NEW FROM FMEP
Iran, the DNC, and Prospects for a Ceasefire (New Occupied Thoughts episode)
FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with foreign policy analyst Matt Duss about whether the US has lost the war on Iran and whether the Israelis drove the US’s entry into the war. They talk about prospects for Democratic party intervention on the war and the ways in which US policy towards Israel policy may be changed over time, looking at party politics as well as elections.
Israel’s Death Penalty law – the evolution of apartheid (New Occupied Thoughts episode)
FMEP fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Sawsan Zaher, an independent Palestinian human rights lawyer based in Haifa. Their conversation includes the background of Israel’s recently-passed Death Penalty law; The way in which the Israeli judiciary supports the regime there; The role of the Supreme Court, including whether it may strike down the law, and how the Court has evolved in the past twenty five years.
Challenging Anti-Palestinian Repression – in the UK & Europe (New Occupied Thoughts episode)
FMEP President Lara Friedman speaks with Dr. Amira Abdelhamid, Director of Research & Monitoring at the European Legal Support Center (ELSC) [also on X]. The ELSC is the first and only independent organization defending and empowering the Palestine solidarity movement across Europe through legal, research, and advocacy support. Lara and Amira talked about the ELSC, it’s work challenging anti-Palestinian repression in the UK and Europe, and about the recently launched database, Britain’s Index of Repression and the previously launched database, Germany’s Index of Repression [check out both databases here — developed/published in partnership with Forensic Architecture and Forensis], as well as ELSC’s recent report: On All Fronts: The Multi-Sited Repression of Palestine Solidarity in Britain.
Censorship, Repression, and Migration of Jewish Israelis (New Occupied Thoughts episode)
FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with journalist Oren Ziv (+972 Magazine/Local Call & Activestills) about the dynamics of reporting on war and living in Israel. Drawing on a recent article Oren published on +972, “‘Our coverage is not truthful’: How Israel is censoring reporting on the war,” the two discuss the realities of the war with Iran and the challenges of reporting on it inside of Israel amidst direct government censorship and harassment of journalists and activists by police as well as deputized, armed vigilantes. They talk about the ways that the Israeli administration normalizes permanent war with Iran and Hezbollah for the Jewish Israeli public, similar to the ways that permanent war with Palestinians has been normalized, how different sectors of Jewish Israeli society relate to information about the genocide in Gaza and abuse of Palestinians more broadly, and solidarity activism and organizing among Israelis.
FMEP Legislative Round-Up April 10, 2026 (Lara Friedman)
- Bills, Resolutions; 2. Letters; 3. Hearings & Markups; 4. Selected Members on the Record; 5. Selected Media & Press releases/Statements. See also FMEP Legislative Round-Up April 3, 2026
GLOBAL/REGION
US-Iran talks in Pakistan uncertain as sides trade accusations (Al Monitor 4/10/26)
“A cloud of uncertainty hung Friday over the scheduled start of talks in Pakistan between the United States and Iran, with no announcement yet on the arrival of negotiators and both sides accusing the other of failing to properly implement a fragile ceasefire. US President Donald Trump has voiced displeasure at Iran’s handling of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, which was meant to be reopened under the deal, while Tehran has reacted angrily to Israeli attacks in Lebanon, insisting that it too falls under the agreement — something Washington disputes. Islamabad was nonetheless pressing ahead with its preparations for the high-stakes talks, which official sources say will cover several sensitive points, including Iran’s nuclear enrichment and the free flow of trade through the strait. Iran has suggested that its participation could hinge on a halt in Israeli attacks on Lebanon: “The holding of talks to end the war is dependent on the US adhering to its ceasefire commitments on all fronts, especially in Lebanon,” said Esmaeil Baqaei, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman. Iranian officials have said the Israeli strikes had rendered the Pakistan talks “meaningless”.’ See also Netanyahu says there is no ceasefire in Lebanon as Israel launches fresh strikes (The Guardian 4/9/26);
The deadliest 10 minutes in decades: Lebanese reel from Israeli strikes that killed hundreds (The Guardian 4/9/26)
“It took Israel only 10 minutes to carry out one of the worst mass-killings in Lebanon since the end of the country’s civil war in 1990…The flood of wounded came after Israel bombed more than 100 targets across Lebanon in those 10 minutes on Wednesday, killing more than 300 people and wounding 1,165, according to an initial count by Lebanon’s civil defence… The Israeli military said it had hit Hezbollah “command and control centres” in the bombing campaign, which it dubbed “Operation Eternal Darkness”. But residents and Lebanese officials said the strikes, which used 1,000lb bombs in densely packed residential areas of Beirut, mainly killed civilians. Lebanon’s prime minister, Nawaf Salam, accused Israel in a statement of targeting “densely populated residential neighbourhoods” and killing unarmed civilians in breach of international law.” See also ‘Black Wednesday’: Israeli Strikes in Lebanon Worst Since 1982, Locals Say (Haaretz 4/9/26); Lebanon Mourns After Israeli Onslaught Kills More Than 300 People (NYT 4/9/26); Israel’s War in Lebanon Has Not Stopped (Isaac Chotiner interviews Maha Yahya//New Yorker 4/9/26)
US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire as Tehran says it will reopen strait of Hormuz (The Guardian 4/8/26)
“The US and Iran agreed to a two-week conditional ceasefire on Tuesday evening, which included a temporary reopening of the strait of Hormuz, after a last-minute diplomatic intervention led by Pakistan, canceling an ultimatum from Donald Trump for Iran to surrender or face widespread destruction. Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire agreement came less than two hours before the US president’s self-imposed 8pm Eastern time deadline to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges in a move that legal scholars, as well as officials from numerous countries and the pope, had warned could constitute war crimes.” See also Disagreement Over Lebanon’s Inclusion in Cease-Fire Threatens to Unravel It (NYT 4/8/26); Vance Says Lebanon Was Never Part of Cease-Fire Deal (NYT 4/8/26); European Leaders Demand That U.S. Cease-Fire With Iran Include Lebanon (NYT 4/9/26); Trump ceasefire leaves Netanyahu flustered as Iran gains politically (Al Monitor 4/8/26); Donald Trump says ‘a whole civilisation will die’ if Iran ignores demands (The Guardian 4/7/26);
Netanyahu announces negotiations with Lebanon after U.S. pressure (Axios 4/9/26)
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he has instructed his Cabinet to launch direct negotiations with Lebanon as soon as possible. However, an Israeli official told Axios that Israel would not observe a ceasefire in Lebanon. Why it matters: Netanyahu’s statement follows Wednesday calls with President Trump and White House envoy Steve Witkoff. Senior U.S. officials said Witkoff asked Netanyahu to “calm down” the strikes in Lebanon and open negotiations. It was also a shift for Trump, who gave Netanyahu a green light to continue the war in Lebanon shortly before announcing the ceasefire with Iran on Tuesday. State of play: Iran claims Lebanon was part of the ceasefire deal, that the U.S. and Israel are now in violation, and that it might abandon peace talks or keep the Strait of Hormuz closed as a result. The Pakistani mediators also say Lebanon was included. The U.S. and Israel deny that the ceasefire applies to Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel massively escalated that offensive within 24 hours of the ceasefire agreement. Israeli strikes on Wednesday killed at least 254 people, according to Lebanese Civil Defense.” See also US to host Lebanon-Israel talks next week in first such meeting (Al Monitor 4/9/26); Netanyahu Says He Ordered Talks With Lebanon About Disarming Hezbollah (NYT 4/9/26);
Iran’s Schools and Hospitals in Ruins, Times Analysis Shows (NYT 4/10/26)
“The Times confirmed damage by using high-resolution satellite imagery and by verifying footage from state media or social media sites, including X, Telegram, Instagram and Facebook. The analysis was limited to schools and health care facilities that were damaged on or after Feb. 28, the first day of the war. The Times’s analysis shows that the damage was often caused by strikes in crowded neighborhoods — especially in Tehran, a capital of 10 million people that is as densely populated as New York City. The Times was not able to verify the total number of people killed at schools and health care facilities. At least 1,701 civilians have been killed in Iran as of Tuesday, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. Among them are students, teachers and health care workers.”
Israel’s Message to a Broad Swath of Lebanon: Shiites Must Go (NYT 4/1/26)
“In private calls to local leaders across southern Lebanon, Israeli military officials have assured several Christian and Druse communities that they could remain in the evacuation zone. They have pressed them, however, to force out any Lebanese from neighboring Shiite Muslim communities who have sought refuge among them as Israeli bombardments flatten Shiite towns, according to local Christian, Druse and Shiite leaders who spoke to The New York Times. The Shiites make up the majority of southern Lebanon. Local leaders took the messages as a clear signal: Israel is trying to force out one group in the south — Shiites, who are from the same sect as Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group that Israel is trying to vanquish.” See also How Israel Is Taking Control of Southern Lebanon (NYT 4/3/26); Israel vows to occupy swathes of southern Lebanon to expand buffer zone (The Guardian 3/31/26);
Gulf Funds Are Recalibrating American Investments, Including Backing for Paramount Merger, as Iran War Rages On (Drop Site 4/5/26)
“Gulf sovereign wealth funds are undertaking a sweeping review of American investments, driven by a combination of commercial necessity and political recalibration driven by the Iran war, according to sources familiar with deliberations around the high-level financing deals. In particular, the planned merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Brothers Discovery, made possible as a result of Gulf financing, is getting a new look.” See also There Are Now Over 50,000 American Troops in the Mideast (NYT 3/29/26); One gunman killed during attack near Israel’s consulate in Istanbul (Al Monitor 4/7/26); Turkey detains 11 over ISIS-linked attack on Israeli Consulate: What to know (Al Monitor 4/8/26); Houthis join the Iran war, launch missile at Israel (Axios 3/28/26); Serbia Poised to Produce Drones With Israeli Arms Giant Elbit Systems (Haaretz 4/7/26);
How Trump Took the U.S. to War With Iran (NYT 4/7/26)
“The black S.U.V. carrying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House just before 11 a.m. on Feb. 11. The Israeli leader, who had been pressing for months for the United States to agree to a major assault on Iran, was whisked inside with little ceremony, out of view of reporters, primed for one of the most high-stakes moments in his long career. U.S. and Israeli officials gathered first in the Cabinet Room, adjacent to the Oval Office. Then Mr. Netanyahu headed downstairs for the main event: a highly classified presentation on Iran for President Trump and his team in the White House Situation Room, which was rarely used for in-person meetings with foreign leaders. Mr. Trump sat down, but not in his usual position at the head of the room’s mahogany conference table. Instead, the president took a seat on one side, facing the large screens mounted along the wall. Mr. Netanyahu sat on the other side, directly opposite the president. Appearing on the screen behind the prime minister was David Barnea, the director of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, as well as Israeli military officials. Arrayed visually behind Mr. Netanyahu, they created the image of a wartime leader surrounded by his team…The presentation that Mr. Netanyahu would make over the next hour would be pivotal in setting the United States and Israel on the path toward a major armed conflict in the middle of one of the world’s most volatile regions. And it would lead to a series of discussions inside the White House over the following days and weeks, the details of which have not been previously reported, in which Mr. Trump weighed his options and the risks before giving the go-ahead to join Israel in attacking Iran.” See also Israel, seeking wider war, hits Iranian railways, bridges as Trump deadline nears (Al Monitor 4/7/26); Iran’s IRGC intel chief killed as Israel expands targeted strikes: What to know (Al Monitor 4/6/26); Israel Strikes Iran’s Largest Petrochemical Complex (NYT 4/4/26);
Israeli Missile Interceptors Have Dwindled to “Double Digits”: Trump Administration Official (Drop Site 4/9/26)
“On the eve of the tenuous ceasefire reached between the United States, Israel, and Iran, the number of ballistic missile interceptors left in Israel’s arsenal had dwindled to “double digits,” according to a Trump administration source with knowledge of the situation. The critical shortage had led Israeli military officials to be significantly more selective when confronting ballistic missile attacks from Iran as well as from Yemen, which recently entered the conflict in a limited fashion. “They’re having to pick and choose what they shoot down,” the official told Drop Site.”
GAZA
Hamas rules out disarmament before Israel meets ceasefire terms (Middle East Eye 4/6/26)
“Hamas’s military spokesman, Abu Obeida, said on Sunday that the group’s disarmament in Gaza would not be discussed before Israel fulfils its obligations under the first phase of the US-led ceasefire agreement.” See also Trump’s Board of Peace Gives Hamas Disarmament Deadline (NYT 4/6/26);
Israeli Airstrike Near School Kills at Least 10 Palestinians in Gaza, Medics Say; WHO Staffer Also Killed (Haaretz 4/6/26)
“At least 12 people were killed and several others wounded by Israeli forces across the Gaza Strip on Monday, health officials said, in the latest violence overshadowing the fragile U.S.-backed Gaza ceasefire deal. According to health officials, an Israeli airstrike killed at least 10 people and wounded several others outside a school housing displaced Palestinians. According to medics and residents, some Palestinians had clashed with members of an Israeli-backed militia, who they said attacked the school in an attempt to abduct some people.” See also Israeli-Backed Militia Launches Deadly Attack on Gaza Refugee Camp Under Cover of Airstrikes (Drop Site 4/7/26); Israel bombed Gaza on 36 of the past 40 days while the war raged in Iran (Al Jazeera 4/9/26);
32 Outposts, 10 Miles of Ground Barrier: IDF Builds New Border Line Inside Gaza. Here’s How It Looks (Haaretz 3/26/26)
“The separation line between the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas in the Gaza Strip – the Yellow Line – is becoming entrenched as a physical border. In recent months, the IDF has established new outposts along the line, carrying out infrastructure work and transferring equipment and facilities, according to an analysis of recent satellite images. At the same time, the army is implementing a large-scale engineering project: constructing a ground barrier stretching for many kilometers along the line. The separation line leaves more than half of the Strip in IDF hands, and there is currently no detailed mechanism regulating a withdrawal from it. The IDF’s entrenchment along the line has had a deadly impact on Gaza’s population. The area around the line is an active firing zone, with ongoing Israeli airstrikes, artillery shelling and small-arms fire. According to the UN, more than 200 Palestinians, many of them civilians, have been killed in its vicinity…Some 2.1 million Gazans are now crowded into less than half the area they lived in before the war, trying to survive in harsh conditions amid rubble they cannot clear. Hundreds of thousands live in tents or in structures damaged by bombings.” See also Israeli-Backed Militia Launches Deadly Attack on Gaza Refugee Camp Under Cover of Airstrikes (Drop Site 4/7/26); Outgoing UNRWA chief seeks probe into killing of hundreds of staff in Gaza war (New Arab 3/31/26)
RIVER TO THE SEA
Israel’s New Death Penalty Law Only Applies to Palestinians (Sawsan Zaher//New Lines Magazine 4/1/26)
“n March 31, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed a law that mandates the death penalty for both Palestinian residents of the West Bank, which has been under military occupation since 1967, and Palestinians who are citizens of the state of Israel, where they make up 20% of the population. The law explicitly excludes Jewish settlers residing in the West Bank; the prescribed method of execution is hanging…In the West Bank, Palestinians are tried in military courts, where the conviction rate is above 99%. The new law amends the Israeli Military Order to mandate the death penalty if the accused is convicted of “causing death with intent, where the act is an act of terrorism defined in the Counterterrorism Law.” In Israel, where Palestinian citizens make up around 20% of the population, the criminal code has been amended to mandate the death penalty for persons convicted of “causing death with the intent to deny the existence of the State of Israel.” While in theory the vague wording of this motive could apply to all citizens, in practice it refers only to Palestinian citizens…Israel describes itself as a democracy, but has codified two separate criminal paths that are based on the nationality and ethnicity of the convicted person…By codifying the death penalty for a specific ethnic group, the state moves from military elimination in the field to judicial elimination in the courtroom. It transforms the logic of genocide into a formal legal procedure, granting the sovereign power the “legal” authority to terminate the lives of those it has already stripped of their humanity.” See also Israel passes law to give death penalty to Palestinians convicted of lethal attacks (The Guardian 3/30/26); Israel’s death penalty law marks a new phase in its dehumanisation of Palestinians (Yuli Novak//The Guardian 4/2/26); ‘Apartheid’: Arab countries including UAE, Jordan decry new Israeli law (Al Monitor 4/2/26); What Israelis can learn from the nightmares of an Iranian hangman (Orly Noy//+972 Magazine 4/9/26); ‘They already shoot us for no reason. Now they have a death penalty’ (Jared Hillel//+972 Magazine 3/31/26);
[Israeli] Government approves a record 34 new settlements, as it acts to deepen hold on West Bank (TOI 4/9/26)
“The security cabinet approved the establishment of 34 new West Bank settlements in a meeting two weeks ago, The Times of Israel has confirmed. The approval of the new settlements — brand new settlements as well as illegal ones retroactively legalized — constitutes the largest number of settlements approved by any government at one time, the Peace Now organization said. According to the i24 News site, which first reported the story earlier Thursday, some of the slated new settlements are located in areas of the northern West Bank isolated from other Israeli settlements but deep among Palestinian population centers…A map published by i24 showed that the new settlements are spread across the entire West Bank…The Yesh Din organization, which campaigns against the settlements, alleged that the approval of the new settlements is designed to advance the “ethnic cleansing” of the West Bank.” See also Israeli Settlers Establish New West Bank Outpost – Accompanied by IDF Soldiers (Haaretz 4/6/26);
Evictions in East Jerusalem surge as Palestinians lose court fight against far-right group (TOI 4/9/26)
“Zuhair Rajabi is not packing. Late last month, Rajabi, who describes himself as “the spokesperson” of the Batn al-Hawa section of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, received an eviction notice ordering him to vacate his home. Several neighbors were also told they would need to leave. His home, where he has lived all his life, was built by his father in the early 1960s, when the area was still part of Jordan. Eventually, he and his six brothers inherited the property. “The whole family is 52 people,” he told The Times of Israel, sitting in his living room, which showed no sign of the pending eviction order…Rajabi said he has no intention of leaving the home voluntarily. In response, authorities told him that they would arrive sometime after Passover to remove him by force.” See also First Time in a Century: Israel Police Block Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarchate From Palm Sunday Mass at Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Haaretz 3/29/26);
Standing at the Gates of Hell (Raja Shehadeh//Boston Review 3/31/26)
“Israel’s right wing, led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister of National Security and a settler himself, unabashedly encourages the use of pogroms against villages spanning from the Jordan Valley to Israel’s 1948 border—acts that constitute the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. And armed settler militias, often operating with support from the army, attack and harass Palestinian communities across the West Bank in an effort to make life so unbearable for them that they will be forced out. Since the latest war’s onset, the settlers have become more emboldened than ever before. According to the Israeli monitoring group Yesh Din, there have been more than 257 reports of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank since the first U.S. airstrikes on Iran, including shootings, physical assaults, property damage, and threats. In this span, settlers have killed seven Palestinians, one of whom died after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli soldiers amid a settler attack. In these attacks (and all the others over the decades in the West Bank), settlers take advantage of the approximately 898 military checkpoints and obstacles that severely restrict Palestinian mobility—permanent checkpoints, iron gates that close off villages, earth mounds, and roadblocks—knowing that, in the wake of their violence, ambulances will not be able to reach the victims in time.” See also The Strategy Behind the West Bank Pogroms: Deir Yassin (Hagai El-Ad//Haaretz 4/1/26); Hollow Oscar: “A year after No Other Land won international acclaim, the world remains content to sit back and watch.” (Adam Adra//Humans of Masafer Yatta 4/8/26); A strategy ‘to make life intolerable’: Israeli settlers are driving Christians out of West Bank (The Guardian 4/5/26); At least 3 Palestinians hospitalized in multiple settler attacks on West Bank villages (TOI 4/6/26);
Israeli leaders are condemning settler attacks. It’s a smokescreen (Oren Ziv//+972 Magazine 4/2/26)
“The recent wave of denunciations from ministers, army chiefs, and right-wing pundits aims to obscure the fact that settler violence is state policy.” See also IDF Suspends Reserve Battalion Whose Soldiers Detained CNN Crew in West Bank (Haaretz 3/30/26); Jewish diaspora leaders urge Israeli president to stop West Bank settler violence (The Guardian 4/2/26);
Sources: Shin Bet Chief Does Not View Jewish Attacks on Palestinians as Terror (Haaretz 4/10/26)
“The Shin Bet security service’s Jewish Division is in a deep crisis that worsened since Shin Bet chief David Zini took office, several sources told Haaretz. Zini views violence by settlers and extreme-right activists in the West Bank as insignificant. He does not call attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank as “Jewish terror,” but rather as “cases of friction” between Jews and Palestinians…According to the sources, Zini has made Jewish terror a low Shin Bet priority, even though data from 2026 presented in internal discussions shows that, for the first time, there are more Jewish than Palestinian terror incidents.”
Top Palestinian Children’s Rights Group Shutters After Being Targeted By Israel (Truthout 4/7/26)
“top Palestinian children’s rights group has announced that it has been forced to shut down due to Israel’s recent attacks and bans on human rights organizations, removing a critical voice shining light on Israel’s atrocities against children in Gaza and the West Bank. Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) announced that it has ceased operations on Tuesday. “After 35 years of defending Palestinian children’s rights, we are not able to overcome operational challenges resulting from Israel’s targeted criminalization of Palestinian human rights organizations,” the group said. Israel has relentlessly attacked and vilified human rights groups for decades, and in 2024, passed legislation mandating that humanitarian groups providing aid to Palestinians in Gaza to register their groups with Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism or be forced to end their operations.”
Israeli police are violently suppressing our growing anti-war protests (Iddo Elam//+972 Magazine 4/1/26)
“As dissent over the Iran war spreads to the political center, demonstrators face crackdowns while opposition lawmakers are still nowhere to be seen.” See also Colette Avital Says She ‘Went to Protest So the Iran War Will End.’ Police Then Threw Her to the Ground (Haaretz 4/6/26); Israeli Support for Iran War Wanes After Early Enthusiasm, Poll Shows (Haaretz 3/29/26)
U.S. SCENE
AOC vows to block future US military aid to Israel, including for defensive systems (The Guardian 4/2/26)
“In a statement on social media, Ocasio-Cortez said that Israel was fully capable of funding “Iron Dome and other defensive systems”, and that “consistent with my voting record to date, I will not support Congress sending more taxpayer dollars and military aid to a government that consistently ignores international law and US law”.’ See also Ro Khanna says he’ll reject Iron Dome funding, joining AOC (JI 4/3/26); DNC Shoots Down Resolutions Calling Out AIPAC and Limiting Arms to Israel (The Intercept 4/9/26)
60% of Americans have an unfavorable view of Israel, up sharply since 2022, survey shows (JTA 4/9/26)
“Six in 10 Americans say they have a very or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel, up 20 points since 2022, according to a new Pew Research Center survey released this week. About half of them say they have a “very unfavorable” view of Israel, a proportion that has tripled in the last four years. The survey of 3,500 U.S. adults conducted late last month, weeks into the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, offers the latest signal that anti-Israel sentiment is surging among Americans. Multiple previous polls have shown that Americans newly sympathize more often with the Palestinians over the Israelis…The latest poll replicated the partisan divide widely detected in polling, with about 80% of Democrats saying they have an unfavorable view of Israel, compared to 40% of Republicans. Nearly half of Democrats under age 50 said they have a “very unfavorable” view of Israel.” See also Most American Jews disapprove of US military action against Iran, new poll shows (JTA 3/30/26); A second poll of US Jews finds the same result: Most oppose the war in Iran (The Forward 3/30/26);
US Sanctions: Criminalizing Palestinian and Global Justice Work (Tariq Kenney-Shawa//Al Shabaka 3/31/26)
“In February 2021, Defense for Children International–Palestine (DCIP) reported that Israeli interrogators had raped a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in detention. Rather than investigate the allegation, Israeli forces raided DCIP’s offices and later designated it—along with five other Palestinian human rights groups—as a “terrorist organization.” While such abuses and crackdowns are not new, this moment marked a decisive escalation: the shift from harassment of Palestinian civil society to its outright criminalization with the full support and participation of the US. In 2025, the Trump administration designated six Palestinian organizations under counterterrorism frameworks before advancing even further, sanctioning leading human rights groups for engaging with the International Criminal Court. These measures move beyond targeting individual actors to undermining the very infrastructure of international accountability. This policy brief argues that the campaign by the US and the Israeli regime against Palestinian civil society and international law carries global consequences, threatening mechanisms designed to hold state violence in check. It offers the following recommendations for how Palestinian organizations and their allies can adapt, defend themselves, and pursue justice in an increasingly hostile environment.”
‘Human tragedy’: Leqaa Kordia on how ICE jail echoes life in occupied Palestine (Alice Speri//The Guardian 4/1/26)
“A Palestinian woman who was released last month after spending a year in a Texas immigration detention center told the Guardian in an exclusive interview that she sees “a lot of similarities” between the treatment of people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody and that of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. Leqaa Kordia, who was detained by ICE following her arrest at a protest against Israel’s war in Gaza, says that she will continue to speak up about the rights of Palestinians, but that she now also sees it as her duty to denounce the “human tragedy” of immigration detention in the US.”
Man charged with US firebomb plot is linked to group whose leaders back violence against Palestinians (The Guardian 4/9/26)
“A man who has been charged with plotting to firebomb a pro-Palestine activist’s home is tied to a group whose leaders support violence against Palestinians and have platformed a convicted terrorist who fundraises for a violent settler movement in the occupied West Bank…Alexander Heifler, who law enforcement officials say is a JDL 613 member, was arrested last month after FBI and New York police department agents foiled an alleged plot to attack the home of the activist Nerdeen Kiswani with molotov cocktails.”
Inside the Holocaust Museum’s quiet changes (Politico 4/5/26)
“In the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington quietly removed from its website educational resources about American racism and canceled a workshop about the “fragility of democracy.”’
Mahmoud Khalil wants to reassure you (Arno Rosenfeld interviews Mahmoud Khalil//The Forward 4/7/26)
“Speaking extensively about Hamas, Oct. 7 and his preferred political solution to the conflict, Khalil sought to reassure American Jews that the protest movement he participated in and helped lead at Columbia University recognizes “absolutely a Jewish connection” to Israel and does not seek to drive Jews out of the region. “The Jewish people are part of the land and they should remain that way,” Khalil told me. “I want to liberate everyone.”…in repeated interviews, Khalil condemned antisemitism and violence against Israeli civilians, and spoke with passion about the important role of Jewish students he had demonstrated alongside…Khalil, like the Palestinian student breakaway group at Columbia, is adamant that targeting civilians is unacceptable. “I grew up in a community that valued human rights and valued principles beyond religion, beyond race,” he said. “I would never, in any context, justify the killing of a civilian for any reason.”
President of Wisconsin’s largest mosque detained by US immigration agents (The Guardian 4/2/26)
“The president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque was detained by federal immigration agents, drawing accusations from local officials and religious leaders that the arrest was motivated by his statements against Israel. Salah Sarsour, a Palestinian-born legal permanent resident of the United States, was taken into custody by nearly a dozen US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Monday in Milwaukee after he left his home, according to the Islamic Society of Milwaukee…[his attorneys] believe Sarsour, 53, was targeted for speaking out against Israel and for a conviction as a minor by Israeli military courts, which have faced scrutiny over allegations of limited due process and high conviction rates of Palestinians. Israel rejects those claims.”
PERSPECTIVES//LONG READS
Sovereignty Without Defense: The Army, the State, and Hezbollah’s Weapons (Ziad Abu-Rish//The Public Source 3/27/26)
“As Israel broadens its aerial bombardment of Lebanon and attempts a ground invasion of the South, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) have yet to meaningfully respond. Echoing the dominant U.S.-Israeli framing, some commentators continue to blame Hezbollah’s military operations against Israel as the root issue undermining Lebanon’s sovereignty. Fundamentally, however, the issue of sovereignty has much more to do with the history of the Lebanese state and the question of who protects Lebanon from external threats — most notably Israeli hegemony and expansionism.
Gaza’s Rubble Is the Grave of Our Future (Ghada Abdulfattah//NYT 4/10/26)
“It has been six months since the cease-fire was announced in Gaza, when the war was officially stopped. But it hasn’t stopped, not really. The Israeli airstrikes are less constant, but they still kill us — there was a drone strike that killed a man and injured a child just this week. When I talk to people abroad, they ask me if I can still hear Israeli drones at night. Once, I tried to record the buzzing as one hovered above my home, proof of the sound that has become a part of Gaza the way the sound of my own breathing is a part of me. War, in and of itself, has become indivisible from Gaza: It’s in the landscape, in the harsh conditions that make up our days, in our bodies. Outside the strip, people speak about the future: about reconstruction, about a “new Gaza.” I’ve seen renderings that imagine it as a city like Dubai, with glittering seaside skyscrapers. But from here, it’s hard to imagine the new Gaza. The war does not feel finished. It continues to live within us. We can’t escape it.
“Trump Caved”: Trita Parsi explains the shaky US-Iran ceasefire. (Josh Nathan-Kazis//Jewish Currents 4/8/26)
“The US war on Iran halted Tuesday night in a fashion far different from the one promised at the outset by leaders in both the US and Israel. The Iranian government remains in place, its military remains capable, and it still appears to have hundreds of pounds of highly enriched uranium. Iran is in a position of relative strength: The basis for planned negotiations, according to President Trump, is an Iranian proposal whose terms include an end to all sanctions against the country, and permanent Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz. (An anonymous White House official claimed to the New York Times on Wednesday that the terms Trump was referring to come from some other, unspecified Iranian proposal.) The Israeli leadership, for its part, is reeling. Benjamin Netanyahu helped push the White House to start this war, but appears to have been nowhere near the agreement to end it. Israel has stopped its attacks on Iran, but continues to bombard Lebanon, where Israeli military incursions have displaced more than a million people in recent weeks. Late in the day on Wednesday, Iran reportedly closed the Strait of Hormuz in response to Israeli strikes in Lebanon, and the state of the ceasefire grew uncertain as Iranian officials accused the US and Israeli side of violations, including Israel’s continuing attacks. To understand the wobbly ceasefire and what it means for the US, Iran, and Israel, Jewish Currents spoke early Wednesday with Trita Parsi, an Iran expert who is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute and former president of the National Iranian American Council.”
At Synagogues, Tensions Are Boiling Over (Eyal Press//New Yorker 3/30/26)
“The American Jewish community responded to the [1973] Yom Kippur War, which killed nearly three thousand Israeli soldiers, by flooding Israel with donations; doctors and students volunteered to join the war effort. It would not have been unreasonable to assume that, after October 7th, this dynamic would repeat and that the determination to bring home the Israeli hostages—twelve of whom were U.S. citizens—would galvanize a new generation. There was no such unity. For some American Jews, the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas, followed by the eruption of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, sparked a renewed sense of collective identity and Ahavat Yisrael—love for the Jewish people. For others, Israel’s merciless assault on Gaza, which has killed more than seventy-two thousand Palestinians, and the increased settler incursions into the West Bank alienated them from the Jewish establishment and from Zionism itself…This past October, a survey by the Washington Post found that forty-six per cent of American Jews supported the war in Gaza and forty-eight per cent opposed it. Thirty-nine per cent believed that Israel had committed genocide.” See also The Orthodox world has abandoned its values by abandoning Palestinians (Rachel Landsberg and Esther Sperber//The Forward 3/27/26)
Blaming Settler Violence on Messianic Racism Misses the Real Story (Haaretz 4/4/26)
“In recent months, incidents of Jewish violence in the West Bank have become routine. What once happened quietly, in the shadows, is now carried out in the open. Human rights organizations are no longer needed to document or expose it. Telegram channels of the so-called hilltop youth broadcast everything themselves: 20 Palestinians dead, and 20 instances in which security forces remained silent. It may be hard to believe, but things were once different. About 15 years ago, the first “price tag” attacks against Palestinians were widely condemned across much of the religious Zionist mainstream. Prominent rabbis visited burned mosques, expressed shock, issued formal denunciations. Today, that restraint has largely disappeared. Acts once associated with fringe groups now receive institutional backing.”
What Does Judaism Look Like Without Zionism? (NYT 4/6/26)
“Has the entanglement of Jewishness and Zionism ever felt more fraught? As Israel, fresh off the wholesale destruction of Gaza, drops more bombs across the Middle East, a Michigan synagogue is attacked by a Lebanese American man whose brother was killed in an Israeli strike half a world away. Noxious conspiracy theories about Jewish power and Zionism bubble up from far-right YouTube shows and even, according to some readings, in the resignation letter of a national security official. This conflation of Jews and Israel is dangerous antisemitism. And yet it’s harder to fight back as the mainstream Jewish establishment insists that Zionism is nearly as integral to Jewish identity as circumcision…In this muddled moment Molly Crabapple’s terrific “Here Where We Live Is Our Country” unearths the story of a Jewish political movement that opposed ethnic nationalism of all stripes and that fought antisemites head-on — sometimes literally beating them on the head. It’s an authoritative history of the Jewish Labor Bund, better known simply as the Bund, the early-20th-century socialist movement that broke with the Bolsheviks, fought the Zionists and tried to resist the fascists.”
When Jewishness Means Genocide (Arielle Angel and Daniel May//Jewish Currents 4/9/26)
“What happens to the concept of antisemitism in an environment where people increasingly hate Jews not for who they are, but for what they do? What could it mean to “fight” antisemitism in the shadow of Israeli impunity and Zionist power, especially when Israel and formal Jewish diaspora leadership insist that the Jewish state and the Jewish people are one and the same? To answer these questions, we spoke to Elad Lapidot, a Jerusalem-born Jewish philosopher living in Europe, where he is a professor for Hebraic studies at the University of Lille, France, and the director of the Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora.”
The humiliating ordeal of traveling abroad as a West Bank Palestinian (Ghaith J.//+972 Magazine 4/7/26)
“When Israel closed Allenby Bridge without warning, my journey to Istanbul turned into 36 hours of missed flights, uncertainty, and endless waiting.”
In the West Bank, ‘protective presence is not protecting anyone anymore’ (Charlotte Ritz-Jack//+972 Magazine 3/27/26)
“For decades, Israeli and international activists have put their bodies on the line to prevent the expulsion of Palestinian communities. But if they no longer deter violent settlers and soldiers, can they still make a difference?”
Fifty years on, does Land Day still matter for Palestinians in Israel? (Noor Dadosh//+972 Magazine 3/30/26)
“Sociologist Nabih Bashir reflects on the enduring legacy of the 1976 uprising against land confiscation, at a time of war, fragmentation, and political impasse.”
On TikTok, Palestinians in Israel are a scroll away from organized crime (Samah Watad//+972 Magazine 4/7/26)
“Videos of luxury cars, cash, masked motorcyclists, and veiled threats have drawn over 100 million views, amplifying criminal power far beyond the street.”
Inside the Israeli army’s propaganda wing (Illy Pe’ery//+972 Magazine 4/8/26)
“Psy-op campaigns, selective leaks, exclusive reporter access: Soldiers and journalists reveal how the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit controls public discourse and promotes Israel’s narrative abroad.”