By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | October 25, 2026

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared a new military operation in the occupied West Bank to collectively punish the people of al-Khalil, all in the lead-up to the scheduled national elections early next week. Is the Premier playing with fire?

Following years of ever-escalating settler violence and the intensification of Israel’s military occupation across the occupied West Bank, two Palestinian men in their twenties – Hamouda and Firas al-Ja’ba – decided to carry out a resistance operation against an Israeli army guard post.

The two resistance fighters carried out their attack, injuring four Israeli soldiers and killing two, using pistols and a rifle near the Farsh al-Hawa checkpoint in al-Khalil. The Israeli army called in backup, leading to an armed clash in which both of the Palestinians were killed during a 20-minute clash.

From the CCTV footage of the clash, it appears as if the two Palestinians were not professionally trained and acted alone. No Palestinian movement claimed the attack, although it was widely praised. Israel was quick to blame Hamas and then launch a new military campaign targeting the entire city of al-Khalil.

There are a number of reasons that the attack, which, although the most significant carried out in the West Bank in over a year, is not exactly unusual, has been reacted to in the way we see today.

One reason for this enormous overreaction is that Netanyahu is looking for a boost in the polls. He evidently believes that by launching a brutal crackdown in the West Bank, his population will respond positively and he may win some more votes come Tuesday.

This is why the Israeli Prime Minister claimed that the planned campaign against al-Khalil will be an operation “unlike any seen since the Six-Day War”. He is trying to play on Israeli nationalism, referencing the June 1967 war, during which the Israelis occupied the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula. Evidently, this is hyperbole, but it doesn’t mean that the campaign will not be brutal.

Another reason why the attack has been transformed into such a major issue is that it is massively embarrassing to both the Israeli army and Netanyahu personally. Although the two Palestinian fighters do not appear to have had any professional training and did not act on behalf of any resistance group, the Israeli media, military, and government are saying the opposite.

The Israelis are claiming that Hamas was involved; they are also spinning a hero story that by calling in backup they managed to thwart a much larger attack that was planned on Israeli settlers and that what happened was actually a success story of sorts.

This is because the truth exposes the unprofessionalism and cowardice of the Israeli occupation soldiers. Two untrained individuals managed to kill a Staff Sergeant and a Sergeant, injured four others, while all the female soldiers on scene hid from the attackers. In addition to this, it took 20 minutes for them to take care of the threat posed to their forces; they also needed to call in backup despite clearly outnumbering the two gunmen already. Accepting the reality would mean accepting that the army is pretty incompetent, and the Israeli public will believe any narrative that allows them to ignore this truth.

Another element of this is that if you tell the public that the Israeli army managed to thwart a major attack, it shows that under Netanyahu’s leadership, he has learned the lesson from October 7, 2023. The narrative being sold to Israelis is that now the army is acting pre-emptively; it is launching a major campaign to prevent another major attack like the one that happened on October 7. Israelis also simply enjoy watching Palestinians suffer.

However, by launching such a collective punishment campaign, there is a chance that the Israelis could end up getting burned, even if not immediately. West Bank Palestinians have been placed under tremendous pressure; by launching an intensive campaign of this nature, it could end up pushing some people over the edge.

Although the rhetoric surrounding the campaign suggests that the Israeli military is seeking to turn the largest populated city in the occupied West Bank into Gaza, this is unlikely to be what they will do. Instead, they will carry out raids, make life an inconvenience, even more than before, likely killing some innocent people while kidnapping random Palestinians while going through their neighborhoods.

The most intensity will be focused on a few specific neighborhoods that will get the worst treatment. But escalating too hard, too fast, could end up triggering a unifying event, especially due to the Israeli soldiers being psychotic and not even following their own rules. Ultimately, it is because of the checkpoints, killings, torture, and daily harassment that Palestinians carry out resistance attacks like the one we saw this Friday morning.

It is only a matter of time until the pressure being placed upon the people of the West Bank will explode. What makes this predicament starkly different from that of Gaza is that when the situation deteriorates, the Israelis have already entrenched themselves so deeply within that territory that they are extremely exposed.

Netanyahu loves to pledge his intentions to collapse the Palestinian Authority (PA) and annex the West Bank, but this is just posturing for gullible Israeli fanatics who don’t understand how everything works. If the PA does collapse and there is a push to annex the territory officially, then the settlements will be indefensible.

Just as the Israeli public truly believes that they have “the most moral army on earth”, they also believe that they are physically superior too. The former is about as accurate as the latter.

During the Gaza Genocide, the West Bank strategy has been to subdue the Palestinians through brute force and to collaborate with the PA in order to ensure there is no major uprising. It has, until now, worked. However, that strategy of constant torment and increasing pressure also “worked” until October 7, 2023.

People will not live under such horrendous conditions forever; it is only a matter of time before the situation there dramatically changes. Such a shift could occur over something relatively small. When you constantly play with fire, you get burnt.

If the West Bank’s population were to enter a sustained popular uprising, the Israeli military would struggle to subdue it. In the event that other fronts of its regional war were to open, this could be a major strategic catastrophe.

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– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.

British attitudes relating to Jewish people and Israel show two broad trends. Anti-Jewish attitudes are typically less prevalent and have remained more stable, whereas anti-Israel sentiments are more prevalent and have been increasing.

Israeli attacks killed at least eight Palestinians across Gaza on Sunday as the Israeli military appears to be escalating its strikes ahead of Tuesday’s Knesset elections. Israeli strikes on Sunday included the bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza City, which killed at least three people and injured eight. University sources told AFP that the […]

Israel’s 27 October election might disappoint everyone. To start, there may be no next-day resolution. Polls show the Netanyahu-allied and opposition blocs nearly tied, both short of a majority.

If that holds, expect weeks of furtive factional negotiations that diminish the reputations of all involved. If those fail, back to the ballot box.  

If a new government forms quickly, it will likely be led by Benjamin Netanyahu or the opposition’s Gadi Eisenkot. Most observers outside Israel are hoping for Gadi. In truth, either result will confront Brussels and Washington with tough choices that both have put off too long.  

Last week’s grudging and partial White House endorsement notwithstanding, Netanyahu is near-friendless on the international scene.

If he grinds out another win, many European leaders and US presidential contenders will find themselves managing bilateral relationships of mutual  contempt.  

Unwilling to face hard facts at home, Bibi seemed to think he could gamble them away with Gulf money and American missile interceptors. He marketed himself as the founding entrepreneur of a new-model Middle East powered by Saudi normalisation and Iranian regime change.

Instead, Houthi drones and Saudi budget deficits are vaporising the mirage of glass cities and data centres in the desert.  

Trump’s war now

Iran is Trump’s war now, not Israel’s: He will fight or end it as he pleases. What’s left on the IDF’s regional briefing map are small places with complicated pasts and unclear futures, lands that Israel wishes the rest of the  world would forget but is itself unwilling to leave.  

The old Middle East is back. In truth, it never left.

It has been the beggar at the door of every air-conditioned Gulf investment conference. But the poor relations — Gaza,  the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen — have refused to go quietly.  

Israel’s old politics are back, too.

The median Israeli is 29-years old. Netanyahu, whose hair and makeup bills are the subject of a considerable body of investigative journalism, just turned 77. His leading rival Eisenkot, who lost a son and two nephews in Gaza, launched his career as a platoon commander in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.  

Israel, like America, is due generational change.

Instead, Israelis (or at least undecided centre-right voters) got a choice of character: the embarrassing, but reassuringly indestructible Bibi, or the earnest but untested Eisenkot.  

It’s not just the faces that are familiar. The candidates are still fighting Israel’s culture wars. The debates that dominated the election — ultra-orthodox military  enlistment, judicial reform, and the role of religion in the state — are serious. But they’re also stalemated.  

Despite deafening recriminations about who is to blame for exposing Israel to Hamas’s 7 October attacks, the debate about security in Gaza and Israel’s north is equally stuck.  

Indiscriminate destruction and deliberate destabilisation

Netanyahu promised “total victory”; that turned out to mean indiscriminate destruction and deliberate destabilisation. His opponents claim Netanyahu has squandered the IDF’s  achievements. They promise to do what Netanyahu could not, by using the same crude tools to achieve the same poorly defined objectives — but this time, with greater skill.  

The question of what that means for ordinary Palestinian civilians, and what future they can expect for their children, has barely been discussed.

Many Israeli voters, desensitised to the situation of Palestinians who are  routinely dehumanised by Israel’s domestic press, don’t ask. Most Israeli candidates carefully avoid answering.  

Both blocs pledge they’ll refuse to partner with the Arab-Israeli parties that could hold the key to a Knesset majority — even as prominent Arab candidates downplay their support for Palestinian statehood and campaign on more  palatable topics like under-policing in Arab communities.  

It’s comforting to imagine an Israeli government formed by anyone left of Netanyahu will steer instinctively towards international expectations. But a more centrist Israeli government, like any elected government anywhere, will  operate within the political space created by the policy priorities and the empathetic capacity of its voters.  

There isn’t much room for Palestinians.  

If an opposition-bloc government forms, it will surely ask for time, assuring foreign capitals that the appearance of pressure makes meaningful change harder back home.

European leaders and US Democrats poised to win at least one house of Congress in November may be tempted to pause efforts to compel Israel towards rapid implementation of the international road map in Gaza, an end to ethnic cleansing  in the West Bank, and full IDF withdrawal from Lebanon and  Syria.  

That would be a mistake.

There will be no place in Israeli  politics for a realistic discussion of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria until the foreign partners necessary to Israel’s security and economy insist, soberly and relentlessly, on creating one.

That will require tough new sanctions, not just wordplay. The things that have to be admitted are too hard, and the promises that must be broken are too many, for any Israeli leader to act alone. 

Amanda Pilz served for 22 years as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer. She is a former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian affairs.

A day after attacks by Palestinian gunmen killed two soldiers, Israel imposed widespread closures, displacing residents in the city of Hebron.

A day after attacks by Palestinian gunmen killed two soldiers, Israel imposed widespread closures, displacing residents in the city of Hebron.

Arabic should not be treated differently from German, Spanish, Italian or Japanese because of contemporary politics.

The UN food agency helping Palestinians and others in need across the world has come under scrutiny for its contract with Palantir –  the controversial US tech and AI company used by various international border police and militaries to sort data and better identify targets.

The UN’s food agency, the World Food Programme (WFP), prolonged its contract with Palantir in July, prompting civil organisations to urge the end of these agreements in a letter published on Friday (23 October).

Some 3,000 European citizens have written to the WFP’s leadership, calling for the agency to end its Palantir partnership.

The WFP holds one of the biggest biometric databases in the world, with millions of its records containing information about vulnerable populations.

WFP is effectively supporting a company that undermines its own operations in Palestine by helping kill civilians for another client, which is “a very strong contradiction,”  Giulio Carini, head of campaigns at an NGO WeMove Europe told EUobserver.

“On one hand, you’re feeding people of Gaza, but then, but on the other, you’re using software from a company whose technology is allegedly also being used to kill them” he added.

As many as 1.1 million people are reached by the WFP in Gaza each month, out of the 1.4 million facing acute food insecurity. The organisation is complaining that it had to scale down its food assistance in Gaza and the West Bank due to a lack of funding.

The WFP has argued that its use of Palantir’s software to compile its datasets and make better decisions has saved them $50m [€45m] that would otherwise be spent on inefficient management of its resources.

This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership

Detailed report finds that Israel has committed “mediacide”. Israel has used “interconnected patterns” which have both facilitated genocide and hindered accountability. Media have repeated unverified Israeli claims & stripped away historical context

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that he has ordered the Israel Defense Force to “immediately impose a lockdown on Hebron and prepare for a full lockdown of the entire” illegally occupied West Bank following a gun battle that reportedly left two Palestinians dead and at least five Israeli soldiers wounded. Following an emergency meeting […]

The post Netanyahu’s full West Bank lockdown called collective punishment appeared first on Asia Times.

Days before Israel’s legislative elections, scheduled for October 27, Israeli forces escalated military activities across the West Bank. Observers speculate that the Israeli government may carry through with its threat to escalate its assaults on Palestinians in the occupied territory.

These speculations are apparently based on the results of the early polls, which showed the bloc of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a tight race with its competitors and facing a likely political deadlock.

On Tuesday, October 20, the Israeli military announced a 24-hour military drill across the West Bank that involved gunfire, explosions, and increased movements of soldiers, aircraft, and military vehicles.

Concurrently, security measures against Palestinians and their supporters have been further tightened. On Tuesday, October 21, the Israeli forces briefly detained 80 US, British, and Israeli volunteers assisting Palestinians harvesting olives west of the southern West Bank governorate of Bethlehem.

The detainees included the New York Democratic congressional nominee Brad Lander, a group of rabbis, and Israel’s former deputy attorney general.

Commenting on the incident, Lander wrote in a post on X:

“I’ve been detained by the IDF, along with a group of rabbis & volunteers. We were simply harvesting olives in a grove near Nehalim in the West Bank.”

“The occupation is a crime under international law. Harvesting olives isn’t a crime under any law I know,” the congressional candidate continued, although he calls himself a “liberal Zionist.”

The Israeli military stated that the mass detention of activists was carried out because they did not submit requests to the relevant authorities in advance for necessary coordination “to ensure the security of the area and maintain public order.”

Settler violence

The incident occurred amid an unprecedented escalation of settler violence in the West Bank, particularly during the olive harvest season.

The last couple of weeks saw horrific settler attacks carried out under the protection of the Israeli forces. Those attacks caused injuries not only to Palestinians, but also international activists, journalists, and diplomats from other countries.

Damage to Palestinian agricultural lands and the looting of crops has also been reported over the same period.

On Friday, October 16, veteran Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine (63) was beaten by a crowd of masked Israeli settlers, while covering the olive harvest in Abu Falah village northeast of Ramallah, although she was wearing a helmet and a protective vest clearly labeled “PRESS” on both sides.

One day later, a delegation of European diplomats was attacked by a group of masked colonists in the village of Taybeh, east of Ramallah, during a visit to the area to support Palestinian farmers harvesting olives.

The Israeli forces also intensified military raids in different parts of the West Bank in recent days, detaining Palestinian traffic police for hours. 

Many believe the incident aimed to break the morale of the Palestinian people by exposing the helplessness of the Palestinian security apparatus in the face of Israel as an occupying power. 

Meanwhile, others viewed it as a provocation of the Palestinian Authority and its security forces, in a bid to push them for an armed confrontation with the Israeli forces. A scenario that the Israeli government has already laid the groundwork for as per recent statements from Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz.

United States has denied former Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau permission to travel to Puerto Rico, where she was due to take part in a municipalist forum next month, a decision that sources close to her link to her pro-Palestinian activism.

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Ada Colau, a candidate for the Frente Amplio, had planned to attend the Ciudades Valientes meeting on November 3 and 4 in the municipality of Caguas in central Puerto Rico. When she applied for the digital travel authorization known as ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization), U.S. authorities approved the members of her delegation but denied her request. She was then advised to attend an in-person interview at the U.S. embassy in Madrid.

According to people close to Colau, the interview held two weeks ago focused on her position on the conflict in Gaza. “The entire interview was about the Flotilla and her pro-Palestinian activism, with a lot of insistence on the three days she was held in Israel,” they said.

RELATED: U.S. Expands Social Media Review for Visa Applicants Starting October

After the interview, U.S. authorities issued a final denial, citing “suspicion that she wants to migrate illegally to the country.”

“This is a clear case of political censorship. And it is a disgrace, because while we see that Javier Milei can travel freely to our country to insult the press and citizens in general, his friend Donald Trump bans me from entering a country like Puerto Rico, which is a colony occupied by the United States,” Colau said.

The US has refused to grant a visa to former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau over her participation in the Global Sumud Flotilla and her support for Palestine.

Colau had been invited to attend a meeting convened by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. pic.twitter.com/TuEEQasz9x

— The Times of Palestine (@PalTimesNews) October 21, 2026

Ada Colau governed Barcelona between 2015 and 2023. She had traveled to the Caribbean archipelago in April 2024 to discuss urban planning, access to housing, human rights and the role of women in politics. During that visit, at a conference on government and citizen participation, she advocated for truth, justice and reparation in the face of European colonization in Latin America.

The prohibition echoes other restrictions imposed by Washington on figures critical of its foreign policy. The same administration has repeatedly denied a visa to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to attend the United Nations General Assembly. In Colau’s case, the stated rationale of immigration risk collides with a documented history of official visits and public conferences.

Event Agenda Unchanged

The decision keeps the event in Caguas and preserves the original schedule rather than postponing or relocating it.

The Puerto Rican collective confirmed that its upcoming event will keep its original agenda, and that the political leader will participate remotely. “Ada will be present, one way or another, because ideas and courage do not require visas to cross the borders imposed on us to divide us,” they affirmed.

“Colau is one of the founding voices of the international municipalist movement that inspires this meeting and her physical absence will be felt, but we maintain our commitment to the exchange of experiences,” the organizers said, rejecting the ban.

“Her physical absence will be felt, but we maintain our commitment to the exchange of experiences. Our collaboration with Ada and with the Sentit Comú Foundation remains just as strong and Brave Cities will take place as planned,” the League stated in a public communiqué.

For her supporters, the case exposes the double standard at the heart of the colonial relationship. The denial of entry, they insist, is not a security measure but a political sentence delivered through administrative channels.

Organizers say the work continues, and that Colau’s ideas will still shape the conversations in Caguas even in her in-person absence. The entry ban, however, ensures that a voice critical of U.S. policy will not speak from the island that Washington governs as a colony.

🚨🇪🇸 BREAKING — Ada Colau:

“If we trivialize and allow the genocide in Gaza, and apartheid and the colonial persecution of Palestine, humanity is lost.

Therefore, all humanity must not give up, resign itself, normalize or trivialize the genocide in Gaza and the persecution of… pic.twitter.com/cLg7UIx5Ss

— Pamphlets (@PamphletsY) October 18, 2026

Puerto Rico has been under U.S. control since 1898, after the Treaty of Paris, and since 1952 has held the status of a commonwealth with its own constitution, although the United States retains exclusive control over immigration, customs, defense and currency. ESTA was required because of the island’s colonial status. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, and ESTA applies to travelers from visa-waiver countries such as Spain who enter U.S. territory.

Rights groups have often criticized U.S. visa denials based on political views, while U.S. officials typically say such decisions follow immigration law and are not open to public discussion.

On the opening day of its National Smallholder Farmers’ Conference and 31st Annual General Meeting (AGM), held from September 29 to October 1, MVIWATA, Tanzania’s national network of smallholder farmers’ groups, set aside time during a program on land, seed, and markets to state solidarity with the peoples of Palestine and Cuba, with the ambassadors of both countries present in the hall.

“We, the members of MVIWATA, who have convened in Morogoro for our 31st Annual General Meeting, wish to give a brief statement in support of the people of Palestine and the Cuban people,” read Theodora Pius, MVIWATA’s head of program, opening the statement. The organization said it was “extremely angered by the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people” and “frustrated to see an open silence on war crimes that happen every day against the people of Palestine by the State of Israel and its allies.” It said its solidarity was with all of Palestine, “not only in the Gaza Strip.”

The statement then turned to Cuba, denouncing more than 60 years of US-imposed blockade, it said, imposed because Cubans exercised their freedom to choose their own political system, and went on to articulate what the blockade now means: “no electricity, no fuel, no medicines, no food.” Despite this, the statement said that the Cuban people have continued to send their expertise (doctors above all) to support life in other countries.

The Cuban Ambassador, Yordenis Despaigne Vera, thanked the smallholder farmers and described the current stage of the blockade as an energy war. United Nations agencies reinforce this characterization. By May, the Cuban people were living with daily blackouts of up to twenty hours, and more than 100,000 patients, including 11,000 children, were waiting for operations delayed by power cuts and shortages. Cuba’s own health ministry recorded infant mortality rising from 7.1 to 9.9 deaths per thousand live births between 2024 and 2025. The ambassador called the United States program “a silent genocide” and said Tanzania’s government and people had stood with Cuba throughout. A week earlier, at the UN General Assembly, Tanzania’s Vice-President had reaffirmed the country’s “unwavering solidarity with Cuba” against unilateral sanctions. Last October, the Assembly voted 165 to 7, with 12 abstentions, to demand an end to the blockade; Tanzania voted in favor.

The Palestinian ambassador, Salam Abu Sharar, addressed the room of farmers. Land, he said, is close to the hearts of the Palestinian people and of MVIWATA alike, and the question of Palestine “is not about religion; it is about land.” In a hall where the first working session opened with the words “land is life, land is not a commodity,” he spoke the delegates’ own language: the struggle of Tanzania’s peasants and the national liberation of Palestine are one struggle.

MVIWATA has been here before. Its AGM in Njombe in December 2023 condemned Israel’s genocide in Palestine. In July 2025, it hosted the youth of La Via Campesina in Morogoro, whose declaration ended with “Free Palestine!” Within days of that meeting’s close, Israeli forces bulldozed the seed multiplication unit of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, the Palestinian farmers’ organization in Hebron, destroying more than seventy local varieties. The same year, MVIWATA and the International Association for Popular Cooperation ran an Africa Bioinputs School in Tanzania, with participants from thirteen countries, including Palestine, learning how farmers make their own fertilizers and pest controls.

On the conference’s final day, the Tanzanian farmers resolved to build their own bank of indigenous seed. In Hebron and in Morogoro, the seed is where the struggle over who feeds whom begins. MVIWATA Chairperson Apollo Chamwela told the ambassadors that the organization stood ready to do for Cuba what it had tried to do for Palestine: collect food if mechanisms for transporting it can be arranged.

MVIWATA is a membership organization of smallholder farmers, founded in 1993 and organized across mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar. It was a meeting with a government minister as its guest of honor. Its statement on Palestine and Cuba came in the same breath as its demands for land, seed, and dignified prices for its members’ produce at home. For these farmers, sovereignty over food and sovereignty over territory are one question, whether the territory is a village in Kilosa or a hillside in Hebron.

The hall closed the statement with a call and response. “Long live Palestine! Long live!” “Viva Fidel! Viva!” “Viva the resistance of the people of Palestine! Viva!”

Jonis Ghedi-Alasow is the Coordinator of the Pan Africanism Today Secretariat. 

Democratic US congressional candidate Brad Lander said Wednesday that he was released by Israeli forces with a “warning” after he and dozens of others were detained while helping Palestinians harvest olives in the illegally occupied West Bank.

“Several dozen rabbis and participants harvesting olives with me are still in detention,” Lander, who is Jewish, wrote on social media. “They should all be released immediately. To be clear: Palestinians face far worse consequences every day. These detentions by the IDF are one more attempt to undermine Palestinians’ right to harvest their olive groves, travel on their roads, and live in their homes.”

Prior to his release, Lander posted a video from a bus that he said was “taking us away for processing” after settler security called the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on the group harvesting olives.

“Let’s be clear: Occupation is a crime under international law,” said Lander, who is running to represent New York’s 10th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives. “Harvesting olives is not a crime under any law.”

I’ve been released from IDF custody with a “warning,” apparently because of my public profile (I told them I wasn’t even a congressmember yet, just a nominee).But several dozen rabbis & participants harvesting olives with me are still in detention.

— Brad Lander (@bradlander.bsky.social) 2026-10-21T13:34:39.826Z

Lander was part of a group of around 80 American and Israeli rabbis and activists who were detained by the IDF on Wednesday as they helped Palestinians harvest olives from a grove near an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Israeli lawyers told NPR that the incident marked “the largest mass detention of activists in the occupied West Bank in at least a decade.”

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the US-based advocacy group J Street, said in response to the detentions that “when the government of Israel and its military and law enforcement are arresting rabbis and volunteers who have journeyed 6000 miles to protect Palestinian farmers harvesting olives and not the violent terrorists harassing and attacking the farmers—it tells you all you need to know about this government’s moral compass.”

“This illegal and immoral occupation must end,” he added.

The mass detention came after several recent instances of horrific Israeli settler violence against Palestinian olive harvesters, European diplomats, and an American journalist.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement earlier this week that “Israel’s apartheid system is turning the olive harvest into a season of horror for Palestinian families across the occupied West Bank.”

“States must recognize that settler attacks are not isolated acts, but a central policy of the Israeli state,” said Morayef, calling on nations to “take concrete measures to respect their obligations under international law and to avoid complicity in Israeli violations and crimes against Palestinians by halting all trade, investment, and cooperation that contribute to maintaining the unlawful occupation, apartheid, and the ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing.”

“Hiding behind empty rhetoric is not only cowardly, it is enabling further abuses,” she added. “For Palestinians, it continues to be deadly.”

Teachers face being banned from wearing politically-contentious insignia – such as pro-Palestinian badges – following a review of antisemitism in schools that found 60% of Jewish pupils reported suffering abuse.

The post Teachers May be Banned by Schools From Wearing Politically-Contentious Badges appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Christian leaders in Jerusalem have released a statement strongly condemning an attack by Jewish settlers against the Christian village of Taybeh and visiting European diplomats in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and the “terror” that Palestinians are facing from settlers across the territory. The attack near Taybeh targeted Palestinians, Belgian, French, and Polish diplomats, as well […]

The Cradle – October 20, 2026

US special envoy Tom Barrack conceded that a “ground kinetic” battle in Yemen by the US “seems fruitless” during a talk at the Global Security Forum in Qatar on 20 October.

“I think the president’s been clear that he supports Saudi Arabia and the backing that they need logistically he will supply. But America getting involved in a ground kinetic battle somewhere else seems fruitless.”

Barrack is Washington’s ambassador to Turkiye and special presidential envoy for Syria and Iraq.

He admitted that military force has failed in Yemen and that Riyadh is in a “very difficult position.”

“These kinetic reactions have never worked. It doesn’t work. It’s probably not likely that it’s going to work,” he said.

Barrack questioned whether US meddling across West Asia has helped or harmed the region, arguing that Ansarallah in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the resistance factions in Iraq would lose their reason to exist only once states took responsibility themselves.

He pressed for talks between Riyadh, Sanaa, and regional mediators, urging regional capitals to build their own alliances instead of leaning on Washington.

He went further, admitting that the US has had a hand in 23 regime changes across the region, none of which achieved their aims.

He declined to say whether the US-Israeli war on Iran launched on 28 February was a mistake, while conceding that it had unleashed unintended consequences across the region.

The admission comes as the Saudi-led coalition presses on with airstrikes on Yemen, drawing retaliatory missile and drone strikes by the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) on the kingdom.

Riyadh has turned to its defense partners under the Mecca pact, including Pakistan and Turkiye, after Washington declined its requests for direct US intervention against Yemen.

Barrack’s remarks follow Washington’s failed bid to subdue Yemen by military force, with more than 1,000 US airstrikes between March 2024 and April 2025 unable to halt Yemeni naval operations waged in support of Gaza, forcing the US into an Omani-brokered ceasefire with Sanaa in May 2025.

The campaign cost Washington $1 billion in its first three weeks alone, as Yemeni forces downed 17 MQ-9 Reaper drones and the US lost two F-18 fighter jets.

Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said in November 2024 that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier had retreated hundreds of miles after coming under Yemeni fire, while then US Under Secretary of Defense Bill LaPlante admitted he was “just shocked” by what Yemen’s missiles could do.

Europe fared no better, with Rear Admiral Vasileios Gryparis, commander of the EU’s Operation Aspides, telling Bloomberg in June 2024 that his Red Sea fleet needed to more than double in size and that US–UK strikes on Yemen were “not contributing to the solution,” after France withdrew one of his frigates citing the threat level.

 

Over the past year, attacks by Israel-backed Palestinian militias have become increasingly frequent in Gaza, particularly targeting Palestinians living close to the ever expanding “yellow line.”

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The European Union claims that "the fundamental right to freedom of expression" only applies to journalists "acting in good faith," and that authorities do not have to give due process before freezing people's bank accounts, as these sanctions are "temporary and are not criminal in nature," according to a legal letter shared by a sanctioned journalist.

Last year, the European Union blacklisted 21 people for allegedly spreading Russian propaganda, banning them from doing business in Europe. One of them, Hüseyin Doğru, was falsely listed as a Turkish citizen living in Istanbul. In fact, Doğru is a German journalist in Berlin, making him the first European citizen on European soil to be sanctioned this way.

It was like being sentenced to "civil death," Doğru told American journalist Chris Hedges. He was banned from holding a job in Europe or having a European bank account, and authorities have restricted Doğru to a €506 ($567) per month allowance from his own money. "The sanctions are designed for people outside of Europe, so they don't really know how that should function with me, because I'm a European citizen and I'm living in Europe," Doğru told Hedges.

Last month, the civil libertarian Wau Holland Foundation hired lawyers to contest the sanctions against Doğru. And earlier this month, the Council of the European Union sent a response letter, which Doğru shared on social media, promising to escalate the case to the E.U. General Court. Although the council conceded to Doğru that he is not a Turkish citizen living in Turkey, it still insisted on the authority to punish him for his speech.

The council quoted a 2022 court case between the Russian news outlet RT and several European countries: "The protection of the right of the media and, more particularly, of journalists to impart information on issues of general interest is subject to the proviso that they are acting in good faith and on an accurate factual basis and provide 'reliable and precise' information in accordance with the ethics of journalism."

Doğru's lawyers insisted that he should be treated as innocent until proven guilty. But the council responded that sanctions fall short of a criminal punishment, so any complaint about a "violation of the presumption of innocence is therefore unfounded." In other words, because he is not accused of a crime, Doğru has fewer rights than a criminal suspect.

"People need to understand sanctions are an extrajudicial measure. They're extrajudicial. There's no court. There is no hearing, no evidence, there is no sentence by the court, nothing," Doğru told Hedges. "When you're sanctioned, you are not informed….The day when I was sanctioned, me and my wife, my wife was pregnant back then, we went to the pharmacy to buy medicine for her, and her cards did not work."

The original blacklisting decision accuses Doğru of supporting "actions by the Government of the Russian Federation which undermine or threaten stability and security in the Union" by spreading "false information on politically controversial subjects with the intent of creating ethnic, political and religious discord amongst its predominantly German target audience."

Doğru and his wife, British journalist Lizzie Phelan, previously worked at the Russian-funded publication Redfish. A few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he split off to create a new website called red.media, insisting to The Left Berlin that "we are not Russian. We are not Kremlin. red.media is not funded by Russia or any other state." In the same interview, Doğru called Russia an "imperialist" regime.

But in September 2024, a Biden administration "fact sheet" on Russian propaganda offhandedly mentioned red.media, citing a hit piece on Doğru by the German newspaper Tagesspiegel. Doğru told Hedges that the U.S. fact sheet created a circular logic in German media: "They said red.media is Russian because [U.S. Secretary of State Antony] Blinken said so. But what they never said is that Blinken is referring to your articles where you never say it like that. You say there is a suspicion, it might be so."

Doğru shut down red.media in May 2025 due to the bad press. The European Union sanctioned him a few weeks later. Doğru's lawyer, Alexander Górski, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine earlier this year that the European Union didn't "even attempt to make an evidentiary case" about any ongoing connection to Russia.

The blacklisting decision also claimed that, during a pro-Palestinian student protest at Humboldt University in Berlin, red.media "coordinated with the occupiers to disseminate images of their vandalism—which included the use of Hamas symbols." Doğru told Hedges that these accusations are an attack on journalists' freedom to do their jobs.

The European Union does not have the same protections for the freedom of the press as the U.S. Constitution. Earlier this year, the Curia of the European Union ruled that simply reposting clips from Russian media could be a violation of European sanctions, even if no money changes hands, something that is explicitly exempted from U.S. sanctions under the Berman Amendment.

Still, U.S. authorities have tried to push the limits of international sanctions to censor speech. The Biden administration told an American nonprofit that "the provision of a platform for [the sanctioned individuals] to speak" was illegal, backing down after the nonprofit sued.

And the Trump administration sanctioned Italian academic Francesca Albanese for her "lawfare" calling for the prosecution of Israeli leaders and a boycott of Israeli industries. In addition to freezing her bank accounts, the sanctions forced Columbia University researchers to cut off their relationship with Albanese, and Georgetown University to close her email account. 

In the same statement accusing red.stream of being a Russian front, the Biden administration announced sanctions on two Russian news agencies. "We encourage dissent, open debate, and free discourse. But we will not stand for attempts by state actors to carry out covert activities with the goal of hijacking that discourse," the statement insisted. "The ultimate goal of sanctions is not to punish, but to bring about a positive change in behavior."

The post The European Union Wants To Punish People for Their Speech—Without Even a Trial appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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