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‘Moderate’ Palestinian Authority Supports Hamas Decision to Keep Israelis Hostage

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the 79th United Nations General Assembly at United Nations headquarters in New York, US, Sept. 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The IDF announced this week that Capt. Omer Neutra, a US citizen, was confirmed to have been killed on October 7, 2023, and his body was taken hostage to Gaza.
Significantly, the Palestinian Authority (PA) fully supports Hamas’ abduction tactics of October 7.
Ever since Fatah — the PA’s ruling party — kidnapped 8 Israeli soldiers in 1982 and exchanged them for 4,700 terrorist prisoners in 1983, it has talked about hostage-taking as a legitimate tactic.
After Hamas succeeded in exchanging kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit for 1,027 imprisoned terrorists in 2011, including then Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas praised them:
Hamas kidnapped a soldier (i.e., Shalit) and managed to keep him for five years — that’s a good thing.”
[Official PA TV, Oct. 24, 2011]
Similarly, this year on the anniversary of the kidnapping of the 8 soldiers in 1982, the PA/Fatah celebrated and presented Hamas’ kidnapping of Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, as an opportunity to free all the terrorists in prison.
Top Fatah official Jibril Rajoub emphasized that Fatah still celebrates the same terror tactics today. Rajoub confirmed that the release of all imprisoned Palestinian terrorists is what the PA/Fatah — just like Hamas — demand in exchange for the release of the Israeli hostages, who were kidnapped by Hamas and other terror organizations on Oct. 7, 2023:
[Fatah] Central Committee Secretary [Jibril Rajoub] demanded that Japan take action on all levels and in all circles to pressure the occupation state (i.e., Israel) to reach a ceasefire agreement and the release of all the captives from both sides.
[Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, Sept. 3, 2024]
Rajoub invoked this Palestinian “logic” of exchanging all the hostages for all the terrorist prisoners already in June, insisting on “everyone in exchange for everyone”:
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “There are two goals. The first goal is to stop -”
Host: “The [Israeli] aggression.”
Jibril Rajoub: “The second is the prisoner exchange – a prisoner exchange under the logic of everyone in exchange for everyone. I tell everyone: If one [Palestinian] prisoner remains – and I’m certain that the motive for 150% of October 7 is that they [Hamas] want the prisoners (i.e., terrorists) – this is an open wound… Whoever wants to end this issue needs to go for everything in exchange for everything.”
[Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, June 21, 2024]
Speaking in the name of Abbas following the Shalit exchange deal, Rajoub “saluted” the Hamas kidnappers:
Rajoub: “We salute those who dug the tunnel [to kidnap Gilad Shalit]; we salute those who captured the captive (i.e., Gilad Shalit), and salute those who guarded the captive until this deal was completed.”
[Official PA TV, Oct. 30, 2011]
While most of the current Israeli hostages are civilians, Rajoub has falsely claimed they “are not hostages” but “soldiers arrested by the Palestinian fighters,” as reported by Palestinian Media Watch:
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “The Palestinian prisoners should be released [in exchange] for the Israeli prisoners who are in the custody of Hamas (i.e., Israeli hostages captured on Oct. 7). [We] should have a prisoner of war exchange…”
South African SABC News interviewer: “Israel is demanding an immediate release of those who have been taken hostage by Hamas.”
Jibril Rajoub: “Those are not hostages. Most of those are Israeli soldiers and they were arrested by the Palestinian fighters. The civilians who were at the beginning already have been released.”
[Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, Feb. 22, 2024]
The currently imprisoned Palestinian terrorists themselves believe they will be released in exchange for Israeli hostages, as is evident from the following statement by a young Fatah prisoner, who was released in the terrorist-hostage exchange deal following October 7:
Released terrorist prisoner: “From the moment the war began [i.e., 2023 Gaza war], we [i.e., imprisoned terrorists] knew that we would be released.
When we were in prison, we weren’t worried because we knew that behind us there are men and the noble people of the Gaza Strip, great guys who can be counted on. There’s no one like the resistance members, may Allah protect them and strengthen them.” [emphasis added]
[“Fateh_Pal65,” X account, Nov. 28, 2023]
Likewise, in November 2023, a PA TV political commentator expressed the expectation that the world would pressure Israel to agree to a hostage exchange for all imprisoned Palestinian terrorists:
Official PA TV political commentator Riyad Helles: “… The pressure will lead to a comprehensive agreement that will include all the prisoners (i.e., Israeli and foreign hostages) who are with the Palestinian resistance and all the [Palestinian] prisoners (i.e., terrorists) in the hands of the Israeli occupation authorities.”
[Official PA TV, Nov. 22, 2023]
In September this year, Fatah celebrated the anniversary of the 1982 hostage-taking as “a great joy,” emphasizing the cleverness of “the plan”:
Awdah TV host: “It was a black night and a great joy when Fatah’s self-sacrificing fighters succeeded in capturing 8 [Israeli] soldiers, which was the first step towards the largest prisoner exchange deal known in Palestinian history.
On Sept. 4, 1982, and with the blessings and guidance of late [PLO Chairman and PA] President Yasser Arafat and Prince of Martyrs and Al-Asifa Forces Deputy General Commander Khalil Al-Wazir ‘Abu Jihad’ (i.e., terrorist, responsible for murder of 125), a squad of self-sacrificing fighters set out with Kalashnikovs. When the zero hour came, the commander of the squad, fighter Issa Hajo, set out towards the Israeli patrol claiming he was from the Lebanese Phalanges Party. He spoke with them in French… to divert their attention and make it easier for the rest of his comrades to complete the plan.” [emphasis added]
[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, Sept. 4, 2024]
The implication of all these Fatah and Hamas statements is that previous terrorist releases were precedents, and therefore Fatah supports Hamas holding the Israeli hostages until many, if not all, Palestinian terrorists in prison are released in an exchange deal.
The authors are the founder and senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.
The post ‘Moderate’ Palestinian Authority Supports Hamas Decision to Keep Israelis Hostage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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As Gaza War Continues, Hamas Calls for Global Protests While Israel Marks Breakthroughs in Medical Innovation

A pro-Hamas march in London, United Kingdom, Feb. 17, 2024. Photo: Chrissa Giannakoudi via Reuters Connect
As the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas calls for global protests amid stalled Gaza ceasefire talks, Israel has broken new ground despite the ongoing conflict, achieving a major medical breakthrough in synthetic human kidney development.
The contrast illustrates a stark contrast between the priorities of Hamas, an international designated terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, and Israel, the lone democracy in the Middle East that has long been a leader in tech and medical innovation.
On Wednesday, Hamas urged worldwide protests in support of Palestinians, calling on the international community “to denounce Israel’s genocidal war and starvation policy in Gaza.”
“We call for continuing and escalating the popular pressure in all cities and squares on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday … through rallies, demonstrations and sit-ins outside the embassies of the Israeli regime and its allies, particularly in the US,” the statement read.
The Palestinian terrorist group also called to expose what it described as “the terrorism of the Zio-Nazi occupation against defenseless civilians.”
Hamas’s latest move against Israel comes amid stalled indirect negotiations over a proposed 60-day ceasefire and hostage release deal, which collapsed last month after the group vowed it would not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established — rejecting a key Israeli demand to end the war in Gaza.
In its statement, Hamas demanded the opening of all border crossings to allow immediate aid into the war-torn enclave and urged a global condemnation of “the international community’s inaction on the Israeli crimes.”
Amid mounting international pressure to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israel announced new measures to facilitate the delivery of aid, including temporary pauses in fighting in certain areas and the creation of protected routes for aid convoys.
Israeli officials have previously accused Hamas of diverting aid for terrorist activities and selling supplies at inflated prices to civilians, while also blaming the United Nations and other foreign organizations for enabling this diversion.
Hamas’s statement also emphasized that the “global resistance movement must continue until Israeli aggression on Gaza ends and the siege on the coastal strip is lifted.”
Meanwhile, as Israel faces escalating hostilities and the heavy toll of war, the Jewish state continues to push the boundaries of innovation and resilience, achieving new medical breakthroughs while confronting ongoing challenges.
In a major medical breakthrough, scientists at Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University have successfully grown a synthetic 3D miniature human kidney in a lab using specialized stem cells derived from kidney tissue — one of the most promising advances in regenerative medicine.
Dr. Dror Harats, chairman of Sheba’s Research Authority, described this achievement as a reflection of Israel’s leading role in global medical innovation.
“Despite growing efforts to isolate Israel from international science, breakthroughs like this prove our impact is both lasting and essential,” he said.
In a landmark study, a team from Sheba’s Safra Children’s Hospital and Tel Aviv University’s Sagol Center for Regenerative Medicine created synthetic kidney organs that matured and remained stable for 34 weeks — the longest-lasting and most refined kidney organoids developed to date.
Nearly a decade ago, the research team became the first to successfully isolate human kidney tissue stem cells — the cells responsible for the organ’s development and growth.
Previous attempts to grow kidneys in a lab using general-purpose stem cells were short-lived, typically lasting only a few weeks and often producing unwanted cell types that compromised research accuracy.
However, this Israeli research team used stem cells taken directly from kidney tissue — cells that naturally develop into kidney parts — allowing them to create a much purer and more stable model with key features found in real kidneys.
This medical breakthrough could have far-reaching implications, redefining the current understanding of kidney diseases and advancing the development of innovative treatments.
Researchers believe the model could help assess how medications impact fetal kidneys during pregnancy and move science closer to repairing or replacing damaged kidney tissue with lab-grown cells.
The discovery came days after researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and international partners discovered a way to boost the immune system’s cancer-fighting ability by reprogramming how T cells, which are white blood cells critical to the immune system, produce energy.
The researchers explained in a study published in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications that disabling a protein known as Ant2 in T cells greatly enhances their effectiveness against tumors.
“By disabling Ant2, we triggered a complete shift in how T cells produce and use energy,” Prof. Michael Berger of Hebrew University’s Faculty of Medicine, who co-led the study with doctorate student Omri Yosef, told the Tazpit Press Service. “This reprogramming made them significantly better at recognizing and killing cancer cells.”
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Netherlands to Push EU to Suspend Israel Trade Deal but Won’t Recognize Palestinian State ‘At This Time’

Netherlands Foreign Affairs Minister Caspar Veldkamp addresses a press conference, in New Delhi on April 1, 2025. Photo: ANI Photo/Sanjay Sharma via Reuters Connect
The Netherlands is spearheading efforts to suspend the European Union-Israel trade agreement amid rising EU criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, while simultaneously refusing to recognize a Palestinian state, contrasting with other member states as international pressure mounts.
On Thursday, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp announced that the Netherlands will push the EU to suspend the trade component of the EU-Israel Association Agreement — a pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with the Jewish state.
This latest anti-Israel initiative follows a recent EU-commissioned report accusing Israel of committing “indiscriminate attacks … starvation … torture … [and] apartheid” against Palestinians in Gaza during its military campaign against Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.
Following calls from a majority of EU member states for a formal investigation, this report built on Belgium’s recent decision to review Israel’s compliance with the trade agreement, a process initiated by the Netherlands and led by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas.
According to the report, “there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations” under the 25-year-old EU-Israel Association Agreement.
While the document acknowledges the reality of violence by Hamas, it states that this issue lies outside its scope — failing to address the Palestinian terrorist group’s role in sparking the current war with its bloody rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israeli officials have slammed the report as factually incorrect and morally flawed, noting that Hamas embeds its military infrastructure within civilian targets and Israel’s army takes extensive precautions to try and avoid civilian casualties.
In a Dutch parliamentary debate on Gaza on Thursday, Veldkamp also announced that the government would not recognize a Palestinian state for now — a position that stands in sharp contrast to the recent moves by several other EU member states to extend recognition.
“The Netherlands is not planning to recognize a Palestinian state at this time,” the Dutch diplomat said.
“This war has ceased to be a just war and is now leading to the erosion of Israel’s own security and identity,” he continued.
This latest decision goes against the position of several EU member states, including France, which has committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood in September.
The United Kingdom has likewise indicated it will do so unless Israel acts to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and agrees to a ceasefire.
For its part, Germany said it was not planning to recognize a Palestinian state in the short term, and Italy argued that recognition must occur simultaneously with the recognition of Israel by the new entity.
Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Slovenia all recognized a Palestinian state last year.
Israel has been facing growing pressure from several EU member states seeking to undermine its defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
On Thursday, European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera strongly condemned Israel’s actions in the war-torn enclave, describing the situation as a “grave violation of human dignity.”
“What we are seeing is a concrete population being targeted, killed and condemned to starve to death,” Ribera told Politico. “If it is not genocide, it looks very much like the definition used to express its meaning.”
Until now, the European Commission has refrained from accusing Israel of genocide, but Ribera’s comments mark one of the strongest European condemnations since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
She also called on the EU to take decisive action by considering the suspension of its trade agreement with Israel and the implementation of sanctions, while emphasizing that such measures would require unanimous approval from all member states.
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Graduate Student Unions Promoting Antisemitism, Reform Group Says

Students listen to a speech at a protest encampment at Stanford University in Stanford, California US, on April 26, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
Higher-education-based unions controlled by United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) are rife with antisemitism and anti-Zionist discrimination, according to a new letter imploring the US Congress’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce to address the matter.
“Tracing its roots to communism in the 1930s, the UE is a radical, pro-Hamas labor union that has a long history of antisemitism,” the National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), one of the US’s leading labor reform groups, wrote on July 30 in a message obtained by The Algemeiner. “The UE openly supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is designed to cripple and destroy Israel economically. Today, the UE furthers its antisemitic agenda by unionizing graduate students on college campuses and using its exclusive representation powers to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. The hostile environment includes demanding compulsory dues to fund the UE’s abhorrent activities.”
NRTW went on to describe a litany of alleged injustices to which UE members subject Jewish student-employees in the US’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Cornell University. At MIT, the letter said, “union officers” aided a riotous group which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings. UE members at Stanford University, meanwhile, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the BDS movement. And Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”
The situation requires federal oversight and intervention, NRTW said, including Congress’s possibly clarifying that student-employees are not traditional employees and are therefore afforded protections under sections of the Civil Rights Act which apply to the campus.
“These continuing patterns of antisemitism are illegal, immoral, and must be stopped,” the letter continued. “We encourage you to do all that is in your power to investigate and help bring an end to the UE and its affiliates’ nonstop harassment and intimidation of Jewish students … The Trump administration can also use tools available to it under Title VI and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act against colleges who work with unions to create a hostile environment for Jewish students.”
July’s letter is not the first time NRTW has publicized alleged antisemitic abuse in unions representing higher education employees.
In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.
That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.
“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.