"In its official comments, the Israeli army had said that the displaced [Palestinian] population had left voluntarily, that “civilians who wished to evacuate were permitted to temporarily leave the area”. Ahmaro was outraged at the suggestion that he had any choice about fleeing. “Never, never, never. Why should I leave my house?” he asked."

Guardian graphic. Source: Peace Now

 

... Within hours, the whole city of 250,000 people had been sealed off [by Israeli forces] and the neighbourhood of Farsh al-Hawa [Palestine], closest to the site of Friday’s attack [on Israeli forces at one of the many Israeli checkpoint chokeholds on Palestine], had been flattened. By Sunday morning, there was nothing left but rubble of an industrial area that had been full of car workshops, a big ceramics plant and other enterprises.

As the bulldozers were at work there, another district a few kilometres away was being systematically emptied. Ein Deir Baha was allegedly home to at least one of the two men involved in the attack (both of whom were killed on the spot), and on Friday its residents paid the price.

Fahed Ahmaro, who was forced to flee his home in the Deir Baha area of Hebron by Israeli security forces, looks at his house from a distance. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

 

The imam from the local mosque, Fahed Ahmaro, was woken at about midnight by the loudspeakers from military vehicles patrolling the street, telling [Palestinian] homeowners to vacate their homes immediately for their own safety.

Ahmaro had 30 members of his family living in his house. He rushed his frail mother and some of his grandchildren to his daughter’s house in another part of Hebron, and was on his way back in the hope of picking up some of his possessions when his neighbour phoned him.

“He told me not to come back, and the [Israeli] army had blown up the gates to the house. I don’t know what they have done to it by now. I heard they destroyed the furniture,” Ahmaro said. “You don’t know what you have until you lose it. Now I realise how devastating it is to lose your home.”

At midday on Sunday, he was in a Hebron market shopping for a change of clothes for his grandchildren, uncertain how long the family’s exile would last.

He had heard that the house was being used as a base by Israeli soldiers and looking up at the house, perched on the side of a steep hill, he could see some lights on but no sign of life.

The Hebron municipality said that 370 families, nearly 2,000 people, had been displaced by the army sweep through Ein Deir Baha. In its official comments, the Israeli army had said that the displaced population had left voluntarily, that “civilians who wished to evacuate were permitted to temporarily leave the area”.

Ahmaro was outraged at the suggestion that he had any choice about fleeing.

“Never, never, never. Why should I leave my house?” he asked.... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/26/collective-punishment-palestinians-displaced-israeli-forces-take-over-hebron-homes

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Israeli soldiers raze neighbourhood in Hebron, driving families from homes

PM Benjamin Netanyahu vows ‘to destroy this place’ in retaliation for militant attack on army checkpoinks

Israeli troops have levelled a neighbourhood in Hebron, driving out hundreds of families in collective punishment for a militant attack on an army checkpoint outside the West Bank city, local Palestinian authorities said.

The Hebron municipality estimated that 35 hectares (86 acres) had been destroyed or marked for destruction and about 1,500 people had been evicted from their homes by Saturday afternoon in the district of Ein Deir Baha. The whole city of 250,000 people was sealed off by checkpoints on every point of entry.

Videos sent by a Hebron resident showed a substantial area of devastation with every house over several blocks flattened in an urban area. One video showed soldiers marking Palestinian houses with a sprayed black cross, another showed a bulldozer tearing down a stone wall on a hillside and another showed a large residential building festooned with Israeli flags... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/24/israel-soldiers-raze-west-bank-neighbourhood-hebron-families-from-homes

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"So perhaps the question is no longer: why would Israeli forces ever kill children? Perhaps the question instead should be: how much Israeli testimony describing the killing of children are we expected to ignore?"

A scene from NAZA, directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. Photograph: NAZA/The Guardian

 

I’ve debated with Israel’s most fervent defenders – NAZA debunks their talking points: The film’s testimonies from Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers expose years of baseless propaganda. 

Don’t take my word – take theirs

Mehdi Hasan

 

Opinion 

NAZA 

Fri 16 Oct 2026 

I watched the extraordinary new Guardian-produced documentary from Oscar-winning Israeli film-makers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor the other night, and I have struggled to stop thinking about it ever since. The film’s title comes from a Hebrew military term for collateral damage, and it consists of eye-opening interviews with two dozen Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers sitting in darkness, often on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, their voices “digitally altered to disguise their identities”.

At one point, Abraham asks one of the soldiers a remarkably blunt question.

“Do you think it’s a genocide?”

“Yes,” the soldier replies. “Completely.”

He points to what he describes as the “intentional” killing of Palestinian civilians, including children.

“We have to describe things as they really are.” That sentence could serve as the film’s subtitle. Because for the past three years, there have in effect been two wars over Gaza: the war itself, and the war over how we are allowed to describe it... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/oct/16/naza-israel-film 

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‘I cannot carry all of this alone’: the couples kept apart by the war in Gaza. Families have been scattered, fathers separated from their children, and couples unable to reunite and marry

Sami Abu Tabaq sits alone in his apartment in Cairo, while his fiancee, Ola, remains in Gaza. Images of Gaza are shown on the television.

Photograph: Mohammed Salem/The Guardian

Gaza

Aseel Mousa

Sat 17 Oct 2026 

Wijdan Abu Matar, 43, was forced to leave Gaza in November 2023 with her eight children for medical treatment, while her injured husband, Hatem, remained behind.

Wijdan and her family were living in the Nuseirat refugee camp when the Gaza war began with the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. Ten days later, on 17 October that year, an Israeli strike hit the al-Muhandseen tower, near their home, injuring Wijdan and every member of her family.

“We were sitting together, just about to start lunch when the bombing happened,” Wijdan recalled. “The ceiling collapsed over our heads. Everything went dark. I couldn’t see anything. I just started screaming the names of my sons and daughters.”

Her daughter Nour, 15, suffered the most serious injuries, including a fractured skull and bleeding in the brain. Five-year-old Amna suffered severe burns to her chest. The family was initially separated after the strike.

Nour spent about 33 days in intensive care, with Wijdan by her side. Amna and Aysel, three and a half, were at a different hospital for 15 days.

Aysel, who incurred severe burns in the bombing, holds up a photograph of her father. Photograph: Mohammed Salem/The Guardian

On 30 November 2023, Wijdan travelled with Nour to a hospital in Egypt for treatment. For months, the family remained scattered across Egypt, receiving medical treatment and staying with other relatives.

“I felt completely helpless,” Wijdan said. “There was a fire in my heart because I was away from my husband and my family was scattered.”

Eventually, Wijdan managed to bring her children together in an apartment in Egypt. Three years on, however, she is still separated from her husband, who remains in Gaza. “I have become both the mother and the father to my children,” she said. “The responsibility is exhausting me, and I am constantly worried about my husband.”

Hatem suffered a serious leg injury that limits his mobility and is now displaced in a tent in Nuseirat. Even speaking to him is difficult because of Gaza’s unreliable internet connection. “When he manages to get online, he calls me and the children. He tells me, ‘I am counting the days until I can see you again.’ I can see the tears in his eyes,” Wijdan says.

Wijdan has no regular source of income and relies on donations. Hatem stopped receiving a salary 10 months ago and his injury prevents him from working.

In Egypt, life is difficult for Wijdan and her family. She says she cannot afford transportation to send five of her children to school. “I see my children’s future slipping away in front of me, and there is nothing I can do.”

Nour still requires medical treatment, but Wijdan often cannot afford her medication. She sometimes considers returning to Gaza to be with Hatem, but fears exposing her children to further suffering.

“I dream of getting my children the treatment they need, and I hope..." READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/17/couples-families-separated-war-in-gaza

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Online ads weaponised to deliver ‘zero-click’ spyware, researchers say: [Israel-based] Discover-Tech’s Controlium software lets clients mass-profile internet users then covertly hack targets, say researchers at University of Toronto

Millions of users worldwide have been served ads by Discover-Tech since 2024, say researchers. Photograph: Sergio Azenha/Alamy

Hacking

Aisha Down

Thu 15 Oct 202

An Israeli advertising agency has been serving millions of online adverts that allow “zero-click” spyware to be used against targets, researchers at a Canadian university have said.

Citizen Lab, a digital investigations research unit at the University of Toronto, said it believed dozens of devices at the Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera had been compromised by spyware delivered through ads run by Discover-Tech, which describes itself as a specialised digital advertising agency.

According to Citizen Lab, Discover-Tech operates a software platform called Controlium that allows its clients to “mass-profile and deanonymise” internet users then covertly hack targets with third-party spyware. Unlike infections that rely on people interacting with links or files, the spyware requires no interaction from the victim to be installed, making it a new delivery technique, Citizen Lab says.

The infections happen without a user’s knowledge, and in a matter of seconds, according to Citizen Lab.

“[The online advertising] ecosystem is being weaponised at a massive scale to profile millions of users, then silently infect targets with zero-click mercenary spyware,” the report says.

According to the report, Controlium is able to harvest a user’s identity and IP address when the user is shown a seemingly benign custom-created ad – for example, for a digital game or a telecoms service. If the user has been selected as a target for hacking, a mercenary spyware firm can then send a malicious code containing spyware to their device, the researchers say.

They say that millions of users worldwide have been served ads by Discover-Tech since 2024, including in Yemen, Brazil, Mexico and Czechia.

Related work by the research group Confiant also suggests that Discover-Tech’s ads have been shown to users of the networks of government entities in Europe and the US, as well as the UN, Nato, the international criminal court and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“It’s disastrous that major ad vendors and organisations apparently were neither able to detect nor prevent the company’s malicious advertising operations for years,” said Wolfie Christl, a researcher at Citizen Lab. “The way the online advertising ecosystem works today is a security threat for states, the private sector, civil society and everyone else alike.”

According to Citizen Lab, Controlium acts as a “facilitator” for third-party spyware firms that have targeted “government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics and embassy workers”. Citizen Lab claims it can deliver spyware that can access everything on the device of a target, extracting messages, photos and emails, recording calls and secretly activating microphones.

The full extent of the targeting allegedly enabled by Discover-Tech is unknown. Citizen Lab’s findings join mounting evidence that the opaque arrangements underpinning the world of online advertising can be leveraged for surveillance.

“There has been a lot of buzz that... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/15/israeli-firm-digital-ads-enabling-installation-of-zero-click-spyware-researchers-say

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Nuclear war and malicious use of AI threaten end of humanity by 2100, says Lancet assessment Newly established commission identifies 17 catastrophic threats to human health but says ‘realistic route to act’ on each exists

 Global health

About this content

Kat Lay

 

Sat 10 Oct 2026

Humans could become extinct by the year 2100 due to malicious use of AI or nuclear conflict, according to a new global risk assessment.

They top a list of 17 major threats to human health over the next 75 years, which also includes cuts to aid spending by wealthy countries, the climate crisis and childhood malnutrition.

The experts behind The Lancet Commission on 21st Century Global Threats to Health said all the threats interact, meaning they must be addressed together – but stressed that there was “a realistic route to act” on each.

“Decisions made by leaders today will shape the health and wellbeing of the next generation,” said Prof Christopher Murray, commission co-chair and the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington.

To create its list, the commission modelled how many years in good health might be lost due to sickness, disability or early deaths due to each threat, based on current trajectories – a measure known as disability-adjusted life years (Dalys).

“Malicious use of AI, including bioweapons, and nuclear conflict with nuclear famine carry risks of extinction in the next 75 years,” the report said, adding that while their likelihood remained low, they had the potential to end humanity in the case of nuclear conflict by injecting enough particles into the upper atmosphere to block sunlight and cause famine, or via AI-created biological weapons. An accompanying Lancet editorial, published alongside the report, warned: “The scale of harm, should they be realised, would inflict an apocalypse on humanity.”

Other risks that could cause more than 1bn cumulative Dalys, and therefore deemed “major catastrophic threats”, included air pollution, antimicrobial resistance, childhood malnutrition and climate breakdown, as well as conventional conflict, declining overseas aid, high alcohol use, high blood pressure, income inequality, low educational attainment, naturally occurring pandemics, obesity, poor mental health, smoking and unhealthy ageing.

To be included on the list, threats not only had to potentially cause a high number of lost healthy years, but also to have potential solutions.

Ibrahim Abubakar, commission member and professor of infectious disease epidemiology at UCL, said: “We are not starting from a point of view of ‘oh look, we want to scare you – we’ve got X many threats facing humanity’. We’re starting from the premise that if you are a policymaker today, whether at the global multilateral level or at the national level, these are the potential threats that you could face, and this is the magnitude by which, if you act, you can actually make a difference.”

Action to limit global heating to about 1.8C (3.2F) rather than letting it reach 4.4C could prevent 1.89bn years of healthy life being lost... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/oct/11/nuclear-war-and-malicious-use-of-ai-threaten-end-of-humanity-by-2100-says-lancet-assessment?CMP=fb_gu#Echobox=1791706906 

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Gaza City- Palestinians inspect the destruction caused by an Israeli airstrike that hit a residential building in the Sabra area of Gaza City. Photograph: Omar Ashtawy in The Guardian

Gaza City

Palestinians inspect the destruction caused by an Israeli airstrike that hit a residential building in the Sabra area of Gaza City. Photograph: Omar Ashtawy/HL/Getty Images

 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2026/oct/09/the-week-around-the-world-in-20-pictures?CMP=share_btn_url#img-6

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Israeli settlers beat press photographer as soldiers watch in West Bank- Jaafar Ashtiyeh was covering violence against olive farmers when settlers set upon him with the butts of their rifles

West Bank  in The Guardian

William Christou in Jerusalem and agencies

Tue 6 Oct 2026

Armed Israeli settlers beat a photographer in the presence of Israeli soldiers, hospitalising him, as he covered worsening settler violence against olive farmers in the occupied West Bank.

Jaafar Ashtiyeh, a 58-year-old veteran photographer for Agence France-Presse in Palestine, was assaulted by a group of settlers, who beat him with the butts of their rifles, despite him being marked as press. He was assaulted in view of about a dozen armed Israeli soldiers.

Ashtiyeh suffered bruises to his head and torso and was taken to hospital, according to witnesses, his family and fellow journalists.

His assault came amid a worsening wave of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank. Every year, settlers attack Palestinian farmers trying to harvest their olives – an economic lifeline for the beleaguered Palestinian economy – with few legal consequences.

This harvest season has been particularly violent as the Israeli elections approach at the end of the month.

Ashtiyeh and another AFP photographer, John Wessels, were near the northern village of Aqraba when they noticed an Israeli soldier detaining a man as local Palestinians picked olives.

A quad bike suddenly raced towards the AFP journalists on top of a hill and a man on it opened live fire, with one Palestinian dropping to the ground. He was also hospitalised, with a gunshot to the foot, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.

At least six other people then rushed towards the AFP journalists firing guns. As Ashtiyeh attempted to enter a car, which was clearly marked “Press”, two men jumped on him and beat him repeatedly with the butts of their rifles.

A group of at least a dozen Israeli soldiers were about 500 metres away at the time of the attack, according to Wessels.

“I could hear his screams,” said Wessels, who was also threatened at gunpoint. The assailants also took Ashtiyeh’s camera equipment.

Ashtiyeh, who is Palestinian, was conscious in a hospital in Nablus. He underwent X-rays which did not detect broken bones but he will remain in hospital for round-the-clock observation, his son, Zain Jaafar, said.

The man who initially fired the gun was wearing a long white shirt as well as military fatigue trousers and boots, which are commonly worn by soldiers, Wessels said.

AFP has asked the Israeli military for comment. Settlers are rarely arrested or charged for their attacks against Palestinians... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/06/israeli-settlers-beat-press-photographer-as-soldiers-watch-in-west-bank

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“Silence in the face of suffering and injustice is not neutrality, it is complicity,” he wrote. “Shutting down discussion on the starvation of the Palestinian people weakens the reputation of the organisation and the legitimacy of our mandate. Being true to our mandate calls for a frank and open discussion around starvation, famine, and genocide in Palestine and elsewhere.” Benjamin Davis, Former UN food agency official claims he was fired for highlighting hunger in Gaza

Benjamin Davis appealing against dismissal from FAO, after being accused by director general of playing ‘political games’

Julian Borger in Copenhagen

Tue 6 Oct 2026   THE GUARDIAN 

 Palestinian women and children queuing to receive food from a charity in Gaza City in February. Photograph: Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini/Anadolu/Getty Images 

Benjamin Davis had worked for the FAO for 26 years before his dismissal. Photograph: Giuseppe Carotenuto/FAO

A former senior UN food agency official has alleged he was fired last week for his work highlighting hunger in Gaza, and has launched an appeal against his dismissal.

Benjamin Davis said the leadership of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had refused to renew his contract as director of its rural transformation and gender equality division because his team had published a brief on hunger in Gaza and held a seminar on the subject last year, and because he had taken part in weekly “moment of silence” vigils on FAO grounds for those killed.

The seminar on hunger in Gaza last September triggered a complaint from the Israeli mission to the FAO, which also sent a diplomat to take pictures of staff taking part a moment of silence gathering last October, according to a FAO staff report filed at the time.

Davis, 62 and a Spanish-American dual citizen, left the FAO last week after 26 years of service. Video of the event shows FAO staff standing and applauding him as he left the Rome headquarters for the last time.

“It’s a nice feeling that I’m not alone, that other people are behind me in this,” Davis said. “I was stopped constantly in the hallways by people, even those that I didn’t know, just to shake my hand or just to thank me or just to say that they supported me or that they were upset.”

The FAO did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on Monday, but the organisation’s director general, Qu Dongyu, appeared to refer to Davis’s dismissal in public remarks last Tuesday, in which he threatened to fire more people for what he deemed to be political activism.

“We are not going to allow you to play the game here of human rights,” said Qu, a veteran Chinese agronomist. “Of course human rights are very important, but they have a human rights agency in Geneva. If you want to take care [of human rights], go there.”

“Thats why [when] some senior members play political games here, I fire him,” he said, suggesting that Davis had violated staff regulations. “I’m a very soft person. I didn’t fire that many. I’m going to use my last year … to fire more if they’re against the law.”

Davis said he and fellow FAO staff members had been stunned by Qu’s remarks.

“Even more than the threat about firing people was just what he said about human rights. I think that really shocked people because it undermined the foundations of why we’re here basically, or why FAO is part of the United Nations and why the United Nations exists,” he said.

“We’re surely an organisation which is based on human rights, right?” Davis added, pointing to the FAO slogan: “Leave no one behind.”... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/06/former-un-food-agency-official-fao-benjamin-davis-hunger-gaza?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

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