Middle East Press On: Turkey, Israel's Future, Americans, Palestine, Genocide, Israeli Detention, Netanyahu, Europe Reopens Gaza Debate, New Age Islam's Selection, 14 April 2026
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
14 April 2026
Firstborn well: Somalia’s offshore drilling mission with Türkiye
Time to talk about Israel's future
Americans’ moral break with endless war
Twitter is Suffocating Us — A Call for Solidarity from the Palestine Chronicle
Civilization in the Face of Arrogance: From Excess Threat to Exposing Zionist-American Predicament
‘Genocide Behind Walls’ – Euro-Med Monitor Documents Abuse in Israeli Detention
Orbán Defeated: Netanyahu Loses Key EU Shield as Europe Reopens Gaza Debate
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Firstborn well: Somalia’s offshore drilling mission with Türkiye
BY ABDIRAHIM MOHAMED HASSAN
APR 14, 2026
April 10 was a day that will echo through Somali history. As the Turkish ultra-deep-sea drillship Çağrı Bey docked in Mogadishu’s harbor for its official inaugural ceremony before steaming northward to the Curad-1 well, 370 kilometers (230 miles) off Somalia’s central coast, the Somali people are not merely witnessing the arrival of steel and technology. We are watching the birth of a new national narrative, one that replaces decades of headlines about poverty, piracy and fragility with images of hope, partnership, and self-determined progress.
For too long, the world has reduced Somalia to a cautionary tale. Yet we Somalis know our story better: a people of legendary patience, resilience and communal ingenuity who rebuilt markets, schools and lives amid state collapse. We survived without a functioning central government for years, not through helplessness, but through is-kaashato (mutual self-help). Now, this vessel signals that our endurance is yielding to emergence.
Partnership with respect
The journey to this moment is rooted in a partnership that began when few dared to believe. Fifteen years ago, in 2011, the then-Prime Minister and current President of the brotherly Republic of Türkiye, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, landed in Mogadishu at a time when much of the international community warned against it. What the world saw as risk, Türkiye saw as responsibility. What started as urgent humanitarian aid of food, medicine and hospitals evolved into something deeper: security training, port modernization, education and now, strategic energy cooperation. Critics who once scoffed at Ankara’s engagement now applaud its results. This is no fleeting transaction. It is a relationship built on respect, reciprocity and shared destiny, stretching back centuries through trade and faith, revived in our hour of greatest need.
The real significance of Çağrı Bey lies in what it represents: Somalia’s first serious test of whether resource extraction can become a blessing rather than the curse that has scarred so many African nations. As a scholar of African political economy, during my coursework, I have studied the oil tragedies in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, Angola’s enclaves, and Sudan’s Petro-violence. The pattern is familiar: external powers extract, elites capture, communities suffer, conflict follows. Somalia is expected to refuse to repeat it.
Avoiding resource curse
Here, the framework is different. Under the landmark 2018 Baidoa Agreement on Ownership, Management and Revenue Sharing of Natural Resources, offshore revenues will be distributed with deliberate equity: 55% to the federal government for national priorities, 25% to the federal member state where drilling occurs (in this case, Galmudug), 10% to the host locality and an additional 10% shared among other member states. Onshore shares tilt even more toward regions and communities. This constitutional federalism ensures that every Somali, whether in Mogadishu, Hargeisa, Baidoa, Garowe or Kismayo, has a stake in Curad-1’s success. No single clan, city or region is left behind.
Galmudug itself adds profound symbolic weight. This central state, historically marked by clan tensions yet also by heroic resilience, sits at the geographic and cultural crossroads of the nation. Its coastline, including the historic Gandirshe area with echoes of ancient Somali civilizations, now hosts a project whose very name, Curad, which translates into the Somali language “firstborn,” carries cultural resonance. In Somali tradition, the firstborn carries responsibility for the entire family. Curad-1 is our national firstborn: the first major offshore well, expected to set the standard of care, accountability and benefit-sharing for every future discovery along our 3,000+ kilometer coastline, rich with untapped potential.
Global signal from Horn of Africa
This is Türkiye’s first-ever offshore drilling mission abroad, a vote of confidence in Somali waters and institutions. It arrives at a moment of global energy uncertainty, when strategic sea lanes like the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean grow more vital. Somalia’s location already grants the country geopolitical importance and energy resources will add economic heft. Yet unlike past extractive models, this partnership is explicitly win-win: Turkish expertise and capital meet Somali sovereignty and local content requirements. It models an alternative African engagement, a model rooted in mutual respect rather than conditionality or domination, precisely when traditional powers’ influence wanes.
Critics will rightly ask about risks: environmental safeguards, local jobs, revenue transparency and security in a region still battling Al-Shabaab remnants. These are valid. But the very structure of this project, joint oversight, naval escort and the federal revenue pact, builds in accountability from day one. As scholars and Somali citizens, we must insist on rigorous environmental impact monitoring, skills transfer for Somali youth and an independent sovereign wealth fund for future generations. Success here will prove that Africa can write its own resource story.
Globally, Çağrı Bey matters far beyond our shores. In an era of energy transition and great-power competition, it demonstrates South-South cooperation at its finest: a Muslim-majority African state and a rising Eurasian power forging a model that prioritizes dignity over dependency. It challenges the outdated notion that Africa must choose between West and East. Somalia is showing the continent and the world that we can partner strategically while remaining firmly in the driver’s seat.
As the Çağrı Bey prepares to spud Curad-1 in the coming days, I see not just a drillship on the horizon, but the first rays of a brighter Somali sunrise. This is our Curad moment, the firstborn of many blessings if we manage it with the wisdom, unity and foresight our ancestors taught us. From the ruins of state failure to the vanguard of African energy emergence, Somalia is rising. Not on someone else’s terms, but on our own, shoulder-to-shoulder with trusted brothers and sisters from Türkiye.
The world that once pitied us will soon watch in admiration. And we Somalis, patient, hardworking, creative people, will finally claim the prosperous future we have always deserved, and always believed was possible.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/firstborn-well-somalias-offshore-drilling-mission-with-turkiye
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Time to talk about Israel's future
BY HAKKI ÖCAL
APR 13, 2026
Do not let these “peace talks” fool you. There will be no peace. At best, we may see a prolonged cease-fire until the U.S. midterm elections. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not stupid enough to have the one and only U.S. president he molded into his wicked ways lose his majority in Congress. President Donald Trump is Netanyahu’s bail and bond to stay prime minister and, consequently, not to rot in prison for 10 years. Apparently, Trump needs Netanyahu to keep the vital portions of the Epstein papers out of the public sphere to continue with a Congress controlled by the Grand Old Party (GOP), not to get impeached and perhaps to remain in the office.
Yet, an extended cease-fire, the reopening of the Hormuz Strait, and alleviating the inflationary pressure on the U.S. economy may not mean that the already heightened public pressure in the U.S. against Trump’s dogging Netanyahu to his wars on Iran is going away. It seems that not only the Democratic Party is waking up from its political anesthesia, but the GOP has also noticed that being in the deep pockets of Zionism is not endlessly beneficial to themselves and the country.
It was not Gulf's war
On the other hand, the leaders and media people in the Gulf countries seem to have learned that the only thing worse than being an enemy of the U.S. is being a friend of the U.S. A Saudi official was quoted the other day on the social media saying when their refinery was attacked by Iran, they asked the U.S. for help, and the American officials even didn’t bother to respond. The Saudi official said, “Now, as we try to make peace with Iran and reduce tensions, America is deliberately sabotaging the process.” Why? The Saudi official thinks the U.S. wants war, “for Israel wants war: it cannot survive without conflict.”
Trump and his goons, who are as obedient as dogs, used the Gulf countries, that is, the Iranian people’s brothers and sisters in Islam, as their launching pad in their support fire on an Iranian elementary school, petro-chemical industry, military installations and nuclear facilities for Israel. What did the Gulf Arabs get in return?
Even if Iran were building a Shiite Crescent around the Gulf, it was not creating a Shiite empire around the Sunni world. It was trying to legitimize the oligarchic-religious dictatorship in Iran. The mullahs hoped that a sheathing of proxies supporting the resistance of the oppressed Palestinians would be good to disguise their archaic jubbahs.
The Arab neighbors had to know that to provide peace back to the Middle East, they only needed to convince their American allies to convert Israel back to a normal country and an apartheid state. If Israel could be forced to give up its malicious Zionist intentions in 1917 to steal all the lands, towns, cities, farms and homes of the native Arab people in Palestine, there would be no wars and no Nakba (the “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in 1948). Palestine would have stayed as a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. Iran would not have nuclear ambitions to protect itself or to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. It would be playing the “Oil Games” with the capitalists of the West.
Together till hell
Netanyahu’s personal cunningness to stay in power and out of jail partnered him up with the idea of endless wars with Messianic Zionism, which also created a marriage made in hell for the neocons’ grotesque, horrible scheme of redrawing the Middle East map. The fool’s paradise the neocons dream of is actually their wholesale answers to the endless coups, regime-changes and prodding their puppets in the oil-rich Middle East countries.
In those happy days when he thought that the Epstein files would be forgotten and Netanyahu would not have his hands on them, Trump even presumed that he could make fun of those neocon and interventionist horrific plans. If you remember the shot he took at them during his foreign policy speech in Riyadh on May 13, 2025: “Western interventionists flying beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live your own lives. ... The so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built.”
But unfortunately, things did not go as he expected, and instead of talking to the Iranians about Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and nuclear issues, he had to bomb Iran twice. Now, God only knows what will come out of the talks in Pakistan, where he sent his vice president, JD Vance.
Call me pessimistic, not because I love “Sad Songs for Sad People” by Megan Moroney, but I realistically expect no peace coming from Islamabad. As long as Trump stays a captive supporter of Netanyahu and as long as Netanyahu serves the dirty plans of the neocons and Zionists, the salvation for the American people, especially the iGen of the Western societies, and the Arabs and Jews of the Middle East is in redoing the “Eretz Israel.” Do we really need to go back that much?
Problems starting with Zionism
Yes, we do. You know what happens if the first button of the shirt is buttoned incorrectly. Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin had asked in 1901, “Where To Begin,” in an article which later became a road map for the Jews of the Russian Empire and all of Europe to migrate to Palestine.
Jews were seeking a haven from the discrimination (and in Russia, from death!) but the “Political Zionism,” in the late 19th century, took shape as a national movement of self-determination, based on ideas that the totality of Jews as a single national collectivity, and that this national entity has a claim of ownership over its ancestral homeland, Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel). Both of these ideas were based on religious myths: Judaism was not a national identity, but a religion, and there was no ancestral homeland of Judaic believers.
That is why, today, only 10% to 15% of all Jews in Israel identify themselves as Zionists. If you are a true believer of Judaism, you do not believe in killing and stealing in general, and the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians, in particular. That is why I think, “re-doing Israel” in the lines of the never-implemented 1937 plan to partition Palestine.
British high commissioner for the Mandate Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael, wrote in a private letter to London, “I see no alternative to partition. ... Jews and Arabs alike would enjoy the possession of their own respective territories.”
But neither London and other European capitals, nor Washington had the slightest intention to stop the Zionist terrorists from expelling all the other people from Palestine and create “a homeland for Jews: The Zion.”
But there is one extremely important point here: Netanyahu, counting down the minutes to the next war, has now turned all his domestic attention to obliterate Israel's democracy. He and his lime-hound on a leash are trying not to end wars. Because the wars have become their regular way to suppress the opposition. These two warlords are widening their governments’ assault on the courts and the pressure on independent journalism. As soon as the opposition starts working on the real targets, like re-creating Israel from scratch, Trump and Netanyahu will accelerate their assault on the liberal method of government.
Whether they like it or not, the people all over the world have seen that to reestablish the global peace and order, you have to nip the trouble in the bud.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/time-to-talk-about-israels-future
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Americans’ moral break with endless war
DR. RAMZY BAROUD
April 13, 2026
In the Middle East, the perception of ordinary Americans has long followed a familiar script: detached, uninformed, inward-looking and politically shallow — a society of “gas guzzlers” with little grasp of global realities beyond their immediate geography.
This perception did not emerge from thin air. It was cultivated — reinforced, even — by American political and media institutions. Politicians claimed to speak on behalf of “the American people,” while the mainstream media shaped what those people knew and, crucially, what they did not.
For decades, Americans overwhelmingly aligned with Israel. This was not merely ideological, it was instructional. The public was told — repeatedly — that Israel reflected so-called American values, such as democracy, civility and modernity. Palestinians and Arabs, by contrast, were framed as perpetual antagonists, initiators of violence and obstacles to peace.
Some Americans embraced this framing on religious or ideological grounds. But for the majority, the pro-Israel position became a default — an inherited conclusion rooted in limited access to alternative information. Israel was “good,” Arabs were “bad.” The narrative was simple, binary and rarely challenged.
With the mainstream media as the primary source of information, this perception hardened over time. Support for Palestine, and for broader Arab causes, remained confined to academic spaces and activist circles — often informed by anticolonial and anti-imperialist frameworks but numerically marginal and politically contained.
The mainstream remained locked in place. But that lock has been broken.
The shift did not happen overnight. Among Democrats, cracks began to appear as early as the mid-2010s. In 2016, Gallup data still showed Democrats sympathizing more with Israelis than Palestinians. By 2018, that gap had narrowed significantly. By 2021, parity had nearly been reached. And, by 2024-2025, a majority of Democrats — especially younger voters — expressed sympathy for Palestinians, with some polls showing support exceeding 50 percent among those under 35.
This transformation was driven in part by grassroots activism, particularly within progressive circles, where Palestine became a central moral and political issue. But it was also driven by something far more consequential: the collapse of narrative control.
The Israeli genocide in Gaza accelerated this shift dramatically. Not only because of the scale of violence in the besieged Strip but because, for the first time, the realities of war were not broadcast solely through the filters of the corporate media. Independent journalism, social media and direct visual evidence disrupted decades of curated narratives. The informational balance — long skewed — began to tip.
At the same time, American trust in the mainstream media reached historic lows. According to a 2025 Gallup poll, only about 31 percent of Americans expressed trust in the mass media to report news “fully, accurately and fairly,” with trust among the young even lower.
Up to this point, one could still argue that the shift remained politically contained: Democrats moving toward Palestine, while Republicans remained firmly aligned with Israel. But then came a rupture.
On Feb. 27, Gallup released a survey showing that, for the first time in modern polling history, more Americans sympathized with Palestinians than with Israelis — 41 percent to 36 percent. This was not a marginal fluctuation. It was a structural break.
That moment should have been seismic. But it was not treated as such. The mainstream media largely buried the story. And, within days, the political conversation shifted to a new crisis: the war with Iran.
In the weeks that followed, polling attention moved rapidly to American attitudes toward military escalation. Across multiple surveys, the outcome was consistent: Americans rejected war and an even greater number rejected the idea of a prolonged military entanglement.
Yet mainstream commentaries generally refused to connect the dots. Palestine was treated as one issue, Iran as another. Venezuela, interventionism and global militarism were separate, disconnected phenomena. Each was analyzed in isolation, stripped of its broader political and moral context.
Instead of recognizing a pattern, commentators fragmented the evidence. Opposition to conflict was framed as war fatigue, economic anxiety or partisan resistance to President Donald Trump. The focus was placed on gas prices, electoral calculations and political polarization — not on the possibility that Americans were making moral judgments independent of elite narratives.
But the pattern is there. And it is unmistakable.
True, Americans are still told what matters — Israel, Iran, energy security, the Strait of Hormuz, etc. The agenda remains largely intact. But the conclusions no longer follow automatically. The chain between attention and consent has been broken.
This is not simply a political shift, it is cognitive and moral. Economic concerns and partisan affiliations still shape public opinion, as they always have, but they no longer fully determine it.
Increasingly, Americans are evaluating global events through a moral lens — one that prioritizes the minimization of civilian suffering, questions power asymmetries and challenges the legitimacy of endless war.
This is not speculation. It is confirmed by data — most clearly in the case of Palestine, which has emerged as a moral compass for a wider transformation in American public consciousness. The shift in sympathy toward Palestinians is not an isolated anomaly but a signal of a deeper rethinking of power, justice and resistance. And it is likely to be irreversible.
The mainstream media will continue to set the agenda for the foreseeable future. But it has lost something far more important: its ability to manufacture consensus at scale.
That signals possibility. And perhaps, for the first time in generations, a reason for cautious — yet unmistakable — optimism: that ordinary Americans are no longer passive recipients of power but active participants in shaping a more morally conscious political reality.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2639763
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Twitter is Suffocating Us — A Call for Solidarity from the Palestine Chronicle
April 14, 2026
Our exposure has collapsed. Posts that once reached tens of thousands—sometimes millions—are now being buried, effectively reaching no one.
Worse still, thousands of our followers have been removed over recent months—500 in the last week alone.
Every attempt we have made to seek clarification or demand the restoration of our audience has been ignored.
In effect, X has engineered a method of silencing Palestinian and anti-war voices without transparency—evading both public accountability and legal scrutiny.
We are asking for your solidarity.
Please contact X directly through the Contact Support section or tag @Support on X and demand the immediate restoration of the Palestine Chronicle’s followers and full visibility.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/twitter-is-suffocating-us-a-call-for-solidarity-from-the-palestine-chronicle/
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Civilization in the Face of Arrogance: From Excess Threat to Exposing Zionist-American Predicament
April 14, 2026
By Elhami El-Meligy
The louder the American threat becomes, the more the emptiness behind it is exposed. Self-assured nations do not rely on “Stone Age” rhetoric, nor on such bluster, to conceal unclear objectives or an inability to translate firepower into political outcomes.
If the first part of this article examined the American threat through the lens of civilizational ignorance, this second part turns directly to the core question: What does this language reveal about America itself?
The issue is no longer confined to Iran, nor merely to the limits of military escalation. It concerns the nature of a power that speaks in such terms, and the dysfunction that afflicts empires when they lose the ability to distinguish between deterrence and neurosis, between politics and impulse, between the state and personal whim.
When Power Loses Its Language
Self-confident nations do not speak this way. Great powers, when certain of their objectives, do not need to raise their voices or substitute institutional language with that of cultural humiliation. They define their goals, understand their limits, and calculate the cost before embarking on action.
But when rhetoric devolves into a mixture of open threats, nervous boasting, and promises not only of military destruction but of civilizational erasure, it signals not strength, but anxiety.
Here, the empire does not speak from composure, but from confusion—attempting to compensate for a lack of vision with crude language. This verbal escalation is less a reflection of power than a desperate effort to mask fractures in political certainty.
Ambiguous Objectives, Amplified Threats
The most dangerous aspect of Trump’s rhetoric is not its aggression, but its emptiness.
He speaks of a “mission” nearing completion without defining it. He claims decisive victory while simultaneously opening the door to further escalation. He gestures toward an end, only to extend the conflict into new phases.
Such contradictions are not the hallmark of a power in control, but of one attempting to obscure confusion through noise.
The threat to return Iran to the “Stone Age” reflects not clarity, but the absence of it. The less defined the political objective, the louder the rhetoric becomes—an attempt to fabricate the illusion of coherence.
When the Empire Speaks with Its Nerves
At this stage, the issue is no longer reducible to the personality of the president—though that remains relevant—but to the structure that allows individual temperament to shape the image of the state.
Trump appears not merely as an impulsive leader, but as an intensified symptom of a deeper crisis: the inflation of propaganda, the collapse of the boundary between decision and spectacle, and the erosion of meaning in the projection of power.
The United States retains immense military capabilities—its bases, fleets, and destructive reach remain unparalleled. But possessing instruments of force is not the same as possessing a coherent strategy, a political vision, or a defined endpoint.
Empires do not begin to decline only when defeated militarily. They begin to decline when their rhetoric exceeds their vision, when image overtakes substance, and when noise replaces certainty.
Prestige that Reveals Fragility
Paradoxically, rhetoric intended to project strength may instead expose vulnerability.
Prestige in international politics is not measured solely by destructive capacity, but by control—over timing, escalation, and purpose. It depends on convincing both allies and adversaries that a state knows what it is doing, why it is doing it, and when it will stop.
When leadership oscillates between declaring victory and expanding targets, between hinting at resolution and issuing new threats, the image of the state begins to fracture.
What appears as force may, in fact, be insecurity—an attempt to compensate for strategic uncertainty by raising the stakes.
A Power that Sees Only Targets
The deeper crisis lies in a narrowing of vision.
Reducing a country such as Iran—with its long history, civilizational depth, and geopolitical weight—to a target to be “returned” to a pre-civilizational state reveals not only cruelty, but intellectual impoverishment.
This is a worldview that recognizes only what can be bombed, broken, or coerced.
It is dangerous not only for Iran, but for the international system as a whole. When power loses political and moral constraints, it ceases to function as a stabilizing force and instead becomes a generator of chaos—transforming deterrence into a source of global instability.
America Confronting Its Own Reflection
In this sense, Trump’s rhetoric reveals less about Iran than about the American moment itself.
The United States remains capable of striking, but increasingly struggles to persuade the world that it knows its direction. The language of electoral politics bleeds into the language of war; media spectacle replaces strategic clarity; threats substitute for policy.
This is not merely a matter of personal style, but a structural condition.
A leader who threatens widespread destruction while simultaneously proclaiming imminent victory does not appear to control the course of war, but to be chasing its image—while its political foundations erode.
Limits of Aggression, Limits of Power
What is unfolding should not be understood solely as aggression against Iran or Lebanon, but as a revelation of the limits of Zionist-American power itself.
Yes, it remains capable of large-scale destruction and escalation. But it has yet to articulate a credible vision of the aftermath—of the regional order it seeks to impose, or of a stable outcome emerging from war.
As threats escalate, this void becomes increasingly visible.
The equation is thus reversed: the question is no longer simply how the empire threatens others, but how its rhetoric exposes its own limitations—demonstrating that overwhelming force cannot compensate for the absence of strategy.
When the Empire Trembles
Those who threaten today to return others to the “Stone Age” may not be demonstrating power, but rather revealing its fragility.
Firepower does not produce wisdom. Noise does not make history.
Civilizations, however, endure.
Even under bombardment, they retain the capacity to expose the weakness of power when it speaks in the language of both arrogance and panic.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/civilization-in-the-face-of-arrogance-from-excess-threat-to-exposing-zionist-american-predicament/
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‘Genocide Behind Walls’ – Euro-Med Monitor Documents Abuse in Israeli Detention
April 13, 2026
A System, Not Isolated Abuse
A new report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor presents a systematic and institutionalized pattern of abuse inside Israeli prisons and detention centers, particularly since October 7, 2023.
Titled Another Genocide Behind Walls, the report argues that the Israeli detention system is no longer operating within a conventional legal framework, but has instead transformed into a structure of organized abuse.
As the report states, “the Israeli detention system has undergone a significant shift to become an official structure that institutionalizes systematic torture, where detention centers are no longer merely facilities for holding detainees, but spaces isolated from oversight, akin to legal and physical ‘black holes’.”
According to Euro-Med Monitor, this transformation has created an environment in which violations occur without accountability, noting that “detention centers became zones of immunity and impunity, where perpetrators are shielded from legal consequences, and victims are deprived of effective mechanisms for redress.”
Mass Arrests and Coercive Conditions
The report situates these abuses within a broader campaign of mass detention targeting Palestinians across Gaza and the occupied territories.
Euro-Med Monitor states that “extensive mass arrest campaigns, targeting thousands of Palestinians, including women, children, healthcare workers, and journalists, have created an unprecedented surge in detainee numbers, often carried out under conditions that disregard basic legal safeguards and due process.”
These arrests, the report explains, are accompanied by degrading conditions, describing detention facilities as operating within “a coercive environment marked by dehumanisation, where detainees are subjected to physical and psychological pressure designed to strip them of dignity and identity.”
The organization emphasizes the evidentiary basis of its findings, stating that “this report mainly relies on firsthand testimonies from Palestinian detainees from Gaza, supported by a cross-referencing approach that includes the analysis of leaked photos, videos, and official documents, ensuring a high degree of accuracy and reliability.”
Sexual Violence as a Systematic Tool
The report states that sexual violence is being used in a systematic and institutionalized manner.
Euro-Med Monitor states that it has documented “a widespread system of torture, including consistent patterns of systematic sexual violence, where detainees are subjected to forced public nudity, sexual harassment, threats of rape, and sexual assault, often in the presence of other detainees or personnel, as a means of humiliation, coercion, and control.”
Crucially, the report asserts that these practices are not isolated acts of individual misconduct but are instead embedded within policy frameworks, noting that such abuses are “carried out as part of a policy supported by senior civilian and military leaders, reflecting a broader institutional approach that enables and perpetuates these violations.”
Testimonies included in the report provide direct accounts of abuse. One detainee recounts: “They showed me pictures of me naked. They threatened to publish them. They repeatedly electrocuted me, and each time they increased the intensity of the electric shocks while I was restrained and unable to move.”
Institutional Collusion
Euro-Med Monitor expands responsibility beyond individual perpetrators, pointing to the systemic institutional involvement across multiple sectors.
The report states that “systematic crimes committed within Israeli detention centers rely on a structure of institutional collusion, where various state institutions, including the military, medical, and judicial systems, play interconnected roles in enabling, concealing, and sustaining these violations.”
In particular, the report criticizes the role of medical personnel, stating that there is a “militarisation of medicine, where healthcare professionals are integrated into the detention system in ways that undermine the duty of care and contribute to the destruction or concealment of evidence related to torture and abuse.”
At the same time, the judiciary is described as failing to act as a check on these practices.
According to Euro-Med Monitor, “the Israeli judicial system fails in its oversight and accountability roles, often providing legal cover or justification for practices that violate international law, thereby reinforcing a climate of impunity.”
Physical and Psychological Destruction
The report argues that the consequences of these practices extend far beyond immediate harm, forming part of a broader strategy targeting the integrity of detainees.
Euro-Med Monitor states that the documented abuses constitute “a strategy aimed at the moral and physical destruction of detainees, where the use of torture and sexual violence is intended not only to extract information or compliance, but to break individuals psychologically and socially.”
It adds that these practices result in long-term damage, noting that they lead to “permanent disabilities and systematically destroying the body’s biological structure, leaving lasting physical and psychological scars that persist long after release.”
Euro-Med Monitor places its findings within the framework of international law, arguing that the documented practices meet the threshold of serious international crimes.
The report states that these violations are “not accidental or isolated acts but a systematic pattern of grave international violations, which qualify as crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the Geneva Conventions.”
It further emphasizes that many of the acts described “constitute acts that fall within the scope of torture, as defined under international law, given their severity, intentionality, and the involvement of state actors.”
The report also warns that the scale and nature of these abuses may engage the Genocide Convention, stating that they “violate the Genocide Convention, particularly in light of the intent and patterns of harm directed at a protected group.”
Calls for International Action
In its concluding section, Euro-Med Monitor calls for urgent and concrete international intervention.
It states that the situation involves “systematic international crimes, including torture, sexual violence, enforced disappearance and acts of genocide, which require immediate and effective responses from the international community.”
The report urges states and international bodies to take action, including “immediate, concrete actions such as pressing for the closure of Israeli detention centers where such violations are taking place, alongside the initiation of independent international investigations and accountability mechanisms.”
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/genocide-behind-walls-euro-med-monitor-documents-abuse-in-israeli-detention/
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Orbán Defeated: Netanyahu Loses Key EU Shield as Europe Reopens Gaza Debate
April 13, 2026
By Romana Rubeo
Broad Public Demand for Change
The political landscape of Europe shifted sharply this weekend as Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán conceded defeat after 16 years in power, marking the collapse of one of Europe’s most entrenched nationalist governments.
Orbán was unseated following a record voter turnout of 77.8 percent—the highest since the fall of Communism—signaling broad public demand for political change.
The election delivered a decisive victory to Péter Magyar, a former Orbán ally who broke away in 2024 to lead the Tisza party. Early projections indicate a commanding parliamentary majority, potentially reshaping Hungary’s domestic and foreign policy orientation.
In his concession, Orbán acknowledged defeat but struck a defiant tone:
“The responsibility and opportunity to govern were not given to us. But we are not giving up. Never, never, never.”
Magyar’s rise is widely viewed as a return toward European consensus, following years of tensions between Budapest and Brussels, as well as Hungary’s alignment with Moscow and right-wing movements in the United States.
Netanyahu’s Shrinking European Shield
The consequences of Orbán’s defeat extend far beyond Hungary, with immediate implications for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government’s standing in Europe.
For years, Orbán functioned as Israel’s most reliable ally within the European Union. Hungary repeatedly used its veto power to block or dilute EU statements critical of Israeli actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, effectively shielding Tel Aviv from collective European pressure.
Orbán went further than diplomatic shielding. In April 2025, following the International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued for Netanyahu, he openly rejected the court’s authority and guaranteed that Hungary would not carry out any arrest.
Despite being a signatory to the Rome Statute, Budapest signaled it would not comply—effectively turning Hungary into a safe political space for Israeli leadership within the European Union.
The political relationship between Orbán and Netanyahu was rooted in shared ideological ground—emphasis on national sovereignty, hostility toward migration, and opposition to liberal international institutions.
Just weeks before the election, Netanyahu publicly endorsed Orbán at a CPAC event in Budapest, describing him as a “rock” and a defender of Western civilization.
With Orbán’s exit, that protective layer inside the EU is now gone. Hungary is no longer expected to reflexively obstruct EU initiatives targeting Israel, opening the door to stronger collective positions on Gaza and broader accountability measures.
The Rise of a More Assertive European Bloc
Meanwhile, a more vocal European front is emerging, mainly led by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. Sánchez has positioned himself at the forefront of calls for European action in response to Israel’s war on Gaza, advocating measures that were previously stalled by Hungarian opposition.
He recently urged the European Union to suspend its Association Agreement with Israel, citing what he described as “flagrant violations of international humanitarian law” in Gaza and Lebanon.
Speaking at the European Pulse Forum on Friday, Sánchez said Europe must “not only rearm itself to address its security and defense problems, but to also rearm itself morally.”
According to Politico, he framed this as essential for ensuring “stable and peaceful development throughout the world” at a time of increasing global instability.
In one of his strongest positions, Sánchez called for concrete measures against Israel.
He said it was “imperative for Brussels to suspend its cooperation agreement with Israel” in response to what he described as “flagrant” disrespect for international law. With Hungary potentially no longer serving as a veto barrier, such proposals are increasingly entering the core of European policy debate.
A Structural Shift
Orbán’s defeat does not immediately translate into a hostile Hungarian policy toward Israel. Péter Magyar has yet to define a clear position on Gaza or on Benjamin Netanyahu himself. But the significance of this moment lies elsewhere.
For over a decade, Hungary functioned as a structural barrier inside the European Union—consistently delaying, diluting, or blocking collective positions critical of Israel. That role was not dependent on rhetoric, but on power: the ability to veto.
With Orbán gone, that mechanism may disappear. What may change, therefore, is not necessarily Hungary’s tone, but Europe’s capacity to act.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/orban-defeated-netanyahu-loses-key-eu-shield-as-europe-reopens-gaza-debate/
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