Minneapolis Happenings on Superbowl Sunday

Sean Snow 2-9-26

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The conflict in Minnesota has moved from the streets to the suburbs and school zones, as federal agents are continuing to target "sensitive locations" previously considered off-limits. In response, the community is building a parallel infrastructure of care, ensuring that when the government steps away from its duty to protect, neighbors step in.

Today is Monday, February 9, 2026, here's what happened yesterday in Minneapolis:

1. Parents Detained at School Bus Stops: In a shocking escalation of "sensitive location" enforcement, reports confirmed Sunday that federal agents detained multiple parents at school bus stops in Fridley and Brooklyn Center on Friday. Witnesses described unmarked SUVs pulling up as children were being dropped off, with agents questioning and detaining adults in front of elementary students. This tactic breaches long-standing norms against enforcement at schools and has sent a wave of panic through suburban school districts.

 

2. DOJ Threatens "Felony" Charges for Observers: The Department of Justice issued a stern warning on Sunday, stating that protesters who "track, surveil, or share" the location of federal officers could face felony charges for obstruction. This announcement appears to be a direct response to the success of the 30,000-strong civilian observer network in Minnesota. Civil liberties groups immediately condemned the threat, calling it an attempt to criminalize the First Amendment right to document public law enforcement activity.

 

3. Congressional Oversight Blocked Again: For the second time in three days, Representatives Angie Craig and Betty McCollum were physically barred from entering the Whipple Federal Building on Sunday. Federal officials cited an unspecified "lawsuit" to limit occupancy to only 13 people, effectively shutting out congressional members. McCollum slammed the move as unconstitutional, stating she has never seen an administration so brazenly obstruct health and safety inspections.

 

4. Retaliatory Surveillance of Observers: A new report from The Marshall Project released Sunday documents an escalation in federal harassment against community watchers. Legal observers in Minneapolis reported that masked agents have begun calling them by name and following them back to their private homes. Civil rights groups are calling these "terror tactics" designed to dismantle the community's capacity to witness state violence.

Enough darkness… here's some reasons to hope:

 

5. The "Grocery Brigade" Mobilizes: With thousands of families too terrified to leave their homes due to the bus stop raids, a massive mutual aid effort dubbed the "Grocery Brigade" launched on Sunday. School social workers and neighbors are using a fleet of personal vehicles to deliver weeks' worth of food and medicine to immigrant families in the northwest suburbs. Organizers say they are building a "mobile pantry" to ensure that no neighbor goes hungry because of federal intimidation.

 

6. Former State Rep. Hosts "Resistance Training": In a bold display of political defiance, former Minnesota State Representative Ryan Winkler announced Sunday that he is hosting "resistance training" sessions at his private home. Winkler posted a video alleging that federal agents parked outside his residence in an attempt to intimidate attendees, but stated firmly, "I will not be intimidated. None of us in Minnesota should be intimidated." The move signals that political leaders are now using their own homes as organizing hubs.

 

7. The "Whistle" Defense Spreads: While anyone who has watched videos of ICE enforcement hears the unmistakable sound of whistles, neighborhoods across the Twin Cities are pushing for greater adoption of the tactic. Reports from Sunday indicate that residents and clergy are distributing thousands of whistles to be used as an immediate alert system during raids. The piercing sound is designed to draw witnesses out of their homes instantly, ensuring that agents can no longer operate in silence or isolation.

 

8. Evangelical Leaders Break Rank: In a significant cultural shift, prominent evangelical leaders in Minnesota began speaking out on Sunday against the crackdown. The Star Tribune reported that leaders from institutions like Bethel University are publicly questioning the morality of the raids, calling them "unjust" and contrary to the teachings of Jesus. This fracture in a key voting block suggests that the "moral cost" of the operation is becoming too high for even the administration's traditional allies to ignore.

 

Here are some national news stories you should know about:

1. Clergy Arrested on Capitol Hill: In a massive show of solidarity with Minnesota, over 500 faith leaders from across the nation descended on the Senate office buildings in D.C. to demand an end to ICE funding. The "Pray with Your Feet" day of action resulted in 54 arrests as clergy refused to leave the rotunda, singing hymns and reading testimonies from families separated by the surge. The protest successfully forced a national conversation on the morality of the budget.

2. GOP Revives "SAVE Act" to Purge Voter Rolls: Congressional Republicans have fast-tracked a new version of the "Safeguard American Voter Eligibility" (SAVE) Act, a bill that would require every American to provide physical documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport or original birth certificate, in order to register to vote. Voting rights advocates warn that this is a "solution in search of a problem" designed to disenfranchise over 21 million eligible citizens who lack ready access to these specific documents. The bill is expected to disproportionately purge young voters, communities of color, and millions of married women whose current legal names do not match their birth certificates, creating administrative chaos just ahead of the 2026 midterms.

 

Mend what is within reach

A great Mexican-American writer, Clarissa Pinkola Estés , said, "Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach." The resistance in Minnesota isn't about grand gestures…it's about the small, daily refusals to accept the unacceptable. Whether it is a whistle blown on a quiet street, a grocery delivery to a frightened neighbor, or taking action on educating others on important new legislation, these actions help mend the fabric of our community. We do not have to solve the whole problem to make a difference…we just have to protect what is in front of us. 

Sources

* Bus Stop Detentions & Grocery Brigade: https://www.k12dive.com/.../an-atmosphere-of-fear.../811427/

* DOJ Felony Threats: https://www.foxnews.com/.../from-protest-felony-lines...

* Congressional Access Denied: https://www.startribune.com/congress-members.../601578300

* Retaliation Against Observers: https://www.themarshallproject.org/.../ice-immigration...

* Ryan Winkler Resistance Training: https://evrimagaci.org/.../minneapolis-grieves-renee-good...

* Whistle Defense: https://www.nea.org/.../mutual-aid-act-resistance-and...

* Evangelical Leaders Speak Out: https://www.startribune.com/evangelicals.../601568168

* Capitol Hill Clergy Arrests: https://www.ucc.org/ucc-clergy-members-among-those.../

* Save act analysis: https://www.brennancenter.org/.../new-save-act-bills...

Minneapolis Makes us Proud to Be American.

The Empire Crumbles During Commercial Breaks

Super Bowl culture wars, ICE abroad, Trump’s Board of Peace grift, and Tulsi Gabbard’s classified lockdown

Republished from Mary Geddry on Substack

MARY GEDDRY FEB 8

Good morning! Because America is now incapable of holding even a sporting event without turning it into a referendum on authoritarianism, the Super Bowl is arriving this weekend as a national culture-war potluck where everyone brought something unhinged. The official halftime show belongs to Bad Bunny, a global superstar, Puerto Rican icon, and yes, an American, the first solo Spanish-language headliner to take that stage, which should be a celebratory moment in a normal country. Instead, conservatives responded exactly as you’d expect, by treating a pop performance like a foreign incursion. Turning Point USA has organized an “All-American” alternate halftime show, because nothing screams patriotic confidence like counterprogramming an American artist in Spanish with Kid Rock and a prayer circle.

And the funniest part is that even the musicians are backing away from the MAGA music-industrial complex. Kid Rock’s own “Rock the Country” festival is already hemorrhaging artists. Shinedown, Ludacris, Morgan Wade and others have exited, and now the South Carolina stop has been outright canceled, with Shinedown issuing the devastatingly polite statement that their purpose is to unite, not divide. Translation: We are not playing the soundtrack to your grievance rally.

The same political stink is drifting across the Atlantic. At the Winter Olympics in Milan, JD Vance popped up on the big screen during the opening ceremony and was greeted with scattered boos, a reminder that outside the Fox News terrarium, Trumpworld is not universally adored. Protesters marched through the streets chanting “ICE out,” furious over the revelation that ICE agents were reportedly deployed to Italy as part of the security circus. Nothing speaks international goodwill like bringing America’s deportation force to the Olympics.

And in perhaps the most coherent American messaging of the week, skier Gus Kenworthy responded by urinating “FUCK ICE” into the snow. Subtle? No. Appropriate for the moment? Abso-fucking-lutely.

The Milan story didn’t end there. On Saturday, thousands marched again, and what began as a broad demonstration over the cost and environmental wreckage of the Games escalated into clashes with riot police, water cannons, fireworks, and arrests, the familiar choreography of a state responding to dissent with armor. Vance, meanwhile, was reportedly booed again at a hockey match before receiving a private tour of The Last Supper in a museum closed to the public. Protesters get detained, the vice president gets Da Vinci. That’s the Trump-era export: spectacle, repression, and VIP impunity, now touring internationally.

Back home, Trump himself is skipping the Super Bowl, which Seth Meyers noted is strange for a man who treats public attention like a controlled substance. Trump claims Santa Clara is “too far away,” which is a truly incredible excuse from someone with a private jet who has flown across continents to shake down allies and golf in Scotland. The real reason is obvious: he’s terrified of getting booed on live television, the way Vance just was in Milan, the way Trump has been at NFL games before. Authoritarians love crowds, but only the kind that clap on command.

Even Trump, who has spent the last decade treating political norms like optional terms and conditions, occasionally collides with the last remaining guardrail: public outrage. This week, after posting a grotesquely racist clip depicting the Obamas as apes, the backlash was so loud that the White House actually did the unthinkable and deleted it, blamed an unnamed “staffer,” and offered the familiar non-apology condemnation without ever managing the words I’m sorry. The shock wasn’t the racism, sadly on-brand, but that even Republicans like Tim Scott couldn’t wave it off as “fake outrage” this time. With midterms looming, Trump is being reminded that political gravity still exists, at least until the news cycle moves on and he goes right back to doubling down. For now, we have him on his heels!

Looming over all of it, like a rot under the stadium lights, is Trump’s desperate insistence that everyone stop talking about the Epstein files. Stephen Colbert tracked Trump’s latest demand that the country “move on,” delivered while he snapped at Kaitlan Collins for not smiling enough, because nothing says innocence like misogynistic rage at a woman asking questions about survivors of sex trafficking. Jimmy Kimmel, watching the suspiciously inflated audience score for the Melania documentary, joked we may need Tulsi Gabbard to seize the ticket machines and audit the popcorn buckets.

The BOP is back, and it’s somehow even weirder now that it’s real enough to have calendar invites. Trump’s self-appointed “Board of Peace” is scheduled to meet in Washington on Feb. 19, with the stated goal of raising reconstruction funds for Gaza, but with a charter that quietly expands its scope into something much bigger and much more ominous.

Critics are already pointing out what it looks like: a parallel international system built outside the UN framework, where Trump sits as chairman with veto-like authority and membership comes with a literal price tag, $1 billion contributions for permanent members, like some sort of geopolitical cover charge.

The guest list tells you everything. Orbán is already confirming attendance, and the roster is stacked with authoritarian-friendly partners and transactional allies: Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE, Qatar, Argentina, Pakistan. Meanwhile, major European allies like France are declining to join, signaling just how skeptical the traditional postwar alliance structure is about this whole thing.

And in today’s episode of Trump’s expanding parallel-universe foreign policy, the president welcomed Honduras’s newly sworn-in leader, Nasry Asfura, to Mar-a-Lago and declared the two countries were partnering to “counter dangerous cartels and drug traffickers” while deporting “illegal migrants and gang members” from the United States.

Which would be easier to take seriously if Trump hadn’t recently pardoned Asfura’s predecessor, former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted in U.S. court for effectively turning Honduras into a narco-trafficking pipeline. So the message is essentially: drug trafficking is an unforgivable threat to national security unless you’re politically useful, in which case you get clemency and a handshake at the resort.

And this is where it dovetails perfectly with Trump’s new “Board of Peace.” The Board is supposedly about “enduring peace,” but what it’s really building is a new ecosystem of transactional strongman diplomacy, where accountability is negotiable, allies are purchased, and corruption is just another form of leverage. It’s impunity diplomacy with a charter.

While Trump is busy founding his own international vanity project, the intelligence community is dealing with something far more immediate: a whistleblower allegation that the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, may have intervened to suppress an NSA report involving a foreign intelligence-linked phone call with someone close to Trump.

According to the whistleblower’s attorney, the NSA flagged the call last spring, the kind of intercept that would normally trigger routine dissemination across the intelligence agencies and congressional oversight channels. Instead, Gabbard allegedly blocked the report from being distributed, took a paper copy directly to Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and then instructed the NSA not to publish the intelligence report at all, keeping it sealed for months.

Eight months later, Congress is only now receiving a heavily redacted version, after the legal window for whistleblower transmission should have long since closed. Democrats are accusing the administration of trying to bury the complaint. Executive privilege is being invoked, which is essentially a flare signaling that this touches Trump directly. Lawmakers are now reportedly bypassing ODNI entirely and requesting the underlying intelligence straight from the NSA, because they no longer trust the political appointees sitting on top of the system.

This is real-time institutional capture: intelligence treated not as a national security responsibility, but as a loyalty-managed asset. The intercept doesn’t move through the proper channels; it moves through the Trump inner circle. The watchdog office gets staffed with partisan allies, the complaint gets locked down, and the public is left watching the architecture of oversight quietly rot from the inside.

Quick note of clarification: in yesterday’s roundup, I misstated a detail in describing Renée Good’s killing. I wrote she was standing beside her vehicle when she was shot. Most of you understood I meant her killer, Jonathan Ross was beside her car, but accuracy matters, so I’m correcting the record here. Not making excuses, but my grammar-checking app was not functioning and I was focused on commas, colons, semicolons and manually policing punctuation like it was 1850. Still, I should have caught my error.

So yes: welcome to Super Bowl weekend in 2026, where the halftime show has a shadow halftime show, ICE has a foreign deployment, Europe is booing the vice president, Trump is hiding from stadium crowds, and even Kid Rock can’t keep his lineup together. The empire is not only crumbling, it’s doing it during commercial breaks.

Marz and I are headed out for a rainy romp now that my flu-like symptoms have finally abated. We continue to send you love and gratitude during our moonbeam vigils each night. You know we’re thinking of you out there holding space with us, tired but unbowed against all of this chaos. And on a lighter note, Go Seahawks! 

The Same Methods and the same Forces In Minneapolis and Across Palestine.

 

From Jewish Voice for Peace

For those of us who have been watching a livestreamed genocide in Gaza—and years of apartheid and occupation across all of Palestine—what’s happening in Minneapolis is not unfamiliar. 

 

The same tactics are being applied, the same technologies are in use, the same hate speech is in play, and the same profiteers are enabling and encouraging these atrocities.

 

In Minneapolis, a military force occupies the city, violating people’s basic rights and attempting to destroy the social fabric of the city. ICE has erected militarized checkpoints and is kidnapping people from their homes, disappearing them from the streets, arresting them at their places of work, and incarcerating them without due process or probable cause. Masked agents are killing protestors, deploying chemical weapons, and carrying out violence against civilians, medics and journalists.

 

The government is targeting observers and has labeled anyone standing against the occupation a t******t, without proof or legal standing, in a desperate attempt to justify its horrific actions. 

These are all tactics that the Israeli government has been using against Palestinians for decades. 

 

The Israeli military and ICE are using the same tactics and technologies, supplied by the same companies, and spewing the same hate speech to carry out their assaults. And the funding comes from the exact same source: The US government. 

 

From Minneapolis to Gaza, from Chicago to the occupied West Bank, the US government is using our tax dollars to carry out and enable state-sanctioned violence. We refuse to live in a society that profits off death, racism, and genocide. Just as speaking the truth about the Israeli military’s genocide of Palestinians is a moral obligation, so too is standing up against ICE killing and disappearing people in the US.

 

We refuse these authoritarian and violent actions wherever they take place 

Japan election: from stagnation to stagflation

by Michael Roberts

In Japan, a general election is taking place tomorrow, just months after Sanae Takaichi became the nation’s first female prime minister.  Takaichi is an arch-conservative, ultra nationalist and a devotee of Margaret Thatcher. She became prime minister last October by winning an internal party race for the presidency of the beleaguered governing Liberal Democrat Party (LDP), battered by two disastrous elections in as many years and currently without a majority in either house of the Japanese parliament. 

However,it seems that the LDP and its new coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party (JIP), are on track to secure a landslide victory tomorrow, with the main opposition Centrist Reform Alliance (CRA), a new party formed by the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) and the former ally of the LDP, Komeito, projected to lose more than half of the 106 single-seat districts it held previously and retain only 32.  The LDP could take 243 seats, and combined with the JIP, get 261 seats, a comfortable majority in the Lower House of parliament.

Takaichi seems to have broad appeal, polling consistently well with women, young and old. She claims that she will be different from all past LDP leaders.  She wants to cut taxes for most people, in particular, the consumption tax which drives up prices in the shops.  And she seeks to increase government spending on social security and ‘defence’, even if it means higher budget deficits. Takaichi says she is going for growth – not dissimilar to the slogans of the ill-fated, short-lived British Tory prime minister, Liz Truss. Truss’s plans for big rises in the UK budget deficit led to a sharp rise in UK government bond yields and a run on the pound. Something similar is happening in Japan, if at a slow burn.  Japanese government bond yields are up significantly and the yen is near historic lows.

Does this mean that Takaichi will go down in flames like Liz Truss?  Probably not, but it does mean that all her talk of ‘being different’ will lead nowhere. As in all G7 economies, over the decades, Japanese governments adopted neoliberal economic policies aimed at reducing pensions and welfare benefits.  Richard Katz has pointed out that the LDP coalition lowered social security benefits for seniors from ¥2.9 million ($20,000 at today’s exchange rates) in 1995 to just ¥2.1 million ($14,500) now, a 30% decrease in price-adjusted terms.  In addition, government spending on healthcare for each person over the age of 65 has been reduced by almost a fifth over the past 30 years. At the same time, the corporate profits tax has been slashed from 50% to just 15%.  Profits have doubled from 8% of GDP to 16%, while corporate tax revenue for the government has tumbled from 4% of GDP to 2.5%. 

But those cuts in corporate profits tax have not led to improved business investment growth. Instead, companies have hoarded the cash or invested in government bonds and the stock market, with nearly 1 quadrillion yen in liquid assets, of which ¥270 trillion were in cash and deposits, ¥233 trillion in bills and accounts receivable, and ¥460 trillion in investment securities. Net of debt liabilities, nonfinancial corporations’ overall financial asset position relative to their total sales has shifted by more than 30 percentage points since the mid-1990s (or about ¥460 trillion). Put another way, the cumulative net saving of the Japanese nonfinancial corporate sector over the past 30 years is now worth about 80% of Japanese GDP.

The key to the failure of neo-liberal measures to boost corporate investment and so end the stagnation of the Japanese economy since the 1990s has been the decline in the profitability of capital investment.  Japan’s profitability of capital has fallen more than in any other G7 economy.

The big long-term issue is Japan’s population. It has been falling and ageing. That allows per capita income growth to grow more than total GDP growth; per capita Japan’s real GDP is up 10.8% since 2010, while real GDP is up 9.6%.  But even per capita real GDP growth has been slowing. Those in work are overworked.  Japan invented the term karoshi — death from overwork — 50 years ago, following a string of employee tragedies.  The large corporates are promoting the idea of a four-day week to relieve this pressure and increase productivity. But there is little sign that this or any other measure is working to raise productivity.  Productivity growth is now non-existent.

Japan’s corporations may have increased profits at the expense of wages, but they are not investing that extra capital in new technology and productivity-enhancing equipment.  Real investment is no higher than in 2007. Public investment (about one-quarter of business investment) is static.  Japanese capital’s image of innovating technology appears to be long gone.  The mainstream measure of ‘innovation’ , total factor productivity (TFP) has faded from over 1% growth a year in the 1990s to near zero now, while the huge capital investment of the 1980s and 1990s is nowhere to be seen. So Japan’s ‘potential’ real GDP growth rate is close to zero.

Prime ministers come and go: from Abe to Kishida to Ishiba, but nothing changes. Japan has run permanent government deficits, spending it on construction and other projects and yet Japan’s economy has continued to stagnate. With Japan’s corporate sector unwilling or unable to invest, Takaichi is now attempting to end Japan’s stagnation by fiscal spending, cutting interest rates and allowing the yen to depreciate in order to boost exports.  It’s a Truss-Trump type policy that has got the Bank of Japan and the financial institutions really worried, as well as foreign investors.

Instead of stagnation, the Japanese economy has now morphed into stagflation, with rising prices, flat GDP and consumer spending and falling real wages.  Consumer prices have risen 12% since 2021. At the same time, GDP is barely higher than it was in 2018. Spending, in turn, is stagnant because real wages are down 7% from their 2018 level.

Takaichi wants to boost growth with fiscal spending and monetary easing and ignore the resulting rising bond yields and falling yen.  In contrast, the BoJ wants to cap bond yield rises and keep fiscal spending down to cap inflation and stop the yen falling.  But here is the dilemma. The BoJ’s aim to reduce inflation via higher interest rates will worsen the stagnation, but Takaichi’s aim to boost fiscal spending and fund it by BoJ purchases will only exacerbate inflation. 

Takaichi correctly insists that Japan’s inflation is mostly supply-driven, but she thinks that is a transitory problem and so reckons restoring growth is more important than suppressing inflation. A year ago, she called the BOJ “stupid” (similar to Trump’s attack on the US Fed for not cutting rates) for raising its interest rate from zero to 0.25% (it is now at 0.75%).  Takaichi opposes interest rate hikes because she wants to help automakers and other exporters “at all costs”, particularly in light of the Trump trade tariffs on Japanese exports. 

Will Takaichi’s policies end up crashing the Japanese government bond market as Liz Truss managed in the UK?  I think not.  Most Japanese government debt is held by Japanese (88%), unlike in the UK. The risk of capital flight only lies in that portion held by private investors, the net debt. And the latter is smaller than it’s been in decades, mainly because the BOJ has bought so much of the debt since 2013. In early 2013, net government debt held by private creditors peaked at 144% of GDP. Today, it equals just 96% (see chart below).

Yes bond yields are up, but reduced net debt and previous ultra-low interest rates have lowered net interest payments at all levels of government to a trivial 0.03% of GDP in 2024, down from nearly 1% in 2012). This is easily manageable.

But what rising yields and a falling yen do show is that, as Richard Katz has put it: “the slow corrosion of the economy. Decades of submarket interest rates have kept zombies on life support at the expense of healthier companies. A stunning half of Japan’s GDP is produced in business sectors where (total factor) productivity is actually falling, not just decelerating.The chronic deficits are more the symptom of economic weakness than its cause.”

Letting the yen depreciate will not work. The 43% depreciation of the yen since 2021 has not boosted Japan’s exports. Exports in real terms are up just 5% in the last three years. That suggests Japanese exports are just less competitive in world markets. Indeed, Japan’s real trade surplus in goods and services is currently falling at a 15% annual rate. So Takaichi’s hope that allowing the yen to fall will somehow boost Japanese exports and kick-start economic growth is so much wishful thinking.

Nevertheless, Takaichi appears to be riding high for now on ‘making a difference’ as a ‘Thatcherite’ prime minister. And she has not wasted the opportunity to play the immigration card.  The number of foreigners working in Japan reached a record 2.57mn last year.  Immigrants have really helped to keep the economy going, as Japanese citizens age and the population falls.  But not for Takaichi.  She has called for immigration controls to stop any change in Japanese ‘culture’ and ‘way of life’.  Again, here she follows the Trumpist message.

The legal fight to open Gaza to foreign press has failed. 972Mag

The legal fight to open Gaza to foreign press has failed. It’s time to change course

As Israel’s Supreme Court continues enabling the government’s foreign media ban, Palestinian journalists are paying the price. Further legal efforts are futile.

By Amos BrisonFebruary 6, 2026

Foreign and Israeli journalists stand on a hill overlooking the Gaza Strip in the city of Sderot, southern Israel, October 19, 2023. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Shared from 972 Magazine.

For over two years, the Foreign Press Association (FPA) has been battling Israel’s government in the Supreme Court over its sweeping ban on the independent entry of foreign journalists into the Gaza Strip. Throughout that time, the Israeli government has not wavered from its position — and the court has proven unwilling to force its hand.

The latest hearing in this Kafkaesque affair took place on Jan. 26. In a statement submitted to the court, the government’s attorney, Jonathan Nadav, argued that “the entry of journalists still poses a security risk, both to the journalists themselves and to military forces.” Neither the retrieval of the last Israeli hostage’s body, nor the limited opening of the Rafah border crossing, he stressed, justify any change in this policy.

The FPA — which represents roughly 400 foreign journalists based in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories — first appealed to the Supreme Court in Dec. 2023, and again in early 2024 after its first appeal was rejected. The court has since granted the state no fewer than 10 extensions to submit its response, effectively allowing the government to sidestep the issue altogether.

This time, the court’s patience with the state appeared to have run out. Justice Ruth Ronnen pressed state representatives to clarify what concrete changes on the ground would be required for the ban on foreign media access to be rescinded. “You can no longer say it’s the same risk,” she said, referring to the ceasefire that had been in place for over three months. “You must explain what else must take place for journalists’ entry to be permitted. It’s not enough to claim security concerns without explaining them.” 

Nadav replied that he could provide further details only in a closed-door session — a request the court accepted, while denying Gilad Shaer, the attorney representing the FPA, access to the information presented to them in secret. After the closed session, the court once again declined to issue a ruling, instead instructing the state to submit another update within two months.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Yitzhak Amit presides over a court hearing, Jerusalem, March 3, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

“The FPA is deeply disappointed that the Israeli Supreme Court has once again postponed ruling on our petition,” the organization said in an official statement in response to the court’s non-decision. “There are no security arguments that justify Israel’s blanket ban on allowing foreign journalists independent access to Gaza at a time when humanitarian aid workers and other officials are being allowed into Gaza. The public’s right to know should not be reduced to an afterthought.” 

Tania Kraemer, a correspondent for Deutsche Welle in Jerusalem and the FPA’s current chairperson, wrote to members the day after the hearing, notifying them that the court had scheduled the next proceedings for March 31, and that the organization’s lawyers planned to appeal the decision. Yet in an update sent to members following a Feb. 4 board meeting, there was no indication of any concrete next steps beyond an intention to “run a social media campaign if we have the capacity.”

One can almost sympathize with the beleaguered FPA in this situation, caught for over two years between an obstinate Israeli government and a feeble Supreme Court. Yet that sympathy quickly gives way to anger and despair upon scrolling through the organization’s statements page, now filled with a seemingly endless series of near-identical declarations of “disappointment” with the government, “dismay” at yet another delay by the court, “hope” that the judges will “stand firmly against the state,” and, inevitably, “outrage and shock” at the ongoing killing of Gazan journalists.

Rather than changing its approach, the FPA continues to play by the rules and defer to the Supreme Court, despite there being no indication that it will ever force the government’s hand. In doing so, the FPA not only fails to achieve its goal of lifting the ban on press access to Gaza, but also helps legitimize the external perception of a good-faith “judicial review” — a cornerstone of Israel’s self-professed liberal democracy.

‘The FPA board is weak, and Israel knows that’

A similar court case outside the realm of press access offers a useful precedent. Last September, four Israeli human rights groups — Gisha, HaMoked, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel — took the extraordinary step of withdrawing an urgent petition to the High Court that demanded the immediate entry of sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza. Filed in May, the petition had languished for more than three months without a hearing, as the court repeatedly declined to exercise judicial review over a policy that had led to mass starvation.

Humanitarian aid enters Gaza through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 1, 2026. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Explaining their decision, the organizations said they could no longer participate in what had become a “futile proceeding” that allowed the state to continue acting without oversight while invoking the mere existence of judicial review as proof of accountability. “[This is a process] from which only the state derives benefit,” Gisha’s lawyers wrote in their request to withdraw the petition. “It continues to wield unrestrained force, to starve innocent people, and to deny them life-saving humanitarian aid … while outwardly washing its hands of responsibility.”

These repeated postponements, the NGOs noted, also assisted Israel in its legal battles in international courts. Even as the state’s representatives argued before the International Court of Justice that its legal system remained open to anyone seeking to challenge its actions, this crucial case went untouched, and the state was never required to account for its conduct.

Could the FPA emulate the example of these Israeli NGOs? Its circumstances are certainly different: Much of the FPA’s day-to-day work — facilitating access, accreditation, and communication between foreign journalists and Israeli authorities — depends on ongoing engagement with the very bodies it now challenges, making disengagement a particularly consequential step for its members.

Yet the FPA has the obligation to ask what its current approach has actually accomplished, both for its members and for the most vulnerable populations in this land. Considering how easily Israel brushes aside the FPA’s appeals to the Supreme Court — with the latter’s active assistance — the answer seems clear. 

Continuing to participate in this charade serves no one except the Israeli government. It does nothing but allow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies to project a democratic facade by participating in legal proceedings, secure in the knowledge that the court will provide endless postponements that prevent any meaningful change in policy.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and coalition lawmakers attend a special session in honor of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s visit to the Knesset, in the Knesset, Jerusalem, January 26, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

“The FPA board is weak, and Israel knows that,” an FPA member who spoke to +972 on condition of anonymity said. “There are voices inside the FPA who have called, and are still calling, for tougher actions, such as stopping the embedding of journalists with the Israeli army [in Gaza] or boycotting the Prime Minister’s Office.” According to another FPA member, a proposal to “suggest to media company editorial leaders to agree to boycott interviews, press conferences and background briefings with army officials until foreign media is granted independent access to Gaza,” was voted down by the board.

Another FPA member, also speaking anonymously, described the ongoing appeal process as “an embarrassingly weak and pathetic evasion of journalistic responsibility by the world’s ‘leading’ mainstream media outlets as the genocidal onslaught marches onward. History will judge this embarrassing episode very harshly indeed, including the slaughter and maiming of several hundred journalists that took place in this period. And very high up on the blame list will be the major international media outlets that insulted the intelligence of gnats with this purely performative litigation.”

A matter of life and death

As long as Israel continues to bar international media from entering Gaza, Palestinian journalists on the ground remain the only eyes of the outside world documenting life under continued bombardment, displacement, and siege, at immense personal risk. Supporting their work is therefore not just a matter of professional solidarity, but of necessity.

But the very fact that Palestinian journalists have been left to shoulder this burden alone is itself an indictment. Recent developments make clear that Israel’s continued ban on foreign media access to Gaza carries life-and-death consequences. 

Only a few days before the hearing, on Jan. 21, the Israeli army carried out one of the deadliest attacks on Gaza since the so-called ceasefire took effect last October, adding 11 more deaths to the roughly 500 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire during the past four months.

Among the victims were two 13-year-old boys, one killed by an Israeli drone strike in central Gaza, and one shot dead by Israeli troops in Khan Younis. Three others — Muhammad Salah Qishta, Abdel Raouf Sha’at, and Anas Ghneim — were journalists on assignment for the Egyptian Committee for Gaza Relief. They were killed after an Israeli airstrike hit the car they were travelling in while on their way to document conditions at a newly established displacement camp in the area of Al-Zahra, south of Gaza City.

Palestinian family members and colleagues carry the bodies of Palestinian journalists killed in an Israeli strike, outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, January 21, 2026. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

The journalists, whom the Israeli army spokesperson later described as “suspects who operated a drone affiliated with Hamas,” were several kilometers from the so-called “Yellow Line” when they were struck, and could not plausibly have posed a threat to Israeli forces. And as imagesfrom the aftermath of the attack show, the vehicle was clearly marked as belonging to the Egyptian Committee.

After the massacre, the FPA issued a condemnation of Israel’s conduct. “Once again, journalists were killed by Israeli military strikes while carrying out their professional duties,” the group said. “Too many journalists in Gaza have been killed without justification, while Israel continues to deny international media independent access to the territory.” 

Setting aside the question of what could possibly constitute a “justification” for killing journalists, it is clear that the FPA’s current strategy has failed to do anything to protect its Palestinian colleagues. How many more Palestinian journalists will be killed by the time the court’s latest deadline to the state arrives in late March — one that is almost certainly no less arbitrary than those that preceded it? 

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The time has come for the FPA to suspend its cooperation with the Supreme Court and other Israeli state institutions that enforce and legitimize the foreign media blackout in Gaza. By publicly declaring the exhaustion of the legal process, it can instead mobilize pressure from the international media community, and push member outlets to condition future cooperation with Israeli institutions on access to Gaza. Continuing down the current path — one that has produced no results for over two years, while Palestinian journalists in Gaza continue to be killed — is no longer defensible.