Our Wednesday News Analysis | The West wants Netanyahu gone - so Palestinians can be killed more quietly again

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks away after addressing the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City, US on 24 September 2026 (Reuters)

Benjamin Netanyahu’s whirlwind visit to the United States last week to address the United Nations General Assembly was further evidence that the Israeli prime minister is now a universal pariah.

He is being abandoned even by his closest allies.

It was perhaps not surprising that 77 nations, including a handful of European states, walked out of the chamber in protest that a wanted war crimes suspect - a fugitive from the International Criminal Court (ICC) - was being given a platform to speak on the world’s largest stage.

Far more notable was what happened - or rather, didn’t - away from the podium. Netanyahu spent just eight hours in the US before heading back to Israel. It is hard to believe that that was his choice.

He was denied his usual moment in the sun with Donald Trump at the White House, and could not even secure a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

There was no invitation to address the US Congress, and with it familiar scenes of legislators rapturously celebrating his anti-Palestinian incitement.

Israel's former ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, told Reuters: "I don't recall a time when the prime minister came to the United States and didn't meet with the president.”

The shunning of Netanyahu stood in stark contrast to the reception of Xi Jinping. The Chinese leader was personally greeted at the airport by Trump with a red carpet and military flyover.

Warnings ignored

Netanyahu’s UN visit was exploited by both sides - by Israeli officials and western leaders - to advance their separate, and conflicting, agendas.

Netanyahu is a month away from a hotly contested general election in which, for the first time, his failures to prevent Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023 are under intense scrutiny.

According to a growing number of recent reports, he was warned by Egyptian and Gulf leaders of a major event - an “earthquake” - coming from Gaza in the days and weeks preceding Hamas’ breakout, but failed to act.

Netanyahu had scheduled his UN speech for Israeli prime time, to attract the largest domestic audience possible. He took the opportunity to call out other world leaders as “moral cowards” and “hypocrites”...

Read more: The West wants Netanyahu gone - so Palestinians can be killed more quietly again

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ISRAEL TURNS GAZA INTO LARGEST GHETTO IN MODERN HISTORY, KILLING RESIDENTS ONE AFTER ANOTHER AS THREE-YEAR GENOCIDE CONTINUES

Source: Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/7109/Israel-turns-Gaza-into-largest-ghetto-in-modern-history,-killing-residents-one-after-another-as-three-year-genocide-continues

Published 29 September, 2026

Yellow concrete blocks mark the yellow zone under Israeli military control, as seen from Al-Tuffah in Gaza City in June 2026. (Ebrahim Hajjaj/Reuters)

Geneva – Israel has transformed the Gaza Strip from the world’s largest ‘open-air prison’ into the largest ‘ghetto’ in history, with more than two million Palestinians isolated under the weight of an unprecedented double blockade. This combines military control over around 70 per cent of the enclave’s area, forcing residents into overcrowding and depriving them of their right to housing, with the closure of crossings to systematically control the entry of basic needs. As a result, residents are trapped in a depleted area without the minimum requirements for survival amid ongoing genocide.

The comprehensive and unlawful outer blockade, enforced by closing crossings, is tightening the noose around millions of forcibly displaced people in the Gaza Strip. It entrenches systematic deprivation by preventing the entry of life-saving supplies, including food, medicine, fuel, and shelter materials. This is part of a humanitarian restriction taking place alongside the widespread destruction of homes and health facilities, depriving residents of their most basic rights and their ability to endure or receive medical care.

As for the inner blockade, the area under unlawful Israeli military control and access restrictions has expanded to cover around 70 per cent of the Gaza Strip, extending beyond military positions behind the Yellow Line and deep into populated areas. This entrenches a policy of forced displacement, denying residents access to their lands, homes, and vital facilities while forcing them into suffocating overcrowding in an ever-shrinking area, without safe shelter or any guarantees of their right to return.

Israel is deliberately concentrating more than two million people in a depleted area covering less than 30% of the Strip, creating a suffocating population density that is the highest in the world

Describing Gaza as the “largest ghetto in history” reflects an unprecedented demographic and spatial reality. Israel is deliberately concentrating more than two million people in a depleted area covering less than 30 per cent of the Strip, creating a suffocating population density that is the highest in the world. Gaza’s enormous, isolated population, combined with military control of crossings and systematic deprivation of basic survival needs, creates isolation and mass destruction on a scale that makes it the largest and harshest ghetto of the modern era.

Israel is using starvation as a lethal weapon to destroy the population, in an ongoing violation and a fully constituted war crime. By deliberately obstructing food supplies and preventing fuel from entering, it has shut down desalination plants and water pumps, forcing hundreds of thousands to drink contaminated water.

This reality has led to the spread of infectious and skin diseases, as well as acute malnutrition among displaced people living without even the most basic conditions for hygiene and shelter. According to official data, 460 Palestinians, including 164 children, have died from starvation. Dozens more died in similar circumstances but went unrecorded amid the Strip’s comprehensive collapse of its health and institutional systems.

Restrictions on medical evacuations are leaving tens of thousands of patients and wounded people in the Gaza Strip without the specialised care they need. Only 19 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain operational, and all are functioning only partially amid severe shortages of medicines, equipment, and fuel. Delaying the departure of patients who need urgent treatment abroad as their conditions worsen within a destroyed health system puts them at risk of preventable death...

Read more: Israel turns Gaza into largest ghetto in modern history, killing residents one after another as three-year genocide continues

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ANALYSIS - EUROPE'S BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL IS RAPIDLY EXPANDING – AND IT WON'T BE EASY TO STOP

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2026-09-28/ty-article/.premium/europe-pressures-israel-as-settlement-goods-face-bans-and-boycotts-spread/000001a0-e402-d259-a3b4-ec9a6f230000

By Jonathan Lis
Published September 28, 2026

From Dutch supermarkets removing settlement products to the Irish push to boycott their Israel match, calls for economic and cultural boycotts are intensifying across Europe – reflecting growing frustration on the continent with Israel's conduct

A demonstration in Amsterdam against Israel's actions in Gaza this month. Credit: Fadel Dawod / Anadolu via Reuters Connect

One of Amsterdam's kosher supermarkets informed its customers earlier this month that, starting last week, it would no longer be possible to find a long list of products on its shelves that originated in Israeli settlements.

The list included several products from the Achva food company, including cakes, tahini, halvah and chocolate spread; cakes from the Abadi bakery; and Yarden, Hermon, Gamla, Jerusalem and Zion wines.

"We're working hard to find suitable replacements, so we can maintain our full range of products as much as possible," the announcement said. "If you notice empty shelves, understand what it stems from."

The empty shelves in the Netherlands, the Eurovision boycott over Israel's participation and the calls in Ireland to cancel today's soccer match against Israel's national team are all part of a growing wave of economic and cultural measures that are slowly filtering down to the streets of Europe.

Alongside the ban on imports of goods from the settlements, which is openly aimed at the occupied territories, the calls for cultural and sports boycotts against Israel as a whole largely reflect Europe's frustration over the conduct of the war in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The Amsterdam supermarket sent the notice following the Dutch government's decision this summer to ban imports of goods from the settlements starting on September 22. This move, Dutch officials said, is meant to bring the country's trade policies in line with international law, under which the settlements are considered illegal.

People take part in a protest against the visit of U.S. President Donald Trump in the Irish capital Dublin, mid September Credit: AFP/ADRIAN DENNIS

The ban not only prohibits importing from the settlements, but also selling or buying goods from the settlements, providing services that facilitate commerce in these goods and bypassing the bans in any other way. The measure also applies to travelers' personal luggage: Customs officials are authorized to inspect tourists arriving in the Netherlands for such goods and confiscate them.

Israel's Channel 12 News reported testimony from passengers on an El Al flight last week who said they were subjected to checks for products from the West Bank. So far, however, there have been no reports from other flights of similar searches or evidence that the procedure is being systematically enforced...

Read more: Analysis - Europe's Boycott of Israel Is Rapidly Expanding – and It Won't Be Easy to Stop