72 arrested as ISA exposes terror network in southern Israel

 

The ISA has revealed a series of terrorism investigations involving residents of Israel’s southern Negev region.

The ISA has revealed a series of terrorism investigations involving residents of Israel’s southern Negev region, including five Bedouin residents of Segev Shalom who allegedly planned to establish a local armed cell modeled on Palestinian terror battalions in Judea and Samaria.

According to the ISA, the five suspects were investigated in May and June 2026 over plans to carry out attacks against security forces, the police station in Segev Shalom, and the central bus station in Beersheba.

The investigations were part of a broader series of arrests carried out by the ISA since the beginning of the year over suspected security-related activity threatening the state.

According to figures released by the agency, 72 residents of the Negev and southern Israel have been detained for ISA questioning since the beginning of 2026. Sixty-seven of them are Israeli citizens holding blue identity cards, while indictments have been filed against approximately 50 of those detained.

The cases investigated included alleged plans to carry out terrorist attacks and smuggle weapons across Israel’s borders.

In the Segev Shalom case, the alleged leader of the group had reportedly worked for an extended period to establish what the suspects referred to as a "military battalion," inspired by Palestinian armed groups operating in Judea and Samaria and motivated by a Palestinian affiliation. The ISA said he also published anti-Israel material on social media and encouraged terrorist activity.

Another suspect allegedly agreed to carry out a shooting attack against the Segev Shalom police station, as well as a stabbing and shooting attack at the Beersheba central bus station. Investigators also found that he had watched videos in an attempt to learn how to manufacture explosive devices, according to the ISA.

A third suspect allegedly agreed to join the planned battalion as an "engineer" responsible for preparing explosives to be used against security forces.

Another, described as a young suspect, allegedly agreed to join the group while also planning an independent explosive attack after his release from detention. The ISA said his interrogation indicated that he supported the Islamic State and had spent approximately two years planning a stabbing attack in the name of the organization.

The fifth suspect allegedly agreed to join the planned battalion and expressed willingness to participate in an attack against the Segev Shalom police station.

In a separate investigation launched in July 2026, the ISA questioned Abdullah Jargjawi, an Israeli citizen from Segev Shalom. According to the agency, Jargjawi incited terrorism and planned to carry out an attack at the Forum nightclub in Beersheba.

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The investigation also allegedly found that Jargjawi was in contact with Islamic State operatives and expressed an intention to travel abroad to join the organization’s fighting zones. He was also accused of identifying with terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State and Hamas.

Indictments have been filed in the Beersheba District Court against suspects involved in the various cases, charging them with serious terrorism offenses.

A senior ISA official said the investigations and arrests demonstrated the security threat posed by Israeli citizens establishing armed or semi-military cells seeking to carry out terrorist attacks inside Israel.

The official added that the planned activity was disrupted before the suspects could carry out their alleged plans through joint preventive operations by the ISA and Israel Police.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/434308

Xbox, Nintendo games may soon be used to teach Gaza children about Holocaust

 

“The changing educational system is central to ‘deradicalizing,’ as the phrase is used, the Palestinian population and future generations,” Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor told JNS.

(Oct. 8, 2026 / JNS)

Xbox and Nintendo video games may soon be used to teach children in Gaza about the Holocaust, David Hasan, founder and president of Gaza Children Village, said at an NGO Monitor-hosted panel on Thursday.

“We have games that we’re going to take for after school, and for Xbox, Nintendo, and the kids will play on it,” Hasan, who is of Palestinian descent, said during a question-and-answer portion of the discussion, which Valop Group co-hosted with NGO Monitor.

“The whole theme of it is, again, collaboration, empathy and, for the first time, we’re going to teach about Holocaust,” he said.

Hasan said the project would involve the U.S. embassy and is an effort to stay ahead of radicalization efforts in Gaza.

“You have to always be in the mentality that they are smarter than you are,” Hasan said. “Don’t get comfortable, because the minute you get comfortable, you will be defeated.”

It was not immediately clear when the games would be introduced or what role, if any, the U.S. embassy would play.

Hasan spoke during a panel titled “Gaza: From Security to Strategy” at Reichman University’s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism World Summit, during which panelists discussed Gaza’s reconstruction, disarmament and deradicalization, with a particular focus on education.

Gaza Children Village opened its first academy in the Strip in July 2025 and has since expanded to 21 academies serving some 22,000 children, Hasan said during the panel.

The organization uses the Palestinian Authority curriculum as its base but removes material it considers hateful or inciting and replaces it with alternative examples, he told attendees.

For example, math problems asking children to count “martyrs” from the First and Second Intifadas were replaced with questions about soccer players and fans, and an exercise involving the trajectory of a weapon aimed at an Israeli soldier was swapped for one involving an Olympic javelin throw, he said.

“For the first time, we have the map that says ‘Israel,’” Hasan said.

Gerald Steinberg, founder and president of NGO Monitor, told JNS after the panel that he is “cautiously optimistic” about the project.

The Gaza Children’s Village is a “unique project,” he said.

“Not just a lot of words and Band-Aids, but a serious attempt, with significant backing, to begin a process,” he told JNS. “I want to emphasize, to begin a process of changing the educational process in Gaza away from the incitement and support forinsta;;e terror, the hate, replacing the existing structure, which includes UNRWA and other frameworks.”

Steinberg said that Hamas has “manipulated” many nonprofits operating in Gaza, so they are barred from operating unless they comply with Israeli security vetting. Gaza Children Village is “not under that category,” he told JNS.

“They have not refused to work with security frameworks that are necessary to prevent a repetition of the infrastructure that the NGOs knowingly helped build, 500 kilometers of terrorist tunnels in hospitals and mosques and under residences, that allowed Oct. 7 to take place,” he said.

“That cannot. Israel is not going to allow Hamas and its network, including NGOs, U.N. agencies, to rebuild that,” he said. “It’s just not. It’s not.”

“Israel cannot allow that to happen, no matter how much the NGOs and their lobbyists continue to demand that,” he told JNS.

Hasan told the panel he wants the U.N. Relief and Works Agency to be dismantled, but an alternative must be built at the same time to prevent other actors from filling the ensuing vacuum.

UNRWA teachers and other educators were among 101 current or former employees whom the U.S. Agency for International Development Office of Inspector General referred to the State Department in June for possible suspension or debarment over alleged participation in the Oct. 7 attacks or affiliation with Hamas.

The group included school principals and teachers identified by investigators as Hamas commanders, intelligence operatives and, in one case, a sniper.

“You can’t create a gap and wait four or five years to find a viable alternative,” Hasan said at the event. “You have to do it simultaneously.”

Steinberg told JNS that he thinks UNRWA should have no role in a future educational framework in Gaza.

“There are different views,” he said. “My own personal view is that UNRWA needs to be taken away entirely from the structure and the process.”

“Not only is there nothing UNRWA contributes, but their history and their track record shows that whatever may be agreed upon in theory, UNRWA will go back to its current and long-standing history of being used by Palestinian leadership to reinforce and to continue what led to the catastrophes in Gaza and elsewhere,” he said.

Steinberg doesn’t know how Gaza Children Village would fit into a transition away from UNRWA but said that the project could offer an alternative where few currently exist.

“It’s very important to have initiatives and not simply talk about and focus on all of the existing failures in the system,” he told JNS. “I think one has to be very cautious, because it’s unique and it’s going to be difficult to implement. But at the same time, it does provide, potentially, an alternative where no other ones exist.”

Hasan said during the panel that the organization vets prospective teachers through Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories and uses a 50-question psychological profiling test. The nonprofit has also developed cameras and microphones powered by artificial intelligence in classrooms that record lessons and are designed to flag antisemitic or hateful remarks, he said.

The recordings are stored for 72 hours, and the system can send an alert within about 20 minutes when language is flagged, according to Hasan.

“Some are bad apples, trust me, but some are just—that’s the culture. Just that’s how they grow of it,” he told attendees.

The monitoring, he said, is intended in part to give teachers feedback as they learn to teach material they have not previously taught.

Changing the education system is essential to any effort to deradicalize Gaza, Steinberg told JNS.

“Every day, you can see, every day, videos of Palestinian children in Gaza who were used and exploited by Hamas and the other organizations as child soldiers, as child terrorists, for the incitement,” he said.

“The changing educational system is central to ‘deradicalizing,’ as the phrase is used, the Palestinian population and future generations,” he said.

“The only way that they’re going to be deradicalized is to change the education system completely,” he told JNS. “That’s also what the Children’s Village does.”

https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/xbox-nintendo-games-may-soon-be-used-to-teach-gaza-children-about-holocaust

Removal of Leftist Activists Before Olive Harvest

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-911081

Israel Katz orders administrative removal of left-wing activists ahead of olive harvest in Judea and Samaria

The request followed an announcement by the Global Sumud Flotilla that it was recruiting foreign activists to travel to Israel and participate in activities in olive-harvesting areas in Judea and Samaria

     Israeli troops removing left-wing activists from Olive Groves

Defense Minister Israel Katz has instructed officials on Thursday to pursue administrative removal orders against activists whose activities are deemed to threaten public order or security in Judea and Samaria, following a request from Yesha Council chairman Yisrael Ganz.

The move comes as the annual olive harvest begins in the West Bank this week, with left-wing activists preparing to travel to the area.

Ganz, who heads the Binyamin Regional Council and chairs the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization representing Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria, appealed to Katz on behalf of local government leaders in the area.

In his appeal, Ganz urged the defense minister to take measures to prevent activists from entering olive-harvesting areas, which he described as the stage for provocations and confrontations.

The request followed, in part, an announcement by the Global Sumud Flotilla, the organization behind the Gaza-bound flotilla that included Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, that it was recruiting foreign activists to travel to Israel and participate in activities in olive-harvesting areas in Judea and Samaria.

Katz seeks administrative removal orders against Leftist activists in Judea and Samaria

According to Ganz's appeal, several other organizations, including Go Palestine, Protect the Harvest, Faz3a, and the International Solidarity Movement, are also organizing activities in the area.

Following the request, Katz instructed officials to work toward issuing administrative removal orders against activists whose activities are found to pose a threat to public order or security in Judea and Samaria.

Yesha Council chairman warns against 'provocations' during olive harvest
“Residents of Judea and Samaria are not props for campaigns by foreign activists,” Ganz told The Jerusalem Post. “We saw the provocations in Gaza, and we must not allow them to reach Judea and Samaria as well.

“We will not allow extremist activists, Israeli or foreign, to come to the area in order to create provocations and confrontations. The olive harvest season must not become a tool for deliberately creating friction on the ground.

“I thank Defense Minister Israel Katz for responding to the request and for taking decisive action to maintain security and public order.”

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-911081

    Israeli Vineyard

     Olive Harvest in Israel

     Olive Tree

     Olive Oil

     Ancient Olive Press

     Harvesting Olives

     Sorting Olives

Mamdani statement an effort to ‘hijack’ Oct. 7 anniversary, Danon tells JNS

 

“Mamdani could not even give us one day to mourn without defaming the Jewish people and giving cover to our enemies,” Inna Vernikov, a Jewish member of the New York City Council, told JNS. “We will not let Mamdani and his radical pals rewrite Oct. 7.”

Oct. 7, 2026 / JNS)

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is drawing widespread criticism after again accusing the Jewish state of “genocide” in a statement ostensibly about marking the third anniversary of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks, which was the bloodiest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

“This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of Oct. 7,” the mayor stated. “On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.”

It wasn’t immediately clear why the mayor referred to “more than 1,100 victims,” when his predecessor, and many others, have said “more than 1,200.”

Mamdani, who campaigned on having the Israeli prime minister arrested and whose spokeswoman said that synagogues violate international law when they host pro-Israel events, is scheduled to attend a 7 p.m. “vigil in remembrance of Oct. 7,” followed by a 9 p.m. meeting with “Palestinian New Yorkers,” according to his official schedule.

His Oct. 7 statement appeared to blame Israel for being attacked by Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror organization since 1997.

“The suffering did not begin nor end that day,” Mamdani said of Oct. 7. “It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children.”

The mayor claimed that more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed “since the so-called ceasefire” and that the “suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing.”

The mayor, whose rhetoric leaders of major Jewish organizations have said endangers Jews, didn’t differentiate between civilians and Palestinian terrorists.

“Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them—all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes,” the mayor said. “Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.”

Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, told JNS that Mamdani’s statement is like “turning Sept. 11 into a day of mourning for al-Qaeda terrorists” and “an attempt to hijack the anniversary of Oct. 7 and turn it into yet another propaganda attack against Israel.”

“We will not let this happen,” Danon told JNS. “We will remember those who were murdered, and we will never forget who was behind this massacre.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, noted that the word “Jew” was absent from Mamdani’s statement.

“On Oct. 7, Hamas-led attackers murdered civilians, committed sexual violence, mutilated bodies and took hostages,” Greenblatt stated. “You are weaponizing a day meant for mourning the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust to recycle your usual anti-Zionist talking points.”

“The city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel deserves a mayor who can honor the dead without exploiting them,” he stated.

AIPAC stated that Mamdani’s remarks are a “disgraceful moral failure.”

“Weaponizing the anniversary of the mass murder and kidnapping of Israelis to amplify a modern blood libel against Israelis does nothing to promote peace,” the pro-Israel group stated. “It only fuels more violence and hate.”

Inna Vernikov, a Jewish Republican on the New York City Council, told JNS that “Mamdani gave the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust one sentence, then spent paragraphs falsely accusing Israel of genocide. Zero mention of terrorism.”

“Hamas raped women. Burned families alive. Dragged babies into tunnels and slaughtered them,” Vernikov said. “Mamdani buried all that and instead defames the very same people who stopped it.”

“Mamdani could not even give us one day to mourn without defaming the Jewish people and giving cover to our enemies,” she told JNS. “We will not let Mamdani and his radical pals rewrite Oct. 7.”

Evan R. Bernstein, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, stated that “as mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel, Mamdani has a profound responsibility to recognize the weight this day carries for New York’s Jewish community.”

Instead, according to B’nai B’rith, the mayor issued a “disgraceful and extremely offensive statement marking the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, in which he distorted and erased the experiences of the victims and the brutality Hamas inflicted upon them.”

Bernstein said that Mamdani “used his platform to promote inflammatory accusations against Israel while shifting the focus to deceptive accusations that Israel is committing genocide and apartheid.”

“That choice is particularly reckless in a city where anti-Jewish incidents have accounted for 52.9% of all confirmed hate crimes so far in 2026, though Jews make up roughly 10% of the city’s population,” he said. “More than 1,200 people were murdered on Oct. 7, 2023, including 49 Americans, and 251 were taken hostage, including 12 Americans. New Yorkers were among those murdered and abducted. Yet rather than remembering the people whose lives were destroyed by Hamas terrorists that day, Mamdani made accusations against Israel the focus of his message.”

Bernstein noted that Mamdani recently unveiled a city-wide strategy to combat Jew-hatred.

“A mayor cannot credibly claim to fight antisemitism and terrorism while using the anniversary of a terror attack to promote disinformation,” the B’nai B’rith leader said.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, stated that it was “disgusting and shameful to use Oct. 7 as an excuse to repeat Hamas’s talking points.”

“The terrorist enemies that seek to destroy us will not prevail,” she stated. “We stand with the Jewish people, and we pray for the victims, their families and the survivors.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition stated that “on the three-year anniversary of the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, the mayor of New York chooses to spew Hamas propaganda.”

“Vile,” the RJC said, adding that the mayor “should be ashamed.”

The Israeli-American Council said that “for the Jewish and Israeli community, Oct. 7 is, first and foremost, a day of mourning, remembrance and trauma.”

“On the third anniversary of Hamas’s mass murder, mass rape, mass torture and mass hostage taking of over 1,200 Israelis, Mayor Mamdani chose, once again, to use the day to accuse Israel of ‘genocide,’” the IAC stated.

“That claim is demonstrably false. The IDF has taken extraordinary steps to minimize civilian casualties, far beyond what the law of armed conflict requires, while fighting an enemy that systematically hides beyond women and children and uses civilians as human shields,” it stated. “This is not a one-time lapse. Every year, on the anniversary of the day our community buries its dead, the mayor reaches for the same blood libel against the Jewish state.”

“Rhetoric like this doesn’t stay online,” it added. “It is exactly the kind of messaging that has fueled a documented rise in antisemitic incidents across New York City.”

Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the New York City-based Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, stated that Mamdani “cannot give Jewish New Yorkers even a single day to mourn without gaslighting us and appropriating the trauma of Oct. 7.”

“He expresses sympathy at rising antisemitism while accusing Israel of deliberately killing children, bombing hospitals and committing ‘genocide,’” the Orthodox rabbi stated. “His rhetoric fuels hostility toward Jewish New Yorkers. Today, he could have honored the victims and promoted peace and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians. Instead, he chose to incite hatred.”

The Jewish commentator and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro wrote that Mamdani issued “49 words in tribute to the Jews murdered on Oct. 7” and “141 words on how Israel is responsible for everything and the only answer is to hand more power, money and authority to those who wish to destroy Israel.”

https://www.jns.org/news/u-s-news/mamdani-statement-an-effort-to-hijack-oct-7-anniversary-danon-tells-jns

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