In the Negev desert, near the Gaza Strip, it is hard to imagine that three years ago this place was full of music and dozens of young people dancing until sunrise. Today, at the site where the Nova festival was held there is no music. There are photographs and memorials scattered across the esplanade. A drone flies over the area while Israeli soldiers guard the access points. On one side, 378 trees commemorate the people murdered by Hamas at the festival. The memorial also remembers the 44 attendees who were kidnapped and taken to Gaza.

The Israeli government has suggested from the very first moment a supposed role of Iran in the incident that last Wednesday forced a change in the route of a plane covering the journey between Dubai and Tel Aviv. The authorities are investigating it as an attempted attack. Without evidence, Benjamin Netanyahu suggested a day after the events that Tehran could be behind it, and the Minister of Defense, Israel Katz, asserted that it was a "jihadist terrorist attack attempt". This Monday, however, the thesis of an Iranian involvement is losing strength: reports from Israel and the United States cited by media such as the BBC point out that the attacker was a "lone wolf".

“The Flydubai flight and the indomitability of the Jews”, “The avoided Flydubai tragedy highlights Israeli courage” or “Extraordinary heroism and nearly miraculous circumstances prevent an air catastrophe” are some of the headlines that can be read these days in Israel. Two days after the incident with Flydubai flight FZ1073, the feeling in the country is one of having dodged a tragedy, but also of having discovered a crack in air security, in one of the countries most obsessed with this issue.

On the eve of the election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted this Thursday that the pilot accused of trying to crash a flight heading to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, which was carrying mostly Israeli citizens, underwent a process of "radical Islamist indoctrination." He stated this in an interview with Fox News, in which he also hinted at a possible role for Iran in the episode that is being investigated as an attempted attack.

At the Tel Aviv Hostages Square, about 300 people listened this Monday evening to testimonies from relatives and survivors of the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. They were wearing t-shirts, caps, and pins with photographs of the hostages. Amidst banners with names and faces, a recreation of a tunnel recalled the conditions in which the kidnapped were held in Gaza. A man dressed as the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, held a banner with a blunt message: "Nobody told me!".The protest comes at a time when the question of what the Israeli government knew before the Hamas attack has returned to the center of Israeli politics. This time the debate passes through Abu Dhabi. On Sunday, the prime minister traveled in secret to the United Arab Emirates to meet with its president, Mohamed bin Zayed. The reason for the visit was to ask him to deny that he had warned him before October 7th that Hamas was preparing an attack, according to sources cited by Associated Press.Netanyahu's office has denied this version and explained that the visit aimed to “strengthen bilateral relations and address regional challenges.” The Emirates government has given a similar version of the visit, without making any mention of a specific request from the Israeli leader.The visit, lasting about four hours and without leaving the airport, as reported by the Israeli media outlet Channel 12, comes amidst weeks of controversy. A few days ago, the newspaper Haaretz published that the Emirates had allegedly alerted Israel that Hamas was preparing a major operation against the country. According to this information, Bin Zayed had personally communicated the warning to Netanyahu, but the notice was not sent to the main Israeli intelligence agencies or the army. Netanyahu denies this version.

The decadent speech delivered by Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu before the UN General Assembly, which included insults and fallacies against the delegates who left the room in protest, had the sole value of reminding the international community that the genocide in Gaza, and the illegal occupation of the West Bank by Israel's far-right and fundamentalist government, continues its course. The massacre of October 7th and 8th of Israeli citizens by Hamas, an unprecedented attack due to its violence, with about 1,400 civilians killed, was met with an immediate response of a genocide recognized as such by a committee and an independent commission of the United Nations itself, as well as Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and a list of the most relevant international entities and organizations. More than 75,000 Palestinians have died there, of whom more than 20,000 are minors. In this case, it cannot be said that the slaughter has no precedent, because the hostilities of the Israeli army, trained with the idea of treating the Palestinian population as subhumans who must be exterminated while young so they do not grow up to be murderous adults, goes back a long way. Of both things, the Hamas massacre and the beginning of Israel's genocidal response, it will be three years in a few days. In Gaza, more than ninety percent of homes have been destroyed, the arrival of international aid has been obstructed, doctors and journalists have been murdered, and the population has been subjected to a health and food crisis (that is, famine and infectious diseases), among other war crimes. In the West Bank, these days we have seen again the images of Zionist bulldozers razing olive groves, thus destroying the main source of income for many Palestinian families.Netanyahu is the most visible face of a coalition government that includes ministers such as the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who toasted with champagne in the Knesset after approving the establishment of the death penalty for Palestinians considered terrorists, and who asks that every night 30 or 40 people be executed in Gaza, until “clearing” the area of its Palestinian population. Or like the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, who boasts that the Gaza Strip is “a real estate gold mine” that the government of Israel is sharing with that of the USA. Since Netanyahu referred to the delegates who left the United Nations hall as “moral cowards,” we must understand that his depraved ministers and he himself consider themselves examples of moral strength. Invoking the right to defense, or much worse, the memory of the Shoah, as a justification for these atrocities does nothing but intensify their baseness.We emphasize that in this article we have referred to the crimes of the government of Israel. Not "of Israel", a confusion that our local Zionism always tries to promote, seasoned with the ineffable touch of indecent victimhood that seeks to equate Catalonia and Israel as peoples joined in misfortune. The decrepit, offensive image of Netanyahu at the UN serves as their mirror.

There are only a few weeks left until the Israeli legislative elections scheduled for October 27, elections that will determine the country's future for the next four years, and it seems difficult for there to be significant changes in the dynamics of the century-old conflict with the Palestinians. During the long campaign underway, we are witnessing a continuous evolution of attacks between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the opposition leaders; a bellicosity that will continue to grow until the polls open and that periodically reaches intense isolated clashes.

The general debate of the 81st United Nations General Assembly runs the risk of becoming a mere stage for an increasingly unilateral world. But, paradoxically, it is the only stage that continues to exist so that the 193 countries that are part of it can make themselves heard. Even if it is to threaten the "annihilation" of the other, to make warmongering proclamations of "not bowing one's head" or to attempt to whitewash a genocide.

1. Here is a redundancy. For three days, New York has been the capital of the world. The UN General Assembly has staged, through speeches by the main heads of state or government, how tangled the planet is. Behind the lectern, and too busy reading the acrylic teleprompter, everyone has their say. Each leader says what they think their audience wants to hear, the majority speak on behalf of their own country's exclusive interests, and some naive Europeans still go around clutching lilies, calling for diplomacy, international law, and multilateralism as the only possible way out of all the evils, which are not few. There has been talk of the war in Iran, the one in Ukraine, the one in Gaza, or the one in Sudan. And Javier Milei, as much in his own world as anyone else, still claims the Falklands as “a national cause.” By the way, the president of Argentina craps on the UN... but he was there.

Benjamin Netanyahu took to the podium at the United Nations General Assembly this Thursday with a forty-minute speech marked by confrontation. The Israeli prime minister, as expected, defended the military operations against Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, praised Donald Trump, and attacked various countries and the role of international media.

Benjamin Netanyahu will arrive this Thursday in New York to deliver one of the most delicate speeches of his career before the United Nations General Assembly. It will be a lightning visit: the Israeli prime minister plans to arrive in the United States on the same day as his intervention and return to Israel a few hours later. Unlike other years, no meeting with the US president, Donald Trump, is scheduled.

The United States is preparing to send to Israel one of the most significant ammunition packages in recent years to enhance Israeli military capabilities. The administration of President Donald Trump plans to deliver 40,000 bombs of 900 kilograms in exchange for 2.8 billion dollars. The shipment includes some of the most destructive bombs in Western arsenals: about 20,000 MK-84 and BLU-117 bombs and another 20,000 I-2000 bombs, according to information reported by the Washington Post.All ammunition is intended to be launched from the air. However, the MK-84 and BLU-117 bombs have a general purpose, while the I-2000s are designed to attack bunkers and other armored structures. This type of ammunition already caused concern in 2024 for former President Joe Biden for fear that Israel would use it in a large-scale offensive in Rafah that would cause numerous civilian casualties. This led the former US president to suspend the shipment.

It is common for Israeli senior officials, once retired, to criticize the government and denounce the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and sometimes even the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population or the no less systematic persecution and dispossession in general. They make comments to this effect, which in some cases are public.

With only a few months left until the elections, the trial against Benjamin Netanyahu has entered a new phase. The Israeli prime minister concluded his testimony before the court at the end of June, after 98 sessions that lasted a year and a half. But the process is still far from over: defense testimonies, final reports from the parties, and the judges' deliberations are still pending before a verdict. What future awaits a case that has marked Israeli politics in recent years and that will mark the country's electoral pre-campaign?The process that began in 2020 has advanced through marathon declarations, postponements for political and security reasons, constant calendar changes due to the different wars Israel has experienced in recent years, and an increasingly open confrontation between the prime minister and the country's judicial system. This is an unprecedented episode in Israeli judicial history: it is the first time that a prime minister in office has faced a criminal trial and has testified for so long in court. True to the strategy he has maintained since the beginning, Netanyahu has denied all accusations and has once again presented the case as a political persecution.The judicial proceeding focuses on three open cases, known as cases 1000, 2000, and 4000, in which the prosecution alleges there are indications of bribery, fraud, and abuse of power. Case 1000 investigates the receipt of gifts valued at approximately 260,000 euros from businessmen such as Arnon Milchan and James Packer, in exchange for possible political favors. For now, Netanyahu has admitted they were friends, but argues that the gifts were part of a personal relationship and not an exchange of favors.Case 2000 analyzes the conversations held with Arnon Mozes, editor of the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, about a possible improvement in media coverage in exchange for limiting the influence of the rival newspaper Israel Hayom. The legal discussion now focuses on whether those conversations constituted a real negotiation or a political maneuver without intention of materializing.Case 4000, the most serious, focuses on the alleged granting of regulatory favors to businessman Shaul Elovitch in exchange for favorable coverage on the Walla portal. It is the only case in which Netanyahu is accused of bribery, but where the judges have reiterated that they have difficulty seeing where this crime lies. The prosecution maintains the accusation.

The US President, Donald Trump, and the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, are two allies of Vox who have been a constant pain in the neck for the far-right party. Until now, Santiago Abascal's formation had responded timidly to the US president's outbursts, which had allowed the rebel former leaders or left-wing formations to accuse Vox of being Trump's "slaves". However, this week the party has slightly raised its voice to distance itself from the US president's threat to cut trade with Spain or Trump's harassment of the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, to whom, with an ironic tone, he said he wanted "a restraining order". The objective is to consolidate a shift that has been debated for some time in the Vox leadership to put an end to the meek image the party had projected until now. The culmination was between March and April, when Israel carried out attacks against Christians. It was then that the national leadership made a decision, according to sources familiar with the matter consulted by ARA: "We have to distance ourselves, like Meloni".

Israel has taken an unprecedented step in its institutional history. The government has announced that it will not obey a Supreme Court ruling that allows the Council of the Second Authority for Television and Radio, the regulatory body for private television and radio channels, to resume its activity. A decision that has reopened the tug-of-war between the executive and the judiciary with only a few months left until the elections in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is playing for his future.

Among the reasons for President Donald Trump to offer a memorandum of understanding to the Shiite Totalitarian Theocracy of Iran (STTI) were: saving the Soccer World Cup in the United States (he did not want to disturb this great business with the sound of missiles), lowering fuel prices before the November mid-term elections, and finding a dignified way out of the quagmireof the Persian Gulf after failing to overthrow the regime as an electoral asset.

US Vice President J.D. Vance said this week that after the midterm elections in November he will announce whether or not he will run in the next presidential elections. This would be very bad for Israel, especially after the unprecedented public comments he made on Thursday against the entire government of Benjamin Netanyahu, calling it "unacceptable" that Israel, in its bombings of Beirut, kills "people who have nothing to do with Hezbollah".

As the hours pass and more details emerge about the memorandum agreed between Iran and the United States, it seems clearer that it represents a victory for Persian diplomacy over American diplomacy. The agreement, which will be signed on Friday, has been received with joy by the markets as it foresees the immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic, but the fine print leaves Donald Trump in a very bad light. One only needs to look at the reaction of the Israeli media, which consider it practically a surrender to the ayatollah regime.

Israel finds itself in a very complicated moment, perhaps the most difficult in the history of the country, founded in 1948. At the helm we have Benjamin Netanyahu, a controversial prime minister not only because of the situation derived from the war with Iran and its uncertain consequences, but also because of the deep religious, social and political division that shakes Israel.