Our Wednesday News Analysis | Is Europe finally getting tough on Israel?

Any losses suffered by the settlements — which represent only a small part of Israel’s overall trade — could be absorbed through Israel’s much larger economic relationship with Europe (AFP)

This time, Europe seems serious about holding Israel accountable — or at least that is what 11 European countries, together with Canada, want us to believe.

Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK last week announced their intention to introduce national restrictions, support European restrictions or actively consider measures against trade in goods with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Undeniably, the announcement represents a significant political and legal precedent. Dismissing it outright would be impulsive, particularly considering the participation of governments such as those of Canada and the UK, which have historically provided Israel with extensive political and diplomatic support.

Yet celebrating the announcement as an earth-shattering event without examining its context, timing and potential effectiveness would be equally rash. Worse, it could contribute to weakening the public pressure that finally compelled Western governments to take even these limited steps.

The political meaning of the initiative notwithstanding, several important qualifications must be considered.

Most of the 12 governments have announced intentions, rather than binding and immediately enforceable restrictions

Dr. Ramzy Baroud

First, most of the 12 governments have announced intentions, rather than binding and immediately enforceable restrictions. The decision is therefore still vulnerable to political negotiations, legislative delays, pressure from pro-Israel groups and changing electoral calculations. Without firm deadlines and enforceable mechanisms, today’s declared intentions could become irrelevant by the time they are implemented...

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THIS YOM KIPPUR, THE WHOLE WORLD MUST APOLOGIZE TO ISRAEL

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-09-20/ty-article-opinion/.premium/this-yom-kippur-the-whole-world-must-apologize-to-israel/000001a0-bb0f-da3d-afb5-fb6f579e0000

By Gideon Levy
Published September 20, 2026

If penitential prayers are heard in Israel on this Day of Atonement, then we have learned nothing from the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The misconception that Israel is capable of sinning is still deeply rooted

Israeli soldiers in the midst of Gaza's ruins, 2024. Credit: Rami Shllush

This year, Yom Kippur should be canceled, probably permanently. Israel is already beyond good and evil. Jews are incapable of sinning, simply because everything they do is always just, moral, legal and even sublime. The fast must also be canceled: This year we will eat like kings, because we deserve it.

Let the Gentiles fast. They deserve it. Let God fast. He also deserves it after all he has done to us. Let the thousands of starving Palestinian detainees fast, not the Jews who have never done anyone any harm. The fast is fitting for the two million war refugees in Gaza. They deserve to fast, not us. We deserve only good, and we have nothing to apologize for. We were and remain a chosen people, a villa in the jungle. A nation of lions never needs to apologize.

If selihot (penitential prayers) are heard in Israel tonight, we will know that Israel has learned nothing since the Yom Kippur War in 1973: The mistaken concept that Israel is even capable of sinning is still deeply rooted.

On this Yom Kippur eve, the whole world should apologize to Israel. Palestinians should ask for forgiveness for everything they have done to Jews since the dawn of Zionism. How they tried to resist the establishment of a foreign state in their land, how they still dare to complain about the Nakba and how they have since tried to resist the Zionist project that seeks Jewish supremacy forever between the river and the sea.

How dare they resist living in the cage of Gaza and the West Bank. They are the ones who should ask for forgiveness. For resisting the occupation, they should seek atonement in mosques; turn to their God and say: "Forgive us, our Father, for we have sinned, pardon us, our King, for we have transgressed."

All other nations of the world should also apologize to Israel. The British should apologize for the Balfour Declaration and for the sanctions they seek to impose on the most just, legal and moral enterprise in the world, the settlement enterprise. Along with them, all European countries that wish to follow their path. Sorry, settlers.

Israeli soldiers take up positions during a military operation in the West Bank city of Nablus, August. Credit: Majdi Mohammed,AP

In the U.S., people should gather tonight for mass apologies to Israel because 67 percent of Americans have changed their opinion of it for the worse and 55 percent have considered reviewing the continued pouring of vast fortunes into Israel. Everyone who has ever dared to criticize Israel should apologize. For what exactly? What is there to accuse Israel of? All people of conscience in the world who could not remain silent about the massacre of a thousand babies and 20,000 children must apologize to Israel, before the gate closes...

Read more: This Yom Kippur, the Whole World Must Apologize to Israel

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ISRAEL IS KILLING THE PEOPLE WHO COULD END ITS WARS

Source: Al Jazeera
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/9/18/israel-is-killing-the-people-who-could-end-its-wars

By Mahjoob Zweiri
Published September 18, 2026

From Iran to Gaza and Lebanon, assassinations have repeatedly removed figures capable of negotiating an end to conflict.

Large crowds gather during a joint funeral held for Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Basij commander Major General Gholam Soleimani, and 84 sailors from the Iranian Navy frigate IRIS Dena, on March 18, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. [Majid Saeedi/Getty Images]

In international politics, it is often assumed that wars end when the fighting becomes unbearable and the parties turn to diplomacy. But diplomacy requires interlocutors — figures with the standing to negotiate and the authority to deliver. Remove them, and a war loses not only its potential mediators but the very possibility of a settlement.

This is worth keeping in mind after a striking recent assessment. In early September 2026, Sir John Sawers, the former head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, told The Financial Times that Israel had deliberately killed Ali Larijani. In his reading, Larijani was targeted not because he ran Iran’s war effort, but because he was among the few Iranian figures capable of reaching a deal both sides could accept.

Coming from a career intelligence officer rather than an advocate, the judgement invites a larger question: does the killing of Larijani belong to a pattern in which Israel removes, at moments of possible negotiation, the very people through whom a war might have been ended?

A pattern, not an incident

Consider what such killings actually produce. Assassinating the head of a government or an army opens a vacuum that others rush to fill. Assassinating a designated negotiator opens a narrower and more damaging one: a vacuum of moderation.

The successor to a killed negotiator is rarely more flexible than the person removed. More often, he is harder, because the hardliners are the ones who survive and inherit. The channel loses its author, and the hardening that follows is then read, on both sides, as proof that diplomacy was never possible in the first place. The tactic becomes self-fulfilling: it does not merely interrupt a negotiation; it manufactures the evidence that negotiation was futile.

The precedent is old. In September 1948, Count Folke Bernadotte, the United Nations mediator for Palestine, was assassinated in Jerusalem by members of Lehi, the Zionist underground whose leaders included the future Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir. Bernadotte had been shuttling between the parties with truce and partition proposals. His killers regarded any compromise as betrayal...

Read more: Israel is killing the people who could end its wars