Tuesday, October 20, 2026

CAIR-NC Welcomes Charges for ‘This is About Islam’ Voter Intimidation Incident at Surry County Polling Site

 The North Carolina office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NC), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today welcomed law enforcement and election officials’ actions after criminal charges were filed against an individual accused of voter intimidation and interference at an early voting site in Surry County.

According to local reports and the Surry County Board of Elections, the incident occurred during the first day of early voting at the Dobson polling site located at the Surry Board of Elections office. The suspect allegedly breached the designated buffer zone and engaged in aggressive behavior, yelling at and intimidating a voter, saying: “This is about Islam.” Local authorities intervened, and the Dobson Police Department filed charges following the complaint.

CAIR-NC said every eligible citizen must be able to exercise their constitutional right to vote free from harassment, bigotry, intimidation, or interference.

“Polling places must remain safe spaces for every member of our community,” said CAIR-NC Community Engagement Manager Al Rieder. “We commend the swift response in addressing this unacceptable behavior. Voter intimidation undermines our democratic process and will not be tolerated. We urge election officials and law enforcement across the state to remain vigilant in protecting voters from hostility and harassment throughout the early voting period and on Election Day.”

CAIR-NC said community members who experience or witness intimidation at the polls are encouraged to document the incident and report it immediately to local election officials, law enforcement, or civil rights organizations.  

CAIR-Arizona Welcomes State Charges in Plot Targeting Muslim and Jewish Sites, Urges Federal Action

 

Pakistan army chief in Tehran: Can diplomacy prevent new US-Iran fighting?

 Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, arrived in Tehran on Tuesday evening for talks with Iranian officials, as diplomatic efforts ramp up to prevent a new round of fighting with the United States and Israel.

Munir’s visit is his fifth to Iran since the April ceasefire between Tehran and Washington, which was brokered by Islamabad. Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi is accompanying Munir, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported. The Pakistani army chief is expected to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi first, IRNA said.

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The visit comes a day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held talks in Tehran, and two weeks after Pakistan and its allies agreed to accelerate the deployment of forces to Saudi Arabia, which has come under repeated attacks from the Iran-backed Houthi armed group in Yemen.

Lavrov’s visit on Monday was his first to Tehran since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran in February. The Russian foreign minister met Araghchi and President Masoud Pezeshkian, and the talks covered the war, the Strait of Hormuz and efforts to end the fighting.

“The timing of [Munir’s] visit, following Lavrov’s presence in Tehran, suggests that Iran prefers to keep multiple diplomatic channels open, rather than relying exclusively on a single mediator,” Seyed Mojtaba Jalazadeh, a Tehran-based foreign policy analyst, told Al Jazeera.

But the Munir visit also comes at a time when some experts have warned of growing signs that United States President Donald Trump might be preparing for a return to fighting with Iran. Trump rejected an Iranian proposal to end the war on September 26. Since then, the US has deployed an additional aircraft carrier to the Middle East, which is expected to arrive by late November. Trump has endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s upcoming October 27 election, referring to their shared mission in attacking Iran. Trump said that if Netanyahu were not re-elected, the US would need to attack Iran on its own.

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Analysts say these developments add urgency to diplomatic efforts to sidestep a potential military escalation. In recent weeks, Qatar has played a key role in channeling proposals between the US and Iran. Andreas Krieg, an associate professor in security studies at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera that while Qatar increasingly provides the diplomatic machinery behind the talks, Doha still values Islamabad’s access to Washington and Tehran.

“Pakistan offers political access, particularly through Field Marshal Asim Munir, while Qatar does much of the detailed negotiating,” Krieg said.

The Islamabad MoU

Pakistan has mediated between Washington and Tehran since the US and Israel began striking Iran on February 28.

A roadside billboard displaying portraits of Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, following a deal between the U.S. and Iran, in Islamabad, Pakistan, June 16, 2026. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro REFILE - CORRECTING INFORMATION FROM "GENERAL ASIM MUNIR" TO "FIELD MARSHAL ASIM MUNIR".
A roadside billboard displaying portraits of Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, following a deal between the US and Iran, in Islamabad, Pakistan, June 16, 2026. [Akhtar Soomro/Reuters]

Islamabad brokered a ceasefire on April 8 and, days later, hosted the highest-level direct engagement between the US and Iran since 1979.

In June, the two sides agreed to a 14-point memorandum of understanding (MoU).

Under the agreement, the US was to lift its naval blockade within 30 days, the Strait of Hormuz was to reopen, and about $24bn in estimated frozen Iranian assets was to be released in phases over 60 days of further talks, including negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme.

That period expired in mid-August without either side agreeing to extend it. Iran says the US failed to meet its commitments, and Tehran has kept the Strait of Hormuz closed, insisting that Washington first lift the blockade.

Pakistan’s Foreign Office has continued to point to the agreement and its utility.

“The Islamabad MoU is already in place, and some of the points currently under discussion are fully aligned with it,” spokesman Sajjad Haider Khan told a weekly briefing on October 9.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said on October 2 that Iran’s seven-day plan was drawn from the MoU.

Analysts, however, disagree on whether the agreement can still provide a basis for negotiations.

“On the Islamabad MoU, I think it’s done from both sides and perhaps a new mechanism is required to start negotiations,” Umer Karim, an associate fellow at the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, told Al Jazeera.

Krieg said that while the Islamabad MoU was “politically alive”, it was “operationally dead”.

“The circumstances under which it was signed have fundamentally changed,” he said.

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But Muhammad Faisal, a South Asia security researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, said the agreement could still be used.

“The Islamabad MoU remains usable, even if the political and security environment has deteriorated,” he told Al Jazeera. “It is still the minimum agreed benchmark between Washington and Tehran, and neither side has an obvious alternative framework for addressing the issues related to maritime access, sanctions relief and nuclear talks.”

Pakistan’s Saudi commitment

Meanwhile, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement on August 7.

It was Pakistan’s second defence pact with Saudi Arabia, after the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement the two countries signed in September 2025.

At an emergency meeting in Riyadh on October 5, the three countries agreed to expedite the deployment of forces and capabilities under the pact.

Within days, Houthi missiles and drones struck Riyadh’s King Khalid international airport more than once, as well as targets in Abha, Yanbu and Shaybah.

Lieutenant-General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the Pakistani military’s spokesman, discussed the defence pact and the importance of protecting holy sites in Mecca and Medina in an interview with Independent Arabia on October 18.

“The security of the Harmain Sharifain is paramount. It’s non-negotiable,” he said, referring to Islam’s two holiest mosques. “Whatever support is needed to do that is being provided and will be provided.”

He declined to provide details, citing operational confidentiality.

Chaudhry said Pakistan wanted a negotiated end to the conflict. “If we are unable to come to a negotiated outcome and we turn into a military conflict, then this collective deterrence, this instrument of collective deterrence of Mecca Alliance will definitely come into play, as it is coming into play,” he said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan (R), Saudi Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman and Pakistani deputy foreign minister Ishaq Dar attend a meeting of the Strategic Political and Defence Committee, established under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on October 5, 2026.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan (R), Saudi Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman and Pakistani deputy foreign minister Ishaq Dar attend a meeting of the Strategic Political and Defence Committee, established under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on October 5, 2026. [Mustafa HatipoÄŸlu/Anadolu Agency]

Asked at the October 9 briefing whether Pakistani forces in Saudi Arabia would engage the Houthis, Foreign Office spokesman Khan said they would not.

“These forces would not cross the border into Yemen to launch attacks against the Houthis,” he said.

On Monday, a day before leaving for Tehran, Munir met Saudi ambassador to Pakistan, Rajeh Tami Albugamy. A statement said the two expressed satisfaction with progress under the pact, but made no mention of the Houthis or Iran.

Tehran’s public response to the agreement has largely been restrained. On October 11, Araghchi told his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, that Tehran was ready to provide “any possible assistance” to start a dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, IRNA reported.

Saudi state media said that the two only discussed the “recent escalation in violence in the region”.

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After meeting Iranian leaders in New York last month, Dar said they had told him Iran had nothing to do with the Houthis and had suggested engaging them politically rather than militarily.

But Krieg said Pakistan’s two roles were becoming harder to reconcile.

“Pakistan remains an important intermediary, but its credibility as a neutral actor is increasingly compromised by its security commitments to Saudi Arabia,” he said.

Jalazadeh said Tehran’s concern was more limited.

“Iran does not necessarily perceive stronger defence cooperation between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as an immediate threat, but it does regard it as a complicating and constraining factor,” he said.

Mixed signals from Washington

But it’s not just Pakistan facing competing pressures — or sending seemingly mixed signals.

In Washington, Trump has pledged not to strike Iran before the US midterm elections.

(FILES) US President Donald Trump (L) holds hands and speaks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in Jerusalem on October 13, 2025.
US President Donald Trump speaks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in Jerusalem on October 13, 2025. [AFP]

“We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the US on November 3rd,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform on October 8. In the same post, he said the US was having productive discussions with Iran. The naval blockade has remained in place.

Ten days later, though, Trump endorsed Netanyahu. “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,” Trump wrote.

On Monday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met Netanyahu at Ovda airbase in southern Israel during an unannounced visit, Axios reported. The outlet said the visit came amid US-Israeli discussions about potentially resuming major combat operations against Iran.

“Threats of military strikes, combined with the blockade and indirect negotiations, undermine Iran’s confidence in Washington’s intentions and make stronger security guarantees one of the central issues in any potential agreement,” Jalazadeh said.

Faisal told Al Jazeera that the timing of the two votes, a week apart, made major concessions difficult for both sides and raised the risk of escalation.

Krieg said the elections were among the strongest constraints on another major war, but warned that the risk could grow once they had passed.

“The immediate danger is that Iran overplays its hand,” he said. “A major attack causing American casualties could override electoral calculations altogether.”


The Language of Extermination: NAZA, Artificial Intelligence and Gaza by Binoy Kampmark

 The 80-minute documentary NAZA, directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is chastening.  It examines the conduct of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) during its ferocious, unremitting war in Gaza, drawing upon the interviews of 24 anonymised military and intelligence personnel.  The interviews were filmed on Tel Aviv rooftops at night, with profiles and voices appropriately altered.  The name of the documentary draws on a Hebrew acronym for nezek agavi or collateral damage, an obscene term used when counting the estimated number of civilians who will perish in a military strike.  Last month, the film won the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, receiving a standing ovation lasting 25 minutes.

The interviewees focus on the terrifyingly relevant role played by artificial intelligence (AI) targeting systems used in guiding the bombing campaign launched in response to the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023.  In Abraham’s words, “the Israeli intelligence officers we spoke with talked to us about how this mass killing is systemic: not by accident, but by design, actions of murder and policies that are based on the total dehumanization of Palestinians.”  One of the interviewed subjects speaks of the goal being “quantity, not quality.”  Another notes the conscious decision to target Hamas members, some even in the lower echelons, when they would be at home even if it meant killing family members and neighbours.  In one recalled instance, the phone of a 12-year-old girl was hacked to learn when her father would arrive home.  The subsequent strike killed her. The cold logic is revealed in the rhetorical question posed by one of the interviewees: “When people talk about ‘flattening Gaza,’ what do you mean if not executing people?’

Despite being placed in a “too hot to handle” category by prominent indie studios, the self-distributed documentary managed to pass the US$500,000 mark in the United States after two weeks of release.  Eight days after premiering at New York’s IFC Center, it went on to earn US$125,000.  A further 85 theatres across 30 cities across North America then showed the film.  Michelle Goldberg, writing in The New York Times, was impressed by the drawing power of the production when attending Walter Reade Theater for a screening.  The venue, seating 268, was at capacity.  “This is, in my experience, very unusual for documentaries of any sort, even those that, like ‘NAZA,’ win the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.”

Militaries specialise in euphemised killing.  A dedicated process of terminology and assessment sanitises and exsanguinates: death and murder become justifiable, necessary measures against an enemy bloated with wickedness and venality.  In that process, mock tributes are paid to the canon of international law, notably international humanitarian law and doctrines of targeting.  The more honest generals do us a favour by boasting about high casualty figures and mass mortality: they are not hiding matters and lurking behind worn ceremonies and the emperor’s non-existent clothes.  Take the remarks of a former head of Israeli military intelligence made in a leaked audio: “For every one person [killed] on Oct. 7, 50 Palestinians must die.”  Those militaries with a heavily staffed legal department supposedly providing guidance in striking a target, largely to reassure the squeamish that they are not implicated in acts of murder, are always suspect.  In that regard, the IDF provides a model example, always claiming to do things differently from other powers in the region, yet resorting to the selective language of exculpation.

The reception of the film in Israel has been markedly hysterical.  This was to be expected: the film unmasks and discomfits.  It demolishes shibboleths.  The IDF chief of staff Eyal Zamir vowed to use “every tool at our disposal” against the production.  The Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar thought the film treasonous.  Abraham and Szor were “willing to harm their homeland in order just to get applause from antisemites around the world”.  The irate minister was keen to “act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of these despicable creators for treason against the state,” he thundered in a social media post.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also called upon the passing of legislation stripping the duo of their citizenship, a curious point given the existing provisions of Israel’s Citizenship Law. (Making German Jews stateless was a specialty of the Third Reich: that the Jewish state would consider this to its citizens is a distinct, bitter irony, yet sadly permissible in light of the Israeli Supreme Court ruling in 2022 validating revocation for acts done in “breach of loyalty to the State of Israel”.)

Activists and members of the far-right party Jewish Power (Otzma Yehudit) led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir protested outside the parents of Szor’s house, with a speaker calling for both directors to be executed and the homes of their families to be demolished (collective punishment remains a great inspiration for tribal sentiment).

The IDF has marshalled its own response in a document accusing the filmmakers of presenting “a distorted, misleading and disingenuous picture of the IDF’s target planning and striking process.” The narrative of the documentary drew upon “substantial factual errors stemming from manipulative misrepresentations of reality.”  Worth noting here is the lower register of critique that does not entirely repudiate the targeting practices of the IDF, dressed up in the apologetics of collateral damage.  Concessions and confessions are always evident from those in and of power who resort to such dismissive language as “misrepresentative” and “disingenuous”.

Be that as it may, the agitated response is illuminating.  The Lavender database, to take one objection, was apparently not one of targets, merely “a database that assists intelligence analysts.”  This represents a distinction without a difference.  The faith placed by militaries in the divinities of technology are hard to shake; there is nothing here to say that such analysts do not treat these data sets as unimpeachable.  AI and religious deities serve to do the imagination for others; they discourage independent thinking and verification.  Why bother when you have someone, or something else, doing it for you?

The response remains weak in claiming that the IDF believes itself “bound by and committed to international humanitarian law, its operational procedures are designed to implement those legal obligations, and it operates dedicated units and mechanisms to mitigate civilian harm.”  The staggering death toll in Gaza, always sneered and jeered at by the Israeli authorities and their defenders, would suggest otherwise.  NAZA serves to, as the Israeli American historian Omer Bartov points out, address a “state of denial” by “actually speaking about the issue of what happened in Gaza rather than refusing to speak about it.”

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

The New York Time’s Bret Stephens, Zohran Mamdani and “Moral Obscenity” by Al Ronzoni

 On October 9, New York Times published opinion writer Bret Stephens Zohran Mamdani’s Moral Obscenity. In it he noted that Mamdani:

“[S]et off a firestorm of criticism Wednesday morning with a social media post ostensibly intended to commemorate the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis. It devoted a brief paragraph to condemning Hamas and commiserating with its victims. The rest was a much longer denunciation of Israel’s “ongoing genocide in Gaza,” a “world in which occupation and apartheid continue” and a situation in which “our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.”

In response, Ammiel Hirsch, the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, said the statement was “so offensive to so many Jews that it is hard to describe how offensive it is.” Stephens stepped in to assist Rabbi Hirsch, claiming that Mamdani’s statement was in fact, “a moral obscenity.” He then proceeded to “count the ways.” Stephens tells us:

It is obscene in the same way it would have been obscene if the mayor had commemorated the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11 last month with a perfunctory nod to the victims of the day, followed by a much longer denunciation of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. What happened on both Sept. 11 and Oct. 7 was undiluted evil, each an unprovoked visit of deliberate and maximalist violence on people who had done nothing to invite that violence other than being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Undiluted evil. The term is often used interchangeably with “pure,” or “unadulterated evil.” It implies committing a harmful act solely for the sake of causing destruction or suffering. It is characterized by purely sadistic intent or terrorizing others for the sake of terror. But was this really the case here? Hamas told us their reasons for the October 7th attacks in a pamphlet entitled Our Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. In Hamas’ view, the Palestinian people have been in a “battle against occupation and colonialism” since 1918. This included thirty years of British occupation and then seventy five years of “Zionist occupation.” Hamas points out that even as the British occupation was coming to an end, in part because British occupation forces were being attacked by Jewish paramilitary organizations like the Irgun, Lehi (aka the “Stern Gang”), and the Haganah, Jewish settlers still occupied only about 6% of the territory of Palestine and constituted roughly 30% of the population.

Curiously Hamas makes no mention the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan, which awarded roughly 43% of Palestine to a proposed “Arab State,” while the remaining territory, almost 60% was to be allotted to a “Jewish State.” Not surprisingly, both the Palestinians and Arab U.N. member states (at this time Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria) rejected this as grossly unfair. Instead, Hamas jumps straight to what Palestinians remember as the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe) or what has been described as the “Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veteran turned historian Ilan Pappe. As Pappe recounts in his book of the same title, this was a pre-planned forcible eviction of Palestinians from the territories designated for the Jewish state by the U.N., along with proposed Arab state territories seized by Israel both before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel. Hamas tells us, “Zionist Gangs destroyed over 500 villages and towns” and “committed dozens of massacres” against unarmed civilians. Pappe’s research, which included examining declassified official documents, state papers, military records from the 1948 period and pre-state Zionist intelligence and mapping projects, which cataloged almost every Arab village in Palestine, agrees with Hamas.

Hamas tells us that in 1967, “in continuation of the aggression, Israeli forces occupied what remained of the territory the U.N. had slated for the Palestinian state, in addition to the Sinai Peninsula (returned to Egypt in 1982, following the 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty) and the Golan Heights (seized from Syria and effectively annexed by Israel in 1981). We are often told that that State of Israel has “a right to exist,” which actually has no basis in international law (this is true for all nations, not just Israel). Major international legal bodies, as well as the vast majority of countries view the occupation as illegal under international law, though the Israeli government strongly rejects this view. However, peoples and nations subjected to colonial domination, alien subjugation or foreign occupation do have the right to struggle for liberation by all available means, including the use of armed force. But this is not an unlimited right. Committing atrocities, taking hostages or collective punishment is unlawful. Hamas and allied Palestinian armed groups did commit such crimes on October 7, though the level of barbarity (beheaded infants, systematic mass rape carried out on the orders of Hamas leadership etc.) has been falsified by the Israelis and their allies in Western governments and media, particularly Stephen’s own New York Times. In addition, the IDF in Gaza, and armed Israeli settlers on the West Bank have carried out similar crimes of their own. While deploring the crimes of Hamas committed on October 7, 2023, is it really “morally obscene” to deplore those committed by Israelis in the years that have followed? Some October 7th survivors and victims’ families have vocally opposed the levelling of Gaza. A larger number of Israeli human rights organizations, academics, writers, and citizens have explicitly described it as genocide. I wonder if Bret Stephens would chastise all these people for being “morally obscene?”

And consider the morality of the following. As the World Socialist Website informed readers in December 2023, Israeli intelligence had obtained Hamas’s operational plan — code-named “Jericho Wall” — more than a year before the attack. WSWS notes further that in the days before the attack, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approval, two of the three battalions guarding the Gaza border were redeployed to the West Bank for the Sukkot festival, leaving roughly 800 soldiers to guard a 51-kilometer border. The vaunted Unit 8200 signals intelligence unit was put off duty for the weekend. The result was that Israeli civilians in the south were left without military protection for ten to twelve hours — and that Israeli tank and helicopter forces, rushed into civilian areas, fired indiscriminately, further swelling the Israeli death toll.

“The purpose of this conspiracy,” WSWS concluded, was “aimed at establishing a pretext for a long-planned genocide against the people of Gaza. The attack was the occasion for Israel and US imperialism to launch the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians and a regional war that has since spread to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Qatar, and Iran. Netanyahu had been promoting his ‘new Middle East’ plans — displaying a map at the UN that included the West Bank and Gaza within Israel’s borders — just two weeks before the attack.”

As noted in a December 2023 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSI), part of the explanation for the October 7 attacks may be that what Hamas saw as previous gestures toward moderation brought it few rewards. CSI notes:

Hamas publicly rebranded in 2017, releasing an updated charter in which the group signaled its acceptance of a two-state solution as an appropriate temporary measure. The charter still contained many hateful and bellicose components, but it was a change from the group’s 1988 founding statement, which fundamentally rejected any accommodation with Israel.

Hamas seemed to back up this perceived change with actions. Before October 7, the group not only limited its own rocket attacks on Israel but also publicly punished those who instigated attacks within Gaza to break the fragile ceasefires. Hamas has let the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fight Israel alone, not joining the fray between Israel and the PIJ in August 2022 or in May 2023. CIS poses the question as to whether this was just a front while Hamas planned the October 7 attack. But there was no major shift on the part of Israel or the international community in response to Hamas’s new moderation. At the same time, there was incendiary far-right political rhetoric and rising levels of violence against Palestinians. Both 2021 and 2022 set records as the deadliest years for Palestinians, as the Netanyahu government green-lit the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and settlers themselves conducted pogroms against Palestinians. CIS notes further:

The Israeli government also made clear its disdain for Hamas. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ripped up Hamas’s revised charter in front of the camera, advocated for the defunding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), and gave a platform to far-right ideologues such as Bezalel Smotrich. This lack of incentives for moderation probably increased the attraction of a large-scale attack. This reality was reflected in Hamas official Basem Naim’s interview after the October 7 attack, where he stated “We knew there was going to be a violent reaction. . . . But we didn’t choose this road while having other options. We have no options.”

Of course, Naim’s words do not in any way convey how bad this “violent reaction” was likely to be. Hamas’s leadership was heady at the prospect of igniting an Islamic “ring of fire” surrounding Israel, an existential war that would defeat it militarily and bring about its downfall. All other considerations were secondary. At the same time, Netanyahu, and his cabinet of racist, religious extremists had their own dream of ejecting the Palestinians from Gaza, once and for all, and then moving on to the West Bank, thus finally completing the work that began in 1947-48.

As with all conflicts of this type, throughout history, it is difficult to see where morality lies in any of this.

Al Ronzoni is a writer, historian and political activist based in New York City

CAIR-NC Welcomes Charges for ‘This is About Islam’ Voter Intimidation Incident at Surry County Polling Site

  The North Carolina office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NC), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy or...