Europe’s Israel policy faces a democratic test

https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2025/000005_en

More than 457,000 European citizens have signed a petition calling for the full suspension of the European Union’s partnership agreement with Israel within the initiative’s first month.

Launched on January 13 as a formally registered European citizens’ initiative, the petition must reach 1 million signatures from at least seven EU member states by January 13 next year to trigger formal consideration by the European Commission. It is not a symbolic appeal. It is a mechanism embedded within the EU’s democratic framework, designed to translate public will into institutional review.

The speed and geographic spread of this mobilisation matter. The demand to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement is no longer confined to street demonstrations or activist circles. It has entered the EU’s formal democratic architecture.

The petition calls for suspension on the grounds that Israel is in breach of Article 2 of the association agreement, which conditions the partnership on respect for human rights and international law. As the initiative states, “EU citizens cannot tolerate that the EU maintains an agreement that contributes to legitimize and finance a State that commits crimes against humanity and war crimes.” The text further cites large-scale civilian killings, displacement, destruction of hospitals and medical infrastructure in Gaza, the blockade of humanitarian aid and the failure to comply with orders of the International Court of Justice.

As of Monday, the initiative had gathered 457,950 signatures, more than 45 percent of the required total in just one month. Signatories come from all 27 EU member states without exception. This is not a regional surge. It is continental.

The distribution of signatures reveals more than raw numbers. France alone accounts for 203,182 signatories, nearly 45 percent of the total. That figure reflects the country’s longstanding tradition of solidarity mobilisation, sustained mass demonstrations throughout the genocidal war on Gaza and the clear positioning of major political actors, such as La France Insoumise. France has emerged as the principal engine of this institutional push.

Spain follows with 60,087 signatures while Italy stands at 54,821, a particularly striking figure given the presence of a right-wing government that openly supports Israel. Belgium has registered 20,330 signatures from a population of roughly 12 million, reflecting high relative engagement. In the Nordic region, Finland with 12,649 signatures, Sweden with 15,267 and Denmark with 8,295 show sustained participation. Ireland has reached 11,281 signatures from a population of just over five million.

Several of these countries have already exceeded their required national thresholds under EU rules. France, Spain, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Italy and Sweden have all surpassed the minimum number needed for their signatures to count towards the seven-member-state requirement. This is a critical development. It means the initiative is not merely accumulating volume but is also already satisfying the geographic legitimacy criteria built into the European citizens’ initiative mechanism.

The Netherlands, with 20,304 signatures, is approaching its national threshold. Poland, at 22,308 signatures, reflects engagement that extends beyond Western Europe. Even in smaller states such as Slovenia with 1,703 signatures, Luxembourg with 900 and Portugal with 4,945, participation is visible and measurable.

Germany presents a revealing contrast. Despite being the EU’s most populous member state and the site of some of the largest demonstrations against Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, the petition has gathered 11,461 German signatures, only 17 percent of Germany’s national threshold of 69,120. This gap between visible street mobilisation and formal institutional participation highlights the particular political and legal environment in Germany, where pro-Palestinian expression has faced restrictions and where successive governments have maintained near-unconditional support for Israel as a matter of state policy. The relatively low percentage does not signal absence of dissent. Rather, it illustrates the structural constraints within which dissent operates. That more than 11,000 citizens have nevertheless formally registered their support indicates that institutional engagement is occurring even under conditions of political pressure.

This petition is not merely a count of signatures. It is an index of political will. It shows that across France, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, the Nordic states and beyond, citizens are invoking the EU’s own democratic mechanisms to demand accountability.

Whether the initiative ultimately reaches 1 million, one reality is already established. The demand to suspend the EU-Israel partnership has entered Europe’s institutional bloodstream. It can no longer be dismissed as marginal rhetoric. It is embedded within the union’s formal democratic process, and that marks a significant development in Europe’s response to the genocide in Gaza.


https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2025/000005_en

Europe already failed all moral tests, will this lead to anything?

Swiss commentator slams ‘Zionist’ Israeli bobsleigh team at Winter Olympics

A Swiss sports journalist has found himself at the centre of a storm for his no-holds-barred commentary during the Israeli team’s participation in the bobsleigh event at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.

Sports commentator Stefan Reina, of Radio Television Suisse (RTS), called the Israeli team’s pilot Adam Jeremy Edelman “a Zionist to the core” as the team appeared on the screen during their run at the Milano Cortina Games on Monday.

Immediately after Edelman’s competition began, Reina commented on the athlete’s social media posts supporting Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“Adam Edelman is an Israeli athlete and a Zionist to the core, as he describes himself,” Reina said in a video verified by Al Jazeera. “He has posted several messages on social media supporting the genocide in Gaza,” the commentator added as the Israeli team’s bobsleigh continued its run.

“It should be noted that the term ‘genocide’ is the one used by the UN Commission of Inquiry. Edelman stated that the military intervention was ‘the most just and moral war in history’, according to him.”

“Edelman asked his followers to cheer on Ward Fawarsa – an Israeli athlete present here in Cortina – while he was involved in an Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip in 2023,” the Swiss journalist added.

Reina was critical of the athlete’s presence in Cortina during these Games, saying it “raises questions” as it pertains to the International Olympic Committee’s decision that “any athlete who has participated in activities supporting war, either militarily or through their social media accounts, is ineligible to participate.”

This decision had been specifically applied to Russian athletes after their country launched a war on Ukraine. He questioned why similar standards weren’t applied to Israel.

The Israeli bobsleigh team finished last out of the 26 teams.

While the video has been widely circulated on social media, RTS removed it from their YouTube channel overnight. The Swiss media outlet has confirmed to Al Jazeera that the video originated from their coverage of the Games.

“Our journalist wanted to question the IOC’s policy regarding the statements made by the athlete in question,” RTS told Al Jazeera on Tuesday. “However, such information, while factual, is inappropriate for sports commentary due to its length. Therefore, we removed the segment from our website last night.”

Reina’s commentary has been commended by a wide range of sports fans and Palestinian supporters, who lauded his courage to use his platform to condemn the Israeli athletes.

Commentator Stefan Renna on Swiss public broadcaster RTS sparked controversy during Israeli captain AJ Edelman’s second bobsleigh run at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, bringing up Edelman’s past social media posts supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including one… pic.twitter.com/TenlLtbRiw

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) February 17, 2026

Israel’s War on Gaza Wipes Out Sporting Generation as 1,007 Athletes Killed, Fields Turn to Rubble

https://www.palestinechronicle.com/israels-war-on-gaza-wipes-out-sporting-generation-as-1007-athletes-killed-fields-turn-to-rubble/


_{Pre-genocide photo of the Palestine Amputee Football Association squad.}

At least 1,007 Palestinian athletes have been killed and 265 sports facilities destroyed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza since October 2023, according to the Palestinian Olympic Committee — a toll that reflects not only human loss but the dismantling of an entire social and cultural sphere in the besieged enclave.

Speaking at a press conference in Gaza City, committee vice-president Asaad Al-Majdalawi said 45 women were among the victims, while damage extended across stadiums, training halls, gyms, and youth centers throughout the Strip. Of the facilities hit, 184 were destroyed and 81 partially damaged.

“This destruction has deprived thousands of young people and adolescents of their right to train and practice sports,” Majdalawi said.

But the figures tell only part of the story. Gaza’s sports sector has long functioned as a social lifeline — offering structure, psychological recovery and community identity in a territory repeatedly subjected to blockade and bombardment.

Coaches, trainers, referees and youth program coordinators also lost their livelihoods, while entire league systems collapsed.

Majdalawi stressed that the impact is “psychological and social,” describing trauma among athletes, interruption of professional pathways and the disappearance of income sources for families connected to sports institutions.

The destruction unfolded within a broader war that, according to Gaza health authorities, has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and injured over 171,000 since October 2023, with hundreds more killed even after the October 10 ceasefire through continued attacks.

Algorithms and AI have turned Gaza into a laboratory of death

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260217-algorithms-and-ai-have-turned-gaza-into-a-laboratory-of-death/


_{A view of makeshift tents amid the rubble left behind by Israeli attacks as Palestinians carry on with their daily lives under harsh conditions in Gaza Strip on February 16}

The revelations by +972 Magazine and Local Call have exposed the darkest core of the contemporary war in Gaza, in which genocide is carried out not only by bombs and missiles, but by data, algorithms and global digital platforms.

The Israeli artificial intelligence system known as Lavender has confirmed what the Palestinian resistance, Lebanon, and Iran have denounced for years: Technology as an organic part of the Zionist war machine, functioning as an instrument of surveillance, target selection, and mass extermination.

The liberal rhetoric of “digital privacy” collapses in the face of the facts. Applications such as WhatsApp insist on the promise of end-to-end encryption, but conceal what is essential, in which metadata are worth more than messages.

Lavender assessed virtually the entire population of the Gaza Strip, comprising more than 2.3 million people, assigning automated “risk scores”. Merely being in a WhatsApp group, maintaining frequent contact with someone already marked, or displaying digital patterns considered “suspicious” was enough to be placed on execution lists.

Human supervision was deliberately minimal, reduced to seconds, with conscious acceptance of high error rates. Entire families were killed in their homes, treated as “acceptable collateral damage” in an algorithmic equation that normalises massacre.

This is not a technical deviation. It is a policy of extermination. International Humanitarian Law explicitly prohibits indiscriminate attacks and requires distinction between civilians and combatants.

Systems that automate lethal decisions, pre-accepting the death of innocents, constitute crimes against humanity and reinforce the characterisation of genocide as a technologically organised and rationalised process.

The machinery that sustains this model is global. Twenty-first century espionage no longer depends on intercepting messages, but on controlling digital ecosystems.

Private platforms function as permanent sensors of planetary social life, feeding databases accessible to intelligence services such as the Mossad and the CIA, through formal cooperation, legal pressure or the exploitation of vulnerabilities. This represents a structural convergence between big tech companies, the military-industrial complex and the imperial security apparatus.

The denunciation is clear: Israel is not waging a war against combatants, but against Palestinian existence itself, now mediated by algorithms.

Hamas rejects Netanyahu aide’s 60-day ultimatum for group to disarm

Hamas has rejected remarks by an Israeli government official calling for the Gaza-based group to disarm in 60 days and threatening to resume Israel’s genocidal war if it fails to comply.

Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi told Al Jazeera Mubasher on Monday that he had no knowledge of such a demand.

“Statements made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu … and through the media are merely threats with no basis in the ongoing negotiations”, Al Jazeera Arabic cited him as saying.

Mardawi’s comments come after Israeli Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs, during a conference in Jerusalem on Monday, threatened to renew the genocidal war on Gaza if Hamas failed to disarm in 60 days, local media outlet the Times of Israel reported.

A top aide to Netanyahu, Fuchs claimed that the two-month period was requested by the United States administration. “We are respecting that,” he said.

Without confirming when the ultimatum would exactly start, Fuchs said it might begin with the February 19 meeting of US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace – a Washington-backed plan for the reconstruction of Gaza.

“We will evaluate it,” Fuchs said. “If it works, great. If not, then the IDF [Israeli army] will have to complete the mission.”

Hamas’s Mardawi told Al Jazeera Mubasher that any threat to renew the war would have “serious repercussions for the region” and stressed that “the Palestinian people will not surrender”, AJA reported.

One year on, No Other Land co-director says Israeli attacks intensifying


_{Oscar winner Hamdan Ballal says his family has been attacked again by Israeli settlers}

Nearly a year since the Palestinian-Israeli film No Other Land won an Academy Award, its co-director, Hamdan Ballal, says Israeli settler attacks on the cluster of occupied West Bank villages known as Masafer Yatta have only gotten worse, as those involved in the documentary bear the brunt of Israeli reprisals.

The latest bout of violence came on Sunday, when Israeli settlers stormed Ballal’s hometown of Susya, despite an Israeli court ruling designating the area around his home as closed to non-residents. Israeli army officers called by the family to enforce the ruling, issued two weeks prior, sided with the attackers.

“The ruling was supposed to make things better for us, but the opposite happened,” Ballal told Al Jazeera on Monday. “Israeli authorities did nothing to enforce the decision, but joined the settlers in the attack.”

One of his brothers was held in a chokehold by an army officer and later hospitalised with breathing difficulties. Four other relatives – two brothers, a nephew, and a cousin – were detained for several hours as they arrived at the scene. They have all since been released.

The Palestinian film director said his family was ambushed by the same Israeli settler who led an attack against him as he returned from the Oscar ceremony in Los Angeles last March. Then, he had been taken away in a blindfold by a group of Israeli settlers and army officers and released a day later with injuries to his head and stomach, leading to global condemnation.

Ballal said the retaliation for the documentary has since been directed against his family, rather than himself, to avoid media attention. His relatives have been routinely prevented from grazing sheep and ploughing the land. At times, they have been arrested, questioned about his work and whereabouts, or intimidated to vacate their homes.

‘Right to live’

Ballal’s family has not been the only one to pay the price for the acclaimed documentary.

Adra, the Palestinian protagonist in the film, had his home in at-Tawani raided by the Israeli army in September, after clashes broke out with a group of Israeli settlers that trespassed in his olive grove.

In July, Awdah Hathaleen, an activist, football player and a consultant for No Other Land, was shot dead, in the chest, in the village of Umm al-Khair. The father of three was a key figure in non-violent resistance against settler violence in Masafer Yatta. His assailant, Israeli settler Yinon Levi, later said, “I’m glad I did it,” according to witnesses.

Ballal said he does not hesitate to describe these attacks as being “terrorist”, as they leave the Palestinian community in Masafer Yatta constantly fearing for their safety.

“It’s a simple right for Palestinians to feel safe in their homes,” he told Al Jazeera. “We are scared; we are in danger, and it’s been like this for a long time.”

“International law doesn’t work for Palestinians,” he continued. “But we are human, and we have a right to live.”

Mapping forced displacements and settler attacks by Israel in the West Bank

According to UNRWA, Israeli military incursions have forcibly displaced at least 33,362 Palestinians from three northern refugee camps: Jenin (12,557), Tulkarem(11,862) and Nur Shams (8,943).

In addition to those displaced during Israeli operations, at least 3,773 have been forced from their homes due to Israeli home demolitions, settler violence, and access restrictions.

According to data from OCHA, settlers have attacked Palestinians more than 3,700 times in the occupied West Bank over the past 28 months.

The number of settler attacks has risen sharply since 2016, with 852 recorded in 2022, 1,291 in 2023, 1,449 in 2024 and 1,828 in 2025 – an average of five attacks per day, according to data from OCHA.

Every West Bank governorate has faced settler attacks over the past year.

Data from OCHA shows that between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2025, the Ramallah and el-Bireh governorate recorded the highest number of settler attacks with 523 incidents, followed by Nablus with 349 and Hebron with 309.

Israeli settlers displace 15 Palestinian families in West Bank: Official


_{A Palestinian man stands on the rubble of a house demolished by Israeli settlers the previous day in a village on the outskirts of Jericho, in the occupied West Bank}

Israeli settlers have forced 15 Palestinian families to tear down their homes and depart from the northern Jordan Valley in the northeastern occupied West Bank, according to a local official.

Mahdi Daraghmeh, head of the al-Malih Village Council, told the Wafa news agency on Tuesday that the families had begun dismantling their homes amid intensifying assaults by settlers.

According to Wafa, seven additional families from the nearby Maita community were forced to leave several days earlier following similar settler attacks and threats.

In a separate incident, settlers assaulted men from Nabi Samwil village, northwest of occupied East Jerusalem, injuring one, who was taken to a hospital with bruises, Wafa reported.

‘Entrenching Israeli control’

This week the Israeli government also approved a plan to designate large areas of the occupied West Bank as “state property”, shifting the burden of proof to Palestinians to establish ownership of their land.

In a joint statement on Tuesday, the foreign ministers of Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt said the step aims at imposing a new legal and administrative reality to consolidate control over the occupied land.

‘Jordan is next’: West Bank annexation signals ‘silent transfer’

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/2/17/jordan-is-next-west-bank-annexation-signals-silent

For decades, the “alternative homeland” – the notion that Jordan should become the Palestinian state – was dismissed in Amman’s diplomatic circles as a distant nightmare or a conspiracy theory.

Today, under the shadow of a far-right Israeli government and a devastating genocidal war in Gaza, that nightmare has become an operational reality.

The alarm in the Hashemite Kingdom reached a fever pitch on Sunday, following the Israeli cabinet’s approval of measures to register vast swaths of the occupied West Bank as “state land” under the Israeli Ministry of Justice. The move, described by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich as a “settlement revolution”, effectively bypasses the military administration that has governed the occupied territory since 1967, treating it instead as sovereign Israeli soil.

For Jordan, this bureaucratic annexation is the final signal that the status quo is dead. With the Israeli military’s “Iron Wall” operation crushing refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarem, Jordan’s political and military establishment is no longer asking if a forced transfer is coming, but how to stop it.

“The transfer is no longer a threat; it is moving to execution,” Mamdouh al-Abbadi, Jordan’s former deputy prime minister, told Al Jazeera. “We are seeing the practical application … The alternative homeland is something that is coming; after this West Bank, the enemy will move to the East Bank, to Jordan.”

The ‘silent transfer’

The fear in Amman is not just about military invasion, but about a “soft transfer”, making life in the West Bank unliveable to force a gradual exodus towards Jordan.

Sunday’s decision to transfer land registration authority to the Israeli Justice Ministry is viewed in Jordan as a critical step in this process. By erasing the Jordanian and Ottoman land registries that have protected Palestinian property rights for a century, Israel is clearing the legal path for massive settlement expansion.

Al-Abbadi, a veteran voice in Jordanian politics, pointed to symbolic but dangerous shifts in Israeli military nomenclature.

“There is a new brigade in the Israeli army, named the Gilead Brigade,” al-Abbadi noted. “What is Gilead? Gilead is a mountainous region near the capital, Amman. This means the Israelis are proceeding with their strategic practices from the Nile to the Euphrates.”

He argued that the 1994 Wadi Araba Treaty is effectively null and void in the eyes of the current Israeli leadership.

“Smotrich’s ideology is not just the view of one person; it has become the doctrine of the state,” al-Abbadi said, warning that the Israeli consensus has shifted permanently. “They are the ones who killed the Wadi Araba treaty before it was even born … If we do not wake up, the strategy will be ‘either us or them’. There is no third option.”

Latest developments

Over 80 film workers slam Berlin festival’s silence on Israel’s Gaza war

Dozens of actors and directors, including Javier Bardem and Tilda Swinton, have condemned the Berlin International Film Festival for its “anti-Palestinian racism” and urged organisers to clearly state their opposition to “Israel’s genocide” in Gaza.

In an open letter published in Variety on Tuesday, the 81 film workers also denounced comments by this year’s president of the awards jury, Wim Wenders, who – when asked about Gaza – said, “We should stay out of politics.”

All of the signatories are alumni of the festival, which is also known as the Berlinale, and include actors Cherien Dabis and Brian Cox, as well as directors Adam McKay, Mike Leigh, Lukas Dhont, Nan Goldin, and Avi Mograbi.

Immigration court rejects Rubio’s deportation cases against two pro-Palestinian students: Report

Immigration courts have terminated deportation proceedings against two pro-Palestinian students, marking the second such decision in just more than a week, ABC News is reporting.

In the latest case, a judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to prove that Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University student detained during his naturalisation interview last year, was removable.

Lawyers representing the Trump administration had given a 2015 FBI investigation, in which a gun shop owner alleged that Mahdawi had claimed to have built machineguns in the occupied West Bank to kill Jews, as the reason.

However, the FBI had closed that investigation, and Mahdawi was never charged with any crime, ABC reported.

The court found DHS did not adequately authenticate a memo allegedly signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio claiming Mahdawi posed a foreign policy threat.

A similar ruling recently halted proceedings against Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University PhD student also labelled a foreign policy risk.

Israeli army sniper in Chile accused of Gaza war crimes could face justice

A Chilean court is considering a criminal complaint against a former Israeli army sniper who served in Gaza during Israel’s more than two-year-long genocide on the coastal enclave and the Palestinian people.

Rom Kovtun’s own social media posts revealed he was holidaying in the country, opening the door to what legal experts call “universal jurisdiction”. Kovtun, an Israeli-Ukrainian, served as a sniper in Israel’s 424th Shaked Battalion in Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s Lucia Newman, reporting from Santiago, said images posted online show Kovtun swimming in a lake in south-central Chile with other former Israeli soldiers.

“His knack for posting leisure and wartime escapades on Instagram is what allowed the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) to file a criminal complaint in Chile, accusing him of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity,” she added.

Al Jazeera’s Newman reported that Kovtun laid siege to the enclave’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, between March and April 2024, allegedly playing a key role in the mass death of civilians and destruction that ensued. The siege denied water, food, medicine and electricity to all those inside, leading to the death of an estimated 500 doctors, nurses and patients, including newborn babies.

“Chile is a favourite holiday destination for Israeli soldiers who’ve completed their military service,” Newman said. “But they’re no longer as welcome.”

The South American nation is home to the largest Palestinian diaspora outside of the Middle East, and Chileans in general are seen as sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

Nevertheless, Newman noted that none of it would have “any bearing on the case”. “It’s a purely legal, complex judicial issue that could take time, enough time to allow the former Israeli sniper to be long gone,” Newman added.

Pro-Palestine activists acquitted of burglary at Israeli arms site in UK

All defendants in the Filton24 case in the United Kingdom have been formally acquitted of aggravated burglary at an Israeli arms company, after prosecutors said they could offer no evidence to support the charge.

At a hearing at Woolwich Crown Court on Wednesday, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) confirmed it was unable to proceed against those who had yet to go on trial, the Filton24 Defence Committee said in a news release.

The defendants, who are linked to the proscribed campaign group Palestine Action, are accused of taking part in a break-in at a UK branch of Elbit Systems in Bristol. Five of those granted bail, all on remand between 14-18 months, will all be released on Wednesday, apart from one person who will have to be granted bail for another case she is charged with first.

It’s the second high-profile win for Palestine Action, and the pro-Palestine community in general in the UK, after the High Court ruled last week that the government’s ban on Palestine Action as a “terror group” was unlawful and disproportionate.

The decision on Wednesday comes after “the first six on trial from the Filton24 were all acquitted of aggravated burglary, the most serious charge by far levelled against the defendants, which carried a maximum sentence of life in prison,” the statement said.

“Three of the defendants, including Zoe Rogers, Fatema Zainab Rajwani and Jordan Devlin, were also acquitted of violent disorder. On the remaining counts, the jury reached no verdicts, meaning the six were not convicted of any offence.”

Global pressure does little to stop Israel’s anti-Palestinian policies

Many Israelis see international condemnation as evidence of anti-Semitism, rather than a verdict on their government’s actions.

Defying a chorus of global condemnation and international law, Israel nevertheless proceeded earlier this month with the de facto annexation of the West Bank, home to more than three million Palestinians and a territory it has illegally occupied since 1967.

The international criticism that met the announcement was hardly new. Over the two years of its genocide in Gaza, Israel has set itself on course to become, in the words of some of its own lawmakers, a “pariah state”. Its prime minister and former defence minister are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, while global revulsion over its actions in Gaza has pushed the boycott of Israeli goods to the forefront of consumers’ minds.

Four countries – Spain, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and the Republic of Ireland – are refusing to take part in the popular song competition Eurovision in protest at Israel’s presence. A global campaign is also under way to suspend Israel from both European UEFA and international FIFA football competitions, while South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in the International Court of Justice is ongoing.

But in Israel, this international isolation – and the killing of more than 72,000 Palestinians – is not significantly changing opinions on how the country should behave. In fact, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still has a strong chance of winning elections set to be held this year, and much of the opposition towards him comes from his domestic policies, rather than disagreement over how he has treated Palestinians, which many remain indifferent to.

“Most people don’t even know we’ve largely annexed the West Bank,” said Orly Noy, the editor of the Hebrew-language news site Local Call. “It just isn’t reported that way.”

“They may be aware that some of the rules of governance have changed, but they probably won’t know that it’s been de facto annexed until there’s an international response that affects them, such as Eurovision,” she said, noting that the withdrawal of the four nations in objection to Israel’s genocide has been framed in Israel as being motivated primarily by anti-Semitism.

Disinterest

For many Israelis, Palestinians barely exist, observers have said, with the extreme settler violence perpetrated upon them going largely unreported or cast as somehow deserved.

“The media never really reports opposition to anything Israel does,” Noy continued. “It simply dismisses it as anti-Semitic, and presents the world as being made up of those that are either for us, or against us.”

“Why would they [Israelis] ever reflect on any of their government’s actions?” she asked rhetorically. “They have the answers already: anti-Semitism, victimhood and defiance.”

Little of the carnage that Israel has inflicted on Gaza has made its way to Israeli television – overwhelmingly the most popular way of receiving news – over the course of the war. On the contrary, Israeli news channels covering the conflict have focused on the number of “terrorists” killed, or framed concern over the nature of the war entirely through the prism of the 250 or so captives taken by Hamas and other groups in 2023.

In print, criticism of the government or its war has largely been left to smaller outlets on the left. In such a landscape, where Israel’s actions go largely unreported, criticism of its government’s conduct is easily cast by lawmakers as anti-Semitic in origin, with just the accusation serving as a second “Iron Dome” – a reference to Israel’s anti-missile defence system – in deflecting criticism of the state, said Neve Gordon, an Israeli professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London.

“Israel always has to be the victim, and that victimhood justifies any level of violence in its defence,” Gordon said.

“Many Israeli Jews have a kind of siege mentality,” Bar-Tal said, describing how criticism of Israel was met by a form of “moral silencing” weaponised and propagated by the government. “They imagine that the rest of the world just wants Israel to disappear.”

“They think, you Europeans didn’t say anything about us during World War II,” he added. “You did nothing to stop the Holocaust, and now you want to attack the one place where Jews feel safe?”

Is Europe going to do anything for the Palestinians?
https://eci.ec.europa.eu/055/public/#/screen/home

It's not just Israelis that can't (won't) distinguish between anti-semitism and criticism of Israel's actions.

BDS Campaigners Targeted By Pro Israel Activists

That's in the UK. No different here (Canada).