Has Israeli settler violence in the West Bank become organized terrorism? What you’re seeing in this video is a Palestinian father and his child being surrounded in a Mafia-style ambush by extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank who blocked the movement of his car, beat him up, and took his vehicle. The man is seen running away and, bizarrely, leaving his child behind - something that’s strange for a father to do but should be quite revelatory of the extent of the terror he must have felt at the moment, and how much he will live with this shame and sense of helplessness. The Israeli military says that it takes this incident seriously and will look into it; but as we have seen in the last two years, nothing comes of these investigations. Just last weekend, the head of the Shin Bet/Shabak yelled at settler leaders for how Jewish settlers are burning Palestinian homes with zero accountability. Prime Minister Netanyahu has condemned this time and again, and so have heads of regional councils and leaders of the settler movement. But nothing has happened, nothing has changed, and the problem is getting exponentially worse. I want you to consider the following: when people throughout the world, but particularly in the Middle East, see this type of scene time and again and again, they are not thinking that these are just a fringe part of the settler movement. Instead, this behavior is ascribed to the entire settlement enterprise, on territories that are part of what is internationally recognized as Palestinian, even if you think this is disputed territory that’s part of “Judea and Samaria.” Worse, many across the world identify this behavior with the entirety of Israelis and the Jewish state, further bolstering the narrative of settler colonialism that is violent, aggressive, exclusionary, and inherently anti the Palestinian people living on lands which have been part of their heritage and identity for hundreds of years. So I pose this question to you: if Israel’s Prime Minister, the army, the security services, and even the settler movement itself denounce this behavior, why then does nothing happen for over two years while Palestinians are systematically attacked, injured, killed, and have their properties damaged and burned? And please don’t cite the false and thoroughly debunked story of Jewish shepherds having their flocks attacked, poisoned, or stolen as the trigger for these confrontations. It is time for Israeli accountability for allowing violent extremists to be enabled by elements of the Israeli government. It’s time to stand up and challenge this horrid behavior. Settler terrorism is bad for Israelis, Palestinians, human decency, and the very legitimacy of the Jewish state.

I thought I was reading about North Korea or Iran, but no, this is Hegseth’s Pentagon. A publicly live streamed firing squad? After the Christa Pike debacle? Revolting for the world’s leading democracy, no matter the crime. nytimes.com/2026/10/08/us/po…

Navi Pillay, a great Nobel winner for today. A human rights defender. And a South African woman of colour. In 2014, I asked how her experience struggling against apartheid informed her work. She said she learned to “be persistent & be totally positive that you will win one day.”

I no longer get angry when I see people glorifying October 7 and calling it a great victory. These days, I just laugh, sometimes bitterly, and remember an old Arab saying: “The one being beaten with the stick is not the same as the one counting the blows.” And for those who took my previous posts to mean that I condemned October 7 simply because of the suffering it brought upon Gaza, or because it failed to achieve its intended goals, let me be clear: My objection is not merely to the consequences. It is also to the actions themselves. I believe wholeheartedly in the justice of the Palestinian cause and our people’s right to freedom and self-determination. But a just cause does not make every means of pursuing it justifiable. War crimes do not become acceptable simply because they are committed in the name of liberation. The justice of our cause should never be used to excuse injustice committed in its name.

Palestinians who oppose Hamas's terrorism are too often unwelcome in the pro-Palestine movement. That is the unfortunate reality. It doesn't matter how outspoken you are about Israeli crimes against Palestinians, or even that you are Palestinian yourself. You can still be excluded, doxxed, and harassed simply for speaking out against Hamas. The leaders of the pro-Palestine movement in the West have completely adopted Hamas's narrative. Question it, and you're out. Today, as some celebrate October 7, they'll call you a traitor for saying what should be obvious: murdering and kidnapping civilians is terrorism and a crime against humanity. It won't matter what else you've said or how long you've fought for Palestinian rights.

I hope everyone reads this. October 7 through a Gazan mother’s eyes. alaafromgaza.substack.com/p/…

Three full years have passed since the day our lives were turned upside down. Hamas planned the October 7 attack, and then left us to our fate. I remember that we ran out of food and water only a week after October 7. There were no emergency protocols in place to protect us, even though Hamas was the governing authority in Gaza and had a responsibility toward the civilians living under its rule. At the time, I was nursing my two-month-old baby. Within a week, we were running short of formula. I was one of the lucky mothers because I was able to switch completely to breastfeeding. Other mothers and their babies were not as lucky. This is just one small example of how we were left alone, without protection or support. Twenty days after October 7, Mousa Abu Marzouq, a senior Hamas leader, was asked in an interview with Russia Today: “If Hamas built 500 kilometers of tunnels, why didn’t it build shelters for civilians to use during airstrikes?” His answer was blunt: “We built the tunnels because we have nothing to defend ourselves with against killings and targeting. These tunnels are to protect ourselves from the planes. We are fighters from the tunnels. As for Gaza, you and everyone else know that 75% of the population are refugees. And refugees are the responsibility of the United Nations to protect. The occupation is responsible for providing them with all services according to the Geneva Convention.” In that moment, Abu Marzouq attempted to strip Hamas of any responsibility for the civilians living under its rule. Instead, he placed the burden entirely on international actors and the Israeli occupation, arguing that because 75% of Gaza’s population are refugees, it is the United Nations’ responsibility to protect them. What about the other 25%? What about the people who are not refugees? What struck me most about Abu Marzouq’s words was the division they revealed. There is a clear binary: “we,” the fighters, and “they,” the refugees\civilians. The people are no longer part of the movement. They are not even part of the conversation. They are treated as an external burden, left to beg the international community for aid and protection.

Three years after the catastrophic day Hamas unleashed on Israelis and on the Palestinian people in Gaza, the majority of the “pro-Palestine” industrial complex still refuses to utter a single word of condemnation or assign any responsibility to the Islamist terror group that destroyed the Gaza Strip and triggered the most calamitous chapter in modern Palestinian history. Today alone, I have seen dozens of posters and announcements for rallies, protests, and a so-called “week of rage.” Endless groups across the Western world, including the United States, whether community-based, campus-based, nonprofit, or cultural, are celebrating and commemorating “three years of resistance and genocide.” In almost comical language, many declare October 7 as the beginning of genocide in Gaza while making no mention of the bloodshed, murder, beheadings, torture, mutilation, burning people alive, executions, sexual assault, and hostage taking that initiated the disaster which befell the Palestinian people. It is as if Israeli and Jewish lives are invisible. As if civilians were not slaughtered in their homes while they slept. As if partygoers were not massacred. As if the attack was not entirely unprovoked while a ceasefire was in place between Israel and Hamas. It is a complete erasure of cause and effect and a refusal to grasp that choices and actions produce consequences. I have yet to see a mainstream Arab, Palestinian, or Muslim American organization, let alone prominent “pro-Palestine” academics, journalists, community groups, or notable individuals, issue a statement acknowledging Hamas’s responsibility and culpability for the devastation inflicted on Gaza. Even within the imbalance of power and the overwhelming suffering caused by Israeli decisions, there is still ample space to acknowledge the humanity of Israeli victims and the injustice of what happened to them. More importantly, there is immense space to speak honestly about the horrendous damage caused to Palestinians by the Jihadi fascism of Hamas, which has devastated Gazans over the two decades of its rule. Three years later, Israelis, Jews, and Zionists are commemorating the anniversary while engaging in introspection, critique, and calls for accountability for leaders, security services, and other political players. In contrast, instead of using the grim third anniversary of October 7 to learn and evolve, significant elements of the “pro-Palestine” industrial complex remain one of the most embarrassing and backward hate-driven movements in contemporary political activism. This is not a real pro-Palestine movement. It is a virulent anti-Israel bloc built on ignorance, mob mentality, open sympathy for terrorism, and sabotage of the Palestinian people’s legitimate pursuit of freedom and prosperity. Its regressive and poisonous rhetoric will not evolve into anything constructive. It should be treated with contempt, stripped of relevance, and isolated until it collapses and makes room for a serious effort that actually cares about Palestinians rather than the fantasies of wannabe revolutionaries.

Tonight, 47 Senators supported my resolution to get accountability for the 9 Americans killed on the West Bank & for Palestinians who face injustices daily. That's more support than we've ever had in this fight. Republicans blocked us, but we won't stop until we get justice.

This endless destruction is why Netanyahu does not allow journalists into Gaza. If he actually believed that Israeli had shown great restraint and that public perceptions were mistaken, we'd all be invited in with cameras. But Bibi doesn't want the devastation documented or the survivors interviewed.

Last year, Al Jazeera Arabic aired an interview with the Kuwaiti political thinker and academic Abdullah Al-Nafisi @DrAlnefisi . I just watched it, and one important part of the interview caught my attention. I’ve translated it below. The presenter, Ali, who quite clearly reflects Al Jazeera’s editorial line, asks: Ali: “How do you view October 7? Was it a leap into the dark, or a confrontation that was necessary, justified, and inevitable? Was it something that had not been properly calculated? As you know, judging October 7 in hindsight, after seeing its consequences, is very different from assessing it at the time. How do you view October 7 today?” Dr. Abdullah Al-Nafisi: “I’ll be frank with you about my opinion, and I have been frank about it with the resistance as well. I have serious reservations about what happened on October 7, for many reasons. “The first is that it was a decision made by specific individuals within the resistance. I would name Yahya Sinwar, Marwan Issa, and Mohammed Deif. These three were the decision-makers behind the operation. I would argue that Hamas’s political leadership did not have a say in approving it. They did not even know that the operation was going to be carried out the following day. “This monopolization of the decision, and the bitterness reflected in the October 7 operation, created a reality in Israel that was not in our favor. It created Israeli fear and a belief among Israelis that this attack threatened Israel’s existence, not merely its security. In other words, it was existential, as English and European journalists have described it. It was an existential threat to Israel. That is how Israel understood it.” Ali: “Isn’t that a good thing?” Al-Nafisi: “Not at all.” Ali asks again: Ali: “Isn’t it a good thing that October 7 posed an existential threat to Israel, regardless of its consequences on the ground?” Al-Nafisi: “No. The consequences on the ground are extremely important. “In politics, Ali, the most important thing is the outcome, not the intention. Leave intentions to religious people. Politics is about results. “If you want to undertake any political action, you first have to study its likely outcome. This decision was taken solely by Sinwar, Issa, and Deif, independently of their colleagues in the political leadership abroad. And you know that there is Hamas inside and Hamas outside.” This part of the interview represents the thinking of a significant number of people in both the Arab world and the West. They approach Palestine through grand slogans, while no one seems to care about the consequences on the ground. They do not care about the people living in tents, the sick, or the hungry. Their cause revolves around slogans, and they will continue to say: “Regardless of the consequences on the ground, Palestine has been brought back to the forefront of global attention.” But those “consequences on the ground” are Palestinian lives.

This Israeli govt, stacked with psychopaths like Ben Gvir & Smotrich, is making Israel historically unpopular. Netanyahu won’t care, but the Israeli people should.

Everyone is consumed with the cause, the resistance, disarmament, the two-state solution, and elections. Meanwhile, none of the leaders of this people seem to genuinely care about the people of Gaza or the unbearable reality of their daily lives. Cooking gas enters Gaza in painfully limited quantities. Yet instead of reaching ordinary families, especially women who have spent months cooking over open fires, breathing in smoke and suffering respiratory and eyesight problems, much of it ends up on the black market. Restaurants and cafés can pay more, so they get the gas while families continue to cook over fire. Medicines and medical supplies enter Gaza on aid trucks. They are supposed to reach public hospitals and clinics, where sick and wounded people can receive treatment for free. Instead, some of these medicines end up on pharmacy shelves, sold at prices the very people they were meant to help cannot afford. The prices of food and basic necessities keep rising. The Hamas government collects taxes from merchants, merchants pass those costs on through higher prices, and once again, it is the exhausted, impoverished people of Gaza who are forced to pay. And all of this is happening while people are living in tents made of little more than fabric and plastic. They endure unbearable heat in the summer and bitter cold in the winter, with almost nothing protecting them from either. Everyone is talking about Gaza as a cause, a battlefield, a political question, or a negotiating card. But Gaza is also millions of human beings trying to cook a meal, find medicine, feed their children, and survive another night in a tent. Who is actually thinking about them?

It is not Islamophobia to call the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks what they were: Islamist terrorists, or to acknowledge that their terrorism was religiously motivated. Islamophobia is when people use the actions of a group of terrorists to dehumanize, demonize, or collectively blame all Muslims.

Iran can't destroy Israel, but these settler goons and nut jobs can: by making it impossible for people of goodwill to even passively sustain the state. Conservatives who ignore or blindly and fanatically excuse these crimes don't do Israel any favors.

Why do so many Arabs and Westerners who know so little about Palestinian history speak as though Hamas is the guardian of the Palestinian cause? Palestinian resistance did not begin with Hamas, and the Palestinian struggle will not end with Hamas. There were legitimate forms of resistance long before the movement existed, and there will be resistance long after it is gone. No single faction owns our history, our rights, our suffering, or our cause. The more difficult question is one Palestinians should be allowed to ask without being accused of betrayal: What has Hamas's strategy of armed resistance actually achieved for Palestinians over the years? Not what has it achieved symbolically. Not whether it has produced powerful slogans, spectacular attacks, or moments of humiliation for Israel. What has it achieved for Palestinians? Has it brought us closer to freedom? Has it protected our land? Has it made Gaza safer? Has it strengthened Palestinian political power? Has it given our children a future? Has it improved our ability to resist occupation and dispossession in the long term? A resistance strategy should ultimately be judged by what it delivers to the people in whose name it is carried out. And perhaps the most uncomfortable question is not about Hamas alone. It is about Palestinian leadership more broadly: Do our leaders have the courage to confront the results of their own strategies? If a strategy repeatedly fails to bring us closer to liberation, how many generations must pay its price before changing course is no longer considered surrender, but responsibility? Palestinians have tried armed struggle, negotiations, diplomacy, popular resistance, international institutions and different combinations of them. We should be able to examine what succeeded, what failed, and what produced catastrophic consequences without turning that discussion into a test of patriotism. The Palestinian cause is bigger than Hamas. It is bigger than Fatah. It is bigger than any leader, faction, ideology or generation. Our cause belongs to the Palestinian people. And perhaps real courage today is not repeating that we will resist forever. Perhaps it is asking whether the way we resist is actually taking us somewhere.

The Great Gaza Scam; Just Listen to Hamas: What you’re seeing in this video is the plain truth, even though it’s coming from slain Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh. I was directly involved in one of the efforts he’s indirectly referring to. This is a confession from a jihadist organization responsible for immense harm, acknowledging that Gaza’s blockade & conditions were not because Israel was hell‑bent on blocking development. Israel became the lazy, convenient explanation & excuse for people unwilling to look beneath the surface and understand what actually happened in Gaza over the last twenty years. Here, the head of Hamas admits there were real offers on the table: an airport, a seaport, new industries, major cash infusions – opportunities dating back to 2014. Former Israeli officials like Shaul Mofaz floated plans to raise tens of billions for Gaza’s development, and large parts of Israel’s security establishment were open to letting Gaza grow and prosper. Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Western governments were prepared to invest serious money, far beyond just humanitarian aid. In 2015, I launched a multi‑year effort to build an internationally run, Israeli‑approved airport in al‑Mawasi, southern Gaza Strip. The proposal drew intrigue from senior Israeli officials, including Herzi Halevi and Avigdor Lieberman. In 2017, through intermediaries, I even appealed directly to Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s former chief and architect of October 7, urging him to consider the airport proposal and think strategically about Gaza’s future. So, what was the price that Israel and the world wanted in exchange for all of this? As Haniyeh states in this video, the price was Gaza’s disarmament and demilitarization so that it wouldn’t be dragged into endless, self‑destructive wars. Hamas was offered a dignified off‑ramp: integrating its employees and former fighters into civilian police, receiving salaries, and shifting toward nation‑building instead of terrorism. That offer was real, with a political pathway for the group. After October 7, and Gaza’s vast destruction, tens of thousands killed, and $ billions wasted, Hamas is forcibly entertaining disarmament and demilitarization. This video exposes the “resistance” cheerleaders who celebrated October 7 and the Westerners who insist Gaza could never have developed because of Israel. Listen to Hamas; whether you support them or think they are useful idiots, Gaza’s development was blocked because the terror Islamist group turned the territory into a fortress of violence, tunnels, rockets, smuggling, and radicalization. And no, Gaza and the West Bank are not comparable cases. Gaza had a genuine chance to become the crown jewel of the Palestinian people, a truly compelling model of prosperity and self‑rule. The pathway forward requires introspection, accountability, responsibility, and Palestinian agency.

They Said, Resist until your last drop of blood. Freedom is waiting. One day, you will return to the land that was taken from you. So we believed. We buried our children beside that promise. We buried our youth, our homes, our futures. Still, they said, "Just a little longer." Then I began to wonder... Was freedom ever waiting? Or was it our blood? They said victory demands sacrifice. They said our deaths would become tomorrow's victory. Yet tomorrow arrived, again and again, asking only for more names, more graves, more mourning mothers. Now I hear the words more clearly. Not as a promise, but as a demand. We need your blood to keep the war alive. We need your grief to feed the speeches. We need your dead to decorate our slogans. They said freedom was waiting. But after all these years, it was death that kept arriving first.

When Hamas leaders are asked what October 7 achieved, they almost always give the same answer: "It brought the Palestinian cause back to the world's attention." That argument is not only deeply flawed, it erases the staggering price paid by Palestinians themselves. Let's be clear: October 7 did not bring the Palestinian cause to the forefront of global consciousness. The cause was thrust before the world by the unimaginable scale of Israel's destruction that followed: by the massacres, by the children pulled from beneath the rubble, by the women and civilians buried under collapsed homes, by entire families wiped from the civil registry, and by the relentless bloodshed inflicted upon Gaza. The world's attention was not won by military strategy. It was seized by human catastrophe. To claim that this devastation was an achievement is to confuse visibility with victory, and to ask the victims to measure success by the magnitude of their own suffering.

Final vote total for the NDAA today which tragically merges our military technology and supply chains with Israel’s. Let’s hope this version fails in the Senate because Section 219 is a betrayal of our sovereignty.