Jasmine Jobson goes the distance as the British-Somalian boxer battling pain from her past and her family’s disapproval in a heavyweight, tick-the-boxes production

The true-life success story of boxer Ramla Ali is confidently told in this capable picture from screenwriter Ursula Rani Sarma and documentary director Anthony Wonke, in his feature-film debut. Ali is the British-Somali boxer who escaped to the UK from the Somali civil war with her family as a refugee, and in 2021 became the first person to box for Somalia at Olympic Games. The boxing significance of her last name is actually not mentioned in the film – and I never noticed it until it flashed up in a kind of “fight card” intertitle before her first competitive bout.

She is fiercely played by Jasmine Jobson, from TV’s Top Boy; her supportive white Muslim-convert husband Richard – a hugely important figure in enabling Ramla to break away from her disapproving family and do as she wants – is played by Finn Cole, and her abusive trainer Clinton is Gershwyn Eustache Jr. This is a film that takes you through the classic boxing-movie scenes fluently enough: the nervous first appearance in the gym, the overbearing quasi-parental coach, the heartstopping fight debut. It was good to see the traditional closeup of post-fight sore fists in the ice-bucket. All in all, the film works better than Giant, the recent biopic of British-Yemeni boxer Prince Naseem, who is in fact briefly mentioned here.

Readers respond to articles on the Green party’s motion

As ever, Jonathan Freedland is on the money in his article (The Green party’s anti-Zionism motion is yet another attempt to tell Jews how we should think, 3 October). As a non-religious Jew-ish Londoner, I am appalled at the passing of the motion to declare Zionism as a form of racism, and I am seriously considering leaving the Green party as a result.

While I condemn the Israeli government’s actions against the Palestinian people, and I am not a Zionist myself, Zionism as defined by the motion is only one political interpretation and completely ignores ancient religious and cultural definitions held by many Jews who also condemn the current Israeli government.

It’s easier to blame brutes and sadists for extreme violence. But as we see in the documentary, modern genocides are fueled by people who are uncomfortably recognizable

Werner Best, a senior SS official and jurist who helped organize the Nazi death squads that murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews, is also known for his statement: “We must destroy the enemy without hating him.” He belonged to a younger generation of Nazi technocrats, who despised the foul-mouthed, beer-bellied, brown-shirted “old fighters” of the Nazi party in the 1920s, and believed in organizing genocide neatly and dispassionately. After the fall of the regime, Best escaped justice for the rest of his long life, dying peacefully in Germany in 1989. His chilling statement came to my mind while I was watching the film NAZA.

I grew up in Tel Aviv and have visited there often in recent years. That is why the interviews with 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers, which make up this documentary, felt strangely familiar. The conversations are conducted at night on rooftops, and the camera scans the cityscape, lingering on apartment windows as their inhabitants watch TV and make dinner. The landscape was intimately recognizable, and I felt a natural affinity with those people living their lives. I also recognized the way the interviewees talked – their speech patterns and choice of words. They reminded me of my son, who served more than a decade ago in the intelligence unit many of them might have belonged to.

While Israel’s actions against Palestinians intensify public anger, the bloc remains paralysed along familiar fault lines

When the British government announced sweeping sanctions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements and condemned “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank by state-backed “settler terrorists”, some EU diplomats hoped this dramatic shift in UK government policy towards Israel would have a galvanising effect on the rest of Europe. So far, it has not.

Although France and Canada joined the UK in pledging to ban goods from illegal settlements and impose sanctions on “those who facilitate them or profit from them”, there has not yet been a wider ripple effect.

Matsadaash staff allege torture and forced confessions after being held on charges of working for Muslim Brotherhood

Egyptian journalists are planning a new protest in Cairo this weekend after six colleagues were charged with terrorism offences amid allegations they had been tortured in police detention.

Last week, Egyptian authorities arrested the journalists, from the independent factchecking and investigative platform Matsadaash, accusing them in a statement of being unlicensed and producing false news on behalf of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

Attack is deadliest in kingdom since it launched major military offensive with allies against Houthis in Yemen

Three Saudi citizens have been killed and several other people were wounded in attacks targeting Riyadh ⁠airport for which Yemen’s Houthis claimed responsibility, Saudi officials have said.

The attack late on Thursday was the deadliest in Saudi Arabia since the kingdom and allied forces in neighbouring Yemen launched a major military offensive last weekend against the Iran-backed Houthis.

Embassies post links to hastily produced online film echoing style of real Guardian documentary about mass killings of Gaza civilians

The Israeli government is promoting an online film project that mimics the style of NAZA, the award-winning documentary that details Israel’s mass killings of civilians in Gaza, in an attempt to counter the real film’s findings.

The real documentary, directed by the Oscar-winning film-makers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, and produced by the Guardian, is in cinemas and will be shown in more than 50 countries.

The escalating violence reflects deep domestic rifts – but is fuelled by broader geopolitical power games

When the Nobel peace laureate is announced on Friday, the committee will be hoping that its choice ages better than 2019’s. Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, won the prize for ending the 20-year border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea – signing a peace agreement with President Isaias Afwerki. A year later, their new relationship facilitated a war with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that killed as many as 600,000 people, displaced millions more, led to atrocities by both sides, and pushed Tigrayans into famine.

Both sides bear responsibility for failing to properly implement the deal that ended that conflict in 2022, and the African Union and US did little to ensure that a piece of paper became a durable settlement. Now violence has resurged in northern Ethiopia, and old foes are forming bizarre new pacts. Last month, seven Ethiopian regional groups announced an “Alliance for Survival” to remove the federal government. Mr Abiy’s coalition is held together by his patronage, but so far may be faring better than his rivals, united solely by shared loathing of him and riven by deep disputes. The TPLF, which controls Tigray, has previously battled the Fano militia of Amhara, and their territorial dispute endures. Ethiopia accuses Eritrea – previously accused of atrocities against Tigrayan civilians – of backing the rebel alliance. Despite Asmara’s denials, there are multiple reports of Eritrean troops in Tigray.

Consulate targeted in sanctions spat has unusual diplomatic status that clashes with Israel’s ambitions to fully annex the city

Israel’s attempt to close the British consulate general in Jerusalem was primarily designed to deter London from imposing sanctions on settlements in occupied Palestine. But it also served the current government’s ambitions to fully annex Jerusalem as a national capital, diplomatic and legal experts said.

The UK mission to the city has an unusual diplomatic status, which dates back to before the founding of the state of Israel, rooted in a vision of Jerusalem as a neutral enclave under international control.

The combination of Iranian, Russian and Chinese aggression is deeply worrying: just how much more concerned about security should the country be?

The first time the window-rattling roar of a B-1 bomber woke me up this summer, I thought for one crazed second we were under attack. By the second time, I’d learned to recognise the sound of US planes taking off from their base at RAF Fairford for what it was: a reminder that although Britain wants no part in this war with Iran, we cannot quite escape the consequences.

We’ll feel them at the petrol pump, or in the supermarket this autumn, or in this winter’s heating bills. But living under the flight path adds an extra edge to it. The skies finally fell silent last week, but only because the bombers have been hastily summoned home after an alleged terrorist plot to attack Fairford, in which (according to the prime minister) there are “strong indications that Iran played a part”. If Fairford is now a target of war, did that threat disappear when the Americans did? Nobody knows.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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Parviz Sabeti denies allegations he led Savak intelligence agency under shah and directed torture of thousands

The alleged “chief torturer” for the deposed Shah of Iran is a step closer to trial for human rights abuses after a Florida federal judge rejected his demand to halt a lawsuit brought by three former political prisoners.

Parviz Sabeti, who was reported last year to have lived in a quiet upscale central Florida community, is accused of being the former head of Savak, the shah’s secret police and intelligence agency. The plaintiffs say they discovered his whereabouts only after a photo of Sabeti at a 2023 protest against the Iranian government was posted on social media by his daughter.

Global bond market sell-off continues and stocks fall amid reports White House has asked to see options for more strikes against Iran

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Oil prices have risen sharply amid fears about escalating tensions in the Middle East and a squeeze on production from the threat of a hurricane off the US coast.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose by 5% to $105.3 a barrel on Thursday, triggering a wave of selling in the global bond and stock markets.

Foreign secretary says former consulate general will remain independent, operational ⁠and serving Palestinian people

The foreign secretary, ⁠Ed Miliband, has said Britain’s consulate general ⁠building in ⁠East Jerusalem ​will not be closing but will ⁠be known as a UK mission, remaining independent, operational ⁠and serving Palestinian people.

Israel had ​ordered the ‌British consulate ‌in East Jerusalem to close ‌on Thursday over the UK’s plans to impose sanctions on settlements in the West Bank.

People tell of lives changed beyond recognition after the 7 October attacks by Hamas three years ago and the subsequent Israeli offensive

Ahmed Ishtaiwi has six chairs. They are cheap and plastic and battered, but they are among the 43-year-old driver and mechanic’s most valuable possessions.

Steven Kay says Britain should act independently and in a role consistent with its status as a member of the UN security council

Patrick Wintour’s report (Libyan unity talks upended as warlord’s son linked to drone attacks on fuel facilities, 3 October) should not surprise anyone concerned with the attempts to end conflict and seek the unification of Libya. Saddam Haftar, like his father, Khalifa, has been backed by the US to support its aims and ambitions in Libya. There is no logic, if democratic elections are the goal, to be backing a member of the Haftar clan for any role in the future of Libya.

The Libyan population want nothing more than peace, security and to use constructively the wealth that could be generated from their extensive natural resources for the improvement of their society. Instead, their resources are being dissipated in corruption and conflict, a state of affairs that benefits only the warmongers.

Hamam al-Hammami spent 175 days in New Zealand until May 2019, as Australian Jewish group calls for full investigation into his time in Melbourne

New Zealand authorities have launched their own investigation into the flydubai co-pilot who allegedly tried to hijack an Israel-bound plane, after police confirmed he underwent flight training there about a year after he abandoned a degree in Australia.

Disaster was narrowly averted on 30 September when passengers and crew intervened to stop the alleged attempt of the co-pilot, Hamam al-Hammami, 29, to take control of a flight to Tel Aviv with 182 people onboard.

I was sentenced to three years in jail for insulting government institutions. Now I am free, I will carry on fighting for the women I met in prison

‘Why don’t you just drive your tuk-tuk and do your work?” the judge asked me after videos from my social media accounts were shown during my court hearing. I had spoken on TikTok and Facebook about issues in Somalia that concerned me: forced evictions in the capital, Mogadishu, high fuel prices and nepotism in government.

I had described how, when I applied for work in hospitals and government departments, I was told on three occasions that I’d have to give a sexual favour in return.

A toxic debate over anti-Zionism leaves the Green leader looking like a passenger in the movement that carried him to the top

When Donald Trump calls someone a socialist he is not using the word in the same way that, say, Zohran Mamdani does. The mayor of New York espouses democratic socialism as a mission of equitable distribution of wealth and opportunity. The US president says socialism only pretends to be democratic “because it sounds so nice”; that “it’s really communism you’re talking about” and that people such as Mamdani pose “the biggest threat to our nation … since its founding”.

People who despise an idea, seeing it as the manifestation of everything wicked, cannot be expected to define it accurately. As with the radical right and socialism, so it is with the left and Zionism.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

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Conflict between UN-recognised government and Iran-backed Houthis has impacts far beyond country’s borders

Yemen has been plunged into a civil war that has extended to one of the world’s most vital maritime choke points and to Saudi Arabian oil sites.

Jaafar Ashtiyeh was covering violence against olive farmers when settlers set upon him with the butts of their rifles

Armed Israeli settlers beat a photographer in the presence of Israeli soldiers, hospitalising him, as he covered worsening settler violence against olive farmers in the occupied West Bank.

Jaafar Ashtiyeh, a 58-year-old veteran photographer for Agence France-Presse in Palestine, was assaulted by a group of settlers, who beat him with the butts of their rifles, despite him being marked as press. He was assaulted in view of about a dozen armed Israeli soldiers.

Israeli communities shattered by Hamas massacres are torn between rebuilding their lives and remembering lost friends and relatives

Keith Siegel spent many of his long hours in Hamas captivity in Gaza etching everything that happened after 7 October 2023 into his memory. For 484 days, he recited to himself every place he was held, the dates he was moved and every attack or humiliation he endured or witnessed.

He aimed to store intelligence that could help Israeli forces free other hostages if he was released, to keep track of time as the days slid by and be able to tell his family what happened to him. Now his body is free, but he cannot loosen those memories.

Zack Polanski must defend Palestinian freedom while reassuring Jewish members and showing that his party can handle disagreements

Last year, the UN general assembly endorsed the New York Declaration supporting two states in the Holy Land by 142 votes to 10. Those voting against included the US and Israel. The wider international diplomatic consensus rests on a 2002 UN security council resolution, which explicitly affirmed a two-state vision for Israel and Palestine. Saudi Arabia’s then crown prince said peace required “two equal parties” and could not survive “oppression and humiliation”. His words remain as relevant now as then.

The Green party has now rejected that two-state framework in favour of a one-state solution. The Guardian strongly disagrees with this move. Peace needs to acknowledge reality: the latest polls in Gaza and the West Bank suggest that a majority support a two-state formula based on the 1967 borders compared with just 10% who back a single democratic state with equal rights. The European Greens also disagree with the new direction of their English and Welsh sister party. The EU-wide representatives argue that the policy is incompatible with previously agreed positions. Europe’s Greens – which include the centrist German party – condemn “the genocide against Palestinians” and call for sanctions against Israel’s government.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Journalist Amal Khalil was killed in April in what colleagues described as a sustained attack by Israeli forces. Rescuers attempted to dig her out of the rubble of a building that had been targeted by Israeli forces, who had also prevented them from providing life-saving assistance.

Beirut-based Guardian correspondent Will Christou explains how investigations by Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International and Legal Agenda show that Israel deliberately and directly attacked Khalil and her colleague Zeinab Faraj, with apparent knowledge that they were journalists. The organisations called for the attacks to be investigated as war crimes, while HRW called for states to halt arms sales to Israel and put targeted sanctions on Israeli officials responsible for ongoing crimes.

Deliberately attacking journalists is a war crime. Israel has killed at least 15 journalists in Lebanon and 210 in Gaza since 2023, according to the UN human rights office.

Israel said it 'regrets any harm caused to journalists', and that they were killed 'as part of a series of events' during which two Hezbollah military operatives were killed

• Israeli strike that killed journalist in Lebanon was war crime, say rights groups