Palestinian groups condemn prison footage as humiliation and intimidation.
Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir visits the site of a rocket attack on March 1, 2026 in Tel Aviv, Israe[Erik Marmor/Getty Images]
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has posted footage from a prison holding Palestinian women on social media, boasting that he is responsible for the harsh conditions imposed on them.
The video, posted on Ben-Gvir’s X account on Sunday, shows him entering a section holding female prisoners and confronting them about their complaints regarding detention conditions.
One prisoner tells him: “This is our third day without showering. We are not receiving medical treatment, and our clothes are not clean.”
Ben-Gvir responds: “The good conditions in the prisons are over. This is the current situation, and I am directly responsible for everything. I am pleased with these conditions.”
In a post accompanying the video, the far-right minister wrote that the “whining” of prisoners over their conditions would not influence him, arguing that Israeli captives held in Gaza had not enjoyed adequate conditions.
“I’ll continue to lead a policy of the bare minimum of the minimum,” he said.
Palestinian groups condemn footage
Gaza’s Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs condemned Ben-Gvir’s visit, saying the filming of female prisoners amounted to intimidation and humiliation.
It said his entry into the women’s section of the facility was “not an inspection visit”, but rather a “political spectacle and public incitement against the female prisoners” aimed at intimidating them and breaking their will in front of cameras.
The Palestinian agency said Ben-Gvir’s remarks showed that conditions inside Israeli prisons were part of what it described as a systematic policy of retaliation based on “humiliation, torture, starvation and deprivation”.
An Israeli police officer outside Ofer military prison near Jerusalem, October 13, 2025 [Mahmoud Illean/AP Photo]
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society also condemned the footage, telling Al Jazeera that Ben-Gvir’s filming and publication of the women constituted “an assault on their human dignity”.
It said hundreds of testimonies from released detainees and prisoners had documented serious abuses inside Israeli prisons and detention facilities.
Push for harsher conditions
Since becoming national security minister in late 2022, Ben-Gvir has pushed for tougher conditions for Palestinian prisoners, including reducing food and water supplies, restricting family visits, limiting shower times and removing privileges inside prison sections.
He has also overseen the transfer of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners between facilities.
Ben-Gvir has previously rejected efforts to improve conditions for prisoners. In 2025, he publicly opposed an Israeli court ruling requiring authorities to ensure Palestinian prisoners received adequate food, insisting that harsh conditions should continue.
According to the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, about 9,400 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli prisons, including 88 women and more than 350 children.
Police arrest protesters at a sit-in opposing the U.K. government’s crackdown on Palestine Action in London on April 11, 2026.Photo: Andrea Domeniconi/LightRocket via Getty Images
When police in Kent, United Kingdom, arrested American peace activist Max Geller in 2021 for chaining himself to a van parked in front of an Israeli-owned weapons factory, he knew he might be jailed and face charges for his protest.
What he didn’t realize was that he could be hit with U.S. sanctions five years later for his past ties to a so-called terrorist organization.
The Trump administration on Wednesday announced sanctions against the U.K.-based anti-genocide protest group Palestine Action, which organized the 2021 demonstration and dozens of subsequent actions at U.K. factories owned by Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems. The goal, in the U.S. government’s words, is to “protect Americans from the risks posed by far-left terrorism.”
“A major threshold has been crossed,” said Geller, who was previously Palestine Action’s spokesperson but left the group in 2025, when the British government made membership punishable by 14 years in prison. “They’re now treating regular Americans who want to effectively oppose genocide as terrorists.”
The specific parameters of the U.S. sanctions are not yet clear, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pledged the government would “continue to cut the financial lifelines of these groups until they are eliminated.” Sanctioned groups and individuals cannot receive funds, goods, or services from American people or business — meaning they’re cut off from both the U.S. banking system and from any donations from Americans who might want to support them. They can have an isolating global effect: Financial institutions outside the U.S. that do business with American companies are often hesitant to affiliate with sanctioned individuals.
As a result, the sanctions could severely curtail their organizing abilities — and restrict their ability to try to stop the flow of weapons that Israel is using to carry out its ongoing genocide in Gaza.
“We are facing unprecedented attacks on dissent by the same powers that are committing genocide in Gaza,” said Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, in an interview with The Intercept. “We are at a point in history where it’s extremely crucial to continue to resist and grow in our movement, rather than back down and to adapt and become less reliant on institutions which are essentially controlled by the powers we’re fighting against.”
While the new U.S. sanctions are a part of a long history of post-9/11 policies in its so-called war on terror, the U.K. government has made itself notorious for its specific draconian crackdown on pro-Palestine dissent. Last year, as Palestine Action members began to face terror charges in court for their demonstrations, the U.K. government proscribed the group as a terrorist organization. The organization in the U.K. immediately ceased operations after the terror proscription. Dozens of members in the U.K. are facing criminal trials for their actions at Elbit weapons factories, and more than 1,200 people have been arrested and charged under the U.K.’s Terror Act for attending rallies merely supporting the group.
Reporting from The Telegraph, which first reported the sanctions, suggested Ammori and fellow co-founder Richard Barnard would face lifetime bans from traveling to the U.S., and that British citizens who continue to support the group would be met with harsh visa restrictions.
Geller, who lives in London, wondered if his bank accounts would be frozen, along with his Venmo and PayPal accounts. He said he normally travels back and forth between the U.S. and U.K. to visit his elderly parents — and the thought of doing so now “suddenly has become scary.”
“They want people scared to even think about supporting or engaging in this kind of work,” Geller said. “This is about materially hurting Palestine.”
The new sanctions against Palestine Action, which were announced alongside sanctions against Autistici/Inventati and Masar Badil, were the latest attack in President Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign to suppress advocacy for Palestinian rights and opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Last year, Trump issued sanctions against the International Criminal Court after the court ordered war crime arrest warrants for Israel’s leaders. Those sanctions targeted people and organizations that work with the court, such as U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, who has been outspoken about the crippling effects of the sanctions. The administration has also sanctioned long-standing Palestinian human rights organizations for their work with the ICC.
“The Trump administration is once again weaponizing counterterrorism authorities to criminalize Palestinian political organizing and solidarity,” said Raed Jarrar, advocacy director with Democracy for the Arab World Now, which last month sued to reverse the Trump sanctions on the ICC. “Sanctions are supposed to target genuine threats to national security, not serve as a political weapon against movements challenging Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”
The vagueness of the new sanctions is meant to strike fear in anyone who is considering support for the sanctioned group, civil liberties advocates told The Intercept. Does a social media post expressing support violate sanctions? How about hosting a talk with an individual in the group?
“Treasury hasn’t been clear on where the line is, and that’s part of the chilling effect,” said Xiangnong (George) Wang, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute who specializes in U.S. sanctions. “In sanctioning Palestine Action, I think their target is more broadly a community of people and groups, including Americans who engage with Palestine Action.”
The sanctions also follow the government’s case against pro-Palestine organizer Fergie Chambers, a past supporter of Palestine Action who was detained for extradition in Spain last month on alleged charges of funding terror groups. The humanitarian aid group Sameer Project, which provided meals and services to Palestinians in Gaza, previously received financial support from Chambers and this month announced it had paused operations in Gaza due to lack of funds.
The repression, said Ammori, has “expanded much more overtly to be used to crush any type of dissent.”
Despite the U.K.’s crackdown on Palestine Action, support for the group and Palestine remains energetic. Rallies in solidarity with Palestine Action and Palestinian rights continue to sprout up across the country even as the government has arrested at least 3,000 people for simple actions such as holding signs that read “I support Palestine Action.” And last year, Elbit closed its facility in Bristol after being targeted by Palestine Action, days before the government outlawed the group.
In the U.S., the group formerly known as Palestine Action U.S., now called Unity Fields as of August 2024, no longer has ties to the U.K.-based group. Though Palestine Action in the U.K. is dormant, secretive cells of Palestine Action are based throughout the U.S. and are continuing to carry out actions. Other Palestine Action cells are targeting the Israeli weapons supply chain in other countries such as Spain, Germany, Ireland, and Poland.
“We have a responsibility to create a huge dent in the Israeli war machine,” Ammori said. “They need to be profitable to operate, and if they’re operating, they’re killing Palestinians — it’s really as simple as that.”
There are growing fears that Israel may be creating the conditions for local atrocities in Gaza “reminiscent of the Sabra and Shatila massacre,” according to a report by the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.
During the 1982 massacre, Israeli-allied Lebanese Phalangist forces slaughtered up to 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians as Israeli troops surrounded the Beirut refugee camps and oversaw the killing.
In a report publish on Wednesday Haaretz warned that the Israeli army is expanding its use of mercenaries, criminal gangs and drug dealers to commit “war crimes” on Israel’s behalf in Gaza.
Based on testimony from Israeli soldiers, UN reports and satellite imagery, the investigation found that increasingly well-armed collaborator militias have expelled Palestinians from their homes and carried out operations across Gaza.
Israel has trained at least five militia groups, and potentially a sixth, operating from heavily fortified bases inside Israeli-occupied areas of the enclave.
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One Israeli soldier described how the state, army and Shin Bet intelligence service send armed and “trained militias to commit war crimes, and I’m the one who has to protect them during their operations so they don’t get hurt”.
Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice, while the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
At least one militia armed and supported by Israel had links to the Islamic State group. Its leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, was killed by Hamas in December 2025.
Many Palestinians celebrated Abu Shabab’s death, while his own family had renounced him as a traitor for collaborating with Israel.
“But the militia project he came to symbolize continues to evolve and expand – particularly since the October 2025 ceasefire was announced,” Haaretz reported.
Another militia leader, Shawqi Abu Nasira, openly acknowledged his collaboration with Israel in a video posted online.
“I made the decision to liberate the land from Hamas. If people say that makes me a collaborator, then I’m a collaborator.”
The vast majority of Palestinians view collaboration with Israel as treason and betrayal, regardless of their position on Hamas.
‘They entered every structure, looted everything they could get their hands on, came out with piles of stuff – and then burned down the house’
– Unnamed Israeli soldier
Israel has also built infrastructure for the gangs amid Gaza’s widespread destruction. Near a militia base in Shujaiya, Israeli forces levelled a large Palestinian cemetery and replaced it with an extensive training ground.
The relationship between the gangs and the Israeli military has become increasingly intertwined. Fighters roam freely around Israeli army outposts, according to soldiers who spoke to Haaretz.
“The gunmen stage displays of force, film them and upload the footage to their Facebook pages for propaganda and recruitment purposes,” the investigation said.
Israel supplies the gangs with weapons and provides artillery and drone support during their operations.
‘Reminiscent of Sabra and Shatila ‘
The mercenaries also serve another purpose. They attack Palestinians struggling to survive Israel’s genocide, drive families from their homes, loot their belongings and burn their houses.
Israeli ministers have repeatedly called for making life in Gaza unbearable as part of efforts to ethnically cleanse the enclave and replace its Palestinian population with Jewish settlers.
In one account, Israeli soldiers said the mercenaries arrived in pickup trucks before “they just ran and shot at people”.
“They entered every structure, looted everything they could get their hands on, came out with piles of stuff – and then burned down the house,” one unnamed Israeli soldier said.
Boys fly a kite against the backdrop of smoke rising from the Gath shelter for displaced Palestinians, after an Israeli air strike in Gaza, on 31 January (AFP/Bashar Taleb)
Reports that Israel has used local gangs to outsource parts of its strategy to ethnically cleanse Gaza are not new. Their activities have been documented for more than a year.
The soldiers’ testimony, however, provides further evidence that the mercenaries now function as an “operational arm” of the Israeli army and Shin Bet.
Israel continues to arm criminal gangs while demanding that Hamas disarm and opposing the formation of any independent Palestinian security force in Gaza. The arrangement allows Israel to use the militias against anyone it labels a Hamas member while unleashing them against ordinary Palestinians.
Hamas sources told Haaretz that they would not surrender their “defensive weapons” while the militias remain armed and receive Israeli support, because the groups would seek to target them.
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Western media, by employing double standards, censorship, deceptive language, amplifying Israeli lies and dehumanizing Palestinians, facilitates the genocide in Gaza.
Chris Hedges ScheerPost
The Western media manufactures consent for genocide. It normalizes Israel’s decades-long military occupation and apartheid. It erases Israel’s flagrant violations of international law. It perpetuates the fallacy of Israeli victimhood. It betrays, discredits and demonizes the work of Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza, at least 220 of whom have been killed by Israel between Oct. 7, 2023, and August 2025. It supinely accepts draconian Israeli censorship. It acquiesces with tepid letters of protest at Israel’s refusal to allow foreign reporters in Gaza — an effort by Israel to mask its war crimes. It amplifies Israeli lies, from beheaded babies to widespread sexual assault of Israeli women on Oct. 7, to obfuscate the truth.
When writing about Gaza, verbs are in the passive tense. There is no subject. No one is accountable. Genocide, it seems, is an act of God. No different from an earthquake or tsunami. Clichés and opaque adjectives such as the “cycle of violence” or “clashes” distort and falsify reality.
“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought,” George Orwell warned.
Terms such as “genocide,” “atrocity,” “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied territories” magically disappear from media reports on Palestinians, whose resistance is routinely described as “savage” and “barbaric.” New York Times reporters are instructed by editors to avoid terms such as “Palestine,” “genocide,” “carnage,” “refugee camp,” “slaughter” and “massacre,” when referencing Palestinians.
The media slavishly regurgitates what Israel feeds it. Saturation bombing becomes “surgical air strikes.” Israel’s weaponization of famine becomes a “food shortage.” The killing of unarmed civilians — including children — becomes “clashes.” The hilltop fortress-like compounds of Jewish colonists becomes “neighborhoods.” Extrajudicial assassination of a journalist or a doctor becomes “died.”
Genocide, referred to as the “Israel-Hamas war” is justified as “self-defense,” part of the mantra of Israel’s “right to defend itself.” When schools, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, mosques, churches and other civilian targets are obliterated, they are labeled “Hamas command centers” or targeted because Hamas is “using civilians as human shields” — something Israel does routinely, when the army binds detained Palestinians and forces them to enter potentially booby-trapped buildings and tunnels ahead of Israeli troops.
When Israelis are held by Hamas, they are “hostages,” even if they serve in the military. When Palestinians — including children — are held without charges or trial and disappeared into Israeli detention centers, where torture is “widespread” and “systematic,” they are “prisoners.”
Missile attacks on tent cities or hospitals are blamed on Palestinian armed groups firing errant rockets. If Israel acknowledges the attacks — which very rarely happens — they are described as a “tragic mistake.”
Civil institutions in Gaza are characterized as “Hamas-run” to cast doubt on the veracity of what they report. The New York Times routinely qualifies announcements from the Gaza Health Ministry by noting it “does not distinguish between civilians and combatants,” masking the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians.
The result is some of the most convoluted writing in the history of journalism, including the Nov. 5, 2023 New York Times headline that reads: “Explosions Gazans Say Was Airstrike Leaves Many Casualties in Dense Neighborhood.”
“When Middle East Eye journalists Mohamed Salama and Ahmed Abu Aziz, along with Reuters photojournalist Hussam al-Masri, and freelancers Moaz Abu Taha, and Mariam Dagga — who had worked with several media outlets, including the Associated Press — were killed in a “double tap” strike — designed to kill first responders arriving to treat casualties from initial strikes — at Nasser Medical Complex, how did Western news agencies respond?” I asked in my column The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists.
“Israeli military says strikes on Gaza hospital targeted what it says was a Hamas camera,” the Associated Press reported.
“IDF claims hospital strike was aimed at Hamas camera,” announced CNN.
The camera belonged to Reuters, which said Israel was “fully aware” the news agency was filming from the hospital.
“When Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al Sharif and three other journalists were killed on Aug. 10 in their media tent near Al Shifa Hospital, how was it reported in the Western press?” I asked.
“Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” Reuters titled its story, despite the fact al-Sharif was part of a Reuters team that won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize.
The German newspaper Bild, published a front page story headlined: “Terrorist disguised as a journalist killed in Gaza.”
Mainstream media failed to describe Israel’s repeated breaches of the ceasefire with the language of violation. Instead, the coverage followed the same patterns of rationalizing Israel’s attacks and uncritically parroting Israel’s claims to justify its actions. As Palestinians continued to be killed — during a ‘ceasefire’ — and the flow of aid did not reach the level of need or what was agreed to, Western media framed these flagrant violations as ‘tests’ or ‘challenges’ to a ‘shaky ceasefire.’ As leading human rights organizations like Amnesty International warned that the genocide was, in fact, not over, legacy media continued to frame it as a war with a ‘fragile ceasefire.’
Words matter. Words justify actions. If there is no genocide, if Israel is defending itself in a war, the U.S. and Israel’s European allies have the right to provide tens of billions of dollars in military aid. If this is a war begun by Hamas on Oct. 7 then it is possible to lament the obliteration of Gaza and mass slaughter by Israel as the regrettable result of the Hamas attack.
This corruption of language is designed, as Orwell noted, to defend the indefensible:
Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.
Adam Johnson in “How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza,” examined over 12,000 articles from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN.com, Politico, Axios, USA Today, and The Associated Press, along with 5,000 TV segments aired on CNN and MSNBC. His carefully researched book is a damning indictment of the “liberal” media’s justification of the genocide.
CNN and The New York Times instructed their editors and journalists that attacks could only be attributed to Israel after confirmation from the IDF and GPS coordinates. Johnson quotes a source at CNN:
Whether it’s in the newsroom or in the field, we couldn’t credit anything to Israel unless we were held to this impossibly high bar of having to call it an “explosion,” until we geolocated the site of the explosion, sent the coordinates to the Israelis and asked them for comment.
You can see an interview with Johnson about his book at The Electronic Intifada here.
CNN journalists reporting on Israel and Palestine must submit their work for review to the network’s Jerusalem bureau prior to airing. The CNN bureau, like all news bureaus in Israel, is required to abide by restrictions imposed by Israeli military censors.
The very few Palestinians who appear on CNN and other legacy media outlets, are routinelyasked — usually before they are even permitted on air — if they “condemn” Hamas. Guests who express even tepid criticism of Israel are asked whether Israel “has a right to exist.”
No one is ever asked if they condemn Zionism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, genocide or Israel’s 100 year war on Palestine. Nor are they asked if the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves — which under international law they do, including with weapons.
Our domesticated journalists and news organizations are, as Robert Fisk pointed out, “prisoners of the language of power.” They dutifully parrot the official lexicon. This makes them not only propagandists, but accomplices to genocide.
Those who protest the genocide, including students on university campuses — many of whom are Jewish — are smeared as “Hamas supporters” and “antisemites.” Journalists ferret out Zionist students, usually found esconced in campus Hillel houses, who claim to be “fearful for their safety,” because of the protests. The media pays little attention to the rise in anti-Muslim bigotry or the repression meted out to student protestors, which includes not only police brutality and 3,000 detainments and arrests, but suspensions, probations, expulsions, withholding of diplomas and the firing of sympathetic faculty.
Slogans which call for Palestinian liberation — including “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — along with the Palestinian flag, have been criminalized.
The message is clear: Jewish lives matter. Palestinian lives do not.
“The reports of UN agencies, of respected human rights monitors, of medical journals, and of professional medical personnel, are generally treated with respect and given prominence in the mainstream media,” writes the historian Rashid Khalidi in the introduction to Robin Anderson’s book, “The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza:”
Not in this war: instead, if such sources are cited at all, equal media treatment is given to the outrageous slanders and calumnies against these organizations and individuals, smears that are produced in profusion by Israel’s legion of professional propagandists and its myriad of defenders in the US. Besides smearing critics of Israel’s genocide as supporters of Hamas or terrorist sympathizers, the main weapon in their arsenal of defamation is their systematic and outrageous misuse of the deadly accusation of antisemitism.
The massive defections of readers and viewers from mainstream media to social media platforms that do not filter news through the Israel lobby, the U.S. government or corporations, are a stark indicator of the media’s bankruptcy. The response to these defections has been “platformicide” — the use of algorithms, shadow banning, restriction of live streaming capabilities and the closing of accounts by social media giants such as Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube and TikTok, to dramatically reduce the reach of reporting on Palestine.
This censorship is part of a coordinated effort to hide the horror of the genocide from the public.
By constantly referencing Oct. 7, the Western media decontextualizes the genocide. It ignores Israel’s 19-year siege of Gaza. Oct. 7 is characterized in the Western media as “unprovoked.” Israel’s massacres of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza in the winter of 2008 and 2009, along with its attacks on Gaza in 2012, 2014 and during the Great March of Return in 2018 and 2019 are ignored.
The 1948 Nakba — when European Zionists seized more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, violently expelled 750,000 Palestinians, destroyed more than 530 Palestinian villages and killed 15,000 Palestinians — is rarely referenced. Seventy percent of those driven from their homes in 1948 were forced into Gaza.
The Zionist project is predicated on fostering historical amnesia.
“Once Hamas was established as a brutal, terrorist group whose members gleefully tortured, dismembered, and beheaded babies without conscience, no further explanation was needed,” writes Anderson in her book. “The media simply avoided reporting Israel’s history of violence and as a result, establishment media also avoided the conditions of everyday life for Palestinians.”
The fiction that there is currently a ceasefire in Gaza — Israel has killed at least 1,286 Palestinians and injured 4,257 since it supposedly went into effect — has become the excuse used by Western media to turn its back on Gaza. This genocide denial has characterized the coverage since its inception. It masks not only Israel’s crimes, but Israel’s stated intention to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians from Gaza. It effectively neuters international law. And it makes a mockery of the profession of journalism.
When the last act of ethnic cleansing happens, Western media will, I am sure, continue to bombard us with Israeli agitprop, euphemisms and clichés.
It will justify the genocide until the end.
NOTE TO SCHEERPOST READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, best-selling author & activist
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Human Rights Watch calls for sanctions and the suspension of military aid to Israel, as dozens of Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank are at risk of erasure.
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Israeli settlers put up Israeli flags on a Palestinian structure on the outskirts of Beit Sahour, on August 14, 2026 [File: Mahmoud Illean/AP]
Dozens of Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank are at risk of erasure due to escalating attacks by Israeli settlers, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.
Increased settler attacks, along with the rapid expansion of Israeli settlements illegal under international law, are driving a wave of forced displacement of Palestinians, the US-based rights group said in a report released on Thursday.
The report accuses Israeli authorities of arming, funding and granting impunity to settlers to carry out the attacks.
Israeli settler violence has been growing since the current government took office in December 2022.
But attacks spiked in the first two months of the US and Israel’s war on Iran, with killings including those of children, assaults, sexual violence, physical and mental abuse, arbitrary detention, arson, property demolition and theft among the reported abuses, the report adds.
Maximum land and minimum Palestinians
“The Israeli government and the settlers share the same goal of maximum land and minimum Palestinians, with the authorities not only failing to stop settler violence, but actively enabling it,” Sarah Sanbar, the acting Israel and Palestine researcher at Human Rights Watch, said.
“Settlers shoot, attack, and expel Palestinians from their land, and the state provides the weapons, the legal cover, and the budget to do it,” she added.
HRW investigated settler attacks in seven Palestinian West Bank communities in April and May, including Al-Mughayyir, Mikhmas and Taybeh, in Ramallah governorate; Jalud and Qaryut, in Nablus governorate; and Khirbet Hamsa and Muarrajat East, in the Jordan Valley.
The report found that, sometimes, armed settlers acted alongside Israeli military units or with soldiers standing by yet failing to intervene, during raids on Palestinian residents and property, contributing to a pattern of forced displacement.
Rising forced displacement
It said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) research found more Palestinians were forcibly displaced by settler attacks, demolitions and evictions in the first four months of this year than in the whole of 2025.
OCHA found that 107 communities, comprising 5,900 Palestinians, had been completely or partially displaced as a result of settler violence since January 2023. It also found that the Israeli military expelled another 32,000 Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank since January 2025, essentially emptying the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps.
Human Rights Watch says the attacks and lack of state protection have created a coercive environment that leaves many Palestinians saying they have no choice but to leave their homes.
Targeted sanctions
The report recommended targeted sanctions on those implicated in ongoing abuses, the suspension of weapons transfers to Israel and a trade ban with illegal settlements, and urged countries to consider suspending preferential trade agreements with Israel.
“The impunity Israeli authorities accord settlers stems directly from the free pass Israel’s allies and donors have granted it,” Sanbar said.
“Israel and the governments that give it a blank check share responsibility and should be held to account,” she said.
Israel has created a fictitious think tank as part of a digital influence campaign designed to feed pro-Israel narratives into artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, Responsible Statecraft (RS) reported on 17 August.
US public relations firm Piro, Inc. received $900,000 from the Israeli Government Advertising Agency to create the Hanover Institute, which uses AI to write reports painting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and colonization of the West Bank in a positive light.
Since 6 August, the Hanover Institute has issued over 100 reports, which are deliberately crafted to influence AI chatbots to use its content when drafting answers for users.
“At first glance, the Hanover Institute for Public Policy looks like a new think tank dedicated to Israel/Palestine … But the Hanover Institute is not a real think tank,” RS wrote.
Hanover issues think-tank-style reports on questions such as “Does AIPAC Use Dark Money in Elections?” and “Is Israel Carrying out a Deliberate Campaign of Starvation in Gaza?”
However, the reports do not list any authors and include a small disclaimer at the bottom of the webpage that notes the institute was created on behalf of the Israeli government.
The reports include footnotes and are written in a neutral tone, making them attractive as content used by AI chatbots such as Claude or Gemini, a practice known as “LLM poisoning.”
Piro’s website openly states that it creates “content engineered for how LLMs evaluate credibility,” a method it describes as “AI Story Optimization.”
Many of the reports have titles that mimic neutral questions that chatbot users might ask about Israel and Palestine, such as “What Caused the Displacement of Palestinians in 1948?” or “What is the Current Situation in the Gaza Strip?”
The articles then use Israeli sources to present a pro-Israel perspective in answering the question.
An article entitled “Is the IDF the World’s Most Moral Army?” cites a 2022 poll that found that 47 percent of Israeli Jews believed that statement.
Another report tries to refute the findings of a UNICEF report stating that 90 percent of water and other infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed in Gaza.
Many reports link to articles claiming that anti-Semitism is on the rise, a tactic meant to deflect from Israel’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
RS used GPTZero software to analyze 12 Hanover Institute articles and determine if the were written by a human author or by AI. GPTZero flagged 11 of the articles as AI-written with “high confidence.” It flagged the final article as AI-written with “moderate confidence.”
Piro co-founder Daniel Rosenberg boasted on LinkedIn about his firm’s ability to influence chatbots:
“When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity about your category, an answer comes back in one confident paragraph. Most brands have no idea how that paragraph gets built. So we spent months reverse-engineering it … At Piro, we already knew how to build stories that move people. The question was: how do you make sure AI knows how to tell them?”
Public opinion in the US has grown increasingly negative toward Israel, which relies on US military aid to wage its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing campaign in south Lebanon.
According to a recent Pew Research Poll, 60 percent of people in the US have a very or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel, up nearly 20 points since 2022.
Israeli forces have killed at least 73,000 Palestinians since the genocide began in 2023, with some estimates suggesting over 200,000 Palestinians have been killed.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio makes opening statement during an event at the US Department of State on July 16, 2026, in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
“When you are shameless, contemptuous of international law, and morally bankrupt, you boast of disgrace as though it were an achievement,” said one critic.
In announcing the sanctions, Rubio described the ICC as “a corrupt and fatally politicized” institution that has supposedly “abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.”
Rubio said the ICC “has repeatedly attempt to assert authority over… the United States and other countries that have not consented to its jurisdiction,” which he said “sets a dangerous precedent for all nations.”
In addition to sanctioning Akane, Rubio said the US would also be sanctioning ICC senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Saye.
While Rubio did not mention what specific actions the ICC has taken to warrant such sanctions, a Tuesday report in The Guardian noted that Saye was charged with investigating war crimes allegedly committed by Israel during its years-long assault on Gaza.
The Trump administration had previouslysanctioned then-ICC prosecutor Karim Khan—who obtained arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—and an additional eight ICC officials.
The social media account of Drop Site News accused Rubio of attacking the court solely to protect Netanyahu from war crimes prosecution, pointing out that “there is currently not a single American citizen under indictment, investigation, or facing an arrest warrant” from the ICC.
The sanctions earned the praise of the Israeli American Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which accused the ICC of conducting “politically motivated investigations and prosecutions targeting America and Israel.”
Rutgers Law School professor Adil Haque said the ICC sanctions showed the US was acting like a “rogue government” and engaged in “deranged behavior.”
Michael Karanicolas, law professor at Dalhousie University, didn’t just point fingers at the US over the sanctions, but at US allies who have sat back as international institutions have come under assault.
“I’m no longer surprised by the Trump administration’s efforts to destroy the ICC,” wrote Karanicolas. “What I keep waiting for is any response from Canada or the European governments who ostensibly still believe in international law to defend these institutions.”
War correspondent and international political analyst Elijah Magnier delivered a withering rebuke of Rubio’s announcement.
“When you are shameless, contemptuous of international law, and morally bankrupt,” wrote Magnier, “you boast of disgrace as though it were an achievement.”
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Ben Gvir made the comments when discussing the reduction in Israeli attacks in Gaza, though the IDF hasn’t fully stopped its strikes and continues to violate the US-backed October 2025 ceasefire deal.
“It’s no secret, I disagree with the prime minister,” Ben Gvir said on a podcast hosted by Rom Braslavski, who was previously held captive in Gaza, according to The Associated Press.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir joins pro-settlement Israelis on a march towards the Gaza Strip near Kibbutz Zikim and Israel’s border with Gaza, in southern Israel, July 19, 2026. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
“I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night. Not just those who pose an immediate threat — there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people,” he added.
Ben Gvir, leader of the Jewish Power party, is known as an outspoken proponent of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the establishment of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory, views that he reaffirmed in the podcast interview.
“I see all of Gaza as ours,” he said. “Settlements not just in Gush Katif but throughout Gaza, encouraging as much emigration as possible, sending them to their countries, and for the terrorists, no emigration, nothing, just to kill them one by one.”
While often portrayed as a fringe figure, Ben Gvir has significant influence in the government and holds a powerful position, as he oversees police and prisons, where nearly 100 Palestinians have died since October 7, 2026, due to increasingly worse conditions, which Ben Gvir has boasted about implementing. He is now pushing a plan to create crocodile-filled moats around Israeli prisons.
Displaced Palestinians, including many children, wait in long queues to receive hot meals distributed by a charitable organization in Gaza City, Gaza on June 7, 2026.
(Photo by Moiz Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“What we are witnessing in Gaza is not a series of isolated shortages, it is a policy of attrition by design.”
The renowned humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday that the Israeli government is still restricting the entry of engine oil and generator parts to the Gaza Strip, imperiling life-saving hospital functions and other essential services in the decimated territory.
Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), noted that Gaza’s remaining healthcare system relies “almost entirely” on generators, “with most electricity cut by Israeli authorities and much of the electrical infrastructure destroyed.” The group said that in some Gaza facilities, its teams barely have sufficient engine oil to last a month and have been forced to “buy engine oil at the local market at exorbitant prices.”
Filipe Ribeiro, MSF’s head of mission in Palestine, said that “what we are witnessing in Gaza is not a series of isolated shortages, it is a policy of attrition by design.”
“For more than two years, we have observed Israel’s policies restricting the entry of supplies,” said Ribeiro. “These policies do not merely delay aid; they dismantle the very systems people rely on to survive.”
Israel’s continued restriction of supplies comes as the country’s military, which is armed by the United States, keeps up its deadly bombing of the strip despite a purported ceasefire deal that took effect in October 2025. Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,200 people in Gaza since the start of the ceasefire agreement. The Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected a US-backed plan for Hamas disarmament in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Earlier this week, a group of United Nations experts condemned Israel’s recent “strikes on hospitals and shelters, the killing of police officers and UN-contracted staff, attacks on fishers, and abductions and abuses by armed groups reportedly collaborating with the Israeli military, as well as the killing of humanitarian workers, who through their work protecting and promoting fundamental human rights, are human rights defenders.”
“These restrictions have become increasingly far-reaching, also preventing the entry of routine items ranging from ointments for skin diseases to rubber seals needed for medical sterilization equipment.”
According to MSF, Israel’s sustained attacks and obstruction of supplies “extend far beyond hospitals.”
“Without engine oil, all transport services could stop, including much-needed water trucks during the peak of summer heat, ambulances, buses transporting medical staff to work, and trucks delivering humanitarian supplies,” the group said. “Bakeries and flour mills also rely on generators, meaning food production could also be affected.”
MSF characterized Israel’s continued obstruction of engine oil and spare generator parts as “one piece of a larger pattern of structural violence imposed by Israeli authorities to intentionally restrict access to vital services and supplies as part of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
“These restrictions have become increasingly far-reaching, also preventing the entry of routine items ranging from ointments for skin diseases to rubber seals needed for medical sterilization equipment,” the group said. “The shortages now impact virtually every aspect of life in Gaza, leaving hospitals and humanitarian organizations without basic supplies.”
Ribeiro said in a statement that “the items change, but the logic remains the same: reducing people to conditions in which life becomes untenable, and dignity is systematically stripped away through the denial of the most ordinary, most essential goods.”
“This is not bureaucracy,” he added. “It is a deliberate effort to make existence itself impossible.”
Palestinians are seen as the Israeli forces placed new yellow concrete blocks at the Sanfura junction continuing to expand the area known as the “Yellow Line” despite the ceasefire in western Gaza City, Gaza, Palestine, on July 27, 2026. [Ali Jadallah – Anadolu Agency]
Gaza should remain “destroyed for generations to come,” said former Israeli general Giora Eiland, who advocated using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians. Eliand also urged Israel not to relinquish the territory it has seized behind the so-called Yellow Line.
Eiland, a former head of Israel’s National Security Council and former chief of the Israeli army’s Planning and Operations directorates, made the remarks during an interview with Israeli radio station 103FM. His remarks were reported this week in Hebrew-language by Israeli newspaper Maariv under the headline: “Giora Eiland without filters: ‘It is better for Gaza to remain destroyed for generations to come’.”
Discussing the US-backed Board of Peace’s 15-point proposal for Gaza, Eiland described the plan as a “very pro-Hamas interpretation” of the earlier 20-point framework and argued that Israel should refuse to surrender its territorial gains inside the besieged enclave.
Eiland was particularly adamant about Israel retaining the territory behind the so-called Yellow Line, territory which Israel has occupied inside the Gaza strip. “We must not give up [the Yellow Line] under any circumstances,” he declared.
In contravention of international law, which prohibits the annexation of territory by force, Eiland compared Gaza with Germany after the Second World War, arguing that “the enemy has lost and we need land”. He said that the Gaza strip needs not be used for Israeli settlements but should instead remain as a “security buffer” where the Israeli army can operate.
While Eiland did not explicitly use the word annexation, his demand that Israel permanently retain the territory would entrench Israeli control over most of the Gaza Strip.
Israel has progressively moved the Yellow Line deeper into Gaza since the October 2025 ceasefire arrangements. By late July, Israel controlled around 70 per cent of the enclave, with yellow concrete barriers pushed further west and thousands of Palestinians displaced from newly seized areas.
In his interview, Eiland explicitly opposed Gaza’s reconstruction.
“Israel has no interest in Gaza being rebuilt,” he told 103FM. “It is better for us that it be destroyed for generations to come.”
He claimed that Palestinian despair served Israel’s interests, arguing that the greater the devastation in Gaza and the longer it remains as a visible reminder of the events of 7 October, 2023, “the better”.
The comments are consistent with Eiland’s repeated calls since the beginning of Israel’s assault on Gaza to punish the Palestinian population through starvation and terror.
In November 2023, writing in the Hebrew-language Yedioth Ahronoth, Eiland urged Israel not to be deterred by warnings of humanitarian catastrophe and disease. “The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this,” he argued, adding that severe epidemics would “bring victory closer”.
South Africa subsequently cited Eiland’s remarks in its application accusing Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), presenting them among statements it said demonstrated genocidal intent.
Eiland is seen as the mastermind of the so-called Generals’ Plan, which proposed ordering Palestinians out of northern Gaza before imposing a complete siege on those who remained, cutting off food, water, fuel and medicine.
International humanitarian law prohibits the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, including deliberately depriving civilians of food, water and other objects indispensable to survival.
Read our complete coverage Chilling Dissent
(Photo credit: IDF Spokesperson page Facebook)
![Palestinians are seen as the Israeli forces placed new yellow concrete blocks at the Sanfura junction continuing to expand the area known as the "Yellow Line" despite the ceasefire in western Gaza City, Gaza, Palestine, on July 27, 2026. [Ali Jadallah - Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/AA-20260727-42078631-42078619-ISRAEL_CONTINUES_ALTERING_YELLOW_LINE_BOUNDARIES_IN_GAZA-1-1.jpg?fit=920%2C613&ssl=1)
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