A Houthi-run court in Yemen has sentenced 13 people to public execution on homosexuality charges, a judicial source said Tuesday, as human rights groups decried a rise in abuses by the Iran-backed rebels.

The sentences were handed down in Ibb, a province controlled by the Houthis whose attacks on Red Sea shipping since November have prompted retaliatory strikes by the United States and Britain.

Three others were jailed on similar charges, according to the judicial source, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

Another 35 people have been detained by Houthis in Ibb province on homosexuality charges, the source said.

"Obviously, the position of Hamas, and the position of the vast majority of the Palestinian people, especially following October 7, I believe that the dream and the hope for Palestine from the River to the Sea, and from the north to the south, has been renewed. This has also become a slogan chanted in the U.S., and in western capital cities, by the American and Western public. 'Palestine from the River to the Sea' - that's the slogan of American students, and the [students] in European capital cities. Our Palestinian enterprise, on which there is almost a Palestinian national consensus…Even if some people must voice a different opinion, due to political constraints…The Palestinian consensus - or almost a consensus – is that we will not give up on our right to Palestine in its entirety, from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, and from Rosh HaNikra to Eilat or the Gulf of Aqaba.

"In order to establish a common ground, and a joint Palestinian plan with the other Palestinian with the other Palestinian forces, and in line with the other Arab position. Hamas agreed to a completely independent [Palestinian] state, with the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital, with the right of Return included – without recognizing the legitimacy of the Zionist entity. This position was meant to facilitate Palestinian and Arab agreement at this stage, but without relinquishing any of our rights or any part of our land, and without recognizing Israel. Our vision remains unchanged. I believe that October 7 has enhanced this conviction, has narrowed the disagreements, and has turned the idea of liberating Palestine from the River to the Sea into a realistic idea that has already begun. It is not something [merely] to be expected or hoped for. It is part of the plan, part of the agenda, and we are standing on its threshold, Allah willing."

And yet, the misleadingly truncated version of Gallant’s quote has not just been circulated on NPR and the BBC. The New York Times has made the same elision twice, and it appeared in The Guardian, in a piece by Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch. It was also quoted in The Washington Post, where a writer ironically claimed that Gallant had said “the quiet part out loud,” while quietly omitting whom Gallant was actually talking about. Most consequentially, this mistaken rendering of Gallant’s words was publicly invoked last week by South Africa’s legal team in the International Court of Justice as evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent; it served as one of their only citations sourced to someone in Israel’s war cabinet. The line was then reiterated on the floor of Congress by Representative Rashida Tlaib.

Politicians and lawyers are not always known for their probity, but journalists have fact-checkers. How did an error this substantial get missed so many times in so many places? One New York Times article that cited Gallant’s mangled misquote sourced the words to an op-ed in another outlet, which sourced them to an X post that featured an embedded TikTok video. But the cascade of media failures appears to have begun with a 42-second video excerpt of Gallant’s talk that was uploaded by Bloomberg with incomplete English subtitles. The clip, since viewed more than half a million times, simply skips over “There will be no Hamas” in its translation. (Bloomberg did not return a request for comment at press time.)

Unfortunately, this concatenation of errors is part of a pattern. As someone who has covered Israeli extremism for years and written about the hard right’s push to ethnically cleanse Gaza and resettle it, I have been carefully tracking the rise of such dangerous ideas for more than a decade. In this perilous wartime environment, it is essential to know who is saying what, and whether they have the authority to act on it. But while far too many right-wing members of Israel’s Parliament have expressed borderline or straightforwardly genocidal sentiments during the Gaza conflict, such statements attributed to the three people making Israel’s actual military decisions, the voting members of its war cabinet—Gallant, Netanyahu, and the former opposition lawmaker Benny Gantz—repeatedly turn out to be mistaken or misrepresented.

Take the claim, also cited by NPR’s Fadel among others, that Gallant referred to Gazans as “human animals.” The defense minister has used this harsh language several times, and it’s reasonable to wonder whom he’s referring to. But as can be seen from the same Bloomberg video, Gallant uses this phrase to talk about Hamas, telling soldiers who fought off Hamas on the devastated Gaza border: “You have seen what we are fighting against. We are fighting against human animals. This is the ISIS of Gaza.” (Hamas’s atrocities on October 7 have been likened to acts of the Islamic State by both Israeli and American officials, including President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.) One can certainly take issue with Gallant’s language—for one thing, a nonhuman animal never executed a grandmother in her home and then uploaded the snuff film to her Facebook page—but not with the fact that the defense minister’s words referred specifically to Hamas.

The war between Israel and Hamas has sparked tensions in the Oakland Unified School District, enough that at least 30 Jewish families have transferred their kids out of the district as first reported by J Weekly and confirmed by CBS News Bay Area.

...

CBS News Bay Area has confirmed the exodus of Jewish families comes following a string of actions by the Oakland teachers' union and the district itself that many say resulted in antisemitism and created a hostile environment for their students.

In the weeks following the October 7th attacks by Hamas on Israel, and Israel's subsequent ground invasion of Gaza, a group of unidentified OUSD teachers held a "teach-in" highlighting pro-Palestinian lessons.

. . .

"I just felt that there wasn't a path forward for Jewish families because I had reached out to OUSD and asked them to have a conversation about how they were going to keep Jewish families feeling safe and included," Rebecca explained. "When there were lesson plans that were being taught that said, 'Draw the Zionist bully,' or 'I for Intifada, J is for Jesus.' And to me, it felt like -- honestly -- we were being targeted and singled out and alienated."