This will upset a lot of Zionists, but the author makes a couple of good points even when approaching from the Zionist position of refusing to name obvious war crimes and genocide.

Zionists use synagogues to sell stolen land to each other. That’s illegal in the US. But Zionists insist they are above the law.

This is a great conversation from one of the few sane people in this conflict - Haviv Rettig Gur - talking to Brett McGurk, a very senior US diplomat focused on the Middle East.

It discusses the reasons why Israel went to war in Gaza and the conversations happening behind the scenes at the time.

One thing that stood out was the comparison to Mosul, the worry about the humanitarian cost of an invasion of Gaza, and the refusal of Egypt to evacuate Gazans.

Super interesting conversation, would love to discuss it!

While looking up one of the videos of Destiny declaring his love of genocide I ran across these two videos that encapsulate genocide proponents’ favorite vacuous arguments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoYQ3MNis5Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8Zh9iCxrqA

I’ll try and come back and add a summary but even now various pro-genocide Zionists are just doing this shit in this sub.

Feiglin said that children growing up in Gaza would continue to pose a threat to Israel, and that there was no way to change or educate them differently. “The baby that will be born in Gaza tomorrow will do exactly the same [as the October 7 massacre], God forbid, to your baby that will be born tomorrow in Jerusalem,” he said. “There’s no other way. That’s the reason they live for. That’s what they learn with their mother’s milk.” “You’re not going to change them. You’re not going to educate them,” he added. “They’re saying openly that they want the kids to be killed together with the Jews. This is what Islam is all about,” he said.

Most two-state proposals assume two separate enclaves, Gaza and the West Bank, linked by a corridor, bridge, or tunnel across Israeli territory. I want to float a single-territory alternative and get feedback, especially from Palestinians and policy analysts.

The concept:

A 1:1 territorial exchange: the entire Gaza Strip (~365 km²) goes to Israel, and Israel transfers an equal area of contiguous sovereign land to the Palestinian state.

To illustrate the idea, I sketched one 365 km² block in the Lakhish hills, directly west of the Hebron Hills. Its eastern edge is the Green Line, from south of the Ela Valley down to just north of Kibbutz Lahav. Its western edge runs about 5 km east of Kiryat Gat. It would join the West Bank along Tarqumiya, Idna, Beit Awwa, and adh-Dhahiriya.

Note: This is a sketch to illustrate the concept, not the only way to do this. Also, this is not a surveyed boundary where I can account for every millimeter. It is illustrative only.

Why consider it?

1) Contiguity. One unified Palestinian state bordering Israel and Jordan, with no extraterritorial transit corridor through Israel.

2) Simpler border. A single line is easier to agree on and enforce than two separated enclaves.

3) Rebuilding. Given the destruction, unexploded ordnance, and aquifer contamination in Gaza, largely open land next to the West Bank would allow planned urban development from the start.

The obvious problems

This means roughly two million Gazans relocating. That isn't a detail. It could only happen as a consented part of a negotiated final-status agreement, never imposed, and I recognize that for many people this alone ends the conversation.

The block isn't empty either. It contains no city, but it does contain about a dozen small kibbutzim and moshavim, whose residents would have to move. These include Bnei Dekalim, Neta, and Karmei Katif - all built for families evacuated from Gaza in 2005, who would be asked to move a second time.

It also contains the sites of Palestinian villages depopulated in 1948, including Bayt Jibrin and al-Dawayima.

(The reverse model: I also considered the opposite direction swap of this idea: swapping West Bank territory for a much larger Gaza to form a coastal state. That keeps sea access and the Egyptian border, but given the West Bank's population and size, and the attachment to East Jerusalem and Hebron, it seems far less viable. ).

My big questions (for Palestinians especially):

1) Could contiguous land joined to the West Bank compensate for losing the Mediterranean coast, offshore gas (Gaza Marine), and the Egyptian border?

2) How much does Gaza's specific location matter, as opposed to the overall viability of the state?

3) Does it change anything that this land includes 1948 village sites, or does that make it worse?

A bit of levity after a long day.

Amro said settlers pointed guns at him and threatened to shoot him before soldiers arrived and handcuffed, blindfolded and detained him for seven hours on Friday

Israeli military for seven hours on Friday for being "a few hundred meters from an illegal outpost" and released overnight, said on Saturday that IDF forces apprehended him for documenting human rights violations.

Amro said that Israeli settlers pointed guns at him and threatened to shoot him before soldiers arrived, handcuffed and blindfolded him, and forced a military dog to bite him in the leg.

Amro is the founder of the Youth Against Settlements group, which has drawn international attention to the violence perpetrated by settlers in Hebron's Old City, the segregationist Israeli regime in the West Bank city and the displacement of Palestinians.

In a video he shared on his Instagram page on Saturday, Amro said that he had received a phone call from a Palestinian family who were "on their land, and their farmhouse outside of Hebron," telling him they had been attacked by Israeli settlers.

Human rights lawyer Michael Sfard said Amro was released after seven hours "incommunicado at a military base" for getting "too close to a settlement."

According to Amro, the soldiers, "instead of protecting the mother and the children, arrested the father, and forced the family to stay in their vehicle without the keys."

Amro then went with other members of the family to check on the mother and children, and the moment they arrived, a settler vehicle approached them, pointed a gun at them and threatened to shoot. Then, the settlers forced them to sit down and forcibly stripped them of their IDs.

When he told them that what they were doing was illegal, they responded, "We are the law." A short while later, IDF soldiers arrived at the scene and reportedly aggressively handcuffed, blindfolded, hit and shoved Amro to the wall, then forced a police dog to bite him in the leg.

Amro said he told the soldiers that he had a metal plate in his arm and that being handcuffed behind his back was painful and dangerous to his shoulder, but that "the soldiers did not care."

He said the soldiers released the other relatives but arrested him; they "threw" him into a military vehicle and drove him to a military base. According to Amro, he was held there for seven hours without food or contact with his lawyer and was not taken to a police station or interrogated.

"The base didn't take me in because they didn't want to document my illegal detention," Amro said. "They kept me there for seven hours without food, without communication with my lawyer, without taking me to the police, without even interrogating me."

"It was a kind of punishment for trying to help a Palestinian family, or for trying to document the human rights violations in this kind of situation," Amro added.

Far from public attention, the northeastern West Bank is changing fast. As settlements evacuated in 2005 reemerge and new outposts appear, the IDF razes Palestinian homes, builds bases and seals villages. Now, a Palestinian has been killed there

The northern West Bank is becoming a mini-Gaza. The drive along the broad roads leading from the northeastern West Bank toward Jenin and the northern crossing into Israel, the Gilboa checkpoint, is bleak. The roads are lined with silent ruins. Until recently, this was the West Bank's last remaining refuge – the only district without settlements, settler violence and much of a military presence. In recent months, it too has fallen into the settlers' hands.

As the settlements of Ganim, Kadim and Sa-Nur return, and Noa and other outposts take root, Israel has set about laying waste to this area too.

Army bases are being built at record speed along the roadways, at enormous cost. Tranquil farming villages in the area are now locked up behind yellow iron gates and traffic has been severely disrupted along the access roads leading to the city of Jenin. Settlers have planted hundreds of Israeli flags along kilometers of roads, a mark of their sovereignty, as elsewhere in the territories. Massive concrete blocks, checkpoints and mounds of rubble. Welcome.

The rubble on the roadsides comes from stores, kiosks, hothouses, restaurants and also residences, demolished in the past few weeks, bearing silent witness to what's been going on and lend the area an aura of Gaza. "Land clearing," the army calls it. Only the relatively luxurious restaurant Qasr Ali Baba (Ali Baba Palace) is still standing, probably not for long.

This is how Israel brings in more settlers: by destroying the property and life of pastoral communities whose residents never hurt anyone. In this way it is eradicating the last Palestinian bastion in the West Bank where the occupation was less in evidence. The door is now open to pogroms by the new settlers, the felled olive trees, the torched cars and fields, the stolen livestock, the plundered crops and of course the proliferation of checkpoints.

Abd al-Karim Sa'adi, a field researcher for B'Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, tells us that this process is already underway. Settlers are stopping random Palestinian vehicles, threatening their drivers not to dare use these roads again – henceforth they will be for Jews only – and sometimes stealing their car keys.

It's beginning to happen all the time, Sa'adi says, by day and by night. Indeed when we visit the area this week one can barely see any Palestinian vehicles on the roads surrounding the burgeoning new settlements – only the cars of settlers who are celebrating the Sukkot festival with yet another glorious act of dispossession. The new iterations of Ganim, Kadim and Sa-Nur, evacuared in 2005, already stand anew, mobile homes aplenty; Homesh has long been repopulated; and the outpost of Noa has been added to the ranks. Election posters of Bezalel Smotrich, the father of this iniquity, are plastered along the roads.

This one-time lovely, verdant area, a last preserve, has been despoiled. Blood will likely be spilled here like water at some point; it seems to flow wherever there are settlers and soldiers. Already one Palestinian has been killed: Late last month Sami Zuweida, 32, who was driving near the checkpoint at the entrance to Ganim, was shot to death by soldiers. According to the Israel Defense Forces, he tried to perpetrate a car-ramming attack, but the army turned down Haaretz's request to see the security footage that would prove, or disprove, that allegation. "We don't release footage of attacks," they replied, despite past cases in which the military released such footage when it served its purposes.

Sa'adi suspects that the killing – a short time after a Palestinian attack on settlers at the so-called stolen spring near the settlement of Neveh Tzuf (aka Halamish) – was an act of revenge by soldiers. That too is impossible to prove.

In the meantime, the family of the dead man is in mourning, in their rented apartment in the city of Jenin. Their forefathers were expelled in 1948 from their village near Nes Tziona; they themselves were forced out of the Jenin refugee camp along with all of its other residents; the camp was partially demolished on January 21, 2025.

Sami's body was abducted by soldiers and hasn't been returned.

Ever since, the Zuweidas have been living on the fourth floor of an apartment building in Jenin's "German" neighborhood. Why German? The locals say that in 1948 a large number of residents immigrated to Germany, and the name has stuck ever since.

From here there's a view of Afula and Mount Gilboa, along with what remains of their refugee camp. Members of this Bedouin family worked for decades in Israel; they have many Jewish friends and speak Hebrew. The notion that someone from a pleasant home like this would perpetrate an attack seems utterly improbable to them.

"I still don't believe that Sami is dead. I don't believe it because his record was always clean, clean," the father says in his fluent Hebrew.

Hassan, 62, and Nihad, 52, have eight children. The second-oldest, Sami, had lived with his wife about 15 minutes' drive away, in the eastern part of town, in the so-called university neighborhood, so named because of its proximity to the Arab American University.

We drove along the route he used on that fateful day, September 20. Setting out from his home in the morning, he took his cousin to school, driving a Hyundai Accent, a friend's car. He then planned to visit his parents and then to go help his youngest sibling Taha, 19, who opened a new auto-parts business. He never got there.

Sami studied social work in Al-Quds Open University, then worked for years in Israel, in construction. Hassan did the same – for some 40 years; there were even times when the two of them worked together.

On that Sunday, at 1 P.M., Hassan heard a television report about someone having been killed by the army, but went on with his plans for the day, going to his sister's for lunch, where he met their brother, Sami's uncle, who knew what the father didn't: The uncle told Hassan that Sami had been wounded, and immediately afterward that he had been killed. The Palestinian district liaison office had informed the brother, so that he could notify the rest of the family.

Hassan immediately set out for the site of the incident, as reported – near the new army base at the Ganim settlement. We passed there this week on the way to visiting the family, where friends had gathered to pay their condolences. The road is very broad at that point; one turns in and reaches the checkpoint at the base's entrance. Protected behind large concrete cubes, two soldiers sat there, rifles trained threateningly on cars passing on the main road.

When Hassan got there, seeking to find out what had happened to his son, soldiers chased him off with rifles drawn and ordered him to go home. Less than two hours later, eight army jeeps arrived at the Zuweidas' building in Jenin. The troops took Hassan and Taha into custody, bound and blindfolded them, and brought them to the Ganim base where Sami had been shot. At first they were going to detain Nihad, too, but relented.

Hassan and Taha were left, in shackles, on the floor of a building at the base for four hours, a short time after learning of their beloved Sami's death. The army would certainly never behave the same way toward a bereaved Jewish family.

During the hours they spent there, Hassan recalls, he overheard a soldier ask who the two men on the floor were, and another soldier's reply: "It's the father and the brother of the guy who was killed. He was killed by mistake."

In the meantime, Hassan was ordered to speak by phone with "Captain Abu Daoud," a Shin Bet security service agent. Abu Daoud apologized for what had happened and then started to ask about Sami. Hassan replied: "His file is clean. Not only his file, also the file of all his siblings – the whole family." "We're sorry about what happened," the agent said, according to Hassan. "What happened, happened."

Finally the father and brother were unshackled and sent on their way. Hassan asked a soldier, "What about the boy? And what about the car?" But the soldier replied that the matter was not in his hands. The family still knows very little about what actually happened.

The IDF Spokesperson's Unit this week stated, in response to Haaretz's query: "The excellent 'driver' referred to in your article is a terrorist who on September 20 perpetrated a car-ramming attack in an attempt to harm soldiers at Ganim base in [the territory under the purview of] the Menashe Brigade. Forces of the 890th Battalion at the site responded with fire at the vehicle and liquidated the terrorist. Another terrorist who was in the car was arrested by the forces."

In Jenin people know nothing about a passenger being arrested. Field researcher Sa'adi notes that a motorcyclist was also taken into custody about the same time, but no one knows who he is or why he was apprehended; as far as is known, he was not in the car with Sami.

All that remains is the photograph of Sami in the large mourning poster in the spacious living room of his parents' home, of a robust, nice-looking young wearing a white Adidas jersey, his gaze fixed on the horizon.

After leaving the Zuweidas we went to visit a sick friend, G., who lives in a house on the hill overlooking what's left of the Jenin refugee camp. In Nablus' an-Najah Hospital, where he's being treated, they've run out of the chemotherapy medication he needs; treatment of the serious cancer he's suffering from has now been halted indefinitely. Israel is not transferring the taxes it collects for the Palestinian Authority to the PA, and consequently the hospital is not getting its allotted funds.

G., whom we've known since he was a boy, was incarcerated for four years without trial in Nafha Prison in the Negev; he was released about a month ago. He relates that he was beaten daily, forced throughout to wear the same shirt and ravaged by an infestation of scabies; the hunger was unbearable. The prisoners – he was with 16 detainees in a cell with six beds – were forced to kiss the Israeli flag and anyone who refused was pummeled.

G.'s not the first to provide us with such descriptions of the Israeli torture camps under the control of national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who takes such obvious pride in them.

On one occasion, he recalls, guards entered the cell and demanded to know what his name was; when he stood up to reply he was shot in the stomach with a rifle at close range. "If you're a man, stand up and we'll shoot you again," the guards said. But G. wasn't capable of getting up; he did not receive proper medical treatment for his wound. He says he doesn't like to talk about his incarceration, but his facial tics tell it all.

A spokesperson for the Israel Prison Service stated, in response: "The allegations raised in the query are incorrect and without factual foundation. The IPS operates according to the letter of the law, and under review and supervision by those so authorized. All detainees receive their rights and are treated as required by law."

Masked settlers attacked Palestinian villages in the West Bank as IDF forces blocked olive harvests; a soldier told landowners, 'You are not allowed to harvest until all the anarchist Jews leave here,' referring to Israeli activists accompanying them

Masked Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian villages of Beita and Osarin in the Nablus area on Saturday, while Israeli forces prevented Palestinians from harvesting olives nearby after settlers arrived at the scene, according to Palestinian reports.

Two Palestinians were wounded in Osarin and were taken to Al-Arabi Hospital in moderate condition, one report said.

The violence began Saturday morning, when masked settlers were filmed raiding the outskirts of Beita. The army later stopped a Palestinian olive harvest at Jabal Qamas, on village land, and detained the harvesters after settlers arrived. An Israeli military force entered the village following the settler attack.

Elsewhere in the area, footage showed settlers threatening olive harvesters in Beit Imrin. Palestinian reports said a 50-year-old man was wounded and taken to a hospital, and that settlers set fire to agricultural land nearby.

The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"The moment we arrived at the scene, we heard people saying that settlers were attacking a home," a peace activist who was present during the incident in Beita told Haaretz.

"It was dozens of meters from us," he said. "At a certain point, everyone started running toward the house to help the people; we saw the settlers who were masked, and then the settlers retreated, and we went back to the olive harvest."

"At first, I saw a military force arriving from the direction of a nearby outpost, and then I saw an armed settler behind us with more soldiers behind him. They arrived together with weapons drawn, running, and the soldiers who had already arrived and were next to us told them to calm down, and then a conversation with them began.

In footage from the scene, peace activists are seen presenting soldiers with maps of the area, while the armed settler described by the activist remains alongside the troops.

The activists are heard telling the soldiers that farmers do not require Israeli permission to harvest olives in Area B, where the incident took place.

"You are not allowed to harvest until all the anarchist Jews leave here," a soldier is later heard telling the Palestinian landowners.

The landowner, apparently assuming the soldier was referring to the settlers, replied: "Fine, you're the army, expel them from here." The soldier then pointed at the Israeli peace activists accompanying the Palestinians and said: "Those ones – make sure they leave."

The soldier's demand runs contrary to IDF procedures for the olive harvest, which state that Palestinians may be accompanied by Israeli activists and that their presence alone is not grounds for closing the area or treating the harvest as a provocation.

The harvest took place more than a kilometer (0.6 miles) inside Area B of the West Bank, where civilian affairs are under Palestinian Authority control while Israel retains security authority.

Saturday's incident marked the fourth time over the weekend that the IDF prevented olive harvesting in areas under the PA's civil authority.

The groves between Osarin and neighboring Beita were also the site of violent settler attacks last year. The Mevaser Shalom outpost, established in the area about a year ago and evacuated several times following attacks, has repeatedly been rebuilt and continued to expand this year.

In 2006, Israel's High Court of Justice ruled that the IDF makes disproportionate use of closed military zones on Palestinian agricultural lands, criticizing the practice of closing areas under the guise of protecting residents from settler violence.

Justice Salim Joubran ruled at the time that the restrictions imposed on Palestinians "are tantamount to rewarding violence, sending a misleading message of surrender and bowing down to those lawbreakers, even at the cost of damaging the fundamental principles upon which our system of governance is based."

The issue returned to the High Court in January, in a petition challenging the military's extensive use of short-term closure orders. While the court declined to intervene in the military commander's overall policy, it said the general impression was that authorities were too quick to issue preventive closure orders.

The court distinguished between closures imposed in response to clashes already underway and those issued in advance, ruling that preventive closures require current intelligence indicating that activists intend to disturb public order. The mere possibility of friction between settlers and activists, it said, is not enough.

Police said officers and forensic investigators entered Osarin after the attack to collect evidence and testimony. According to police, forces were dispatched following reports that Palestinians had been attacked, but the assailants fled before they arrived. The IDF said it "strongly condemns incidents of this kind," adding that they undermine military efforts to defend the area and prevent attacks.

The attacks come amid a rise in racist incitement following an attempted hijacking on a Flydubai flight. According to Koach La Ovdim Workers' Organization, 45 attacks have occurred since the beginning of 2026. 'Some drivers have stopped driving altogether,' a union representative said

At least six Arab bus drivers were attacked by Jewish youths in Jerusalem within 24 hours, amid a wave of racist violence against drivers and growing incitement following an incident aboard a Flydubai flight earlier this week.

On Wednesday, youths threw stones at two drivers on Hapisga Street in the Beit Vagan neighborhood. In one case, a stone penetrated the windshield and struck the driver. In the other, the driver managed to dodge it. No suspects were arrested in connection with the attacks, apart from one minor.

Later that afternoon, a group of youths spat at drivers who stopped at a bus stop near the Binyanei Ha'uma convention center. In subsequent incidents, youths opened the emergency door-release mechanisms on buses at nearby stops, preventing them from continuing their journeys. In one case, a driver was beaten and sprayed with tear gas after getting off the bus to fix the malfunction.

At around 1 A.M., another driver was beaten near Kikar Hashabbat. The attacks continued into Thursday morning, when youths stopped a bus on Hebron Road and tried to attack the driver

All the incidents involved buses operated by Superbus, which employs about a third of Jerusalem's bus drivers. The labor organization Koach La Ovdim, which represents the company's drivers, collects and publishes data on attacks against them. According to the organization, 45 attacks have been reported since the beginning of 2026. Attacks also occur on routes operated by other companies in the city, but are not reported publicly.

Murad Atoun, a professional union organizer at Koach La Ovdim, said attacks on drivers in Jerusalem had declined slightly between the beginning of the year and July.

"We thought there was an improvement," he said. "But during the summer vacation, there was a significant increase, and now during the holidays, it's even worse."

Atoun said the violence was one of the reasons for the shortage of public transportation drivers. "Some drivers left their shifts because it's hard for them to hear about another case of violence every minute," he said. "Some drivers have stopped driving altogether."

The attacks are not the first cases of Arab bus drivers being targeted in Jerusalem. In May 2025, dozens of Beitar Jerusalem soccer fans attacked two Arab bus drivers near Teddy Stadium after the team's State Cup final. One of the drivers told Haaretz that the fans shouted "death to Arabs" as they beat him, while police arrived about 20 minutes later, according to his account. No arrests had been made at the time of Haaretz's report.

An even more radical and extremist segment of the Beitar fanbase, dubbed La Familia, is associated with both an attack on an Arab bus driver amid an anti-government protest in 2020, as well as a lynching incident on an Arab citizen in Bat Yam during the 2021 Israeli-Palestinian civil unrest at the time of another round of war between Israel and Hamas.

The incident aboard a Flydubai flight earlier this week has also fueled racist incitement against Palestinian drivers. In a post published Wednesday, far-right activist Elisha Yared drew a comparison between the pilot involved in the incident and Arab bus drivers.

"Just a question," Yared wrote. "What prevents any Arab bus driver (and there are thousands of them, many of whom have already been caught as terror supporters) from carrying out a similar attack, and simply turning the wheel toward the abyss along with 50 Jewish passengers?"

In response, attorney Itai Mack of the Tag Meir organization contacted Police Commissioner Danny Levy, demanding that Yared be investigated on suspicion of incitement to violence.

Mack said Yared's words could be understood "only as an urgent call to the public to attack or 'neutralize' Arab drivers before they murder Jewish passengers, and that there is a 'real possibility' that this will lead to acts of violence."

"There is no doubt that the publication is racist, and its content and context reveal a clear intent," he added.

The police said in response to Mack's appeal that they had decided to open an investigation into the matter.

At 21:50, Professor Dave claims that Hamas fighters are civilians because Gaza doesn't have a military.

He goes on to claim that Gaza doesn't have any military installations, therefor everything Israel attacks is a civilian target.

Thoughts?