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US Says Israel-Saudi Normalization Needs Gaza Quiet, Talks on Palestinian Rule
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog attend a wreath-laying ceremony marking Israel’s national Holocaust Remembrance Day in the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in Jerusalem, May 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/Pool
Forging formal Israeli-Saudi relations as part of an emerging trilateral deal involving Washington would require a calming of the Gaza war and a discussion of prospects for Palestinian governance, the US envoy to Jerusalem said on Tuesday.
“There’s going to have to be some period of quiet, I think, in Gaza, and there’s going to have to be a conversation about how do you deal with the question of the future of Palestinian governance,” Ambassador Jack Lew said.
“My view is, that strategic benefit is worth taking the risk of getting into that conversation about. But that’s a decision that the government of Israel will have to make and the people of Israel will have to make,” he told a conference hosted by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) think tank.
The United States on Monday described as “near final” a bilateral defense pact with Saudi Arabia. Once completed, it would be part of a broad deal presented to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to decide whether to make concessions to secure a normalization of ties with Riyadh.
Netanyahu has long promoted such a diplomatic prize. But, seven months into a war with Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip whom Israel has sworn to eradicate, a ceasefire is elusive and he says it is premature to discuss day-after Palestinian rule.
“Of course we want to expand the circle of peace. We haven’t been shy about this,” Israeli government spokesperson Tal Heinrich said. “[But] any peace initiative that jeopardizes Israel‘s security is not something that we see as real peace.”
Addressing the IDI event separately, Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial, argued that bilateral ties with Saudi Arabia would be a setback to Iranian-backed Hamas, which sparked the war with an Oct. 7 cross-border rampage.
“I very much hope that this possibility is being seriously considered, as the empire of evil sought on October 7 to destroy the chance for normalization,” Herzog said.
“Our struggle, in the end, is not only a fight against Hamas. It is a wider, strategic, global, and historic battle, and we must do everything to integrate into the grand vision of normalization.”
The Netanyahu government, however, has said a failure to defeat Hamas could harm Israeli credibility in the eyes of US-aligned Arab Sunni powers, which worry about Islamist militancy.
The post US Says Israel-Saudi Normalization Needs Gaza Quiet, Talks on Palestinian Rule first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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The NY Times’ Non-Apology for Its Nasty Blood Libel
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Nearly 25 years ago, HonestReporting began its mission by taking on The New York Times over a photo it published of a young man — bloodied and battered — crouching beneath a club-wielding Israeli policeman. The caption identified him as a Palestinian victim of recent riots — with the clear implication that the Israeli soldier was the one who beat him.
The effort to fix the incorrect reporting started with the boy’s father writing a letter to the Times, explaining the truth about his son, a Jewish student from Chicago who was pulled from his Jerusalem taxi by a mob of Arab people who beat and stabbed him and his friends.
A half-hearted correction was issued about “an American student in Israel” — but not a Jew beaten by Arabs. Only after additional public outrage did the Times reprint Tuvia Grossman’s picture — this time with the proper caption — along with a full article detailing his near-lynching at the hands of Palestinians.
Fast forward to last Thursday, when the Times put on its front page a moving photo of a skeletal child, Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, cradled in his mother’s arms. The photo, taken by a photographer for a Turkish news agency, looked like a gut-wrenching snapshot of starvation in Gaza.
The underlying message was that Israel was deliberately starving Gazan children.
It took five days of pressure from the Israeli consulate in New York and organizations like HonestReporting for the Times to admit their mistake.
“After publication of the article, The Times learned from his doctor that Mohammed also had pre-existing health problems,” an editor’s note added to the article said.
A New York Times spokeswoman issued this statement on Tuesday night:
Children in Gaza are malnourished and starving, as New York Times reporters and others have documented. We recently ran a story about Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians, including Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, who is about 18 months old and suffers from severe malnutrition. We have since learned new information, including from the hospital that treated him and his medical records, and have updated our story to add context about his pre-existing health problems. This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of his situation. Our reporters and photographers continue to report from Gaza, bravely, sensitively, and at personal risk, so that readers can see firsthand the consequences of the war.
In other words, The New York Times ran a picture without properly checking the truth behind it. The Times continues to stand behind the underlying message against Israel that it tried to convey by running the photo in the first place.
Instead of being self-critical about its reporters and photographers who got the story wrong, the Times praised their bravery and sensitivity.
No, New York Times, the new information does not merely add context about Mohammed’s pre-existing health problems. It proves that the way he looks has nothing to do with Israel and the war that began with the October 7 massacre.
Thank you for your non-apology, but the damage of this blood libel has already been done. It has been weaponized and used to demonize Israel around the world, resulting in dangerous policy changes by the leaders of France, Canada, and the United Kingdom and the president of the United States saying “That’s real starvation. I see it, and you can’t fake that.”
The New York Times’ lies about the photograph and the resulting international condemnation of Israel led to Hamas hardening its positions in negotiations to end the war. There are up to 20 live Israeli hostages, who are actually known to be starving, whose horror has been prolonged by the irresponsibility of the Times and other media outlets that ran the photo without doing their due diligence.
There have also been antisemitic incidents throughout the world since the photo ran, and the connection between the rapid rise in anti-Jewish violence and its connection to dishonest reporting since October 7, 2023, has been well documented.
Instead of running a front-page apology online and in print and showing true accountability, the Times hid its correction by posting it on its PR account, which has 89,000 followers on X, not its regular account with 55 million followers.
The Times also has not taken back another incorrect report, published Saturday, claiming in a headline that is shameful since it’s not satirical: “No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say.”
The article quotes unnamed, anonymous “military sources.” Even after official IDF spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said and proved that the opposite was true, there has still been no admission from the Times that it made yet another dangerous mistake. There has been no statement by the newspaper’s spokeswoman and no editor’s note.
But at least with its statement about the photo, The New York Times did somewhat more than nothing to update its readers. Other media outlets have not even done that.
The Daily Express issued this editor’s note: “Following the publication of this article, we have learned that Muhammad was also suffering pre-existing health problems that affected his brain and his muscles. We have updated the article to reflect this.”
The author is the Executive Director of HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Palestinians ‘Praised and Cheered’ Oct. 7, Admits Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor
An Israeli soldier stands during a two-minute siren marking the annual Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day, at an installation at the site of the Nova festival where party goers were killed and kidnapped during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, in Reim, southern Israel, May 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Criticizing Hamas for the “disaster” suffered by Palestinians because of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre and ensuing war, Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor admitted that the massacre itself was “praised and cheered” by Palestinians.
In fact, the murder of over 1,100 Israelis, including over 800 civilians, the wounding of over 5,000, and the kidnapping of 251 “stirred their emotions”:
Abbas’ advisor Al-Habbash: “On Oct. 7, [2023,] everyone praised [it] and cheered as if we had liberated Jerusalem, [but] things are not achieved this way. Things are judged by their results and consequences…
Oct. 7 was a disaster for the Palestinian people and the Palestinian cause – in terms of results. Emotionally… it stirred the emotions of all of us. That is something else. But in terms of consequences, the political results, and the realistic considerations, no, it was a disaster.” [emphasis added]
[PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash, YouTube, July 5, 2025]
Not once has the PA condemned Hamas’ murder, beheading, rape, and torture of Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. The only criticism ever voiced by PA officials has been against Hamas’ unilateral decision to launch the attack without consulting the PLO, and against the destruction they have brought on the Gaza Strip.
Al-Habbash — who felt that Oct. 7 was celebrated “as if we liberated Jerusalem”– has repeatedly defended Hamas’ atrocities:
Al-Habbash: “What Hamas carried out on Oct. 7… resistance is legitimate. We agreed from the start that the resistance is legitimate… What happened on Oct. 7 is a legitimate thing, okay? It’s legitimate.” [emphasis added]
[Al-Habbash, YouTube channel, March 11, 2025]
On the other hand, he is explicit in condemning Hamas, and its parent organization the Muslim Brotherhood for Palestinian suffering in Gaza:
Al-Habbash: “The Muslim Brotherhood organization, the satanic brotherhood, is the greatest disaster that has befallen the Arab and Islamic region during the last century… Give me one state where the Muslim Brotherhood is present and they haven’t created a civil war there and destroyed the society.” [emphasis added]
[Al-Habbash, YouTube channel, July 5, 2025]
But he still did not condemn Oct. 7, 2023, for targeting and massacring Jewish civilians.
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this story first appeared.
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Kurdish-led SDF Say Five Members Killed During Attack by Islamic State in Syria
Islamic State slogans painted along the walls of the tunnel was used by Islamic State militants as an underground training camp in the hillside overlooking Mosul, Iraq, March 4, 2017. Photo: via Reuters Connect.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said on Sunday that five of its members had been killed during an attack by Islamic State militants on a checkpoint in eastern Syria’s Deir el-Zor on July 31.
The SDF was the main fighting force allied to the United States in Syria during fighting that defeated Islamic State in 2019 after the group declared a caliphate across swathes of Syria and Iraq.
The Islamic State has been trying to stage a comeback in the Middle East, the West and Asia. Deir el-Zor city was captured by Islamic State in 2014, but the Syrian army retook it in 2017.