Italy on Monday arrested three Palestinian men, described by the Minister of Interior Matteo Piantedosi as “dangerous terrorists.” Prosecutors said they were planning terror attacks abroad.
La Repubblica reports that the three had been allowed to live in Italy after being given “residence permits for humanitarian reasons.”
Swiss politician Ruedi Löffel said the news was a sign that “Hamas terrorism is coming to Europe.”
At London’s weekly anti-Israel protests each Saturday, one can often find a small group of strictly Orthodox Jewish men — always men or boys, never women. Generally no more than a dozen, they hold signs with wording such as “Judaism: Godly and Compassionate. Zionism: Godless and Merciless”, or “Authentic Jewry Worldwide Never Recognised the State of Israel or Jerusalem as its Capital”. At the bottom of the placards, there is inevitably a mention of either “NKEurope” or “NKUSA”. “NK” stands for “Neturei Karta”, Aramaic for “Guardians of the City”, the name of the group the men belong to.
“We are here as men who refuse to have their Jewishness and the Holocaust hijacked by an ‘occupation’ which has led to conflict for so many innocent people”.
This is how British filmmaker Jonathan Glazer spouted forth idiocies as he received the Oscar for best international film for “The Zone of Interest”. So what if Gaza has not been under “occupation” since 2005 and Hamas does not know what to do with Glazer’s distancing from his own “Jewishness”? It’s like the Jewishness of Judith Butler, the gender philosopher of Berkeley who last week defined the massacre of 7th October as “armed resistance”. There are no “good Jews” in Hamas’ world.
The US administration believes that the Palestinian Authority (PA) should be “revitalized” before it is handed control over the Gaza Strip after the Iran-backed Hamas terror group is removed from power. The US administration, however, has not clarified what it means when it talks about the “revitalization” of the PA. It can be assumed that it implies implementing — and enforcing — comprehensive reforms and ending the rampant financial and administrative corruption in Palestinian governing institutions.
PA leaders, meanwhile, seem to have a different interpretation of the “revitalization” proposal. For these leaders, revamping the PA means forging an alliance with Hamas by inviting the terror group to be part of a new governing body that would rule the Gaza Strip in the post-war era.
Palestinian medical staff in Gaza have told the BBC they were blindfolded, detained, forced to strip and repeatedly beaten by Israeli troops after a raid at their hospital last month.
Ahmed Abu Sabha, a doctor at Nasser hospital, described being held for a week in detention, where, he said, muzzled dogs were set upon him and his hand was broken by an Israeli soldier.
His account closely matches those of two other medics who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.
You’d think that a president who had a front-row seat in the Obama administration might be a bit more careful about issuing ad hoc red lines on foreign policy that he knows will be crossed. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what President Biden has done in issuing a red line on an Israeli invasion of Rafah, which is a necessary step to defeating Hamas. In the process, he has set up a historic crisis in the United States relationship with Israel.
At a Dutch museum dedicated to preserving the consequences of Jew-hate, a small girl got to experience that hate, too, as baying mobs waving Palestinian flags screamed out their hatred for Jews at the child.
So now we know. If you’re from a working-class background in a Red Wall constituency and you think Islamism is a big problem, the Tories are not the party for you. That’s the takeaway, surely, from Lee Anderson’s flight from the Tories into the welcoming arms of Reform UK following the confected media stink over his brash comments about Sadiq Khan being too cosy with Islamists. The optics of this are awful. A former miner turned Tory MP pipes up about radical Islam and the eye-wateringly wealthy Rishi Sunak effectively kicks him out? Yikes.
When a member of a Fredericton synagogue that had been vandalized wrote to local Liberal MP Jenica Atwin to admonish her for not speaking out about it, she responded weeks later with a long letter about “the atrocities in Palestine” and how dedicated she was to helping Gaza.
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says Canada is pledging $1 million to support victims of sexual violence by Hamas in Israel during last October’s attacks.
The funding comes with an offer of RCMP support for investigations three months after a group of women who hold political office in Canada called on Ottawa to provide this type of support.
Belfast band Kneecap have pulled out of South by Southwest (SXSW) in Texas over the arts festival’s sponsorship with the US Army.
The group is the latest to cancel their sets at the event in protest against the military’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza.
Other artists who’ve announced they won’t be performing include Lambrini Girls, Scowl and Sprints.
BBC Newsbeat has contacted organisers of the festival for comment.
I think of the job of acting as inhabiting a situation or identity significantly different from my own. As a rabbi, acting is not really in my wheelhouse. However, when I was cast in a commercial sponsored by the Foundation to Combat Anti-Semitism (FCAS) to play a rabbi whose synagogue receives a bomb threat during a Bar Mitzvah ceremony, I found it was a familiar role.
Rabbi Michael Dolgin is senior rabbi of Temple Sinai Congregation of Toronto and is actively engaged in interfaith dialogue.
Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi announced on Thursday that the group had carried out 96 missile and drone attacks over the past five months, targeting 61 ships in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
The Houthis also confirmed that they had introduced submarine warfare into their operations, reflecting the development of their military capabilities and raising international concerns.
Eight years after his execution, the name of Mahmoud Ishtiwi is still whispered in the Gaza Strip by those in Hamas who oppose the iron rule of Yahya Sinwar, its chief in the territory.
Executions within Hamas are hardly rare, but that of Ishtiwi was different. He was no ordinary operative accused of “immoral” acts or passing on information to the Israelis but the commander of the Zeitoun battalion, one of the battle-hardened units in Hamas, and came from a family whose members had all been prominently active in the movement for decades.
Michael Gove has been warned he must name Islamist groups or his crackdown on extremism will not work.
The Communities Secretary has been told by senior Tories and a leading anti-Islamist campaigner that the Government would be seen as “weak” if it failed to “call out” the extremist groups trying to subvert democracy.
Mr Gove has come under pressure ahead of an announcement this week of a new official definition of extremism that will enable the Government and bodies such as universities and councils to ban funding for or engagement with Islamist and far-Right groups.
