Reuters reports that Israel’s Army Radio aired a recording from a Jewish Power meeting in which one lawmaker discusses a proposed bill for deporting those who voice solidarity with militants. Ben Gvir urged caution that a bill designed to deter Palestinian militants could be used against Jewish extremists.

The Guardian reports on tension in the World Cup in Qatar, with Israelis being treated unwelcomingly. One video posted on social media “shows an Egyptian football fan smiling serenely as an Israeli broadcaster introduces him live on air.” Then he leans into the microphone with a message: “Viva Palestine.” Another clip from the streets of Doha this week shows a group of Lebanese men walking away from a live interview with a reporter they have just learned is Israeli. One shouts over his shoulder: “There is no Israel. It’s Palestine.” The Financial Times also publishes a piece referring to these incidents, adding that the World Cup in Qatar Is “a rare source of regional unity”.

The Guardian also publishes an article saying that a niece of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called on foreign governments to cut all links with Tehran’s “murderous and child-killing” regime in a video posted online two days after she was arrested. The video of a statement by Farideh Moradkhani, a well-known rights activist, has been circulating online after it was shared by her France-based brother Mahmoud Moradkhani on Friday. Mahmoud Moradkhani said his sister had been arrested on Wednesday after going to a prosecutor’s office following a summons.

The Telegraph reports that Iran state-affiliated media says the US should be kicked out of the World Cup for racism after removing the Islamic Republic emblem from their opponent’s team flag. The legal advisor to the Iranian Football Federation is said to be “filing a complaint to FIFA”. “The US football team breached the Fifa charter by posting a distorted image of the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran on its official Twitter page, for which a 10-game suspension is the appropriate penalty,” said the Iran-based Tasnim News Agency.

The Daily Mail reports that police protection remains in place at the London HQ of an Iranian news channel whose journalists have received death threats from Tehran after broadcasting footage of anti-regime protests into the country.  Armed police have been spotted outside the Iran International offices in Chiswick, west London, alongside multi-role armoured vehicles. Police have confirmed that “officers are working in response to potential threats projected from Iran against a number of UK-based individuals”.

There is wide coverage in the Israeli media of political and military responses to Friday’s clash in Hebron between soldiers from the Givati Brigade and left-wing Jewish-Israeli activists. Video of the incident showed an activist thrown to the ground, punched, and taunted that a new era is beginning in which his views and activities will be outlawed. Israel Hayom reports the suspension from duty of the soldiers concerned and quotes the IDF’s official statement on their behaviour: “The conduct of the soldiers is serious, and the violence used is not consistent with the values ​​of the Israeli military.” The condemnation was echoed in separate comments by Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi.

In contrast, presumptive National Security minister Itamar Ben Gvir backed the soldiers: “I know these leftists well who come to Hebron. They provoke the soldiers, insult them and often attack them as well.” Haaretz reports lawyers from the right-wing Honenu legal defence organisation echoing Ben Gvir, as well as reporting that two of the Israeli activists involved in the incident were “sent to five days’ house arrest on Sunday and were ordered not to return to the city for two weeks.” I24 News, meanwhile, reports Gush Etzion Regional Council chairman Shlomo Na’aman as lobbying Kohavi to ban anti-occupation groups from entering Hebron “provoking the soldiers, disturbing the residents and agitating the area.”

In an op-ed in Yediot Ahronot, Ofer Shelah places the incident in the context of both wider deteriorations in the West Bank and problems of recruitment in the IDF. Raising the alarm at the possibility of the collapse of the Palestinian Authority and a Third Intifada, Shelah worries that the transition of the IDF “from a people’s army to a peripheries’ army” has produced (as a generalisation, of course) a situation in which the children of certain segments of society that once took pride in combat service and volunteering to serve as officers, now refrain from serving in the territories and in the infantry brigades as a whole. Even worse, the deteriorating situation in the territories and the social changes in Israel also have impacted the values embodied by the army.”

In Yediot Ahronot, Nahum Barnea writes with alarm of the possible impact of the new government on key Israeli institutions, including the Supreme Court, the General Security Service, the Police, and the IDF. “People who are familiar with political workings have tried to reassure us by saying that” both alarmist predictions and the more extreme public pronouncements of those expected (or who have already agreed) to lead the relevant ministries “is only idle talk”, and that the nature of coalition government is to moderate the more extreme ambitions of its individual members. However, “The breadth of views within previous coalition governments was an established fact; it was difficult and in some cases impossible to form a one-sided coalition government. Respect for the state’s institutions successfully kept their personal and political ambitions in check. This coalition is different. It has the support of a public that has been trained to dismiss the other side, and to despise and disparage the state institutions. A divided society produces a divisive government. That is what has happened in the United States, and that is what has happened here as well. Now isn’t the time to set aside concerns.”

In a similar vein, Haaretz discusses Chanamel Dorfman, Itamar Ben Gvir’s likely choice as chief of staff in his National Security ministry. Likely to join Ben Gvir in assuming wide-ranging authority over the Israel Police, Dorfman has previously referred to the force as “rotten,” “racist,” “mafia,” an “organization of a culture of lies”, and “the most antisemitic police in the world”. The paper also alleges that Dorfman has previously been “the target of investigation by the Shin Bet’s department that investigates Jewish citizens”, while columnist Anshel Pfeffer argues that Ben Gvir’s own likely reforms of law enforcement “may well find favour with a significant number of serving officers. Israel’s police force won’t become a more efficient or disciplined law enforcement agency under Ben-Gvir. It will become more aggressive, violent and lawless – because all these elements are already embedded within it, and the new minister will be out there with populist promises to ‘give the cops the backing they need,’ urging his officers on… You just have to see how Ben-Gvir has been greeted in recent weeks by police officers on the street to understand that his message has already been received loud and clear by the rank and file. They like the idea that a party leader whose election slogan was ‘Who are the landlords?’ actually wanted to be their minister.”

Kan Radio reports the news that the far-right Noam faction’s sole MK, Avi Maoz, is to be handed roles as deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and as head of the Jewish National Identity Authority. Both Yediot Ahronot and Maariv cover the angry response of opposition parties to the news. Concern focusses on Maoz’s views on gender equality and his record of hostility to members of both non-Orthodox strains of Judaism and Israel’s LGBT community, with Labor leader Merav Michaeli quoted lamenting that an “age of darkness” beckons with the elevation of a “racist, chauvinist and homophobe. The stomach turns.”

Kan Radio also reports that the Shas party is seeking absolute settlement of the question of its leader Aryeh Deri’s ability to hold high office before the swearing in of the new government. With anyone convicted of an offence involving “moral turpitude” barred from holding a cabinet office, Shas seeks an amendment to the Basic Law: Government stipulating that only in cases where a custodial sentence is imposed will such a rule take effect. Such a change would ensure that Deri’s 2021 suspended sentence and NIS 180,000 (£43,343) fine following a conviction for tax offences did not preclude him serving in cabinet.