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Iraqi national flag in Baghdad on 10 January 2019 [AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP / Getty]
An attack targeted military facilities in Iraq last week, including Chinese-made air defence systems and ammunition depots reportedly recently delivered from Iran for Shiite militias in the country, Iraqi sources said, with suspicions that Israel was behind the strike.
Saudi media quoted two Iraqi sources as saying that authorities in Baghdad had indications pointing to Israel’s involvement, but had yet to determine how the attack was carried out or whether it involved warplanes or drones.
The attack wounded five people, who sustained minor injuries, according to the sources. Iraqi authorities are still investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident.
The developments come amid previous reports of possible Israeli military activity inside Iraq. About six months ago, US media reported that Israel had established a secret military base in Iraq, housing special forces and serving as a logistical hub for the Israeli air force, in coordination with the United States, according to sources cited in those reports.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objecting.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
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Posters of former Israeli Chief of General Staff and Yashar Party leader Gadi Eisenkot (right) and Prime Minister and Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu (left) are seen as election campaigns intensify two days before the vote as campaign posters of candidates are displayed on billboards and buildings across the streets ahead of the Knesset elections scheduled for October 27, in Tel Aviv, Israel, on October 25, 2026. [Nir Keidar – Anadolu Agency]
Israelis head to the polls Tuesday in a closely contested parliamentary election that could end Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long rule or leave the country facing another political deadlock, with neither major bloc projected to secure a governing majority, Anadolu reports.
The vote will be Israel’s first general election since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and the subsequent Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, as well as military confrontations with Lebanon and Iran.
It will also be the first Israeli general election held on schedule since 1988, following decades in which successive governments collapsed before completing their four-year terms.
Around 7.3 million people are eligible to vote, including approximately 1.2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Voting will take place at 12,018 polling stations, with approximately 18,000 ballot boxes deployed nationwide.
Most polling stations will open at 7 am (0500GMT) and close at 10 pm (2000GMT). Election day is a public holiday.
Thirty-seven parties and electoral lists are competing for seats in the 120-member Knesset, where a governing coalition requires the support of at least 61 lawmakers.
Under Israel’s proportional representation system, voters choose parties rather than individual candidates. Parties must secure at least 3.25% of valid votes to enter parliament.
No party has ever won an outright Knesset majority, making coalition negotiations decisive in determining who becomes prime minister.
Eisenkot’s party leads final polls
Final surveys published by Israel’s three main television broadcasters put former military chief Gadi Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party narrowly ahead of Netanyahu’s Likud.
Yashar is projected to win 22 to 23 seats, compared with 19 to 21 for Likud.
The B’Yachad, or Together, alliance led by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid is projected to finish third with 14 or 15 seats.
Other opposition parties include the Democrats, led by former general Yair Golan, and former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beytenu.
The three surveys project Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious bloc winning 50 seats, while the opposition bloc is forecast to secure between 52 and 56.
Palestinian-led parties are projected to win a combined 14 to 16 seats.
The figures suggest that neither Netanyahu nor Eisenkot has a clear path to the 61-seat majority needed to form a government.
Winning the largest number of seats does not automatically determine who becomes prime minister.
President Isaac Herzog will consult the elected parties before assigning the task of forming a government to the lawmaker considered most likely to command a parliamentary majority.
Netanyahu, 77, is seeking another term after serving as prime minister for more than 18 years across three separate periods.
His campaign has focused heavily on national security, portraying his experience and military policies as essential to confronting regional threats.
However, he faces criticism over his government’s failure to prevent the Oct. 7 attacks, its handling of subsequent conflicts and its opposition to establishing an independent state commission of inquiry into the security failures.
Netanyahu is also standing trial on corruption charges, which he denies, and faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
His potential coalition partners include far-right parties led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, alongside the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties.
Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have advocated expanding illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, rejected Palestinian statehood and encouraged Palestinians to leave Gaza.
The ultra-Orthodox parties have meanwhile faced mounting criticism over demands to preserve military-service exemptions for religious students as the Israeli military struggles with personnel shortages after years of conflict.
Eisenkot offers change in leadership, no major shift in security issues
Eisenkot, 66, served as chief of the Israeli military from 2015 to 2019 and joined Netanyahu’s emergency government following the Oct. 7 attacks.
He later left the government after criticizing Netanyahu’s management of the Gaza offensive and the absence of a clear political strategy.
His son was killed while serving with the Israeli military in Gaza in December 2023.
Eisenkot has campaigned on government accountability, political stability and restoring public confidence in state institutions.
He supports establishing an official inquiry into the Oct. 7 security failures and ending broad military-service exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men.
Despite positioning himself as an alternative to Netanyahu, Eisenkot maintains similar positions on several major security issues.
He opposes establishing a fully sovereign Palestinian state under current conditions and says Hamas’ military capabilities and rule in Gaza must be dismantled.
The election therefore presents voters with competing approaches to leadership, governance, judicial independence and relations with far-right parties, even as the two leading candidates share positions on key security issues.
The Joint List and Ra’am, the principal parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, could play a decisive role if neither major bloc secures 61 seats.
Polls project the Joint List winning around nine seats and Ra’am securing between five and seven.
An Eisenkot-led government could require support from one or both Palestinian-led parties, either through formal coalition participation or outside parliamentary backing.
Such an arrangement would face political obstacles.
Lieberman has rejected joining a government dependent on Palestinian-led parties, while other opposition figures have been reluctant to commit to such an agreement.
Netanyahu has repeatedly invoked the possibility of Palestinian-led parties influencing the next government to mobilize right-wing voters.
Coalition scenarios, possible deadlock
Several possible outcomes could emerge from Tuesday’s vote.
Netanyahu could form another government if his bloc secures enough additional seats or attracts lawmakers from outside his existing alliance.
An Eisenkot-led coalition would likely depend on an agreement involving Palestinian-led parties, defections from other camps or difficult compromises among ideologically divided opposition leaders.
A unity government involving Likud and major opposition parties is another possible arrangement, although Eisenkot and several allies have ruled out serving under Netanyahu.
If neither side assembles a majority, Netanyahu could remain caretaker prime minister during prolonged coalition negotiations, potentially leading to another election.
The performance of smaller parties polling near the 3.25% electoral threshold could prove decisive. Parties that fail to meet the threshold win no seats, potentially weakening their political allies and shifting the balance of power between the competing blocs.
Exit polls are expected immediately after voting ends at 10 pm local time Tuesday.
Initial official results will begin emerging overnight, although counting ballots from military personnel, hospitals, prisons and other special voting arrangements could take several days.
Official results are scheduled to be published by Nov. 4, after which coalition negotiations could continue for weeks.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objecting.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
Candidate of the Students’ List celebrate on stage along with staff members after polls closed in the parliamentary election in Belgrade, Serbia, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Ph – Copyright AP Photo
This is not simply a change of government. It is the collapse of a political order that has defined Serbia since 2012.
Serbia’s elections have produced a result that will almost certainly be remembered as one of the biggest political turning points in the country’s modern history. The Student List has won a landslide victory and, with 140 of the 250 seats in parliament, secured an outright majority. The Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), until now the country’s dominant political force, has won 104 seats and, for the first time in almost 14 years, is heading into opposition.
…
Since the Serbian Progressive Party came to power, Aleksandar Vučić and his political bloc have exercised almost complete dominance over Serbia’s political life. The SNS controlled the executive branch, enjoyed large parliamentary majorities, dominated local politics and, through an extensive network of political and institutional alliances, largely determined the boundaries of political competition in the country. For more than a decade, opposition parties repeatedly tried to break that dominance, but without success.
…
The Student List has transformed itself from a movement born out of months of student protests into the country’s dominant political force, turning what began as a social revolt into electoral legitimacy. In doing so, the student movement has achieved what Serbia’s traditional opposition parties failed to accomplish for more than a decade: it has directly broken Aleksandar Vučić’s political monopoly.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva speaks after winning the presidential runoff election, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, beating Flávio Bolsonaro. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters
Leftist incumbent Lula says unprecedented comeback was a ‘defeat for denialism’ as Bolsonaro refuses to accept election result
With 100% of votes counted the 80-year-old leftist received 4.4m votes more than Bolsonaro, with a 51.79% share to his 45-year-old rival’s 48.21%. However, soon after Brazil’s electoral authority confirmed Lula’s victory, Bolsonaro refused to concede defeat and asked for the results to be annulled.
Lula narrowly lost the first round of the election to Bolsonaro in early October, casting his political future into doubt and plunging progressive Brazilians into three weeks of despair. Never, since the return of democracy in the 1980s, has the first round runner-up won the second vote.
But Lula did precisely that on Sunday, prompting joyous scenes on the streets of São Paulo, where he had been following events, and at the hotel where he was watching the count.
Addressing a packed crowd of ecstatic supporters in a São Paulo conference hall, Lula said: “We are going to change the way that this country is governed … This election was a defeat for denialism … I want to thank God and to thank you, Brazilian men and women of this country … it was democracy that made this happen.”
‘So let’s all of us commit to stopping the sleep-walking into a new form of Nazism and by acting together, in unity, we can challenge their narrative’
SOLIDARITY campaigners came together in Cardiff on Saturday in a Unity March through a rain-soaked capital.
The Unity March was called by a coalition of organisations including CND Cymru, the National Education Union Cymru, PCS Cymru and Together Cymru to bring communities together in the face of far-right attacks.
In his address, Your Party leader Jeremy Corbyn thanked the marchers for the solidarity they were showing to the Palestinian people.
He said: “I reckon that between one and two million people in Britain have either attended demonstrations, gone to local events, signed petitions, lobbied their local MP or done something to support the Palestinian people.
“That is almost unprecedented for international solidarity in this country, so well done each and every one of you.”
…
Former Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood spoke about the undercover ITV documentary on Reform UK.
“Many people saw on their TV screens this week what the mainstream far right have been carefully trying to hide,” she said. “We saw elected councillors and officials using language, arguments and imagery similar to that used by the Nazis and turning racism into a badge of honour.
“This language, these attitudes of superiority, this lack of empathy is what led, almost a century ago, to concentration camps.
“So let’s all of us commit to stopping the sleep-walking into a new form of Nazism and by acting together, in unity, we can challenge their narrative and their destination,” she said.
Nigel Farage blames the Muzzies.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
‘So let’s all of us commit to stopping the sleep-walking into a new form of Nazism and by acting together, in unity, we can challenge their narrative’
