I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.
Palestinians struggle with flooding after heavy rain hits Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on December 11, 2025. [Mohammed Nassar – Anadolu Agency]
Around 950,000 displaced people in the Gaza Strip are living in areas at medium to high risk of flooding, including more than 400,000 facing a high risk, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said “Available supplies could partially assist only 18 per cent of the 294,250 families requiring shelter assistance for the rainy season.”
On 17 August, the Gaza government media office said 2.15 million displaced Palestinians, representing 509,393 families, are living in “dire” humanitarian conditions. More than 800,000 of them are staying in tents unfit for “human habitation”, it added.
In September, the office warned that conditions for hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Gaza are deteriorating as winter approached, saying more than 60 per cent of their tents are worn out and need immediate replacement.
Palestinian and UN human rights officials have previously warned that winter storms and rainwater flooding have destroyed or damaged thousands of tents and temporary shelters, forcing displaced people to endure cold, damp and unsafe living conditions.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a state memorial ceremony in memory of those killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, at Mount Herzl Cemetery in Jerusalem, Monday, Oct. 5, 2026. [AP Photo/Debbie Hill/Pool Photo]
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday at Ovda air base in southern Israel, which hosts US fighter jets and refueling aircraft. Hegseth’s visit, kept secret until the news site Axios reported it, took place eight days before Israel’s October 27 election and one day after US President Donald Trump endorsed Netanyahu for reelection.
The United States and Israel are preparing to resume the war against Iran after Israel’s election and the November 3 US midterm elections. The Israeli settler rampage in the occupied West Bank and the starvation of Gaza accompany the US-Israeli escalation against Iran.
Netanyahu’s spokesman Doron Spielman confirmed the meeting Tuesday. Spielman said Hegseth and Netanyahu had discussed “the threats in the region” and how the United States and Israel would deal with them, offensively and defensively. Hegseth thanked Israel for hosting the thousands of American troops stationed there, Spielman said.
Trump told Time magazine in late September that it would be “possible” to step up the bombing of Iran after the elections. At the start of October the US military sent about 2,000 Marines and 7,000 sailors toward the Middle East, including the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group.
The Roosevelt carrier strike group is due to arrive by the end of November, the Jerusalem Post reported Tuesday, citing Fox News, and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit has sailed from San Diego aboard the USS Makin Island amphibious ready group. The carriers USS George H.W. Bush and USS George Washington are already in the region with hundreds of US aircraft. The new ships raise the US force in the region to about 20,000 troops, Al Jazeera reported October 9.
Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin wrote Tuesday that the Roosevelt deployment “will provide more options for the US as President [Donald] Trump is reportedly considering ramping up strikes on Iran after the [November 3] Midterms.”
Netanyahu told reporters Sunday: “The regime must fall, and I will bring it down.” On Tuesday, at Tel Hai University near the Lebanese border, Netanyahu said: “Finishing the job means bringing down the terrorist regime in Iran.” Netanyahu said he had spoken with Trump about overthrowing the Iranian government “more than once, including the day before yesterday.”
In his endorsement of Netanyahu, posted Sunday on Truth Social, Trump wrote that unless the Iranians “change their ways, rapidly, we will soon finish the job.” Trump also wrote: “If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so.”
The United States and Israel began bombing Iran on February 28, and on April 13 the US military blockaded Iran’s ports. Washington signed a “ceasefire” with Iran on June 17 and broke it on July 7 and 8, when US forces struck what the US military said were about 170 Iranian military sites and boats.
Israeli ministers are calling for war in the West Bank alongside the war against Iran. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a podcast of the Israeli news site Ynet on September 27 that Israel should “go to war in Judea and Samaria,” the official Israeli term for the West Bank, “to dismantle the Palestinian Authority.”
About 80 settlers, many of them masked, attacked Palestinian olive harvesters on Friday at Abu Falah, a village northeast of Ramallah, beating the harvesters and a Washington Post photographer, Heidi Levine, while Israeli soldiers tear-gassed the harvesters. On Saturday settlers attacked Belgian, French and Polish diplomats in Taybeh, a Palestinian Christian village northeast of Ramallah. Netanyahu called the international condemnation of the settler attacks “a huge exaggeration” on Sunday.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said Saturday that Israel has killed 1,511 Palestinians there since the “ceasefire” began on October 10, 2025. On October 14, Israel cut off all commercial deliveries into Gaza. The UN World Food Programme, which has received less than half its usual funding for Gaza and the West Bank this year, said Monday that its food distributions in Gaza will reach 1.1 million people instead of 1.6 million.
Netanyahu’s coalition partners are demanding the annexation of Gaza and the expulsion of its population. Smotrich said at a Jerusalem conference on October 6: “I demand that the State of Israel permanently apply its sovereignty over the territories it currently holds, both in Gaza and in Lebanon.” On September 3, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who leads the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, presented a plan to push 1.86 million Palestinians, nearly the entire population of Gaza, out of the territory within seven years through what he calls “emigration.”
Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 10, 2026 – protesters call for the release of Venezuelan leaders Cilia Flores and Nicolás Maduro, kidnapped by United States forces on Jan. 3, 2026.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros and First Combatant Cilia Adela Flores were brought to a federal court in Manhattan this morning shackled and defiant. Facing Judge Alvin Hellerstein, both prisoners of war were arraigned on phony charges of torture. Neither is even accused of torturing anyone. They declared themselves innocent.
The week before this same judge rejected Cilia Flores request to be placed under house arrest because of her deteriorating health, which includes an untreated possible heart attack. Isn’t that torture?
The same Trump regime that kidnapped President Maduro and First Combatant Flores on Jan. 3 has killed at least 238 people on the high seas for allegedly being drug traffickers. No evidence was produced, no trials were held and those accused died horrible, painful deaths.
That’s not just torture committed by the Pentagon. These lethal attacks were lynchings.
These new torture charges are being brought because the United States government’s case against Maduro and Flores as drug kingpins may be crumbling. Jason Richman, who supervised this case as national security co-chief in the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan, suddenly resigned on Sept. 25.
The Cartel de los Soles–Cartel of the Suns–which Maduro and Flores were allegedly involved in, doesn’t exist. Even the Justice Department quietly dropped that claim from its rewritten indictment in January. Meanwhile, Trump pardoned an actual drug lord, the former right-wing president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández.
Both Maduro and Flores appeared in court dressed in their prison uniforms. Their jailers couldn’t take away their dignity.
This writer was part of a delegation in the courtroom that wore red to show our support. Its organizer was Lucy Pagoada, who is co-host of the Voices of Resistance radio program that runs on New York’s WBAI (99.5 FM), on Tuesdays at 7 p.m.
Before President Maduro was seated, he turned around and raised his hands together in a gesture of strength. When Judge Hellerstein asked for his plea, Nicolás Maduro declared the charges false.
“I have seen [this indictment] in its entirety,” he said. “I reject this document in its entirety.” Representing President Maduro is Barry Pollack, while Mark Donnelly is Cilia Flores’ attorney.
Judge Hellerstein has set the tentative trial date for June 2027, when he will be 93 years old.
After the court appearance, supporters went outside the Moynihan federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan— named for the pig who advised President Nixon to show “benign neglect” towards Black people–to talk to the media. They were able to get the truth out despite the presence of counterrevolutionaries.
These characters want to turn back the clock in Venezuela and have the country once again become a United States oil colony. They attacked reporters for teleSUR, who were able to defend themselves.
Remember the Panther 21!
Back in 1969, 21 members of the Black Panther Party in New York City were indicted on over 200 charges. These ridiculous counts included attempting to blow up a Macy’s department store.
Because of a massive defense campaign, a jury acquitted the Panthers of all charges. We need to build such an effort to free President Nicolás Maduro and First Combatant Cilia Flores.
Netanyahu released a phone call he had with Trump after the US president endorsed him for the upcoming Israeli elections
by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, October 19, 2026
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released footage on Monday of a call with President Trump, during which the US president told the Israeli leader, “You’re the man I want by my side.”
The call came after Trump endorsed Netanyahu for the upcoming October 27 Israeli elections in a long post on Truth Social, where he suggested that the US may have to “finish the job” against Iran without the help of Israel if Netanyahu doesn’t remain prime minister. In the phone call, the two leaders alluded to the Iran war, with Netanyahu using the same language as Trump’s post.
“Donald, we have a job to finish. You said it, and we’ll finish it together. We’ll finish it, and no one else will do it,” Netanyahu said.
Trump told Netanyahu that he “crafted” the post himself. “You’re a warrior, and you’ve been treated unfairly by your country and from some others … but you’re a great warrior, and we will prove that. We will prove that very soon,” he said. “I think you’re terrific, Bibi … You’re the man I want by my side, Bibi.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday responded to Trump’s post and the suggestion that the US and Israel will “finish the job” against Iran, suggesting that Netanyahu was leading the US into another war.
“Last time you wanted to ‘finish the job,’ Iran emerged even stronger. Want to try your luck again? Be our guest. But be careful; we have unfinished jobs too,” Araghchi wrote on X. “Netanyahu is driving America into another war to stay out of jail, whatever the consequences for Israel—let alone POTUS.”
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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.
Israeli soldiers block the road to prevent Palestinian farmers from reaching their land during the olive harvest on October 17, 2026 in Abu Falah, West Bank.
(Photo by Faiz Abu Rmeleh/Getty Images)
“European diplomats got a glimpse of everyday life for Palestinians in the West Bank.”
The Israeli military reportedly ignored repeated distress calls before masked settlers attacked a group of European diplomats with metal bars during a visit to the illegally occupied West Bank this past weekend, sparking international outrage.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that “despite the warnings, security forces were not sent to the area to prevent the attack or intervene as it unfolded. The outlet noted that ”an activist who was in the area following reports of attacks on Palestinian olive pickers sent a report of the settlers’ attack to a phone in the brigade’s operations room used to receive messages from settlement security coordinators. The soldiers in the operations room did not recognize the sender’s number, so they ignored the message and did not relay it to forces in the field.“
In the Saturday attack, settlers targeted diplomats from France, Belgium, and Poland, as well as Catholic representatives. Israeli authorities said Monday that they had arrested 10 suspects as part of an investigation into the incident, but critics expressed doubt that the Israeli government would hold the perpetrators to account given the general pattern of impunity for violent settlers.
“It was clear to me this had to come for Israel to save face,” Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst on Israel at the International Crisis Group, wrote in response to the arrests. “They probably will be released shortly.”
The attack on diplomats came a day after Israeli settlers in the West Bank brutally attacked 63-year-old Heidi Levine, a photojournalist with The Washington Post and a US citizen. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuissued a statement casting doubt on Levine’s account and news reports, and said the incident was under investigation.
Netanyahu’s office took a similar line following the Saturday attack on European diplomats, saying in a statement, “The more serious the accusation, the greater the demand for compelling evidence.”
France’s foreign affairs ministry denounced the attacks on diplomats as “acts of terror” and called on Israeli authorities to “arrest the perpetrators of this extremely serious assault and bring them to justice.” Bernard Baudoux, a French mayor who was attacked, said he was “struck with metal bars and kicked before being thrown to the ground.”
“We were finally able to get back to our vehicles,” Baudoux added.
Breaking the Silence, an Israeli anti-occupation group, said in a statement on Sunday that “European diplomats got a glimpse of everyday life for Palestinians in the West Bank.”
The group added that the IDF “will always have a bureaucratic excuse” for not acting to prevent such attacks, “but the real reason is that backing settler terrorists is its policy.”
“This horrifying routine serves a purpose,” the group said. “Through daily terror and economic strangulation, it aims to drive Palestinians off their land. The ultimate goals: ethnic cleansing and annexation.”
The attacks also drew condemnation from lawmakers in the US, where Republicans and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman recently blocked legislation aimed at shining light on Israeli abuses in the West Bank.
“I condemn the brutal settler attacks on American photojournalist Heidi Levine, European diplomats, and Palestinian olive harvesters in the West Bank,” US Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement on Sunday. “Prime Minister Netanyahu must act now to stop settler violence, protect civilians, and ensure those responsible are brought to justice. The impunity must end.”
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Protests erupted throughout France on Saturday, with demonstrators citing a wide variety of grievances, including inequality, the high cost of living, and poor conditions in the nation’s schools.
As reported by Agence France-Presse, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in Paris and other cities to protest what they said was inaction by the French government on the biggest problems facing the country.
“For years we’ve had climate, economy, and equality problems,” one protester identified as Agnes told AFP, “but the government is not doing anything about it.”
18-year-old student Kamil Alahyan told AFP that there are “so many reasons” to protest, including “the elections coming up in 2027, politicians who lie, the ultra-rich who’ve been taking more and more wealth over the past 10 years.”
A 19-year-old protester identified as Lola expressed a similar view in an interview published by The Guardian on Saturday.
“We are fighting because the cost of living is too harsh,” Lola said, “because the price of fuel is too high, because high school pupils are being violently attacked and hurt all over the country just for trying to protest and ask for more teachers and decent learning conditions.”
Student organizer Ryad Rani told AFP that “the government is trembling and it’s right to tremble because when the French people are angry, they never let up.”
Saturday’s demonstrations mark the expansion of a movement that began last month when students blockaded their schools to protest staffing shortages, dilapidated buildings, and a widely criticized university application system.
According to The New York Times, demonstrations took place in at least 140 cities across the country.
Some of the protests did turn violent in major cities including Lyon, Marseille, and Paris, AFP reported. A Saturday BBC report claimed that more than 270 protesters have been arrested nationwide.
French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu accused “ultra-left groups” of inciting violence at the demonstrations.
“To those who clearly want to use these acts of violence as a ‘warm-up’ ahead of the presidential election, let me be clear: we will not be intimidated,” Lecornu wrote in a social media post. “No one will impose their political agenda through violence.”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader the left-wing France Unbowed party, slammed the media for focusing too much on the isolated incidents of violence and not reporting on the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of the demonstrations.
“Crowds of people everywhere, calm and joyful everywhere when the police aren’t around,” Mélenchon wrote in a social media post that featured photos of peaceful marches from across the country, which he described as “images you won’t see in the official media.”
The US military has drawn up new strike plans against Iran that include potentially using the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), nicknamed the “mother of all bombs,” according to a report from CNN.
The MOAB is the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal and has been used only once before in a strike on a village in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province in 2017. The US said the strike killed dozens of ISIS-K fighters, and the now-defunct US-backed Afghan government said no civilians were killed because they evacuated due to the ISIS occupation. But since returning, the residents have dealt with environmental effects and the damage from the attack, which destroyed about 30 civilian homes.
The MOAB is about 30 feet long, and due to its size, it must be dropped from a C-130 cargo aircraft close to the intended target, meaning that any MOAB strike on Iran would be vulnerable to Iranian air defenses.
A MOAB is prepared for testing at the Eglin Air Force Armament Center on March 11, 2003 (Pentagon photo)
The CNN report said that the potential target of the MOAB includes Iranian energy infrastructure, with one source telling the outlet that President Trump ordered the military to develop additional strike packages against Iranian targets that include “a lot of energy infrastructure” and the potential use of a MOAB.
The other potential target is Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, known in Iran as Kolang Kouh. The US and Israel have alleged there may be nuclear activity underneath the mountain, allegations that Iranian officials have denied. The problem with a MOAB strike is that it is designed for a massive surface-level blast, not for penetrating underground like the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), the bunker-busting bomb that the US dropped on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025, which is heavier than the MOAB but carries less explosive.
Sources speaking to CNN said a potential MOAB strike could be more of a psychological operation. “POTUS has unfortunately put himself in a situation where he is almost compelled to do something and, without the ammunition designed to penetrate that level … you have to look at psychological effects for which the MOAB is well-equipped,” a source familiar with the planning told the outlet.
Any MOAB strike could result in devastating civilian casualties since the bomb has the power to destroy nine city blocks. The CNN report said that some US officials have warned that dropping the massive bomb was unlikely to force Iran’s capitulation or achieve a strategic military victory.
![Palestinians struggle with flooding after heavy rain hits Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on December 11, 2025. [Mohammed Nassar - Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/AA-20251211-39951511-39951492-HEAVY_RAINS_FLOOD_THOUSANDS_OF_TENTS_SHELTERING_DISPLACED_CIVILIANS_IN_GAZA-1.jpg?fit=920%2C613&ssl=1)
Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 10, 2026 – protesters call for the release of Venezuelan leaders Cilia Flores and Nicolás Maduro, kidnapped by United States forces on Jan. 3, 2026.
