Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, launched a sharp attack Monday on the European Union following its announcement of plans to approve new sanctions against residents in Judea and Samaria. Dagan forcefully rejected what he called Europe’s distorted comparisons and accused EU leaders of structural antisemitism and hypocrisy.
“The European Union is once again ignoring the facts,” Dagan said in response to the expected decision. “There aren’t two violent sides—there’s one side that murders babies in their beds and rapes women, and one side that chooses life. ‘Palestinian Authority’ terror against Jews is hundreds of percent higher than the isolated incidents, which we of course oppose, of criminal acts against innocents.”
Dagan criticized the use of the term “settler violence” and added: “As always, antisemitism speaks from the throats of European Union leaders, and there’s a double standard here. This is an expression of dehumanization, an attempt to erase the faces of half a million people living in Judea and Samaria, the vast majority of them law-abiding.”
Finally, the Samaria Council head pointed to the absurdity of European disregard for institutionalized incitement on the ‘Palestinian’ side: “We haven’t heard of sanctions against organizations that encourage terror in the ‘Palestinian Authority’, including Fatah itself, which by the way published an ad calling to harm me. I don’t want to imagine what would happen if the Samaria Council published an ad saying to harm Abu Mazen.”
The Knesset passed a bill Monday creating a Heritage Authority for Judea and Samaria, giving the state direct responsibility for managing antiquities and archaeological sites in the Judea and Samaria.
The legislation, sponsored by Knesset members Amit Halevi and Avichai Boaron, passed its first reading 23-14. The bill now returns to the Education, Culture and Sports Committee for further debate before second and third readings.
Under the proposal, the new authority will operate as a statutory corporation under Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu. It will receive dedicated funding within the Heritage Ministry’s budget to ensure ongoing operations.
The authority will have powers similar to the Israel Antiquities Authority, including initiating archaeological excavations, developing and managing heritage sites, expropriating and acquiring land for its work, and enforcing violations in archaeological reserves.
The bill’s explanatory notes say its purpose is “to establish in primary legislation direct state responsibility for handling antiquities and heritage and archaeological sites in Judea and Samaria, in order to improve and streamline their management and reduce damage to them.” The notes add that creating a professional, independent authority will ensure efficient, budgeted handling of this important issue.
Foreign ministers from the European Union’s 27 member states approved a sanctions package Monday against residents in Judea and Samaria. The move targets seven individuals and organizations over allegations of violence against ‘Palestinians’. The sanctions include asset freezes in European banks and a blanket ban on entry to EU countries. Israel firmly rejected the decision, calling it an arbitrary political move designed to undermine the Jewish people’s historical rights in the heart of their homeland.
The agreement marks a dark day for Israel-EU relations. The move, blocked for months, went through immediately after Hungary’s change of government and the removal of Viktor Orbán’s veto. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar responded angrily to the decision, making clear that Israel firmly rejects the European attempt to dictate political positions through personal sanctions against Israeli citizens and organizations.
Sa’ar launched a sharp attack on the moral basis of the EU decision, emphasizing that it was an arbitrary political choice made without any factual foundation.
“Israel firmly rejects the decision to impose sanctions against Israeli citizens and organizations,” Sa’ar said. “The European Union has chosen, in an arbitrary and political manner, to impose sanctions against Israeli citizens and bodies based on their political positions and without any basis. No less outrageous is the intolerable comparison the European Union has chosen to make between Israeli citizens and Hamas terrorists. This is a comparison that is completely morally distorted.”
The minister made clear that Israel will not be deterred by such decisions and will continue to stand on its rights in Judea and Samaria: “Israel has stood, stands, and will stand on the right of Jews to live in the heart of our homeland. There is no other people in the world that has such a documented and longstanding right to its land as the Jewish people has to the Land of Israel. This is a moral and historical right that has also been recognized in international law, and no entity can take it away from the Jewish people. The attempt to dictate political views through sanctions—is unacceptable and will not succeed.”
For months, Hungary under Viktor Orbán’s leadership managed to stop the wave of European sanctions against Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. Orbán consistently vetoed the move, preventing the other 26 countries from reaching the unanimous agreement required in the EU.
In recent months, Hungary was the only country blocking the sanctions in EU forums. Since the change of government in Budapest and Orbán’s departure, the new government removed the veto. In recent weeks, European foreign ministers took advantage of the shift in Hungarian policy and approved the sanctions package against seven Israeli targets.
The EU decision represents a new low in international diplomacy. The use of personal sanctions—originally designed for dictators and war criminals—against Israeli citizens operating in Judea and Samaria is a tool of crude political coercion.
The practical meaning is an attempt to stigmatize an entire public and make an inconceivable moral equivalence between settlement activists and Hamas terrorists. The removal of the Hungarian veto exposes Israel to a reality where Europe is trying to manage Israel’s internal policy through economic harm and restrictions on its citizens’ freedom of movement.
Israeli forces killed several terrorists, including Nukhba fighters from Hamas, who posed an immediate threat to troops operating in the Gaza Strip. The Nukhba operatives were identified advancing terror operations in the immediate timeframe against forces in southern Gaza.
In a separate incident Saturday night, troops from the 14th ‘Crushing’ Brigade combat team identified two terrorists in northern Gaza. The two carried out suspicious activity on the ground and approached Israeli forces in a manner that posed an immediate threat. In both cases, the Air Force was scrambled and killed the terrorists with ground forces directing the strikes.
The IDF emphasized that before carrying out the strikes, steps were taken to prevent harm to civilians, including the use of precision munitions and aerial surveillance. The military added that IDF forces in Southern Command are deployed throughout the area and will continue to act decisively to remove any immediate threat to troops and Israeli civilians.
Eilat District Police arrested two suspects—Sami Barsoum and Najib Saada, East Jerusalem residents in their thirties—on suspicion of burning to death a 14-year-old Shih Tzu named Nuki during Lag BaOmer celebrations in the Arava.
Police opened an investigation over the weekend after receiving a report that the dog was burned during a Lag BaOmer event in Neve Harif, a community in the Arava. Detectives arrested the two suspects, both employees at a luxury hotel in the area, on suspicion of involvement in the act.
Today (Sunday), the two were brought to Eilat Magistrate’s Court, which granted the police’s request and extended their detention until Tuesday, May 12, 2026, to continue the investigation.
Israel Police emphasized the severity of the incident, stating they “view animal abuse with utmost seriousness and will prosecute those involved in such acts to the fullest extent of the law.” Police added that the investigation is ongoing and further procedures are expected to build the evidentiary foundation against the suspects.
The Knesset Economics Committee, chaired by MK David Bitan, began advancing a dramatic reform today (Sunday) to establish metropolitan transit authorities. The bill would transfer public transit management from the national government to regional bodies that know local residents’ needs on the ground—and fight traffic congestion that costs the economy around 40 billion shekels a year.
Bitan sharply criticized delays in advancing the bill and demanded binding timetables for implementation. “If the problem is public transit and the damage to the economy is 40 billion shekels a year, why does every project take 10 years?” Bitan asked, declaring: “If China finishes projects in two months, here you’ll do it in two years.”
The issue of operating public transit on Shabbat came up during the hearing, but Bitan made clear he won’t let the topic delay the bill. “I have no intention of getting into the political argument about Shabbat. We won’t hold up this bill for more years because of this issue,” he said. Transportation Ministry Director General Moshe Ben Zaken also welcomed the move, saying: “We’ve reached the conclusion that the citizen is at the center.”
Local government representatives and civic organizations voiced support for the reform but raised concerns about potential harm to small cities. At the hearing’s end, Bitan demanded government officials examine including the city of Rishon LeZion in the reform, and announced that hearings will continue as soon as next Sunday with the goal of passing the bill quickly.
The Wall Street Journal reported this evening (Saturday) that Israel established a secret military outpost in the Iraqi desert to support its air campaign against Iran, and has launched airstrikes against Iraqi forces that nearly exposed it early in the war, sources familiar with the matter, including American officials, told the newspaper.
According to the report, Israel built the facility, which housed special forces and served as a logistics center for the Israeli Air Force, just before the start of the war, and with the knowledge of the United States, according to the same sources.
Search and rescue teams have been stationed there in case Israeli pilots are shot down. So far, not one has been shot down. When a US F-15 was shot down near Isfahan, Israel offered assistance, but US forces managed to rescue the two crew members themselves, one of the sources said. Israel carried out airstrikes to help secure the operation.
The US newspaper added that the Israeli base was almost exposed in early March. Official Iraqi media reported that a local shepherd reported unusual military activity in the area, including helicopter flights, and the Iraqi army sent forces to investigate. Israel repelled them with airstrikes, according to one of the sources involved.
The report said the IDF declined to comment on the publication, while the Iraqi government condemned the attack at the time, which killed an Iraqi soldier. An Iraqi government spokesman declined to comment further on the incident or on whether the government knew about the Israeli base.
Under mounting international pressure, Gaza flotilla activists Tiago Avila and Saif Abu-Qashaq were released from custody today (Saturday), transferred to immigration authorities, and will be deported from Israel, our correspondent Milen Amar reported.
Avila is a Spanish citizen, and Abu-Qashaq is a resident of Spain. The two were detained aboard a vessel near Crete and launched a hunger strike following their arrest. At a hearing this week on extending their detention, a police representative said they are suspected of membership in a terrorist organization, aiding the enemy in wartime, and contact with terrorist elements and a foreign agent.
The police representative also said the two had ties to the Popular Conference for ‘Palestinians’ Abroad (PCPA), which is designated as a terrorist organization. Because they were among the dominant figures in the flotilla and there is material establishing a level of suspicion in the offenses attributed to them, they were arrested, he said.
Open any American paper this spring, and you will find the same headline rephrased a dozen different ways: support for Israel is plummeting. The pollsters everyone quotes are Pew, and while Pew is not the Torah, nor the Gospel, the question raised by the headlines are worth taking seriously. How close are the Israeli and American conservative movements today?
Conservatives fight to conserve Western civilization. What conservatives in any given country actually conserve, though, depends entirely on which enemy is at their gate. Which means every conservative movement is shaped first by what is trying to destroy it, and next, by what it believes.
Both Israel and the United States share similar values despite their distinct beginnings. The U.S. is a constitutional republic founded by deeply religious Protestant Christians based on biblical values and Aristotelian ethics. Israel is an ethnonational state founded by secular Jews, coupled with a desperate need for a state in which they could live safely following the Holocaust.
But different origins mean we do not fight the same battles. Unlike American conservatives, who cling to the ideals of their nation’s founders and the Constitution, the Israeli right rejects many of the ideas of Israel’s founders, like David Ben-Gurion and his Mapai party (The Workers’ Party of the Land of Israel), which included socialism and support for a two-state solution. Decades of fighting radical Islam have forced the Israeli right to realize something that an atheist-based left could never possibly understand: this is a religious war.
A bust of David Ben-Gurion | Photo: Shutterstock
However, Israel’s right sometimes fails to see that in the war against the West, the battlefront where Jews and Christians face Islam is not the only one. Mark Levin wrote in Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, “The Conservative does not despise government. He despises tyranny.” There’s no doubt that what Israel faces in the form of ‘Palestinian’ liberation is tyranny – all it must do is look to any other Muslim country, and it will find the oppression of Christianity and Judaism, among other examples that oppose Western values.
Israelis must understand that tyranny can also come in the form of licentiousness and socialism. American conservatives are fighting on a different battlefield, against that very type of tyranny. The progressive left, in the name of what Concordia University professor Gad Saad calls suicidal empathy, butchers close to a million babies a year in abortions, mutilates people in ‘sex assignment surgeries,’ opened America’s borders to hordes of third-world migrants with incompatible cultures, and on a wider scale, takes a wrecking ball to all of the institutions on which the West is built.
Pro-life activists at the March for Life | Photo: Shutterstock
Israel has been spared the worst of the leftist mind virus, although we still have symptoms like a soft-on-crime judicial system, the enlistment of women into the armored corps, or holding a Pride festival at the historical location of Sodom and Gomorrah. Israel’s constant struggle to exist prevents our society from looking inward and engaging in cultural self-criticism. In other words, we’re focused on Hamas, not transing our kids.
None of this is just an accident of culture. It is also an accident of geography. The United States is an extremely privileged country, rich in resources and weaponry, with an advanced culture, governmental structure, and size. No less important is its location. Two countries and two oceans neighbor America, and though Canada and Mexico are flawed in their own right, they are immensely preferable to any country surrounding Israel, and unlike Israel’s neighbors, they do not openly wish to destroy America and everyone in it. This grants the U.S. many more opportunities to engage in social experiments with terrible ideas. The threat on the border is just different.
Maps of North America and the Middle East | Photo: Shutterstock
Lastly, there is the obvious point of distinction, and the very reason political disagreement exists in the first place, which is religion. U.S. conservatives are largely Christian, and Israel’s right is almost entirely Jewish and tends to be religious. But funny enough, Judaism and Christianity differ very little as a basis for society.
American conservatives and the Israeli right may have distinct characteristics, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they disagree politically. Each focuses on different enemies of Western civilization: Israel on Islamism, and the U.S. on progressivism. Those enemies, the red-green alliance, grow ever-closer. American and Israeli conservatives can win by sticking together and focusing on what we do have in common – our civilization.
— Golan Israel is an international correspondent for C14 Israel. Views expressed are his own.
An alert for suspected terrorist infiltration was activated Friday in the community of Ofra, in western Binyamin, in the heart of Judea and Samaria. Following the alert, residents received clear instructions to immediately shelter in their homes, lock doors and windows, and close shutters until further notice from security officials.
Large security forces were dispatched to the community and are on their way to sweep the area.
