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Ex-Officers Kept Access To Flock Cameras Long After Leaving The Police, Including A Former Georgia Investigator

A former investigator with the Effingham County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia kept using the Flock nationwide license plate camera system for five years after he left his job as an investigator, and used it to search for his wife’s plate, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Andrae Wright, a former investigator for the Effingham County Sheriff’s Office, left the office in 2021, but logged into the Flock system to search for a license plate bearing his wife’s middle name more than 60 times over a five-year span, according to Georgia Bureau of Investigation statements and audit records. Some of the searches were conducted while Wright was trying to gain permanent custody of the couple’s teenage daughter, the Post learned. Wright and his wife divorced this year. He was arrested in July and charged with stalking his wife, using information from Flock “for the purpose of harassing and intimidating her,” according to his warrant. Wright did not return a call for comment for the Post’s story. The sheriff’s office said it had not regularly reviewed account access and plans to begin audits.

The Post investigation identified 11 cases of unauthorized use of Flock license plate readers, a network of at least 120,000 cameras nationwide. In 4 of the cases, police officers continued to use the system after they left their jobs or while they were on suspension from their jobs. In 6 additional cases, logins or access were shared with officers from other police departments.

The Post also reported on a case out of Fulton County, where an investigation was launched into the actions of a former police officer over suspected Flock license plate searches after she had left her employment with the department. The department shared its Flock subscription with the sheriff’s office, and no one notified the sheriff’s office to revoke her access when she resigned from her job. “They didn’t remove the employee,” Police Chief Wade Yates told the paper. “I’ll take the heat for that.”

In Cobb County, the sheriff’s office cut its Flock accounts from some 200 users to about 50, and only those 50 are now considered to be authorized to use the system. The review found that a number of employees had been given login information to the system for no work-related purpose, and the review found no apparent misuse.

The Post revealed the worst case of abuse of the system in a story about Indianapolis. A police recruit named Matthew Binford used a senior police officer’s account to enter the plate of his estranged wife on the Flock system over 1,000 times in one year, according to a court affidavit obtained by the paper. The senior officer had opened Flock on Binford’s laptop and left the session active, the affidavit stated, and Binford kept access for more than two years. Binford and four other current and former Indianapolis police officers were charged last month, after a Post inquiry prompted a department-wide audit. He declined to comment.

Three former Flock employees told the Post that the company has pushed back against additional security measures. Two of them said leadership had concerns that additional security would negatively impact sales to law enforcement agencies. While Flock’s contracts stipulate that accounts be created using official agency email addresses, the company acknowledged that it began to actively enforce this only recently. Multi-factor authentication was made the default setting in 2024, though agencies could opt out, and was made mandatory in August of this year. In the wake of the Post’s findings, Flock said it is working with customers to remove personal email addresses and other forms of shared login credentials from Flock accounts. As of next year, users will have to log back in every 12 hours. Company spokesman Paris Lewbel said Flock acts when it identifies security weaknesses or policy violations. The company declined to comment on individual cases, however.

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Shadow at the Door: Death and Dying in Palestine

The recent death in my family underscored for me the devastating impact of personal grief, illuminating the deep loss and constant state of mortality that Palestinian families endure every day.

To be Palestinian is to carry an inherited archive of loss. After nearly a century of forced displacement, military occupation and relentless aggression at the hands of a brutal colonizer, death in Palestine has not been a quiet end at the close of life. It is an ever-present shadow weaved into the tapestry of daily existence.

Across generations, grief has been more than individual sorrow, an occasional isolated tragedy, it is an ongoing shared reality written into the collective memory of an entire people.  For Palestinians, Israeli colonization has stolen more than land; it has robbed them of their sovereignty over mourning, honoring and burying their loved ones in peace.

For most of the world, dying young is an unbearable disruption of the natural life cycle; for Palestinians, living under systemic hardship, surviving into old age is a rare exception rather than the norm.

From the traumatic dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Nakba (the Catastrophe) in 1948, to the ongoing genocide and ecocide of Gaza, and military occupation of the West Bank, every Palestinian family has experienced violent loss.

Forcibly displaced from ancestral villages in their youth, grandparents passed down keys to homes that were either stolen or destroyed, along with memories of family members lost to Israeli aggression.  Their children in the West Bank continue to endure innumerable hardships and indignities under Israeli apartheid occupation.  And in Gaza, their descendants, surrounded by death and destruction and the ever-present threat of another Israeli attack, are struggling to survive.

Long before entering a classroom, the children of Palestine absorb the vocabulary of military attacks, martyrdom and survival.  The ceaseless threat of loss forces families to adapt to living with constant vigilance that is passed down from parent to child.

To truly grasp the nature of Palestinian grief, is to see that profound anguish and resentment exists alongside an extraordinary reverence for life and human dignity.

A century of national suffering has made agony a constant in daily life. In Palestine, this collective sorrow has taken on uniquely powerful, visible traditions of survival and shared resistance.

When burials are possible, entire communities come together to bare witness, offer support and share the weight of collective trauma. Oral histories, street art, literature and music carefully document the names, faces, and stories of the dead.  Where physical spaces and lives are continually erased, memory becomes the ultimate sanctuary for preservation.

Writing, thinking, or speaking about death in Palestine means facing a reality where grief is both an individual sorrow and a shared national identity. In the face of continuous, devastating loss, the simple act of remembering those who have died becomes a powerful affirmation of their humanity.

The Palestinian ethos of Sumud (steadfastness) embodies this dynamic:  a collective determination to remain on the land and to defy every Israeli effort to erase their existence – to live is to resist.

Grief in Palestine is non-linear.  It has had no end.  It does not move from denial to anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.  It does not follow an inevitable straight path, because the iniquitous conditions that produce it remain unaddressed.

From the graves of forced exile to the countless deaths in Palestine today, the international community has consistently failed to take decisive action. Watching Palestine die is more than witnessing a genocide; it is an indictment of the global conscience.  The perpetuation of statelessness and oppressive occupation ensures that each new generation will be born into a world where untimely death remains a shadow at the door.

The abiding refusal of the Palestinian people to be subjugated or forgotten is a testament to their inspiring steadfastness. It serves as a powerful example that the pursuit of true freedom is a sacred generational responsibility, worth defending at all costs.

Palestinian endurance is far from passive survival; it is an active, daily reclamation that refuses to let their history be rewritten or justice silenced. Across generations, through the relentless wear of exile, displacement and loss, the Palestinian spirit remains anchored to the land and in an unyielding insistence on dignity and self-determination.  In every quiet act of preservation and every resounding cry for liberation, they demonstrate that while Israeli brute force and unbridled cruelties inflicts profound suffering, it can never erase a people whose identity, hope and humanity burns so undauntedly bright.

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Watch Elizabeth Warren SQUIRM When Questioned About Billionaires Funding the Democrats in the Midterms

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was recently grilled – on CNN of all places – about the fact that despite all of the Democrat Party’s complaints about billionaires, they are being funded for the midterms by quite a few of them.

The whole billionaire thing on the left is so tiresome. It all goes back to Bernie Sanders. He used to be the only one who talked about it but now they all do.

Of course, they all conveniently look the other way when a billionaire is ready to hand them a massive campaign donation.

It’s still hard to believe this conversation happened on CNN.

FOX News reports:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., got defensive in a new interview as she railed against billionaire donations in politics and was asked about Democrat Troy Jackson revealing multiple billionaire donors, as well as a large possible donation from Michael Bloomberg.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins said during an interview with Warren that Bloomberg had given about $80 million to help Democrats win the midterms after noting that Elon Musk had contributed $276 million to Republicans.

Collins asked Warren, “You’re someone who has said billionaire donors should not be in politics. Given what you’ve said, do you want Michael Bloomberg’s help here?”

“Look, what I want is to get this kind of money out of politics,” Warren said. “Right now, the Republicans know that their only chance, as they see it, to be able to hang on to the House and the Senate and some of these governors’ mansions is to be able to just drown people in money, to be able to run all the ads on TV, to lie, to cheat, and that there won’t be any opportunity for Democrats to be able to respond.”

“We need to push back because, this campaign, this 2026 midterm, really is about the money or the people. Because the Democrats have got the people on their side. The Republicans have got the money, and they think if they can spend it, they can maintain control of this country, and I sure hope they’re wrong,” Warren said, arguing for a “very different” system.

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Our Failed Constitution

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

The U.S. Constitution was ratified to create and to restrain the government. It established boundaries beyond which the government may not venture, even when it invokes national security, public order, economic necessity, emergency or the will of a popular majority. Its purpose is not to make government more powerful but to keep the government off the people’s backs.

By that measure, the American Constitution is a failure. Formally, the document physically survives, its ceremonies continue, and politicians swear their oaths to abide it. Yet functionally, the government it was designed to restrain has accumulated vast and totalitarian powers that its authors would never recognize.

Power grows, concentrates and perpetuates itself, while liberty contracts. Every emergency supplies a justification for new authority. Every temporary restriction threatens to become permanent. Every president discovers powers that his predecessors claimed but that the Constitution never authorized. And every generation is told that the latest surrender of freedom is necessary to preserve freedom itself.

The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 criminalized criticisms of government officials. Newspaper editors and political opponents faced prosecution. The government that had declared independence from a distant king was punishing Americans for criticizing their own elected officials.

The contradiction was extraordinary. The First Amendment had been adopted precisely to prevent the federal government from suppressing political expression; and it was ratified by some of the same human beings who later voted to undermine it. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison resisted these measures, recognizing that a government that could legally determine which political opinions may be expressed will eventually confuse criticism with sedition. And so it did.

During the Civil War, the Lincoln administration suspended habeas corpus, imposed military dictatorships which arrested civilians, and directed armies to kill civilians. In Ex Parte Milligan (1866), the Supreme Court invalidated Lincoln’s arrests without trial and affirmed a principle that ought to be self-evident: Neither Congress nor the president can simply replace constitutional government with personal or unaccountable authority.

But that did not stop Woodrow Wilson from arresting those who verbally opposed the draft or Congress from establishing the administrative state as a fourth and unaccountable branch of government or FDR from arresting Japanese-Americans for being Japanese-Americans.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 created the Federal Reserve System, a central banking institution with authority over monetary conditions. It triggered unlimited money creation, and the eventual abandonment of gold convertibility in 1933 and the end of the dollar’s international gold convertibility in 1971.

The Federal Reserve today creates money whenever it wants, and its monetary expansion weakens the purchasing power of money and transfers costs onto future generations.

The National Security Act of 1947 created the CIA and established the national security state as the fifth branch of government, truly unaccountable. The United States had emerged from World War II with unprecedented military power and global ambitions. Rather than return to a posture of restraint, Washington established over 850 worldwide permanent military and intelligence institutions designed for a world of perpetual confrontation and American domination.

The CIA was created to collect intelligence, not to serve as the president’s personal army. Nevertheless, its history of secret interventions, covert actions, murders, tortures and even domestic operations conducted beyond ordinary public scrutiny raises a fundamental constitutional question: Who controls the government when the government acts in secret?

The national security state also perpetuates itself. Agencies justify their budgets through threats; military establishments seek new missions; presidents discover that secret operations are politically easier than openly debated wars. What began as a response to a particular international crisis becomes a permanent structure of government. The republic that once warned against standing armies and foreign entanglements is now a failing empire that thrives on both.

The Patriot Act of 2001 extended this pattern into domestic surveillance. Enacted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it radically expanded surveillance authorities available to federal agencies, and it unleashed the federal government’s mass suspicionless and warrantless surveillance; today capturing every keystroke and conversation transmitted on fiber optic cables anywhere in the U.S.

Across these episodes, the pattern repeats itself. Government restricts speech in the name of stability, expands executive power in the name of war, weakens monetary discipline in the name of economic management, conducts secret operations in the name of security and broadens surveillance in the name of preventing terrorism. Each measure arrives with an explanation. Each emergency is declared exceptional. Yet the accumulated result is a government more powerful and a citizen less secure in his liberty. And none is countenanced by the Constitution.

Was Jefferson right that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants? His famous language arose from the revolutionary generation’s experience and its fear of concentrated power. It expressed a belief that liberty cannot survive without eternal vigilance and a continuous willingness to resist oppression.

The deeper question is whether the Constitution can preserve liberty when the people entrusted with enforcing it benefit from its erosion. The answer depends upon whether Americans treat government as their servant or their master.

In the long march of history, power tends to grow because those who possess it have incentives to retain it, while those who surrender their freedoms rarely recover them. All of these attacks on liberty were enacted or performed with popular support even though the Constitution was crafted to prevent Congress and the president from popularly or unpopularly impairing personal freedom.

If Americans fail to regard freedom as a birthright, the Constitution may survive as a historical document while the constitutional republic it created becomes a bankrupt failure.

The Constitution cannot save a people who have abandoned the principles from which it sprang. Ultimately, liberty survives only when the governed insist that the government remain within its constitutional limits. If it won’t, we must alter or abolish it.

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DEI Continues: DOJ Discovers Discrimination Against Whites and Asians at Ohio State Medical School Despite Supreme Court Ruling

The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that Ohio State’s medical school was found to have discriminated against white and Asian applicants in violation of federal law.

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division cited admissions practices for the 2023, 2024, and 2025 incoming classes, saying that the school violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on color or race, according to a news release.

The Justice Department also mentioned the 2023 Supreme Court decision of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which effectively banned affirmative action.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said, “Despite SFFA, OSU Med allows some applicants to bypass its own screening process and skip interviews solely because of the color of their skin.”

“A university’s admissions process, and all its stages, should apply equally to all applicants regardless of race,” she continued. “The use of a separate admissions process based on race is plainly illegal under federal law, and this Department will not allow these appalling practices to continue at OSU Med or any other federally funded higher ed institution.”

The release went on to describe how OSU used a “Holistic Approach” as a workaround to admit so-called “underrepresented minorities.”

In addition, the medical school’s admissions process has an interview stage, but the DOJ discovered that black applicants who are screened and interviewed “are about 2.8 times as likely to be admitted than Asian applicants with equal credentials.”

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Increasingly Toxic To Candidates, Pro-Israel AIPAC Retreats From Endorsements And Direct Donations

In the latest indication that a sea change is underway where US support of Israel is concerned, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Wednesday announced it will stop endorsing political candidates and directly contributing to their campaigns and PACs. The move reflects a new political environment in which the receipt of AIPAC money and endorsements is now being exploited as a major political liability.

AIPAC isn’t abandoning the political battlefield, but is choosing to emphasize stealthy means of influencing election outcomes. AIPAC will continue operating its cryptically-named United Democracy Project independent super PAC. That entity is prohibited from coordinating with candidates or giving them money, but can spend a limitless amount to promote favored candidates or undermine their opponents. 

First reported by Jewish Insider, the major policy shift was disclosed in a letter to AIPAC members. “[The current election cycle is] one of the most challenging environments in recent memory,” wrote the group’s president, Bernie Kaminetsky, and three other officials. “We assess that the challenges we are confronting will continue to grow in the years ahead.”

Earlier this year, AIPAC suffered an expensive, high-profile loss in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary. The group’s super PAC spent more than $30 million on Rep. Haley Stevens, only to see her lose to Abdul El-Sayed, a fierce critic of the US-Israel relationship. In recent days, El-Sayed said that, contrary to the long-running characterization, “It’s time for us to realize that Israel is not actually our friend...an ally that takes your money to push you into wars you shouldn’t be fighting is not an ally.” Recent polls show El-Sayed with a 2-point lead over GOP nominee and former Rep. Mike Rogers.

On the other hand, AIPAC also participated in an important victory, as the group helped oust Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie in the GOP primary. Thanks to money spent by AIPAC’s United Democracy Project, the Republican Jewish Coalition, and the MAGA Kentucky PAC — which was created solely to oust Massie and funded by non-Kentuckian Jewish billionaires Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer and John Paulsen — the contest was the most expensive primary in US House history. Massie earned the Israel lobby’s wrath by opposing foreign aid to any country, voting against pro-Israel legislation and condemning Trump’s wars on Iran.

AIPAC has been increasingly perceived as a villainous participant in US politics, and social media has helped put the group in an unwanted spotlight. One key contributor to that reputational decline is Track AIPAC, which was launched in 2024. Tapping federal disclosures, Track AIPAC’s website and social media accounts publicize the extent to which candidates are taking money from AIPAC and other pro-Israeli political forces. It also publicizes how legislators vote on Israel-related legislation.

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Federal Judge Orders CIA to Release Records Related to Jan 6 Protests Including Information on Whether CIA Had Personnel Deployed Like the 274 Undercover FBI Agents That Day

A federal judge has ordered the CIA to begin releasing records related to January 6 by November 16, including documents on shots fired inside the Capitol, requests for bomb technicians and detection dogs, and whether CIA personnel were deployed. The ruling follows a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch.

OANN reported:

“The CIA must begin releasing records related to January 6th by November 16th.

In a recent ruling, the U.S. District Court for the D.C.— for the District of Columbia ordered the CIA to begin releasing records related to shots fired inside the Capitol.

The agency must also release requests for bomb technicians and bomb-detecting dogs and whether CIA personnel were deployed. The order stems from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Filed by conservative legal watchdog Judicial Watch.

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81 People Wrote A Federal Judge Asking For Leniency For Brant Frost, Who Pleaded Guilty To Running A $140 Million Ponzi Scheme

More than 80 people, including family, friends, and even investors who lost money in the scheme, are asking a federal judge for mercy on Newnan businessman Edwin Brant Frost IV who is set to be sentenced for a Ponzi scheme that the SEC says defrauded about 300 investors of at least $140 million. Their names are listed below in the exhibit index from Frost’s own sentencing memorandum.

Frost, 69, pleaded guilty on May 12 to one count of wire fraud, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. The SEC says First Liberty Building & Loan, the firm he owned, operated as a Ponzi scheme since at least 2021, paying existing investors with new investors’ money. The SEC also says Frost used investor funds for more than $2.4 million in credit card payments, more than $335,000 to a rare coin dealer and $230,000 on family vacations. Prosecutors recommend 14 years in prison. His lawyers ask for five, in a sentencing memorandum filed October 19 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Case No. 3:26-cr-00008-LMM. Sentencing is set for October 26, according to local reports.

When First Liberty Building & Loan sold itself to investors, it billed its leaders as “authentic followers of Christ” with a penchant for charitable giving to religious causes, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In advertising in conservative media across Georgia and beyond the state, First Liberty promoted itself with the slogan “We say yes when the big banks say no.”

Frost’s own lawyers concede the core of his misconduct in their memorandum regarding sentence. They state that “Brant made material misrepresentations to investors and omitted certain material facts.” According to their memorandum, in the final years of the investment program, returns to investors were paid largely from newly invested funds and not from borrowers’ repayments of loans. The sentencing guidelines stipulated in his plea agreement put the loss between $65 million and $150 million and count substantial financial hardship to 25 or more victims.

Frost’s lawyers write that he is neither the swindler nor the con artist that many imagine him to be. In describing Brant, the letter writers are unanimous in describing him as a gentle, kind, and loving soul, they say. Moreover, they say, the investment program that Brant oversaw was not a sham or a con.

These letters were written by Frost’s family members and friends, business associates, and ministers and other Christian leaders from several different churches. They include a letter from Paul C. Broun, M.D., who wrote that he has known Frost since the 1980s. Other writers include Chad Connelly of Faith Wins; Carroll Conley, retired executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine; Pete Mullins, who signs as Pastor Emeritus of Coweta Community Church; Tim Tidwell, who signs as pastor of Oakside Baptist Church in LaGrange; and David Theiss, who signs as mayor. Writing to a judge before sentencing is lawful and routine, and the names are part of the public court record.

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Katie Hobbs Canvassers Busted by Muckraker Trying to Register Felons and Noncitizens to Vote – Hobbs RUNS When Confronted!

Muckraker on Thursday published an election report out of Arizona, using undercover reporters to catch the Democratic Party, nonprofit groups, and labor unions backing Incumbent Governor Katie Hobbs, attempting to illegally register noncitizens and felons to vote.

Muckraker caught multiple Democrat organizations allowing blatant voter fraud.

These suspect groups were caught attempting to register noncitizens to vote and mobilizing noncitizens and felons to vote in the upcoming election.

When Katie Hobbs was confronted with the findings, she ran away from questions.

Muckraker posted their latest investigation on Thursday.

Per Muckraker:

Here’s what we found:

Stand Indivisible Arizona (endorsed Gov. Hobbs in their 2026 ballot guide) — Our journalist posed as a Canadian citizen and asked to register to vote. The canvasser not only agreed to help the alleged non-citizen register, but when asked whether other Canadians could register too, she said, “Tell them to do it online.”

Worker Power (working to re-elect Gov. Hobbs) — Our journalist told a canvasser they were not a U.S. citizen. Despite this, at our journalist’s request, the canvasser marked “yes” on the citizenship question of the voter registration form.

When We Count (the DNC’s own registration program) — Our journalist posed as a felon on probation and asked to register to vote. The canvassers looked up the law and saw that a felon on probation is ineligible. Even so, they encouraged our journalist to register: “You should just do it.”

AFL-CIO (phone bank mobilizing voters for Gov. Hobbs) — Our undercover journalist asked a phone bank trainer whether to ask the people being called if they’re citizens. The trainer’s answer: “We don’t care.”

First, Muckraker caught a volunteer for Stand Indivisible Arizona, a liberal nonprofit group backing Hobbs and other Democrats’ campaigns, attempting to register a journalist posing as a Canadian citizen, as well as his Canadian friends at a voter registration drive at Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix.

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Two Israeli Soldiers Killed In Hebron Checkpoint Shooting As Netanyahu Orders West Bank Closure And Vows More Settlements

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and three others were wounded by Friday morning fire from two Palestinian gunmen at a checkpoint near Hebron in the occupied West Bank, just four days prior to the October 27 Israel election.

Staff Sgt. Ron Yonatan Roytman, 23, from Ashkelon and a squad commander, and Sgt. Yuval Shai Svilem, 20, from Hod Hasharon, were killed in the attack, the Israeli military said. The three Home Front soldiers wounded in the attack, who are part of the same battalion as the two killed, suffer from light to moderate injuries. The three are from the 775th “Ari” Battalion of the Search and Rescue Brigade of the Home Front Command.

The two Palestinian gunmen who opened fire at a checkpoint near Hebron in the West Bank this morning arrived at the Judea Junction on Route 35 in a car with Israeli license plates, armed with an M16 rifle and a pistol, Israel Today reported. The gunfight with the Israeli soldiers who responded to the attack was prolonged and lasted over 20 minutes during which both attackers were killed by the soldiers. A large amount of ammunition was found in the car the two gunmen arrived in, IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said. Netanyahu said it appeared Hamas terrorists were planning “a major attack aimed at murdering innocent civilians.” Both gunmen were members of Hamas, Israeli media reported, according to Israel Today.

The Israeli Prime Minister said he had instructed the military to “impose a cordon on the city of Hebron and to prepare for a full closure of the entire West Bank starting today,” DW reported. In the Hebron neighborhood where the two shooters came from, the IDF would apply the same model used in the refugee camps in the West Bank. “We will evacuate the residents, go from house to house, remove the weapons there, and address and demolish all terrorist infrastructure,” Netanyahu said. He added that Israel is placing a siege on the city of Hebron and its neighboring city of Halhul, and would consider applying the same model in other cities as well.

Netanyahu added that an even bigger operation is going to be carried out by the IDF in Judea and Samaria. “The Defense Minister and I have seen an IDF operation in Judea and Samaria on a very broad scale, unlike anything carried out since the Six-Day War. The IDF is ready to carry it out, and we will determine the timing, but it is coming.” He gave no date.

To the settlers in the area, Netanyahu declared, “You are an example to the people of Israel. You are an example to the State of Israel. We are going to destroy the terrorist infrastructure, and we are going to build the settlement infrastructure.” He continued that the government was advancing plans to build and legalize over 100 new communities and over 100 farms.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for a large-scale military campaign in the West Bank. He said he wanted a campaign “exactly like in Gaza and Lebanon,” DW reported. Immediately he ordered the demolition of a row of what he called illegal Arab structures next to the spot where the attack took place.

The attack occurred at the end of the campaign, when the voting is due to take place in four days’ time, on October 27. According to DW, the vote is widely seen as a referendum on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The polls have predicted a very tight race between the pro-Netanyahu camp and its opponents. Netanyahu connected the attack to threats that the election-season expects from his enemies. “We warned several weeks ago about attempts by our enemies to harm us, our civilians and our soldiers ahead of the elections. That is what they tried to do here,” he said.

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