Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett yesterday called on Israelis not to leave Israel, “which is going through its most difficult times since 1948”.

“We are in the most difficult period since the War of Independence: Change in the war, international boycotts, damage to deterrence, 120 Israelis in captivity, thousands of bereaved families, a deserted Galilee, thousands of evacuees, ministers who only care about themselves, loss of control over the economy and the deficit,” he wrote in a post on X after saying that he was “very sad” to hear a software engineer he knew was moving to Europe.

While there is no official data on the number of Israelis who have left since the beginning of the war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, the Hebrew news website the Times of Israel said on Sunday that more than half a million Israelis left and did not return in the first six months of the war.

Much of the attention on Thursday’s presidential debate fell upon President Joe Biden’s faltering performance, which has called into question whether he can even remain the Democratic candidate. In the aftermath, some have focused on former President Donald Trump’s nonstop lies.

Left largely overlooked, however, has been the open xenophobia Trump deployed against Palestinians and immigrants, and the silence with which it was met.

The most striking illustration might be Trump’s response to a prompt from CNN moderator Dana Bash, regarding Israel’s war on Gaza and the “humanitarian crisis” that Israel has created while killing thousands of Palestinians.

As Biden insisted that Hamas was the only entity standing in the way of a ceasefire, Trump actually pushed back on the idea. “You got to ask him,” Trump began, referring to Biden, “as far as Israel and Hamas, Israel is the one that wants to go. He said the only one who wants to keep going is Hamas.” He continued: “Actually, Israel is the one, and you should let them go and let them finish the job. He doesn’t want to do it. He has become like a Palestinian. But, they don’t like him because he is a very bad Palestinian. He is a weak one.”

Smith, who has been to the enclave twice since the war began, most recently worked in Rafah and central Gaza for two months, including at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah and Al-Awada Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp. “It was carnage,” he says. They were “the most horrific scenes that I have ever seen as an emergency physician.”

“We talk about the media being complicit in Israel's violence… but they also, it would appear, actively obscured the reality of what's happening,” he says, pointing to coverage of Israel’s massacre of more than 270 Palestinians in Nuseirat that occurred just after he left Gaza. Local physicians he worked with described people lying in pools of their own blood in the hospital and patients crammed into an already overcrowded spaces. “The most horrific, unimaginable conditions. And I truly don’t think that any of the major media outlets have captured the barbarity of this violence.”

Democratic leaders did not tell members to vote against an amendment to block the State Department from citing the Gaza Health Ministry’s statistics.

The House of Representatives has voted to effectively conceal the death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza.

On Thursday, lawmakers voted 269-144 on an amendment to prohibit the State Department from citing statistics from the Gaza Health Ministry. The measure is part of the annual State Department appropriations bill. It was led by Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz, Fla., and Josh Gottheimer, N.J., and Republican Reps. Joe Wilson, S.C.; Mike Lawler, N.Y.; and Carol Miller, W.V.

Mohammed Khader, policy manager at the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action, told The Intercept that the amendment is part of a trend of anti-Palestinian sentiment in Congress since the start of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. “By preventing any recognition of the number of Palestinians killed since October, this amendment is a clear example of genocide denial and is no different from what was done towards victims of genocides in Rwanda and Armenia.”

The University of Waterloo in Canada has filed a lawsuit against its students for continuing its pro-Palestine encampment urging the university to disclose and divest from Israel.

According to reports in the Canadian press, administrators were suing the encampment for $1.5m in damages including "trespass[ing], damage to property, intimidation and ejectment".

The university alleges the student encampment has damaged the school's reputation, driven up administrative and operational costs for the university and depreciated the university's property values.

In statement released by organisers of the encampment, Occupy UWaterloo, the student group said it was "incredibly shameful" that the university adminstration had decided "to sue their own student body that's protesting the university's complicity in a genocide that's almost nine months in and has claimed the lives of over 40,000".

An ID verification company that works on behalf of TikTok, X and Uber, among others, has left a set of administrative credentials exposed for more than a year, as reported by 404 Media.

The Israel-based AU10TIX verifies the identity of users by using pictures of their faces and drivers’ licenses, potentially opening up both to hackers.

The Houthis in Yemen say they launched attacks on a commercial vessel after it used an Israeli port, and on a US aircraft carrier ordered home after months of responding to sea attacks launched because of the war on Gaza.

Yahya Saree, the military spokesman of the Iran-aligned group, said in a televised announcement on Saturday the Liberia-flagged bulk carrier Transworld Navigator was directly hit by ballistic missiles in the Arabian Sea.

“The ship was targeted because the company that owns it violated the ban of entry into the ports of occupied Palestine,” he said, alluding to an earlier threat that all ships docking at Israeli ports would be considered targets.

The attack came after the sinking this week of the ship MV Tutor, which appears to mark a new escalation in the campaign against commercial vessels in vital maritime corridors.

At the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, Dr Iyad, director of the Kamal Adwan hospital's maternity department, refused to leave Gaza City, opting to stay with his patients and fulfil his humanitarian mission. But after a month of intense Israeli bombardment and siege, including the targeting of hospitals, he decided to take his family to safety.

He took the road instructed by Israeli forces, assuming it would grant him safe passage. But neither that nor his identifiable medical uniform made any difference.

"Nurse, come," the soldier said when he spotted him, according to Dina. That was the last time she saw her father.

“I cried a lot that day,” Dina, 19, said. “The last words I said to him were, 'May God protect you, my father, my love.'" For the next seven months, Iyad, 53, was forcibly disappeared. Dina had no information about his whereabouts.

Her hopes of seeing him again were shattered earlier this month, when it was revealed he died "under torture" in Israeli detention, six days after his arrest.

The New York Times published the headline “Bowman Falls in House Primary, Overtaken by Flood of Pro-Israel Money” — before swapping it out for “Bowman Falls to Latimer in a Loss for Progressive Democrats.” Other coverage emphasized that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s spending wasn’t the only factor in the race and that Bowman’s flaws made him particularly vulnerable, as did changed district lines that made his reelection even tougher.

Progressive strategists, however, had a much more clear takeaway from the results. “You don’t drop $15 million on an election if your positions are popular,” said Eva Borgwardt⁩, national spokesperson for the Jewish advocacy group IfNotNow, which endorsed Bowman. “This was an act of desperation from a pro-war lobby that is at odds with the majority of Americans, including American Jews.”

The amount of spending on the race should be alarming to everyone who cares about democracy, said Sophie Ellman-Golan, director of strategic communications at Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. “Now we know how much it costs to buy an election,” she said. “That price tag was nearly $25 million.” “It is noteworthy that many of AIPAC’s ads did not even mention Israel,” she said. “AIPAC understands that they are losing on the issues, because voters and constituents do not want to fund a genocide.”

AIPAC invested historic amounts of money in the race because it saw that unconditional support for Israel was unpopular among Democratic voters, Ellman-Golan said. “They would not have spent this much money if they were not scared,” she said. “You don’t spend $25 million — an unheard of amount in a primary — if you’re feeling confident in your candidate.”

Hundreds of Kenyan police officers have arrived in Haiti as part of a US-backed security intervention aiming to rescue the Caribbean country from a criminal insurrection that toppled the prime minister and brought death and chaos to the streets.

About 400 members of the Kenya-led multinational police operation stepped off a Kenyan Airways plane at Port-au-Prince’s international airport on Tuesday. The US president, Joe Biden, hailed their arrival as the start of “an effort that will bring much-needed relief to Haitians”.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down part of a federal anti-corruption law that makes it a crime for state and local officials to take gifts valued at more than $5,000 from a donor who had previously been awarded lucrative contracts or other government benefits thanks to the efforts of the official.

By a 6-3 vote, the justices overturned the conviction of a former Indiana mayor who asked for and took a $13,000 payment from the owners of a local truck dealership after he helped them win $1.1 million in city contracts for the purchase of garbage trucks.

In ruling for the former mayor, the justices drew a distinction between bribery, which requires proof of an illegal deal, and a gratuity that can be a gift or a reward for a past favor. They said the officials may be charged and prosecuted for bribery, but not for taking money for past favors if there was no proof of an illicit deal.