The scene shocked many and highlighted the violence of this year’s olive harvest in the Israeli-occupied West Bank: a young masked man clubs an older Palestinian woman picking olives, who then collapses on the ground.

The incident during an attack by Israeli settlers, filmed by an American journalist, took place in the town of Turmus Ayya near Ramallah, a hotspot of violence this year.

“Everybody was fleeing because the settlers attacked suddenly, maybe 100 of them,” witness Yasser Alkam told AFP, adding that one Swedish activist also had his arm and leg broken by settlers.

Alkam, a Turmus Ayya city official, said that the woman, 55-year-old Um Saleh Abu Aliya, was struck as she was waiting for her son to drive her away from a mob of settlers.

“Fighting back would only bring more violence, sometimes with the army’s backing,” lamented Nael al-Qouq, a Turmus Ayya farmer who was prevented from reaching his olive trees that same day.

Expanded settlements

Not far from the scene, an Israeli flag flapped in the wind at a settlement outpost, illegal even under Israeli law.

The army eventually arrived in Turmus Ayya and dispersed the crowd with tear gas, an AFP journalist witnessed.

But not before the youths who descended on the village burned at least two cars.

The head of the West Bank’s Israeli police, Moshe Pinchi, told his district commanders to find the man who attacked Abu Aliya, according to a leaked WhatsApp message reported by Israeli media.

The Israeli army told AFP that it “works in coordination with the Israel Police to enforce the law concerning Israelis involved in such incidents”.

But Turmus Ayya is far from an isolated case, and AFP journalists have witnessed at least six different instances of Palestinians being denied access to their land, attacked by settlers, or being victims of vandalism during the 2025 olive harvest.

Clashes in rural areas reached new heights this year, prompted by ever-expanding Israeli settlements and a growing number of settlers — not all of whom engage in violence against Palestinians.

More than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

All settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.

‘Uprooted’

Near Turmus Ayya, in the village of Al-Mughayyir, one villager was prevented from harvesting altogether.

“I own ten dunams (one hectare) of olives. All I have left are the olive trees in the garden of the house … They uprooted it all,” Abdul Latif Abu Aliya, 55, told AFP.

Abu Aliya’s land borders a road on the other side of which three trailers make up a recently-installed settlement outpost.

After a settler was injured during an altercation near Abu Aliya’s house, an army order called for the trees his father and grandfather planted to be uprooted.

Bulldozers then pushed mounds of soil and roots halfway up the field and 100 metres from the family house, making a barrier that Abu Aliya and his family do not cross for fear of being attacked by settlers.

Faced with unprecedented violence during this year’s olive season, the Palestinian Authority’s agriculture minister called for the international community to protect farmers and pickers.

“It’s the worst season in the last 60 years,” Agriculture Minister Rizq Salimia told journalists, adding that this year’s crop was already bad due to poor climate.

Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN’s Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territories, condemned “severe attacks” during this year’s harvest and deplored “dangerous levels of impunity” for perpetrators.

The annual harvest, once a peaceful gathering for the occupied West Bank’s families, has in recent years turned into a series of increasingly violent confrontations involving Israeli settlers, troops, Palestinian harvesters and foreign activists.

Identity marker

The season began in October and will last until mid-November, as Palestinians across the West Bank harvest olives from trees they see as deeply connected to their national identity.

The West Bank boasts over eight million olive trees for three million Palestinians, according to the agriculture ministry’s 2021 census.

Every autumn, Palestinians farmers, but also city folk whose families own a few trees, head out into the fields to pick olives, mostly by hand.

The UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, said that 27 West Bank villages were affected by harvest-related attacks in the week of October 7 to 13 alone.

“The incidents included attacks on harvesters, theft of crops and harvesting equipment, and vandalism of olive trees, resulting in casualties, property damage, or both,” OCHA said.

• Trade talks scrapped after Ontario anti-tariff ad airs.
• Ontario to pull ad Monday; Trump wants immediate removal.
• Ad quoted 1987 Reagan warning against high tariffs.

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump slammed Canada for playing “dirty” Friday as a row over an advertisement featuring former leader Ronald Reagan that prompted Trump to scrap trade talks showed no sign of abating.

The Canadian province of Ontario said it would pull the offending anti-tariff ad on Monday so that negotiations could restart, after Trump alleged that the ad misrepresented the views of fellow Republican Reagan.

But Trump showed no sign of backing down, saying Ontario should not have let it air during the first two games this weekend of baseball’s World Series.

Adding extra spice to the row, the World Series features a Canadian team, the Toronto Blue Jays, facing a US team, the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Blue Jays thrashed the Dodgers 11-4 in the first game on Friday.

“Canada got caught cheating on a commercial, can you believe it?” Trump told reporters before heading on a trip to Asia.

“And I heard they were pulling the ad — I didn’t know they were putting it on a little bit more. They could have pulled it tonight,” Trump added.

After a reporter said the ad would be pulled on Monday, Trump replied: “That’s dirty play. But I can play dirtier than they can.”

Trump announced on his Truth Social network on Thursday that he had “terminated” all negotiations with Canada over what he called the “fake” ad campaign.

Less than 24 hours later, Ontario premier Doug Ford said he was suspending the ads after talking to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney about the spiralling row with Washington.

“In speaking with Prime Minister Carney, Ontario will pause its US advertising campaign effective Monday so that trade talks can resume,” Ford said in a post on X.

‘Crooked ad’

The Canadian ad used quotes from a radio address on trade that Reagan delivered in 1987, in which he warned against ramifications that he said high tariffs on foreign imports could have on the US economy.

It cited Reagan as saying that “high tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars,” a quote that matches a transcript of his speech on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library’s website.

The Ronald Reagan foundation wrote on X on Thursday that the Ontario government had used “selective audio and video” and that it was reviewing its legal options.

Trump said on Friday night that it was a “crooked ad”, adding that “they know Ronald Reagan loved tariffs.”

Trump and Carney are both set to be at a dinner on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in South Korea on Wednesday.

But Trump said he had no plans to meet Carney.

The latest twist in relations between the United States and Canada came just over two weeks after Carney visited Trump at the White House to seek a relaxation of stiff US tariffs.

On Friday, Carney had sought to calm the situation, saying that his country was ready to resume “progress” on trade talks “when the Americans are ready.”

Canada has “to focus on what we can control, and realise what we cannot control,” he added as he headed to Asia.

Trump’s global sectoral tariffs — particularly on steel, aluminium, and autos — have hit Canada hard, forcing job losses and squeezing businesses.

For now, the United States and Canada adhere to an existing North American trade deal called the USMCA, which ensures that roughly 85% of cross-border trade in both directions remains tariff-free.

But in a speech on Wednesday, Carney said that the United States has raised “its tariffs to levels last seen during the Great Depression.”

“Our economic strategy needs to change dramatically,” Carney added, saying the process “will take some sacrifices and some time.”

Three separate controversies involving leaked text messages from private online group chats have rocked US political circles this month, revealing racist, antisemitic, and violent statements from figures across the ideological spectrum.

The messages — sent privately but now public — include racial slurs, praise for Nazis, and threats of political violence, raising questions about why those involved felt comfortable expressing such views despite the risk of exposure and censure.

The online posts have also deepened concern among civil society groups and political language experts that violent rhetoric and racist hate speech are becoming normalised in America, particularly after decades of hard-fought civil rights victories that sought to dismantle such ideologies.

People have long expressed violent or racist views in private settings, but experts say the leaks of the text messages are noteworthy because they surfaced the unfiltered — and to many shocking — views of political figures.

A Politico report on October 14 revealed that a group of about a dozen Young Republican leaders had been sending racist and antisemitic messages to each other on Telegram between January and mid-August, referring to Black people as monkeys and with one declaring, “I love Hitler.”

On October 3, leaked texts published by National Review revealed that Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate to be Virginia’s top law enforcement official, sent a private text in 2022 saying a state Republican should be shot dead and that he would urinate on the graves of political opponents.

And this week, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead a federal watchdog agency, Paul Ingrassia, withdrew from consideration after he lost support among key Republican lawmakers following reports that he had described himself as having a “Nazi streak” in a private text message exchange.

Experts in online culture and political discourse, including a professor from the City University of New York and Alex Turvy, a sociologist who writes for publications including “Social Media and Society”, say the persistence of inflammatory group chats reflects a false sense of privacy and safety, despite the fact that the messages form a permanent record and can be leaked.

At the same time, members in group chats sometimes falsely assume they can trust their fellow participants when allegiances, ambitions, and motivations can shift over time, especially in politics, said Turvy.

“There is an illusion of intimacy,” Turvy said. “It feels like it’s private speech. But you’re betting that all of the members in the group chat are going to protect you forever.”

Provocative language

The experts said an increasingly powerful social media presence among more extreme elements of both parties, and a phenomenon — especially among younger people — to push rhetorical boundaries, have exacerbated private hate speech.

Reece Peck, an associate professor of media culture at the City University of New York, said Trump’s own rhetoric and attacks on progressive causes have led many conservatives to believe that language that would have been deemed unacceptable before Trump first took office in 2017 is now permissible.

While campaigning last year, Trump accused people in the US illegally of “poisoning the blood of the country.” As president, he has called some of them “criminals,” and described illegal border crossings as an “invasion,” while his White House has posted memes online that critics say have coarsened political rhetoric.

“They feel Trump has seized popular culture, and the Democrats are out of touch. The throughline is anti‑woke,” Peck said. “If you can be edgy – say something inappropriate – you establish group membership. That dynamic is central to Trumpism.”

Turvy said this is known as “Edgelord culture,” an online phenomenon where people deliberately post shocking or taboo content to stay relevant within the chat group.

The Black Conservative Federation, a grassroots group that sought to court Black voters for Trump’s second term, called on Republican leaders to denounce the Young Republican group chat texts “without hesitation or excuse.”

Hakeem Jefferson, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, also said Trump has helped “give some cover” to some of the speech contained in the texts.

“This is how the president of the United States speaks, and I do think it has opened a space for these people to mimic his behavior,” Jefferson said.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said, “President Trump is right to call out heinous criminal aliens who have invaded our country and have murdered innocent Americans.”

Jackson cited the case of a man in the US illegally who allegedly killed three people while driving a truck this week under the influence of drugs in California.

She said White House memes were successfully communicating Trump’s agenda against people in the country illegally who are committing crimes against Americans.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the content of the Young Republican group chat and the alleged private text messages by Ingrassia.

Trump has criticised Jones for his text messages, saying that he shouldn’t be allowed to run for office.

“You would think he’s totally discredited – anybody would be put in prison for what he said,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on October 19.

Firings, resignations

The text scandals brought widespread condemnation from across the political spectrum, although Vice President JD Vance – while calling the Young Republican texts “truly disturbing” – also accused critics of “pearl clutching” and referred to the chat participants as “kids”. Most were in their 20s and 30s.

Vance instead drew attention on X to the texts by Jones.

Jones, in his 2022 text, said former Virginia Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert should get “two bullets to the head,” and mused about his children dying in their mother’s arms.

Jones’ campaign referred Reuters to a statement he issued on October 3 in which he said he was “embarrassed, ashamed, and sorry” about his texts and had sought to apologise to Gilbert and his family.

A Washington Post-Schar School poll of Virginia voters released on Thursday showed that support for Jones has tumbled since the texts were made public, and a race he had led in public opinion polls is now a tie.

Many of the Young Republicans involved in their group chat have since lost their jobs as political aides or lost their positions as Young Republican leaders. One, a state senator from Vermont, has resigned.

Republican group disbanded

Across 2,900 pages of chats, Black people were referred to as “the watermelon people,” one member talked about raping enemies, and there was talk of sending people to the gas chamber.

Several members of the group were from the New York Young Republicans Club, which was disbanded by the state’s Republican executive committee last week. At least two members from the group, which also included members from states including Kansas, Arizona and Vermont, have apologised.

Hayden Padgett, chairman of the Young Republican National Federation, referred Reuters to a statement the group released on X on October 3, in which its board of directors called on all involved to resign.

“Such behavior is disgraceful, unbecoming of any Republican, and stands in direct opposition to the values our movement represents,” the statement said.

Ingrassia, a former right-wing podcaster, was Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates claims of retaliation against government whistleblowers.

His nomination imploded after Politico reported on Monday that Ingrassia told Republican operatives and social media influencers in a text chat last year that “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time.” He also said the January holiday celebrating Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. “should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs.”

A lawyer for Ingrassia, Edward Andrew Paltzik, said in a statement to Reuters that the messages could have been manipulated. He added that if they were authentic, they “clearly read as self-deprecating and satirical humor.”