“When I do feel that I’m right, I’m not much bothered by criticism,” she added. “Who has ever stood up against injustice without being criticized? If that’s all I have to endure, then it’s very little.”
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Israeli far-right minister orders Arab village evicted after saying ICC is seeking his arrest
(JTA) — Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister and a minister in the Ministry of Defense, said on Tuesday that the International Criminal Court is seeking a warrant for his arrest and announced he would retaliate by clearing Palestinians from a herding village in the West Bank.
Smotrich said in a press conference that the ICC prosecutor “submitted a secret request for an international arrest warrant” against him. Calling the court “antisemitic,” he said the move was a “declaration of war” and he would respond by evacuating Khan al-Ahmar, a Palestinian Bedouin village in the West Bank.
“I promise all our enemies, this is only the beginning,” Smotrich said.
Smotrich has authority over construction and demolition in the portion of the West Bank where Khan al-Ahmar is located through his role in the Ministry of Defense. The head of the far-right Religious Zionist Party, Smotrich lives in a West Bank settlement and has been banned and sanctioned by several countries who say he has incited settler violence against Palestinians.
The court told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that it was unable to comment on Smotrich’s claim because its applications for arrest warrants are sealed. Once warrants are confirmed, judges can decide whether or not to publicize them.
Members of the court could have various motivations for choosing to publicize arrest warrants or keep them secret, said Eran Shamir-Borer, director of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Center for Security and Democracy.
“A reason why the court may decide to render the existence of arrest warrants public could be to interrupt ongoing criminal conduct or deter other crimes,” said Shamir-Borer. “A reason to keep the arrest warrant secret could be for the sake of effectiveness of its enforcement, so the suspect does not evade arrest.”
In November 2024, the ICC publicly announced arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Smotrich did not specify who had informed him of the request for a warrant or the ICC’s reasoning. His spokesperson declined to comment on the details of a potential warrant to JTA.
Both the ICC and Smotrich’s settler movement have long had their eyes on Khan al-Ahmar, a village near Jerusalem that is home to about 200 Bedouins.
The village was subject to a protracted legal battle for years, as settlers backed by senior politicians petitioned for its demolition because it lacked the proper building permits. In 2018, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that Khan al-Ahmar could be razed. (The community moved to its current location after being expelled by the Israeli military from the Negev desert in the 1950s, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.)
But the demolition did not move forward, partly because of intense international pressure. In response to the Supreme Court decision, the ICC’s then-prosecutor warned that destroying Khan al-Ahmar could amount to a war crime.
The governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom jointly urged against the village’s demolition, saying that its location had “strategic importance for preserving the contiguity of a future Palestinian state.” Khan al-Ahmar’s support from Europe includes a school built in 2009 with the help of an Italian NGO.
Friends of Jahalin, a local volunteer group advocating for the Jahalin Bedouin tribe that encompasses the residents of Khan al-Ahmar, suggested that Smotrich was making a play for his pro-settlement political base as Israel approaches elections, which must be held by October.
“In his pathetic attempts to pass the voting threshold, Minister Smotrich finds himself invited to The Hague, but along the way he is dragging the entire country into an international moral disaster,” Friends of Jahalin said in a statement.
Pro-peace groups in Israel and the United States have also condemned Smotrich’s announcement.
The Israeli organization Peace Now said in a statement, “Minister Smotrich seeks to take revenge on The Hague and the international community at the expense of one of the most vulnerable communities, which for years has struggled simply for the right to live on the small piece of land in its possession.”
J Street, a liberal Zionist U.S. group, said on X that “using Khan al-Ahmar as a political pawn is cruel, extremist and dangerous.”
The European Union last week announced sanctions against Israeli settlers over violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. Europe could be poised to take a stronger tone against Israeli policies after Viktor Orban, Hungary’s former president and Netanyahu’s close ally, was unseated in April.
The Trump administration, which has sanctioned at least 11 ICC judges and prosecutors involved in investigating U.S. or Israeli nationals, has not yet responded to Smotrich’s claims. In 2024, under the Biden administration, the United States rejected the ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. That was possible because, like Israel, the United States is not a party to the treaty that created the ICC and does not recognize its jurisdiction. Smotrich visited the United States and met with senior Trump administration officials last year.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israeli far-right minister orders Arab village evicted after saying ICC is seeking his arrest appeared first on The Forward.
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Sally Rooney to Publish Hebrew Translation of Latest Book With Pro-BDS Israeli Publisher
Author Sally Rooney in an interview with “PBS NewsHour.” Photo: Screenshot.
Award-winning Irish author Sally Rooney will publish a Hebrew translation of her latest novel, Intermezzo, through an independent Israeli publishing house that supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, it was announced on Tuesday.
According to its website, November Books aims to “promote the full realization of human rights … and in particular for Palestinians living under all forms of Israeli oppression including the military occupation.” The Israeli publishing house said it is also “committed to the idea, in line with Palestinian and democratic voices in Israel, that Israel should not be a Jewish state but rather a state of all its citizens and recognize the right of return as it was accepted by the UN. We strongly oppose any form of inequality and apartheid.”
November Books will publish the Hebrew translation of Intermezzo in collaboration with +972 Magazine and Local Call, two independent Israeli news outlets. Translated by Debbie Eylon and edited by Asaf Schurr, it will be published in June “in a way that honors the principles of the boycott and stands in solidarity with the Palestinian demand for freedom, equality, and justice,” +972 Magazine executive director Haggai Matar wrote on Tuesday in an op-ed announcing the news. The novel, published in 2024, focuses on two brothers following the death of their father, and it explores themes of grief, love, and family.
In 2021, Rooney announced she would only allow her third book, Beautiful World, Where Are You, to be translated to Hebrew through a publishing house that complies with the BDS movement’s “institutional boycott guidelines” against Israel. The 35-year-old author said she does not want to partner with an Israeli company “that does not publicly distance itself from apartheid and support the UN-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people.”
At the time, Rooney had already published Hebrew translations of two of her novels — 2017’s Conversations With Friends and 2018’s Normal People – with the Israeli publishing house Modan, but refused to let them translate Beautiful World, Where Are You.
BDS seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination. Leaders of the movement have repeatedly stated their goal is to destroy the world’s only Jewish state.
Rooney spoke this week to The Guardian and attempted to explain her position.
“For me, the act of translation is in itself a beautiful ideal,” she said. “Though my refusal to work with complicit Israeli publishing houses made the contractual side of things more complex, I was, of course, never boycotting the Hebrew language or any language.”
Last year, Rooney said she would give proceeds from her books and BBC adaptations of them to support Palestine Action, an anti-Israel group designated as a terrorist organization in the United Kingdom.
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For Israel, the Accusation Itself Becomes Proof
People attend the annual al-Quds Day (Jerusalem Day) rally in London, Britain, March 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
A dangerous shift happens when people stop feeling responsible for verifying what they believe. The accusation itself becomes enough. Once institutions repeat something with enough confidence, many decent people hand over their judgment completely. They assume somebody else has already checked the facts.
That is where real danger begins.
A case is being built against Israel in international courts, and much of the public discussion around it already feels emotionally settled long before most people have examined a single document, testimony, or legal standard for themselves.
The International Court of Justice has no meaningful conflict-of-interest mechanism comparable to what people would expect in many domestic legal systems. UN reports and secondary claims enter public discourse carrying the weight of institutional authority, even when the underlying sources were never cross-examined or independently verified in a courtroom setting.
At a certain point, the accusation itself becomes proof.
That pattern extends far beyond a courtroom. Perception gets taken over before a person realizes his or her thinking has been outsourced. Repetition creates familiarity. Familiarity creates emotional certainty. Eventually people stop asking where the information came from in the first place.
Jewish history carries enough experience with this pattern to recognize it early. A claim repeated often enough starts feeling like an established truth even before evidence exists to support it.
Once institutions absorb the accusation, the public no longer experiences skepticism as responsibility. Skepticism starts feeling like disobedience.
Artificial intelligence is about to accelerate this problem even further. AI systems absorb dominant narratives faster than human beings can examine them critically. Once a version of events becomes widely indexed, cited, repeated, and emotionally reinforced, it enters the system as background truth. The next generation encounters conclusions first and context later.
That matters because most people do not independently investigate history, legal claims, or war. They inherit understanding socially. Search engines shape it. Institutions shape it. Algorithms shape it. Repetition shapes it.
The responsibility for your own safety begins before the threat fully arrives. Physical self-defense taught me that years ago. Cognitive self-defense follows the same principle. A society that loses the ability to question emotionally satisfying accusations becomes vulnerable to manipulation at a scale far larger than any courtroom.
People once understood that serious accusations required serious proof. Today, institutional confidence often replaces evidence in the public mind. That shift should concern anyone who still believes good intentions alone are enough to protect people from participating in injustice.
Tsahi Shemesh is an Israeli-American IDF veteran and the founder of Krav Maga Experts in NYC. A father and educator, he writes about Jewish identity, resilience, moral courage, and the ethics of strength in a time of rising antisemitism.
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Fatah Turned 388 Terrorists Into Its Leaders at Its 8th General Conference
A meeting of the Fatah Revolutionary Council at the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar in the West Bank, July 12, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Mohamad Torokman.
The Eighth Fatah Conference continued to glorify past Palestinian terrorist murderers while building the next generation of terrorist leadership.
PA and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas decided that all prisoners who were incarcerated for more than 20 years — meaning those who were guilty of murder or attempted murder — automatically would become part of the Palestinian leadership and thus were able to participate and vote at the conference, which took place this past weekend.
The consequence of this is that a total of 388 Palestinians, who as prisoners were presented as role models, just transitioned into becoming PA leaders.
A senior Fatah youth leader described the importance: “We have a great opportunity as Fatah youth … to learn from them.”
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has shown repeatedly exactly how the PA and Fatah, as policy, portray murderers of Jews as role models for all Palestinians, and especially youth:
Official PA TV newsreader: “The prisoners [i.e., terrorists] will also have prominent representation in the [Eighth Fatah] Conference, there will be participation of more than 388 prisoners who have served more than 20 years in the occupation’s [i.e., Israeli] prisons…”
Fatah Shabiba Youth Movement Secretariat member Tasami Ramadan: “The participation of the [released] prisoners this time in this conference… is a very qualitative addition... seeing this qualitative and special addition that our released prisoners will contribute, as they are not just released prisoners and we cannot summarize them only as such.
They are also [figures] of national stature and national pillars who have outlined the characteristics of Fatah’s path, and they are also spiritual and organizational pillars. We have a great opportunity as Fatah youth … to learn from them and to be their partners in building Fatah’s political decision.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV News, May 8, 2026]
A Fatah spokesman further legitimized the participation of released terrorists in Fatah’s leadership conference as they “precede everything” and are held “in highest regard:”
Fatah Spokesman and Eighth Fatah Conference preparatory committee member Iyad Abu Zneit: “The composition of the [Eighth Fatah] Conference is diverse and rich … Of course, the released prisoners [are also represented], as they precede everything.
I will emphasize that the leadership insisted on there being broad representation for the [released] prisoners at this conference… The group of prisoners that these ones represent from among those in the Fatah Movement also constitutes a significant number [of members], a large number, who have their own role, and we hold them in the highest regard. They have the right to be partners in Fatah, in the [Fatah] Revolutionary Council, in the leadership of the [Fatah] Central Committee, and in any place they can reach.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, May 6, 2026]
PMW exposed last week that among the Fatah members at the Eighth General Conference and those running for Fatah leadership positions are released prisoners responsible for the murder of 75 people while some of the most venerated figures at the conference included arch-terrorist murderers Abu Iyad, who planned the Munich Olympics massacre, and Abu Jihad, who was responsible for the murder of 125 people.
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.