In the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman asks: “Why the new nationalists love Israel”. A trip to Jerusalem, he argues, has become almost compulsory for today’s ‘strongman’ leaders. Rachman stipulates that while the clouds are gathering at home for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they are lifting overseas. Israel is benefiting from the rise of a new generation of nationalist-populist political leaders — from Washington to Delhi, and from Budapest to Brasília — who ardently admire the Jewish state. This change in the international political atmosphere has created new breathing space for a country that has long feared international isolation and trade boycotts.

The Independent reports that an Israeli watchdog claimed it has found a network of social media bots disseminating messages in support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of next week’s elections. Noam Rotem and Yuval Adam, two researchers operating the Big Bots Project, said in a report that they uncovered hundreds of fake accounts spreading messages in support of Netanyahu’s Likud Party and smearing his opponents.

The Times and the Independent report that Shamima Begum, the British schoolgirl who ran away to join ISIS, has said she has accepted she will probably never return to the UK – but insisted she was “brainwashed” by the terrorist group. The Times reports that speaking for the first time since the death of her third baby in March, the 19-year-old said she “really regretted everything” and asked for a second chance. “Since I left Baghuz I really regretted everything I did, and I feel like I want to go back to the UK for a second chance to start my life over again,” she said. “I was brainwashed. I came here believing everything that I had been told, while knowing little about the truths of my religion.” Officials from the Kurdish administration running from the al-Roj camp say Ms Begum is fast emerging from her radicalised condition, and that her preferred company in the camp are women disaffected from their time as jihadi wives in the caliphate.

The Guardian reports that a US woman who survived an attack by the Egyptian military on a group of tourists is now fighting to prevent the sale of the US-made weaponry that left her permanently scarred. April Corley from San Diego and her Mexican boyfriend Rafael Bejarano were traveling with a tour group in Egypt’s White Desert in September 2015 when they were attacked by the Egyptian military, who later claimed they mistook the group for jihadist militants. “I was doing cartwheels in the sand, Rafael was taking pictures of me. Then all of a sudden it felt like I was thrown to the ground, and Rafael wasn’t near me anymore. There was just…black, black all over the sand,” she said. Corley described how the tourists scrambled for shelter as an Apache attack helicopter circled overhead, firing at them with rockets and 30mm machine guns for several hours – even while their guides desperately waved a white flag.

The Times reports that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is facing the biggest challenge to his 16-year rule after the opposition seized control of Turkey’s urban powerhouses in local elections. The secularist Republican People’s Party, or CHP, the main opposition, ousted Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), in Ankara and Istanbul, the biggest cities, both held by Islamist parties since 1994. It also held on to Izmir, the third biggest city, and won several other major centres including Antalya and Mersin.

In the Financial Times, David Gardner writes that Turkish President Erdogan’s power is waning amidst a significant defeat in local polls. In a two-month-long nationwide marathon of rallies, writes Gardner, Erdogan thundered that Sunday’s municipal elections were a “matter of survival” for Turkey. The threat: a web of foreign and domestic conspiracies to take down both the president and his country as a Muslim power. After losing the capital, Ankara, and very possibly Istanbul, the metropolis where Erdogan had his political start as a mayor in 1994, he cannot feel that he won this battle.

In the Telegraph, Raf Sanchez writes: “Erdogan has been chastened by the election results, but he’s not going anywhere”. Sanchez argues that since he emerged from prison in 1998 after being jailed for reading an Islamist poem, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has come first in every single national election. It is hard to overstate his record as an election winner. While Erdogan may be prepared to accept defeat in local elections, his party is more likely to deploy dirty tricks if control of the presidency or parliament is at stake. Their defeat last night may only strengthen their resolve to win the next election by any means necessary. The results in Istanbul and Ankara should be seen for what they are: a hopeful reminder that the battle for Turkish democracy is not yet lost.

In the Financial Times, Chloe Cornish writes that despite the territorial defeat of ISIS, Sinjar’s exiled Yazidis are still a long way from returning home, with northern Iraq too unstable for rebuilding to begin.

The Guardian reports that according to the Washington Post, the children of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi have received multimillion-dollar homes and are being paid thousands of dollars per month by the kingdom’s authorities. The payments to his four children – two sons and two daughters – “are part of an effort by Saudi Arabia to reach a long-term arrangement with Khashoggi family members, aimed in part at ensuring that they continue to show restraint in their public statements”, the Post said. The houses given to the Khashoggi children are located in the port city of Jeddah and are worth up to $4m, the newspaper reported. Salah, the eldest of the children, plans to continue living in the kingdom, while the others, who live in the United States, are expected to sell the homes, the paper said. In addition to the properties, the children are receiving $10,000 or more per month and may also receive larger payments that could amount to tens of millions of dollars each, according to the report.

The Guardian reports that Saudi Arabia’s state oil company has emerged as the most profitable business in the world, racking up profits of $111.1bn (£84.7bn) in 2018. According to a rare glimpse into its finances contained in a bond-offering document, Saudi Aramco made the profit on revenues of $355.9bn last year, as it produced 10.3m barrels per day of crude oil. The snapshot, published on Monday by the credit ratings agency Moody’s Investors Services, places the company in a league above Apple, which made a profit of $59.5bn in 2018. It means the company made more than four times the profits of other oil industry rivals last year, including the Anglo-Dutch company Royal Dutch Shell, which made $23bn, and the US firm Exxon Mobil, which made $21bn.

In the Financial Times, David Sheppard and Robert Smith report on Saudi Aramco. Whilst the organisation might have lifted the lid on its financials to reveal profits that dwarf even the largest energy majors, future investors in the state oil company — should it ever go public — still have a number of unanswered questions. The company’s first international bond prospectus revealed net income of $111bn last year — more than Apple and Alphabet made combined in 2018 — and enough cash on hand to assuage any doubts about its ability to finance the $69bn purchase of Sabic, the state-backed petrochemical company. However, if Aramco wants to position itself as a supersized rival to the likes of Royal Dutch Shell or ExxonMobil — and keep alive its ambition of going public — investors will want to learn about more than just the profits at the company. They will also want to know how much it needs to spend on everything from investments to government payments.

The Telegraph reports that Middle Eastern payments processing company Network International will float on the London Stock Exchange at a valuation of up to £2.3bn, providing a major uplift to Europe’s capital markets amid an otherwise tepid market. The company confirmed an offer price of between 395p and 495p for the 25-year-old company, valuing it at between £1.9bn and £2.3bn. The Dubai-headquartered company operates in more than 50 countries across the Middle East and Africa and allows companies to accept digital payments either in their shops or through desktop computers and smartphones. The offer price comes after Mastercard agreed to invest $300m in the Middle Eastern company, becoming a cornerstone investor in the float.

The Independent reports that floods and heavy rains across four countries in the Middle East and Asia have left at least 86 people dead, displaced tens of thousands, and added fresh misery to people in impoverished rural areas long suffering from drought. Unusually heavy rains mixed with melting mountain snows and struck parched lands unable to absorb water with disastrous results in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Some 400 villages and towns across 15 Iranian provinces have been flooded following weeks of torrential downpours, said Iran’s interior minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli on Monday, as more rains were predicted for the next two days. At least 44 people have been killed in heavy rains and flooding that have battered Iran, with tens of thousands of families displaced.

Reuters reports that on Monday, Iran said US sanctions were impeding aid workers from sending helicopters to flood-hit regions of the country because of the poor state of the national helicopter fleet. The country has announced an emergency situation in southern provinces threatened by flooding and has evacuated dozens of villages as forecasters predicted more of the heavy rains that have killed more than 45 people. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a tweet that US sanctions were “impeding aid efforts by #IranianRedCrescent to all communities devastated by unprecedented floods. Blocked equipment includes relief choppers: This isn’t just economic warfare; it’s economic TERRORISM.”

The Israeli media continue to report the Yedioth Ahronoth and New York Times story yesterday about a network of fake Twitter accounts supporting the Likud and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Several complaints were lodged with the police, the State Comptroller’s Office and the Central Elections Committee by politicians and watchdog organisations demanding an investigation. Prime Minister Netanyahu held a press conference in which he dismissed the allegations as “libel” and invited Giora Ezra, the owner of a Twitter account under the name “Captain George,” which was cited by the study as being one of the fake accounts in the alleged network, to refute the allegations.

Israel Hayom runs a series of articles titled “I’m a bot,” that were written by the paper’s columnists, in an attempt to discredit the study.

The authors of the original article discussing the study, Ronen Bergman and Inbal Tvizer write in Yediot Ahronoth that “After the article was published, several of the Twitter account owners blocked access to their tweets, while others deleted tweets. More importantly, Twitter chose to block some of the accounts. That is an unusual course of action by the network, which is only taken in the event that Twitter’s supervisors conclude that there are grounds to believe that the network has been used either inappropriately or illegally.” They reiterate that “Out of the hundreds of fake users, only a handful were found to be operating under their real names. The allegation isn’t that they constitute a “network of bots” but, rather, a coordinated and synchronised network that is operated by real people and which disseminates propaganda in the service of the Likud and Netanyahu, and against his opponents.”

Also in Yediot Ahronoth, Ben-Dror Yemini writes that: “The fact that an account named “Captain George” is real, and that Netanyahu celebrated that at a press conference with him, doesn’t change the fact that this is a huge and organised campaign that hovers like a cloud over social media. And this “captain,” it turns out, is a Kahanist, a serial spreader of racist and other nauseating content. Have you reached the point of having lost all shame, Mr. Prime Minister? Are these your propagandists?”

In Haaretz, Chemi Shalev discusses the response to the report: “The brouhaha is essentially much ado about nothing, a filler for the temporary vacuum in the election campaign. The number of Twitter users in Israel, even if one accepts the company’s claim of dramatic growth in recent years, is far more modest than in other countries, comprising no more than 100,000 users… Nonetheless, one prominent reason for the hubbub surrounding Bergman’s report of the dissemination of fake news and unsubstantiated slander is the analogy to Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign. The possibility that Netanyahu is using similar underhanded methods comes in the wake of a growing perception that Trump and his campaign are serving as role models for the Israeli prime minister. From fake accounts to slimy insults against rivals and a blatant disregard for actual facts, Netanyahu seems to have adopted Trump not only as the greatest friend Israel has ever had but as a personal and political role model as well. His fans don’t mind, but opponents abide by the rule: Tell me whom you emulate, and I’ll tell you who you really are.”

Also in Haaretz, Yossi Verter describes how Netanyahu has turned this to his advantage: “For some reason, the “Gantzists,” for whom the Times and Yediot reports couldn’t have come at a better time, are heading into the last week of the campaign seeming less sure of themselves than the alleged culprit, Netanyahu. The fact that Netanyahu is the No.1 campaigner is well known. There is no lemon that he cannot turn into lemonade; there is no garbage he cannot recycle into gold. With fake social media accounts or without them, polls show he is getting closer to a fifth term as prime minister. But all the Captains in the world won’t be able to save him from the complications he can expect during coalition negotiations.”

In other news, Maariv reports that Israel has warned that Hezbollah’s missile project will have consequences. During his recent visit to Beirut, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly warned the Lebanese government that Hezbollah and Iran have set up a new covert factory for precision missiles on Lebanese soil.

Haaretz features on its front page an analysis of the municipal elections in Turkey. Zvi Barel writes that “President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party won Sunday’s local elections in Turkey, but Erdogan lost. That’s the paradox in which the president placed himself when he said that these elections polls were a vote of confidence in him and in his policies, and would shape Turkey’s future.” Barel adds that: “After inflating the significance of these elections, Erdogan took two very personal hits, in Ankara and in Istanbul. In both cities, he had appointed the party’s candidates,” concluding that while the small margin of defeat doesn’t “seem like the stuff of tectonic shock in support for AKP, but the symbolism of losing control in both cities will reverberate throughout Turkey and beyond.”

Army Radio reports that President Reuven Rivlin, who is currently visiting Canada, talked about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, saying: “Hamas is really ruling the two million really miserable people of Gaza that we feel is in the interest of Israel to give them a better life.” Security cabinet member Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked commented on the report in the Hamas-affiliated Al-Quds that said that the truce arrangement would include a prisoner exchange, saying she was unaware of any such deal. She also criticised the Prime Minister for not convening the security cabinet to discuss the truce arrangement with Hamas.

Army Radio reports that a Palestinian man in his twenties was killed last night by IDF fire in the Kalandiya refugee camp near Ramallah in the course of violent disturbances.