Support for the State of Israel, in the midst of the genocide in Gaza, has been one of the issues that weighed on the resounding defeat of Donald Trump and the Republican Party in Tuesday's elections in the United States. American public opinion has changed in these three years, and the defense of Israel is no longer a cross-party consensus policy within the bipartisan system. Democratic President Joe Biden, a staunch defender of Israel, had said and repeated that "if Israel did not exist, we would have to invent it," and the support of Trump's favorite son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for Israel and his investments in the Israeli military industry is well known. But on Tuesday, candidates critical of Benjamin Netanyahu's government and the Zionist project won in key states. And now, the Democratic majority in both chambers could cause the White House's support for Tel Aviv to change.

The world has been watching the midterm elections in the United States. The defeat of Donald Trump and the Republican Party fills the front pages of the international press, some with very original headlines.

Trump had framed the midterm elections as a referendum on his record, and the result has been a resounding "no". Democrats have gained control of both chambers of Congress, while Republicans have lost states they had controlled for decades — even Texas. Neither the multimillion-dollar donations nor the backing of the tech oligarchs — the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, who surrounded him at his inauguration less than two years ago, (it feels like twenty )— could save him.

Air Alert, the application that alerts the Ukrainian population of Russian attacks, suffered a cyberattack this Sunday evening, as confirmed by the military and the company that manages it. Ukrainians received three consecutive alarm messages on their mobile phones shortly before eleven at night, one hour earlier in Catalonia. The first warned of a "radiation danger" in Kyiv; the second, of a "chemical threat", and the third, of "street fights". It is the first time that this application has suffered a hacking attack. A few hours later, Russia reported that the alarm application of its Ministry of Emergency Situations had also been hacked.

"What should make us expect any significant change with a new government in Israel? Will new acronyms or new faces change the reality in which we Palestinians have been living for decades? After all, since 1948, we have only experienced dispossession, occupation, forced displacement, and the denial of our most basic rights." This is the response from Maisara Baroud, an illustrator from Gaza, regarding what he expects from the new government in Tel Aviv. "Political methods and justifications may change and governments come and go, but the fundamental reality remains the same: we Palestinians are losing our lands, our homes, our people, and the right to live with freedom and dignity."

Waiting for the slow count of Tuesday's elections in Israel to finish, it is already clear that one of the keys has been the record turnout of the Arab minority, who represent 20% of Israel's population. This community had always been traditionally abstentionist because it did not feel represented in a state that treats them as second-class citizens. Unlike the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank (whom Israel has never wanted to consider citizens so as not to lose its Jewish demographic majority), Palestinians with Israeli citizenship have the right to vote. And this time they have exercised it massively: 70% went to the polls, an unprecedented percentage.

While Israel is awaiting the vote count of this Tuesday's elections, where Benjamin Netanyahu is gambling his political future, the Palestinian population of the West Bank lives under the siege of attacks by settlers and soldiers, in the shadow of the genocidal operation against the Gaza Strip. Waheed Abu Naeem only thinks about one thing: how to protect the primary and secondary school students from the attacks of the settlers who occupy eleven hills around his village, Al-Mughayyir, in the occupied West Bank. On April 23, a sniper murdered a 14-year-old student at the school gate, and since then, parents are afraid for their children to go to school.

The musicians change, but the score remains the same. It is a quite graphic image of Israel's political map in relation to what must be done with the Palestinians. The five men who will challenge Benjamin Netanyahu, who has dominated political life in Israel for the last 25 years, in this Tuesday's elections disagree with the prime minister on many things, but on this there are no fissures. Government and opposition share the same plan to sweep the Palestinians from their land. All five candidates signed a non-aggression pact at the end of September with the aim of unseating Netanyahu, who faces his first test after the greatest security failure in Israel's history with the Palestinian attacks of October 7, 2023. In the text of the agreement they proclaim: “Despite the ideological differences we have among us, the formation of a Zionist government, with a sense of state, dedicated to repair and reconstruction, is our great shared objective”.

Ukraine continues to resist the Russian invasion not only with its army, but also with a network of citizen initiative organizations that deal with all kinds of daily problems and are supported by volunteers without any kind of protection. After almost five years of war, this network is at the limit of its strength. This is confirmed by a report that the NGO Novact presented this Thursday to the Parliament of Catalonia. The report has followed 200 civil initiatives in the country between February 2022 and June 2026 and includes 105 interviews with community leaders, institutions, and local organizations. Civil society has taken on the coordination of emergencies, evacuations, and emergency repairs, particularly in areas under occupation or near the front line, in the west of the country.

Many people do not know this, but 20% of Israel's population is Palestinian. And for the first time in its history, this minority could be key in tipping the result of the Israeli elections on October 27th. Polls point to a 50-50 tie between the governing bloc of Benjamin Netanyahu's right and far-right and the liberal opposition forces. With this almost unprecedented scenario, the Arab minority would hold the key to Netanyahu's defeat, a candidate who is under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for the genocide in Gaza. However, in a context of strong anti-Arab racism, neither the government nor the opposition wants to reach agreements with the parties that represent them. Last month, the electoral board banned all Arab parties from running in the elections, as well as the communists of the only party that brings together Arabs and Jews. The decision was so discriminatory that the Supreme Court reversed it, but only partially. The United Arab List (Ra'am) will be able to run, as will the Unified List. The candidate from one of their parties, Sami Abu Shehadeh, remains banned. The Jewish communist candidate Ofer Cassif will also be able to run. In contrast, Israeli far-right parties with candidates who are under international sanctions for human rights violations have been able to run without problems.

The Houthi missile attacks against Riyadh airport, which on Saturday caused at least 14 deaths and more than 300 injuries, have once again placed Yemen at the center of international news. The explosions in the Saudi capital are hogging the headlines, but outside the media spotlight, a much more decisive battle is being fought within the country. Houthi forces have surrounded Taiz, the third most important city in Yemen, and are disputing control of the strategic Bab el-Mandeb strait, the gateway to the Red Sea. The poorest country in the Arab world is once again plunged into war, after five years of relative calm. The blows that Saudi Arabia is receiving put Donald Trump in the dilemma of having to defend his ally when the pockets of his voters are still suffering the impact of the fiasco of the attack against Iran, and just three weeks before the legislative elections.

Ukraine raises the stakes against Donald Trump. After the US president had agreed with Vladimir Putin to purchase 300,000 tons of diesel from him to try to lower the price and announce an "immediate" truce from both sides against energy infrastructure, Kyiv has realized that, once again, the White House is playing in favor of the Kremlin and that it cannot trust Washington. Not only has Russia not stopped the attacks, but, in addition, President Volodymyr Zelensky has denounced in the last few hours the blackout of intelligence information from the United States, which makes the task of its air defenses to stop Russian ballistic missiles and drones much more difficult.

The University of Barcelona presented this Wednesday the Ferrer Foundations Chair for Palestinian Studies, the first to be promoted in Europe dedicated exclusively to this subject. The chair will have a multidisciplinary approach, with faculty from the fields of international law, ecology and the environment, Arab studies, contemporary history, communication, and the arts. These studies will be financed with the support of the foundations linked to the pharmaceutical laboratories Ferrer, which have action for Palestine among their lines of activity.

The announcement that Donald Trump made on Sunday regarding an energy truce between Russia and Ukraine has no value on the ground. This was confirmed this Wednesday afternoon by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, from Downing Street, after Russia once again punished Kyiv with a large-scale attack of ballistic missiles and drones during the early hours. The impacts in residential areas have caused at least eight deaths and around twenty injuries, and the projectiles have damaged several energy facilities, which has once again left parts of the capital in the dark and aggravated supply difficulties.

An oil tanker sailing off the north coast of Qatar was hit this Thursday by "several projectiles" which caused an undetermined number of casualties, according to a British maritime security agency. The attack comes after Iran announced it would close a route in the Strait of Hormuz used to bypass the blockade imposed by Tehran on maritime traffic. This week, attacks against oil tankers sailing there have reached their highest level since the start of the war against Iran—at least 12 have been recorded against crude oil and liquefied natural gas transport vessels—according to maritime security companies, which has once again pushed the price of oil above $100 a barrel. The Strait of Hormuz is vital to the global economy: before the start of the war, approximately one-fifth of the planet's oil and liquefied natural gas passed through this maritime route.

Three years after the start of Israel's genocidal offensive on Gaza, Dr. Abdelrahman, an orthopedist at one of the few hospitals that remain partially operational in the Strip, explains to ARA the impossible conditions in which they work, without basic tools, with a systematically destroyed healthcare system and a population facing a chronic humanitarian crisis. Before the war, he worked at the Indonesian Hospital, in the north of the Strip, which was put out of service because it is located in the area under the control of the Israeli army. He has moved to the Nasser Medical Complex, in Khan Yunis, the largest one that continues to function in the south of the Palestinian enclave, where the majority of the population has been displaced by bombings on civilian areas.

Amira Hass (Jerusalem, 1956) was the first Israeli journalist who decided to settle in the Palestinian occupied territories, first in Gaza and then in the West Bank, more than 30 years ago, to explain "the regime of occupation domination". And she is still dedicated to the same thing. Daughter of Holocaust survivors, she has become an international benchmark for field journalism, as rigorous as it is uncomfortable. This Monday she was awarded the Manuel Vázquez Montalbán international journalism prize, presented by the Journalists' Association of Catalonia.

Democracy is threatened not only by the rise of authoritarianism, but also by growing social inequalities. The philosopher Erica Benner (Tokyo, 1962), one of the great contemporary specialists on Machiavelli, warns that economic inequalities, the concentration of power in the hands of a minority, and the loss of the idea of the common good corrupt democratic systems from within. Benner has visited Barcelona at the invitation of Cidob, where she has reflected on the crisis of democracy and the rise of the new right.

Not taking the official version for granted. This is synonymous with doing journalism, and this is what the Journalists' Association of Catalonia recognized this Monday, with the Manuel Vázquez Montalbán International Award presented to the Israeli journalist Amira Hass. The tenacious journalist from the newspaper Haaretz, who has lived for three decades in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has a difficult mission: to explain to the occupiers what is happening to the occupied.

The government of Turkey has carried out a major police operation in recent days against bars, organizations, and homes of activists from the LGBTI community in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Mersin, and other cities, in one of the worst episodes of the offensive it has maintained against the collective for more than a decade. There are at least 63 people detained and a total of 162 under investigation, in addition to nine associations and thirteen businesses, according to the Prosecutor's Office. Websites of various entities have also been blocked, including those dedicated to raising awareness about HIV. Protests against rights violations and discrimination have also been repressed.