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US President Donald Trump responded to alleged Iranian assassination threats, saying “1,000 missiles are locked and loaded” in a Truth Social post on Saturday,

“Orders have already been given, and the US Military is ready, willing, and able, for a one-year period of time, subject to extension, to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran,” warned Trump.

On Friday, Trump told the New York Post he left instructions for the US to retaliate if Iran succeeds in assassinating him. 

“I’ve left instructions, if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before,” the New York Post cited Trump as saying.

This comes a day after the Wall Street Journal wrote that Israel shared intelligence about an Iranian assassination plot with the US president, though Trump subsequently disputed the report. 

“No, no, Israel came up with nothing,” Trump said, adding that he had been Iran’s primary target for “a long time.”

“It’s the way life is, you know,” he said. 

Trump left instructions in 2025

Trump previously stated that he had left instructions in the case of his assassination in January of 2025, saying that Iran would be “obliterated” if their assassins succeeded. 

However, the New York Times cited experts saying that a president cannot leave instructions for military action after his death. All authority would transfer to his successor, the new commander in chief. 

Iranian mourners call for Trump’s death

Trump’s claims come as Iranian crowds called for his death at the week-long funeral for Iran’s former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“I swear by the blood of the Supreme Leader, Trump, we will kill you!” they shouted, with women holding up placards reading “Kill Trump.”

The roads leading to the shrine were a sea of black-clad mourners on Thursday, some responding to shouted chants in praise of Khamenei and against Iran’s enemies, including the old revolutionary slogan of “Death to America.”

The New Israel Fund cited freedom of speech in pushing back Friday against a congressional investigation alleging that the US nonprofit violated its tax-exempt status by funding political campaign activity in Israel in 2019.

“NIF will not be deterred in our work to defend democracy, promote equality, and advance peace in Israel,” New Israel Fund CEO Mickey Gitzin said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “And we will stand firmly for the right of Jewish Americans to express their views, and their First Amendment rights through their philanthropic support of any and all charitable institutions in Israel and the United States.”

In a letter sent to the New Israel Fund Thursday, Reps. Jim Jordan and Jason Smith, Republican chairs of the House Judiciary and Ways and Means Committees, respectively, alleged that the nonprofit had provided “millions of dollars in funding to groups that engaged in political campaign activities in the 2019 Israeli elections.”

“Reports that the New Israel Fund engaged in prohibited political campaign activity – while telling the IRS that it did not – demonstrate the need for stronger enforcement,” Smith wrote in a post on X/Twitter. “The Ways and Means Committee will continue conducting rigorous oversight to protect American tax dollars and ensure that those who abuse our tax code are held accountable.”

According to a Jerusalem News Syndicate story the Judiciary Committee posted on its website, one of the alleged offenses includes bussing Bedouin citizens of Israel to the polls on election day. The criticism echoes Republican attacks on groups that assist and encourage Black voters to get to the polls in the United States.

The letter also alleged that the New Israel Fund had provided funding to Adalah, a group that provided legal representation to an alliance of Arab parties that “centered their campaign around ousting Prime Minister Netanyahu in favor of his opponent, Benny Gantz.”

A GOP-led House Judiciary Committee letter to two mainstream Jewish philanthropies, the Jewish Communal Fund and the PEF Israel Endowment Funds, also raised eyebrows in May when it appeared to accuse the groups of funding protests against the Netanyahu government’s proposed judicial overhaul. The groups are clearinghouses for donations to a wide range of groups, including those aligned with Netanyahu’s government.

‘Radical anti-government campaigns’

The May letter alleged that the philanthropies may have violated their nonprofit status by “funding groups engaged in radical anti-government campaigns in Israel.”

The New Israel Fund supports progressive Jewish and Arab organizations in Israel and is often criticized by the Israeli government and its allies in the United States.

“NIF adheres fully to both US and Israeli law as it relates to our charitable work and status,” Gitzin said. “That has always been the case and continues to be.”

Gitzin said that the House letter was “drawn heavily from a lawsuit filed against NIF that was dismissed in the Southern District of New York in 2021, and wherein the State of New York declined to intervene.”

‘Allegations entirely lack merit’

“NIF believed then, as we do now, that these allegations entirely lack merit,” Gitzin said.

The allegations by the Republican lawmakers drew quick condemnation by Jewish New York Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, who called their behavior “outrageous” in a post on X.

“Those seeking to undermine democracy on both sides of the ocean seem now to have found common cause,” Nadler wrote. “All people of good faith must rise up and oppose this ridiculous and meritless inquisition seeking to eviscerate American Jews’ fundamental First Amendment rights.”

Netanyahu has in different contexts welcomed US conservatives weighing in on Israeli internal politics. A conservative US nonprofit helped Netanyahu publish the Hebrew version of his autobiography just prior to the last election.

The IDF announced on Thursday that it held its first Arrowhead agility test in three years, reintroducing the multi-brigade fitness competition after a years-long hiatus.

Troops from the Paratroopers Brigade, Givati Brigade, Golani Brigade, Nahal Brigade, Kfir Brigade, Lotar Unit, and Refaim Unit competed in multiple events, including running, shooting, and Krav Maga.

The competition doubles as one of the last fitness tests the soldiers will face before finishing their training courses.

According to the IDF, this year’s competition differed from previous ones and was modeled after conditions similar to what they will encounter in the field.

This year, rather than having participants run on a flat course, soldiers ran on a course through forest and sand dunes, each carrying 20 kg. of weight. Soldiers also practiced running carrying stretchers together. 

At the end of the run, troops also immediately participated in shooting exercises.

The second part of the competition consisted of two Krav Maga practice scenarios. In one, soldiers were tested on skills such as defending against a fellow soldier, playing the role of an “attacker,” attempting to take their weapons and stab them.

The second part of the Krav Maga section was direct hand-to-hand combat.

At the end of the tests, each brigade is scored based on running times, shooting accuracy, and Krav Maga skills.

The overall winner of the competition was the Paratrooper Brigade, with the Givati Brigade in second place and the Lotar Unit in third.

Arrowhead competition adjusted to reflect modern battlefield conditions

The head of the IDF’s Training and Research at the Combat Capability Directorate, Major M., said that changes to the competition format were made to ensure soldiers were prepared for battlefield conditions before deployment.

“These changes are rooted in drawing lessons from prolonged combat,” he explained. “We realized that the things we were tested on in the past no longer illustrate what happens on the battlefield in the best way.”

Commander of the Combat Fitness Division, Col. (res.) Avi Dahan, further elaborated that the activities were designed to occur in quick succession to test the troops’ physical and mental resilience.

The debate over Iran’s missile arsenal has resurfaced following an argument that it is unfair to ask Iran to give up its missile capabilities while other countries in the region possess similar ones. 

And yet this line of reasoning overlooks a more fundamental question: Is the problem the existence of missiles held by states seeking to defend themselves, or a vast offensive arsenal built over decades that has become an instrument of regional influence and threat?

Herein lies the paradox. The issue is less about a mutual arms race between comparable actors and more about a strategic imbalance that has imposed itself on the region over decades, one that Iran’s neighbors are then expected to adapt to rather than seek to address or counterbalance.

Iran has not only built a massive missile program; it has turned missiles into a standalone strategic language, using them as a deterrent, a means of pressure, and a message of influence that reaches past its immediate borders. 

In contrast, for decades, the Gulf has been on the receiving end, buying defense while lacking the capacity to counterbalance the offensive threat on its own terms.

The deeper problem is that major powers manage this issue not by the logic of fairness or balance, but by the logic of leverage over the parties’ behavior. The Gulf ally is always told to exercise restraint because it is the actor whose conduct can be influenced. 

Iran, having imposed its missile program as a strategic fact, is managed through containment, negotiation, and risk management rather than through preventing the capability in the first place.

The Iranian attacks on Gulf states during the 2026 war laid bare this imbalance in its starkest form, showing that Gulf countries can become direct targets of missile strikes even when they are neither the architects of the war nor a principal party to it.

The UAE was the most striking example, hit by intense waves of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. The significance of these attacks lay not only in the volume of munitions but in the lesson they imparted: a stable, open Gulf state integrated into the global economy can find itself at the center of the confrontation when Iran seeks to widen the war’s costs for its adversaries.

A deeper truth emerged here. The attacks were more than a fleeting military event; they showed that economic stability and global openness offer no automatic immunity against the logic of missile power. They also showed that a Gulf state, however successful in its development or integrated into the world economy, can become a direct target when missiles are wielded to impose political or strategic costs on others.

Strategic imbalance

More importantly, the 2026 war showed not just the scale of the threat but the limits of the assumptions that informed regional security thinking for decades. A long-standing belief held that international partnerships, economic strength, and integration into the global system could reduce the likelihood of being directly targeted or raise the political cost for an attacker. 

What happened, however, demonstrated that an adversary’s possession of a vast offensive capability remains a decisive factor that overrides many conventional political calculations. From this vantage point, the war was more than another military confrontation; it was a strategic turning point affirming that sustainable security rests not on prosperity alone, nor on external partnerships alone, but on a deterrent capability that raises the cost of aggression above any conceivable gain.

But the lesson of the war reaches past military calculations to how the threat itself is perceived. This is where the double standard in the dominant narrative becomes most evident. 

When Iran or its proxies strike, the world is often absorbed in managing escalation, de-escalating, and preventing a wider conflagration, rather than starting from a simpler question: Why is an offensive arsenal of this magnitude allowed to become an almost normalized regional feature? 

Why is the Gulf always expected to act as the more rational and less impulsive party, even as it is the most exposed to fire and bears the highest cost of defending itself?

Then there is the economic dimension, far from a minor detail; it is another core of the equation. Past the military shock, Iran is betting on a straightforward attrition formula: relatively cheap offensive tools against exorbitantly expensive defenses. 

Each wave of attack is a test not only in the sky but also in the budgets. Gulf states pay not just the security cost of the threat, but the economic cost of continuously deterring it and defending their cities, infrastructure, ports, and vital fields. 

The Gulf thus becomes a forced underwriter of a lopsided regional stability, while the attacking party retains the advantage of lower cost and greater capacity to sustain attrition.

Gulf states certainly bear some responsibility for their slow progress in forging a more independent collective deterrence doctrine and for their prolonged reliance on an external guarantor. But that does not change the fundamental fact that the missile imbalance was never the Gulf’s doing – it was imposed by Iran through decades of military accumulation.

Any serious talk about regional security must start from an unambiguous principle: either unified, genuine restrictions on offensive missile capabilities in the region, first and foremost on Iran, or an explicit recognition of the Gulf states’ right to build deterrence that breaks this imbalance. 

The problem is no longer the Gulf’s pursuit of its own security, but the continued treatment of a chronic strategic imbalance as a fait accompli to be adapted to. 

Anything short of that is no balanced regional security policy, but the diplomatic management of a chronic strategic imbalance, whose security and economic costs are borne by the Gulf while others merely manage its consequences.

The writer is a UAE political analyst and former Federal National Council candidate.

The commissioner of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Office of International Affairs, Ana Maria Archila, was scheduled to meet with an Iranian official before the US State Department intervened, according to a City Journal report on Thursday.

According to the report, Archila was scheduled to meet with Iran’s representative to the United Nations, Amir-Saeid Iravani, on Tuesday with two other senior officials from the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs.

Archila reportedly did not inform the US State Department or Mamdani of the meeting in advance.

A State Department official told City Journal that, upon learning about the meeting, the State Department met with the Mamdani administration to clarify that it was unacceptable. Following the State Department visit, Archila was reportedly reprimanded and ordered to cancel the meeting.

A spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs told City Journal that Archila’s meeting with the Iranian official “did not and will not take place.”

Mamdani administration reportedly using Office for International Affairs to advance political agenda

According to City Journal, the meeting is not the first instance of Archila or the Mamdani administration using city resources to advance agendas unrelated to New York City.

In April, according to the report, a message was sent to staff in the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs asking them to prioritize engagements with foreign diplomats, in part, based on whether or not the officials were “in political alignment/leftist.”

The Mayor’s Office for International Affairs, City Journal claimed, is not intended to be used to shape foreign policy and is instead meant to focus on bringing foreign businesses to the city and supporting the city’s diplomatic community regardless of political leanings.

Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier defended her presence at a pro-Palestinian rally the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel during a wide-ranging interview Friday with progressive Jewish author Peter Beinart.

“I think the targeting of civilians is wrong in any context, including on Oct. 7,” Avila Chevalier said when asked by the editor-at-large of the leftist Jewish Currents about slogans legitimizing “resistance” that appeared at the rally. Avila Chevalier previously defended her attendance at the rally to City & State in June.

“I think what matters is international law, and what international law condemns and protects,” she said. “And it condemns the targeting of civilians, and it also protects the right to resist.”

Beinart, who is an outspoken critic of Israel and a journalism professor at the City University of New York, pushed back, saying that he “didn’t see any discussion of international law in that rally on the signs or the slogans of the kind that you are offering now… Were you uncomfortable by that?”

Avila Chevalier responded that, at any protest, there will always be “folks who are voicing opinions that you might not agree with.”

“I knew even as early as Oct. 8, right, where this cycle was headed, and I knew the things that I did have power over,” Avila Chevalier said. “The thing that we have power over is the fact that our tax dollars are going towards an apartheid state that has a pattern of engaging in this type of retribution against civilians.”

Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist who helped organize pro-Palestinian encampments at Columbia University, ousted incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat last month in the Democratic primary for New York’s 13th Congressional District, which covers parts of Upper Manhattan and the Bronx.

Cheers of ‘Free Palestine’

“Today we make it clear. The politics of the past ends today,” Avila Chevalier told attendees at an election night watch party, where the crowd erupted into cheers of “Free Palestine.”

She joined two other progressive and Israel-critical candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in winning upset primary victories, cementing the anti-Israel mayor’s influence in the city’s politics and likely extending the left’s gains in Congress since the wins came in deeply Democratic districts.

Beinart’s interview offered an extensive look into the Israel-related positions that became flashpoints during Avila Chevalier’s campaign, including her attendance at the Oct. 8 rally, which was condemned at the time by Mamdani and fellow congressional candidate Brad Lander, and past criticism of former President Joe Biden’s policy toward Israel and Gaza in a since-deleted X account.

Many of the attendees on Friday’s Zoom call appeared unimpressed by the candidate’s responses.

“She is well-intentioned, but also clearly is not familiar with the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said Hillel Schenker, a veteran American-Israeli peace activist.

Other attendees defended Avila Chevalier.

“I am surprised and disturbed by many of the comments made here that are just dismissing her comments and her approach to expressing her belief in human rights and a world without hierarchies of peoples,” wrote an attendee with the screen name Benjy Ben Baruch.

To kick off the interview, Avilia Chevalier described her internship in the West Bank as a 20-year-old Columbia University student, saying that at the time she observed “systems and how they were impacting Palestinian people and Jewish folks, and how people were being treated based off of those state structures.”

Beinart then asked Avila Chevalier why she believed Israel had become so “central for progressive politics.”

An ‘insatiable war machine’

“I think there is a war machine that is insatiable,” Avila Chevalier replied. “An American war machine, the Israeli war machine, that we fund with our tax dollars as Americans, and instead what we could be funding is our communities.”

When asked by Beinart what she wanted to see as the region’s future, Avila Chevalier voiced her support for a one-state solution, which she described as “one governing body, one state that sees everyone as equal before the law, regardless of race, religion, identity, ethnicity.”

“We have seen over the course of history that attempts at two states have failed, and even so, I think in this question of like, well, do we partition to begin with, that inherently is divisive,” Avila Chevalier said.

Avila Chevalier also stopped short of saying that “Zionism is racism” when asked if she agreed with the statement by Beinart.

“Zionism is an ideology that creates this type of hierarchy that I’m talking about, and I just don’t believe that we should be striving for a world where there is a hierarchy among people,” Avila Chevalier replied.

Towards the end of the conversation, Beinart referenced scrutiny Avila Chevalier had drawn for her 2022 statements in which she condemned Dominican nationalism and said it was the reason she didn’t put the flag in her social media bio.

“What do you see as the fundamental differences between Zionism as a form of Jewish nationalism, the Dominican nationalism that you have had some concerns about, and Palestinian nationalism,” Beinart asked Avila Chevalier, whose parents are Dominican immigrants.

In response, Avila Chevalier referenced racist attacks she had endured for those comments in the lead-up to the election.

“While it’s not the majority of Dominicans, I would never say that, I think there is a faction that supports this ideology that I have just always found incredibly violent, and the type of rhetoric that I was subjected to, I think, is reflective of the very thing I was criticizing, and I see a lot of that in Zionism as well,” Avila Chevalier responded.

The candidate added that, in contrast to Zionism and Dominican nationalism, Haitian and Palestinian discussions of “liberation” were rooted in “a more universalist understanding of human rights before the law.”

“When I was there in Palestine, you know, some of the most dehumanizing language I’ve ever heard, right, was coming from Israeli soldiers towards children,” Avila Chevalier said, adding that she saw the movements “in very different lights.”

When asked whether she worried that “Hamas’s version of Palestinian nationalism may have exclusionary elements as well,” Avila Chevalier replied: “That’s why I worry about nationalism point blank.”

“Nationalism itself always gives me pause, but I think it’s important to also consider the context in which we’re talking about, like what group is engaging in this conversation, right, and the power dynamics at play there,” Avila Chevalier continued.

In most visitors, Alaska inspires wonder at its beauty, awe at its wildlife, and admiration for the hardiness of those who make their lives in its vast backcountry, enduring some of the harshest conditions on earth. 

For Israelis, it can also inspire humility. Not because the Jewish state is smaller than Denali National Park, but because in Alaska, one is reminded that the world neither revolves around Israel nor is obsessed with it.
 
That realization came on a trip The Wife and I took to America’s Last Frontier last month.

“Where is your final destination today?” the woman checking us in for our flight home at the Anchorage airport asked chirpily.

“Tel Aviv,” I replied. “Where’s that?”

When I said it was in Israel, she smiled and said, “Oh.”

Lest one think this was just a fluke: on the plane a few hours later, another Alaskan asked where we were going. When we answered “Tel Aviv,” she said she had never heard of it.

Granted, two people do not a Pew Poll make, but they do offer a small corrective to the perception – fed by the media most of us follow – that the world is preoccupied with Israel, thinking about us obsessively, talking about us constantly, and cursing us unremittingly.

The last part, at least in Alaska, is also not true. During our two weeks there, we saw no “Free Palestine” graffiti, nor were we subjected to dirty looks or “child killer” comments when we said we were from Israel.

All of America, it turns out, is not Mamdani’s Manhattan, nor does social media present a proportionate picture of that country’s reality.

One of the problems with social media is that every incident of antisemitism is posted online. The incidents are real and rising at an alarming rate, but seeing them all in one place creates a disproportionate sense of how likely you are to encounter them while traveling. 

Watch enough clips of a Jewish kid harassed on a New York subway or an Israeli couple berated at a hotel in California, and you begin to wonder whether the same thing awaits you when you ride an American subway or check into a hotel. 

It doesn’t. Yet the cumulative effect is that you begin to wonder how open to be about your Israeliness. You don’t decide to hide it, but simply having to ask the question adds a mini-layer of apprehension before every trip. 

When Israel comes along for the ride

You also learn to read the Uber.
“Honey,” I urged The Wife before we got into an Uber in Chicago during a brief layover, “you don’t have to say you’re from Israel.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “I’m not going to hide who I am.”
“Wonderful sentiment,” I replied. “The driver’s name is Rabah. Humor me.”
We didn’t volunteer our place of origin, nor did he ask.

But on the entire trip, that was the only time we consciously withheld that nugget of biographical information. Everywhere else, we proudly said we were from Israel – and it was fine. More than fine: it was often a conversation starter.
 
On a whale-watching excursion, we sat across from a young couple from China who work at Google. They were intrigued that we lived in Israel, and even more fascinated that we passed on the chicken sandwiches being served.

Instead of looking for sea creatures, The Wife spent a good part of the trip explaining why some of the fish in the sea we can eat and others we can’t.

“Honey,” I whispered at one point, a bit annoyed. “We didn’t pay all this money for you to give an introductory lecture on kashrut. Look for the damn puffins.”

Since October 7, another layer has been added to the anxiety of travel: whether your flight will be canceled at the drop of a ballistic missile. 

One doesn’t just hop over to Alaska on a whim; it takes planning and a special occasion to justify the expense. For us, it was 40 years of wedded bliss, so we booked back in October after being warned that rental cars sell out months in advance.

We chose United. But just days after the war with Iran broke out, United – typically – canceled flights until mid-June, four days after our planned departure. We acted quickly – well, The Wife acted quickly – and switched to El Al. Still, it complicated the trip further.

Then came the more serious question: Do you leave the country when one of your sons or your son-in-law is in miluim in Lebanon, Gaza, or Syria? 

My first instinct was no: you don’t leave when one of your children is serving. That may have worked before Oct. 7, when reserve duty meant a few weeks a year and could be planned around.

But today, when they have each logged upward of 350 days, saying you won’t leave while they are serving essentially means that you won’t leave at all.

Which, by the way, is hardly the end of the world. But what can I say? I like to travel.

So we went, even though as we were watching bears and sea otters, my youngest son was dodging drones in Lebanon.

“Go,” he said. “What are you going to be able to do by being here? And if, God forbid, something happens, you’ll come back.”

“That’s not the point,” I said. “How can we enjoy it if we are worrying about you?”
“You’ll figure out a way,” he teased.

And he was right. Sure, we worried, but less than if we were here. Distance, it turns out, has its advantages. I wasn’t glued to the news, tracking every development on his front. 

Perhaps that was Alaska’s greatest gift. Not the calving glaciers, surfacing whales, or foraging bears, magnificent though they were. It was the realization that while Israel is the center of our world, it is not the center of everyone else’s. Every now and then, regaining that perspective is refreshing. ■

Argentine soccer icon Lionel Messi, widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the sport, has built one of football’s most decorated careers.

Throughout his illustrious career, Messi has cultivated a measured public image, rarely commenting on politics or becoming involved in major public controversies.

But the 39-year-old has occasionally made headlines for expressing support for Jewish causes and Israeli companies – and at times for being pulled into the tense geopolitical landscape of the Middle East by no doing of his own, including when a grandmother originally from Argentina credited him for saving her life when her Israeli kibbutz was attacked on Oct. 7, 2023.

Messi’s past has roared into public view during this year’s World Cup, with Argentina playing Switzerland in the quarterfinals on Saturday. Some critics of Israel have surfaced his past activities and affiliations to make the case that opposing Argentina is the anti-Zionist choice. Many Israelis, meanwhile, favor the team.

Ahead of the game, here’s a look back at 10 moments from Messi’s career – presented chronologically – where he and his fame intersected with Jewish and Israeli culture through public appearances, peace initiatives, controversies and more.

Messi’s message to Argentine Maccabiah team

1. In July 2013, Messi sent a message to the Argentine Maccabiah team, a greeting before the national delegation departed for the “Jewish Olympics” in Israel. It wasn’t the first time he demonstrated support for his country’s Jewish community – in 2011, he participated in a campaign for justice and memory of the victims of the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing that killed 85 people in Buenos Aires.

2. One month later, he visited the Western Wall on a “peace tour” with Barcelona F.C., the famed Spanish team with which Messi spent the majority of his career. The club hosted skills clinics for Israeli and Palestinian children and met Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

3. In September 2014, Messi supported a “match for peace” in Rome organized by Pope Francis to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but he did not play due to an injury. Fellow Argentine great Diego Maradona and Israeli player Yossi Benayoun also participated, alongside stars from Russia, Cameroon, Italy, France and Brazil.

4. In 2016, Messi was slammed as “Jewish” and a “Zionist” by Egyptian officials after donating his soccer cleats to a charity in Egypt. Then-Egyptian Football Federation spokesman Azmi Mogahed phoned in to the show to criticize Messi: “I know he’s Jewish, he donated to Israel and visited the Wailing Wall and whatever. …We don’t need his shoes and Egypt’s poor don’t need help from someone with Jewish or Zionist citizenship.”

5. In June 2018, Argentina’s national team canceled a friendly match with Israel’s national team following pressure from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. A boycott campaign sponsored by BDS Argentina was launched using the motto “Argentina don’t go,” or #ArgentinaNoVayas. The Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires tweeted that the match was canceled due to “the threats against Messi that logically generated the solidarity of his teammates.”

6. Two months later, FIFA suspended the head of the Palestinian soccer body for threats against Messi. Jibril Rajoub, who had lobbied FIFA to take action against Israel, was suspended for a year after he urged supporters to burn photos and player jerseys if Messi or the Argentinian national team had shown up for the canceled friendly match.

7. In 2019, Argentina’s national soccer team announced it would play a friendly match against Uruguay in Tel Aviv that November, following the cancellation a year prior. The match was again targeted by the BDS movement, with protestors demonstrating outside a training camp in Barcelona and calling on Messi not to participate. Despite the opposition, the game went on as planned, with Messi scoring a goal in front of a sold-out crowd of 29,000 fans – including Israeli President and soccer fan Reuven Rivlin – at Bloomfield Stadium.

8. In 2020, Messi signed a three-year contract to become a brand ambassador for the Israeli company OrCam, which makes devices to help the visually impaired. It wasn’t his first time promoting an Israeli company: in December 2017, the Tel Aviv-based Sirin Labs hired him as its global ambassador.

9. On Oct. 7, 90-year-old Kibbutz Nir Oz resident Esther Cunio name-dropped Messi to a Hamas terrorist who had come to kidnap her, likely saving her life. During the attack, Cunio asked the assailant if he liked soccer before telling him, “I’m from where Messi is from.” Cunio then appealed to Messi for help in rescuing her grandson.

‘Jewish lobby’ blamed for Algerian World Cup loss

10. Last month, after Messi scored a hat trick in a 3-0 Argentina victory over Algeria in the World Cup, an Algerian broadcaster blamed the “Jewish lobby” for a controversial non-call on a potential penalty that could have penalized Messi. “Messi is protected by the Jewish lobby,” analyst Mustafa Mazzouzi said.

“This lobby controls the world; they run it however they want, as if they were the mafia. [FIFA President] Infantino doesn’t want us to do well.” He added, “We have political stances regarding Western Sahara and the Palestinian issue, and therefore they don’t want us to do well.” Elsewhere, a Palestinian TikTok content creator with over 350,000 followers suggested that Argentina deserved to lose the World Cup because of Messi’s numerous associations with Israel.

Messi wears No. 10 – typically reserved for the best player on a soccer club, but since there are 11 players on the pitch, we’ll add a bonus.

11. The World Zionist Organization used a play on words involving Messi in a 2020 Hebrew educational video, explaining that the Hebrew word “mesibah” means “party,” or “fiesta” in Spanish. In Spanish, it sounds like “Messi va,” or “Messi goes.” In other words, “if Messi goes, it’s a party.”

A “once-in-a-generation” expedition led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to survey ships belonging to two of the most important Antarctic explorers set sail earlier this week.

Quest, a schooner-rigged steamship captained by Sir Ernest Shackleton, and Terra Nova, Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s whaler and polar expedition vessel, are the targets of these new surveys. 

While both Shackleton’s and Scott’s polar expeditions had set sail in the early half of the 1900s, the Terra Nova Expedition between 1910 and 1913 and the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition in 1921-1922, the ships sunk much later in the century.

Terra Nova, after returning from Scott’s expedition in 1913, was repurchased by her former owners to resume work as a whaling vessel. 

Thirty years later, in 1942, she was chartered by Newfoundland Base Contractors to carry supplies to stations in Greenland.

Terra Nova, Quest sink years after their expeditions

A year later, on September 12 of 1943, Terra Nova issued an urgent SOS that her pumps were not working and she was beginning to take on water. 

Rescue ships arrived a day later, saving her crew from the catastrophe. She was sunk by gunfire that same day. 

Her wreckage was rediscovered off the coast of Greenland in 2012 by the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s flagship R/V Falkor during routine testing. The wreck was confirmed as Terra Nova over a decade later by maritime archaeologists aboard the MY Legend.

Quest, however, outlived Terra Nova by some 20 years. 

A year after sailing from London in 1921, Shackleton died onboard as Quest and her crew prepared to enter Antarctic waters. The expedition was lost along with its captain. Instead, led by British Antarctic explorer Frank Wild, she carried out a desultory survey of the Weddell Sea before turning back.

Seven years later, having been refitted, Quest joined the rescue effort to save survivors of the Italia Arctic airship crash. She returned as a sealing vessel in the 1930s, and was used as a minesweeper by the British navy during World War II. 

On May 5, 1962, while on a seal-hunting expedition Quest’s hull was pierced by ice. She sunk off the north coast of Labrador.

Her wreckage was discovered in 2024 at a depth of 390 meters in the Labrador Sea by RCGS’s Expedition Leader John Geiger.

First comprehensive survey of Quest, Terra Nova

The new expedition will be the first comprehensive visual survey of the two ships in order to the digitally produce recreations of them both for further study, RCGS announced in a statement last week.

Researchers will use high-definition 5.2K video cameras and Canadian VOYIS photogrammetric technology to document the wrecks and surrounding debris fields.

The vessels set to take part in the mission are the research vessel Atlantis, operated by WHOI, and will serve as the “mothership” to the human occupied vehicle (HOV) Alvin and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). 

Alvin was the first submersible to ever survey Titanic’s wreckage.

“The discovery of Quest in 2024 was only the beginning” said Geiger. “On Canada Day, we will gather to embark on the largest and most ambitious expedition in the 96-year history of the RCGS.”

“By combining Canadian and American technologies, and an international team of experts, we will document Quest and Terra Nova in unprecedented detail, creating an extraordinary record of two historic shipwrecks and sharing these important stories with the world.”

WHOI Director of Ocean Imaging Dwight Coleman and co-chief scientist on the mission said that by using the advanced imaging tools, researcchers will be able to “see and re-create two historically significant shipwrecks and bring the stories of two great explorers to life.”

“The bravery and leadership demonstrated by these two polar heroes have inspired generations of explorers over the years, and our hope is that by documenting their last ships with the latest technology we too can inspire the next generation of explorers worldwide,” said shipwreck expert and expedition co-chief scientist David Mearns, characterizing the expedition as an “once-in-a-generation” opportunity.

Updates on the mission and footage of the wrecks will be posted on Canadian Geographic’s website here.

The United States on Wednesday officially began the process of removing Syria from its list of State Sponsors of Terrorism after US President Donald Trump notified Congress of his decision to rescind the designation, which had been in place since 1979.

The move could mark a major turning point in relations between Washington and Damascus and pave the way for increased American investment and economic engagement in Syria.

Under US law, Congress now has a 45-day review period before the decision can take effect. In a formal letter addressed to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, President Trump said Washington intends to remove the “obstacles” preventing Syria’s reconstruction, adding that American companies are now “ready to invest” in the country.

The decision represents one of the most significant shifts in US policy toward Syria in decades. It ends a designation that has shaped bilateral relations for nearly 47 years and follows a series of gradual American steps in recent months, including easing certain restrictions and expanding engagement with Syria’s new government following the country’s political transition.

Although the move does not lift all US sanctions imposed on Syria, it removes one of the most significant legal and political barriers that has discouraged international banks and foreign companies from reentering the Syrian market.

Syria was first designated a State Sponsor of Terrorism on December 29, 1979, becoming one of the earliest countries placed on the list following its establishment under the US Export Administration Act. At the time, Washington justified the designation by accusing Damascus of supporting organizations that the United States classified as terrorist groups, as well as hosting leaders of Palestinian and Lebanese factions included on US terrorism lists.

For more than four decades, Syria remained on the list despite changes in successive US administrations, making it one of the longest-serving countries under the designation. During that period, Washington imposed a broad range of restrictions, including bans on arms exports, limitations on US economic assistance, tighter controls on dual-use exports, and additional financial and banking restrictions.

Congressional notification signals shift in US approach

Syrian political analyst Abdul Karim believes that notifying Congress was far more than a legal procedure required before removing a country from the terrorism list.

“The notification reflects profound political and economic implications that signal a shift in Washington’s approach toward Damascus,” Karim told The Media Line.

He said President Trump’s letter to al-Sharaa went beyond simply announcing the beginning of the legal process.

“It included a commitment to remove the obstacles preventing Syria’s reconstruction, while also confirming that American companies are prepared to invest in the country. This is the first official indication at this level linking a change in US policy toward Damascus with direct economic engagement,” he told The Media Line.

Karim added that the decision follows a series of steps taken by the US administration in recent months, including easing several restrictions on Syria and opening channels of communication with the country’s new government, as part of a broader policy that differs from the one that governed bilateral relations for decades.

From a legal standpoint, Syrian legal expert Ibrahim Hussein said the decision does not mean Syria will be removed from the list immediately, as US law grants Congress a 45-day review period before the measure can take effect.

Not the end of all US sanctions

“The removal of the designation does not automatically lift the other US sanctions imposed on Syria, many of which are based on separate laws and executive orders,” Hussein told The Media Line. “However, it removes one of the most politically significant classifications affecting how international financial institutions and companies engage with Damascus.”

For more than four decades, Syria’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism served as one of the principal obstacles limiting its economic ties with the United States and Western countries. The designation imposed restrictions on US assistance, exports, financial transactions, and significantly increased the legal and commercial risks facing banks and companies considering business with Syria.

Syrian economist Osama Qadi said that completing the removal process would give international financial institutions and foreign companies greater confidence to explore opportunities in Syria, even if other sanctions remain in place.

“The State Sponsor of Terrorism designation carried legal and psychological consequences that extended far beyond the direct sanctions themselves,” Qadi told The Media Line.

He added that the US president’s explicit reference to American companies being ready to invest in Syria represents a notable shift in US rhetoric.

“For years, official US statements focused primarily on sanctions, counterterrorism, and humanitarian assistance,” he said. “The current message is the first to present a vision in which the American private sector could participate in rebuilding Syria’s economy, provided the necessary legal and political procedures are completed.”

Qadi argued that these messages are directed not only at Damascus but also at international banks, financial institutions, and American and European companies.

“They are intended to demonstrate that US policy toward Syria has entered a new phase based on gradual engagement rather than comprehensive isolation,” he told The Media Line.

Meanwhile, Syrian political analyst Abdullah al-Abdoun said Damascus views the decision as one of its most significant diplomatic achievements since the formation of the new government.

“The decision provides Syria with an important opportunity to advance its efforts to reintegrate into the global economy, attract foreign investment, and convince Western governments that the country’s political landscape has fundamentally changed,” al-Abdoun told The Media Line.

At the same time, he cautioned that Syria’s full return to the international financial system remains a long-term process.

“The success of this step will ultimately depend on the future of the remaining sanctions, as well as Syria’s ability to implement economic and institutional reforms and provide the legal and security environment necessary to attract investors,” he said.

If the process is completed following Congress’ review period, Syria would become the first country to be removed from the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list since Sudan in 2020. Iran, North Korea, and Cuba would remain on the list, highlighting the significance of Washington’s changing approach toward Damascus.

Despite the importance of the decision, it does not mark the end of the broader US sanctions regime on Syria. Rather, it represents one step within a wider legal and political process that has gradually emerged following Syria’s political transition. Understanding the significance of the move requires looking back at the evolution of US sanctions policy over the past four decades.

Following the outbreak of Syria’s uprising in 2011 and the subsequent civil war, Washington dramatically expanded its sanctions regime against Damascus. Then-President Barack Obama signed a series of executive orders targeting former President Bashar Assad, senior government officials, and key state institutions.

The measures included asset freezes, restrictions on financial transactions, a ban on new US investment in Syria, and sanctions targeting the country’s oil, energy, and banking sectors.

In 2019, Congress passed the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which took effect in June 2020. The legislation significantly broadened the scope of US sanctions by targeting individuals, companies, and foreign governments that provide financial, technical, or engineering support to the Syrian government or participate in reconstruction projects without US authorization.

The Caesar Act became one of Washington’s most powerful economic pressure tools against Damascus, discouraging many international companies and financial institutions from entering the Syrian market for fear of becoming subject to secondary US sanctions.

Despite its political and legal significance, removing Syria from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list does not automatically eliminate the broader US sanctions regime. Most of the restrictions imposed over the past decade are rooted in separate legislation and executive orders, particularly the Caesar Act.

As a result, removing Syria from the terrorism list would eliminate one of the most consequential legal and political obstacles facing the country, but it would not dismantle the wider framework of US sanctions.

For that reason, many analysts view the Trump administration’s decision as the beginning of dismantling one of Washington’s oldest pressure mechanisms against Syria rather than the end of the sanctions architecture that has evolved over several decades and intensified after 2011.

While removing Syria from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list does not mark the end of US sanctions, it does bring to a close one of the longest-standing instruments of American pressure on Damascus, dating back to the late 1970s.

The real test now is whether Washington will follow the decision with additional legal and economic measures capable of reopening Syria to international finance and investment, or whether the move will remain a significant political gesture without being matched by broader policy changes that fundamentally reshape US-Syrian relations.

Syrian authorities announced Wednesday that they had dismantled several Islamic State (ISIS) cells operating in southern Syria and arrested senior ISIS figure Firas al-Dagher, who officials say held several high-ranking positions within the organization, including serving as the group’s so-called “Governor of Lebanon and Palestine” and later as a personal aide to ISIS’s “Caliph.” 

The operation, carried out jointly by Syria’s Interior Ministry and the General Intelligence Service, marks one of the most significant counterterrorism operations announced by Damascus since the country’s political transition. 

According to the Interior Ministry, investigations revealed that al-Dagher steadily rose through ISIS’s command structure.

The security operation also resulted in the arrest of several ISIS operatives responsible for assassinations and financing following a series of coordinated raids across southern Syria. 

The ministry said the investigation found that the cell financed its activities through assassinations and armed robberies targeting gold merchants in Daraa province. The stolen gold was later sold to generate funds for the group’s operations. 

Authorities also said the detainees confessed to killing two Interior Ministry personnel, carrying out an attempted assassination inside a barber shop that resulted in the death of a civilian, and surveilling another victim and his wife before later killing them. 

Significance of Syrian counterterrorism efforts extends beyond al-Dagher’s arrest

Syrian political writer and researcher Bassam Abu Adnan said the significance of the operation extends well beyond the arrest of a senior ISIS commander. 

“The investigation sheds light on how ISIS cells in southern Syria have adapted their methods, increasingly relying on assassinations, armed robberies, and criminal activity to finance their operations after losing the traditional sources of revenue they once controlled during the years they ruled large parts of Syria and Iraq,” Abu Adnan told The Media Line. 

He added that the operation also reflects growing coordination between the Interior Ministry and the General Intelligence Service as Syrian authorities continue pursuing ISIS sleeper cells despite the group’s territorial defeat several years ago. 

Although Syrian authorities have not disclosed exactly how security forces located al-Dagher and the other members of the cell, the nature of the operation suggests it followed an extended intelligence effort. 

A security source at the Interior Ministry told The Media Line that the arrests were the result of a lengthy intelligence operation conducted jointly by the Interior Ministry and the General Intelligence Service. The raids targeted multiple suspects simultaneously, suggesting they were preceded by an extended period of surveillance and intelligence gathering. 

The significance of al-Dagher’s arrest lies not only in his seniority within ISIS but also in the range of positions he held during his years inside the organization. Al-Dagher began by taking responsibility for what the group referred to as the “Jaidour Sector” and the “Western Region” before being appointed to oversee the self-proclaimed “Province of Lebanon and Palestine.” 

His career trajectory suggests he was among the organization’s trusted senior cadres. Such positions typically require more than battlefield experience, reflecting close ties to the group’s leadership structure and responsibility for managing sensitive operational and organizational affairs. 

Syrian security services growing ISIS-fighting capabilities

Orabi Orabi, a Syrian researcher specializing in jihadist movements, said the capture of someone who occupied such senior positions would not normally result from a routine security raid. 

“Operations of this nature are usually the outcome of extensive intelligence work involving surveillance of suspects, monitoring financial and communication networks, and, in some cases, information obtained through previous arrests or investigations into crimes linked to the cell,” Orabi told The Media Line. 

He noted that investigators had linked the group to a series of assassinations and robberies targeting gold merchants in Daraa province, adding that such findings point to growing capabilities within Syria’s security services to penetrate ISIS sleeper cells and reach senior operatives rather than merely arresting field-level militants. 

Orabi also said ISIS has fundamentally transformed the way it finances its operations since losing its territorial strongholds in Syria and Iraq and shifting from a quasi-state structure to a decentralized network of clandestine cells. 

“At the height of its territorial control, ISIS relied on oil and gas revenues, taxation, extortion, and control of border crossings and local resources,” he told The Media Line. “Today, its cells increasingly finance themselves through criminal activity such as armed robbery, gold theft, extortion, and kidnapping for ransom.” 

He said the Interior Ministry’s findings – that the cell targeted gold merchants in Daraa and sold the stolen gold to finance its activities – fit this broader transformation. 

“Criminal activity has become one of ISIS’s primary funding mechanisms since the group lost its traditional sources of income,” Orabi said. “This model also allows sleeper cells to operate with greater flexibility and remain concealed, as many of these crimes initially appear to be ordinary criminal incidents before investigations reveal links to terrorist financing networks.” 

The operation, therefore, represents more than the arrest of a senior ISIS commander. It also provides insight into how the organization has evolved in recent years, both in its command structure and in the way it finances and sustains clandestine operations. 

As Syrian authorities continue dismantling ISIS networks, analysts say the long-term success of the campaign will depend not only on arresting individual operatives but also on disrupting the group’s leadership structure, financial networks, and intelligence infrastructure that enable sleeper cells to survive despite the organization’s territorial defeat. 

The US Treasury Department announced that it had imposed new sanctions on individuals and groups linked to Iran, according to a department press release on Friday.

Those sanctioned include Ali Ansari, an alleged financier to Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials.

According to the Treasury, Ansari is responsible for institutionalizing large-scale embezzlement within Iran’s government, including the diversion of public health funds to benefit Iranian elites, as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Ansari, based in Dubai, is alleged by the Treasury to have invested regime funds in holdings in the United Arab Emirates, Europe, and other non-sanctioned nations.

In addition, Iranian shadow exchange houses, which use shell companies to move billions of dollars annually on behalf of Iran’s already-sanctioned banks, were also sanctioned, the press release noted.

Three separate exchange houses were targeted by the new sanctions, along with seven individuals involved and two additional front companies based in Hong Kong and the UAE.

The sanctions require any US-based involvement in the aforementioned companies to be reported to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). 

Bessent: US will ‘preserve’ assets for Iranian people

“The so-called Supreme Leader is hiding in seclusion while his regime crumbles,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. “Treasury will continue using every tool at its disposal to isolate him and other regime elites from the global financial system.”

“We will preserve these assets for the Iranian people,” he added.

The sanctions come after the US revoked a general license on Tuesday that allowed the sale of Iranian oil in response to Iran’s “wholly unacceptable” strikes on commercial tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.

The strikes, targeting three vessels, included at least five Iranian drones and missiles, a source told The Jerusalem Post.

Oil prices rose by over 5% following Tuesday’s announcement, with the Treasury noting that a wind-down period would be in effect until July 17 to allow for the completion of active transactions.

Amichai Stein and Reuters contributed to this report.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Damascus on July 6 to 7, 2026, marked the most visible sign yet of a thaw in French-Syrian relations, as both governments sought to move beyond years of diplomatic estrangement toward cooperation centered on diplomacy, economic recovery, and reconstruction.

The meeting between Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Macron produced more than symbolic declarations about restoring dialogue. The two sides announced a series of practical initiatives, including French technical assistance for Syria’s banking sector, transportation-related cooperation, procedures to return assets confiscated in France from members of the Assad family, and the return of Syrian antiquities held in Paris for years.

The visit also carried broader geopolitical significance. Damascus is seeking to rebuild its international legitimacy after years of isolation, while Paris appears eager to reestablish its influence in Syria before reconstruction opportunities are claimed by competing regional and international actors.

Al-Sharaa described the visit as “an important development” in bilateral relations and said France had played a constructive role in supporting Syria’s reintegration into the international community. He said the next phase of cooperation would focus on infrastructure, financial reform, and other sectors in which French investment and expertise could contribute to rebuilding the country.

The visit comes against the backdrop of a complex relationship dating to the French Mandate in Syria from 1920 to 1946. Following independence, ties fluctuated between periods of cooperation and political tension, although diplomatic, economic, and cultural contacts continued through the 1990s and early 2000s.

Major milestones included former French President Jacques Chirac’s visit to Damascus in 1996 and then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s participation in France’s Bastille Day celebrations in 2008 at the invitation of then-President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Relations collapsed after the outbreak of Syria’s uprising in 2011. France withdrew its ambassador, closed its embassy in Damascus, and became one of the leading European advocates of sanctions against Assad’s government. Syria’s political transition has since prompted Paris to reassess its approach, with Macron’s visit representing the clearest indication yet that France is prepared to engage with Syria’s new leadership.

Significance in the substance

Ayman Abdelnour, a US-based Syrian reformist and economist affiliated with the Arab Christian Congress and the Middle East Institute’s Syria Program Advisory Council, said the significance of the visit lay not simply in the presence of a French president in Damascus, but in the substance of the talks.

“Paris and Damascus have moved beyond testing each other’s intentions toward building shared interests,” Abdelnour told The Media Line. “France understands that Syria is entering a new phase in which the country’s economic landscape will be reshaped. Remaining absent would allow other regional and international players to cement their positions in reconstruction, energy, and infrastructure projects.”

He said the practical measures announced during the visit distinguished it from previous diplomatic contacts and suggested an intention to turn political rapprochement into sustained cooperation.

The composition of Macron’s delegation reinforced that message. Alongside senior government officials, the French president was accompanied by representatives of major French companies, showing that economic cooperation featured as prominently as political and security issues.

Samir Tawil, a Syrian economic journalist based in France, said the delegation reflected growing recognition in Paris that future relations with Syria would depend as much on economic partnerships as diplomatic engagement.

“The agreements announced during the visit – from financial-sector cooperation to transportation and asset recovery-show that France is not simply testing the waters,” Tawil told The Media Line. “Paris is seeking to establish an early foothold in what is expected to become an increasingly competitive reconstruction environment.”

For Damascus, Macron’s visit represented more than a diplomatic breakthrough. Syrian officials see it as an opportunity to strengthen the country’s international legitimacy, persuade Western governments that the post-Assad political transition has created conditions for a different relationship with Europe, and encourage other European governments to reopen political and economic channels.

Dr. Faten Ramadan, a Syrian political and human rights activist who heads the organization Sans Menottes, said the visit provided the new leadership with important diplomatic momentum because it came from a country that had long helped shape Europe’s Syria policy.

“A French president’s visit to Damascus after years of diplomatic estrangement carries significance far beyond protocol,” Ramadan told The Media Line. “It reflects recognition that Syria’s political landscape has changed and that engagement with the new leadership is becoming part of a different European approach.”

She cautioned that rebuilding relations with Europe would require more than a single visit, adding that France’s move could encourage other European capitals if the new Syrian authorities deliver tangible results.

That assessment was echoed by Mazen Alloush, director of relations at Syria’s General Authority for Border Crossings and Customs, who attended the meetings between the two presidents. “The economic agenda featured prominently alongside political discussions,” Alloush told The Media Line. “Talks focused on rebuilding state institutions, modernizing infrastructure, and creating an environment capable of attracting foreign investment.”

He said Damascus views cooperation with France as the beginning of a broader economic partnership rather than a series of isolated agreements. “The objective is also to reassure European investors that Syria is open to partnerships and investment opportunities during the next phase,” he said.

Kenana Khalaf Alkorde, a Syrian political activist, journalist, and media figure from Deir ez-Zor, said the participation of business leaders demonstrated that France increasingly views Syria as a future economic partner, not merely a political or security issue.

“French interest extends to infrastructure, energy, transportation, financial services, and public-sector rehabilitation,” she told The Media Line. “These sectors will require significant investment and international expertise after years of conflict.”

France offers technical support to Central Bank of Syria

Among the visit’s most consequential announcements was France’s commitment to provide technical assistance to the Central Bank of Syria, a move economists describe as essential for rebuilding investor confidence.

Mohammad Faroun, a Syrian economist working in the exhibitions and conferences sector, said banking reform is fundamental to attracting foreign capital. “Any serious investor needs a banking system capable of handling international transactions, providing financing, and operating according to globally recognized standards,” he told The Media Line.

Faroun said modernizing Syria’s financial institutions would help reconnect the country’s economy to international markets and create conditions necessary for long-term investment.

Another significant outcome was France’s decision to initiate procedures to return €51 million, approximately $58 million, in assets confiscated from members of the Assad family. Faroun said the announcement carries political as well as financial significance. “It demonstrates France’s willingness to cooperate with Damascus on sensitive legal and financial issues that would have been politically difficult only a short time ago.”

He added that the move could encourage similar initiatives elsewhere while reinforcing the Syrian government’s efforts to recover public assets through internationally recognized legal mechanisms.

France’s renewed engagement with Damascus is driven by more than bilateral diplomacy. According to analysts, Paris is responding to a rapidly changing regional landscape in which Syria’s political transition has created strategic and economic openings.

Mosab Al-Saoud, a France-based Syrian journalist and member of the Oversight and Transparency Board of the Syrian Journalists Association, said the emergence of a new leadership in Damascus has prompted French policymakers to reassess a policy that remained largely unchanged for more than a decade.

“The new authorities have presented themselves as a government committed to rebuilding state institutions and reopening Syria to the international community,” Al-Saoud told The Media Line. “That has created a different political reality for Paris.”

He argued that France’s calculations extend beyond diplomacy. “Security remains a key consideration,” he said. “Stability in Syria affects European interests through counterterrorism, migration, and security in the Eastern Mediterranean.”

Paris is also aware, he added, that remaining on the sidelines would leave reconstruction opportunities to competing regional and international powers.

Tawil said the business presence showed France’s intention to secure an early position in sectors expected to drive Syria’s recovery. “The cargo-handling agreement at Damascus International Airport should be viewed as more than a stand-alone project,” Tawil said. “It could become the first practical step toward the return of French companies to the Syrian market.”

He said successful implementation would likely encourage additional European firms to consider investment if Syria succeeds in providing a stable legal and economic environment.

The visit also produced a symbolic cultural breakthrough with France’s decision to return 23 Syrian antiquities that had remained at the Arab World Institute in Paris. The number was modest, but the timing lent the move political weight, as the return coincided with the restoration of high-level ties between the two countries.

Alkorde described the decision as an important confidence-building measure. “Cultural cooperation is often one of the first signs that political trust is being rebuilt,” she noted. “Returning these artifacts could pave the way for broader cooperation in protecting Syria’s cultural heritage and recovering additional antiquities held abroad.”

The visit unfolded against a reminder that Syria’s security challenges have not disappeared. Two improvised explosive devices detonated in Damascus while Macron was in the capital, injuring several people, including police officers. Syrian security forces launched an investigation, but the French president continued his schedule unchanged.

Abdelnour said that the decision carried political significance. “Paris does not intend to allow a single security incident to dictate the future of its relationship with Damascus,” he said. “Continuing the visit demonstrated that France views engagement with Syria’s new leadership as a long-term strategic choice.”

The attacks showed that attracting international investment will depend not only on political engagement but also on the state’s ability to provide lasting security and institutional stability. As one of the European Union’s most influential members, France could become the first major European power to test a new model of engagement with Damascus.

Ramadan said the visit has the potential to influence broader European policy-but only if its promises are translated into measurable results. “The agreements announced this week represent an important opportunity for both sides,” she said. “Ultimately, they will be judged by implementation rather than political declarations. That is what will determine whether this visit marks a genuine turning point in Syrian-French relations.”

Whether Macron’s trip becomes a lasting reset will depend on what follows: implementation, institutional reform, and the survival of French-Syrian economic cooperation amid Syria’s security and political tests.

The Israeli government is set to approve a budget on Sunday worth over NIS 1 billion for road construction to and between West Bank settlements, according to a statement released by the Finance Ministry.

The budget, led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, will primarily involve new settlements already approved for construction by Israel’s cabinet, including four that were previously evacuated.

The plan’s pending approval is in response to a need for safe and secure access to the settlements, the statement read.

According to the ministry, the budget, planned in conjunction with the Settlement Administration, will be split between the Defense Ministry and the Transportation Ministry.

Smotrich noted that the plan also involves establishing “critical security components,” saying he is working to “ensure safe and regulated movement in the new settlements.”

“The historic decision we approved will allow the establishment of dozens of settlements at strategic points in Judea and Samaria,” said Smotrich. “We are leading a settlement-security revolution, with over 100 settlements and 160 farms that fortify the security of the State of Israel and will kill the terrible idea of ​​establishing a terrorist state in the heart of the State of Israel.”

The plan will span three years and include the construction of new roads, improvements to existing ones, and security components, the ministry stated, adding that any new settlements approved in the future will be included in the plan.

West Bank hotel budget

The road budget’s approval on Sunday will follow the July 5 approval of NIS 27 million allocated to the development and construction of hotels in the West Bank aimed at tourism promotion.

The hotel budget, financed through the Tourism Ministry, will be distributed through 2030 and include grants supporting hotel establishment, conversion, and expansion.

“For the first time, we will lead a comprehensive initiative combining planning, infrastructure development, the creation of land reserves for hotels, and a dedicated track to encourage hotel construction,” said Tourism Minister Haim Katz, noting that the budget will “enable the realization of the enormous tourism potential in Judea and Samaria.”

“We will remove barriers in the sector, create certainty for investors, and lay the groundwork that will increase the supply of accommodation rooms, attract tourists, and strengthen the local economy,” added Katz.

Keshet Neev contributed to this report.

Yet another survey has found that fewer than half of Jews in an American city identify as Zionists, this time in Milwaukee, the childhood home of Golda Meir, the Zionist icon and former Israeli prime minister.

The survey, released last week by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, found that 43% of Jewish adults said they identified as Zionist, while 42% said they did not. A much higher share, 69%, said they feel somewhat or very “emotionally attached to Israel.” At the same time, 52% of respondents agreed that “Israel regularly violates the human rights of the Palestinian people.”

The results join a growing number of similar data points generated by Jewish groups that point to evolving, and at times seemingly contradictory, views about Israel among American Jews. A survey released in February by Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella group, found that 37% of Jews identified as Zionist even as 88% believed that “Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish, Democratic state.” 

The findings cut across North American Jewish communities of different regions and sizes and are prompting Jewish leaders to reexamine their assumptions at a time when Israel is shedding support among Americans of all backgrounds.

“A year ago I really would have had a knee-jerk reaction where I was stuck on the word, because I am a Zionist,” Miryam Rosenzweig, the Milwaukee federation’s president and CEO, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about her views on the survey. “What I needed to overcome and understand is that, as a brand, it’s tarnished.” The word, she said, “is tainted.”

‘The values are still there’

Yet, Rosenzweig insisted, for her Jewish community, “the values are still there.”

The Milwaukee area is home to an estimated 27,500 Jews who attend more than a dozen synagogues and six Jewish schools. The local federation operates a number of programs directly and supports a wide range of education, cultural, religious and security initiatives meant to strengthen the Jewish community. (It also gives to a number of national Jewish organizations, including a small grant to 70 Faces Media, JTA’s parent company.)

The local survey, completed by 980 families, was conducted between December 2024 and March 2025, at a time when criticism over Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza was sharply mounting. More than 100 hostages taken when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, triggering the war, were still in captivity at the survey’s start, while dozens were released during a temporary ceasefire midway through the survey period.

Conducted by researchers at Brandeis University and the University of Chicago’s NORC social research firm, the survey is the federation’s first deep dive into its Jewish population since 2011. It was conducted by email, mail and phone, with options to complete the survey online or over the phone, and has an overall margin of error of 6.5%.

The survey asked about a wide range of topics and, Rosenzweig said, has illuminated unique challenges for the federation, including the region’s aging Jewish population and its relatively lower average household income when compared to similarly sized Jewish communities. 

High levels of Jewish ‘participation’

The data also offered unique bright spots, such as high levels of what Rosenzweig classified as Jewish “participation.”

Three-quarters of Jewish children in the area’s interfaith households are being raised Jewish, for example, and nearly one in four of all Jewish children in Milwaukee are enrolled in a Jewish day school or yeshiva, higher than the national average.

But it is the Zionism question that has seized public interest, in part because it was asked at all. 

For decades, according to Matthew Boxer, a researcher at Brandeis’s Cohen Center for Jewish Studies who led the Milwaukee study and has worked on many others, local federations conducting population studies would ask about topics such as emotional attachment to Israel, but largely refrained from directly asking their communities whether they identified as Zionists. 

That changed with the 2020 Chicago federation survey, also led by Boxer’s team, which found that 40% of the region’s Jewish adults self-identified as Zionist while 80% agreed with the statement “It’s important for Israel to be a Jewish state.”

Since then, Boxer said, around a dozen federations have opted to ask some version of the Zionism question on their surveys. Recently released findings from the federations in Boston and St. Louis found similar results to Chicago’s and Milwaukee’s; new survey results in Austin, Texas, and Orange County, California, are expected later this year. (Some have decided against including the question, too.) 

The findings have functioned as something of a Rorschach test for American Jews. Those who are deeply critical of Israel say the fact that a minority of American Jews identify as Zionists prove that American Jewish groups should roll back their support for and engagement with Israel. Those who want to preserve the historic relationship urge looking beyond the label and focusing on the fact that a significant majority of Jews are aligned in their support for traditional tenets of Zionism.

In an essay for JTA published after the national federations group released its survey, Mimi Kravetz, JFNA’s chief impact officer, concluded that most Jews still believe in the “historic definition” of Zionism, while conceding that the term has gone through “definition creep.” She urged federations to “open pathways for learning and belonging,” and avoid “responding with anger when the moment calls for steady leadership.”

For Rosenzweig, who came to Milwaukee in 2019 after years working with Jewish young professionals at Detroit’s federation, polling her community about Zionism was a no-brainer even when they were first conceiving the survey before Oct. 7. “We have to ask the question,” she said. 

“The demographic study is not meant to answer what we want to hear,” she said. “We need to know where they stand, where do people agree and disagree?” 

While the survey found a split on Zionist identification, it found broad consensus on other issues, sometimes ones that are in tension with each other. For example, 84% of Milwaukee Jews somewhat or strongly agreed with the statement, “I consider it important for Israel to be a Jewish state.” At the same time, 88% agreed that “Israel should be a democratic state for all of its citizens, regardless of religious identity.” 

Two ideas could coexist

Rosenzweig said she believes the two ideas could coexist. “Our community can support Israel and support Israel’s right to exist and be a Jewish state, and they’re concerned for the human dignity of Palestinians. It’s not binary,” she said. “And I think that’s really an important message about who American Jews are.”

Rabbi Noah Chertkoff, who leads the Reform Congregation Shalom in the suburb of Fox Point, said he wasn’t surprised by the survey results on Zionism but cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from them.

“I proudly identify as a Zionist, but I also recognize that the word itself has been badly distorted and, at times, deliberately defamed by people more interested in vilifying Jews than engaging seriously with Jewish history, Jewish belief and the Jewish people’s own understanding of our story,” he wrote in an email to JTA.

Chertkoff added that his own congregants have expressed both “real anguish” over Oct. 7, as well as concerns for democracy in Israel and “the suffering of civilians on all sides of the conflict.” He added that the survey should be read as a “mandate”: “If we want the next generation to inherit a durable connection to Israel and Zionism, we cannot rely only on inherited labels.”

Rabbi Lex Rofeberg, a Milwaukee native who runs the alternative Jewish engagement network Judaism Unbound from his current home in Rhode Island, said he believed the survey is surfacing more than mere confusion over the word Zionism. 

“As a person who would self-identify as ‘not a Zionist,’ I hope that Jewish organizations in Milwaukee, and beyond, would respond to this finding not by trying to shift my beliefs, or by insisting that I don’t really know what I’m opposing,” he wrote in an email. “I’d hope instead they’d recognize the reality that ‘I’m not a Zionist’ is a sincere, deeply-held belief for a lot of Jews all around the world, and that includes just over 40% of Jews in the greater Milwaukee area.” 

Jewish institutions, he suggested, “should respond to lower support for Zionism not with ‘how do we re-brand Zionism’ but rather ‘how can we create meaningful Jewish experiences for folks who are actively not Zionists?’” 

Jewish Milwaukee, which Rofeberg calls “awesome” and credits with having “shaped me as a person and a Jew,” could achieve this, he insists. 

What the federation does with this new information is still to be determined. Rosenzweig is currently drafting “a very extensive strategic plan,” she told JTA, but said it was too early for specifics. She does hope to focus on points of commonality, rather than trying to convince half of the local Jews they are, or should be, Zionists.

For inspiration, Rosenzweig has been dusting off Milwaukee’s community survey from exactly a century ago. (Meir had already moved to Palestine by way of Denver at the time.) Back then, she said, the community was roughly the same size it is now, and its Jewish funding arms were raising roughly the same amount of money, adjusted for inflation.

“It was talking about the ‘Campaign for Palestine,’ in 1926, because the Jews of Eastern Europe had nowhere to go,” Rosenzweig said. “They were worried about it then. And so today, we’re responding to the moment. And yes, it looks dark. There were dark days, and we survived because we came together. We know how to do this.”

Andy Burnham, who is on track to become Britain’s next prime minister following Keir Starmer’s resignation last month, apologized for his party’s handling of the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas mass killings in Israel, saying that it should have done more to push for a ceasefire and called for exerting greater pressure on the Jewish state today.

His comments prompted a joint response from the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, which said they had contacted his team to express “significant concerns” about his remarks.

Burnham made his comments in a video statement on Thursday in response to questions from the public. Burnham is likely to become the next prime minister after gaining the overwhelming support of sitting Labour members of Parliament. To date, no one has challenged him for the party’s leadership ahead of a July 17 deadline. 

“I know many people feel that at the start of Israel’s military action in Gaza, my party didn’t get it right, and I am sorry about that,” he said. He added that he supported further sanctions on Israelis involved in the violence in Gaza, measures to ban trade with Israeli settlements and restrictions on arms licenses to Israel, saying there was “increasing evidence that war crimes appear to have been committed.”

He also condemned increased antisemitism in Britain, and said that tackling antisemitism did not contradict holding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to account.

Lawmakers are pushing for Israel criticism 

His comments came as lawmakers across the political spectrum have pushed for increased condemnation of Israel and sanctions on the country.

“The unbearable suffering in Gaza is a scar on our collective conscience,” Burnham said. “The killing of innocent Palestinians, including children,” was “completely unacceptable,” he added, declaring that Britain had to do more to “put pressure on the Israeli government.”

He described the country as “too slow to call for a ceasefire” and that “we must now do more to strengthen our approach” as “Israel continues to violate the ceasefire agreement, killing innocent Palestinians.” 

In their response, the Board and JLC said they shared “concern for the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip” but stated that the conflict “cannot be understood without reference to the role of Hamas not only in launching the conflict but in perpetuating the war through the holding of hostages, war-fighting entirely from within the civilian population, and [their] ongoing refusal to cede power and disarm, in line with the 20 point peace plan.”

They added that the conflict also could not be understood without reference to Hamas’ regional backers and allies, including Iran and Hezbollah. Burnham addressed none of this in his comments.

Burnham condemned UK antisemitism as ‘appalling’

Burnham did, however, reiterate his condemnation of Hamas, describing the Oct. 7 attacks as “monstrous,” stressing that he denounced them “as strongly today as I did in the immediate aftermath.” 

He said that he also condemned “the increase in appalling antisemitic attacks here in the UK and those who seek to divide our communities by targeting Jewish people.”

“I felt first-hand the anxiety in our Jewish community and the very real threat they face,” the former mayor of Greater Manchester said, referring to the Yom Kippur 2025 attack on the city’s Heaton Park synagogue in which two people were killed.

The Board and JLC welcomed Burnham’s “zero tolerance approach to antisemitism” and affirmed his assertion that “there is no contradiction between fighting antisemitism and disagreeing with actions of the Israeli government.”

However, they said, “Antisemitism cannot be confronted without addressing all its drivers,” arguing that in Britain that includes “Islamist, far left and far right extremists who go beyond criticism of the Israeli government to a place of hatred directed at Jews and Israelis.”

Their joint statement pointed out that Burnham knew “first hand the links between hatred of Israel, antisemitic extremism and deadly violence against British Jews,” adding that, “in a country in which antisemitism has become more normalized, more extreme and more violent, we call on our leaders to show the utmost care in their rhetoric in relation to the conflict.”

US President Donald Trump claimed the US has accepted a request from Iran’s leadership to resume negotiations, but emphasized that the ceasefire between the nations is over in a post on Truth Social on Friday, after having previously declared that the Washington-Tehran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was also over.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has asked us to continue ‘talks.’ We have agreed to do so, but the United States has stated to them, in no uncertain terms, that the Cease Fire is OVER!” Trump asserted.

According to Iranian state media reports, a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry denied that any requests were made regarding the continuation of talks and stated that any US breaches of commitments would be met with “reciprocal action.”

The spokesperson noted that Iran had agreed to a visit by Qatari mediators.

Qatari officials discuss US-Iran tensions with Iranian, Pakistani officials

According to semi-official Iranian news outlet Tasnim, a Qatari delegation arrived in Iran on Friday to consolidate Doha’s role as a mediator between Tehran and Washington after clashes in the Strait of Hormuz reignited hostilities between the two nations.

Tasnim reported that Iranian officials will also discuss Doha’s condemnation of Iran’s recent strikes on commercial vessels transiting the strait.

Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held a phone call with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday, according to his office, to discuss the US-Iran situation and Pakistan’s role in negotiations. 

According to a statement regarding the call, both leaders stressed the importance of continuing talks, reducing regional tensions, and resolving the disputes through diplomatic means.

Iran is attempting to restore nuclear sites damaged during the US and Israel’s Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion, according to a Friday CNN report based on satellite imagery of the sites.

The imagery was reportedly captured in June and July and allegedly showed nuclear sites in Iran’s Parchin and Pickaxe Mountain being repaired.

American and Israeli airstrikes struck and damaged the sites multiple times over the course of the operations.

Analyzed by CNN in conjunction with the Institute for Science and Security, the Parchin imagery reportedly showed temporary coverings placed over impact holes from US and Israeli strikes, which were then replaced with mesh coverings a few weeks later.

Concrete mixing trucks were also visible in the imagery, indicating that Iran may be preparing to seal the impact holes, experts told CNN.

Additional imagery from Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain facility showed construction vehicles moving in and out of the underground site, which CNN noted may amount to a violation of the recently signed US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

The MoU requires Iran to maintain the status quo at all nuclear sites, CNN noted.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday claimed that the MoU was over during a press conference at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey.

No repairs seen at Isfahan, Fordow, Natanz

Images of Iran’s Isfahan, Fordow, and Natanz nuclear sites did not seem to indicate any restoration efforts, CNN reported.

In addition to nuclear sites, CNN shared imagery of repair attempts at damaged Iranian missile bases. Repairs are also visible at Iran’s Tabriz airbase, which showed what appeared to be a runway crater being filled in with concrete.

According to CNN, regional satellite imagery was initially censored by the US government, but a recent loosening in restrictions allowed outlets to share such photos more easily.

On a warm Monday evening in early June, on the grounds of a synagogue in a New Jersey suburb, several hundred people gathered to celebrate a decision most of them had not yet finished carrying out.

For those actually making the move, it was still unfinished business: a house not yet sold, an apartment not yet found, a job that ends in a matter of weeks. For one afternoon, Nefesh B’Nefesh (NBN) had given them somewhere to set it all down.

Two large tents had gone up on the grounds. One, on the grass, was for the children; the other, beside the synagogue, held the food, a barbecue of burgers and hot dogs, salads, and salmon. 

Just outside, an Israeli entertainer, DJ Raphi, himself an oleh (a new immigrant to Israel), had a crowd of kids waving their arms in unison, and they were, without exaggeration, delighted. 

A face painter worked on a patient queue of small clients. A photo booth was stocked with props from the journey everyone attending was about to make: a cardboard suitcase and placards naming various cities.

The mood was celebratory and loud with music. But running underneath it was something I can only describe as excited stress, the particular tension of people who have made the biggest decision of their lives and now have to execute it, box by box. 

That was the afternoon NBN had built: a community pausing, mid-upheaval, to be told that someone understood exactly what they were going through, and would hold their hand the rest of the way.

The gathering was the New Jersey launch of Nefesh B’Nefesh’s 2026 summer aliyah season, held on June 2, alongside Israel’s Aliyah and Integration Ministry, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, and JNF-USA. 

More than 450 people came through the doors; a second event in Toronto the following night drew over 200 participants.

Across the coming months, NBN expects to bring about 2,300 North American olim to Israel on 47 group flights, departing from New York, New Jersey, Miami, Boston, and Los Angeles, some 478 families among them.

The round numbers, though, don’t tell the full story. Nearly everyone in it was a story caught mid-sentence.

Alana Goldsmith’s story involved reaching the packing stage. “That’s the million-dollar question,” she told the Magazine when I asked what makes the cut and what gets left behind. 

“We’re bringing mementos, a little bit of furniture, and my kitchen,” she said. The family’s visas had come through the week before, and they flew to Beit Shemesh around two months later.

An educator of 18 years, Goldsmith described a decision 17 years in the making. 

“It was never why or how,” she said. “It was really just a matter of when.” 

Her son is 15, her daughter 12 – an age, she reckoned, where you can still settle a child into a new country before the joins begin to show. Her husband, a consultant, plans to look for work once they land, while she helps the children acclimate. 

NBN had already lined up doctors in Israel for a family medical issue, she said, and taken the sting out of the paperwork. Her parents made aliyah two summers ago, and a brother and sister are there already. One sister is staying behind.

For Rebecca Catan, who flies on August 10 to Karmiel, the pull was harder-edged. She is still hunting for an apartment, which she put down, half-laughing, to the fact that “everyone’s going where we’re going.” 

When I asked what had moved her, she didn’t pause. “Since the war started, I think we’ve just been more interested.” She and her husband want their children to grow up somewhere they feel at home, she said. 

She lives, for now, in a community she described as friendly to Jews. “But I don’t think it’ll stay that way forever. And we want a forever home.”

That word, “forever,” kept surfacing. So did the war, though rarely as a reason to hold back.

Stan and Karen, a couple bound for Ramat Beit Shemesh, had done everything “except selling the house” – the one piece, Karen noted, refusing to move. 

They had begun the process a year earlier. Two of their children and several grandchildren are already in Israel; four children and 16 grandchildren remain in the US, a split the family is still learning to talk about.

They had been in Israel, as it happened, two days before the war began, and spent it moving in and out of the reinforced safe room, right through to the airport on the way home. 

Israel ‘probably the safest place’

“That’s part of life now, unfortunately,” Karen said. Had it given them second thoughts? It had done the reverse. “If you look at what’s going on in the world, in this country now, it’s probably the safest place,” she said. “Strange, but true.”

No one held that contradiction – the fear and the conviction side by side – more openly than Marla Rattenshark, who is becoming Mira when she lands. 

Hers is a 21-year story of, in her words, “no more excuses”: a lone-soldier daughter already serving in Jerusalem, an older daughter about to begin graduate school there, and a son heading to a gap-year program. 

She works for an Israeli organization, and said she had spent years feeling she was living a lie, comfortable in New Jersey. “We’re running away from nothing,” she was careful to add.

She had been in Israel during the war, running to shelters for the first time in her life. “It almost compromised my conviction,” she admitted. “It did, honestly.” 

And then, in the same breath, she pulled herself back. “I do everything with an extreme,” she said. “They say go big or go home. I’m actually doing both. Go big and go home.”

A chef with a brand-new kitchen, a fitness studio, and a house with a backyard, she is trading all of it for a smaller flat in either Jerusalem’s Baka or Katamon neighborhoods.

Her wider family, secular Jews who she said do not identify with Israel, are unlikely to visit. “It’s going to be a little lonely,” she said, and did not attempt to soften it.

For Sarah and Steve Clark, heading to Netanya to be near a daughter in Zichron Ya’acov, the reasoning ran down the generations. Sarah had just retired after 38 years of teaching. 

The idea, Steve explained, was to become a fixed point, “Saba (grandpa) and savta (grandma) as a base” for grandchildren who come to Israel for a gap year and, the couple hoped, decide to stay. 

“We’ll bring the grandchildren over one at a time,” Sarah said. “So we’ll see what happens.” Of Nefesh B’Nefesh, she was unequivocal: it had been “holding your hand across the line,” an adviser once answering a handful of her questions with six links apiece.

Not everyone on the grounds was leaving. Aaron Bernstein has no plans to make aliyah; his daughter did through NBN a few years ago. He had seen an advertisement for the party and decided to come along, and to cheer on people he had never met. 

“I’m here to support people,” he told me. “A lot of people are indifferent. You’re going to Israel. So what? And I think people should know that what they’re doing is exceptional.” 

The companion beside him admitted she had never set foot in Israel. It was, she said, a dream. Next year, perhaps.

The same thread ran through nearly every conversation. Each of these people had, at some point in the last three years, been handed an obvious reason to wait. None of them took it. 

The war came up again and again, in the safe rooms, in the news from home, but never once as a reason to stay. If anything, it had sped things up. It turned a “someday” into a date on a boarding pass.

The only person I interviewed in Hebrew that afternoon was Yohanan Mali, director-general of the Development of the Negev, Galilee, and National Resilience Ministry. To watch families make aliyah while Israel is still absorbing hard news, he told me, is deeply moving, and it sharpens the state’s obligation to give each of them a soft landing.

The security situation dictates the agenda, he admitted, and he hopes it will change. But the building does not stop. “Three years at war,” he said, “and we keep going the entire time.” 

He listed the projects: a university going up in Kiryat Shmona, a planned rail line to reach it, and money going into health and education across the North and South. 

“In five or 10 years,” he said, “you won’t recognize these areas when you see them.”

It is not an empty pitch. Through Go Beyond, a joint NBN and KKL-JNF initiative, some of this summer’s olim will settle not in the established Anglo enclaves but in the very regions Mali is working to rebuild. The families in that synagogue garden are, whether they would put it this way or not, part of a national project.

By the time these words are published, the season that opened that evening is well underway. Catan has her August flight. Goldsmith is somewhere among the boxes in Beit Shemesh. Mira is, more than likely, in Baka. The 47 flights are running.

Near the synagogue, the photo booth kept a steady queue all afternoon: guests posing with a cardboard suitcase and a placard with the phrase “Now more than ever.” A dress rehearsal, in props, for a departure that for most of them was then only weeks away. 

Many, by now, have made it for real and are quite possibly reading these words in Israel.

For over 40 years, Shelly Levine, founder and CEO of Tivuch Shelly Real Estate, has presented Israeli real estate to clients worldwide, selling thousands of apartments and helping build communities for her Anglo clientele. 

During that time, Levine has organized and participated in hundreds of housing fairs, community presentations, and private meetings across the United States, Canada, and England.

For most of those years, these events were welcomed as opportunities for prospective buyers to learn about life in Israel, find homes or investment properties, and strengthen their connection to the Jewish homeland.

Today, when she travels for these fairs, she finds herself on the front lines of the Israel-Arab conflict.

Never before has Levine experienced the kind of hostility that has emerged over the past three years.

What was once a straightforward real estate presentation is now met with aggressive demonstrations against Israel and the Jewish community, requiring heightened security measures.

During a recent visit to the New York Tri-State area to present Israeli housing opportunities to interested buyers, Levine was met with large-scale demonstrations. 

In Teaneck, New Jersey, she was forced to change locations at the last minute and hire private security to ensure a safe environment for herself and the attendees.

After decades of presenting Israeli real estate opportunities, helping families settle in established Anglo communities, and building new ones, she suddenly found herself facing demonstrations, intimidation tactics, and media scrutiny unlike anything she had encountered in her professional career.

Yet despite the protests, attendance remained strong.

“The people attending these events are not looking for conflict,” she said. “They are looking for information, options, and a connection to Israel. Many are thinking about their future and where they want their families to have a place to call home.”

Following the New Jersey event, things escalated. After several hundred pro-Palestinian demonstrators disrupted an event at Park East Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, The New York Times published a particularly critical article about the event, highlighting Shelly Levine as the veteran representative.

Rather than report on the angry chants of “from the river to the sea” and “long live the intifada,” Levine felt the coverage lacked important context regarding the anti-Israel and antisemitic views expressed by many of the protesters. 

Soon afterward came a wave of hateful messages on her social media accounts and company website.

The controversy followed her overseas to London, where she participated in another Israel property housing fair. 

Event organizers instructed exhibitors not to market certain projects located in areas that could raise legal or political concerns under UK regulations. 

Levine said she fully complied by covering the relevant projects on her display materials, keeping her brochures (which contained her contact information and a broad range of property listings) under the table, and did not present those locations during the event.

She said she provided a brochure to one individual who specifically requested her contact information and believes the interaction may have been part of an effort to ‘set her up.’

After the event, Levine was contacted by a Sky News reporter whose questions reflected what she perceived as several misconceptions about Israeli communities described as disputed or illegal. 

During their conversation, Levine explained the history and legal status of several of these areas, noting that neighborhoods such as Ramat Eshkol and Givat HaMatos are recognized as part of Jerusalem.

After learning that the reporter had never visited Israel, Levine invited her to come as her guest, even offering to cover her travel expenses so she could see the communities firsthand and better understand the country’s history and realities on the ground. 

According to Levine, what began as a tense conversation became a respectful dialogue, although she still disagreed with portions of the published article.

Sky News quoted Levine as saying: “Ma’aleh Adumim is not an expansion; it’s an urban renewal. It’s a 40-year-old city, not a new development. The project is knocking old buildings down and building new modern ones. They are not expansion settlements.”

Neither protests, intimidation, nor sensational headlines will deter Tivuch Shelly from its mission. For more than 40 years, Shelly Levine has helped thousands of families and investors turn their dream of owning a home in Israel into a reality, and that commitment remains stronger than ever. 

‘The writing on the wall’

As antisemitism continues to rise around the world, many of her clients, including children of Holocaust survivors, tell her they “see the writing on the wall.” 

They recognize the importance of having a place to call home in Israel, whether for today, for their children, or for future generations.

There has never been a more important time to begin the conversation about owning property in Israel. 

From Jerusalem and Netanya to emerging communities like Carmei Gat, Tivuch Shelly is committed to helping clients every step of the way, from the initial search to receiving the keys and beyond. 

Whether making aliyah or investing in a future home in the Jewish homeland, her experienced team provides honest guidance, expertise, and personal attention.

For Shelly Levine, this has never been just about selling real estate. It has always been about helping Jews build their future in Israel. If the past three years have changed anything, it is not her mission; it is the urgency with which many families now approach it. 

More and more clients tell her that owning a home in Israel is no longer simply something they hope to do one day. 

In a world of rising antisemitism and growing uncertainty, they see it as a need rather than a want. And despite the hostility she now encounters, Levine remains committed to helping them make that future a reality.■

The writer is marketing manager at Tivuch Shelly. Learn more about the company: (02) 566-2499; www.tivuchshelly.com

Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner has officially withdrawn from the state’s US Senate race, the Maine secretary of state’s office said in a statement on Friday, meaning his name will not appear on the November 3 ballot, and his political party has until July 27 to name a replacement.

Platner’s formal withdrawal came one month after he earned the Democratic Party nomination to challenge Republican Senator Susan Collins. Platner easily won the June 9 Democratic primary and became crucial to Democrats’ drive to win control of the Senate from Republicans in the November 3 election.

His fall came following a series of accusations this week, including one of rape, which he has denied.

“I write to formally withdraw my candidacy for United States Senate,” Platner wrote in a letter to the Maine secretary of state’s office.

Platner calls to ‘free Palestine’ in withdrawal letter

The letter outlined major themes of his now-doomed campaign, including his drive for national healthcare. He concluded with an expletive aimed at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that is at the center of US President Donald Trump’s deportation program and a call for a “Free Palestine.”

There already are six Democrats who have formally announced campaigns to replace Platner, in a procedure yet to be detailed by the Maine Democratic Party.

An outline of the process has been announced that would have party delegates gathering at a nominating convention, occurring before the July 27 deadline for submitting the new nominee’s name that will appear on November ballots.

In 1975, Lincoln Square Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side had become the hottest ticket in town. And no ticket was required to attend services at the 600-seat Orthodox congregation that, under the leadership of the charismatic young rabbi, Steven (later Shlomo) Riskin, was filled to overflowing each Shabbat.

More than 1,500 people were attending the dozens of weekly adult education classes offered, from simple Hebrew to advanced Talmud.

At that point, the synagogue’s energetic educational director, Ephraim Buchwald, 29, suggested that Lincoln Square create a Shabbat service with the potential to reach the majority of American Jews, those who were unaffiliated or marginalized and felt disenfranchised from traditional synagogues and much of Jewish life.

The result was the Beginners Service, a weekly gathering that included a selection of prayers in Hebrew and English, a summary and discussion of the weekly Torah portion, and most important, an open environment that encouraged questions, comments and give-and-take between Rabbi Buchwald, and a wide range of several dozen attendees.

Fifty years later, on June 27, the rabbi, now known as a pioneer in the world of Orthodox Jewish outreach, stepped down from his post.

The enormous impact of the ‘Beginners Service’ learning program

Toward the end of a long conversation a few days later, I asked him to provide contact information for some of the program’s more memorable participants, past and present, so I could interview them.

The next day he emailed me a list he compiled of “noted notables, by category,” which included one-line bios of 117 Beginners Service attendees in “academia, business, celebrity, celebrity relatives, education, Jewish communal activism, journalism/media/publishing, law, law enforcement, medicine and psychology, philanthropy, science and math, show business and entertainment, and Torah.”

The list, and his preparation of it, gave me a glimpse into the depth of Rabbi Buchwald’s reach and impact on the spiritual lives of thousands of men and women for the last five decades.

Each of the former and current students of his that I subsequently spoke with described him as having re-energized and enriched them in profound ways through his teachings, not only of Jewish ritual and text but of modeling a life of meaning and purpose.

Each said they had been a guest at the Buchwald Shabbat table more than once, where they were welcomed warmly by the rabbi and his wife, Aidel.

Allan Leicht, a writer and producer for theater, movies and television, discovered the Beginners Service more out of curiosity than commitment, after moving from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side with his actress wife, Renee Lippin, in 1980.

“I was looking for a synagogue to go to on Saturday mornings, but after meeting this young, enthusiastic rabbi, he won me over completely,” the soft-spoken Leicht explained. “Rabbi Buchwald’s lively discussions” about the prayers and Torah portion “were addictive,” he recalled. The rabbi “never invalidated anyone’s point of view.” 

Leicht began to observe Shabbat and Jewish holidays more fully, despite the challenges presented in working in the entertainment world. He credits Rabbi Buchwald for his transformation. “I became re-awakened to my Judaism.

More than 40 years later, Rachel Priester, who was raised Christian, had a similar reaction to Rabbi Buchwald’s impact on her spiritual life.

“He helps people find their way to, or back to, Judaism,” said Priester, who moved to the Upper West Side a year and a half ago and sought out Lincoln Square’s Beginners Service on her path toward Judaism.

Rabbi Buchwald “welcomes you warmly and reaches out to everyone on their own level and makes you aware that you are part of something bigger, part of a community of tradition and prayer.”

Priester completed her Orthodox conversion shortly before Shavuot this year and now attends the early Shabbat morning “hashkama” minyan at Lincoln Square each week in addition to the Beginners Service, which she says “continues to bring me great comfort.”

Short in stature, prodigious in enthusiasm, charisma and compassion

Short in stature, prodigious in enthusiasm, charisma and compassion, Rabbi Buchwald, 80, has become an inveterate selfless promoter, using his educational and marketing talents to showcase the beauty of Judaism.

A favorite story he tells is of the 19th century Chasidic leader, the Kotzker Rebbe, who was asked about two people on a ladder, one on the fourth rung and one on the 10th. “Which one is higher?” his students asked. “It depends on which one is climbing up and which one is going down,” the Rebbe answered.

“As long as you’re going in the right direction, that’s our motto,” Rabbi Buchwald told me. “It’s about giving people a positive, joyous Jewish experience. And the key ingredients are passion and follow-up.”

Tom Steinberg, CEO of a diversified investment firm and a Judaics educator at Orthodox yeshivas in Israel, views his time as a Beginners Service attendee in the early 1980s as a pivotal waystation between his Reform childhood in the San Francisco area and the many years he has spent in the Israeli yeshiva world. 

He says he met Rabbi Buchwald soon after he moved to New York to start a job in finance and had decided he wanted to become observant.

“On my first visit to Lincoln Square, I met the rabbi, and he immediately invited me to lunch for that Shabbat,” Steinberg recalled. He found the rabbi’s teachings “masterful,” and was moved by the warmth of the Buchwald family, where he was a frequent Shabbat guest.

Over time, Steinberg moved toward a more “yeshivish” life in Jerusalem and, like his mentor, became involved in kiruv, or outreach, to young people.

He has remained close to Rabbi Buchwald, and says he deeply appreciates “the amazing energy it takes to create a new organization” and keep it growing for decades. “He literally carried me on his shoulders at my wedding,” Steinberg said, attributing the feat to the rabbi’s “spiritual strength.”

In reflecting on how the Beginners Service has changed in recent years, Rabbi Buchwald said that since the Covid pandemic, the number of those who attend the three-hour sessions has decreased a bit from about 50 people a week to between 30 and 40.

He estimates that half of the regulars now are not Jewish, about equally divided between those who have a Jewish spouse or partner and those who are spiritual seekers drawn to Judaism on their own. 

Educator and opera singer Jennifer Moore, raised Catholic, was interested in Judaism before she met her observant Jewish boyfriend. “Seeing his devotion to his faith and how he lives his life made me draw closer,” she said, and Rabbi Buchwald’s “generosity of spirit and personal interest in each person’s journey” was instrumental in her decision to convert to Judaism.

She said that becoming a Jew after Oct. 7 felt like “the right thing to do. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t aligned with my values.”

Adrianne McMillan, an African-American woman who was born Episcopal, said Rabbi Buchwald made her feel comfortable the first time she attended the Beginners Service four years ago, and over time, “he made me feel like a daughter.”

Her conversion took place in 2024, and she still walks four miles from her Harlem home to Lincoln Square on Shabbat. 

Rabbi Buchwald launched the National Jewish Outreach Program (NJOP) in 1987

Rabbi Buchwald launched the National Jewish Outreach Program (NJOP) in 1987, and promoted its first project, the Hebrew Reading Crash Course, through an ad campaign developed by the late copywriter Jesse Cogan. It included jingles on the radio, toll-free numbers, and billboards on buses and subways with catchy slogans like, “This Rosh Hashanah, Pray in the Original,” and “This Passover, Experience the Exodus From Right to Left.”  The course began at Lincoln Square, with 5,000 people signing up at the outset, and later went national. 

Rabbi Buchwald said reading Hebrew was key for feeling comfortable at synagogue, that learning it was relatively easy and that “it was neutral and non-threatening” compared to Shabbat observance. “For many who took the course, Hebrew reading became the gateway to greater Jewish involvement,” the rabbi has said.

Over the years NJOP has helped establish Beginners Services at synagogues around the country as well as programs like “Turn Friday Night Into Shabbat,” based on a phrase Cogan created and which became NJOP’s motto, and Shabbat Across America, a once-a-year synagogue service for unaffiliated and marginally affiliated Jews that has drawn more than 1.5 million people and now takes place in more than 40 countries, according to Rabbi Buchwald. 

The Beginners Service will continue, Lincoln Square has assured its community, and though he will miss those weekly encounters, Rabbi Buchwald plans to keep busy with a highly ambitious list of projects. They include raising “billions of dollars” to allow Jewish day schools around the country to provide a free education, and promoting a campaign to have Jews around the world recite Sh’ma Yisrael twice a day “with love.” Perhaps most challenging: “convincing people to stop talking in shul,” Rabbi Buchwald said. 

If anyone can do it, he can.

Gary Rosenblatt, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, is the former editor and publisher of The Jewish Week of New York. You can follow him as a free or paid subscriber at garyrosenblatt.substack.com.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko said he held consultations with his Monaco counterpart on Friday as authorities are looking into a high-profile bombing targeting a Ukrainian-born businessman.

Kravchenko called for a joint group to continue the investigation after a major suspect was found dead near Ukraine’s capital in a statement on Telegram on Tuesday.

“I have assured that Ukraine is open to full cooperation in accordance with international legal procedures. I am counting on the same stance from our partners in the Principality of Monaco,” he said.

This news comes after three people were wounded on June 29 in a parcel bomb explosion in the wealthy principality, which was believed to be an attack on a Ukrainian-born oligarch. The female suspect, Anastasiia Berezovska, was believed to have fled on foot to France, which does not have border checks with Monaco. She then allegedly drove to Germany via several European countries, including Italy.

Though authorities initially issued an arrest warrant for the suspect, Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian news outlet, reported that the woman was shot and her body was found close to 11 p.m. local time (2 a.m. Israel time) on July 3.

This was later confirmed by Ukraine’s prosecutor-general’s office.

Two suspects for the bomber’s death are in custody 

Two suspects for Berezovska’s murder have reportedly already been detained in connection with the case, one of whom is an officer with the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR). The other is a former law enforcement officer, Ukrainska Pravda said.

In a statement on Thursday, the Prosecutor General’s Office said the court in Kyiv had ordered the two suspects to be held in detention without bail.

Ukrainian media, citing court proceedings, said the HUR employee had retracted his confession, saying the other defendant had fired the shots and that he had confessed out of fear for his life.

Berezovska was wanted by authorities in Monaco on charges of attempted murder, placing an explosive device in a public place with criminal intent, and criminal conspiracy.

Monaco prosecutor Stephane Thibault told reporters he held a video call with Ukrainian prosecutor Ruslan Kravchenko earlier on Friday to exchange information.

Thibault said investigators were looking at “all options,” and that there was no information yet on the motive for the bomb or where it came from.

Kravchenko said an international investigative team should be set up quickly.

The initial attack targeted members of the Monaco Jewish community

Cypriot-Ukrainian Vadym Yermolaiev, who was wounded in the targeted explosion, is Jewish and an active member of the Dnipro Jewish community.

Vadym Yermolaiev, his wife, Anna Innokentiivna Yermolaeva, and their 13-year-old son David were hospitalized after an explosive device was set off at the entrance to their house.

According to Ukrainska Pravda, both of Yermolaiev’s wife’s legs were partially severed in the explosion, and doctors performed a double amputation.

Regional outlets in the Côte d’Azur reported that Yermolaiev sustained burns and shrapnel injuries, but he is reportedly conscious. The boy reportedly sustained burns and bruises, and a bolt from the explosive device is said to have lodged in his leg.

Mathilda Heller and Ruby Sadikman contributed to this report.

The Israeli television industry continues to release series at a breakneck pace, and the latest one to be coming our way is On Standby, which will be coming up on Yes on July 21.

While episodes have not yet been released to the press, the premise sounds interesting: It’s a comedy about a depressed security screener at the airport, played by and starring Gitit Fisher, who lives with her father and has given up on her personal life, until a series of events pushes her to come out of her shell. 

It seems like those endless rounds of asking, “Did you pack by yourself?” might be a perfect subject for some black comedy. We’ll find out soon how well this works.

Some fight for the right to party, while others, specifically Larry David, fight for the right to kvetch. Kvetching has worked well for David, whether it was when he was writing complaints for characters on Seinfeld or for himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm. 

While it may be redundant to kvetch about kvetching, that’s what his new series, Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America, on HBO, has inspired me to do.

Don’t you just hate it when comedy isn’t all that funny? This series, which was produced by the Obamas, consists of sketches that feature David taking part in key events in US history, which is a funny idea, and there are some laughs.

Larry David writes the first draft of the Constitution

David plays Richard Livingston, a member of the Continental Congress, who gets to write a first draft of the Constitution, which he wants to load with David-like wisdom, like a prohibition on sharing umbrellas. “You forgot your own umbrella? Too bad!” he insists, to the dismay of Benjamin Franklin (Chris Parnell, who played Dr. Leo Spaceman on 30 Rock), John Hancock (Henry Winkler), and Thomas Jefferson (Alan Tudyk). Of course, it’s amusing to find a guy as down-to-earth as David at an event where the others are concerned with the highest ideals. But it goes on. And on.

That’s the trouble. Each skit could last for two to three minutes and be good, but they outlive their funniness. A sketch about David as a World War I soldier telling a fellow soldier that his girlfriend isn’t good-looking after the doomed soldier proudly shows him her photo falls completely flat. 

Another one with David as Alexander Graham Bell, who invites a crowd to hear him speak on a telephone for the first time, only to have the onlookers ask whether the new invention will have all the features of a cellphone, a woman asks if she can choose her own ring, etc., as David seethes in response, reminds me of something you might see in a college revue. 

At these college shows, everyone’s friends laugh, but it doesn’t mean it’s that funny. David and his buddies, including Jerry Seinfeld, who plays Clark to his Lewis in the second episode, seem to have had a good time making this, but it isn’t much fun to watch.

The second episode features the final performance by Rob Reiner, who was murdered in December by his mentally ill son.

He plays President George Washington announcing that he will not run for a third term and suggesting that a constitutional amendment be passed to forbid presidents from staying in office more than two terms. 

David plays a heckler in the crowd who raises the possibility of the emergence of a con man president, who would not accept the results of the election and would try to foment a January 6-like insurrection. Reiner plays Washington straight, convincingly showing how the leaders of that day could not envisage an unprincipled man like the current US president ascending to the office. 

It stings to remember what a good actor Reiner was, as well as a writer/director, but it’s some consolation that his last role was about issues in which he believed deeply.

Sheep take on crime in England

Audiences have embraced the new live-action movie The Sheep Detectives, which tells the story of a flock in England that can speak, although only they understand each other, and love to hear detective stories that their shepherd/owner, George (Hugh Jackman), reads to them, and eventually get busy solving an actual murder. 

The movie, which was just in theaters, is already available to stream in Israel on Amazon Prime Video, and while the meadows are scenic, it hasn’t lost much in its move to the small screen.

I am not as charmed by talking animals as some people. Other than Charlotte’s Web and Animal House, I haven’t always loved this genre, and at first, The Sheep Detectives seemed too cutesy to get through. 

But the clever writing and the voice actors, who include Patrick Stewart, Brett Goldstein, Chris O’Dowd, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Regina Hall, and Bryan Cranston, won me over, as did the human cast members like Jackman, Emma Thompson, Molly Gordon, and Michael Wildman eventually won me over. 

The movie is at its best when the sheep try to understand human ways, such as who this guy, God, who lives in the church, is. Sebastian (Cranston), one of the flock, explains that God is a shepherd, but also a lamb, who “dams” things, and the parishioners eat him on Sundays. 

It’s also funny to hear them expertly sketch out theories for the murder, the police always say it’s a drifter at first, the will is always read, and the beneficiaries are always the prime suspects, etc. Some people will want to watch this with children, but I would caution them that there is an actual murder, and young kids are not likely to be charmed by hearing about British detective-story cliches.

A new biography of Alfred Hitchcock, A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy, by Tony Lee Moral, was just published, and it contradicts decades of rumors and accusations that he sexually harassed Tippi Hedren, the star of The Birds and Marnie, and that he behaved sadistically toward his actresses in general. So, it’s the perfect time to watch the new documentary, Kim Novak’s Vertigo, a portrait of Novak, who starred in Vertigo, one of Hitchcock’s most iconic films, which is streaming on Hot VOD and Yes VOD.

Novak is one of the only stars of Hollywood’s golden age who is still alive and compos mentis, and the movie is a loving portrait of this actress, who bowed out of movies gracefully when she was still in her prime and devoted herself to living a quiet life on the Oregon coast and painting.

She is modest, forthcoming, and funny, and is perfectly fine with the fact that people are most interested in her today because she starred in Vertigo and other classics, such as Pal Joey with Frank Sinatra and Picnic with William Holden. She has mostly kind words for Hitchcock, and she is honest about how the bizarre psychodrama in Vertigo mirrored her life as an actress, and also showcased Hitchcock’s and the movie studios’ penchant for transforming and manipulating actresses, although she does not accuse him of any inappropriate behavior.

Novak played a showy double role in Vertigo, as Judy, a tough, working-class girl, and Madeline, a worldly socialite, in a performance that gave her a place in the pantheon of Hollywood icons. “Of course, [Vertigo] is the story of Madeline and Judy, but it’s my story, too,” she says.

“I was so green in the business, I had never seen an Alfred Hitchcock movie, so I didn’t fully appreciate what I was getting into until I got into it. But when I read that script, I felt it was so right for me. I was Judy, in a lot of ways. I think I’ve always resented being made over. That’s why I was so right for the role in hb because it’s all about that.”

About Jimmy Stewart, her costar in the movie, who played a traumatized detective suffering from vertigo, she says, “Jimmy Stewart, he was always himself, he always brought something to it. We had so much to react to with each other. He was reacting off of me, I was reacting off of him. We weren’t acting, we never acted.”

For Hitchcock fans, this documentary, which shows her unboxing her costumes from Vertigo, is a must-see.

Synagogues often give those inside them a sense of connection to the heavens, although they do not normally float through the sky. But in Nabatele, a large, outdoor installation by artist and architect Anna Kamyshan, a shtetl-style synagogue appears to hover over Venice, perched on a massive rock suspended above water.

The work, an official collateral event of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, will be on view from July 16 to September 16 at Arsenale Nord in the Castello district of Venice.

It will be presented in collaboration with the Montreal Jewish Museum and curated by Maria Veits and Yevgeniy Fiks.

At once playful, spiritual, and unsettling, Nabatele imagines a Jewish house of worship without ground beneath it.

Its windows are continuously lit, evoking the Ner Tamid, the light that is always kept lit in synagogues to symbolize God’s presence and the Temple, thus suggesting a fragile but persistent source of illumination at a time of war, displacement, and uncertainty.

Grappling with Venice’s Jewish history

“Nabatele is a very personal project, created while I was in search of my personal identity,” Kamyshan, who lives in London, has said.

That personal search is embedded in the work. Kamyshan is Ukrainian, of Jewish heritage and Russian origins, and her biography echoes the questions the installation raises about belonging, exile, memory, and the impossibility of neatly containing one’s identity within borders.

The title itself carries several layers of meaning. It draws on nabat, a Biblical Hebrew word meaning a call of warning or alarm in moments of danger, and softens it with the Yiddish diminutive suffix “-ele.”

What follows from this is a word that suggests both danger and tenderness, an alarm transformed into something more intimate, evoking a soft voice that refuses to disappear.

The image of a synagogue suspended above Venice also resonates deeply with the city’s own Jewish history.

Venice was home to the world’s first Jewish ghetto, established in 1516, and its synagogues were tucked away, often hidden on upper floors.

Kamyshan’s installation reverses that history of concealment. Here, the synagogue is elevated, visible, and illuminated, not hidden from view but held aloft above the city.

Further, the work draws on the memory of the wooden synagogues of Eastern European shtetls, most of which were destroyed in the Holocaust.

Rather than reconstructing one of these vanished buildings as a conventional memorial, Nabatele turns it into an apparition: A structure that is present but unreachable, rooted in memory rather than in land.

The floating rock inevitably recalls René Magritte’s 1959 painting The Castle of the Pyrenees, part of the Israel Museum’s collection, in which a stone mass crowned by a castle hovers over the sea.

But Kamyshan’s version replaces the castle with a synagogue, shifting the image from surrealist fantasy toward Jewish history, specifically the longings of Jews in exile and the concept of a homeland that may exist only culturally and spiritually.

“Nabatele explores the tension between gravity and buoyancy, the gentle effort of existing uprooted,” Kamyshan said.

“Whether the structure ever had roots or a foundation, or instead always floated freely above the ground; whether it seeks a place to land or prefers its airy autonomy… these questions remain a mystery.”

She also described the light in the synagogue windows as central to the work’s meaning. “The constant light from the synagogue windows symbolizes for me that inner flame that is not extinguished by any turbulence, and that persists in instability.”

“It is not trying to represent a state or a flag,” Kamyshan added. “It is more like a condition. Something floating, something that refuses to be pinned down.”

On a technical level, the work is ambitious as well. The installation is a helium-filled, double-membrane structure that rises to 25 meters, combining architecture, engineering, and visual illusion.

Its design and engineering were led by Aerotrope’s Christopher Hornzee-Jones, with calculations and engineering analysis by Tensys.

But despite its scale and technical complexity, Nabatele is not a monument in the usual sense, because it is constantly in motion. It moves with the wind, soars into the sky, or hovers near the water and the rock.

“We understand the project as a point of connection over the long term,” said Alyssa Stokvis-Hauer, the artistic director of the Museum of Jewish Montreal, where Nabatele will eventually find a home.

“Conceived to travel, Nabatele seeks to broaden its cultural reach and foster dialogue across communities and cultures,” she said.

According to Stokvis-Hauer, “These goals are what led our museum to organize the project as a collateral event at 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia and become its future North American host.”

Ela Sayag Lipman got a distressing phone call from her cousin on the second day of Passover 2023. He’d just found an ailing Central Asian Shepherd dog in the woods near Petah Tikva. Knowing that she’d been caring for stray, sick, and abandoned animals since childhood, he hoped she could tell him what to do.

Lipman contacted several animal-welfare organizations, but everyone she approached was too overwhelmed to help. So, she advised her cousin to take the dog to a nearby veterinary hospital, and she’d take it from there.

The vet scanned a microchip under the dog’s skin, leading Lipman to its Arab owner. He explained that he’d abandoned the large animal because he couldn’t afford to feed him anymore.

Lipman, 33, decided to foster Namer at her home in Jaffa until he was healthy. She and her husband already had an adopted dog and a handful of cats.

“Namer couldn’t even stand; he weighed just 40 kilos and had a lot of skin diseases. Now he’s 70 kilos and has an amazing, healthy coat. But when I started to look for a home for him, I discovered a messy situation,” she says.

“There are hundreds of shelters and charities, even businesses like pet pensions, that try to help dogs by taking them in and finding them new homes. They each have their own Facebook or Instagram page or WhatsApp group. The data is not sorted or updated. Everything is done manually, with no management system beyond an Excel sheet, and no communication with local government authorities.”

Tinder for pets and adopters

Having worked in hi-tech for 11 years as a quality assurance manager, Lipman realized she needed to create a digital platform, “a marketplace where we’d collect, organize, and analyze all the data” on pets needing owners.

She’d met her husband through the swipe-left, swipe-right Tinder dating app, “so this was the format that came to mind: a ‘Tinder’ for dogs and cats looking for homes.”

This notion turned into Adopt Me Israel, a nonprofit putting tech expertise to the task of matching shelter animals with forever homes based on personality, lifestyle, family situation, and needs.

Lipman, the CEO, recruited more than 80 volunteers from the hi-tech, marketing, design, animal-welfare, and nonprofit sectors. Her former coworker, Tomer Chechik, chairs the board.

Adopt Me Israel strives to make order out of chaos for the benefit of the animals, potential adopters, and municipalities struggling with an ever-growing population of stray and abandoned cats and dogs.

Lipman and fellow volunteers made a thorough assessment by visiting animal shelters and talking to national and local officials.

The initiative began several months before October 7, but even then, she remembers that the shelter in Sderot was overwhelmed with hundreds of dogs and cats from surrounding towns and from Gaza.

Once the war started, the situation in the western Negev and the Galilee reached crisis proportions, with countless animals in dire straits. Today it’s even worse across the country, particularly for dogs.

“While cats are allowed to live on the streets, dogs by law must be put in shelters and can be shot or poisoned if they’re on the street. These dogs are getting euthanized because the municipalities have very little budget for animal control, and it’s cheaper to euthanize them than trying to give them a chance to be adopted,” Lipman explains.

“Through our app, which now has over 10,000 downloads on Android and iOS, we have collected a lot of data over the past year and a half.”

The website has an English version, and the app will soon be available in English, too.

“We focus on municipal shelters because no one is promoting them. Our technology division is developing tools to help them.”

About 60 of Israel’s 150 animal shelters are already working with Adopt Me Israel.

As a result, Adopt Me has rehomed more than 250 dogs and cats by streamlining the shelter adoption process and ensuring that the animals are healthy upon arrival. This last goal is especially relevant now that Israel is experiencing a rise in rabies reports.

So many sweet dogs

Veterinarian Dr. Tal Assif, director of the Lod municipal animal shelter serving municipalities from Holon and Bat Yam to Hod Hasharon and Rosh Ha’ayin, said the shelter handles approximately 700 dogs and cats per year, plus another 100 animals of other types. Only about 160 shelter animals are adopted annually.

“We started working about a year ago with Adopt Me,” Assif says. “We work with a few other animal advocate organizations, and our cooperation with Adopt Me is unique. It’s a direct route of getting dogs of all breeds, sizes, ages, and temperaments to adoption events that they organize, and we upload available dogs through their app. The more exposure, the more chances you’ll get a home for the dog. It’s a great technology advancement that we really appreciate.”

Through Adopt Me, Assif made a connection with the Agriculture Ministry, which has agreed to fund and launch a shelter renovation project across the country. While the Lod Municipality has been exceptionally supportive of the local shelter, Assif adds, cooperation on the national level didn’t exist. “We felt we were actually being heard for the first time,” he says.

Lipman explains that whereas some animal-welfare organizations are antagonistic to the government, Adopt Me has forged good working relations with the Agriculture Ministry and the Environmental Protection Ministry.

“We are a nonpolitical organization and don’t use the animals as a tool against the government,” she says. “Unfortunately, the Agriculture Ministry is really disconnected from the situation in animal shelters; they haven’t assessed it for a decade. The ministry’s veterinarians work with cows and chickens, not dogs and cats. We are here to work with the ministry and with other animal-welfare associations to make the process more efficient.”

On July 1, Adopt Me Israel held a conference of leaders from all Israeli animal-welfare charities and shelters, with the aim of forming working relationships and sharing ideas. The gathering was hosted at Microsoft Reactor in Tel Aviv.

“The most important thing,” says Assif, “is people being aware that so many sweet dogs are waiting for a loving home – waiting for you to come and adopt them.”

Social media, in-person adoption days

Adopt Me Israel’s marketing division works with shelters’ social-media teams and with influencers to raise awareness of the situation and encourage people to adopt rather than buy dogs from pet shops or breeders.

Adopt Me Israel volunteers also work offline, bringing puppies on weekends from the overburdened shelters to cafés in Tel Aviv or Modi’in, where there are many people open to pet adoption.

“People are having breakfast and hugging puppies. Hopefully they will fall in love with them and take them home. It’s a nicer experience than going to a shelter, which can be traumatizing,” says Lipman. “So many people are not aware that there are shelters near where they live. We have a long way to go in spreading awareness of how people can adopt dogs.”

Cats are in need of homes, too.

Adopt Me Israel volunteer Shani Peretz, an Instagram influencer, posted a humorous, awareness-raising reel in which her boyfriend proudly shows her a cat he adopted in reaction to a text message. The SMS seemingly indicated that Peretz wanted a pet of her own (ani rotzah ba’al hayim sheli). She really meant she wanted a husband (ani rotzah ba’al, hayim sheli) but left out the comma.

In reality, of course, the adoption of Thiago the cat was carried out with full intention.

Izzy finds a family

Last February, Yavne residents Eilat and Yossi and their 10-year-old daughter, Ariel, were seeking a new pet after Oshrit, one of their two dogs, died at age 17. The remaining dog, Hugo, was lonely.

“First we searched Facebook groups, Yad2, and Google. We saw hundreds of posts about dogs for adoption, but the spark hadn’t happened yet. We hadn’t yet met the dog that felt right for us,” Eilat says.

Then they tried the Adopt Me app. “It really felt like Tinder, only for animals. You swipe right if there’s a spark, or move on to the next star.”

Eilat swiped left until she came across Romi, “a small, brown lump of sweetness and wisdom” waiting for a home at the Gilboa animal shelter. At the first opportunity, the family drove two hours north to meet Romi, whom they renamed Izzy.

“As soon as we met her, we knew we had made the right choice,” Eilat says. “All the information we received about her – her age, size, character, energy level, and needs – was completely accurate. This is a very important detail for any family adopting a dog.”

Eilat notes that the efficient coordination between Adopt Me Israel and the shelter made Izzy’s adoption process “exciting, accessible, simple, and convenient.”

After the family headed home with its new pet, “Izzy slept the entire way on Ariel’s lap, and all our hearts were filled again,” Eilat says. When Izzy was introduced to Hugo, “he received her gently and patiently like a true gentleman.”

Izzy’s brother is still living at the shelter. “Like him, thousands of other dogs across the country are still waiting for a family to choose them,” Eilat says. “I wish more people would choose to adopt instead of buy.”

Dramatically reducing failed adoptions

Reuven Ashenberg, a QA engineer and fundraiser who volunteers with Adopt Me, notes that many people become frustrated with the fragmented process that Adopt Me is striving to change, and eventually choose to purchase animals instead of adopting them.

At the same time, more pets are homeless than ever before due to rising abandonment, neglect, abuse, and violent acts, including intentional poisoning.

“The founders believed that Israel, the Start-Up Nation, had the talent, technology, and innovation to solve this problem. While hi-tech had transformed many industries, animal welfare had largely been left behind.”

Adopt Me’s app not only provides real-time information about available pets but also offers educational content, articles, and videos designed to help adopters make informed decisions and become responsible pet owners.

The organization provides post-adoption support as well, helping owners navigate issues that may arise after bringing a new pet home.

“By supporting families after adoption, Adopt Me aims to dramatically reduce failed adoptions and keep animals in permanent homes,” he says.

Ashenberg adds that people who cannot adopt a pet can help shelter animals through the organization in other ways.

“You can provide a temporary home for pets in need, with support and benefits; you can assist with pet transport, events, and community efforts; or you can donate to help us continue making a meaningful difference in the lives of animals and families,” he says.

The nonprofit also is supported by the Merit Spread Foundation, Check Point, Intel, and IBI Investment House.

“The Torah teaches compassion toward all living creatures and emphasizes humanity’s responsibility to care for animals with dignity and kindness,” he says.

“Through education, adoption, and community involvement, Adopt Me seeks to bring those values into practical action by protecting vulnerable animals and helping them find loving homes.

“To achieve that goal, the organization is seeking sponsors, strategic partners, investors, and supporters who share the belief that Israel can lead not only in technology, but also in compassion.”

A light aircraft crashed at the Ein Vered airfield, sparking a fire at the scene, Magen David Adom Spokespersons Unit said Friday. 

Magen David Adom paramedics evacuated the aircraft’s two occupants to Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba.

A man in his 50s suffered moderate injuries to his head and limbs, and the second occupant was lightly injured.

Firefighters were deployed in reinforced teams to bring the blaze under control and prevent it from spreading.

The aircraft reportedly crashed in an area with solar panels, causing the fire.

MDA found both occupants conscious, evacuated them. 

“We received a report of a light aircraft that had crashed in an open area,” said Dr. Omri Gorga, an MDA physician who was dispatched to the scene.

“When we arrived, we saw flames and a large amount of smoke coming from the aircraft. Nearby were two occupants who had managed to exit the plane. They were fully conscious. We immediately began treating and examining them, provided medical care, and then evacuated them in MDA ambulances to the hospital.”

As Americans conclude celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the greatest democratic experiment in modern history, Israelis find themselves entering yet another election season. The timing is striking. One nation reflected on the endurance of its democratic institutions; the other prepares for what many already predict will be one of the most bitter and divisive political campaigns in its history.

The contrast should cause every Israeli to pause. For me, given that my family has been American for more than half of the 250 years, and now, as an American Israeli, I find myself way beyond that moment of pause, and instead to the serious concern for our future.

We often define democracy by its institutions: free elections, freedom of speech, an independent judiciary, a free press, and the peaceful transfer of power. These are indispensable pillars of any democratic society.

But they are not what makes democracy resilient.

Democracy’s greatest strength has always rested upon something deeper: the belief that despite our disagreements, there exists a common good that is worth pursuing together.

Citizens may disagree passionately about how to achieve that common good. They may debate security policy, economic priorities, judicial reform, religion, education, or diplomacy. Vigorous disagreement is not democracy’s weakness; it is its strength.

The danger begins when we stop believing there is any common good at all.

Israel today confronts perhaps the most complex strategic environment in its history. Iran continues pursuing regional dominance. Terrorist organizations remain committed to Israel’s destruction. Information warfare, diplomatic isolation, economic pressure, and efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state have become permanent features of the international landscape.

Yet history teaches that nations rarely fail because their enemies become stronger alone. They fail because internal cohesion becomes weaker.

No missile can destroy a society that refuses to surrender its unity. But internal hatred can accomplish what foreign adversaries only dream of achieving.

Perhaps that is why the words of Israel’s Declaration of Independence remain so relevant today. Our founders did not merely proclaim sovereignty; they appealed to the Jewish people to unite in rebuilding their homeland while committing the new state to freedom, justice, peace, and the welfare of all its inhabitants. Their vision was not simply political independence. It was the creation of a shared national purpose.

Jewish tradition understood this long before modern democracies existed.

Many Jews begin each morning by accepting upon themselves the commandment to love their fellow before standing in prayer. The sequence matters. Before speaking to God, we are reminded of our obligations to one another. It is a profound recognition that a nation cannot hope to receive blessings while allowing contempt to define relationships among its own people.

That wisdom has never been more relevant.

Imagine, for a moment, a different kind of election. Imagine an election in which slogans and political buzzwords were outlawed. No labels. No manufactured outrage. No campaigns devoted to convincing voters that the greatest danger facing Israel is another Israeli.

Instead, every candidate would be required to answer four simple questions.

What problem are you trying to solve? Exactly how will you solve it? Where has your approach succeeded before? Why should the Israeli public trust you to deliver?

Imagine televised debates where credibility mattered more than charisma. Imagine campaigns built around evidence instead of emotion. Imagine applause following practical solutions rather than clever insults. Imagine candidates asking for our vote because they had earned our confidence, not because they had persuaded us to hate someone else.

That is not naïve. It is what democracy was always intended to be.

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question.

In recent months, many Israelis have wondered whether America is abandoning Israel. It is a legitimate concern. Alliances matter. Strategic partnerships matter. The relationship between Israel and the United States remains one of the most important in the world.

But perhaps that is not the most important question before us. Perhaps we should instead ask: Have we begun abandoning ourselves? Have we allowed outrage to become our political currency? Have we accepted that campaigns built on fear and resentment are somehow inevitable? Have we permitted those who profit from polarization to define the national conversation?

We must demand solutions

Israel’s enemies understand something that we sometimes forget: a divided democracy is easier to weaken than a united one.

The objective of modern information and cognitive warfare is not merely to spread falsehoods. It is to convince citizens that they have more in common with their political tribe than with their fellow countrymen. Once that happens, democracy begins consuming itself from within.

The antidote will not come from another political party. Nor will it come from another election. It must come from us.

Israel does not need another political revolution. It needs a civic revolution. A peaceful revolution led not by politicians, but by citizens – a revolution in expectations.

Every Israeli, Jew, Muslim, Christian, Druze, religious, secular, Left, Right, and Center, should begin demanding something profoundly simple from every candidate seeking public office.

Bring us solutions. Bring us evidence. Bring us integrity. Bring us hope.

Do not bring us hatred. Do not ask us to vote for you because you are not someone else.

Ask us to vote for you because your ideas, your experience, and your character offer the best path toward strengthening the State of Israel.

The strongest democracies are not those without disagreement. They are those whose citizens refuse to allow disagreement to destroy their shared future.

America’s founders understood that free people could govern themselves only if they believed they belonged to something larger than themselves. Jewish civilization has taught for millennia that our covenant with one another is inseparable from our covenant with God. Israel inherits both traditions.

As this election season begins, perhaps the most patriotic act any of us can perform is not merely casting a ballot. It is demanding that every person asking for that ballot first demonstrate how they intend to serve the common good.

The day Israelis stop rewarding slogans over substance, outrage over solutions, and division over vision will mark the beginning of a revolution, not in our government, but in ourselves.

That may prove to be the greatest victory any democracy can achieve. 

For Israel, failure is not an option.

The writer is a global strategist and a strategic adviser at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. He can be reached at globalstrategist2020@gmail.com.

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Friday that Turkey hopes to achieve a result on lifting US sanctions and its desire to purchase F-35 fighter jets soon, adding there should be no defense industry restrictions between allies.

US President Donald Trump, who visited Ankara this week for a NATO Summit, announced on Tuesday that he would lift US sanctions imposed on Turkey over its purchase of Russian S-400 defense missile systems.

Speaking to state broadcaster TRT Haber, Fidan said there was political will from both Ankara and Washington on removing the sanctions, and that the relevant ministers were working to resolve the issue.

In 2020, Washington imposed sanctions on Turkey under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) over its acquisition of the S-400s. It also removed Ankara from the F-35 stealth fighter jet program. The US Congress passed legislation requiring Turkey to end possession of the S-400s in order to rejoin the F-35 program.

Fidan said that there were two matters to be resolved in Turkey-US relations that are subject to US legislation.

“CAATSA is one of them. The issue of the F-35 jets is another… God willing, we will reach a conclusion soon; in other words, I do not think there will be any problems in this regard,” Fidan said in his remarks broadcast on TRT.

Turkey pushes for F-35 jets, but Trump hasn’t ‘made up his mind’

Two sources told Reuters this week that Trump was expected to throw his support behind the potential sale of F-35s during the visit to Ankara. Trump said he “has not totally made up his mind” on the issue.

Turkish daily newspaper Hurriyet reported on Friday that Turkey could announce it would resell the S-400s to one of the Gulf nations as soon as Friday in order to persuade the US to sell F-35 jets to Ankara.

Asked on Friday about the media report and whether Turkey had sought Russia’s permission for such a deal, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow had been in contact with Ankara over what he described as an “extremely sensitive issue.”

The IDF is now running a cutting-edge “targeting cell” officers’ course, with The Jerusalem Post recently exclusively interviewing four officers in connection with it.

A “targeting cell” is a term that refers to a specific kind of command center that coordinates between parts of the IDF’s heavier power, from aircraft to drones to tanks to artillery to the navy, should the military attack a target.

The targeting cell unit reviews the latest multifaceted intelligence, receives and gives directions to ground forces nearby, evaluates risk to innocent civilians who are close by, and assesses the best kind of munition for the attack.

Notably, in the recent war in Gaza, a targeting cell also carried out an assessment regarding the likelihood of danger to Israeli hostages.

Speaking to IDF Lt.-Col. and course commander “R,” who has served in the IDF for 24 years and who has conducted two such courses, he said that “following a jump in the evolution of how war is fought, the training has to be unique, innovative, different, and cutting-edge.”

The dynamics of the war have taught new lessons and need to adapt

“This war has been a climax for new situations, variations, and learning, so we have accumulated tremendous lessons from the last three years, especially regarding new ways to work better and more rapidly when it comes to different arms of the military,” R said.

The need for this fresh course was emphatically operational.

According to R, “We need to inculcate the right approach from the start of officers’ training as a young officer. It is harder when someone comes from another area of the military. Part of this training involves working directly with other overlapping arms of the military from the very start of officer training.”

“Officers from our new training course will already ‘speak the language’ and already know how to work much more smoothly with other arms of the military when there is crossover,” he said.

In other words, until now, targeting cells were thrown together haphazardly on an ad hoc basis when needed.

The downside is that this sometimes meant that portions of the IDF personnel serving in the cell were less trained for aspects of the mission and had miscommunication issues when there was crossover work with non-ground forces arms of the military.

The ethics dimension

“The course teaches all of the issues related to war, ethics, and proper values. You need to avoid harming an innocent person [including Palestinians],” R said.

“Officers are trained to closely analyze these issues to understand all the specifics of the battlespace, including whether there are citizens [like Israeli hostages] nearby, in order to carry out complex missions. We specifically discussed hostage situations and the full spectrum of situations.”

Next, R was questioned about rising threats that soldiers, especially those involved in decisions like targeting, could face. These might include future International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants. 

One way to address this, for instance, might be to generally prevent targeting cell members from flying overseas lest they be arrested or harassed in a variety of European and other countries.

It is important to note that over 120 countries are bound by the ICC’s arrest warrants, and some foreign countries conduct their own local efforts to arrest or harass Israeli soldiers.

“I don’t think we are worrying about them or their impact [in terms of] our future ability to fly overseas or not,” R replied. “In our operations, we focus on the good of the country and accomplishing the mission.”

“Our own values and ethics are the reasons we avoid harming innocent people. We do not worry about outsider standards. We follow our ethics and established IDF values,” R continued.

“We trust that the [Israeli legal] authorities and the IDF will protect us” from external prosecution when fulfilling military duties.

The lessons learned from field experience

Addressing experience in the field, R stated, “I was operational in a targeting cell in Gaza during the early months of the war. We helped multiple attack cells to elevate the ground forces’ performance level.”

“When you carry out operations, you need to make lots of quick and complex decisions,” R said. “Major challenges had to do with the proximity to our forces, where we were directing heavy fire, the speed with which we needed to assist them, and selecting which category of munition to use.”

All this, R continued, “while balancing, maximizing, and achieving the mission next to minimal collateral damage.”

Moreover, he said, “Connecting to the field on the front lines improved me a lot as an army educator.”

“I can compose drills that are much more precise and relevant. This really helps new cadets – they hear from someone speaking from firsthand experience in the battle space. It is easier to connect to that.”

A large part of the targeting cells’ new officer training course focuses on artificial intelligence.

R told the Post, “The enemy is changing its tactics rapidly, but we can change even faster by using AI to analyze the new enemy tactics and then by quickly coming up with a way to adapt.”

Using AI has also radically changed targeting cells’ ability to strike enemy forces at a much closer range than ever before.

Other IDF officials have told the Post about cases where they were able to strike Hamas terrorists with IDF troops only being 150-350 meters away. 

These are close distances that would never have been approved in prior wars, out of concern that harm to friendly forces would have been unavoidable.

R would not address specific distances, but replied, “We need to be more precise than ever, and we have extensive processes to increase that precision.”

On officers, subcommanders in the course

Lt. “A” is a new graduate of the targeting cell officer program.

Prior to moving to the targeting cell officer track, she was a combat fighter, dating back to September 2023.

A then attended portions of the navy captain’s course before transferring to training with the Zik (the Elbit Hermes 450) drone system in the Artillery Corps in support of special forces, where she spent eight full months during her mandatory IDF service.

A told the Post, “If you didn’t come from this world or if you came from the world of drones, it is a different and significant challenge to learn a new role and to be tested on it, then succeed.”

“I needed to invest a lot of time and energy to make this change from 0 to 100,” she noted.

Next, A stated, “If you are being tested or look at a military situation merely on paper, you can figure out problems after the fact.”

“But when an operation is really happening, it is a different kind of challenge,” where after-the-fact salutations do not exist or it would be too late to adapt by then.

During the final set of drills to conclude the training period, “there were crazy scenarios that no one could really be fully ready for,” according to A.

Describing the drill in more detail, she said, “They try to construct an event that will push you beyond your comfort zone.”

For instance, “They wake you up suddenly for a middle-of-the-night emergency when you are tired and groggy. Even those who come from this world, if they are woken up suddenly to confront a hard dilemma, they find it challenging.”

“When you have a high-pressure situation and multiple challenges, you need to decide what to prioritize first,” she added.

A also told the Post, “It can be hard for a female soldier to have an impact in the field, so this is a great place to be able to do that, and we have new classified weapons.”

“During this existential war, more things have become open to women, and the best of them can get into new places,” she noted.

A is now on a 30-month minimum career track, designated to serve with the Gaza 143rd Division.

IDF Lt. “I” said that serving in the targeting cell was a change she made in order to be directly connected to the battlespace.

“Pretty quickly, I could already understand the lingo of what targeting cell people were saying, and I could already help, though I did need to fill in some holes of how to do certain aspects of the role,” “I” said.

“We helped soldiers who were formally more senior than us by rank, but they didn’t know the new systems as well,” she went on to say.

Moreover, “I” noted, “Twice I helped a senior commander. Now there are lots of reservists who come from a different time period and army experience, because our military has really changed.”

“With my background, I could explain to them more about drones, which are having new developments all the time,” she added.

Further, “I” said, “I also know more about using AI, which needs to be used as part of our well-oiled machine. Reservists are now fully trained to know how to perform all of the new AI actions and to use more precise language to form better and more efficient tools for the given situation.”

IDF Capt. “O” said that she “had already learned some of the targeting cell roles, and then I did supplemental training.”

According to O, she has been in the IDF since 2019. “I was in the air force at the crossover of coordination between the air force and the ground forces. I was a subcommander at the IDF Officers’ School at Bahad 1 and then went all in for the targeting cell, and I loved it.”

Discussing the background of the latest officer-cadets, she said that “most of this round of cadets come from mandatory service backgrounds, as opposed to other places where there is a mix of mandatory and reserve officers.”

“Running a course for supplementary targeting cell training has been my life project. How do we best build focal points and connections to multiply the value of our knowledge? Most people do not start with a targeting cell background,” O pointed out.

“So it is hard for them. But skills they learned in the Navy and the Air Force can be very useful if you think about them the right way,” she explained.

Continuing, she noted, “To lead the process, one session at a time, to hear how much Lt. A has learned, as she is now one of our leaders … this course gave her new tools. I feel that all of the staff and I succeeded. It was an incredible and spellbinding project.”

In addition, O said, “Many of the officers who are joining might have left the IDF if they had not joined, because in their specific area, they did not necessarily have an obvious path to promotion.”

“But now, they can advance. Whether it is this round of cadets or the next, there is a lot to be proud of with this incredible progress.”

The IDF killed 12 terrorists in the Gaza Strip in recent days, including a commander in Hamas’s production headquarters, a commander in the Nuseirat Battalion, and the head of a Nukhba cell that raided Camp Re’im on Oct. 7, the IDF Spokespersons Unit announced Friday.

According to the IDF, the Israeli Air Force struck northern Gaza on Wednesday, killing Khalil Jamal Khalil Manaa, a commander in the production headquarters of Hamas’s military wing.

During the war, Manaa commanded workshops that produced launchers and oversaw their final stages of production.

He also played a central role in the headquarters’ operations and production processes and took part in efforts to rebuild it during the ceasefire.

In another strike in northern Gaza on Friday, the IDF killed Osama Walid Dib Maharb, a platoon commander in Hamas’s Nuseirat Battalion.

Terrorists posed a threat to Israeli forces 

The military said Maharb had recently been in possession of explosive devices intended to harm IDF troops operating in the Strip.

The IDF said the terrorists posed a threat to Israeli forces and were struck from the air to remove that threat.

Another terrorist killed was the head of a Nukhba cell that raided Camp Re’im during the Oct. 7 massacre.

The IDF struck southern Gaza on Friday, killing Yahya Sa’id Muhammad Hamdan, head of a Nukhba cell in Hamas’s military wing.

According to the military, Hamdan had recently advanced terrorist plans against IDF troops and attempted to help restore Hamas’s capabilities. He was also killed in a precise airstrike.

Channel 14 commentator Yaakov Bardugo revealed that he asked Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Head David Zini to investigate leaks within the organization, despite not being a journalist but rather “a media personality,” on Friday on Galei Israel radio. 

Bardugo described meeting Zini in the luxurious offices at the Shin Bet headquarters and said that another person was also present in the room. 

The TV channel i24 reported that the additional person was a Shin Bet official related to one of Channel 14’s staff members. 

In response to the story, the Yashar party, led by Gadi Eisenkot, issued a strongly worded statement. 

“David Zini owes the public an explanation: Why did he discuss this matter with someone who openly declared he is not a journalist, who has a clear political agenda, who is a close associate, one of the prime minister’s biggest mouthpieces and loyal advocates, and who came with the goal of persuading him to launch an investigation against a media outlet in Israel?” the statement asked.

“If a political figure or someone close to the government is able to influence decisions concerning the exercise of security powers, this is a grave incident. The public deserves to know who made the request, who applied pressure, what was said during the meeting, and why it took place. Israeli democracy is not a plaything in the hands of any public official, and no political commentator should have the ability to influence it,” the statement continued. 

Legal group demanded disclosure

The Movement for Quality Government in Israel sent an urgent letter on Wednesday to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Zini, and Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, demanding full disclosure of the reported meeting between Zini and Bardugo.

According to the movement, the meeting allegedly took place at the Shin Bet chief’s office in the agency’s Tel Aviv headquarters and concerned calls to examine Channel 12 over alleged leaks about the timing of an Israeli Air Force strike in Iran in late February.

Legal group says public interest overrides secrecy

The movement said the Shin Bet’s exemption from the Freedom of Information Law should not prevent disclosure in this case, arguing that the exemption is intended to protect operational secrecy, methods, and employee identities.

It argued that the reported meeting did not involve classified material because Bardugo does not hold a security clearance, and that one of the meeting’s alleged participants had already publicly discussed its existence and contents.

The Shin Bet, the movement wrote, is a public authority and a trustee of the public, adding that when the agency can share information without harming security, it must do so through law, discretion, and common sense.

Germany will withdraw troops from the northern Iraqi city of Erbil and close a field camp there, after US moves to remove a protection force as part of its own drawdown plans, Spiegel reported on Friday.

The troops will go by the end of September, Spiegel said, citing a parliamentary defense committee briefing. There are currently around 30 German soldiers stationed in the camp on the edge of the airport there, it added.

Germany has already sharply reduced its presence in the Middle East due to security risks posed by the Iran war.

A German defense ministry spokesperson said a briefing had taken place and that Germany was planning to reduce the number of soldiers there over the long term, without giving details on the timing or numbers involved.

“I want to emphasize that we are merely reducing our footprint; vital support services, such as those for the Peshmerga, will be maintained. To this end, a team of military advisers will remain at the embassy,” the spokesperson added.

German soldiers have been in Iraq for years

German troops have been stationed in Erbil for years as part of Berlin’s contribution to the international coalition against Islamic State, providing training, advice and support to Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

When asked if the US plans had contributed to the move, the spokesperson said the decision was taken in coordination with partners.

“No single partner is decisive here. Rather, it is all of them together,” the spokesperson told a press conference.

Qatar has been in talks with the US and Iran to de-escalate the current crisis, according to a Friday New York Times report citing two anonymous officials familiar with the matter. 

Iranian armed forces launched attacks on US military infrastructure in Gulf states on Thursday following US strikes on Iran’s southern coastal and eastern provinces, further eroding a three-week-old ceasefire.

Iranian media later reported multiple explosions across southern Iran, including Bushehr, where one of the country’s nuclear plants is located, along with Konarak, Choghadak and Bandar Abbas.

Attacks on Qatari and Saudi shipping vessels earlier this week upended the ceasefire, with US President Donald Trump declaring the truce “over.”

A Qatari delegation also visited Iran on Friday in what is believed to be an effort by Doha to consolidate its role as a mediator after a recent escalation in hostilities in the Gulf, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

Tasnim said the visit followed what it described as Qatari accusations against Iran over an alleged incident in the Strait of Hormuz and subsequent US attacks on Iranian military and civilian targets.

A source with knowledge of the situation told Reuters on Friday that Qatari negotiators were meeting Iranian officials in an effort to de-escalate tensions and create conditions for broader negotiations, adding that the talks were being conducted in coordination with the United States.

Axios also cited a diplomat as saying that “it’s clear both sides want to come back to the MOU.”

CENTCOM says US forces struck about 90 military targets in Iran

US Central Command said on Wednesday its forces had struck approximately 90 Iranian military targets, including air defense systems, coastal surveillance assets, and missile and drone storage sites.

The US military said its strikes were aimed at keeping the strait open after it accused Iranian forces of attacking three tankers in the area.

“This is in retribution for yesterday’s bombing of ships by Iran. If it happens again, it will get much worse!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

‘Stevie is everywhere, and he’s nowhere, and I find myself looking for him, and he’s not there,” said Esther Marcus wistfully. 

Marcus, a resident of Kibbutz Alumim, which was attacked on October 7, and whose husband Stevie passed away just three months later of a broken heart, never dreamed that she would need to utilize her skills as a therapist in maintaining her own resilience in the face of the personal tragedy that she had to face.

The 61-year-old Marcus, born Esther Blau, is soft-spoken and reserved, grew up in the London neighborhood of Golders Green, and was raised in an Orthodox, Zionist family. She was a member of the Bnei Akiva youth movement and participated in its post-high-school hachshara (preparation) program in Israel on Kibbutz Lavi. 

Encouraged by her father to remain in Israel (her mother acknowledged that she needed to spread her wings but said that there was always a place for her at home if her aliyah did not succeed), she made aliyah in 1984 at the age of 19 and studied at the Hebrew University, where she received her bachelor’s degree in social work. 

Shortly after receiving her degree, Esther was surprised to receive a draft notice from the IDF. “At the time, the law was that if you came on aliyah before age 20, you could be drafted into the army. But no shaliach (representative) in England had told me about it,” she recalled with a smile. “I was 23 at the time, somewhat older than the other women who had been drafted.”

Despite her misgivings, Esther joined not only out of obligation but also from a sense of idealism. 

“I really believe that religious men and women should join the army, because I think it’s an opportunity to blend and for religious people to meet non-religious people, and a way to show that you can be religious and you can go into the army. Those are my values, and those are my principles,” she shared. 

Esther is glad that she had the opportunity to join the IDF: “Looking back, it’s remarkable that I did because it led me to where I am now.” She took an officer’s course with other psychologists and social workers and became a mental health officer (kabanit), serving from 1989 until 1992. 

Esther & Stevie: Their story

In 1990, she met Stevie Marcus, a devoted soccer fan and AC/DC aficionado who had made aliyah in 1984 and was part of a group of young people (garin) living on Kibbutz Alumim, a religious kibbutz founded in 1966 in the Gaza Envelope. 

“He was the only one in his garin that wasn’t married,” said Esther, with a smile. “They suggested to him to take a year off to search for a wife, and he came to Jerusalem, and that’s how we met. He was on this mission to find a wife, and he succeeded.”

Esther and Stevie married in 1991, and she joined him in Alumim, traveling to Jerusalem daily for the last six months of her army service. They raised their four children there. She worked in Sha’ar Hanegev for 12 years as a social worker, and then spent four and a half years working in a rape crisis center in Beersheba. 

During that time, she received her master’s degree in social work and art therapy. She also provided individual and group therapy to teenage girls at a boarding school in Kibbutz Saad. For the past 10 years, she has been the clinical director of the Resilience Center Clinic in Sdot Negev.

Stevie started out working in irrigation in the kibbutz and moved on to the dairy farm, where he was the assistant director. “Stevie was a very passionate person,” said Esther. “With anything and everything, he went right into it. He really learned, trained, and understood. He was in charge of herd health, and over the years, the dairy farm grew.” 

In addition to his formal job, Stevie took on voluntary tasks in the kibbutz, working on metal recycling, handling safety regulations, and serving as banquet manager for bar mitzvahs and weddings. In recent years, he became interested in photography and became a self-taught expert through YouTube, posting his creations on Alumim and eventually on social media. 

“Stevie loved living on the kibbutz,” said Esther. “He was extremely funny, and he loved whisky.”

October 7

On the weekend of October 6 and 7, 2023, Esther was celebrating her 59th birthday with her husband and two of her children – her newly married son and his wife, along with her daughter, son-in-law, and their two young children. 

“I had gotten up very early on the morning of Oct. 7,” said Marcus. “I was up before the alarms started. I remember seeing my neighbor go off for a run, and then, within minutes, we heard all the sirens and the ‘tzeva adom’ warning.”

She explained that over the years, the alarm system had become more sophisticated, such that individual sirens would sound for each kibbutz in the area. On that morning, she recalled, all of the alarm sirens from each kibbutz sounded at once, and the words ‘tzeva adom’ (code red) were sounded repeatedly. 

“We knew that something was different this time, and then we received messages ordering us to go into our safe room,” she said.

The eight family members quickly went into the safe room. When she heard the message that they needed to make sure that the children were quiet, Marcus set up her computer for her two-year-old grandchild to watch television, which would keep him quiet during the emergency. Her daughter held the younger grandchild most of the day. 

In the meantime, Stevie was on the phone speaking with the Thai and Nepalese workers in the dairy farm. 

“They were telling him that they saw the terrorists come in,” said Marcus. “We could hear him on the phone saying to them, ‘Go into the safe room, go into the safe room.’ He was trying to calm them down, saying that it would be okay and that the army was coming.”

Marcus, whose job is to match therapists with people in need, was already receiving phone calls from worried residents asking what was happening. Many of the calls were coming from outside the area, including family members of the Nova survivors who were looking for their children. 

Her two children, who were in the safe room, also had friends who had been at the Nova festival, and they were trying to find out what had happened. While they were on the phone, they heard shooting outside. 

The emergency squad of Kibbutz Alumim heroically fought the Hamas terrorists, and later that day, the army came in and cleared the area of terrorists. Most of the action took place near the agricultural area of the kibbutz, where the terrorists killed 324,000 chickens, demolished the dairy farm, and destroyed the living area of the Thai and Nepalese workers. 

At the end of the day, the residents learned that Hamas terrorists had massacred 22 Nepalese and Thai workers and kidnapped two others. 

On Saturday evening, the army came and took Stevie to the dairy farm to see the damage. “He was blown away because it meant that he saw the bodies of the workers,” said Esther. One of the workers, she related, had managed to save himself by moving the ceiling tiles and hiding in the crawl space in the ceiling. Another worker jumped from a window and hid amidst the cow dung for hours. 

At 3 p.m. the following day, the residents of Alumim were evacuated and taken to two hotels in Netanya because there wasn’t enough room in a single hotel to accommodate all the kibbutz residents. 

“The kibbutz had to start functioning in this emergency situation, but because we have people who are already leading the kibbutz, they really stepped up,” said Marcus.

Resilience tested

Stevie went back to Alumim to help reconstruct the dairy farm, and Esther went straight to work with the Resilience Center. She set up the center in Netanya so that people from Alumim could start receiving assistance. She then set up 10 additional resilience centers with therapists throughout the country for the evacuees in Eilat, the Dead Sea, the Arava, and other locations. 

Addressing the subject of resilience centers, Esther pointed out that the concept of resilience centers is believing in people.

“In America, they’re called trauma centers. The focus is on the trauma. In Israel, they’re called resilience centers. The focus is on the resilience. The focus is on knowing that we can bounce back,” she said. “Now we might bounce back wounded and lacking, with various difficulties. But we’re doing it. That’s the Jewish spirit, and that’s the Israeli spirit. You see it again and again. What the soldiers have been through, families like mine, the people in the area, the hostages.”

Two months later, Esther’s resilience was tested again. On the fourth night of Hanukkah, Stevie, who was spending much of his time rebuilding the dairy farm together with a small crew of workers while spending evenings sleeping on a mattress in the kibbutz’s operations center, went to his home to take a shower. It was there that he suffered a massive heart attack and died on his 62nd birthday. His body was not discovered until the next morning. 

Esther, who was en route to Alumim for a meeting, received a phone call bearing the tragic news. She notified her children, including one of her sons who was serving in Gaza, but by chance had been allowed to leave to attend another funeral. She also had to break the news to Stevie’s sister and father in the UK, who was 87 at the time, and organize the funeral. 

Due to security considerations, the funeral took place at Kibbutz Yavne, where one of their sons lives. During the service, the music of Aerosmith, one of Stevie’s favorite rock groups, played in the background. Stevie was buried in Kibbutz Alumim, as explosions from the war echoed nearby. 

Stevie’s death was attributed directly to the war, and Esther was recognized as a war widow by the National Insurance Institute (bituah leumi) and has received benefits from the organization. In 2024, residents began returning to Alumim, but Esther decided to live in Jerusalem while commuting daily to the Gaza Envelope. She returned to Kibbutz Alumim in August of 2025.

How has she dealt with the trauma and grief? “I was definitely in denial for a long time,” she acknowledged.

“The fact that I wasn’t living in the kibbutz and I wasn’t with the community helped me develop even more denial because then I could keep in my mind and have this fantasy that he was still alive and he was still working on the kibbutz.”

“Denial was very powerful, which I’ve always known as a therapist,” she shared. “You can use denial. It’s a defense mechanism, if you know how to use it, for a certain amount of time. I kept working. I was doing a lot of traveling. I have to say the journeys in the car also helped me because I’d be talking to myself. I’d be talking to him.”

Esther was very focused on her work, and she said that helped her survive. “I had to help other people. I had to set up those resilience centers, and my family and close friends kept pushing me through.”

‘Saba Stevie had a camera’

Today, Marcus is memorializing her husband’s photography skills with a 24-page children’s book in Hebrew, titled Saba Stevie had a camera. The book features Stevie’s photographs, with a cartoon-like figure of Stevie on each page to explain the photos. 

Esther said that while the purpose of the book is to honor his memory, it also helps people cope with their grief: “It’s my personal story, but there are hundreds of people in Israel, unfortunately, who are now dealing with grief. I can’t believe there isn’t somebody in this country who hasn’t been touched.

“Yes, people die, but the focus is on what he did with his life. The focus is on his photography – the fact that he had a hobby and developed it and left us these treasures, which are his beautiful photographs, which also show us how beautiful the world is while we’re all going through despair and losing faith. One of the biggest challenges that we had was with people who went into depression and felt this sense of despair.”

Esther added that the varied photographic angles of Stevie’s images also play a role. 

“It’s like saying you can look at life in this way, or you can look at life in that way,” she said. “And we see his macro photography – you figure out what you want to focus on in your life? There are so many things.”

She recognized that the book is not going to become a best-seller: “I did it more to encourage people to take on a hobby and develop that hobby as Stevie did, and to see the world as a beautiful world, that with what we’ve been going through the last few years, we’ve seen so many awful things. And I think he really taught us that the world is beautiful.”

Esther acknowledged that, while she has her ups and downs in life, she feels fortunate. “I can see it’s brought out the best in my children, in our relationship, in who we are, and with my sister-in-law. For all that, I have so much to be grateful for. I think of these young women who were married for a year, two years, three years, [and lost their husbands]. 

“When I used to ask Stevie what kept him going in miluim (reserve army service), he’d say, ‘When we’d be on a march, I’d turn around. If someone was behind me, then I was okay because there was someone worse off than me.’ And I adopt that as well.”

On December 10, 2023, 29-year-old Yotam Haim, of Kfar Aza, who had survived 42 days in Hamas captivity since Oct. 7, escaped from his captors, along with two other hostages – Alon Shamriz and Samer Talalka. The trio survived for five days by hiding in abandoned houses in the Shejaia neighborhood of Gaza City. Five days later, on December 15, they were killed by IDF troops, who mistook them for Hamas terrorists.

“It would have been easier for me to succumb to despair and visit his grave every day,” says Iris Haim, Yotam’s mother, who spoke with this writer recently over Zoom. “I could sit at home and be angry at the army that killed my son, and the government that abandoned me on Oct. 7, but that was not an option for me.”

After Yotam’s tragic death, Haim became famous for her graciousness in forgiving the soldiers who had mistakenly shot her son. During the shiva period of mourning, she recorded a message of comfort and forgiveness to the soldiers who had mistaken her son and the others for terrorists. She has since spoken at numerous venues across the country, delivering her message of consolation and a call to remain united. 

Two-and-a-half years since her son’s death, Iris is actively engaged in the development of a project that is directly tied to the essence of her son – Beit Yotam, a center for mental health and trauma recovery that is planned for the Gaza border area. The center, she explains, will be built on the same foundations that strengthened Yotam throughout his life – family support, music, sports, and animals.

“First and foremost, it’s about supporting the family,” says Haim. “The family is the most important anchor in the life of a person facing difficulties. Through conversations with many families, I’ve seen the challenges they face – the shame, the tendency to hide what they’re going through, and the lack of communication that can develop between family members.

“With Yotam, we built a strong support network around him, and it helped him tremendously. That is the foundation of Beit Yotam. Before anything else, it will serve as a resilience center for families, providing them with the support, guidance, and tools they need to cope with these challenges together.”

Second is the person himself. Sports, music, and animals are all important tools for helping people, she explains. “Yotam loved CrossFit and played basketball,” says Iris. “CrossFit strengthened him.” 

Despite his mental health issues and emotional difficulties, Yotam was a skilled drummer. He was scheduled to perform with his band on the night of Oct. 7 in Tel Aviv. Haim calls music “a frequency of love.” “Many musicians suffer from depression and use it for health and healing,” she says.

Iris acknowledges that the kidnapping of Yotam and his death changed her life.

Growing up in a secular home in Haifa, she never attended synagogue, didn’t fast on Yom Kippur, and was not Shabbat-observant.

“If you had asked me before Oct. 7 whether I was Jewish or Israeli, I would have told you unequivocally: Israeli. To me, ‘Jewish’ referred to religious people. Today, first and foremost, I am Jewish –and then, Israeli. This is a profound change that I have undergone.”

Change catalyst

Iris Haim is just one half of this story. For Rafi Shalev, an IDF reservist and company commander in the Givati Brigade, Friday, December 15, 2023, will remain forever ingrained in his memory. For him, the death of Yotam Haim was a catalyst for change.

“On that Friday morning,” he recalls, “I received a phone call from my battalion commander who informed me that there was a possibility that our brigade had mistakenly killed a hostage.

“My commander said, ‘Take the brigade rabbi with you, retrieve the body, and identify him.’”

Shalev and the rabbi drove in a military Hummer with a stretcher to the perimeter – it was not safe to take the jeep any further, and they were handed a body bag. When they opened it, they identified the remains as Yotam’s. 

“That moment hit me very, very hard,” says Shalev. “I had evacuated bodies and dealt with casualties throughout the war, but I never expected something like this. To me, it felt like a tremendous failure. This was someone we should have brought home alive – not like this. The feeling was incredibly difficult.

“Together with the soldiers, we loaded the stretcher into the Hummer. We were extremely careful to treat the body with dignity. In the Hummer, there was a way to elevate the stretcher rather than place it on the floor, so I raised it and positioned him higher.”

Shalev and the brigade rabbi continued to Kibbutz Be’eri, where representatives of the Military Rabbinate were waiting to receive the body. 

Four days later, Shalev was heading home from his base in Mitzpe Keramim, adjacent to Kochav Hashahar, overlooking the Jordan Valley. Along the way, he read a post that Iris had shared on Facebook, noting that the family was observing Yotam’s shiva at Moshav Shoeva in the Jerusalem Hills, near Shoresh. Shalev turned the car around and headed in that direction.

When Shalev arrived, the home was crowded with hundreds of people. Though he was told that no one could enter, he walked into the home and saw Iris – whom he had never met – along with others, looking at him in complete surprise.

“I introduced myself and said, ‘Hello. My name is Rafi. I came from the south. I was the one who evacuated your son’s body, and I want to tell you what happened.’”

Shalev told the story of what he had experienced. Iris began to cry and then played the recording that she had made in which she said that she was not angry with the soldiers who had shot her son and invited them to her home. 

“You are the first soldier to come to us directly from the battlefield,” said Iris. “I want every soldier to hear this.”

Shalev says it is difficult to express the emotions he was feeling at that moment. “I left the house and immediately sent the recording to all of my commanders and soldiers. As it turned out, someone else in our unit also circulated it, and eventually the entire country heard it.”

When Rafi finally arrived home later that evening, he encountered a friend who told him he was in the final stages of approval as a kidney donor.

“I remember thinking to myself,” he says, “that there are no coincidences. This wasn’t random.”

Rafi, moved by his experiences handling Yotam’s remains and meeting Iris, decided he wanted to do something meaningful. He decided to donate a kidney. Rafi shared the news of his decision with Iris and wrote to her, “Thanks to Yotam, we are adding life.”

Two days later, he contacted Matnat Chaim, the Israeli organization that coordinates kidney donation, and underwent a battery of tests, which culminated in his donating a kidney in August 2024 to a young man named Nir Barzilai.

Iris accompanied Rafi and Nir throughout the process and presented Nir with a necklace that had the inscription “to believe, to see that there is good.”

“We’re partners in advancing the idea of adding life – adding goodness and adding light in the midst of darkness,” says Rafi. “It’s a message that transcends sectors and communities. Everyone wants it. Each person expresses it in their own way. I spend a great deal of time talking about it and trying, in my own way, to live it. The kidney donation is one part of that.”

Yotam lives on

Beit Yotam is in the midst of its fundraising campaign, and Iris says that Rafi’s central role in raising funds for the center stems from his understanding that Yotam’s death was not the end.

“A great deal of life will come forth from Yotam for the Jewish people,” she says. 

“Beit Yotam will be for people who find it difficult to cope with the challenges of daily life – those facing personal struggles, depression, or mental illness, as Yotam did.

“Our philosophy follows Yotam’s example: never give up. People may fall, but they can always rise again. That’s the message we want to share – that we can choose hope, choose positive words, and look ahead, rather than destroy what we have or turn against one another.”

Haim says that Beit Yotam will also house a visitors’ center that will enable those who are unfamiliar with the struggles of those who are suffering from mental illness.

“The goal is to provide an immersive experience that allows visitors to see the world through the eyes of someone like Yotam. Much like programs that simulate life without sight to help people understand the experience of blindness, this center will help people better appreciate the realities and struggles faced by those dealing with mental health challenges.

“There is not enough awareness about who these people are. People think they are crazy or sick, but they are people just like you and me, who experience crises in life, and I believe they came to this world to make a change. We are all here to change something.”

Perhaps what best epitomizes Yotam’s mental health struggles and those of others is the semicolon symbol that Yotam had tattooed on his arm when he was 26.

Explains Iris, “The semicolon is an international symbol for coping with mental issues. It means that every person has a choice – they can choose to end their lives with a period and give up or choose a comma and continue.

“Yotam had to deal with these issues every day and every hour. He spoke about death and thought about harming himself. Life for him was a challenge, and it is so for many others like him. 

“During our week of shiva, we adopted the symbol and said that we are also not ending things and stopping. People said to me, ‘You must continue to speak and deliver your messages, because they are life-changing. We used the semicolon in the campaign.

“Even when Yotam was in captivity, he encouraged people to continue, giving them his food. And even at the end, he chose to run away rather than hide, and he said to the army, ‘We are here.’ These are the choices that a person makes.”

Rafi suggests that people who have donated to the Beit Yotam campaign have made a conscious choice to be part of a force for good.

“During the fundraising campaign, I met many people, and what motivated them to reach into their pockets and donate was their connection to the message we are trying to promote – the belief that we must continue to do good. Iris embodies that message through her actions every day. People connect with that idea. They want to see more goodness in the world. 

“Ultimately, that is our choice. As a society, we can focus on those who give, contribute, and make a positive impact, or we can be drawn to what is lacking, negative, and missing. We choose to focus on the good and to help it grow.”

Haim concludes that Israel is at a pivotal moment, with crucial decisions ahead about the country’s future.

“We have seen enough destruction caused by hatred among fellow Jews.

“Soon we will mark Tisha B’Av and read Eicha [Lamentations]. I say this almost like a rabbanit – even though I never imagined I would. The more I learn, the more I understand that this kind of division and hatred has existed throughout our history.

“But for those of us in this generation, Oct. 7 was a painful wake-up call. It struck us with tremendous force. 

“I hear the same message from so many bereaved families: Why do we continue to hate one another? Why do division and hostility persist, even after everything we have been through? When more places like Beit Yotam are built, the better it will be for our country.”

As Iris Haim and others, including Rafi Shalev, carry forward the mission of doing good in Yotam Haim’s memory, she reflects on what Yotam would say if he could see how profoundly his life continues to touch people in Israel and beyond.

“He would say – he still does – ‘Keep going.’”

The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), a major Volkswagen shareholder, blocked a proposed agreement between Volkswagen and Israeli defense company Rafael to manufacture Iron Dome components at a factory in Germany, according to German newspaper Bild.

Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, Volkswagen’s third-largest shareholder, reportedly vetoed a plan to repurpose the automaker’s struggling plant in Osnabrück, putting hundreds of additional jobs at its German factories at risk.

A potential solution to save the plant appeared to have been found in late April, when Volkswagen signed a letter of intent with Rafael. Under the proposal, the Israeli company would manufacture components for the Iron Dome missile defense system at the facility.

The Qatari shareholders have since expressed reservations about the agreement because of tensions between Qatar and Israel, according to the report.

The state-owned Qatar Investment Authority, or QIA, holds 17% of Volkswagen’s voting rights and 10.4% of its total share capital, giving it significant influence over decisions made at the company’s headquarters in Wolfsburg.

Senior Qatari officials sit on Volkswagen’s supervisory board

QIA CEO Mohammed Saif Al Sowaidi and two former members of the Qatari government serve on Volkswagen’s supervisory board.

Qatar, which for years was considered a major financial supporter of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, opposes the proposed production of weapons components intended solely to defend Israel against rocket attacks.

Security expert Peter R. Neumann of King’s College London warned in an interview with Bild that although investments from Gulf states are welcome, “the same principle applies here as elsewhere: We must not become dependent on anyone.”

Neumann argued that “we need to take a more pragmatic approach to this region.”

Rafael seeks to expand Iron Dome production overseas

The Jerusalem Post previously reported that Rafael was holding talks with defense companies in India about establishing a production line for Iron Dome interceptors in the country.

Should the plan move forward, it is expected to expand Rafael’s production network beyond Israel and the US while giving the company greater flexibility in supplying the system to customers worldwide.

Iron Dome interceptors are currently manufactured at a Rafael plant in northern Israel. Another production line began operating in the US last year as part of a partnership with Raytheon, according to the report.

The US line is intended to supply interceptors for the US Marine Corps’ new air defense system. It could also reinforce Israel’s production capabilities if necessary.

Establishing a production line in India would serve several objectives. It could allow Rafael to expand sales to additional countries, reduce production costs, provide backup for its existing production lines, and strengthen its position in the Indian defense market.

The move would also carry strategic implications for Rafael’s business operations.

India requires foreign defense companies seeking to sell products to its military to manufacture them in the country and, in some cases, export them from India.

The policy is intended to strengthen local industry and the Indian economy, making it a significant consideration for international defense companies seeking to operate in the country.

Ryanair said one of its planes was forced into an emergency landing at Thessaloniki airport in Greece shortly after take-off on Friday after its window was “dislodged,” with two industry sources saying a passenger was partially sucked out of a window.

The airline said one person received medical assistance, but did not elaborate on the cause.

The plane was flying from Thessaloniki to Memmingen airport in Germany.

“The aircraft landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal,” Ryanair said in a statement.

A piece of the engine broke off, smashing the window

Local media in Greece reported that a piece of engine broke off and smashed a window, causing the cabin to decompress and sucking one passenger partially out of the window.

Two sources with knowledge of the incident relayed the same details to Reuters.

Unverified videos posted on social media from the inside of the plane showed a broken window and oxygen masks dangling from the ceiling.

Jerusalem Border Police rescued an Israeli citizen on Thursday who accidentally entered the village of A-Ram, just north of Jerusalem, in Area A of the West Bank. 

Israeli citizens are strictly prohibited from entering Area A; police emphasized in their statement following the event that entering Area A is “extremely dangerous and can be life-threatening.”

On Thursday evening, police received a report of a 30-year-old Israeli man from the Givat Ze’ev settlement who unwittingly found himself in A-Ram. 

Border Police in the Jerusalem area were dispatched to the scene and quickly located and escorted the man to safety.

IDF, Border Police rescue ten civilians who entered Kalkilya to search for stolen motorcycle

On Monday, the IDF and Border Police officers rescued ten Israeli civilians who had entered the West Bank town of Kalkilya, located in Area A, forbidden to Israeli citizens.

The Israelis entered the area to search for a stolen motorcycle, according to Israel Police.

Locals surrounded the Israelis upon noticing them, with the IDF and Border Police arriving soon after to separate the groups and extract the Israelis.

Goldie Katz and Ariella Roitman contributed to this report.

China announced on Friday a temporary export ban on helium, effective immediately, as resumption of military conflict in the Middle East threatens to trigger new shortages of the gas critical for chip manufacturing.

Earlier this year, the US-Israeli war on Iran led to helium shortages, disrupting companies globally, including in China, where the AI industry increasingly relies on domestic chips for training and running AI models. Helium is essential for heat management in semiconductor production.

The helium ban is the latest example of Beijing seeking to prevent domestic shortages of critical materials by curbing exports. It has previously imposed similar measures on fuel, fertilizers and sulphuric acid.

China is also looking to boost domestic chip manufacturing capacity and reduce the industry’s dependence on cutting-edge Nvidia semiconductors that fall under US export controls.

China re-exports helium

China is heavily dependent on overseas helium despite efforts to expand domestic production.

Still, the export ban could squeeze global supply further because Chinese companies have increasingly acted as intermediaries, importing Russian helium and re-exporting some volumes to overseas markets, including Europe.

Analysts estimate China imports around 85% or more of its helium requirements. Qatar accounts for a major share of global helium output and has supplied more than half of China’s imports in recent years.

Helium is extracted from natural gas fields with unusually high helium concentrations and cannot be quickly manufactured from other industrial processes.

In chipmaking, it is used for wafer cooling, plasma etching, chemical vapor deposition, atomic layer deposition, lithography support and leak detection.

The question, “Is Israel facing a constitutional crisis?” echoed across the country’s airwaves this week.

Arguably, the crisis has existed for a long time – from the days of the 2021 government’s judicial reform proposals and the resulting mass demonstrations, and even further back. There’s a reason, after all, that the reform was raised.

Perhaps Israel is not so much facing a constitutional crisis as facing elections, which must be held by October 27. Political camps need battle cries. On the Left, there are slogans about the end of democracy; on the Right, fears that a juristocracy has taken control, making it impossible for the elected government to rule.

This week’s trigger unexpectedly centered on the decision regarding the Second Authority for Television and Radio regulatory body that oversees commercial broadcasting, which was handling an attempt to buy the relatively small Channel 13.

Due to a wave of resignations when a new council was approved by the government in March, the Second Authority was left without the quorum needed to authorize a buy-out. The government maintains that without the quorum, the Second Authority could not legally approve a purchase (whose backers, not coincidentally, are considered to oppose the Netanyahu government).

Last month, the High Court ruled that the Second Authority can continue to function even without the 10-member quorum, and without the voices of the outgoing members, while it hears the challenges to the new appointments.

Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi and Justice Minister Yariv Levin spearheaded a resolution on Sunday that the government would not recognize the actions of the Second Authority’s old council (without the legally required number of members) despite the High Court’s approval.

Criticism of the government’s resolution was voiced by President Isaac Herzog, embattled Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, and a slew of party leaders from the opposition.

Former and wannabe prime minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the Together joint list with former premier Yair Lapid, issued a statement saying non-compliance with the court would lead to “anarchy in the streets and to the collapse of our state,” adding: “Soon we will fix everything. There will be one law for everyone.”

At the annual Israel Hayom conference on Sunday, Levin said: “With all due respect, the Supreme Court is not above the other two authorities, above the Knesset and above the government. It is equal to them. This is the essence of democracy.”

Trying to avert the crisis, or at least ameliorate it, Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs posted on X/Twitter: “Contrary to reports, there is no word in the statement that calls for non-compliance with the High Court of Justice ruling but rather sharp criticism of a ruling that contradicts the explicit language of the law; the government stated that it will act with all the legal tools at its disposal to annul the decision in the future. How do legal tools become non-compliance with the ruling?”

The crisis, of course, goes way beyond the fate of Channel 13 or the status of pro-Bibi Netanyahu Channel 14, which opposition members threaten to close if elected. It hits at the heart of a dilemma that has been dividing Israel for years. Who ultimately rules the country: the courts or the government?

Since the judicial activism of former Supreme Court head Aharon Barak in the 1990s, the rhetoric has grown stronger but the answer less clear. Barak’s guiding principle was “Hakol shafit,” everything is justiciable. This enabled the courts to assume more power to overturn laws passed by the Knesset. 

As a result, the Supreme Court has become involved in decisions which are essentially political ones. It was on Barak’s watch that the Knesset in 1992 enacted two Basic Laws that the courts consider to be a version of a constitution.

Among the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets in the first few months of 2023, rhythmically chanting “Demo-crat-ia,” many if not the vast majority fought against the government’s plans to amend the so-called Reasonability Clause – the clause that allowed judges to strike down a law, government appointment, and pretty much whatever else they saw fit not on the basis of legal facts and precedents but on a subjective, value-laden interpretation of what they judged to be “reasonable.”

There is little doubt that Israel’s enemies perceived Israel to have been severely weakened by the civil unrest – and threats of civil war – ahead of the October 7, 2023, Hamas mega-atrocity and subsequent war on seven fronts. When reservists threaten not to serve, the message is picked up by ayatollahs in Tehran and not just ministers in Jerusalem.

The shock of the brutal invasion and war brought Israelis together, but the politics did not disappear. Neither did the judicial intervention. Just last week, the High Court determined that the four most significant sections of the report into October 7 drawn up by outgoing State Comptroller Matanayahu Englman could not be published; separately, the court ordered a revote by the Knesset of his elected replacement, Michael Rabello, as some MKs recorded themselves despite it being a secret ballot.

Balance between majority and minority

It is at once both the most normal and abnormal phenomenon that Israel is arguing about domestic politics, while still embroiled in a war spreading from Iran to Gaza and Lebanon.

Last week, headlines focused on Netanyahu’s ongoing trial. The judges, for the second time in three years, called for the state prosecutor to drop the bribery charge in Case 4000, the most serious charge of the three cases that the prime minister is facing. In Case 4000, the so-called Walla-Bezeq Affair, Netanyahu is accused of granting regulatory favors to Shaul Elovitch, the former chairman of the telecommunications giant, in return for positive coverage on the Walla website that he also owned. 

The claims of “positive coverage” were later changed to allegations of “unusually favorable and responsive treatment,” although it was hard to see evidence that the news site treated Bibi unusually favorably (or even minimally favorably).

The name most frequently raised in the current talk of a judicial-constitutional crisis is Baharav-Miara. Members of this government aren’t the first to propose that the roles of attorney-general and state prosecutor should be split, but Baharav-Miara has provided them with more ammunition.

In several key cases, rather than defending the government that she is meant to advise, she has advocated prosecuting it. Although a government appointee and public employee, she has also refused to resign even though she clearly cannot work with her current boss, Netanyahu.

Several of her decisions have been overruled by the courts, most recently her attempts to prevent the appointment of Roman Goffman as head of Mossad (replacing David Barnea) and David Zini as Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head, replacing Ronen Bar, who had been the service’s head on October 7, 2023. Bar, like Baharav-Miara, initially refused to be fired. 

The attorney-general even made an attempt to keep Bar on via the courts after he agreed to resign, making the courts play devil’s advocate in a case it did not want, and Bar hadn’t asked for.

The heads of the Mossad and the Shin Bet are not meant to appoint their successors, although they can make recommendations, and the courts and attorney-general aren’t meant to have the last word in determining who holds those sensitive positions. Add to that the situation in which the judges want to appoint themselves, leading to the absurd situation in which Justice Minister Levin refuses to recognize Yitzhak Amit as head of the Supreme Court.

It’s easy to see why the country is in such a mess – and not so easy to see how to get out of it. The country can’t function when the elected government tries to take it in one direction, and the unelected and unimpeachable courts push it in the other. There needs to be a balance between protecting the rights of minorities and the right of majority rule. The politicians and the justice establishment need to step back and lower the flames.

No government will be able to govern if every decision is overruled by the courts and citizens lose faith in the courts if they are perceived to be acting out of political convictions.

Israel’s democracy is not in danger – but neither the judiciary nor the political establishment can be a law to themselves.