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  • Haftar’s forces execute 30 after secret military trials in eastern Libya

    Haftar’s forces execute 30 after secret military trials in eastern Libya

    A wave of secret death penalty convictions carried out by de facto authorities in eastern Libya has triggered international condemnation, after rights groups confirmed that at least 30 men have been executed since late August, with dozens more facing imminent execution. This resumption of capital punishment ends a 15-year de facto moratorium on executions that has held across Libya since 2010.

    The executions were carried out by the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF), the powerful military bloc led by eastern commander Khalifa Haftar that controls most of eastern and southern Libya, alongside the region’s de facto governing institutions. According to Amnesty International, the global human rights watchdog that first documented the abuses, all of those put to death were convicted in grossly unfair, closed military trials tainted by systemic torture.

    Many of the convictions were tied to alleged murder and terrorism offences connected to intra-Libyan conflict between the LAAF and rival armed groups between 2014 and 2018. Multiple detainees alleged that armed groups aligned with the LAAF tortured them following arrest to force coerced confessions, which were then used as primary evidence against them at trial. Amnesty’s investigation confirms that military courts in eastern Libya systematically violate core fair trial rights: defendants are denied access to legal counsel, given insufficient time to mount a defense, stripped of the right to remain silent, and are not granted public hearings before an independent, impartial judiciary. All military prosecutors and judges in the region are affiliated with the LAAF or its allied armed groups, eliminating any guarantee of judicial independence.

    This irregular judicial framework dates back to a 2017 law passed by the eastern-based House of Representatives that granted military courts jurisdiction over civilians accused of terrorism and crimes in so-called military zones. The legislation was later ruled unconstitutional by Libya’s Constitutional Chamber, but it remains in use by Haftar-aligned authorities.

    Witnesses and rights groups have also documented cruel post-execution mistreatment of the deceased and their families. Local human rights defenders report that de facto authorities have denied families permission to bury their executed loved ones themselves, instead seizing the bodies and conducting secret burials. While relatives have been permitted to identify remains before interment, they have been explicitly barred from holding public funerals—a practice the United Nations has repeatedly classified as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

    Local Libyan rights group the Crime Monitoring Organisation has independently verified 31 executions at Gernada and al-Kuwayfiyah prisons as of September 10. The group confirmed that all sentences were handed down by military courts, and no case files have been released to the public, making independent audits of trial fairness impossible. Libya Al-Ahrar television station has also reported that families of detainees have already received notifications of upcoming additional executions at the same two facilities.

    The resumption of executions came roughly two weeks after a car bomb assassination of LAAF military intelligence chief Major General Fawzi al-Mansouri in Benghazi in August. It also unfolds against a long-running political backdrop of Libyan division: the country remains split between the internationally recognized Government of National Unity that holds the capital Tripoli and controls western Libya, and the Haftar-aligned administration that governs the east and most of the south. The executions come as UN-led mediation efforts continue to work toward unifying the country’s rival institutions and paving the way for long-delayed national elections.

    Both Amnesty International and the United Nations have called for immediate action to end the crisis. Amnesty is demanding the LAAF authorities immediately implement an official moratorium on all executions, vacate all convictions and death sentences obtained through unfair trials, and retry all civilian defendants in civilian courts that adhere to international fair trial standards, excluding any evidence obtained through torture. The organization has also called for independent, impartial investigations into all allegations of torture and ill-treatment of detainees, and for unimpeded access for international human rights monitors to Gernada and all other detention facilities in eastern Libya. The UN Support Mission in Libya has echoed the call for an immediate halt to further executions, noting that the resumption of capital punishment ended the 15-year unofficial moratorium.

    The internationally recognized Tripoli-based Libyan authorities have also joined the UN in condemning the executions. Separately, reporting from Middle East Eye has confirmed that the LAAF, in partnership with the United Arab Emirates, continues to support Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, a militia widely accused of perpetrating genocide in Sudan’s ongoing conflict. Investigations have documented active RSF fighter training camps in both eastern and southern Libya, raising further international concern over the LAAF’s regional activities.

  • Tenth woman’s body found in South Africa suburb as police probe killings

    Tenth woman’s body found in South Africa suburb as police probe killings

    A grim new discovery has amplified national anger over South Africa’s long-running crisis of gender-based violence, after local police confirmed they recovered the body of an unidentified woman in a Johannesburg suburb over the weekend — the 10th set of human remains of a woman found in the region since July.

    The corpse was located early Saturday morning at a public cemetery in Tembisa, a working-class neighborhood situated northeast of central Johannesburg, according to official police updates. The victim was preliminarily identified by a friend who had accompanied her to a local bar the previous night; the friend told South Africa’s national public broadcaster SABC that she recognized the victim’s clothing from the previous evening when shown photographs of the body by investigators.

    Grieving and visibly shaken, the friend told reporters: “I don’t know what I’m going to say to her children. It’s painful.”

    In the immediate hours after the discovery, the South African Police Service dispatched specialized crime scene investigators to the cemetery to collect forensic evidence, but officials have not released the victim’s name publicly pending formal notification of next of kin.

    Gauteng Provincial Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Tommy Mthombeni told journalists that investigators have not yet ruled out the possibility that a serial killer is operating in the region. While he noted that the 10 deaths discovered across Ekurhuleni and an 11th case in nearby Soweto share clear patterns, including matching victim profiles and a consistent suspected modus operandi, Mthombeni stressed that it is too early in the investigation to confirm a definitive link between the latest killing and the previous deaths.

    “For now, it’s not something which we can overrule to say there’s a serial killer, but we cannot conclusively indicate as such,” Mthombeni said.

    The string of brutal deaths has sparked widespread national outcry, shining a fresh spotlight on South Africa’s status as one of the countries with the highest global rates of gender-based violence. All 10 earlier victims were young women, and nearly all suffered extreme brutal violence before their deaths, with most of the bodies discovered in Kempton Park, a neighboring suburb just a short distance from Tembisa.

    South Africa already grapples with one of the world’s highest overall homicide rates: official police data recorded 5,425 total murders between April and June 2026 alone. While national police statistics do not break down homicide victims by gender, the South African Human Rights Commission released new data last week showing that 569 women were killed across the country in that same three-month window, with another 1,051 women surviving murder attempts.

    This public outrage comes at a politically sensitive moment for South Africa’s national government, which formally declared gender-based violence a national disaster less than one year ago. The string of killings has placed intense new pressure on administration officials to deliver on promises to improve protection for women and address the country’s persistent crisis of violent crime against women.

    So far, law enforcement has made limited progress in the cases: three men have already appeared in court earlier this week charged with involvement in one of the earlier murders, and investigators are continuing to hunt for other potential suspects linked to the killings.

  • Watch: Paris turns into an ‘open air cathedral’ as Pope Leo visits

    Watch: Paris turns into an ‘open air cathedral’ as Pope Leo visits

    A landmark moment for global Catholicism unfolded this week as Pope Leo touched down in France, transforming the iconic city streets of Paris into what faith leaders and attendees have described as a sprawling “open-air cathedral” for the historic visit. The gathering drew tens of thousands of worshippers and onlookers from across France and neighboring European countries, who filled the city’s central plazas and boulevards to catch a glimpse of the pontiff and take part in open-air religious services.

    The BBC’s senior religion editor, Aleem Maqbool, has broken down the complex layers of what the visit means for both the Catholic Church in France and the country’s broader social and political landscape. Beyond its religious significance, the visit comes at a time of shifting religious dynamics in Western Europe, where secularism remains a core founding principle of the French state, but Catholic traditions still hold deep cultural sway for millions of citizens.

    Maqbool notes that Pope Leo’s choice to prioritize open-air, public gatherings over closed-door, Vatican-only ceremonies was a deliberate strategic move, designed to connect with lapsed Catholics and engage with French society more broadly, rather than only speaking to the existing faithful. By turning the entire city into a space of worship, the pontiff has emphasized a message of accessibility and inclusion, that resonates with many younger French believers who have grown disconnected from formal institutional religion.

    Local authorities confirmed that security arrangements were robust but low-key, designed to avoid disrupting daily life in the capital while ensuring the safety of all attendees and the pontiff. Footage from the visit shows crowds gathering peacefully along the procession route, many holding small papal flags and rosaries, singing hymns that echoed through Paris’s historic architecture. Local residents expressed mixed reactions, with many saying the open-air gatherings added a unique, joyful energy to the city, while a small number of secular advocacy groups raised questions about the mixing of religious ritual and public urban space.

    Looking ahead, observers say the visit is expected to leave a lasting mark on the relationship between the Catholic Church and the French state, as well as prompt renewed conversation about the role of faith in contemporary French society.

  • Canadian lawmaker removed from position after backing bill targeting arms exports to Israel

    Canadian lawmaker removed from position after backing bill targeting arms exports to Israel

    A sitting Liberal Party legislator in Canada has been stripped of his parliamentary secretary role at the Department of Veterans Affairs, a disciplinary move that followed his decision to back a private member’s bill seeking tighter oversight of Canadian arms exports to Israel.

    Sean Casey, who represents the riding of Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island, confirmed in an interview with CBC News that Liberal Party whips explicitly warned him back in March that supporting the bill introduced by New Democratic Party MP Jenny Kwan would carry professional consequences. The legislation was crafted to close a longstanding regulatory gap that permits Canadian-manufactured military hardware to be shipped to third-party nations, then transferred onward to Israel for end use.

    Casey explained that he cast his vote in line with concerns raised directly by residents of his constituency, even though the bill ultimately failed to pass a vote in the House of Commons. He was the sole Liberal MP out of 15 total who backed the measure, and the only Liberal parliamentary secretary to support it. Casey received formal notification of his dismissal during a phone call with representatives from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office on Thursday, and Quebec Member of Parliament Sophie Chatel was appointed to fill his position the following day.

    Kwan, who sponsored the private member’s bill, has condemned the disciplinary action, calling the outcome deeply troubling and questioning whether Liberal lawmakers actually enjoy the freedom to vote in alignment with the interests and wishes of the constituents they represent. In an official statement posted to her public website, Kwan argued that parliamentary secretaries should never be forced to choose between retaining their appointed roles and acting on their moral judgment. While the governing Liberal caucus has every right to oppose legislative proposals, she added, no elected representative should face retaliation including the loss of official parliamentary duties simply for voting according to their conscience and the priorities of their community.

    This internal Canadian political controversy emerges alongside a stark warning from major Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership has dragged Israel’s global diplomatic standing to an unprecedented low. In a scathing editorial, the outlet argued that Netanyahu has dismissed repeated warnings over years about the lasting damage his policies inflict on Israel’s key strategic alliances.

    Haaretz specifically called out Netanyahu’s “blatant interference in American politics in favor of [former President Donald] Trump and the Republican Party,” noting that this move has caused Israel’s reputation among U.S. Democrats to collapse entirely. The editorial added that the erosion of Israeli standing is no longer confined to the Democratic Party; Netanyahu’s current governing coalition, which includes far-right figures National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has pushed Israel’s standing among Republican voters to a new low as well.

    The editorial cited multiple factors driving growing criticism of Israel even among Americans that have traditionally been strong supporters: threats of an expanded war with Iran, skyrocketing domestic fuel prices in Israel, ongoing violence by extremist Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, and documented harm to Christian communities across Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It also referenced recent U.S. public opinion polling that shows a sharp, unheard-of decline in favorable public attitudes toward Israel, particularly among younger generations of Americans.

    Haaretz concluded that no ambitious, rhetoric-heavy speech from Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly could hide or reverse this stark negative trend. The paper warned that the Israeli public must recognize the far-reaching long-term consequences of this image collapse for the future of Israel’s critical bilateral alliance with the United States.

  • Nor’easter storm brings coastal flooding, as New York and New Jersey declare emergency

    Nor’easter storm brings coastal flooding, as New York and New Jersey declare emergency

    A powerful nor’easter is bearing down on tens of millions of residents across the northeastern United States this weekend, leaving a trail of early disruption that includes coastal flooding, widespread power cuts, travel gridlock, and a wave of canceled major public events.

    The U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) has warned that the storm will reach its peak intensity on Saturday, bringing a hazardous combination of dangerous coastal flooding, unsafe beach conditions, high-speed winds, and heavy downpours to heavily populated areas stretching from New York City to Boston. Forecasts indicate precipitation and gusty winds will extend across a 900-mile stretch of the East Coast, from Virginia all the way north to Maine.

    In response to the rapidly unfolding severe weather, state officials have declared states of emergency in both New York and New Jersey. New Jersey, in particular, is already grappling with early coastal inundation in multiple low-lying shore communities, where Saturday morning already found residential streets and local homes submerged in floodwater in Surf City and Manasquan. Forecasters added that this weekend’s coinciding full moon will exacerbate high tide levels, worsening the coastal flooding threat for at-risk areas.

    The NWS issued an urgent alert for coastal communities, advising residents to “prepare immediately for significant inundation in low-lying areas near the shore, including roads underwater and impacts to homes and businesses.” In New York City, officials warned that wind gusts could reach up to 55 miles per hour (88 kilometers per hour) through the end of the weekend, raising risks of downed trees, snapped power lines, and extended power outages. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani urged caution in a public video address to residents, saying, “Don’t travel if you don’t have to. Do not drive or walk through floodwater.”

    The storm has already forced widespread cancellation of major scheduled events across the region. Ed Sheeran’s highly anticipated concert at Boston’s Gillette Stadium was scrapped for public safety, venue officials confirmed. Other called-off events include the Global Citizen Festival in New York City’s Central Park, which was set to feature headlining performances from Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, and John Legend. Major league sports schedules have also been upended: the Boston Red Sox moved their scheduled weekend series game against the Chicago Cubs from Sunday afternoon to next Friday, while a professional MLS match between Red Bull New York and St. Louis City SC was also canceled.

    As of Saturday morning, the storm had already knocked out power to nearly 150,000 households across the affected region, according to outage tracking site PowerOutage.us. Air travel has also been severely disrupted: the Federal Aviation Administration has urged all passengers to confirm their flight status with carriers before heading to airports, and flight tracking service FlightAware reported that more than 1,100 domestic flights have already been delayed, with another 400 flights completely grounded ahead of the storm’s peak.

  • German town bans ‘stumbling stone’ memorials to Nazi victims

    German town bans ‘stumbling stone’ memorials to Nazi victims

    A small town in eastern Germany has sparked nationwide outrage after local leaders approved a ban on the iconic ‘Stumbling Stone’ memorials that honor victims of Nazi terror, shining a new spotlight on the growing influence of extreme-right politics in the region.

    Heidenau, a town located near Dresden in the state of Saxony, passed the ban last week in a vote backed by councillors from the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) — a populist party whose Saxony branch is officially classified as a right-wing extremist movement by Germany’s domestic intelligence service — and the mainstream conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

    Conceived by artist Gunter Demnig in the 1990s, the Stolpersteine, or Stumbling Stones, project has grown into one of Europe’s most distinctive decentralized acts of Holocaust remembrance. Thousands of palm-sized brass plaques have been embedded into sidewalks across Germany and more than a dozen other European countries, each placed directly outside the former homes or workplaces of Jews, Roma, LGBTQ+ people, political dissidents and other groups targeted for extermination by the Nazi regime. Funded almost entirely by public donations, the memorials are designed to be encountered unexpectedly in daily life, forcing passersby to literally “stumble” over the plaque and pause to reflect on the atrocities that unfolded in their own community.

    Under the Heidenau council’s approved motion, all future memorials to Nazi victims will be moved exclusively to the town’s Nordfriedhof cemetery. The proposal claimed that many local residents viewed the sidewalk plaques as inappropriate, arguing that concentrating remembrance at the cemetery would prevent people from stepping directly on the memorial markers.

    The decision has drawn immediate fierce condemnation from across German politics and Jewish communities. Germany’s federal Education Minister Karin Prien, herself a member of the CDU, called the ban a outright “scandal” in comments to the newspaper Bild.

    “Anyone who banishes Stolpersteine and memorial sites commemorating Jewish life from public spaces to the cemetery is prioritising death over life and rendering Jewish people invisible once again,” Prien said, adding that the Saxony state branch of her own CDU shared direct responsibility for the outcome.

    Charlotte Knobloch, a respected Holocaust survivor and former president of the Munich Jewish Community, also spoke out against the move, calling it “completely the wrong approach.” She told Funke Media Group she was “appalled that a democratic party would stoop to supporting such a transparent manoeuvre by the extremists of the AfD.” While Knobloch noted she does not personally support the placement of Stolpersteine on sidewalks — a policy already in place in her home city of Munich, where public building plaques are used instead — she emphasized that decentralized, public remembrance is non-negotiable for a healthy culture of memory. “Decentralised remembrance – which is not banished from public space but, on the contrary, permeates and shapes it – was crucial to a genuine culture of remembrance,” she said.

    Demnig, the creator of the Stumbling Stone project, said the ban came as no surprise amid the AfD’s recent electoral gains in eastern Germany. The party has secured landmark victories in recent state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, building a strong base in the former East German region on an anti-immigration, “Germany First” and Russia-friendly platform.

    “It was certainly to be expected that something like this would happen,” Demnig said of the Heidenau ban. The AfD has repeatedly rejected German intelligence’s classification of several of its state branches as extreme-right, dismissing the designation as political overreach.

  • Watch: Bangkok declared flood disaster zone

    Watch: Bangkok declared flood disaster zone

    Bangkok, the bustling capital of Thailand, has been formally declared a flood disaster zone following 48 hours of unrelenting heavy rainfall that has pushed the city’s drainage and water management infrastructure to its breaking point. According to local weather forecasts, additional precipitation is expected to hit the metropolitan area on Sunday, raising urgent concerns about worsening flooding and potential risks to public safety. The relentless downpour has already overwhelmed the city’s existing water systems, which were designed to handle moderate rainfall but lack the capacity to absorb the volume of water that has accumulated in recent days. Local authorities are expected to imminently activate emergency response protocols, including evacuations for at-risk neighborhoods, deployment of flood mitigation resources, and assessments of damage to residential and commercial properties across the city. The impending new round of rain has prompted officials to urge residents in low-lying areas to prepare for potential displacement and heed official safety guidance to avoid flood-related hazards.

  • Security lapses at Utah campus where Charlie Kirk was killed, review says

    Security lapses at Utah campus where Charlie Kirk was killed, review says

    Almost a year after high-profile conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot during a public speaking event at Utah Valley University (UVU), an independent external review has confirmed a cascade of critical security gaps and missteps that left the event vulnerable to attack.

    The September 2025 killing, which unfolded as Kirk addressed roughly 3,000 attendees in a campus courtyard surrounded by multi-story buildings, sent shockwaves across U.S. political and higher education circles. The shooting, carried out by a gunman firing from a nearby rooftop, left Kirk dead at 31 after he was struck in the neck and rushed to a local hospital.

    The newly released report, commissioned by UVU and conducted by independent external security consultants, details a breakdown in pre-event planning that started months before the killing. Campus officials raised red flags as early as August 2025 about the planned outdoor courtyard venue, warning that its position ringed by tall structures created major security risks, and offered multiple alternative indoor locations for the event. Those concerns were overruled, however, when a representative from Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA insisted on retaining the courtyard, noting the activist had previously spoken at the site and the group was familiar with the space.

    Far from taking control of security planning to address the identified risks, the report finds UVU deferred nearly all key safety decision-making to Turning Point USA. The university never completed a formal written security assessment of the venue, nor did it draft a structured event action plan aligned with standard protocols for high-profile public gatherings. Most critically, no documented line-of-sight assessment of surrounding buildings was conducted during planning, a basic step to identify potential sniper threats like the one that killed Kirk.

    The review also uncovered major coordination failures between UVU’s campus police force and Kirk’s private security detail. A planned pre-event meeting between the university’s police chief and Turning Point’s security leadership never happened, and the two teams never held a joint security briefing or walked through the venue together. Reviewers noted this omission was a critical missed opportunity to flag unaddressed risks, clarify shared responsibilities, and implement additional protective measures before attendees arrived.

    Notably, the review concluded no UVU employee or institutional representative acted in bad faith, nor did any party demonstrate willful, reckless disregard for attendee or speaker safety.

    The findings have been embraced by Kirk’s family, who have long alleged the university’s negligence led to the activist’s death. The family has already filed a formal wrongful-death notice, a standard procedural step that opens the door to future civil litigation against the institution. Kirk’s family attorney Brett Parkinson said in a statement Friday that the independent review fully validates the concerns his clients have raised since the shooting.

    “The buck stopped with UVU leadership and law enforcement,” Parkinson told the Associated Press. “Justice for Charlie and his family requires true accountability for UVU’s fatal shortcomings that day.” When reached for comment on the review’s conclusions, Turning Point USA declined to issue an independent statement and instead referred reporters to Parkinson’s remarks.

    Beyond its findings of existing failures, the review puts forward a broad set of recommendations to overhaul UVU’s security protocols for major campus events. In response to the report, UVU President Jon Anderson committed the institution to implementing changes, saying the university has a responsibility to learn from the tragedy and follow through on all proposed safety updates.

    Previous public reporting has already revealed additional gaps: campus police did not complete now-standard security procedures common for high-profile events, including drone surveillance of surrounding rooftops to monitor for potential threats, or basic entry-point security screenings such as bag checks and metal detector scans.

    In the aftermath of the shooting, 30-year-old suspect Tyler Robinson was taken into custody and charged with aggravated murder. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge, and prosecutors have announced they will seek the death penalty in the case. The killing has reignited long-running national debates over gun violence, campus speech safety, and security protocols for high-profile public events at U.S. higher education institutions.

  • Huge crowds greet Pope in Paris ahead of open-air Mass

    Huge crowds greet Pope in Paris ahead of open-air Mass

    In a landmark display of public devotion that has captured the attention of France and the global Catholic community, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and onlookers packed central Paris on Saturday to welcome Pope Leo XIV ahead of his major open-air Mass, the centerpiece of his four-day official visit to the country.

    The pontiff traveled along Paris’ iconic Champs-Élysées, traveling from the Arc de Triomphe toward Place de la Concorde in his popemobile, as cheering crowds lined the avenue to catch a glimpse of the leader of the Catholic Church. Chants of “Leo, Leo” echoed through the tree-lined boulevard as the Pope stopped at multiple points along the route to bless infants and exchange brief greetings with attendees. Organizers project that over 500,000 people will ultimately take part in the day’s Mass, for which a custom ceremonial altar has been constructed on the historic Place de la Concorde.

    French political protocol has shaped the attendance of the country’s top leadership: President Emmanuel Macron, who held an hour-long private meeting with Pope Leo on Friday ahead of the visit’s public events, will not attend any of the papal Masses during the trip. The absence adheres to France’s long-standing strict legal separation of state and religious institutions. In his place, First Lady Brigitte Macron and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu will represent the French government at the Champs-Élysées Mass.

    Multiple candidates vying for next year’s French presidential election have also signaled their attendance at the high-profile event. Hard-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen and conservative figure Bruno Retailleau were already spotted at Place de la Concorde ahead of the ceremony, while prominent centrist politicians Edouard Philippe, the mayor of Le Havre and former prime minister, and Gabriel Attal, also former prime minister, are scheduled to join them. Former Prime Minister Francois Fillon was also among the early arrivals at the venue.

    Earlier on Saturday, Pope Leo carried out a quieter, reflective engagement at Paris’ Maison Bakhita centre, a community organization that provides support to migrants and refugees. During the visit, he commended the group for its work centering people often pushed to the margins of society, saying the organization “invites us to see those who are invisible”. He reaffirmed his commitment to inclusive coexistence, noting that “it is possible to encounter one another and to live together in dignity and peace”, and highlighted the outsized “fundamental role of women in building a civilisation of love”.

    The Pope’s visit opened on Friday with a wide-ranging address to French Church and state leaders at the Élysée Palace, where he offered a notable caution about the rising global influence of artificial intelligence. Leo warned that communities must avoid the risk of “losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines”.

    Church officials frame the massive public turnout for the papal visit as a signal of growing spiritual interest among populations across France and broader Europe. The trip includes additional major engagements in the coming days: on Sunday, 150,000 registered attendees are expected to gather for a Mass at the famous Catholic sanctuary of Lourdes in the Pyrenees. On Monday, the Pope will travel to Metz in northeastern France to honor Robert Schuman, one of the founding fathers of the European Union and a devout Catholic who is currently being considered for beatification.

    For Pope Leo, born Robert Prevost in Chicago in 1955, the visit carries personal as well as religious significance. His paternal grandmother was born in Le Havre, Normandy, in 1894; the Prevost family name, carried by the Pope today, originates from his great-grandmother’s French maiden name.

  • Time’s no longer on Israel’s side in America

    Time’s no longer on Israel’s side in America

    For 80 years, a core unspoken assumption has shaped every decision made by Israel’s political and national security leadership: unwavering American backing is not a contingent policy outcome, but an immutable fact of geopolitical life, as unchanging as the Mediterranean shoreline that borders Israel itself.

    Across changing U.S. presidential terms, even when sitting presidents pressured or persuaded Israeli leaders to make concessions, the foundational structure of the relationship held: solid pro-Israel majorities in Congress, broad public sympathy among American voters, and a multi-billion-dollar annual aid package that renewed with little to no political friction. This assumption was not without its exceptions even decades ago: during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Washington only rushed critical resupplies to a struggling Israel Defense Forces after securing future diplomatic concessions that Jerusalem opposed. But for generations, the assumption held strong enough that Israeli strategists could count on U.S. support as a permanent structural given, not a variable to be negotiated or defended.

    Today, that foundational assumption is at greater risk than any military defeat, Iranian nuclear advancement, or conflict with Hezbollah. The greatest long-term threat to Israel’s position in Washington is not on a battlefield—it is demographic, and the numbers already tell a clear story.

    Gallup has tracked American sympathies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict every year since 2001. For every year of that survey up to 2025, sympathies for Israel outpaced those for the Palestinians, often by margins of more than 40 percentage points. In the 2026 survey, that streak broke for the first time: 41% of U.S. respondents now say they sympathize more with Palestinians, compared to 36% who side with Israel, a gap that falls within the poll’s margin of error but marks a historic turning point.

    Data from Pew Research Center reinforces this trend from a different perspective: 60% of all U.S. adults now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up from just 42% in 2022—a near doubling of negative sentiment in four years. A further 59% of Americans lack confidence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of global affairs. Among Democratic voters, unfavorable views of Israel have now reached 80%.

    For Israel, the only partial reprieve is that a full bipartisan collapse of support has not yet occurred: Republicans still sympathize with Israelis over Palestinians by a 70% to 13% margin. But the most damaging erosion is concentrated in the youngest cohorts of voters, cutting across both major U.S. political parties.

    Gallup’s data shows a majority of 18-to-34-year-old Americans now sympathize with Palestinians, hitting a record 53%. Pew found that only 52% of Republicans under 30 express confidence in Donald Trump’s handling of U.S.-Israel relations, compared to 93% of Republicans over the age of 65. A 2025 youth survey conducted by Yale University measured this generational divide directly, finding it is larger than any other political split in American public life: Baby Boomers register a +34 score on a composite pro-Israel index, while Gen Z registers a -22—a 56-point generational swing that cannot be dismissed as random polling noise.

    This shift is not reversible by more aggressive public diplomacy, polished social media influencer campaigns, or additional congressional delegations to Israeli-occupied territories. It is the natural product of differing generational formative experiences: older Americans came of age with the 1967 Six-Day War as their defining frame of reference, while younger Americans’ core understanding of the conflict is shaped by the live-streamed 2023-2025 Gaza war.

    Israel’s political establishment has historically fallen back on a familiar argument: moments of crisis, like the October 7 attacks, trigger a rally-around-the-flag effect that will reverse drifting public opinion. The October 7 attacks tested this expectation, but the rally in U.S. public opinion faded after just a few months, failing to hold long-term.

    The roots of the shift are structural, not emotional. American sympathy for Israel was never an unprompted cultural given. It was built on specific post-WWII and Cold War context: the living, widespread memory of the Holocaust among American voters, a Soviet-aligned bloc of Arab states opposing Israel, and a framing of Israel in American eyes as a small, embattled democracy rather than the regional military power it is today, boasting the world’s fourth-strongest air force.

    Those contextual conditions will not return. Generational replacement is an cumulative, irreversible process: every election cycle, the electorate grows slightly more shaped by the experience of the Gaza war and slightly less shaped by the 1967 conflict.

    Projecting current trends forward makes the coming shift easy to predict. The current $3.8 billion annual U.S. military aid package for Israel runs through 2028; negotiations for the next agreement will take place before a Congress where more members launched their political careers after October 7 than before it. Longstanding U.S. policies of automatic diplomatic cover for Israel at the UN Security Council, unconditional arms sales, and the routine “ironclad alliance” rhetoric recited by every U.S. administration since Bill Clinton—none of these are permanent natural laws. They are political outcomes, sustained by an electoral coalition that is steadily aging out of the electorate, replaced by voters who demand justification for the “ironclad” label rather than accepting it as given.

    Within a decade, if current trends hold, the core debate in Washington will no longer be whether to support Israel, but on what terms. Israeli governments that have spent decades treating U.S. backing as an unconditional given will suddenly find themselves negotiating from a position they have never had to occupy before.

    None of this is an irreversible fate. Public opinion is not an unchanging glacier; it shifts in response to events. A genuine diplomatic peace settlement, a change in Israel’s ruling government, or a different character to future crises could all alter the current trajectory. But one assumption Israel can no longer rely on is the long-held belief that time is on its side among the American public, that the bilateral relationship is a fixed asset rather than a renewable political arrangement that requires ongoing defense and justification.