A demonstrator wearing a Cookie Monster costume holds a placard depicting US President Donald Trump, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, US Attorney General Pam Bondi, US Vice President JD Vance, US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and US House Speaker Mike Johnson as people march down the National Mall to take part in a “No Kings” protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies, in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis

The first of what “No Kings” organizers expect to be more than 2,600 protest events began Saturday in the United States and other countries, a mass mobilization against President Donald Trump’s policies on immigration, education and security that organizers say are pushing the country toward autocracy.

The protests — big and little, in cities, suburbs and small towns across the US — follow mass demonstrations in June and reflect the frustration of opponents of an agenda that Trump has rolled out with unprecedented speed since taking office in January.

Saturday’s rallies started outside the US, with a couple of hundred protesters gathering outside the US embassy in London, and roughly hundreds more holding demonstrations in Madrid and Barcelona.

By Saturday morning in Northern Virginia, many protesters were walking on overpasses across roads heading into Washington, D.C., and several hundred people gathered in the circle near Arlington National Cemetery, near where Trump is considering building an arch across the bridge from the Lincoln Memorial.

Since Trump took office 10 months ago, his administration has ramped up immigration enforcement, moved to slash the federal workforce and cut funding to elite universities over issues including pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, campus diversity and transgender policies.

Residents in some major cities have seen National Guard troops sent in by the president, who argues they are needed to protect immigration agents and to help combat crime.

“There is nothing more American than saying ‘we don’t have kings’ and exercising our right to peacefully protest,” said Leah Greenberg, co-founder of Indivisible, a progressive organization that is the main organizer of the No Kings marches.

Trump has said very little about Saturday’s protests. But in an interview with Fox Business aired on Friday he said that “they’re referring to me as a king — I’m not a king.”

More than 300 grassroots groups helped organize Saturday’s marches, Greenberg said. The American Civil Liberties Union said it has given legal training to tens of thousands of people who will act as marshals at the various marches, and those people were also trained in de-escalation. No Kings ads and information have blanketed social media to drive turnout.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a progressive independent, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Democrat, have backed the marches along with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who lost the 2016 presidential election to Trump. An array of celebrities also has backed the movement.

In June, over 2,000 No Kings protests took place, mostly peacefully, on the same day that Trump celebrated his 79th birthday and held a military parade in Washington.

REPUBLICANS CLAIM PROTESTS ARE ANTI-AMERICAN

US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, on Friday echoed a common refrain among the GOP on the No Kings protests.

“Tomorrow the Democrat leaders are going to join for a big party out on the National Mall,” Johnson said at a press conference on Friday. “They’re going to descend on our Capitol for their much anticipated, so-called No Kings rally. We refer to it by its more accurate description: The hate America rally.”

Other Republicans have blasted Democrats and marches like No Kings as motivating people to carry out political violence, especially in the wake of the September assassination of political activist Charlie Kirk, a close confidant of Trump and key members of his administration.

Dana Fisher, a professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and the author of several books on American activism, forecast that Saturday could see the largest protest turnout in modern US history – she expected that over 3 million people would participate, based on registrations and participation in the June events.

“The main point of this day of action is to create a sense of collective identity amongst all the people who are feeling like they are being persecuted or are anxious due to the Trump administration and its policies,” Fisher said. “It’s not going to change Trump’s policies. But it might embolden elected officials at all levels who are in opposition to Trump.”

The Gaza war may finally be over, and the idea of a Palestinian state has returned to the center of global discourse. But before it can become a reality, Palestinians will need to carry less suspicion and hatred toward Israel — which means Israel must give them fewer reasons to cultivate those reactions.

An investigation from last week by my former colleagues at The Associated Press helps show how distant we are from that outcome — not just in Gaza, but also in the West Bank.

The investigation found that, according to United Nations data that Israel does not dispute, live Israeli fire has killed at least 18 children under the age of 15 in the West Bank this year. It killed 29 children in 2023, and 23 in 2024.

Some were killed during Israeli military raids in crowded neighborhoods, others by sniper fire in calm areas. The army told AP that its open-fire regulations prohibit deliberate targeting and that it had launched some investigations. But it did not say whether anyone had been punished. The families of the deceased children report receiving little information from the army about the circumstances of their deaths, or any consequences meted out in reaction to them.

Israel’s security concerns about the West Bank are legitimate. The strategic ridge surrounds Jerusalem on three sides and overlooks Tel Aviv and the coastal plain. An attack from there could be catastrophic; if a group like Hamas were ever to take control there, the consequences are dire.

But the need for Israel’s security cannot justify the killing of children — not one, not 18, not 29. So long as the Palestinians of the West Bank live in fear of their own children joining those grim ranks, there cannot be a chance for a real, lasting peace.

Consider just some of the children killed this year, whose stories AP collected:

• • Layla, age 2: Tayma Asous, a single mother in the Jenin refugee camp, said that on Jan. 25, while her daughter Layla sat on her lap, an Israeli sniper fired through their second-floor window. The bullet struck Laila in the skull. Her grandfather lifted her and ran downstairs shouting for help. Layla, who was breathing when the ambulance arrived, died en route to the hospital. The army said it is still investigating, and could not provide details.

• • Rimas, age 13: On Feb. 21 — the 32nd day of an Israeli operation in Jenin — Rimas Amouri went to play outside, even though her mother, Rudaina, objected. Seconds after she left, Rudaina heard gunfire and screams. “They shot her in the back,” Rudaina said. “I screamed, ‘Please stop, stop!’ Then they started shooting at me.” About 10 soldiers surrounded the house and fired on her when she tried to reach her daughter, she said. Rimas’ father said the family required a special Israeli permit to bury her. The army said the case is under investigation, but shared no further details.

• • Mahmoud, age 14: On Jan. 14, a group of men gathered outside the Garabiya family home in Jenin. when one missile hit, then another, then a third. Only Ashraf Garabiya survived. Six people, including his son, were killed. The army said the airstrike had targeted several militants and that it was “aware of claims” of a civilian casualty. No indication of an investigation was given.

It goes on and on.

In Tulkarem, 10-year-old Saddam Rajab was caught on security footage standing on the sidewalk, turning, then being caught in a burst of gunfire and falling. He cried for his mother and died 10 days later. In Turmus Ayya, 14-year-old Amer Rabee, a Palestinian-American born in New Jersey, was shot while picking almonds with two friends, who were injured. His father said soldiers fired dozens of rounds, stripped the boy’s body, and carried it off; the army later described the victims as “three terrorists” throwing stones. In Hebron, 12-year-old Ayman al-Haimouni told his mother, “Mama, they shot me,” before collapsing. Video shows soldiers approaching his body, recoiling, and walking away without offering aid. The military police opened an investigation that has yielded no result.

Although the situation has grown especially horrible under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the phenomenon is not new. The Israeli philosopher and academic Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned in the early days of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, after the 1967 Six-Day War, that this new reality would corrupt Israeli society and devastate its moral standing.

He was not wrong. My own experience as a reporter working in and around the West Bank confronted me many times with this clear and painful fact.

The newborn baby of one Palestinian AP photographer, in the Nablus area, experienced a medical emergency; the baby died while the ambulance carrying it was delayed by Israeli troops at a checkpoint in 2002. A year later, a cameraman with whom I regularly worked, Nazeeh Darwazeh, was killed by a random bullet fired by an Israeli soldier. I remember visiting the family, and trying to console the widow and his children. They were heartbroken.

These kinds of things simply happen all the time.

Aren’t these stories, repeated so frequently after so many decades, enough to boil the blood of any normal person? How would any supporter of Israel react if this kind of indiscriminate, senseless violence happened in Israel, and the army responsible was Palestinian? If that army kept claiming that it would investigate these awful and useless slaughters, but it was obvious that any form of punishment was all but nonexistent?

Add to the mix that Netanyahu’s reckless government has normalized settler rampages, the perpetrators of which are almost never punished. Unforgivably, Israel has prosecuted few if any of the settlers who regularly rampage through Palestinian communities in what is a clear provocation aimed at creating mayhem. Settler violence, with the winks and nods of the government, is at a high — and when they are detained it is usually for assaults on Israeli soldiers, not Palestinians.

Many Israelis fear that these reckless settler provocations will unleash a third intifada. But to some far-right radicals, that would be a welcome development, as they hope for a massive war in which the Palestinians might be somehow expelled — the same outcome some far-right Israelis very plainly wished for in the Gaza war.

Israelis who have the courage to face the truth must ask themselves sincerely: How can we accept this state of affairs? How can we explain to the world — and to ourselves — that this is reasonable and moral? Is this “the fight against terror”? How can we expect our Palestinian neighbors to want to work with us toward peace?

Something is clearly sick to the core. The way out of this bloody cycle is through a true and clear separation between Israelis and Palestinians, with hope for a normal life on both sides. If this continues, more violence is likely, and the outcome may not be good for Israel — or anyone.

The post The biggest impediment to peace between Israelis and Palestinians has little to do with Gaza appeared first on The Forward.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif embrace each other on the day they sign a defense agreement, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 17, 2025. Photo: Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS

Amid rising tensions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, experts say the newly signed Saudi-Pakistani mutual defense pact is largely symbolic and unlikely to alter the regional balance of power.

On Friday, Afghanistan accused Pakistan of carrying out airstrikes on its territory, shattering a temporary ceasefire after days of escalating clashes that marked the deadliest fighting along the border in years.

“The truce has been broken and Afghanistan will retaliate,” a spokesman for the Taliban-led Afghan government said in a statement, announcing that Pakistan had “broken the ceasefire and bombed three locations in Paktika,” a province in the country’s eastern region.

Earlier this week, the two nations had agreed to a 48-hour ceasefire after border clashes killed dozens of troops.

The conflict erupted after Pakistan accused its neighbor of harboring and supporting terrorist groups responsible for attacks on its territory, while Afghanistan accused Pakistan of violating its airspace and carrying out strikes in the country’s eastern regions.

The fragile ceasefire came after appeals from major regional powers, including Saudi Arabia, with which nuclear-armed Pakistan signed a mutual defense pact last month, further solidifying a decades-long security partnership.

According to experts, the recent regional escalation shows how the Saudi-Pakistan partnership is largely symbolic, offering diplomatic backing and condemnation but unlikely to be tested in practice.

“”The recent Pakistan-Afghanistan clashes are unlikely to lead to invocation of the Saudi-Pakistan defense pact,” Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based think tank, told The Algemeiner.

He explained that the threat from Afghanistan, while politically serious, is not strong enough to push Pakistan to seek support from a third party, since the country is far stronger than the hostile forces along the contentious border.

“The Saudis, as central players in the Islamic world, will also want to be seen as welcoming Afghanistan’s gradual rehabilitation,” Brown said, noting that even if the pact were invoked, it is unlikely they would want to intervene in the conflict.

More broadly, he argued that this recent escalation underscores the limits of the Saudi-Pakistan defense pact, emphasizing that “most of the challenges that both countries face do not rise to the level of war between states.”

“”The possible war scenarios that do exist — Pakistan with India, Saudi Arabia with Iran — are not ones in which the other party to the pact would want to get involved, and it is inconceivable that Pakistan is offering a nuclear guarantee to the Saudis,” Brown told The Algemeiner.

Pakistan has repeatedly argued that its nuclear weapons are intended solely as a deterrent against India.

As the only nuclear-armed, Muslim-majority nation with the Islamic world’s largest army, Pakistan’s newly signed defense pact has raised questions about shifts in Middle East power and regional dynamics.

“”The agreement states that any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both,” the Pakistani Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement following the signing of the pact.

While no further details have been disclosed, the partnership reportedly “encompasses all military means,” ranging from armed forces and nuclear cooperation to intelligence sharing.

Pakistan has even openly declared that it “”will make available” its nuclear program to Saudi Arabia if needed.

However, experts maintain that Pakistan’s ability to provide a nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia is dubious, as its longest-range missile cannot reach most potential threats to the country.

“The deal’s military value appears negligible beyond its symbolic photo-op,” Brown told The Algemeiner. “Pakistan lacks the capability to project power over 2,600 miles to Saudi Arabia.”

The pact is also designed to strengthen Saudi Arabia’s long-term defense autonomy, with defense industry collaboration, technology transfer, and military co-production and training, among other key initiatives.

Although the Saudi-Pakistani relationship has long been close, Brown explained that mutual support between the two nations has faced significant limitations.

“This new mutual defense pact is likely to remain a symbolic agreement, with its main applicability in nonbelligerent arenas, such as training and procurement,” he told The Algemiener.

Experts have also noted that the new pact could heighten regional tensions, strengthening Saudi Arabia’s defenses against Iran and its allies while also signaling its strategic posture toward Israel.

Yet, Brown argued that it makes little sense to suggest the pact is directed at Israel, given there is no realistic prospect of conflict between the Jewish state and either Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, whereas Iran remains far more active against both countries.