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‘Today, I won’t condemn’: Some Netanyahu allies are declining to decry Sunday’s West Bank settler riot
(JTA) — The day after hundreds of settlers rioted in the Palestinian West Bank village of Huwara, torching houses, shops and cars, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned their actions from the floor of parliament, declaring, “We won’t accept a reality where all do as they wish — igniting houses, torching cars, intentionally injuring innocents.”
Other lawmakers in Netanyahu’s coalition denounced the riot while expressing understanding for the settlers who rioted. But earlier on Monday, a lawmaker from Netanyahu’s own Likud party, Tali Gottlieb, stood up at the same dais and struck a different note.
“They asked me: ‘Don’t you condemn what happened in Huwara?’ I said to them, ‘Not today,’” Gottlieb declared as Netanyahu looked on from the floor of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. “Tomorrow, but not today.”
Gottlieb attributed her delay in decrying the settler violence to her focus on the two Israeli victims of a shooting attack earlier on Sunday, when a gunman from Huwara killed two brothers driving on a thoroughfare that runs through the town. The settler riot in Huwara was a response to the attack. A Palestinian was killed in a town to Huwara’s south amid the riot, and dozens were injured.
“So today, I won’t condemn,” Gottlieb said subsequently in her speech. “Today, I am just sending a unifying message to the people of Israel.”
Gottlieb was not the only member of Knesset to stop short of condemning the riot. While many lawmakers in Netanyahu’s government have criticized the rampage and declared that it doesn’t represent Israel’s values, a number of his partners have shown sympathy for the rioters or even endorsed their actions. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, recently put in charge of settlers’ civilian affairs, indicated a measure of understanding for the riot, even as he came out against vigilantism.
The small but significant measure of support for the rioters comes as Israel’s government, which includes far-right parties, contends with a growing wave of violence in the West Bank and Israel. Terror attacks have killed more than a dozen Israelis, most of them civilians, while Israeli raids have killed dozens of Palestinian militants and a number of civilians. But if Sunday’s riot indicates that some settlers feel emboldened to settle scores on their own, the response to their actions shows that they have support from a few members of the sitting government and its allies.
“A closed, burnt Huwara — that’s what I want to see,” said Zvika Fogel, a lawmaker from the far-right Otzma Yehudit party and a member of Netanyahu’s coalition, according to the Times of Israel. “That’s the only way to achieve deterrence. After a murder like yesterday’s, we need burning villages when the IDF doesn’t act.”
The chair of Fogel’s party, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, gave a speech from the site of an illegal West Bank settlement outpost in which he called for the Israeli military to “cease the policy of containment” and said “the enemy needs to be cut down.” He evinced sympathy for the rioters even as he condemned their actions.
“I understand the difficult feelings, but this is not the way,” he said. “We do not take the law into our own hands. The government of Israel, the state of Israel, the security forces, they are the ones who need to cut down our enemies.”
Yishai Fleischer, a pro-settler activist who has served as Ben-Gvir’s spokesman, also sympathized with the rioters while criticizing their actions. “Vigilante behavior is generally wrong and is certainly illegal,” he tweeted. “However, years of Israel’s abandonment of policing and looking away from the jihadism, illegal weapons, and no-go zones, that have grown within us – have led to wanton Arab terrorism – and now to a human reaction.”
Another advocate for the settlements, Smotrich, condemned vigilantism alongside other Israeli leaders, writing on Twitter, “It is forbidden to take the law into one’s hands and create dangerous anarchy that will likely go out of control and cost human life.”
But screenshots show that he liked a since-deleted tweet from a regional settlement official declaring that Huwara “needs to be wiped out today.”
Later in the day, another Twitter user wrote a viral series of tweets both condemning the riot and endorsing “collective punishment of the family and surroundings of the terrorist.” The tweets also appeared to compare the riot with the weekly nonviolent mass protests in Tel Aviv of Israel’s proposed judicial reform.
Smotrich shared the tweets along with the message: “The whole thread.”
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The post ‘Today, I won’t condemn’: Some Netanyahu allies are declining to decry Sunday’s West Bank settler riot appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar says Stephen Miller’s comments on immigrants sound like how ‘Nazis described Jewish people’
Rep Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, on Sunday likened the Trump administration’s immigration rhetoric to Nazi depictions of Jews.
“It reminds me of the way the Nazis described Jewish people in Germany,” Omar said in an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, commenting on a social media post by Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser, in which he suggested that “migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.” Miller, who is Jewish, is the architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
Omar called Miller’s comments “white supremist rhetoric” and also drew parallels between his characterization of migrants seeking refuge in the U.S. to how Jews were demonized and treated when they fled Nazi-era Germany. “As we know, there have been many immigrants who have tried to come to the United States who have turned back, you know, one of them being Jewish immigrants,” she said.
Now serving as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, Miller is central to the White House’s plans for mass deportations and expanded barriers to asylum. During Trump’s first term, Miller led the implementation of the so-called Muslim travel ban in 2017, which barred entry to the U.S. for individuals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, and pushed to further reduce a longtime refugee program.
Rep. Ilhan Omar: “When I think about Stephen Miller and his white supremacist rhetoric, it reminds me of the way the Nazis described Jewish people in Germany.” pic.twitter.com/GAjIMqFq26
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 7, 2025
Miller’s comments echoed similar rhetoric by Trump after an Afghan refugee was accused of shooting two National Guard members near the White House last month, killing one.
Trump told reporters at a cabinet meeting last week that Somali immigrants are “garbage” and that he wanted them to be sent “back to where they came from.” The president also singled out Omar, a Somali native who represents Minnesota’s large Somali-American community. “She should be thrown the hell out of our country,” Trump said.
In the Sunday interview, Omar called Trump’s remarks “completely disgusting” and accused him of having “an unhealthy obsession” with her and the Somali community. “This kind of hateful rhetoric and this level of dehumanizing can lead to dangerous actions by people who listen to the president,” she said.
The post Rep. Ilhan Omar says Stephen Miller’s comments on immigrants sound like how ‘Nazis described Jewish people’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Nigeria Seeks French Help to Combat Insecurity, Macron Says
French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Pool
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has sought more help from France to fight widespread violence in the north of the country, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday, weeks after the United States threatened to intervene to protect Nigeria’s Christians.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has witnessed an upsurge in attacks in volatile northern areas in the past month, including mass kidnappings from schools and a church.
US President Donald Trump has raised the prospect of possible military action in Nigeria, accusing it of mistreating Christians. The government says the allegations misrepresent a complex security situation in which armed groups target both faith groups.
Macron said he had a phone call with Tinubu on Sunday, where he conveyed France’s support to Nigeria as it grapples with several security challenges, “particularly the terrorist threat in the North.”
“At his request, we will strengthen our partnership with the authorities and our support for the affected populations. We call on all our partners to step up their engagement,” Macron said in a post on X.
Macron did not say what help would be offered by France, which has withdrawn its troops from West and Central Africa and plans to focus on training, intelligence sharing and responding to requests from countries for assistance.
Nigeria is grappling with a long-running Islamist insurgency in the northeast, armed kidnapping gangs in the northwest and deadly clashes between largely Muslim cattle herders and mostly Christian farmers in the central parts of the country, stretching its security forces.
Washington said last month that it was considering actions such as sanctions and Pentagon engagement on counterterrorism as part of a plan to compel Nigeria to better protect its Christian communities.
The Nigerian government has said it welcomes help to fight insecurity as long as its sovereignty is respected. France has previously supported efforts to curtail the actions of armed groups, the US has shared intelligence and sold arms, including fighter jets, and Britain has trained Nigerian troops.
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Netanyahu Says He Will Not Quit Politics if He Receives a Pardon
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participates in the state memorial ceremony for the fallen of the Iron Swords War on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem on Oct. 16, 2025. Photo: Alex Kolomoisky/POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that he would not retire from politics if he receives a pardon from the country’s president in his years-long corruption trial.
Asked by a reporter if planned on retiring from political life if he receives a pardon, Netanyahu replied: “no”.
Netanyahu last month asked President Isaac Herzog for a pardon, with lawyers for the prime minister arguing that frequent court appearances were hindering Netanyahu’s ability to govern and that a pardon would be good for the country.
Pardons in Israel have typically been granted only after legal proceedings have concluded and the accused has been convicted. There is no precedent for issuing a pardon mid-trial.
Netanyahu has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in response to the charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, and his lawyers have said that the prime minister still believes the legal proceedings, if concluded, would result in a complete acquittal.
US President Donald Trump wrote to Herzog, before Netanyahu made his request, urging the Israeli president to consider granting the prime minister a pardon.
Some Israeli opposition politicians have argued that any pardon should be conditional on Netanyahu retiring from politics and admitting guilt. Others have said the prime minister must first call national elections, which are due by October 2026.