SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
occupation
'Day of Ordinary Terror': Israeli Attack on West Bank School Kills Man, Child
"It does feel like if a group of Palestinians with machine guns broke into an Israeli school and shot a bunch of children, it would be breaking news in every outlet on Earth," said one reporter.
Apr 21, 2026
Israeli soldiers and settlers opened fire on a school in a West Bank village Tuesday, killing a Palestinian man and child and wounding at least four other people amid their escalating ethnic cleansing efforts in the illegally occupied territory.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health and Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said settlers attacked a school in the village of al-Mughayyir, east of Ramallah, on Tuesday morning.
Amin Abu Ulaya, head of the local council, told Reuters that settlers and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers entered the village and then shot at students at the school and other Palestinians who rushed to the scene.
PRCS said that 14-year-old Aws Hamdi Al-Naasan and 32-year-old Marzouq Abu Naim were shot and killed by the attackers.
An IDF spokesperson claimed that troops were deployed to the area following reports of stones being thrown at a military vehicle, and that a reservist then opened fire at "suspects."
The IDF also said the reservist, who has not been identified, has been suspended pending an investigation. Most Israelis who harm Palestinians are never punished. Meanwhile, Israel last month passed legislation legalizing the hanging of terrorists convicted killing of Israelis—a law critics contend will not apply to Israelis who commit similar crimes against Palestinians.
Kathem Al-Haj-Ahmed, a 57-year-old al-Mughayyir resident, told Reuters on Tuesday that settlers arrived first and began attacking the school. Parents and others who came to pick up their children came under fire. Al-Haj-Ahmed said that's when the man and child were killed.
Drop Site News reported:
A paramedic at the scene said at least three settlers deliberately fired at children attempting to escape from classrooms from a position approximately 50 meters away, with a level of accuracy he described as close to sniping. An eyewitness said shooting was directed at classroom windows and balconies still full of children as residents attempted to evacuate the school by crawling.
Israeli forces arrived during the attack and, according to witnesses, provided protection to the settlers rather than stopping them. A 63-year-old man, Attallah Abu Aliya, said he was shot in the leg by an Israeli soldier without warning as he walked toward the school after hearing it was under attack.
IDF troops often protect, and sometimes join, settlers attacking Palestinians.
Another 14-year-old, Mohammed Naasan, was killed by IDF troops in al-Mughayyir in January. The slain boy's father was also killed by settlers in 2019.
Tuesday's shooting occurred about 15 miles from where a Palestinian family—a mother, father, and two young children—were massacred by Israeli troops while traveling in their car in Tammum in March. The two children, ages 7 and 5, were shot in the head; two of their siblings were wounded but survived.
Two other West Bank Palestinians died Tuesday as a result of encounters with Israelis. Sixteen-year-old Mohammad Majdi al-Jaabir of Hebron was struck and killed by a vehicle in a convoy sent to secure Israeli Settlement Minister Orit Strock, while a woman, 49-year-old Raja' Fadl Bitawi, succumbed to injuries sustained from Israeli army gunfire in Jenin nearly two years ago, according to local media reports.
"This is our reality in al-Mughayyir village; they aim to displace us, and both the army and the settlers are exchanging roles among them," Al-Haj-Ahmed said.
Both Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the colonization of Palestinian lands by Jewish settlers are illegal under international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an “occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice—where Israel is currently facing a genocide case related to the Gaza war, which has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead or wounded—found the occupation of Palestine to be an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended as soon as possible. The ICJ also ruled that Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to annexation, also a crime under international law.
As the world’s attention focused on Gaza after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack and, later, the US-Israeli war on Iran and Israel's assault on Lebanon, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 1,079 Palestinians—at least 235 of them children—in the West Bank, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Numerous US citizens—most but not all of them Palestinians—have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in recent years.
Settler pogroms have been compared to the Nakba, during which more than 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed to make way for the modern state of Israel.
On Monday, the West Bank Protection Consortium—which is led by the Norwegian Refugee Council and funded by donors including 13 European nations—published a report detailing sexual violence committed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank. Crimes including sexual assaults have facilitated Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Keep ReadingShow Less
House Dems Unveil Bill to Prohibit Taxpayer Funding for Trump Occupation, Plunder of Venezuela
"The American people want affordable healthcare, not to spend billions or more on ‘running’ Venezuela," said US Rep. Joaquin Castro.
Jan 08, 2026
A pair of House Democrats on Thursday introduced legislation that would prohibit the Trump administration from using any taxpayer funding to control Venezuela or exploit its vast oil reserves, an effort launched after the US president said he expects his illegal plunder operation in the South American country to last years.
The new bill, titled the No Occupation of Venezuela (NOVA) Act of 2026, would bar "any federal funds from being used to support US possession, supervision, jurisdiction, or control over Venezuelan territory or resources, whether through military or civilian means," according to a summary released by Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) and Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), the measure's lead sponsors.
The legislation would also prevent "taxpayer dollars from being used to subsidize, reimburse, or otherwise support oil company expansion, reconstruction, or resource control in Venezuela" and halt any effort by the White House to shift "from military action to civilian governance or economic administration without explicit congressional authorization."
“The American people want affordable healthcare, not to spend billions or more on ‘running’ Venezuela,” Castro said in a statement. “The NOVA Act would block the president from occupying Venezuela and prevent him from enriching himself, his cronies, and oil companies in the process.”
The Democratic lawmakers unveiled their legislation a day after the US Department of Energy released a document outlining, with few specific details, how the Trump administration intends to exploit Venezuela's oil with the help of American fossil fuel corporations.
The document states that the US government "has begun marketing Venezuelan crude oil in the global marketplace for the benefit of the United States, Venezuela, and our allies."
"All proceeds from the sale of Venezuelan crude oil and oil products will first settle in US-controlled accounts at globally recognized banks to guarantee the legitimacy and integrity of the ultimate distribution of proceeds," the fact sheet continues.
"At a time when families are stretching every dollar for groceries, housing, and healthcare, American taxpayers should not be forced to bankroll an overseas occupation or subsidize Big Oil’s return to Venezuela at Donald Trump’s direction."
Trump has repeatedly suggested that US taxpayers could "reimburse" oil companies that agree to invest in Venezuela in the wake of the administration's illegal assault on the country and abduction of its president, Nicolás Maduro. The president is set to meet with the top executives of major US oil companies at the White House on Friday.
"We will rebuild it in a very profitable way,” Trump said of Venezuela's oil infrastructure in an interview with the New York Times on Wednesday. “We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil."
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that the Trump administration is "about to execute on a deal to take all the oil." Venezuela's state oil company, PDVSA, said Wednesday that it was in active negotiations with the Trump administration, but did not say a deal was in place.
The Trump administration's military campaign against Venezuela directly and its massive buildup of forces in the Caribbean have already cost US taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Fortune reported Thursday that the administration's ongoing naval blockade against Venezuelan oil tankers has cost "an estimated $700 million and counting," while the Center for American Progress noted earlier this week that US military deployments to the Caribbean have cost upwards of $600 million.
“At a time when families are stretching every dollar for groceries, housing, and healthcare, American taxpayers should not be forced to bankroll an overseas occupation or subsidize Big Oil’s return to Venezuela at Donald Trump’s direction,” Krishnamoorthi said in a statement Thursday. “The NOVA Act draws a clear line: No president gets to spend Americans’ money on foreign occupations or oil deals without Congress—and without the consent of the American people.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Israeli Cabinet Approves 19 New Apartheid Colonies in Occupied West Bank
"The ONLY reason Israel gets away with this naked thievery is US military and political support," said one observer.
Dec 21, 2025
Israel's Cabinet on Sunday finalized approval of 19 new Jewish-only settler colonies in the illegally occupied West Bank, a move the apartheid state's far-right finance minister said was aimed at thwarting Palestinian statehood.
Cabinet ministers approved the legalization of the previously unauthorized settler outposts throughout the occupied Palestinian territory, bringing the total number of new settlements in recent years to 69.
The move will bring the overall total number of exclusively or overwhelmingly Jewish settlements—which are illegal under international law—to more than 200, up from around 140 just three years ago.
Included in the new approval are two former settlements—Kadim and Ganim—that were evacuated in compliance with the now effectively repealed 2005 Disengagement Law, under which Israel dismantled all of its colonies in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank.
"This is righting a historic injustice of expulsion from 20 years ago," Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—who is a settler—said on Sunday. "We are putting the brakes on the rise of a Palestinian terror state."
"We will continue to develop, build, and settle the inherited land of our ancestors, with faith in the righteousness of our path," Smotrich added.
Following an earlier round of approval for the new settlements last week, Palestinian presidential spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said, “All Israeli settlement activity is illegal and constitutes a violation of international law and international legitimacy resolutions."
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres earlier this month denounced Israel's "relentless" settlement expansion.
Such colonization, said Guterres, "continues to fuel tensions, impede access by Palestinians to their land, and threaten the viability of a fully independent, democratic, contiguous, and sovereign Palestinian state."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials—some of whom, including Smotrich, deny the very existence of the Palestinian people—have vowed that such a state will not be established.
While Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—is under pressure from right-wing and far-right government officials, settlers, and others to annex all of the West Bank, US President Donald Trump recently said that "Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened."
Some doubted Trump's threat, with Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) executive director Sarah Leah Whitson reacting to the new settlements' approval by posting on X that "the ONLY reason Israel gets away with this naked thievery is US military and political support."
Israel seized and occupied the West Bank including East Jerusalem along with Gaza in 1967, ethnically cleansing around 300,000 Palestinians. Many of these forcibly displaced people were survivors of the Nakba, the Jewish terror and ethnic cleansing campaign that saw more than 750,000 Palestinians flee or be forced from Palestine during the foundation of the modern state of Israel.
Since 1967, Israel has steadily seized more and more Palestinian land in the West Bank while building and expanding colonies there. Settlement population has increased exponentially from around 1,500 colonists in 1970 to roughly 140,000 at the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993—under which Israel agreed to halt new settlement activity—to around 770,000 today.
Settlers often attack Palestinians and their property, including in deadly pogroms, in order to terrorize them into leaving so their land can be stolen. Israeli colonists have also attacked Israel Defense Forces soldiers they view as standing in the way of their expansion.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice—where Israel is currently facing a genocide case related to the Gaza war—found the occupation of Palestine to be an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended as soon as possible. The ICJ also ruled that Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to annexation, also a crime under international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an “occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
As the world's attention focused on Gaza during the past two years, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 1,039 Palestinians—at least 225 of them children—in the West Bank. This year, at least 233 Palestinians, including at least 52 children, have been killed so far, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East.
On Saturday, Israeli occupation forces shot and killed two Palestinians in the northern West Bank, including a 16-year-old boy, Rayan Abu Muallah, who the Israel Defense Forces said was shot after he threw an object at its troops.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular