Thursday, October 22, 2026

10/22 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: The war against the Jews in Judea and Samaria; Who made Gaza hospitals and homes targets?; Hamas threatens another Oct. 7-style attack

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The war against the Jews in Judea and Samaria
Every year, the olive harvest attracts activists to “help the Palestinians pick their olives,” and every year there are confrontations.

Naomi Linder Kahn, director of the international division at the Judea and Samaria monitoring group Regavim, says some foreign-funded groups use the olive harvest to provoke confrontations.

“They don’t give activists buckets for harvesting olives,” she said. “What they give them is video cameras, and they give them lessons in social media and … how to provoke a confrontation, how to present yourself when you’re trying to get into Israel, to misrepresent what you’re coming for and where you’re going to be.”

Brad Lander, the Democratic nominee for a congressional seat in New York, was among a group of around 80 Americans and others detained for some hours by the IDF this week after the group arrived “to harvest olives” alongside Arab farmers without requesting Israeli permission.

“The plot in question requires only a small number of harvesters to collect its produce,” an Israeli military official told JNS. “The security establishment views the arrival of dozens of activists as an act intended solely to provoke, which undermines the harvesting process.”

Lander is Jewish, but he is no friend of Israel. He has accused the country of “genocide” and has called Israel’s occupation of the West Bank “a crime under international law.” These claims are lies designed to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state in the eyes of the world.

Earlier this week, Lander said he was visiting to help Arab farmers harvest olives “in the face of state-sanctioned settler terrorism” and to “shed a light on the reality of the occupation.” If anyone thinks this group wasn’t there to foment trouble for the Israelis, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

It’s difficult to discover what truly happens in many of these incidents, so an open mind is necessary. There is indeed a problem of Jewish attacks on Arabs that have not been stopped; they are disgraceful, and the Israelis need to shut them down.

But there can be no justification for Western media and politicians failing to acknowledge this Arab terrorist war being waged against Jewish residents in Judea and Samaria. Such radically skewed reporting has turned half a million overwhelmingly upstanding and besieged Jews into enemies of humanity—just as Israel has been treated in its war against Iran.

However, in addition to failing to deal adequately with the problem of delinquent “hilltop youth” or the provocateurs, the Israelis themselves hardly ever mention this Arab onslaught in Judea and Samaria.

There are various possible reasons for this. First, the degree of truth in the “settler violence” claims puts them on the back foot.

Second, they are under huge pressure over this from the Trump administration and don’t want to irritate it further by introducing the inconvenient complexity of Jewish victimization.

Third, among the Israeli top brass, there are some who even now hanker for a “two-state solution” and view the settlers as the obstacle.

Last, but not least, the Israelis want to brush this issue away as of no real consequence. As ever, they dismiss Western public opinion as irredeemably hateful toward the Jewish people and so think myopically that trying to appease it is a waste of time.

They believe that they have more urgent issues to deal with, including the renewed threats from Iran, Gaza and Lebanon. They also fear that a third and even more terrible intifada is being plotted by the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, along with the Palestinian Authority’s force of 60,000 armed men.

If that fearsome threat were to be realized, the combination of Western malice toward the “settlers” and Israel’s negligence in how it presents itself to the world means that once again, the Jews of Israel would be blamed for their own destruction.
Michael Doran: Is There an Effective ‘America First’ Position on Israel?
That is the danger posed by the groypers. They do not merely question American policy toward Israel. They portray Jewish Americans as members of an alien interest group whose participation in national affairs is inherently suspect. Their conspiracy theories transform disagreements over policy into accusations of divided loyalty.

The American constitutional inheritance supplies a different principle. Religious, ethnic, and cultural communities are indispensable parts of American life. They have every right to preserve their traditions, organize their institutions, and pursue their interests. But none owns the republic. The state belongs to citizens as citizens, not to Christians, Jews, whites, Blacks, or any other group.

This is also where national conservatism’s intellectual project becomes relevant. Hazony has spent years challenging interpretations of the founding that emphasize John Locke and liberal political philosophy, preferring an account rooted in biblical political thought, English constitutional tradition, and Edmund Burke. Other postliberal thinkers, including Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule, advance different but overlapping critiques of liberalism.

These disagreements need not be settled here. The question is not whether Locke or Burke deserves more credit for the American founding, nor whether Christianity contributed profoundly to American civilization. Of course it did. The real question is this: What do national conservatives intend to conserve? The Declaration, the Constitution, and Washington’s understanding of citizenship are the crown jewels of the American inheritance. Their principles make possible a political community whose members need not agree about theology, ancestry, or philosophy to belong to the same nation.

The groyper movement offers not an escape from progressive identity politics, but a rival version of it. Where progressives organize political claims around groups they regard as historically disadvantaged, the groypers define the nation through an exclusionary conception of its traditional majority. The identities change, but the underlying contest remains: Which ethnic and religious groups possess the greatest claims to political authority? The founding offers a different answer. Political rights do not belong to a religious or ethnic faction. They belong to citizens.

This brings us back to the disagreement between Trump and Vance. Trump’s understanding of America First, as expressed in his defense of the Israeli partnership, begins with a calculation of American power and interests. Israel’s military capabilities, intelligence, technology, and willingness to fight are strategic assets. Their value does not depend on the religion of the Americans who defend the alliance.

The conspiracy theory promoted by Carlson and Fuentes substitutes a different test. It asks whose influence lies behind American policy, assigning sinister significance to Jewish identity. In doing so, it corrupts strategic judgment while undermining the common citizenship on which a broad American political coalition depends.

Vance’s continued relationship with Carlson, and the efforts of Roberts and Hazony to maintain connections across the nationalist movement bring these competing approaches into serious tension. We have no reason to doubt their stated opposition to antisemitism. But their political and intellectual commitments provide them with no potent ideological ammunition with which to fight it.

Washington supplied that ammunition two centuries ago. He did not address the Jews of Newport as a tolerated minority living under the indulgence of a Christian nation. He addressed them as fellow citizens possessing the same rights as their neighbors. That distinction remains decisive. A capable ally strengthens the United States. The religion of American citizens does not diminish their standing at home. A conservatism that defends neither allies nor the full rights of all citizens will fail to conserve the American inheritance. It will merely manage its replacement.
The Fighting Jews
The best museum in Israel—or at least the best-kept secret—isn’t in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. It’s in Latrun, roughly halfway between the country’s two largest cities. To get to it, you have to exit the highway, circle through a gas station, and dart down a dusty one-lane road until you see a large gate. Honk, and ask the armed guard to open up: You’re about to enter an Israel Defense Forces base. Once inside, park the car, behold the gorgeous and meticulously planned landscaping, and exhale: You’ve arrived at the Museum of the Jewish Soldier in World War II.

Inside, interactive displays tell the story of the 1.5 million Jewish men and women from all over the world who fought to defeat the Nazis. Using state-of-the-art technology to build gorgeous and immersive galleries, the museum allows visitors to marvel at the scope of the global Jewish community’s sacrifice and follow the touching stories of individuals who risked all for freedom. Here, for example, is a dashing young man with an Errol Flynn mustache, a coy smile, and a white tie. Touch his picture, and you’ll learn that when the war broke out, the young man suspended his studies at the University of Cambridge, reported to the Mons Officer Cadet School, and completed his training as an intelligence officer. He spent most of the war interrogating German prisoners, including Heinrich Himmler. When the war ended, he moved to Israel, helped set up the IDF’s intelligence branch, and eventually became the nation’s sixth president.

But while Chaim Herzog and his story are celebrated—the museum, indeed, is named after him—other stories on tap are less known and just as invigorating. One display, for example, is dedicated to the Aboulker family. On Nov. 7, 1942, this prominent Algerian Jewish family recruited a force of 377 resistance fighters, of whom 315 were Jewish. Wearing fake uniforms and flashing fake orders, they marched right up to the Vichy military command and demanded its immediate surrender. The ruse was successful: The Aboulkers captured the police station, the radio station, and all other strategic assets, then radioed the Allies and informed them it was safe to enter. As a result, Algiers was liberated overnight.

Walk through the museum, and it won’t take long before a radically different emotion takes over: pride, even joy, for being brave, for being right, for winning.

Each of these stories is moving, and you could easily spend a day at the museum swiping from one to the next. But take a step back, and the scope of Jewish bravery is revealed. Let’s say, based on a crude calculation, there were 18 million Jews in the world when the war started. If 6 million were murdered by the Nazis, and if you don’t count the elderly and the underage, you end up with something like 4 million Jews. Which means that nearly a third of all capable Jews alive in the world in the late 1930s and early 1940s put their lives on hold and joined the fight; more, by far, than any other group anywhere in the world.

Sharing this statistic still makes Zvi Kantor’s eyes misty. A lifelong soldier—he retired from the IDF as a brigadier general in 1999—Kantor was drawn to starting and running the museum, he says, out of sheer ignorance.

“As a sabra, an Israeli-born kid who came of age with the state, I was brought up to believe that us Israelis were the main attraction, and everyone else was secondary,” Kantor said. “For us, the story of Jews in World War II was the story of the Holocaust. And if we thought about Jewish resistance, we thought about the Warsaw Ghetto rebellion, Hannah Szenes parachuting into enemy territory, the Partisans, and the Jewish Brigade of volunteers. That’s it.”


Huckabee questions Board of Peace’s ability to carry out Trump's Gaza peace plan
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee questioned whether the Board of Peace would be able to carry out US President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza without additional planning and resources from the US government, according to a cable obtained by Politico.

The cable, reportedly sent to State Department leadership on Thursday, detailed Huckabee’s concerns about whether the Board of Peace and the US Embassy in Jerusalem had enough personnel to oversee plans to disarm Hamas and begin reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. Jerusalem embassy unprepared to take over IGSC responsibilities

Huckabee’s concerns focused on the International Gaza Support Center, the main hub for coordinating between the US, Israel, and international partners, according to Politico. The cable questioned whether the center could maintain operations as the Pentagon planned to reduce its personnel presence over the next year, with civilian staff expected to take over their responsibilities.

“Embassy Jerusalem is not currently staffed to assume these roles, but can be if it has an idea of the human, financial and logistical resources that will be needed,” Huckabee wrote. “The BoP is working to increase staff, but its ability to cover all functions at the IGSC remains unclear.”

The cable, marked “sensitive but unclassified,” also warned that replacing military personnel with civilians at the coordination center could complicate cooperation with the Israeli military, particularly regarding intelligence sharing, Politico reported.

“How will roles and responsibilities shift to State and the BoP as DoW reduces its presence?” Huckabee asked State Department leadership. “How will we keep critical IGSC workstreams running and what conditions should be met before this transition begins?”

Huckabee told Fox News that the Board of Peace “could be moving forward progressively, but the only reason that there’s any slowdown is because of Hamas.”

Huckabee specifically cited Hamas’s failure to follow through on its commitment to disarm as an obstacle to progress on the cable.

The Jerusalem Post reported in August that the high representative for the Board of Peace, Nikolay Mladenov, criticized Israel for continued strikes on Gaza after a cease-fire was reached in October 2025, and Israel's refusal to allow the NCAG into Gaza.
Hamas threatens another Oct. 7-style attack on Israel in unprecedented warning
Senior Hamas officials have sent Israel an unusually blunt and direct message, warning that the terrorist organization is prepared to carry out another attack similar to the October 7, 2023, massacre and could strike wherever the opportunity arises — inside Israel, in Judea and Samaria and abroad.

The message was delivered to U.N. humanitarian coordinator Dr. Ramiz Alakbarov by senior Hamas officials who met with him last week at his office in the Gaza Strip and asked him to convey the warning to Israel.

The Hamas officials told Alakbarov that Israeli military operations in Gaza, the shifting of the Yellow Line — the boundary marking Israeli military positions in the Strip — and the Palestinian Authority's cancellation of elections were causing Hamas to lose control on the ground. They made clear that they were unwilling to accept the continuation of this situation.

Alakbarov met Wednesday with Maj. Gen. Yoram Halevy, Israel's coordinator of government activities in the territories (COGAT), and relayed the message from Hamas leaders. Israeli officials described it as an extraordinary threat, unprecedented in its bluntness and directness. A document detailing the Hamas leadership's threats against Israel was urgently forwarded to the country's political and security leadership.

The remarks reflect the mounting pressure on Hamas as Israel has recently intensified its military campaign, carrying out a series of targeted killings of members of Hamas' elite Nukhba force and senior operatives in Gaza. At the same time, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has canceled the Palestinian Authority's elections that had been scheduled for November 28.

Hamas has been instructed by the Board of Peace and mediators to disarm, but Israeli officials believe the organization will refuse and instead resort to delaying tactics to buy time. Meanwhile, Israel continues to refuse to allow the technocratic committee or the Palestinian police force to enter Gaza.

Behind the scenes, Hamas is also facing a severe financial crisis. The terrorist organization needs approximately 90 million shekels ($29 million) a month simply to continue paying its operatives.


Who made Gaza hospitals and homes targets?
In a Gaza neighborhood, beside a playground built with UNRWA money and flying a Hamas flag, sacks of rice and flour stamped with United Nations markings were stacked into a fighting fortification like sandbags.

Next door, according to an IDF commander who fought there, stood a Hamas training compound and a kindergarten. Inside the kindergarten, troops found weapons and photographs of small children in Hamas uniforms. A tunnel shaft had been dug into the kindergarten’s yard. When Israeli forces moved in, two Hamas gunmen emerged from that shaft and hit them with an RPG. Five soldiers were wounded.

This was the same war in which Israel stood accused, in newsrooms, at the United Nations, and in The Hague, of starving Gaza by design. In that compound, the food had arrived. Hamas used it for cover.

The scene comes from NAZA: The Real Story, the reply to NAZA, the Guardian-produced documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor that took the Special Jury Prize at Venice. Three Israelis made the counter-film in under two weeks with their own money: Lt.-Col. (res.) Roi Danino, attorney and reservist Ariel Averbuch, and director Hagay Gutman.

A film made that fast has rough edges. But it puts IDF soldiers and officers who fought in Gaza on camera, and it backs their accounts with footage of Hamas weapons and military infrastructure in hospitals, mosques, and schools.

I wrote here last month about how NAZA recast Israel’s lawful collateral damage calculations as something nefarious. This piece concerns the half of the story it ignores. The Guardian’s documentary asks how Israel decided whether to strike. It never asks who decided where the target would be.

The war against Hamas
The answer is on the map, where the terrorist leaders who launched these wars of choice were finally found.

On September 27, 2024, Israeli jets killed Hassan Nasrallah in Hezbollah’s headquarters, a bunker beneath apartment towers in Beirut’s Dahiyeh suburb. He chose that spot knowing what the footage of any strike on him would look like.

On May 13, 2025, an Israeli strike killed Mohammed Sinwar, Hamas’s military chief in Gaza, along with its Rafah Brigade commander, Muhammad Shabana. Troops later found the compound directly beneath the emergency room of the EU-funded European Hospital in Khan Yunis. Hamas built its command center under that ER.

Mohammed Sinwar was no bystander to his brother’s war. He helped plan the 2006 abduction of Gilad Schalit, part of the template for October 7. He was central to building the Rafah tunnel network, where Hamas hid fighters, weapons, and hostages under a city that sheltered more than a million displaced Gazans.

He spent his last months underground, under a hospital, betting Israel would not find him or strike the building above him. Israel found him and aimed at the bunker, not the wards. Gaza’s Health Ministry still reported 28 dead. It did not say who built the bunker or how many of the dead were Hamas operatives, and it never mentioned Sinwar or Shabana. Its tolls don’t distinguish its fighters from civilians.

Sinwar’s brother Yahya, the architect of the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led invasion and massacres, died on October 16, 2024, in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan neighborhood, inside a family home whose owner had evacuated months earlier.

Nearby, seven weeks before, Hamas executed Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, and Almog Sarusi in a tunnel whose shaft opened inside a child’s bedroom in another family’s home, its walls painted with Snow White and Mickey Mouse.

An apartment block, a hospital, a family’s home. Each was chosen in advance by men who understood that their neighbors’ bodies were their best armor.
Tech for Palestine Founder Joins Erdoğan, Turkish Intel and Alleged FSB Agent at TRT Forum
Paul Biggar, founder and CEO of Tech for Palestine, is scheduled to speak at the TRT World Forum 2026, organized by Turkey’s state broadcaster on November 6–7 in Istanbul. The event will also feature Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, former Turkish intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Academy, and a Russian military analyst identified as an FSB agent by Estonia’s foreign intelligence service.

Biggar previously defended membership in Hamas and disputed reports of sexual violence committed during the terrorist organization’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel. In an April 16, 2024 article on his personal website, he wrote that “being a member of Hamas is not illegal or even wrong” and asserted there was “little to no evidence of any rapes by Hamas on October 7”.

According to the forum’s official website, Erdoğan is listed among the inauguration speakers, while Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who previously directed Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) for 13 years, is listed as a keynote speaker. Fidan maintains direct contacts with Hamas leaders, including a meeting earlier this month with the terrorist organization’s political leadership.

The conference’s speaker roster identifies several additional participants with connections to intelligence services, Hamas, organizations accused of supporting terrorism, and Turkish government-linked institutions.

Turkish Intelligence Links and Continuing Hamas Contacts
Fidan, who directed Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) from 2010 until becoming foreign minister in 2023, was the subject of an October 2013 Wall Street Journal investigation reporting that U.S. intelligence officials suspected his agency of passing sensitive Western intelligence to Iran. Citing current and former senior U.S. and Middle Eastern officials, the newspaper reported that the CIA began suspecting MİT in 2010 and that American officials believed the agency had passed several intelligence items to Tehran, including classified U.S. assessments about the Iranian government. The reporting also described allegations that sensitive intelligence collected by the United States and Israel had been shared with Iran.

Fidan has also maintained a longstanding working and personal relationship with Hamas’s senior leadership, dating back to his years directing Turkey’s intelligence agency. In a July 2024 interview, he acknowledged working “very closely” with Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal until 2017, before developing a working relationship with his successor, Ismail Haniyeh. Following Haniyeh’s assassination in July 2024, Fidan described their friendship as spanning many years, praised the Hamas leader’s religious devotion, and said he felt privileged to have known and worked with him.

Fidan’s contacts with Hamas have continued as foreign minister. In October 2024, he offered condolences to Hamas officials following the killing of Yahya Sinwar. A year later, he joined Turkey’s serving intelligence chief, İbrahim Kalın, for a meeting with senior Hamas leaders in Doha. Most recently, on October 9, 2026, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that Fidan met Hamas political bureau chief Khalil al-Hayya in Ankara.


Leaked Internal Document Shows What Brad Lander Was Really Up to in Israel
An internal document from the group that organized Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander’s trip to the West Bank describes Israel as "genocidal" and engaged in "ethnic cleansing" and says the trip’s goal is to build support for "international intervention" against Israel.

The document, labeled "INTERNAL DOCUMENT: DO NOT SHARE OR CIRCULATE," is a set of talking points from Protect the Harvest, which recruits foreigners to help make Israel look bad as part of its smear campaign.



Lander did his part, posting to social media that he had been "detained" by the Israel Defense Forces.

Lander is the Democratic nominee for a New York City congressional district that includes parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn. The district is currently represented by Dan Goldman. Lander, a former New York City comptroller who ran unsuccessfully for mayor and then endorsed Zohran Mamdani, defeated Goldman in a Democratic primary in a race whose entire supposed justification was that Goldman was not anti-Israel enough.

Israel’s foreign ministry denounced Lander’s move as "reckless political theater."

"Lander traveled to a foreign country, deliberately entered a restricted security area, and participated in an unauthorized activity without the required coordination," the foreign ministry said. "What makes this stunt even more outrageous is that his own team contacted Israeli representatives in the United States ahead of his visit and was explicitly informed that proper coordination with the relevant authorities was required. He chose to ignore those instructions."

The foreign ministry said the real purpose of the trip wasn’t harvesting olives. "This was not about harvesting olives. It was about harvesting headlines," the ministry said.
Brad Lander and the Politics of Appeasement
What was Mr. Lander even hoping to gain from this week’s actions and rhetoric? This is someone who already joined the anti-Israel crowd in opposing all aid to Israel. Astonishingly, for someone who claims to care about innocent civilians, this includes funding for the purely defensive Iron Dome. He accused Israel of a potential genocide in Lebanon while speaking at a mosque and called for a coalition with anti-Zionists.

Sadly, this is nothing new for Jews throughout history. Anti-Jewish voices among the Jewish people have often been the very most dangerous voices at the most perilous of times. Mr. Lander’s actions, as he sits on the precipice of increased political power, make him an influential link in that horrific chain.

Every time it appears he’s gone far enough, he’s mugged by the reality that nothing is far enough. Yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, the lesson he seems to draw is that it’ll get better if he keeps going further against Israel, keeps going further in making Jewish Americans feel less safe. After everything he’s said and done to distance himself from Israel, he was still publicly berated as a “Zionist.” His response? To minimize the incident as a few loudmouths and then double down on falsely accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid.

It seems Mr. Lander is having a hard time understanding what’s at play here, so I’ll lay it out clearly: No matter how much he turns on Israel and the Jewish people, there is no hechsher strict or pure enough for the mob.

Winston Churchill famously said, “(a)n appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” If anyone should understand the danger of appeasement of those who hate them, it’s the Jewish people. And it is crucially important that Jews entrusted with senior positions of influence understand and internalize the reality of history and its lessons for the present. Does Mr. Lander believe he will somehow be the first to ever tame the crocodile? History says otherwise.

In Congress, Mr. Lander will have a choice that will go beyond his own ambitions and personal antipathy to the Jewish national project: he can use his Jewishness as a shield for the worst anti-Israel voices among his new colleagues and a cudgel against his own community, or he can stand with his community. So far, every choice he has made points in the same problematic direction.


Peter Beinart Hijacks Black History to Defend Brad Lander
To break it down simply for Beinart to understand: Brad Lander has nothing to do with the Blacks and Jews who marched down to Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964 — because the Palestinians, and their quest for “liberation,” have nothing to do with the African-American Civil Rights struggle.

If one wants to make room for minority stories; elevate lived experiences – prioritize Black voices. So stop clacking for a second and listen to this Black (and Jewish) voice! Some seven decades ago, my own father battled to desegregate his South Texas elementary school and was met by violent white supremacists committed to keeping him very separate and very unequal.

But my father — and my aunt and thousands of other brave and truly virtuous young people — did not respond with kidnappings and suicide bombings like the Palestinians that Beinart so self-indulgently champions. Nor did their Caucasian comrades — who were equally honorable and often Jewish —march alongside them, like Lander and Greta Thunberg and their preening, flotilla-folly ilk, to score media hits and image inflation.

These are among the many reasons why the condition of Palestinians in the West Bank, as Beinart further contended on X yesterday, is not “worse” than that of Blacks in Jim Crow Mississippi; African-Americans marched in response to a lack of rights and equality; the Palestinians – failed by their cunning and short-sighted leadership – are the architects of their own misfortune.

Indeed, the only thing less honorable than Lander and his simping solidarity quest is Beinart, using it to curry favor with the woke elite who cover his paychecks. Because what Beinart does not — cannot and could never — understand is that he dishonors the nobility and nonviolence of the Black Civil Rights struggle every time he equates it with #palestine.

So I am appealing to Beinart directly: Stop — just stop!

As an actual African-American, I don’t need his manufactured alignment or cheesy, intersectional coalition-building. Because we, as Black people, have nothing to do with the Palestinians, no matter how hard they try to hijack our history. And Brad Lander is nothing like those Freedom Marchers, because Palestine today is nothing like Jim Crow Mississippi.
Lander says he will co-sponsor anti-settlement bill in Congress
Brad Lander, Democratic nominee for New York’s 12th Congressional District, said on Wednesday that once he is sworn in as a member of Congress, he will co-sponsor legislation that would ban the United States from importing items produced in Judea and Samaria.

The former New York City comptroller, who has accused Israel of “genocide,” spoke with reporters via Zoom from a hotel in the Palestinian Authority town of Beit Jala.

He had been released earlier from Israeli military detention after joining about 60 North American and British rabbis who, with local Palestinians, were picking olives during harvest season, he said.

They had picked olives without incident on Monday and Tuesday in a different location, but on Wednesday, in a grove within sight of Israeli residents, they were detained by Israeli authorities, according to Lander. He said that he was released with a warning after about an hour.

Lander, who beat Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) in the primary, is expected to win the deep-blue seat, which represents Park Slope in Brooklyn, in the midterm election.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whom Lander supported after running unsuccessfully against him in the mayoral race, has backed Lander in the congressional race. Mamdani, whose rhetoric endangers Jewish New Yorkers, according to Jewish leaders, also released a statement about Lander’s detention.

During the call with reporters, Lander said that once he is sworn in, he intends to co-sponsor a bill that Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) introduced that would prevent U.S. companies from doing business in, or importing goods from, Judea or Samaria.

The “Stop the Settlements Act” would halt “construction of new settlements and the expansion of existing Israeli settlements and outposts in the West Bank and Gaza through sanctions and a prohibition on importing goods made in these settlements and outposts,” Castro stated.

More than 50 congressmen have already signed on as co-sponsors, Castro stated.
NYC comptroller no longer slated to speak at synagogue after saying city would stop investing in Israel Bonds
Mark Levine, New York City comptroller, recently told The New York Times that the city would stop investing in Israel Bonds and later clarified that he was bound by his predecessor’s decisions. Still, he has been dropped as a Shabbat dinner speaker at the Altneu Synagogue.

The Shabbat dinner at the Orthodox congregation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side is still slated to feature Tom DiNapoli, the New York state comptroller, who has pledged to maintain the state’s investment in Israel Bonds.

A spokesman for the comptroller told JNS that he “has many friends at Altneu, has visited the congregation many times and shares its deep connection to Israel.”

“He looks forward to continuing to strengthen these relationships,” the spokesman said.

JNS sought comment from the synagogue. A source, who is not part of the Altneu leadership but who goes to the synagogue regularly, told JNS that he heard the parting was “mutual.”

Levine “was gonna get grilled” and “would have been raked across the coals,” the source, who spoke anonymously, told JNS. “Neither side wanted an uneasy dinner,” he said that he heard.

The event was originally titled “Shabbat dinner comptrollers: Off the record.” It is now billed as “Shabbat Dinner with Tom DiNapoli.”

Levine, who speaks Hebrew and often talks about his ties to Israel, had campaigned for the office of the city’s top finance executive on a promise to reinstate the Big Apple’s significant investment in Israel Bonds.

That investment had lapsed under his predecessor, Brad Lander, the Democratic nominee for what is considered a safe Democratic congressional seat.
Emirati diplomat, whose family holds keys to Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, enters UN secretary-general race
Lana Nusseibeh, an Emirati diplomat whose family history runs through Jerusalem, entered the stalled race for United Nations secretary-general on Wednesday.

Rebeca Grynspan, a Jew and former vice president of Costa Rica, has won five of the six secret-ballot straw polls that the U.N. Security Council has held to determine the next head of the global body.

But in a poll taken on Oct. 16, the first in which the five veto-holding members of the council used color-coded ballots, Grynspan drew negative votes from two of those five, suggesting she may be unable to secure the nomination.

None of the other candidates have come close to Grynspan, and multiple permanent council members have raised objections to each of the others. Time is ticking down to the Dec. 31 conclusion of António Guterres’s term as secretary-general.

Enter Nusseibeh, who said that she is taking a leave of absence from her position as United Arab Emirates minister of state to the United Nations and European Union.

“I have spent much of my professional life working in and around the United Nations, and I have seen first-hand what determined diplomacy can achieve,” she stated, announcing her candidacy, which the Emirati government backed.

“Countries with profound differences finding common ground, and agreement where people said agreement was impossible,” she stated. “I have also seen the cost when diplomacy falls short. When the distance between what we promise and what we deliver grows, trust erodes and so does our ability to act.”

Nusseibeh served as the Emirati ambassador to the global body from 2013 to 2024, which included the period when Israel and the United Arab Emirates normalized relations.

Her family, considered Jerusalem’s oldest Muslim dynasty, arrived in the seventh century of the Common Era and remains the keyholders to Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of Christianity’s holiest sites.
ICC wins EU’s top rights award as court faces sweeping US sanctions
Facing US sanctions, the International Criminal Court was on Thursday awarded the European Union’s top rights prize, in a show of support that risks upsetting US President Donald Trump.

“The European Union is built on respect for multilateralism and international institutions, and this prize recognizes the important work of the court in upholding international law and justice,” said European Parliament chief Roberta Metsola in announcing the award.

The ICC thanked the European Parliament for giving it the Sakharov Prize “at a time when the Court and its officials face unprecedented challenges.”

“Against this backdrop, the Sakharov Prize carries particular significance, reaffirming the importance of independent judicial institutions and of those who work to uphold international law,” ICC President Tomoko Akane said.

This month, the United States announced sanctions against the ICC aimed at crippling the day-to-day operations of the court, which tries individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Trump’s administration has vowed to dismantle the court “brick-by-brick,” furious over an arrest warrant its judges issued for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged crimes in the war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza, and a past investigation into actions of US soldiers in Afghanistan that the ICC has since closed.

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and then-defense minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024, saying there were reasonable grounds to believe they bore responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza war, including the alleged use of starvation as a method of warfare. Israel rejects the court’s jurisdiction and has denied committing war crimes in Gaza.


Danon blasts UN rapporteurs for ‘distorting facts, spreading falsehoods’
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon on Wednesday accused “so-called ‘U.N. experts’” of distorting facts and advancing political agendas, endorsing U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s criticism of their credibility.

“Their only real expertise lies in distorting facts, spreading falsehoods, and disguising political agendas as objective analysis,” Danon wrote on X. Rubio had described the term “U.N. experts” as an “oxymoron” during remarks in India.

Danon also challenged Ben Saul, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights while countering terrorism, over the Jewish state’s right to defend itself.

Citing the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of approximately 1,200 people and the abduction of 251 others, Danon asked whether Saul believed “every country is entitled to defend its citizens—except Israel.”



Israeli Actress Sues UN Adviser Francesca Albanese Over Nazi Comparison
Israeli actress and model Sarai Givaty filed a defamation lawsuit on Tuesday against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, for allegedly twisting comments she made and comparing them to remarks made by Nazi officials.

The 500,000-shekel lawsuit was filed at the Jerusalem Magistrates’ Court on behalf of Givaty by the Israeli legal advocacy organization Shurat HaDin.

The lawsuit claims that Albanese, who has a mandate from the UN to advise the international body on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, shared a “selectively edited” clip on X from a television interview that Givaty did in September 2025. The clip is “falsely portraying Givaty’s warning about extremist indoctrination as justification for killing children,” the suit notes, and Albanese compares Givaty’s words “to Nazi justifications for murdering children during the Holocaust.”

Albanese’s post on X led to Givaty receiving online abuse and death threats, and resulted in damage to her career in Israel and internationally, according to the lawsuit.

“Francesca Albanese is waging a venomous antisemitic campaign against Israel and is responsible for spreading yet another defamatory accusation against its citizens. We will not let her hide behind her immunity,” said Shurat HaDin president Nitsana Darshan-Leitner.

During a television interview in September 2025 with the Hebrew-language i24NEWS, Givaty talked about growing extremism in the aftermath of the Hamas-led massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, and the need to confront radicalization. “I feel sad for every child in the world who cries. I do. But I also understand that if we don’t act, that child will grow up to be a terrorist,” Givaty said in part.

According to the lawsuit, cited by Ynet, Givaty was referring to the dangers of children being exposed to hatred and extremist indoctrination and was not advocating or suggesting that children should be targeted with violence. However, the brief clip posted on X by Albanese includes a partial English translation of Givaty’s remarks and does not explain the context of her discussion, according to Givaty’s lawyers. Albanese’s post allegedly gives the false impression that the Israeli actress supports or justifies the killing of or violence against children in the Gaza Strip.


Israeli intelligence helps Saudi Arabia target Houthis as IDF prepares for potential escalation
IDF intelligence continues to provide Saudi Arabia with exceptional capabilities to assist its military operations against the Houthis through US mediation, a defense official confirmed on Thursday.

The assistance is being provided in accordance with Israel's national interests and directives from the political leadership, the official said, emphasizing that the Shi'ite-Sunni confrontation reflects developments taking place beneath the surface across the Middle East.

According to the official, Sunni countries are watching the escalation led by the Houthis against neighboring Saudi Arabia, with encouragement and support from Iran, and understand that they could be next.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is concentrating its efforts on launching powerful attacks against an extensive range of targets in Houthi-controlled areas, seeking to degrade critical military capabilities, including infrastructure.

"Two main points need to be made about this. First, it serves Israel's interests quite well because it wears down the military strength of an Israeli enemy that is preparing and planning to harm us in the future. In addition, we are monitoring and observing methods of operation and tactics, and learning a great deal from what is happening there, including about weapons that are not necessarily manufactured by the Houthis," the official said.
US orders embassy staff, families to leave Saudi Arabia amid escalating Houthi attacks
The United States has ordered non-essential US embassy staff and their families to leave Saudi Arabia, the State Department said on Wednesday, as the kingdom comes under sustained deadly attacks by Yemen’s Houthis.

“Iranian-supported Houthis have increasingly engaged in hostilities against Saudi Arabia, including attacks on civilian airports and other critical infrastructure resulting in civilian casualties and severe travel disruptions,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a social media post explaining the measure.

“The safety and security of department personnel and their families remain our highest priority,” he added.

A diplomatic source in the Middle East told AFP that some families of US embassy personnel were also being withdrawn in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain, but Pigott stressed that Wednesday’s order was for the departure of non-emergency embassy staff and their families in Saudi Arabia only.

Saudi Arabia has this month come under near-daily attacks from the Iran-backed Houthis, including a strike on Riyadh’s international airport that was the kingdom’s deadliest in years, as the war with the group escalates.

On Wednesday, the Saudi energy ministry said that falling debris from the successful interception of a drone targeting an oil facility killed two people and injured a further two.


Iran puts ‘Trump’ behind bars in new Tehran propaganda installation
Anti-American propaganda is a common sight on the streets of the Iranian capital, but authorities have gone a step further with their latest effort — a life-size jail cell with an actor playing US President Donald Trump languishing inside.

The 3D art installation is proving a hit with locals, who have been stopping to take selfies as well as hurl abuse at the faux Trump, who is accused by Tehran of war crimes during the Middle East war.

Since the beginning of the war that began with American and Israeli strikes in February, the Islamic Republic has ramped up propaganda operations, with several pieces of artwork going viral.

In their latest campaign, a prison cell is suspended several stories high in Tajrish Square in an upscale neighborhood of north Tehran.

Inside is an actor dressed in a dark suit and red tie and wearing a prosthetic mask to look like the US president, as he paces around the cell or clutches its bars.
Hezbollah sends Latin American recruits to Lebanon for training before targeting Jewish communities
Hezbollah is increasingly recruiting convicted felons in Latin America, targeting individuals with financial difficulties who harbor resentment toward the courts – while relaxing its requirements for ideological alignment – according to a new Washington Institute for Near East Policy assessment. The report was written by Lucas Gualtieri, a Brazilian federal prosecutor who specializes in organized crime and Hezbollah’s use of criminal networks.

Operation Trapiche, a counterterrorism operation launched by Brazil’s Federal Police in November 2023 with support from Israel’s Mossad, has shed light on Hezbollah’s efforts to outsource operatives, as well as on criminal revenue generation and financial services in Latin America, building capabilities the terrorist group can plausibly deny if confronted.

Hezbollah has long outsourced operations in Latin America, as illustrated by the 2021 expulsion of two criminals hired by the Iran-backed group to target an Israeli in Bogotá.

The investigation has uncovered what amounts to an assembly line for operatives. Rather than simply contracting hitmen, Hezbollah recruits men with no prior ties to the group, flies them to Lebanon for training, and sends them back to their home countries to scout for potential Israeli and Jewish targets.

Gualtieri said Hezbollah was specifically seeking to recruit financially vulnerable convicted felons with no prior ties to the group or Lebanon. In intercepted audio, recruiters discussed looking for aggrieved individuals who had been “locked up” and felt they “owe the courts,” he said.

By recruiting men without prior ideological or personal ties to Hezbollah or Lebanon, Gualtieri said, the group could deny involvement in attacks, allowing any resulting unrest to be dismissed as hate crimes committed by fringe extremists.
IDF hunts suspects after Jewish holy site torched in Samaria
Israeli soldiers were dispatched on Wednesday to the Samaria village of Awarta following a report and footage of a grave being set on fire, the Israel Defense Forces told JNS on Thursday.

Troops searched for suspects, who had fled before their arrival, the military said in response to a JNS inquiry. No injuries were reported.

Judea and Samaria District Police officers and forensic investigators were preparing to enter the scene under IDF protection to collect evidence and testimony as part of an investigation, the military said.

“The IDF strongly condemns such incidents. Security forces are working resolutely to locate the suspects and bring them to justice,” it added.

The Judea and Samaria Situation Room, established by the Yesha Council to monitor developments and provide information to international media, decision-makers and organizations, identified the site as the traditional tomb of Eleazar the High Priest.

According to its statement, Arabs from Awarta set fire to the tomb overnight on Oct. 20–21. Footage circulated on Arab social media accompanied by songs glorifying the act and threatening messages, JSR said.


Hillel Neuer on the Brian Kilmeade Show: “The Iranian Regime Is Getting Weaker Every Day”
UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer appeared on the Brian Kilmeade Show with Fox News to discuss Iran’s weakening regime, the future of Hamas disarmament in Gaza, and Europe’s growing crisis.


Commentary Podcast: Brink and Mortars
Our friends Matt Continetti of the WSJ and Jonathan Schanzer of FDD join us today to discuss Saudi Arabia's Houthi bind, the possibility of the entire region being dragged into the conflict, the controversy over the shutdown of Starshield, which limited Ukraine's ability to strike Russia, and the possibility of renewed Israeli/American offensives on Iran. Plus, more election talk, and Matt recommends The Strategist by Eliot A. Cohen.


The Camera Was Part of the Unit: Inside Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Military Media System
The camera appears first as familiar professional equipment: a Canon body, a white telephoto zoom and a substantial tripod with a fluid style head. Muhammad Nabil al-Zaq adjusts the camera and works through the viewfinder with the practiced movements of someone who knows the equipment.

Then the film cuts to rifle training. Al-Zaq moves through an earthen training ground carrying an assault rifle. He practices with a handgun. He appears in armed formations and wears insignia identifying Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Military Media operation.

The sequence is not documentation of allegations assembled by Israel or an interpretation imposed by a hostile editor. It comes from Roots of Victory⁠, a memorial videos series produced by the Al-Quds Brigades⁠, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. PIJ edited the camera, the rifle, the uniform and the military formation into a single account of one man’s service.

It is difficult to imagine a clearer illustration of how meaningless the conventional separation between “journalist” and military operative can become inside Gaza’s armed groups. He serves as a case study for how the PIJ’s media apparatus is inextricably integrated in both its military structure, but also its propaganda strategy.

The Photographer the News Knew
Al-Zaq’s media work was real. That is precisely what makes his case important.

A Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate report⁠ lists the full name Muhammad Nabil al-Zaq, aged 29, as a photographer for Al-Quds Today. Other Palestinian and international records described him as a journalist or the channel’s social media manager. When he was killed in November 2023, Shams News reported that Al-Quds Today had mourned him as a colleague⁠.

Two prewar Palestinian news posts also carry the shorter credit “Photography: Muhammad al-Zaq.” One shows the Ramadan moon above Gaza⁠. The other shows Israeli reconnaissance aircraft over the territory⁠. The abbreviated credits cannot yet be tied conclusively to Muhammad Nabil Ibrahim al-Zaq, but the name, location, period and publishing network make them credible leads.

No attributable work by al-Zaq was located in searches of Reuters, AFP, Getty Images, The Associated Press or Anadolu. His appearance in mainstream coverage came not as the creator of a published photograph, but as a name in the expanding record of journalists said to have been killed in Gaza.

The Washington Post included Mohamed Nabil al-Zaq⁠ in an interactive article titled “The journalists killed in Gaza and what they tried to show the world.” The Guardian’s interactive on “the deadly toll on journalists” ⁠still lists him simply as “Journalist.”

That Guardian page states that it was last modified on September 25, 2025. Almost exactly a year later, the Committee to Protect Journalists announced the results of a comprehensive review ⁠in which it removed 22 people previously included in its database. CPJ’s updated casualty record places al-Zaq among those removed after new research established engagement in combat⁠. His individual CPJ entry is now marked “Removed”⁠.

The correction does not mean al-Zaq never worked in media. The evidence shows that he did. It means that “journalist” was an incomplete description of a man whose other role was not incidental to the story.





 




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