‘The Arab Vote’: How Israeli Racism Has Ruined Their Elections
By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | November 1, 2026
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that Palestinians are responsible for “stealing” the latest round of Israeli elections, in what has been labeled the most consequential race in Tel Aviv’s history. What instead has been revealed is that Israel’s existence is predicated on the idea that democracy should be forbidden.
Palestinian citizens of Israel turned up to vote in historic numbers this past Tuesday, with roughly 80% of eligible ‘Arab voters’ casting their ballots. As a result, they managed to secure 19 seats for Arab Parties in the Israeli Knesset (parliament).
In order for a government to be formed in Israel’s parliamentary system, a coalition must gain at least 61 seats. Currently, Israeli PM Netanyahu’s bloc has 53 seats, while his opposition secured 48.
The opposition, headed by Gadi Eisenkot, ran a campaign based around the idea of forcing Netanyahu from power and argued their case fiercely, with many claiming that Israel’s future depended on this election. When the results emerged, the opposition fell short of the numbers they were projected to hit, according to the pre-election polls and Netanyahu’s bloc managed to secure more seats than expected.
However, the factor of ‘the Arab vote’ changed everything. Because the Palestinian citizens of Israel exercised their ability to vote, an activity that many previously felt to be useless, the opposition bloc on paper has the ability to form a government and oust the longtime Israeli leader. For years, this opposition has mobilized hundreds of thousands of Israelis in mass demonstrations against Netanyahu, and now they have the opportunity to act.
But there is one thing standing in their way: the opposition refuses to work with Arab Parties. Doing so, even if the Israeli opposition sought to do it as a tactical maneuver, would be to commit political suicide. Giving Palestinians a say over any Israeli policy is viewed by the vast majority of Israeli Jews as tantamount to the destruction of their Zionist project.
Israel is Antithetical to Democracy
Israel advertises itself as the “only Democracy in the Middle East”. This is one of its key hasbara talking points, yet when the Israeli society and political leadership get even a whiff of democracy, they seek to ban it.
There’s an obvious elephant in the room that also has to be addressed when discussing the Israeli political system: around 30% of the people living between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea are completely excluded from voting; instead, they are subjected to military rule. On July 18, 2024, the Israeli Knesset unanimously passed a bill that banned the creation of a Palestinian State. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) also ruled that the Israelis have to immediately withdraw from Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, yet the Israelis have done the very opposite.
Israeli settlers living in the West Bank are treated the same as their counterparts living in Tel Aviv; they can vote, and every mainstream Israeli politician dubs the territory “Judea and Samaria”, arguing that the territory is the “biblical heartland of Israel”. There are no “peace talks”; they refuse to engage any Palestinian parties and vow never to leave the territories they have seized and illegally settled. In other words, this is not a temporary occupation; it is a de facto annexation of these lands.
The only reason Israel has not declared a de jure annexation of these territories is that it would then face a dilemma, whereby it must kill or violently expel all these Palestinians, but it understands that the conditions to successfully do that have not yet materialized. Not only will it be militarily costly, but neighboring countries are not prepared to open their borders and facilitate it.
If Israel were to give these persecuted people Israeli citizenship, then the result would be that Palestinians would be a majority, while Jews remain a minority. In other words, Palestinians would vote in a government that is truly representative of the population, and the Zionist State, which is built on the concept of Jewish Supremacy, exceptionalism, and exclusivity, would be gone.
Inside what is called “Israel proper” – a term used to exclude the West Bank, Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and Gaza – the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are today also referred to as “Arab Israelis”, are roughly 22% of the total population. They are the Palestinians who managed to remain on their lands during the Nakba (1947-9). Their birthrate is already higher than that of their Jewish counterparts. In addition to this, the highest birthrate amongst Jews is that of the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox), who are essentially useless to the Zionist project as they overwhelmingly do not work and refuse to join the army.
In other words, if the Israelis are to continue to allow their Christian and Muslim citizens to vote, then eventually the Jewish citizenry are not going to have the numbers to be able to form an all-Jewish government anymore.
Already, this problem has presented itself in the latest round of elections. A coalition government could easily be formed, but it would include the Arab Parties, who will inevitably demand that various Israeli projects come to a halt. For example, the Israelis have sought to ethnically cleanse the Bedouins of the Naqab (Negev) region, cracking down on them and destroying their homes in order to achieve this. That project of ethnic cleansing and Judaization through the establishment of Jewish settlements would be brought to a halt. There would also likely be resources actually allocated to combating criminal gangs in Palestinian neighborhoods, or funds put into their communities more generally.
All of this is a threat to the Israeli Jewish public and the Israeli Jewish government’s core values. They seek to expand the territory which they currently occupy, to make it more Jewish and less Arab. The last thing they want to see is a government that would help Palestinian Muslims and Christians.
In their irrational racism, the Israelis have made an obvious mistake when approaching this issue. The likes of Itamar Ben Gvir, who used his position as Security Minister to persecute Palestinian citizens of Israel, while rubbing it in their faces and passing racist bills, have now politicized a population that had long been far from political mobilization.
Israel is putting its back against the wall, and because of that we just saw a protest vote, one that sent a powerful message to the Israeli leadership, one that asserts: ‘we are here’. In reaction to this, Israeli settlers began to physically assault Arab voters on election day, as Netanyahu accused them of being part of a Hamas conspiracy, evidently inciting against them.
Now the results of the election are being blamed upon them. In the eyes of the Israelis, the Arabs aren’t supposed to ever have a say; they can vote but have no right to influence any government, nor its decisions. Suddenly, the Israelis felt a little taste of what democracy can bring, and they are advocating removing this right from their Muslim and Christian citizens. A notion that even American Zionist commentators, like Ben Shapiro, have themselves echoed.
Democracy would destroy Israel overnight, because the Jewish settlers are just under half of the population living in occupied Palestine. If there ever were a truly democratic election, the Zionist regime would no longer exist. In order to protect that regime of ethno-supremacy, they must kill and/or expel almost all of the Palestinians, at least doing so until there aren’t enough of them to ever prove a demographic threat ever again.
Now that Netanyahu is blaming the Arab for stealing his election victory, he will continue inciting hatred against them for political gain. Yet, this strategy is short-sighted, as stirring up tensions in this way could result in a domestic uprising, one which could spiral into something much more dangerous for the Zionist regime. In 2021, we got a taste of what could happen if Tel Aviv pushes things too far.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.
Israel forces Palestinians in Gaza to choose between assassination alone or death with their families: Report
The Cradle | November 1, 2026
Israel is reportedly forcing some Palestinians in Gaza, among them resistance fighters and supporters of the resistance, to choose between being assassinated alone or alongside their families, Al-Sharq al-Awsat reported on 1 November.
“They received a call from the occupation giving them a choice between being bombed along with their families or being killed alone,” the paper wrote.
Relatives of activists affiliated with Palestinian resistance factions killed by Israel say they were targeted by Israeli drones while walking alone on side streets or main roads, or while on the rooftops of homes, residential buildings, or shelters where they lived with their families.
In the latest case, an Israeli drone killed a young Palestinian man, Mohammed al-Bayouk, on Wednesday afternoon in central Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.
Bayouk’s relatives stated that before he was assassinated, he received a phone call from an officer of Israel’s General Security Service (Shin Bet) who gave him a choice between being bombed along with his family or going up to the roof of the shelter where they were living to be killed alone.
Bayouk chose to spare his family and went to the roof where a small missile killed him.
One of his aunts suffered serious injuries while chasing after Bayouk to prevent him from leaving the family’s small room in the shelter alone after receiving the call.
Similar assassinations involving advanced phone calls have been reported in Lebanon amid Israel’s war on Hezbollah.
According to sources who spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat, Israel has carried out at least five such killings in Gaza over the past three months.
Israel has also used similar tactics against Palestinian detainees to force them to reveal security information, the sources explained.
Palestinian detainees are threatened with the killing of their relatives if they refuse to provide the information wanted by interrogators.
In some cases, prisoners were shown photographs of their children and relatives after they had been killed to exert psychological pressure on them.
By contrast, Israel continues to kill senior Palestinian leaders and prominent field commanders using multiple missiles and explosive-laden drones while they are among their family members, resulting in the deaths of large numbers of civilians.
Earlier in the genocide, Israel killed over 100 civilians in a single strike to kill a prominent Hamas commander.
The sources said that Israel’s decision to contact lower-level Palestinian fighters and activists before killing them “does not mean that the occupation is showing mercy toward Palestinians or attempting to improve its image before the world.”
They emphasized that many Israeli bombardments continue to kill civilians, including women and children.
Haaretz reported in September that Israel is killing fewer civilians in Gaza due to pressure from the US to avoid collateral damage and to preserve larger bombs dropped by warplanes for attacks on Iran and Lebanon.
As a result, Israel has increasingly used smaller munitions launched from drones.
According to the Israeli paper, this is the reason for the relative decline in civilian deaths from Israeli airstrikes in recent months. Recently, the ratio has been approximately 0.6 civilians killed for every resistance fighter killed, Haaretz claimed.
One source speaking to Asharq al-Awsat disputed the reports, calling them inaccurate.
The source emphasized that recent Israeli airstrikes had killed civilians during attempts to assassinate individuals, while other civilians had been killed as a result of continued indiscriminate bombardment.
UAE security forces tortured, killed journalist for opposing Israel normalization: Report
The Cradle | October 31, 2026
UAE security officers detained, tortured, and killed Emirati poet and news editor Habib al-Sayegh in August 2019, shortly after he published a column opposing UAE normalization with Israel, according to a newly published book.
“Princes and Thieves,” a book by investigative journalist Matthew Cole published on 25 October, alleges that UAE security officers raided Sayegh’s Abu Dhabi home shortly after the publication of the column, hooded him in front of his wife and took him to a detention facility where he was tortured to death.
His interrogators reportedly pulled out several of his teeth with pliers and beat him repeatedly with a sharp metal object.
On 11 August 2019, Sayegh criticized the UAE’s plan to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords in his weekly column for Khaleej newspaper. The column was titled “Israel Is Our Real Enemy and A Dangerous Project.”
Sayegh described Israel as “a real and natural enemy” while questioning “who authorized the normalizers to speak on behalf of everyone?”
Nine days after the column was published, Emirati state media announced his death, without stating a cause.
The UAE normalized relations with Israel a year later, alongside Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) praised Sayegh after his death. However, a source told Cole that MbZ would not tolerate criticism of the decision to normalize with Israel.
Since 2020, the UAE has proved to be a close ally of Israel, both in its bid to project power in the Horn of Africa and in the war on Iran begun by the US President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in February.
In response to the book’s allegations, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) sent a letter to three UN agencies asking that an investigation be opened into Sayegh’s death.
“The allegations that UAE security forces tortured and killed one of the country’s most prominent poets are horrifying and demand an independent investigation,” said Raed Jarrar, DAWN’s advocacy director.
“Habib al-Sayegh wrote that Israel was the enemy, and nine days later he was dead with no cause given. One year later his government, notorious for their intolerance for dissent, normalized relations with Israel. Those facts are not in dispute. What happened in between is the question, and only an independent investigation can answer it,” said Isabelle Hayslip, Advocacy Associate at DAWN.
Cole’s book generated controversy last week over its claim that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, secretly gained access to $2 billion in slush money from the governments of the UAE and Saudi Arabia during Trump’s first administration in exchange for advancing their political interests in Washington.
Kushner denounced the book, claiming the author failed to provide evidence to substantiate its claims.
London tourism expo promotes Israeli agency linked to theft of Palestinian land
(Photo credit: Israel Kasnett)
The Cradle | October 30, 2026
An international travel exhibition taking place in the UK next month will promote an Israeli government agency involved in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the construction of illegal Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, Middle East Eye (MEE) reported on 29 October.
World Travel Market (WTM) London, one of the world’s largest international tourism trade exhibitions, is scheduled to take place between 3 and 5 November.
The exhibition brings together tourism officials, travel companies, airlines, hotels, and tour operators to promote destinations and negotiate business deals.
It will include a stand for the Israeli government’s tourist office promoting the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA) and affiliated companies.
The JDA is involved in the construction and expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, including constructing so-called Biblical parks.
Israel’s construction of settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem is illegal under international law.
Biblical parks are tourist attractions or heritage sites designed around places, events, landscapes, and stories described in the Bible, particularly the Old and New Testaments.
They may include archaeological ruins, reconstructed ancient villages, religious monuments, gardens containing plants mentioned in the Bible, and exhibits illustrating biblical history.
“Hundreds of Palestinians have been displaced or are at risk of being forced out of their homes to make space for these parks in violation of the Geneva Conventions,” stated the the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The JDA has also participated in the expansion of illegal settlements in East Jerusalem, such as Gilo.
It plans to build large settlement housing projects near the Palestinian neighborhoods of Beit Safafa and Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, which will displace dozens of Palestinian families.
Israel’s stand at WTM London will be shared with Africa Israel Hotels, which has also been involved in several settlement projects in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
iTravelJerusalem, which promotes tourism in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, will also be present, MEE noted.
WTM London is allowing the participation of the Israeli agency and travel firms despite the UK’s ban on goods produced in Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank last month.
British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced the ban, referring to Jewish settlers as terrorists who are carrying out ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.
The announcement came after the UK and other European countries condemned the Israeli government’s decision to move ahead with the E1 settlement project.
The E1 project is designed to bisect much of the occupied West Bank and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state on contiguous Palestinian territory.
Dockworkers launch global strike against Israeli and US military shipments
RT | October 30, 2026
Dockworkers across five continents have launched a coordinated anti-war strike, targeting Israeli arms shipments, US military cargo, and the growing militarization of civilian ports.
Organizers say more than 25 unions are mobilizing across 113 ports in 22 countries and regions on Friday in an unprecedented international action. The campaign includes 24-hour strikes, shorter walkouts, blockades, and solidarity rallies.
Major European ports joining the action include Genoa, Marseille, Le Havre, Hamburg, Valencia, Barcelona, and Piraeus. Beyond Europe, protests are planned at Tangier Med in Morocco, Nhava Sheva and Chennai in India, and Oakland and San Francisco in the US, with further actions across Türkiye, Cyprus, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, and Australia.
France’s CGT Ports et Docks has called 24-hour strikes across 24 ports, while Italy’s USB has declared a nationwide general strike, with protests in more than 40 cities. Unions in Germany, Greece, Spain, India, and the US are also taking part.
Dockworkers at Piraeus, Greece’s largest port, were among the first to join the action, with a three-hour stoppage scheduled from 08:00 to 11:00 GMT. Other Greek maritime unions announced 24-hour strikes affecting seven ports, threatening ferry services to the country’s islands.
Videos of demonstrations and gatherings at other ports have emerged online, although the full extent of the disruption to shipping operations remains unclear as actions are taking place at different times.
What do the dockworkers want?
The unions demand a halt to weapons, ammunition, military equipment, and troop shipments through commercial ports, targeting both Israeli and US military supply chains. They also oppose turning civilian ports into military hubs and diverting public funds into rearmament while workers face stagnant wages, job insecurity, and worsening conditions.
“From planes to tanks, guns to bullets, explosives to ammunition, uniforms to boots, our ports have become replenishing and forwarding bases for war and genocide,” the organizers said at a press conference on October 15 in Rome.
The unions accused governments and shipping companies of keeping military supply routes open despite the Gaza ceasefire announced over a year ago, which they say has been rendered largely meaningless by continued Israeli strikes.
‘No Harbour for Genocide’, the campaign coordinating the action, claims that it tracked 315 shipments of components for Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems through 56 ports in 29 countries over 14 months. It says it identified 3,400 shipments of US military cargo through 67 ports in 42 countries over ten months. The group also says US military cargo volumes at some European ports rose as much as tenfold following the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran. The figures have not been independently verified.
Organizers estimate the action could delay 40,000 containers carrying cargo worth over $2 billion, potentially costing shipping companies up to $43 million.
Is it the first strike of this kind?
Dockworkers have challenged military shipments for years, though resistance was largely scattered and localized. Since 2019, workers in Italy, Greece, Morocco, and France have staged sporadic blockades and stoppages, targeting arms shipments to Israel, US bases, and other conflict zones.
The movement gained momentum in late 2025 after Israel intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla, a 40-plus-vessel convoy attempting to deliver aid to blockaded Gaza. Hundreds of activists were detained, sparking strikes and port blockades across Europe. The flotilla campaign also pledged to join the action on Friday with “coordinated, strategic actions on the water.”
International coordination intensified in February, when dockworkers at more than 20 ports across seven countries staged their first joint day of action, reportedly stopping five suspect ships.
In May, dockworkers’ unions from France, Greece, Italy, Türkiye, Morocco, and Spain’s Basque Country adopted the Istanbul Declaration, in which they pledged to block military cargo and troop shipments to war zones, including those supporting Israel and US military operations. The agreement laid the groundwork for Friday’s global strike.
Beyond Netanyahu: what Israel’s election means for Palestinians
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | October 29, 2026
In the past, many Palestinians and Arabs followed Israeli elections closely. They did so not because they entertained illusions that a Zionist leader would deliver peace and justice, dismantle the occupation or remove illegal settlements. Rather, they feared that some Israeli leaders were worse than others. They hoped to avert the worst-case scenario.
Over time, however, that distinction gave way to the belief that all Israeli leaders were essentially the same. This is not pessimism. It is experience.
Consider, for example, the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements during the Oslo peace process under Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Between 1992 and 1995, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, increased from 111,673 to 140,235 – a rise of more than 25 per cent, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), drawing on Israeli statistical records.
The same pattern continued under the Labour government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Within his first six months, Barak’s government issued tenders for 3,196 settlement housing units, exceeding the annual average under his right-wing predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu.
When Naftali Bennett formed a coalition government in June 2021 that included the Arab party Ra’am, settlement expansion continued unabated.
According to the Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now, the Bennett–Lapid government advanced plans for 7,292 settlement housing units during its first year, a 26 per cent increase over the annual average recorded under previous Netanyahu governments.
The settlements are themselves a driving force behind the occupation. They require land, and therefore land confiscation; protection, and therefore an expanded military presence; water, roads and infrastructure, and therefore the appropriation of Palestinian resources. Together, these elements deepen dispossession and generate further Israeli violence.
According to the PCBS, the West Bank contained 645 Israeli settlement sites, outposts and other occupation installations by the end of 2025, including 350 settlement outposts.
The Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, a Palestinian Authority body, reported that Israeli authorities targeted approximately 29,335 dunums of Palestinian land through declarations of so-called “state land” between October 2023 and August 2026 – one of the largest waves of such land appropriation since Oslo.
By September 2026, the Commission had also documented the advancement or consideration of plans for more than 18,000 additional settlement housing units across the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
Alongside this expansion is the violence unfolding across the West Bank.
By the end of 2023, the West Bank had experienced its deadliest year for Palestinians since the UN began systematically recording casualties in 2005.
The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission documented 23,827 attacks by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinians and their property during 2025 alone. In the first seven months of 2026, settler attacks increased by 63 per cent compared with the corresponding period of the previous year.
Typically, this violence, carried out by the Israeli occupation army and armed illegal settlers, is contextualised within the ongoing genocide in Gaza. But violence in the West Bank also serves another purpose beyond collective punishment: the confiscation of Palestinian orchards, the annexation of land, the expansion of settlements and the crushing of Palestinian resistance, including non-violent opposition to this colonial enterprise.
Any Israeli candidate in the 27 October elections who supports settlement expansion does so with full knowledge of its consequences: further dispossession, military occupation, annexation and violence.
The difference between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and politicians presented as less extreme, is often one of language, strategy and timing.
Former Israeli military chief and Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot, for example, openly supports the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, despite his reputation as a more “moderate” alternative to Netanyahu.
What, then, about Gaza?
Who among Israel’s leading political figures is promising to end the genocide, lift the siege, ensure unrestricted humanitarian aid, restrain the army or investigate violations of international law? None.
Israeli media have spent the past three years reporting on major disagreements between the government, military establishment, intelligence agencies and political opposition over what should happen in Gaza.
Yet Eisenkot has pledged to end Hamas’s rule in Gaza within 18 months of taking office, whether through US President Donald Trump’s framework or through continued war.
For his part, Yesh Atid leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid has proposed placing Gaza under Egyptian administration for up to 15 years, effectively shifting responsibility for Israel’s actions onto Arab states.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, meanwhile, supports continued Israeli military control until Palestinian groups are disarmed.
The disagreement, therefore, is often over how Israel should achieve its objectives, rather than whether those objectives should change.
Other major disagreements primarily concern Israeli society: the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews, judicial reform and accountability for the failures of 7 October.
But these disputes should not be confused with the questions that matter most to Palestinians.
If Netanyahu succeeds in forming another right-wing coalition, the policies of occupation, settlement expansion and military confrontation will continue, potentially with renewed momentum.
If Israel produces a broader coalition, its members may reach compromises over judicial reform, conscription and other domestic disputes. The occupation, however, is unlikely to become the central point of disagreement.
More troubling still, even a government leaning towards the centre-left might succeed in presenting Israel to the international community as a country ready to move beyond the image it acquired during three years of genocide, without fundamentally changing its conduct on the ground.
The international community must therefore remain vigilant. It cannot allow a future Israeli government to present itself as a peacemaker, or sell the illusion of a newly reformed Israel, while continuing to invest in settlements, occupation, war and genocide.
Pentagon fires top military planner
RT | October 29, 2026
The Pentagon has fired its top military strategist as Washington draws up contingency plans for a possible escalation of hostilities with Iran.
Army Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia has been removed from his position as director for strategy, plans, and policy (J5) on the Joint Staff, a spokesman confirmed late Wednesday, following media reports of his dismissal.
His predecessor, Lt. Gen. Joseph McGee, was forced into retirement a year ago amid reported friction with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine. Sylvia previously served as vice director of the J5.
The Pentagon did not explain Sylvia’s departure. His responsibilities included developing military strategies and plans to advise the chairman and the US president. He joins nearly two dozen senior military and civilian officials removed during Hegseth’s tenure.
The secretary has portrayed the dismissals as part of an effort to reduce the military’s bloated ranks of generals and make the armed forces more efficient and lethal. Critics, however, have characterized the shake-up as an ideological “purge.”
President Donald Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of renewing large-scale hostilities with Iran, including resuming the intensive bombing campaign conducted during the first 40 days of the conflict, which the US and Israel launched in late February. A potential escalation could be timed around the November midterm elections.
Military experts have widely expressed concern that another bombing campaign would fail to “finish the job,” as Trump has put it, while further increasing the conflict’s economic toll worldwide. Tehran has repeatedly warned that it is prepared to retaliate against US allies in the Gulf region if it faces renewed attacks.
Conversely, speculation has emerged that Trump could dismiss Hegseth after the midterms, when the opposition Democratic Party is expected to make gains in both chambers of Congress. Critics of the Iran war, including Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, have argued that firing the secretary could help Trump avoid a potential impeachment battle if Democrats take control of the House.
Trump’s public rhetoric remains supportive of Hegseth and his policies.
Former US officials who resigned over Gaza urge 2028 presidential candidates to reject architects of Biden-era policy
MEMO | October 28, 2026
A group of former US government officials who resigned because of Washington’s policy in the Gaza Strip has urged candidates seeking the 2028 presidential nomination to pledge not to appoint officials they said enabled Israel’s genocide in the enclave, Anadolu reports.
“Senior Biden Administration officials who were architects of the Gaza policy are now actively white-washing their own roles in enabling genocide,” Gaza Resignees said in a statement signed by 12 former officials.
“They violated U.S. and international law by providing U.S. weapons while Israel indiscriminately and disproportionately attacked civilians and civilian infrastructure, and as Israel arbitrarily blocked humanitarian assistance to Gaza,” it said.
The signatories include former State Department officials Josh Paul, Annelle Sheline and Stacy Gilbert, former diplomats Hala Rharrit and Mike Casey, former White House official Anna Del Castillo and former USAID senior adviser Alexander Smith. Also among them are former Army officer and Defense Intelligence Agency official Harrison Mann, former Air Force Maj. Riley Livermore, former Navy Lt. Cmdr. Hani Z. Nofal and former political appointees Tariq Habash of the Education Department and Lily Greenberg Call of the Interior Department.
“Not even two years since the end of their disastrous time in office, many of these same officials appear to be pursuing a path back into the halls of power,” they said.
“The most basic level of accountability, the most minimal level of consequences, is to ensure that those who have wreaked so much harm from within the highest levels of our Government cannot return to it,” according to the statement.
The group said that “Gaza has become a litmus test for the credibility of American politicians and the viability, in particular, of Democratic candidates.”
The pledge asks candidates to acknowledge US “complicity” in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It also asks them to exclude any past or present political appointee who was “an architect, leader, defender, or key enabler” of the policy.
In a video released with the statement, the former officials took turns reading the call over images of former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who now sits on the board of directors of the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank.
“We have watched as elite institutions have welcomed these officials,” said Mann, as the video showed former White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk, who is now with venture capital firm Lux Capital and a CNN commentator. It also showed former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and former USAID Administrator Samantha Power, who both joined Harvard Kennedy School after leaving office.
“We have watched as these officials have tried to launder their bloody reputations,” Paul said, with Rharrit adding, “and prepare to re-enter the halls of power.”
“And we say, enough,” the former officials said in the video. “Enough with the culture of impunity in Washington. Enough with policies that break our laws and defy our values.”
“They have blood on their hands,” they added.
Top Biden administration officials at that time acknowledged civilian suffering in Gaza but defended Israel’s right to defend itself following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack.
US-made weapons were photographed several times in Israeli strikes in Gaza, although US authorities have declined to confirm this.
Since October 2023, Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and wounded over 175,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It has also caused widespread destruction affecting around 90% of the territory’s civilian infrastructure.
More than 1,500 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since an October 2025 ceasefire went into effect.
Wired for War Crimes: Israeli spy-tech firm targeted Starlink users – researchers
RT | October 28, 2026
An Israeli online advertising company implicated in spyware attacks targeting internet users was heavily active on SpaceX’s Starlink service, Japanese researchers have found, bolstering claims that the firm was running a “targeting and tracking” operation masquerading as a commercial advertising business.
Earlier this month, Canadian cybersecurity watchdog Citizen Lab and New York-based ad security firm Confiant published extensive investigations identifying Discover-Tech, an Israeli advertising technology company, as a middleman helping spyware firms, including Candiru and Intelos, as well as a little-known US-linked operator known as Dark Cartographer, track internet users and potentially infect their devices without their knowledge.
Discover-Tech’s operation involved purchasing advertising space on hundreds of thousands of websites and apps, using ads to collect information about users who viewed them, and making the data available to spyware companies. Those firms could then identify specific targets and potentially install spyware on their devices through malicious advertising code.
Despite presenting itself as a commercial operation, Discover-Tech concentrated much of its advertising spending on markets that would be of limited interest to conventional advertisers. Of 228 countries and territories examined, Palestine was the most heavily targeted, despite its population having severely limited access to Western goods and relatively little purchasing power.
In more than 100 countries, Discover-Tech was the leading bidder for advertising space targeting Starlink users, according to researchers at TrendAI, a unit of Japanese cybersecurity firm Trend Micro. The company was also the largest advertising bidder in Syria, Libya, Yemen and South Sudan, and the second-largest in Afghanistan.
TrendAI published its findings on October 15, identifying the suspicious advertiser only by the codename Shadow-Earth-79. Six people familiar with the research subsequently told Reuters that the codename referred to Discover-Tech.
Noting that “the demand for legitimate Western advertising in sanctioned or active-conflict states is effectively zero,” the researchers concluded that the company was running “targeting and tracking infrastructure rather than a commercial advertising operation.”
The findings suggest that Discover-Tech may have been attempting to identify, geolocate or monitor Starlink users. However, they do not establish that the company successfully infected Starlink users’ devices with spyware.
Who runs Discover-Tech?
Founded in 2020 by Israeli entrepreneur Dekel Boni, Discover-Tech appointed Eric Banoun as its director. Banoun co-founded Circles, a surveillance company affiliated with Pegasus spyware developer NSO Group, and Senpai Technologies, a company known for developing and selling surveillance software to governments, including those of Angola, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Banoun also founded Intelos, which uses advertisements similar to those placed by Discover-Tech to surveil and geolocate individuals. He attempted to sell the technology to Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency, according to Haaretz.
Haaretz also identified Sara Hamou, through her holding company, as a shareholder in Discover-Tech. Hamou is a former manager at Intellexa, the company that marketed Predator spyware in Greece. Earlier this year, she was sentenced to eight years in prison for her role in the Predator scandal.
Is Discover-Tech linked to the Israeli government?
It remains unclear who purchased the services of Candiru, Intelos and Dark Cartographer after the companies obtained user data through Discover-Tech. However, as RT previously reported in its ‘Wired for War’ series, Israel treats domestically developed spyware as a controlled defense export and retains authority over where such technology may be sold.
According to a 2021 investigation by Haaretz, export licenses for Pegasus were often granted when sales were considered beneficial to Israeli foreign policy interests, including in connection with trade agreements or diplomatic support for Israel at the UN.
Other Israeli spy-tech companies covered in the series, including Black Cube, BlackCore and Paragon Solutions, have also been linked to activities aligned with Israeli interests, even when they were not directly contracted by the Israeli government.
Discover-Tech’s advertising infrastructure was used to target at least 45 devices at Al Jazeera with Candiru spyware in 2024 and 2025, according to Citizen Lab. Researchers confirmed that some devices were infected through malicious advertisements that required no interaction from users.
The attacks occurred during a period of heightened tensions between Israel and the Qatar-based broadcaster, which Israeli authorities have accused of threatening national security. Candiru was founded by two Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intelligence veterans and operates under Israeli defense export controls.
While the Israeli government has not been accused of ordering Candiru to surveil Al Jazeera journalists, the targeting raises questions about whether the company’s clients shared interests with the Israeli authorities. The investigations have not identified the government or client responsible for commissioning the attacks.
Is Discover-Tech still operating?
Following the investigations by Citizen Lab and Confiant, several major advertising companies took action against Discover-Tech. Google, Comcast-owned Beeswax and Eskimi blocked the firm from their platforms, while Vungle suspended its access pending a review. Industry association IAB Europe also suspended Discover-Tech from its list of approved vendors.
Discover-Tech’s website, which markets the company as a “tailored digital advertising agency,” remains active. The firm has not publicly responded to the findings reported by Citizen Lab, Confiant or TrendAI.
Barghouti: ‘Netanyahu has fallen,’ era of Smotrich, Ben-Gvir over
Al Mayadeen | October 27, 2026
Palestinian National Initiative Secretary-General Mustafa Barghouti told Al Mayadeen after “Israel’s” election that “Netanyahu has fallen” and that “the era of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir is over.”
He hailed the Arab electorate for its stand “against fascism,” and said divisions within the right-wing camp had weakened Netanyahu’s bloc, leaving the remaining parties to determine the next political steps.
Warnings on the road ahead
Barghouti warned that if former military chief Gadi Eisenkot fails to ally with Arab parties, “Israel” could face another election or a zionist unity government. He said that regardless of who leads the next Israeli government, Palestinian statehood remains off the table, and that the most dangerous scenario would be Netanyahu’s government continuing as a caretaker administration.
On Gaza, he said US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace has failed to bring peace to the besieged territory, and that the election result would have repercussions there. He expressed distrust of Trump and said that if the US president loses his congressional majority, it would be a “positive development” for Palestinians.
What the exit polls show
Exit polls after Tuesday’s vote showed Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious bloc at about 50 seats, down from the 64 it won in 2022. Eisenkot’s opposition bloc was at 51 to 53 seats, and both fall short of the 61 needed for a majority.
Likud was projected as the largest single party, with 24 to 25 seats against 21 to 23 for Eisenkot’s Yashar party, though a pro-Netanyahu channel, Channel 14, gave the prime minister’s camp 60 seats.
Arab parties, the Joint List and Ra’am, were projected to win a record 16 to 18 seats, nearly double their 10 in the outgoing Knesset, on turnout that reached a three-decade high.
Eisenkot said the exit polls reflect “a complete lack of confidence” in Netanyahu, but he has ruled out a government that depends on Arab parties, and other opposition leaders have said the same.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said his party “won’t let” Arab voters celebrate, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir warned Netanyahu against a unity government with Eisenkot.
Gaza and the Board of Peace
The Gaza ceasefire took effect on October 10 last year, but more than 100 aid and rights groups said earlier this month that it is a ceasefire “in name only.”
Gaza’s Health Ministry has said at least 1,471 people were killed between the ceasefire and early October. In August, Netanyahu rejected the Board of Peace’s 15-point roadmap, which Hamas had accepted, effectively bringing the initiative to a standstill.
When the final results are in, Israeli President Isaac Herzog will consult representatives of all the parties in the Knesset and then task whoever he thinks is best placed with forming a government.
Oman FM: Persian Gulf states, Iran, Iraq should form security pact excluding US
Press TV – October 27, 2026
Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi has called for the formation of a non-aggression security pact involving six Persian Gulf states plus Iran and Iraq, slamming US attempts to demonize the Islamic Republic as a threat.
Speaking at Girton College, Cambridge, on Monday, Albusaidi stressed that Washington has promoted for almost half a century the false image of Tehran as a threat to the Persian Gulf states, holding back West Asia’s ability to solve its own problems.
The Omani foreign minister, speaking to break the deadlock over the region’s future, stressed that the US would no longer be the region’s primary security provider.
“Issues such as the Strait of Hormuz have become impossible to resolve because external powers continue to define the terms of engagement, while regional powers are unable to take collective responsibility for making their own security arrangements and reach a consensus on them,” Albusaidi noted.
Iran has so far refused to ease its restrictions on transit through the strategic Strait of Hormuz, saying the key international energy waterway will be fully reopened once the US permanently ends its aggression and lifts its maritime blockade and sanctions against Iran.
Iranian authorities have also indicated that the country would not back down from its conditions and would respond decisively to any new act of aggression against its territory.
“What holds us back is that issues which ought to be handled at a regional level by the states of the [Persian] Gulf themselves, are made more complex, more intractable and sometimes simply impossible to resolve because the region’s security arrangements are insufficiently developed,” Albusaidi further stressed.
“And they are insufficiently developed because they have relied for too long on the involvement of external powers,” he added.
Oman’s top diplomat noted that the Islamic Republic “had been systematically excluded from playing any meaningful role in the security arrangements of the region.
Albusaidi also stressed that such exclusion had led to “profoundly negative consequences, not just for Iran, but for the region as a whole”, including the imposition of priorities on the region by external powers such as “the entirely false perception that there is a fundamental regional antagonism between Iran and the Arab states of the [Persian] Gulf.”
According to the Omani foreign minister, the most “damaging” of the priorities imposed on the Persian Gulf region from the outside has been the requirement that the Islamic Republic be excluded.
“Not just excluded. Worse. Positioned as the threat against which regional security had to be organized,” Albusaidi stressed, speaking on the day high-level defense and intelligence officials from Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia gathered in Tehran in an attempt to prevent a renewed act of aggression by the US against Iran.
Iran and Oman, both coastal states bordering the strategic waterway, engaged in intensive negotiations for months over arrangements for safe shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
Tehran and Oman finally reached a temporary agreement on how shipping traffic should be managed in the strait, but the plan is on hold as Iran keeps the waterway closed due to US acts of aggression and violations.
Roughly one-fifth of global oil demand passes through the Strait of Hormuz, making the waterway one of the world’s most strategically important maritime chokepoints.
Oman’s foreign minister, without mentioning by name, also challenged US President Donald Trump’s case for a further war of aggression against Iran by saying that he believed the previous round of Oman-mediated negotiations between the US and Iran in February were “making significant progress, and that an agreement was within reach. We still stand by that judgment today.”
The US and the Israeli regime waged their first war of aggression against Iran, which lasted 12 days, in June 2025. Their second aggression began on February 28, 2026, and came to a halt in early April after 40 days.
Iran has been defending itself by targeting US bases and energy infrastructure in the Persian Gulf states with missile strikes and drone attacks.
Featured Video
Trita Parsi: Trump’s Swiss Cheese Iran Plan & U.S. Break with Israel?
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Only a Beginning… Charles Malik’s vision of an emergent Pax Judaica
By David Miller | Tracking Power | November 12, 2026
In August 1949, three months after Israel joined the United Nations, Lebanon’s envoy in Washington sent his government a long report. Charles Malik, no firebrand, had signed the UN Charter and helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His Report on the Present Situation lay largely unread until Dar An-Nahar printed it in 2002. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Trita Parsi: Trump’s Swiss Cheese Iran Plan & U.S. Break with Israel?
- Iran’s NPT exit debate: How repeated attacks exposed the failures of global nuclear safeguards
- Mainstream Israeli Media Celebrates Deadly Floods In Gaza
- Australian Censor Chief Rejects Claims Digital Duty of Care Will Drive Censorship
- Why a New European Security Architecture Will Be Born Through War
- EU incapable of speaking with one voice on Ukraine – analyst to RT
- Moscow, Kabul Planning to Sign Intergovernmental Agreement on Trade – Official
- Ukraine training Sahel militants to use drones – Russian envoy
- EU trying to boycott ties between Niger and Algeria
- Independence movement declares mobilization against Morocco
- If Americans Knew
- Senior Dems will make life ‘hell’ without Jeffries vote, freshman rep says
- Humanitarian Orgs Demand Answers on Yemen War After Hegseth Impeachment Fails
- Eric Trump’s Humanoid Robots To Be Used In Gaza Genocide
- 97.6% – The Overlap of the White House and The Foundation for Defense of Democracies
- US taxpayer group calls on ICC to investigate Trump, Rubio for ‘aiding’ Gaza genocide
- ‘A slow genocide accelerated’: How Gaza’s winter ‘crisis’ is manufactured by Israel
- How Israel has engineered a system of apartheid on West Bank roads
- DAILY UPDATE: Latest essential news on Palestine, Israel, & region
- Israel Kills 22 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Including Six in Direct Attack on Nasser Hospital’s Surgery Building, Among Them a Doctor and a Child
- Lawmakers Report That Some Democrats Missed Hegseth Impeachment Vote to Attend Event for ‘AIPAC Front Group’
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Barents Sea Temperatures Were Warmer And Sea Ice Less Extensive In The 1700s Than Today
- German Authorities Start Initiative To Evaluate Public Register For Climate “Disinformation” Spreaders!
- Zonal Asymmetry of Temperature Change in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current
- New Study: The Net Fossil Fuel Contribution To Rising Atmospheric CO2 Has Been Zero For 500 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
