‘I have nothing left.’ Small business owners in Paris say they are traumatised after rioters looted their shops. With more protests expected across France on Saturday, Al Jazeera’s Virginia Pietromarchi speaks to shopkeepers fearing further destruction.
Published On 21 Oct 202621 Oct 2026
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Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir boasted Tuesday of the destruction of the Gaza Strip and mocked Palestinian residents in a campaign video released ahead of parliamentary elections, Anadolu reports.
Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, posted the AI-generated clip on US social media platform X, presenting a vision of Gaza in 2030 based on the widespread destruction inflicted by his government.
The video shows the enclave as a ghost town, with its schools, infrastructure and port destroyed.
A scene showing a donkey is followed by the party’s message: “You’d have to be a donkey to stay in Gaza,” mocking Palestinians who remain.
Ben-Gvir has repeatedly demanded occupying Gaza, displacing its Palestinian population and establishing Israeli settlements on the territory.
READ: Israel’s Ben-Gvir uses fines against mosques in election campaigning
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, launched with US support in October 2023, has killed more than 74,000 victims and injured over 175,000, while destroying 90% of civilian infrastructure.
Despite a ceasefire that has been in effect since Oct. 10, 2025, Israel has continued shelling, shooting and demolishing Palestinian structures, further expanding the destruction.
The campaign video comes after Arab parties accused Ben-Gvir on Sunday of exploiting his measures and violations against Palestinians to rally support and intimidate Arab voters.
Israel is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections on Oct. 27, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc competing against opposition parties.
A Channel 12 poll published Monday projected 55 seats for opposition parties and 51 for Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, leaving both blocs short of the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.
READ: Netanyahu says Ben-Gvir will hold prominent ministerial position in next government
Published On 12 Oct 202612 Oct 2026
Residents across the southeastern United States have begun cleanup efforts after Hurricane Isaias, the first Atlantic tropical cyclone of the 2026 season, slammed ashore near Destin, Florida, on Friday.
As of midafternoon Sunday, roughly 356,000 customers remain without power in southern Alabama and the northwestern region of Florida, according to data from PowerOutage.com, an independent tracking website.
At its peak, the storm knocked out power to nearly 800,000 homes and businesses across the Gulf Coast.
Sarah Gatewood, a spokesperson for the utility company Florida Power and Light (FPL), announced that workers from across Florida and more than two dozen other states had mobilised to restore power.
At least four deaths have been linked to Isais after it made landfall as a Category 2 storm on the five-tier Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
The tempest churned northward into Alabama on Saturday with fierce tropical-storm-force winds before weakening into a post-tropical cyclone and tracking further north towards the Appalachians.
Though its power is waning, the storm continues to endanger the mid-Atlantic region with the potential for flash flooding.
According to the National Weather Service (NWS), surface observations indicate that Isaias now has maximum sustained winds of 160 km/h (100 mph) and an estimated minimum central pressure of 28.88 inches, or 978 millibars.
Across Florida and Alabama, residents have reported damage from the storm’s high-velocity winds.
A Rest and Relax Inn in the resort city of Pensacola, Florida, saw its roof sheared off during the hurricane, and a boathouse was flattened in Destin.
The immediate struggle for basic necessities was most stark in Pensacola, the westernmost part of the Florida Panhandle, where the storm downed power grids and caused widespread structural damage.
Hundreds of cars lined the block around a United Cajun Navy distribution site, a volunteer disaster relief organisation, on Saturday morning.
Pensacola’s Mayor DC Reeves warned of critical drinking water shortages following the storm, which affected drinking wells and water infrastructure. Residents, he said, remain under an advisory to boil tap water before use.
“We are winding down day three of storm response and recovery operations, and we remain focused on public safety, clearing debris, and restoring critical infrastructure and services,” Reeves said on social media.
Isaias also forced the indefinite closure of Pensacola International airport, Florida’s 10th-largest airfield, due to severe damage.
Fallen trees and power lines continue to make travel hazardous in Houston County, Alabama, which remains under an emergency flash flood warning, according to state emergency officials.
“Due to the impacts of Hurricane Isaias, all Houston County roads are closed until further notice,” the agency posted on X.
After Israeli soldiers stormed Birzeit University near Ramallah to demolish a stone memorial dedicated to dead students, Rania Washaha, 47, felt the pain of bereavement again.
Her brother, Fadi, 34, was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier near the northern entrance to el-Bireh in the central West Bank in May 2021.
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His name was among the 38 students from the university killed by Israel and listed on the stone pillar known as the Martyrs’ Monument.
Israeli soldiers raided the university campus at dawn on Monday, accompanied by 10 military vehicles. A bulldozer demolished the pillar, and soldiers took away the marble stone. In its place, the Israelis left a planter containing a fig sapling, bearing the inscription: “Water it twice.”
This raid marks the fifth Israeli incursion into the campus since the beginning of 2026 and the 28th since 2002.
Birzeit University’s administration condemned the recent raid, describing the destruction of the Martyrs’ Monument as a violation of international law and an attack on education and national memory.
“Bulldozers won’t erase the memory of the martyrs, military vehicles won’t extinguish the light of knowledge, and these assaults won’t break the university’s resolve to pursue its academic and national mission,” a statement by the university pledged.
It came 10 days after another incursion by Israeli forces during the daytime, a day before the start of the new fall semester.
Nardeen al-Memi, the university’s public relations and media officer, told Al Jazeera in the brief minutes of their incursion, Israeli soldiers approached the monument for the first time and photographed it.
The Martyrs’ Monument was erected between 1994 and 1996, bearing the names of students and alumni at Birzeit killed by Israeli forces. The list starts with Sharaf al-Tayyibi, who was shot dead by Israeli forces on the campus in 1984. The names of other students and alumni were added during the years that followed.
“The last name inscribed on the monument was that of student Omar al-Naasan, whom soldiers killed in al-Mughayyir east of Ramallah on September 2 while he was confronting settler incursions,” said Nardeen. “Days after his death, his father came and personally wrote his son’s name on the monument.”
University students organised a protest at the site of the destroyed memorial on Tuesday afternoon, most viewing it as an Israeli attempt to intimidate them.
Sami Adel, a Birzeit student who wanted to use a pseudonym due to his fear of being detained, told Al Jazeera the memorial holds a place in the heart of everyone who has attended the university since the 1990s.
In recent years, Israel has tried to suppress any student activity dedicated to commemorating the martyrs, he said.
“Soldiers detained me for several hours three weeks ago and threatened that if I participated in any political student activity on campus, I would face a long and harsh detention,” he added.
The removal of the memorial is part of a broader Israeli policy targeting memorials dedicated to Palestinians killed by Israel in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli far-right has made the issue part of its campaign to erase markers of Palestinian identity.
Zvi Sukkot, a member of the Knesset from the Religious Zionism Party, destroyed one such memorial in the village of Madama, south of Nablus, with a sledgehammer in August. The Israeli military later said that it routinely removes “symbols of incitement”.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich submitted a list of approximately 40 Palestinian memorials, proposing their destruction, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
There has been a wider targeting of civic and cultural symbols across the West Bank, particularly in Jenin, by Israeli authorities.
“Jenin Horse”, a monument constructed from the wreckage left behind by an Israeli incursion into the city, was removed. A memorial dedicated to Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin was also targeted in 2023.
A cemetery containing the bodies of Iraqi soldiers killed during the 1948 war, also located in Jenin, has been raided by Israelis from illegal settlements.
Other landmarks embedded in the city’s collective memory, including the “Watermelon Roundabout”, have also been targeted.
Israel’s targeting of Palestine’s collective memory has coincided with a wider campaign of suppression in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian universities have been a particular target in this pressure campaign, with campuses raided, students detained, and strict restrictions on activities and events within university grounds.
Israeli authorities are likely focusing on Palestinian universities because they hold a special significance for Palestinian resistance. They historically served as spaces for anti-occupation activism and have been an integral part of the Palestinian political landscape for decades.
Political analyst Mohammed al-Qeeq, who served as president of the Birzeit University Student Council between 2006 and 2007, told Al Jazeera that Israel has targeted writers, influencers, and activists, along with students, to deter any resistance to the occupation.
Universities have historically served as a “fundamental pillar” of Palestinian resilience and identity.
“Israel had also sought to weaken Palestinian political and social cohesion inside universities by deepening divisions between factions and creating chaos”, he said.
For Rania, the memorial served to cement the names of the martyred students in the minds of the next generation of Berzeit students, including her brother’s.
“I cannot deny that I felt a pang of anguish when the memorial was demolished,” she told Al Jazeera. “I realised the goal wasn’t simply to uproot a physical object; I felt the suppressed violence Israel inflicts upon us.”
The memorial, constructed in 1996, stood on the campus when Fadi studied at Birzeit University. He had been arrested multiple times, spending a total of eight years in detention, and Israel denied Fadi the chance to wear a graduation gown.
“He didn’t even complete two years of study due to repeated arrests and injuries from soldiers’ gunfire,” Rania said. “Yet, he loved Birzeit University dearly and would stand by the memorial, contemplating the names of the student martyrs, never knowing that his own name would one day be added to theirs.”
This year, Rania’s son enrolled at Birzeit University as a first-year student. Shortly before classes started last September, an Israeli officer phoned him, threatening him if he participated in any student activities on campus. “Remember what we did to your uncle,” they warned him.