” before trying to stand her up. She said they then pushed her down again, continued to kick her and stole her equipment.

“They are Jewish terrorists and they are giving everyone in the country a horrible reputation,” she said. “I cannot understand how a parent can raise such individual monsters. They’re not even humans.”


CNN’s Amanpour’s Accomplishes the Impossible: Being More Hostile Toward Israel than a U.N. Bureaucrat
Fletcher then dodged Amanpour’s question about why the work wasn’t moving faster, responding that “the obstacle is that the process is not moving fast enough through the phases.” Amanpour pushed, “Why not?” He dodged again, saying, “we’re still in this frustrating situation that we can’t bring in everything we need to bring in.”

Unsatisfied that Fletcher had not named a culprit, Amanpour again pushed Fletcher, “But who’s saying that you can’t? Why can’t you?” Fletcher finally gave in, saying that “Israel is the occupying partner,” before turning to the improvements in Gaza over the past year.

Amanpour finally got the answer she wanted, but it was an incomplete answer. That is because she did not ask the right questions.

It is true that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) prevent the delivery of certain goods into Gaza. Notably, Amanpour’s journalistic zeal to pursue answers ended before inquiring as to why the IDF does this.

The “postwar” reality in Gaza is one where a terrorist organization, Hamas, continues to operate against the IDF, seeks Israel’s destruction, and is still in control of parts of the territory. This is quite unlike the usual “postwar” realities, like in Germany after World War II and Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

Hamas is infamous for and prolific at rerouting humanitarian aid to fuel its own war machine. According to the Washington Post, it “would take control of trucks carrying high-demand goods like flour, which could sell for up to $30 for a kilogram, and steal fuel meant for aid groups.” Therefore, disinterested in the well-being of Gazans is Hamas, which will dig up existing infrastructure, like water pipes, to use them to manufacture rockets. So brazen is Hamas that it will even film itself and boast about such actions.

One can disagree with Israel’s policy of not allowing concrete to be brought into Gaza. But any intellectually honest disagreement must contend with Israel’s justification: that Hamas has diverted enormous amounts of concrete meant for civilian reconstruction in order to build its terror tunnels underneath civilian areas. Simply ignoring this reality isn’t professional journalism; it’s propaganda.

Unfortunately, Amanpour has a long record of prioritizing such one-sided propaganda over engaging in honest journalism.

Tom Fletcher and the United Nations are entitled to their frustration with the IDF. Their missions do not exactly align. Both sides are also operating in an environment with no real historical precedents and are learning as they go. But Amanpour never engaged with the misaligned institutional imperatives.

Examining these challenges will help find solutions to them, which will in turn boost the conditions of Gazans. But Amanpour does not seem interested in helping Palestinians. She appears invested in getting her guests to attack Israel.

But give it to Amanpour. It is a major accomplishment when you manage to be the person most hostile toward Israel in the presence of a U.N. bureaucrat.


Trump says Israel has ‘been very helpful to Saudi Arabia’ amid fight against Houthis
US President Donald Trump suggested Friday that Saudi Arabia was accepting help from Israel in its battle against Yemen’s Houthi rebel group.

Asked by a reporter on the White House lawn if Riyadh should be open to such assistance, Trump said, “I do, I think they will. Israel’s been very helpful to Saudi Arabia, and yeah they certainly would do that, yeah.”

It was not clear whether Trump was saying Israel had provided assistance to the Saudis in fighting the Houthis specifically.

The Saudis are currently facing unprecedented Houthi attacks. Since Yemen’s civil war flared back to life in July, the pro-Iran Houthis have repeatedly struck Saudi targets including Red Sea tankers, oil facilities and Riyadh’s international airport, where 13 people were killed in a single attack last week.

A Saudi-led military coalition has supported Yemen’s internationally recognized government for more than a decade, and reported on Friday having intercepted more missiles and drones as the kingdom comes under sustained attack from the Houthis.

Israel has itself faced years of Houthi ballistic missile attacks which it has largely succeeded in thwarting, though some still proved deadly. It has struck Houthi targets in response on multiple occasions.

In an interview on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked if the Saudis had asked for help, and said: “There are barely any Middle Eastern states that aren’t asking us for help.”

Asked by the reporter if long-sought Saudi-Israel normalization could be back on the table through the Abraham Accords, the 2020 deal under Trump’s first administration that saw the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco normalize ties with the Jewish state, the US leader said: “Yeah, I think so, maybe more than ever.”

Jerusalem and Riyadh were considered close to inking a deal before the Hamas October 7, 2023, attack. But Saudi Arabia has consistently said in recent years it will only normalize ties with Israel if a clear pathway to Palestinian statehood is established.

Trump added: “Saudi Arabia is very happy to have Israel’s support and our support.”
Chinese FM tells Herzog that Israel should stop ‘forced establishment’ of settlements
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told President Isaac Herzog that Israel should stop and reverse its “forced establishment” of West Bank settlements, China’s foreign ministry said in a statement released Friday.

China has consistently held that the Palestinian question is the greatest historical injustice of this century, Wang told Herzog in Baku, Azerbaijan, China’s ministry added.

Wang said that promoting peace and reconciliation in the region is the “cornerstone” of China’s Middle East policy, with Beijing believing that the “two-state solution” is the right path to a resolution and the immediate priority is to fully open access to the Gaza Strip so a humanitarian “catastrophe” is not allowed to spread.

China is willing to work with the international community to push all parties to return to dialogue and consultation as soon as possible and seek a political settlement of the conflict, Wang further said.

According to Herzog’s office, the Israeli president met with Wang on the sidelines of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia summit in Baku on Thursday to discuss “bilateral relations,” with an emphasis on “economic, trade, and cultural ties.” His office declined to comment when asked about their discussions on the West Bank or the Palestinians.

Herzog also met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdul Latif Al Zayani.

During his address, Herzog called for expanding Israel’s diplomatic and economic ties with Asian nations.
Italy names Israeli defense minister, IDF chief, others in probe of flotilla activists’ treatment
Defense Minister Israel Katz, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and senior military, police and prison officials have been placed under investigation in Italy over the treatment of Gaza flotilla activists, Italian prosecutors said on Friday.

The move expands an investigation that was previously focused on Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

The case concerns alleged torture, kidnapping, personal injury, robbery and damage when Israeli forces intercepted small fleets of boats headed toward Gaza in 2025 and 2026, the Rome prosecutors’ office said in a statement.

Israel has repeatedly denied the allegations.

The Israel Prison Service said that those detained were held “in accordance with the law, with full regard for their basic rights,” and received necessary and professional medical care.

Investigators opened the probe after complaints from 50 Italian citizens who were detained by Israeli authorities following two Global Sumud Flotilla missions in September-October 2025 and April-May 2026.

Katz did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In June, Ben Gvir dismissed news that he was under investigation, saying he would “continue to stand proudly alongside our fighters.” Claims of death threats and beatings

Prosecutors said activists detained after the first mission faced reported beatings, injuries, death threats, insults and accusations of terrorism.

Activists involved in the second mission reported even harsher treatment, including beatings in the dark and the use of tasers and rubber bullets, the statement said.

Investigators identified various individuals forming the military and police chains of command involved in the operations, prosecutors said.

Besides Katz and Ben Gvir, prosecutors named 12 senior Israeli military, police and prison officials as suspects, including Zamir.
Italian intelligence finds links between mafia, terrorists
Previously classified Italian intelligence documents reveal suspected connections between Palestinian terrorist organizations and the Sicilian Mafia during the 1980s, including possible cooperation in weapons trafficking, narcotics smuggling, and explosives expertise, according to an investigation published Thursday by the Italian newspaper Il Giornale.

The investigation, by journalist Giulia Sorrentino, draws on intelligence reports, judicial records, and historical documents describing networks extending from Lebanon and Syria to Sicily and Rome. The material also includes an intelligence warning about a possible terrorist attack against the US Embassy in Rome.

Drug trafficking and Palestinian terrorism
One of the central documents, dated November 9, 1983, contains information gathered by Italy’s Carabinieri, the country's military police force, concerning international drug trafficking and Palestinian terrorist operations.

According to the intelligence report, members of Sicilian Mafia networks associated with the Greco and Gambino families were operating in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, then under strong Syrian influence. The area reportedly contained narcotics-processing facilities near Baalbek.

The source alleged that six AK-47 assault rifles had reached Mafia associates and been used in attacks in Sicily. It also described a shipment of approximately 900 kilograms of morphine base reportedly sent from Lebanon toward the Sicilian city of Catania in October 1983.

The same intelligence material warned that Palestinian terrorist organizations might attack Western targets if the multinational military force stationed in Lebanon intervened against Palestinian positions. The source specifically reported knowledge of a planned attack against the American Embassy in Rome.

Sorrentino's investigation also revisits the July 29, 1983, assassination of Rocco Chinnici, an Italian magistrate who played a leading role in the campaign against organized crime.

Chinnici and three other people were killed when a car bomb containing approximately 75 kilograms of explosives detonated in Palermo. The attack's use of a remotely detonated explosive device resembled techniques employed by terrorist organizations during Lebanon's civil war.

Judicial records describe how Bou Chebel Ghassan, a Lebanese police informant, had provided information about contacts with Mafia figures and efforts to obtain weapons and morphine. Days before Chinnici's assassination, Ghassan reportedly described methods of killing investigators remotely, comparing them to those used by Palestinian terrorists in Lebanon.
Norwegian teen sentenced to 20 years for plotting UK murder tied to Iran-linked gang
A Norwegian teenager convicted of traveling to Britain to carry out a contract killing on behalf of an international crime gang linked to Iran was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison.

Johannes Kongsnes Natland, 19, was found guilty in July of conspiracy to murder for agreeing to shoot an unknown target for 25,000 euros ($28,100) last year. He was arrested at a hotel in Huddersfield in northern England with two guns and ammunition two days after arriving in the UK.

The target is not known.

Natland, who was working part-time at a pizza restaurant at the time of his arrest, was recruited by a Swedish organized crime group known as the Foxtrot Network while he was playing a game online. The group has links to the Iranian government, according to counterterrorism officers from London’s Metropolitan Police.

Natland admitted possessing the firearms and ammunition but claimed he did not want to go through with the plan.

“You agreed to be the enforcer and pursued it, despite numerous opportunities to extricate yourself,” Justice Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said at his sentencing hearing at Woolwich Crown Court in southeast London.

“Although the fact that no one was shot dead or physically harmed is important. I am sure had the intervention of the police not prevented the plan from proceeding, you would have done what you had agreed to.”

She said messages he sent showed “not only participation but at points excitement” about what he was planning to do.

Natland was hired by a 17-year-old known as “Generalen.” A court in Norway last year convicted the teenager of attempting to “contribute to murder” and sentenced him to 14 years in custody. A 16-year-old is awaiting trial in Norway for his role in the conspiracy.

The gang is backed by the Iranian regime and is known for deploying children as young as 13 in drug smuggling and violent crimes.
IDF kills Hamas Nukhba commander in Gaza who infiltrated Re'im base on October 7
The IDF killed Hamas Nukhba cell commander Maher Walid Omar Al-Husseini in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, the military announced on Friday.

According to the IDF, Al-Husseini infiltrated the Kibbutz Re'im military base as part of Hamas's October 7 massacre.

Since the 2023 attacks, the terrorist has continued his involvement in planning terror attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians, the military noted.

The announcement follows two separate Gaza strikes on Thursday, which killed an additional Hamas commander who participated in the October 7 massacre and a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist.

The Hamas commander, Mohammed Mohammed Abd al-Khalek Hala, was killed in northern Gaza, while the PIJ terrorist, Ahmad Jabrin Tawqif Dalhan, was killed in Khan Yunis, the IDF said earlier on Friday.

According to the military, Hala produced weapons for Hamas and advanced its presence in Gaza, and Dalhan advanced attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Gazan terror weapon smugglers killed in joint IDF-Shin Bet strike
On Thursday, the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) jointly announced that they killed two terrorists in Gaza on Wednesday who were allegedly involved in the smuggling of weapons and other military assets into the strip.

The Khan Yunis strikes killed Basel Nabil Abd al-Rahman Kashta and Ahmad Raja al-Shaer, with the statement describing them as having posed an immediate threat to IDF soldiers operating in the area of the Yellow Line, as well as Israeli civilians.


IDF releases Sinwar letter encouraging Oct. 7 terrorists to plan broadcast of massacre footage
The IDF released previously unseen documents written by Hamas's leader, Yahya Sinwar, on Friday, two years after his assassination.

Additionally, the IDF published footage of the military carrying out the assassination, including firing tank shells on the structure Sinwar fled to, and drone footage carrying out searches within the structure the following morning.

In one document, the October 7 massacre's architect demanded that Hamas's Nukhba Force terrorists broadcast their acts to as many media outlets as possible in order to terrorize the entirety of Israel.

Sinwar wrote that "it must be emphasized to those responsible for the [terror cells] that they must undertake their [terror] actions intentionally, document and broadcast the images as quickly as possible."

These "images" should include "stepping on IDF soldiers' heads, shooting at point-blank range, slaughtering people with knives, exploding IDF tanks, prisoners kneeling with their hands on their heads," and more, Sinwar wrote.

"We need to plan in advance for the events that will produce horrific images," he wrote in another document. "Several burning car bombs that exploded inside a post or building and caused terrible destruction. Heartbreaking sights. Enormous fire. Five or ten such pictures will make their [Israel's] heart sink.

"Allah came upon them without them expecting it and cast fear into their hearts. Two or three operations should be organized with the aim of burning down entire neighborhoods, a kibbutz, and the like. They [the terrorists] will spray gasoline or diesel fuel from a special tanker, then burn the place, and broadcast the pictures," the terror leader wrote.

The documents also show how Sinwar tricked Israel's political, defense, and intelligence establishments, and tricked them into believing he was leaning towards a political settlement with Israel.

Sinwar also wrote what could happen in the event that other terrorist organizations from the West Bank and the Iran-led "Axis of Resistance" would join in the massacre.

"There may be indications of the enemy's collapse from the very beginning, and it is possible that the movements of our people in the 'interior,' in Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as Hezbollah's intervention, will encourage this," he wrote.

"Therefore, we must be prepared to expand the attack to its maximum. The core of the plan should include control of the centers of power and command and control of our central forces. Forces of the Palestinian factions can be sent to population centers, but our forces must be concentrated on important defined objectives and key positions," he added.


‘Hold a Kalashnikov and shoot Jews': IDF reveals letter by Yahya Sinwar’s son
The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday night published a letter written by Ibrahim Sinwar, the son of former Hamas terrorist chief Yahya Sinwar, at the start of the war, when he was 10 years old, in which he expressed a desire “to hold a Kalashnikov and shoot Jews.”

The letter was recovered by IDF soldiers in the Gaza Strip in 2024.

Yahya Sinwar masterminded the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in southern Israel, which killed more than 1,200 people, wounded thousands and resulted in 251 people being taken hostage to Gaza. He was killed in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Oct. 16, 2024.

In the letter addressed to his father, Ibrahim expresses how much he misses him, writing that in his spare time he “makes pistols, tanks and Kalashnikovs out of paper and cardboard” and declaring his desire “to hold a Kalashnikov and shoot Jews.”

“I, Ibrahim, In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful Beloved father, I miss you very much! I want to hug you and see you victorious, and I want to proclaim ‘Allah is the greatest,’ hold a Kalashnikov and shoot Jews,” reads the letter, according to a translation provided by the IDF.

“When will you come back and sleep with your arms around me? I am constantly making pistols, tanks and Kalashnikovs out of paper and cardboard. My Lord, I wish the war would end and that I see you well. May Allah protect you, father. I want you to pray for me. Peace be upon you, and the mercy of Allah and His blessings,” it adds.

The letter includes drawings by Ibrahim depicting weapons and tanks near the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel, and missiles being fired at the Jewish state.

“The letter and drawings illustrate how Sinwar’s murderous ideology is reflected in the upbringing of his children, revealing the impact of Hamas’s values of hatred and violence on the younger generation in the Gaza Strip,” the IDF said.

Sinwar was convicted in 1989 by an Israeli court for six murders and sentenced to five life sentences, which he was supposed to serve until his death. However, in October 2011, he was released from jail—having served 22 years—as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.


Natasha Hausdorff: International law itself under attack by anti-Israel NGOs
Welcome to The Times of Israel's Lazar Focus. Each Friday, join host diplomatic correspondent Lazar Berman for a deep dive into what's behind the news that spins the globe.

Israel is doing well on the battlefield since October 7, but has lost significant ground in the information war.

Much of that discourse is rooted in legal language -- war crimes, arrest warrants, illegal settlements, charges of genocide.

International law and the conversation around international law is a central battlefield for Israel.

Natasha Hausdorff is one of Israel's most prominent advocates, especially around questions of international law.

Hausdorff is a barrister in London with law degrees from Oxford and Tel Aviv University. She is the legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust, and is the founder of the Center for International Rule of Law.

She argues that there is an ecosystem of international organizations, NGOs, and foreign governments "promoting a particular agenda against Western civilization" and using the phraseology of international law to vilify Israel.

Hausdorff says Israel takes measures to protect civilians that go beyond those of any other army in the world. That includes the delivery of leaflets, phone calls to individual householders, evacuation corridors to humanitarian zones, and yes, estimates of collateral damage before strikes.

She also argues that the International Committee of the Red Cross does not have a clear mandate to access terrorist combatants in Israeli prisons.

Turning to the genocide question, she says the UN Commission of Inquiry that ruled Israel was committing genocide in Gaza was "essentially a copy and paste" of the Amnesty International report, which relied on a Human Rights Watch report.

Hausdorff calls it "a cycle of disinformation laundering... Hamas propaganda getting that stamp of UN authority."

She also laments Navi Pillay's Nobel Peace Prize, saying she is part of the effort to lower the threshold for genocide in order to find Israel guilty.


Brett McGurk pushes back on former Biden WH colleagues who called for greater pressure on Israel
Brett McGurk, a veteran national security official who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations, pushed back on Thursday against arguments from his Biden administration colleagues that former President Joe Biden should have applied more pressure on Israel to end the war in Gaza and secure the release of the hostages sooner.

Debate in Democratic foreign policy circles over the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza has intensified following the release earlier this month of McGurk’s new book, Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages, in which he argues that Biden’s efforts to pressure Israel during hostage negotiations emboldened Hamas and complicated efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement.

In the book’s prologue, McGurk made the claim that “every time that Biden had curtailed assistance for Israel — or even threatened to do so — it had the perverse effect of emboldening Hamas, which would shut down the negotiations to release the hostages it was holding in exchange for a ceasefire.”

However, some of his former Biden administration colleagues have argued that Biden’s pressure on Israel was both necessary and effective. Among them are Phillip Gordon, who served as national security advisor to then-Vice President Kamala Harris, and Jake Sullivan, who served as Biden’s national security advisor.

Gordon — a prominent Democratic foreign policy voice, potential national security advisor in a future Democratic administration and a consistent critic of Israel’s conduct in Gaza — argued that pressure on Jerusalem had worked and that “most” White House staff believed Biden should have taken an even tougher line against Israel.

“I would say most of my former colleagues think that President Biden should have put more pressure on Israel to conduct the war differently and end it sooner, and few think that the biggest mistake Biden made was to show daylight with Israel,” Gordon wrote on X on Saturday, in a direct reference to McGurk’s book.

In July, unrelated to McGurk and prior to the book’s release, Sullivan told The New Yorker, “I will say straightforwardly — we should have put more pressure on Israel to take a different approach.”
Brett McGurk’s fact check of former Harris advisor Phil Gordon on hostage negotiations
Brett McGurk, the former Biden administration Middle East coordinator, has strongly disputed claims that Israel caused a delay in securing a hostage deal due to its insistence on maintaining a military presence in key locations in the Gaza Strip. Instead, McGurk argues, it was Hamas that held up the agreement with its maximalist positions, until its position ultimately weakened.

Speaking Thursday at an Atlantic Council event alongside Washington Post columnist David Ignatius about his new book, Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages, McGurk took aim at recent narratives from some of his former Biden administration colleagues surrounding the agreement.

While McGurk did not name his former colleague explicitly, his remarks directly referenced a social media post last weekend by Phil Gordon, the former national security advisor to then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Gordon had suggested that a deal had finally been achieved in January 2025 because Israel had dropped its insistence on maintaining a military presence in the Philadelphi Corridor and conducting weapons checks in the Netzarim Corridor — implying a deal could have been struck months earlier had Jerusalem compromised sooner.

“I actually, David, had a former colleague who was not in the negotiations recently say the way they got the deal was that Israel dropped demands on [the] Philadelphi Corridor and these other things. Totally not true,” McGurk said. “Hamas accepted things they were not prepared to accept in the summer.”

Under the January agreement, Israeli forces remained in the Philadelphi Corridor for the entirety of Phase One, which provided for the release of 33 hostages. The agreement also included provisions for weapons checks on vehicles moving north through the Netzarim Corridor. McGurk argued that those terms were more favorable to Israel than what had been on the table the previous summer.





 




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