The Israeli military commander accused of ordering the killing of Hind Rajab has been on holiday in the US – prompting calls for his arrest.
The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) filed a request to the US Department of Justice on 19 October to prosecute Sean Glass, who they accuse of war crimes and genocide in Gaza.
Glass recently uploaded photos and videos to social media from New York’s Central Park and Times Square, as well as an ice hockey game at Madison Square Gardens.
The foundation alleged that Glass commanded the “Vampire Empire” company of the Israeli military’s 52nd Armored Battalion, whose troops were implicated in the 2024 killing of five-year-old Rajab, alongside members of her family and paramedics sent to rescue them.
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.
French MEP Rima Hassan appears at Paris criminal court on charges of glorifying terrorism online. Abdul Saboor/Reuters
‘The trial of the century for freedom of expression.’
For the last three years, Rima Hassan has watched in horror as thousands of people have been killed in her family’s homeland. The French jurist and La France Insoumise (LFI) MEP, who was born stateless in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, is one of France’s most outspoken critics of both Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the complicity of Europe’s governments.
Now, she could be sent to prison over a post on social media.
In March, Hassan posted a quotation on X/Twitter attributed to Kōzō Okamoto, a member of the Japanese Red Army who took part in a 1972 attack on an Israeli airport in which 26 people were killed.
“I gave my youth to the Palestinian cause,” Okamoto’s quotation read. “As long as there is oppression, resistance will not only be a right, but a duty.”
Far-right National Rally politician Matthias Renault, interior minister Laurent Nuñez and two French pro-Israel lobby groups reported Hassan to prosecutors for apologie du terrorisme (the glorification of terrorism) – a criminal offence. Hassan denied the charges and said her main goal had been to share a quotation about the “philosophy of resistance”, and that she couldn’t be accused of glorifying terrorism for doing so.
Hassan’s trial began on 19 October. If found guilty, she could be sentenced to up to seven years in prison and fined €100,000 under French law. Her situation, she said, is the latest in a series of legal and political battles in France over solidarity with Palestine.
“People who stand in solidarity with Palestine are labelled as terrorists because it [this label] is the only instrument that allows them to silence concrete opposition and activism,” Hassan told Novara Media ahead of her trial.
This isn’t the first time the French state has brought the full force of its institutional machinery against Hassan. 22 legal proceedings have been initiated against her in the last two years in connection with her political views (six have been closed by prosecutors without questioning, 13 after questioning and three remain open). In September, a separate trial in relation to two social media posts from 2025 was adjourned.
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.
Artwork: Filippo Marra/Novara Media | Photo: Roger Harris/House of Commons
‘They will not shut me up.’
…
Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich South, revealed that he had received a letter from Palantir’s new UK senior VP, Tom Watson, warning him that the company was surveilling his activities relating to Palantir last month. Lewis described this as “very Big Brother” and an “implicit threat”.
Watson is a former minister and Labour party deputy leader who now sits in the House of Lords, alongside his Palantir job.
Lewis told Novara Media the Mosley letters in June indicate that Palantir was panicking as the Starmer administration crumbled. “They put all their eggs in one basket with Starmer, and then the writing on the wall was that he wasn’t going to be around much longer.”
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
A view of the heavily damaged city infrastructure and destroyed buildings while displaced Palestinians struggle to survive in makeshift tents along the coastline of Gaza City, Gaza, Palestine, on October 07, 2026. [Ali Jadallah – Anadolu Agency]
Repeated displacement during three years of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has left shelters across the enclave increasingly deteriorated, while restrictions and funding shortages are hampering preparations for winter, a senior UN migration official said late Friday.
Karl Baker, regional crisis coordinator for the Gaza response at the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said some Palestinians have been displaced as many as eight times, damaging or destroying tents and other temporary shelters each time families are forced to move.
“When they move, all those goods that they currently have or did have either get destroyed, or they have to seek new shelter,” Baker told UN News.
Even basic materials such as tarpaulins need to be replaced roughly every six months, but humanitarian agencies have been unable to bring replacements into Gaza at the required scale, he said.
Baker said agencies now need to move beyond temporary solutions toward more durable transitional shelters.
Materials needed for stronger roofing, concrete floors, and more substantial walls, however, are affected by Israel’s “dual-use” restrictions over security concerns.
“After three years of war, we do need to improve the level of shelter which is inside, and move further away from temporary and more toward transitional type of shelter,” he said.
Baker said IOM remains in constant contact with Israeli authorities, but some durable materials continue to be denied entry over security concerns.
He also cited funding shortages and disruptions to international shipping as obstacles, saying IOM relies on suppliers in countries including China, India, and Pakistan.
Although funding has begun to arrive, it remains insufficient to meet the needs of an estimated 1.8 million to 1.9 million people requiring shelter assistance, he added.
Baker said only around 30% of Gaza is currently accessible to most of the population, forcing displaced Palestinians into increasingly crowded and often flood-prone areas.
“The 30% in which they currently live is a very large displacement camp,” he said.
With winter rains already beginning, humanitarian organizations are working to address flood-prone areas and deploy water pumps, but Baker warned that getting displaced Palestinians through the winter would be the biggest challenge.
Earlier this month, IOM said available and incoming shelter supplies covered only 17% of Gaza’s winter needs, while more than half of tents and makeshift shelters were in poor condition.
A ceasefire has been in effect since Oct. 10, 2025, but Israeli attacks and restrictions on the entry of humanitarian and shelter supplies have continued.
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.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Israeli soldiers are deployed at Erez border with heavy weapons and military vehicles in Erez, Israel on February 29, 2024. [Mostafa Alkharouf – Anadolu Agency]
A former head of Israeli military intelligence has said that since 7 October 2023, Israel has been run by an unwritten security doctrine that writes off the US as a declining power, rejects peace as a strategic goal and makes war a permanent feature of national life.
Hayman says the new concept has never been written down or presented to the public. Even so, it now “inform[s] decision-making and dictate[s] Israel’s approach to security”. He argues the shift goes beyond military planning and points to “a change in Israel’s national identity”.
The most striking principle is the doctrine’s view of Washington. Hayman says it treats the US as a “declining power” and holds that “excessive adherence to restrictions imposed on Israel by a US administration is dangerous”.
Under this thinking, the US, “given its ongoing social and political shifts, will soon abandon Israel in any event”. Dependence on Washington is also seen as exposing Israel “to the influence of a progressive American value system that is incompatible with Israel’s Jewish character”. Cutting ties with the US is therefore “not only inevitable, but essential to Israel’s independence and the resilience of its Jewish national identity”.
Hayman rejects that view. He points out that Israel is a small country with few natural resources and depends heavily on trade with the rest of the world. For that reason, he says, the country’s security chiefs have always believed it needs a major power on its side, because Israel “cannot sustain an autarkic defence economy isolated from the world”. In other words, Israel is incapable of producing everything it needs for its own defence.
Hayman questions whether a relationship with Washington based only on mutual interest would be enough to protect Israel. He also asks whether cutting Israeli science and arms industries off from international partnerships, such as the EU’s Horizon research programme, would leave Israel facing “technological stagnation and diplomatic isolation”.
Hayman identifies four other major principles behind the new doctrine. Taken together, they describe a state that puts ethnic identity before democracy, sees peace as a trap and treats war as normal.
The first is that Israel’s Jewish identity comes before its democracy. Under the doctrine, the state must stay Jewish “even at the cost of eroding its democratic values”. Hayman asks whether Israel can still call itself “Jewish and democratic” if it pursues a policy of curbing the civil rights of its Palestinian citizens, who make up about a fifth of the population.
The second principle rejects peace altogether. The doctrine holds that “a meaningful peace agreement is unattainable in the Middle East” and assumes that “any arrangement with Arab actors is temporary and deceptive”.
The doctrine treats peace deals as “merely technical and temporary arrangements”. Peace has no value of its own and is only “a means of achieving other policy objectives”. Peace itself is dismissed as “a naive concept” belonging to the left-wing “peace camp”, and set against “security”, which belongs to the right.
The third is contempt for Israel’s Arab neighbours as states. The doctrine views most of them as “not genuine nation-states, but collections of tribes and ethnic groups lacking a shared history”. It therefore sees their collapse as “a natural process” that Israel can manage and “should even encourage”.
The fourth is that war is Israel’s normal condition, not an exception. Preventive war is preferred, and the “constant presence” of war is considered “an asset to national security”. The paper quotes the slogan “Silence is filth” to sum up the view that seeking peace is a sign of weakness.
The doctrine goes further on territory. It calls for “forward defence” zones and civilian settlements in the occupied West Bank and in security zones inside Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It rules out a Palestinian state and dismisses the Palestinian national movement as “an inauthentic Western narrative”.
Hayman says the doctrine draws its power from never being stated openly. It works “as an unwritten concept revealed through practice, rather than as a government’s declared policy”. He calls for a public debate on whether it is “a necessary adaptation” to Israel’s security situation or “an expression of a fundamental, unchecked shift in the state’s identity”.
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.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
