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WASHINGTON – Any US sale of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia should account for Israel’s qualitative military edge and Riyadh’s place in a broader US-led regional security architecture before it moves forward, a Washington national-security expert told The Jerusalem Post following the State Department’s approval of a potential $24.3 billion deal.

Jonathan Ruhe, Fellow for American Strategy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), said two major issues should be resolved before the kingdom receives the advanced stealth fighters – with Israel’s military edge and regional integration at the top of the list.

“The entire F-35 program is designed to support US-led collective defense,” Ruhe told the Post.

“America must show leadership on integrating Saudi Arabia into a new regional security architecture, and Riyadh also needs to show it’s a committed partner before it can obtain F-35s,” he said. “Israel’s QME is a key factor in this regional integration, and should be reflected in any potential F-35 sale to the kingdom.”

The State Department on Thursday approved a possible Foreign Military Sale to Saudi Arabia of 48 F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters, 49 Pratt & Whitney F135 engines and related equipment, training and support, with an estimated value of $24.3 billion.

The proposed transaction is not yet a completed contract. The State Department has approved the possible sale, which now moves through the US arms-sale process and congressional review. The State Department said the deal would strengthen Saudi Arabia’s ability to deter threats and improve interoperability with US and allied forces, and maintained that it “will not alter the military balance in the region.”

Israel is currently the only country in the Middle East operating the F-35. US policy on Israel’s qualitative military edge, or QME, is more than a political commitment: Congress wrote the requirement into law in 2008, obligating the US government to consider the effect of major regional arms sales on Israel’s ability to counter credible military threats while minimizing casualties and damage.

For Ruhe, preserving that edge should be part of a broader US effort to integrate Saudi Arabia into a regional defense architecture, rather than be treated simply as a technical question about the capabilities installed on individual aircraft.

China is the second test

The second issue, Ruhe said, concerns Riyadh’s defense and technology relationship with Beijing.

“In exchange for US arms sales and other security cooperation, Washington and Riyadh need an overarching, and overdue, agreement that formally ends worrisome Saudi-Chinese defense and technology ties,” he told the Post.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that US intelligence officials have warned in internal assessments that China could potentially obtain sensitive F-35 technology through espionage in Saudi Arabia or through Beijing’s existing military and security relationships with the kingdom.

A Defense Intelligence Agency assessment examined Chinese access to Saudi military facilities, as well as the kingdom’s use of Chinese telecommunications technology, and raised questions about whether sites housing sensitive F-35 systems could be adequately secured, according to the report. US intelligence analysts have also examined whether Riyadh would agree to restrict contact with Chinese military and intelligence personnel and remove certain Chinese telecommunications equipment from sensitive installations.

Those concerns are not entirely new. Similar worries over Chinese ties played a role in the difficulties surrounding a proposed F-35 sale to the United Arab Emirates following the Abraham Accords.

US enters negotiations with more to offer

Ruhe argued that Washington enters those negotiations with substantial leverage.

“The United States has leverage here, since it can offer Saudi Arabia much more than China can,” he said.

The F-35 is among the most sensitive weapons systems the United States exports, combining stealth, advanced sensors, electronic warfare capabilities and networked combat systems. The proposed Saudi package would also include secure communications and cryptographic equipment, electronic warfare database support, training, simulators, software and logistical support.

Lockheed Martin, based in Fort Worth, Texas, would be the principal aircraft contractor, while Pratt & Whitney would provide the engines.

The China question has therefore become intertwined with the question Ruhe places first: whether introducing the region’s second F-35 operator can strengthen a US-led security system without undermining Israel’s military advantage.

“The potential F-35 sale to Saudi Arabia shouldn’t move forward unless two key issues are first resolved,” Ruhe said.

Jonathan Ruhe is JINSA’s Fellow for American Strategy. He previously worked at the Bipartisan Policy Center, focusing on Middle East and former Soviet Union security issues, and his work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and The Dispatch.

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A Reform synagogue in Jerusalem was targeted for the second time in a month when a group of Jewish youths threw eggs at worshippers arriving for Rosh Hashanah services, in what the congregation described as an escalation in a series of attacks on Reform communities in Israel. 

The incident unfolded Sunday morning at Kol HaNeshama in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood, on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. The congregation said its security cameras recorded the youths, including their faces. It subsequently filed a police complaint and provided the footage. No injuries were reported. 

Debi Shoua-Haim, one of the congregation’s rabbis, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the group had engaged with several members of the community before the egg-throwing began. 

“Some of their questions and comments were homophobic and bordered on harassment,” she said. “They were met with openness by everyone they spoke with, and it is unfortunate that this was their response.” 

“We see this as an escalation,” Shoua-Haim added. 

Congregation increases security

The congregation is increasing security for Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath that falls between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as well as for services on the fast day itself, she said. 

“We would have preferred to keep our doors open to anyone who wanted to come in,” Shoua-Haim said.

The latest incident came a month after vandals broke into Kol HaNeshama overnight, smashing a window, entering the prayer hall, damaging artwork and tearing down Pride flags displayed by the congregation. 

Days later, attackers targeted a second Reform congregation, Darchei Noam in Ramat Hasharon, throwing a heavy paving stone through one of its windows. Rabbi Eli Levin told JTA at the time that he viewed the attacks on Reform communities in Israel as part of a pattern of unchecked hostility toward the movement. 

“The attacks on Reform Jews are carried out by hotheaded, ignorant Jews, and unfortunately there is no one in the political and haredi leadership who will stand up and condemn the act,” Levin said. 

The attacks come amid an ongoing fight over the status of non-Orthodox Judaism in Israel. Earlier this year, lawmakers advanced legislation that would effectively bar egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall. Last year, the governing coalition also considered a bill to narrow eligibility for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return by eliminating the so-called grandparent clause, a move vehemently opposed by Reform and Conservative leaders. 

Kol HaNeshama has faced other attacks in the past, some of them targeting its support for LGBTQ inclusion. In 2018, a large rock was hurled into its courtyard while more than 200 people were taking part in Simchat Torah celebrations. No one was injured. In June 2023, the synagogue reported two break-ins within several weeks in which Pride flags were torn down, with intruders entering the sanctuary during one of them. 

Shoua-Haim said the congregation had not received any update from police on either of the two recent incidents. 

Israel Police did not immediately respond to a JTA request for comment on the status of either investigation. 

Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism criticizes lack of arrests 

The Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism said the lack of arrests in the recent cases was emboldening further violence.

“This is not a prank. This is violence against Jews for the way they choose to practice Judaism,” the movement said in a Facebook post. “And when there is no enforcement, violence grows.”

Kol HaNeshama said it drew encouragement from support it had received from neighboring synagogues across the Jewish denominational spectrum. A group of south Jerusalem congregations, including Orthodox ones, signed a letter of solidarity with the synagogue. Members of different streams also joined the synagogue for a Kabbalat Shabbat service.  

Despite the repeated attacks, Shoua-Haim said the congregation would not change its approach to Jewish communal life.

“We will continue on our path of openness and acceptance of every person,” she said. “We will continue to promote our values and sustain our community.”

This post was originally published on here. 

The problem was not Robert Kraft’s decision. The problem is how we explain it.

We removed the messenger from the stage without confronting the lie he was spreading. We focused on Macklemore–his rhetoric, his history, the hurt his words cause–when the far greater threat is the message itself. And in doing so, we inadvertently helped create precisely the narrative Macklemore and his defenders wanted.

Now the story practically writes itself: Macklemore dared to “speak truth to power.” He said what others supposedly do not want Americans to hear, and for his courage, a Jewish billionaire and other venue owners took away his microphone. Macklemore becomes the martyr. His cancellation becomes evidence of his righteousness. And Jews assume precisely the role his rhetoric already assigns us: morally compromised and willing to use our influence to suppress anyone brave enough to expose an uncomfortable truth.

We should stop defending ourselves against the accusation and start challenging the accusation itself.

Macklemore did not belong on that stage because he was using it to spread hateful lies about the Jewish state. He was telling an audience that the world’s only Jewish state is committing “genocide” and practicing “apartheid,” presenting those accusations not as arguments to defend, but as settled truths.

That is not the same as supporting Palestinians or criticizing Israel. Macklemore remains free to say what he believes. But freedom of speech does not entitle anyone to someone else’s microphone, particularly an entertainment stage before thousands who bought tickets for a concert rather than to hear a political polemic.

There is also a bitter irony in the outrage over Macklemore being “canceled.” Where was this defense of artistic freedom when American Jewish musician Matisyahu had concerts canceled after activists targeted venues over his support for Israel, creating security and staffing concerns? Macklemore did not lose his place because of his identity. He lost that stage because of what he chose to do with it.

The accusations coming from more than Macklemore

And this is much bigger than Macklemore. He did not invent these accusations. He is simply their latest celebrity messenger.

“Genocide.” “Apartheid.” “Ethnic cleansing.” “War criminal.” We hear these charges on college campuses, across social media, in newsrooms, entertainment, politics, and our institutions. Repeated often enough, they enter our discourse not as extraordinary accusations requiring proof, but as established facts requiring allegiance.

That is where the Jewish community has missed something fundamental. We have become very good at identifying antisemitism and condemning those who traffic in it. We have been far less willing to confront the lies that make the antisemitism possible.

Dara Horn has articulated something essential about antisemitism: it does not operate simply as hatred or intolerance toward Jews. It operates through a recurring lie–that Jews are responsible for destroying whatever a society holds most dear.

That distinction changes the prescription. If we treat antisemitism primarily as intolerance, we answer it with tolerance: more education, dialogue, and opportunities to understand Jews. Those things have value. But you cannot cure a lie by teaching people to become more tolerant of the people being lied about. You have to challenge the lie.

And we must confront the genocide lie more boldly. Israel is not committing genocide. The accusation is false and outrageous.

Genocide is not a synonym for a terrible war, a high civilian death toll, or even violations of the laws of war. It is a specific crime requiring intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such. Intent is not incidental to the definition. It is essential.

Israel’s conduct matters too. John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute, has argued after studying the Gaza campaign that Israel has implemented more measures to prevent civilian harm than any military he has studied. That does not mean every Israeli decision was correct or every strike justified. But warnings, evacuations, and extensive civilian-harm precautions are evidence that must be confronted before accusing a country of intending to destroy a people.

The genocide accusation is a modern blood libel.

The original blood libel accused Jews of deliberately murdering Christian children. Its power came from transforming hatred into righteousness. Those who believed it did not imagine themselves persecuting innocent Jews. They imagined themselves protecting innocent children from evil.

The moral vocabulary changes. The mechanism remains hauntingly familiar. Today, someone can accuse the Jewish state of deliberately destroying a people and still sincerely insist–as Macklemore has–that he has nothing against Jews. He may genuinely believe he is standing against evil. That is precisely what makes the libel so dangerous.

Concern for Palestinian human rights, advocacy for Palestinians and criticism of Israel are not antisemitic. Palestinian suffering is real. Innocent civilians have died, and where individuals commit crimes, they should be held accountable.

But none of that establishes genocide. And compassion does not demand self-flagellation or self-erasure.

Jews should not have to accept the lie that Israel is committing genocide to prove that we care about Palestinian lives. We should not have to sever our connection to Israel to establish our moral credibility or repeat a blood libel against the Jewish state to demonstrate our decency.

Yet that is increasingly the moral test imposed upon us.

Accept that the world’s only Jewish state is committing one of humanity’s gravest crimes, and you can remain among the righteous. Challenge that premise, defend Israel against the charge, or refuse to distance yourself from the Jewish state, and suddenly your disagreement becomes complicity–and your connection to Israel becomes evidence against you.

That is not incidental to the antisemitism. It is how the antisemitism works.

Some argue that Netanyahu’s government or particular Israeli policies have made defending Israel more difficult. But difficulty does not turn an accusation into a fact. We do not have to support Netanyahu or defend every Israeli action. And distancing ourselves from Israel will not make American Jews safer; it only reinforces the dangerous fiction that Jewish safety depends on Jewish behavior.

We can defend Palestinian humanity without surrendering our own. We should not disavow Israel to demonstrate our decency or accept collective guilt for a crime Israel did not commit.

The answer to a blood libel is not to prove that Jews are good people. It is to expose the blood libel as a lie.

Robert Kraft is a hero for standing up. Now it is our job to stand with him–and fight the lies.

This post was originally published on here. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed the upcoming Knesset elections as a direct struggle between the Right and Left, and sharply attacked Yashar party leader and prime ministerial candidate, Gadi Eisenkot, during a Likud party rally in Tel Aviv on Thursday evening.

“I want to tell you what these elections are about,” Netanyahu said. “It is either Left or Right. That is the essence of the elections. Either Left or Right. There is no Yashar, it is a bluff.”

“I am going to the Right, we are on the Right. I do not need someone to say, like Eisenkot’s campaign manager says: ‘What do we need to say so that they will think we are Right?’ We are Right,” Netanyahu added.

A central part of the speech was devoted to a political attack against Eisenkot. Netanyahu criticized Eisenkot’s decisions as IDF chief of staff and as a member of the cabinet during the war, and claimed that a government led by him would include Yair Golan, Avigdor Lieberman, Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid and the Arab parties.

Netanyahu claimed that such a government would “cancel all our achievements,” lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state and withdrawal from security zones.

In response, Eisenkot posted a tweet with a picture showing Netanyahu pointing at the T-Junction road sign that he used on stage, but edited to be placed in front of a backdrop of Hamas terrorists crossing the Israel-Gaza border on the back of a pick-up truck, and driving along a highway with signs pointing to Sderot and Ofakim, in the Gaza border communities.

Terrorists from Hamas and other terror groups driving through southern Israel is a reference to the terror infiltration during the October 7 massacre.

pic.twitter.com/069CwyEY6Y

— Gadi Eisenkot – גדי איזנקוט (@gadi_eisenkot) September 17, 2026

Netanyahu announces proposal of bill to ‘financially harm’ those who defame IDF

Netanyahu also attacked Democratic Party chairman Yair Golan and referred to his statements regarding IDF activity and the controversy surrounding the Military Advocate General.

He announced that together with Justice Minister Yariv Levin, a government bill would be advanced that, according to him, would financially harm those who defame the IDF around the world, and he also addressed a proposal regarding revoking citizenship.

Toward the end of the speech, Netanyahu addressed right-wing voters and warned against voting for parties that may not pass the electoral threshold. “It is forbidden to vote for a party that does not pass the electoral threshold,” he said, and also warned about transferring votes that could, according to him, harm the right-wing bloc, a message aimed, among others, at Ofer Winter’s People of Israel party.

The prime minister also addressed relations with the United States. “A prime minister in Israel must be a statesman who operates in the international arena,” he said. “You need to know how to mobilize our friends, first and foremost in the United States.” According to him, alongside cooperation with Washington, an Israeli prime minister needs to know “how to say no when necessary.”

Netanyahu also devoted a large portion of his speech to the war and Israel’s military achievements.

“Think about where we were three years ago. Look at what we achieved thanks to our heroic soldiers,” he said. “I promised on the second day of the war that we would change the Middle East. That is exactly what we did, we changed the Middle East.”

Israel ‘would not have been here today’ if it hadn’t acted against Iran’s nuclear program

The prime minister mentioned the successful killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and claimed that government actions prevented an existential threat to Israel. “We saved the State of Israel from destruction,” he said.

According to him, had the decision not been made to act against Iran’s nuclear program, “we might not have been meeting here today.”

Netanyahu also addressed the strike in Iran, saying: “We did what no one dared to do for 47 years.” According to him, most media outlets are trying “to hide this historic thing.”

He compared the Iranian threat to a “cancerous mass” that must be removed in order to prevent danger to the patient’s life.

Later, Netanyahu mentioned the pager operation against Hezbollah, which happened two years to the day before Thursday’s speech.

“Exactly on this day two years ago we blew up the pagers. You remember the pagers, right?” he told the audience. “I promise you, Hezbollah also remembers them.”

The prime minister listed Israel’s operations in Lebanon and Syria and said that Israel also acted to defend the Druze in Syria.

“We did this because we are Right and not Left, because we protect Israel’s security,” he said.

Netanyahu declared that the campaign has not yet ended. “We have done a significant part of the work. I want to say honestly, we must complete the mission until the end,” he said. He later presented the fall of the Iranian regime, the elimination of Hezbollah and Hamas as goals that Israel is required to complete.

James Genn contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Former Gaza hostage Bar Kupershtein led a slichot prayer service as part of a night of thanks marking one year since his release from Hamas captivity at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv on Thursday night. 

Kupershtein, a paramedic from Holon who had been kidnapped from the Nova music festival during the October 7 massacre, was released in October 2025. 

Also present at the prayer service was Kupershtein’s mother, Julie and former hostage Rom Braslavski. 

Ayelet Samrano, the mother of deceased hostage Yonatan Samrano, and Michel Ilouz, father of  deceased hostage Guy Ilouz made a live appearance from the slichot service at the Western Wall.

“In captivity, I understood what it truly means to be in the depths,” Kupershtein said. “To be beneath the earth, in the darkness, when no one above you can hear your voice, and to believe. To keep believing.”

“Exactly one year ago, we were still there. We fasted on Yom Kippur. We prayed very, very hard. In a place where they tried to take everything away from us, faith was the one thing they could not take.”

“It was what kept us going. And there was something else that kept us going in the tunnel,” he said, addressing the Israeli public. “You. When we came home, we understood how much you, the people of Israel, had kept that flame burning for us.”

“With every prayer, every struggle, and every day that you refused to give up on us, you kept it burning until we came home.”

“זמן להגיד תודה לכל מי שהיה בשבילנו, אלו שהפגינו ונלחמו למעננו” – שורד השבי בר קופרשטיין מספר מערב הסליחות בכיכר החטופים על צום יום הכיפורים בשנה שעברה בשבי החמאס, ומודה לכל מי שנטל חלק במאמצים לשחרורו@Rinatspivak
📺מתוך #המוסף_השבועי https://t.co/kqQ5599Wqp pic.twitter.com/k2QrK3oppD

— ערוץ כנסת 99 (@KnessetT) September 17, 2026

Kupershtein thanked his family, God, the IDF and security forces involved in the return of the hostages, including those with PTSD and who have been physically wounded in the war, and added that while the hostages have returned, “we all have a duty to continue remembering those who did not get the chance to return.”

He described the protests that had filled Israel’s streets week after week while hostages were still being held in Gaza.

Not forgetting Haymanut Kasau

“You went out into the streets week after week. You prayed. You cried out. You embraced our pictures as though we were your own children. You held up our families and did everything you could so that we could stand here today.”

Additionally, Kupershtein made mention of Haymanut Kasau, an Ethiopian girl who has been missing since February 25, 2024.

“I know what it is like when a family does not know where their child is. I know what uncertainty does to a family, day after day, night after night,” he said, urging for Israel to not give up on her either.

“Haymanut is one of ours,” he said. “And we need her home.”

הפרגוד: הרב מאיר בלוך מאיר הלבבות תוקע בשופר באירוע סליחות של משפחות שורדי השבי בהובלת בר קופרשטיין בכיכר החטופים pic.twitter.com/4HdTFgO15p

— הפרגוד (@moshepargod) September 17, 2026

Rom Braslavski calls to remember hostages killed by Hamas

In his own speech, Braslavski echoed Kupershtein’s thanks for the Israeli public’s support for the hostages throughout his time in captivity. 

“I am very happy to be here, at Hostages Square, a place that symbolizes war and pain, and to say thank you,” he said. “Thank you to the people of Israel who fought, and because of whom we are here.”

Braslavski ended with a call to remember the hostages who were killed by Hamas in captivity.  

“At the same time, I want to remember all those who are not here. Those who did not return alive from Gaza. I returned alive, but I will always carry on my shoulders the knowledge that there are those who did not,” he said.

“We will remember them, love them, and honor them always. Thank you for fighting for them too.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Far-left Twitch streamer and political commentator Hasan Piker said that the US conducted more terrorism than al-Qaeda while talking to Axios in a podcast released on Thursday.  

Piker, who has over 3 million followers and is one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, came under renewed attention due to his participation in campaigning for , Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Michigan senator.

Piker previously stated that “America is the top dog in terrorism,” and stood by his statement in his interview. 

“We have caused tremendous terror all around the world,” Piker said to Axios, explaining that he believed the US had committed more terrorism than al-Qaeda “pound for pound as far as the number of deaths.”

Piker referred to the deadly strike of an elementary school in Minab, Iran, in March as an example of US terror.  

While the Trump administration has not released findings from a Pentagon investigation into the strike, evidence has been found indicating that at least one US missile struck the school. 

“If you’re killing 140 schoolgirls, that is an act of terror,” Piker said. “This doesn’t mean that all Americans are terrorists, but the reality of the matter is we have to create an environment of accountability to ensure things like that never happen again.”

Piker tied to El-Sayed campaign

Piker has been tied to El-Sayed through his own campaigning and through Republican-affiliated groups, which have already spent nearly $3 million in ads attacking El-Sayed over his connections with the streamer, Axios reported, citing tracking firm AdImpact. 

Many of the ads feature a clip of Piker saying that “America deserved 9/11,” from 2019, for which he has apologized and since said that the attacks were “blowback” from US involvement in the Middle East. 

Piker said that he did not believe the 9/11 terror attacks were justified but that he was conducting an analysis “to stop further violence from taking place, both violence in the region, but also violence in the home front as well.” 

El-Sayed denies affiliation with Piker

El-Sayed has largely dismissed his connection to Piker, often calling him just a “streamer in California,” according to Axios. 

“The reason I talk to Hasan isn’t because of Hasan, it’s because of the 3 million people who pay attention to what he has to say,” El-Sayed told Fox 2 Detroit on Tuesday. 

“Too often the way that our politics happen is that we’re told who we cannot talk to,” he said. 

El-Sayed told Axios that he disagreed with Piker’s belief regarding the US and al-Qaeda. 

“I do not agree with this statement, nor do I give much weight to the statements made by a social media streamer. I am more concerned with the dangerous policies of Donald Trump and Mike Rogers that are raising the prices of gas, groceries, and healthcare for Michiganders,” El-Sayed said. 

This post was originally published on here. 

More than 600 Michigan Jews have signed a new open letter pledging to vote for Abdul El-Sayed for the US Senate, seeking to grow the Democratic candidate’s rocky Jewish support in what is expected to be a close and pivotal election.

The coalition, “Michigan Jews for Democracy,” includes several liberal and progressive Jewish figures in the state, though they signed in personal capacities. Signatories include father and son former US Reps. Sander and Andy Levin, progressive attorney general nominee Eli Savit, Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus chair Decky Alexander, Detroit Jews for Justice executive director Lisa Tencer and former “Uncommitted” organizer Eleanor Gamalski.

“Some of us are enthusiastic supporters of El-Sayed,” the open letter reads. “Some of us have reservations: there are disagreements with El-Sayed on important issues, including aspects of his approach to Israel and the language used by some of his allies.”  

The letter continues, “We understand that a vote is not a valentine; it’s a strategic chess move.”

El-Sayed’s campaign promoted the letter Thursday morning.

Jewish clergy who signed include Rabbi Alana Alpert of the Reconstructionist Congregation T’chiyah in Ferndale; Rabbi Nate DeGroot, who serves congregations in Jackson and Flint and directs the Shalom Center; and retired Cantor Annie Rose of Reform Temple Beth Emeth in Ann Arbor. Other notable signers include University of Michigan Jewish Studies professor Deborah Moore and Danny Fenster, the Jewish journalist who was imprisoned in Myanmar for five months in 2021.

El-Sayed works to mend relations with Jewish voters

El-Sayed has sought to mend relations with Jewish voters in the state in recent months, though his opposition to a two-state solution in Israel, along with past controversies involving anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker and his response to the attack on the Detroit-area Temple Israel, have rendered his candidacy polarizing to the community. Recently, El-Sayed held an unpublicized meeting with rabbis at Temple Israel, weeks after apologizing for his earlier remarks in which he appeared to equivocate about condemning the March attack, according to a report in Jewish Insider.

The new letter in favor of El-Sayed also contrasts with other Jewish open letters in the state. One pledging to vote for his GOP opponent, former US Rep. Mike Rogers, has collected 478 names since launching in August. Another, urging El-Sayed to respond to Jewish “non-negotiables” including “Jewish sovereignty in Israel,” has been promoted by several rabbis in the state.

National Democrats see retaining Michigan’s Senate seat as essential to their hopes of retaking the chamber this fall and instituting checks on President Donald Trump. The Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus has not endorsed El-Sayed, despite its chair’s presence on the new letter. The Jewish Democratic Council of America, whose CEO Halie Soifer is a Michigan native, has also not endorsed him, telling Jewish Insider this week that the organization does “not endorse all Democrats.”

This post was originally published on here. 

The United States announced sanctions on an Iranian cryptocurrency exchange controlled by sanctioned Iranian financier Babak Zanjani on Thursday, accusing ‌it of processing payments for ships to transit safely through the Strait of Hormuz.

Treasury said BitBank had routed hundreds of millions of dollars to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and described the exchange as a key component in Iran’s digital assets-based sanctions-evasion infrastructure. The exchange was used to transfer funds paid to Iran’s newly established Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority, Treasury said in a statement.

Zanjani has long been a key figure in Iran’s sanctions-evasion networks. He was sentenced to death by Iranian authorities in 2016 for embezzlement. His sentence was commuted in 2024. The following year he re-emerged as a backer of Iranian government economic projects.

The designation is part of Treasury’s “Operation Economic Outcast” intended to isolate Iran economically and disrupt Iran’s global financial, commercial and logistical networks, according to the statement. The strategy has targeted Iran’s illicit oil trade, financial intermediaries, exchange houses and shipping, aviation and front companies.

The US also sanctioned Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company, the software developer behind BitBank, and three close associates of Zanjani, Hossein Ali Zaker Hossein, Mohammad Mahdi Zaker Hossein and Seyed Adel Heidari.

Treasury previously sanctioned Zanjani for laundering money for IRGC

Treasury announced sanctions against Zanjani and his two largest digital asset projects, Zedcex Exchange Limited and Zedxion Exchange Limited, in January, accusing them of laundering money for the IRGC.

In July, the US imposed sanctions against nine other firms that Zanjani is involved in, including his Iran-based “Dot One” conglomerate and other firms based in Turkey and the United ​Arab Emirates, as well as top executives at those firms.

“Through this combined infrastructure, Zanjani’s enterprises have served as both public‑facing commercial ventures and covert financial platforms enabling sanctions evasion and support to Iranian state‑linked entities,” Treasury said.

This post was originally published on here. 

The United Nations General Assembly voted on Thursday to allow Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to address the annual gathering of world leaders next week via video – for the second year in a row – after the United States again denied him a visa to travel to New York.

The resolution received 152 votes in favor and three votes against, while four countries abstained. It also allows Abbas and any other high-level Palestinian officials to take part in UN meetings or conferences via video over the next year if they are prevented from traveling to the United States.

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said that Abbas could not be allowed to attend the UN General Assembly while still funding terror. 

“As long as Abbas continues his policy of making payments to terrorists and their families, he cannot expect the international community to simply ignore it. Instead of coming to New York, he will send videos. The responsibility for changing this policy is in his hands,” Danon said. 

The US said last year that Abbas and about 80 other Palestinians would be affected by its decision to deny and revoke visas from members of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. Washington announced on Wednesday that it had extended the visa bans. 

“If the PA wants to be treated as a partner, it must stop subsidizing terror and stop using diplomatic theater as a substitute for serious governance,” Deputy US Ambassador to the United Nations Tammy Bruce told the assembly before the vote.

Palestinian leaders rejected and condemned the move by the United States, Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour told the General Assembly. 

US extends visa sanctions against Palestinian officials

Without naming specific officials, the US State Department said on Wednesday it ​would extend visa sanctions against Palestinian officials over actions they took to “internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” including ​pursuing cases against Israel at international tribunals.

A Palestinian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed Abbas’ visa had been ​denied.

Under a 1947 UN “headquarters agreement,” the US is generally required to allow access for foreign diplomats to the UN in New York. However, Washington has said it can deny visas for security, extremism, and foreign policy reasons. 

This post was originally published on here. 

An F-16 military jet from the 149th Fighter Wing of the Texas National Guard crashed in Grand Traverse County, Michigan, Michigan State Police announced in a statement shared to X/Twitter on Thursday.

“MSP personnel are assisting the Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office with its response to a plane crash involving a military jet near County Road 633 and Blair Townhall Rd,” it said. “The Michigan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs confirms the incident involves an F-16 from Texas.”

MSP added that the pilot, who was successfully able to eject from the jet, is in stable condition and is being treated at a local hospital. No other injuries have been reported.

An F-16 fighter jet crashed in Grand Traverse County, Michigan, on Thursday, and an evacuation order is in effect along part of County Road 633, the county’s emergency management said.

A spokesperson with the 149th Fighter Wing of the Texas National Guard confirmed that the… pic.twitter.com/ryAwGPb5DA

— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 17, 2026

The crash occured during a routine training exercise, CBS reported, citing a spokesperson of the Texas Military Department. CBS added that the reason for the crash is under investigation.

According to information heard on a mayday call shared on social media, the jet reportedly struck a bird.

Evacuation order issued for nearby residents

An evacuation order within one mile of the site was issued by the Grand Traverse County Emergency Management, and a shelter has been established at the nearby Kensington Church.

“If you have evacuated and need a place to go, Kensington Church and the American Red Cross are there to assist residents,” the emeregency management said in a social media post.

CBS cited Blair Township Supervisor Nicole Blonshine as saying that she does not believe “anyone on the ground was hurt or that any homes were damaged.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Israel is systematically dismantling Palestinian collective life in the West Bank, the NGO B’Tselem claimed in a new report titled “The Elimination Project.”

B’Tselem has been critical of Israel for decades, but in recent years its reports have become even harder-hitting, going so far as to label Israel an apartheid state.

Israel and the IDF have vehemently rejected the vast majority of the claims as groundless or sensationalized, while acknowledging specific, more limited criticisms in some circumstances.

The report considers Israel to be orchestrating a comprehensive mechanism of elimination that works to “dismantle the conditions for continued Palestinian existence in the West Bank, while deepening Jewish control and supremacy in an irreversible manner.

“At any moment, Palestinians may be exposed to violence by soldiers or armed settler militias, arrested and imprisoned, subjected to abuse and humiliation, and sometimes even killed,” it claims.

“The Elimination Project” purportedly draws on more than 2,000 testimonies from Palestinians since October 2023, combined with B’Tselem’s materials from the last three decades.

While other NGO reports focus on specific incidents of harm against Palestinians, B’Tselem chooses to take a broader approach, looking also at the reality in the West Bank as “not simply a series of separate violations of individual and collective rights” but a “comprehensive mechanism of elimination” involving multiple intersecting Israeli actors.

B’Tselem frames “elimination” not only as physical elimination, but also as the “elimination” of Palestinian land, institutions, language, culture, social ties, leadership, shared memory, and history.

The report is split into five domains: violence and intimidation; movement restrictions; economic strangulation; social and political destruction; and ethnic cleansing and territorial takeover.

The IDF told The Jerusalem Post this week that “any claim that the State of Israel, including the IDF, is advancing a course of action aimed at eliminating the Palestinians as a people is false, baseless, and blatantly disconnected from reality.

“The IDF’s mission in Judea and Samaria is to thwart terrorism, protect all residents, and enforce law and order in the area,” the IDF added.

Additionally, B’Tselem presents as established fact that Israel is committing the following: genocide, ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism, and apartheid.

Even Israel’s Western critics do not accept such allegations as established fact, with the International Court of Justice legal proceeding on genocide now delayed until at least 2029 to cope with a 4,000-page comprehensive defense presented by Israel earlier this year, and Israel continues to deny all such blanket accusations.

B’Tselem goes further to say that its own legal analysis – detailed in the report – is that Israel’s actions in the West Bank meet the legal threshold for apartheid.

Israel has rejected apartheid allegations in the past, noting that it has well over two million Israeli-Arab citizens with full rights, including representation in all areas of government.

It has also noted that the Palestinians are not only not Israeli citizens, but have been in an armed conflict for decades with Israel, and their land rights and future potential sovereignty rights are connected to a process of negotiations under UN Security Council Resolution 242. Negotiations have been frozen since Hamas invaded Israel in October 2023.

While taking these accusations against Israel as truths, B’Tselem does not meaningfully acknowledge the existence of Palestinian terrorism, or the role this plays in retaliatory Israeli policy.

And while it does acknowledge 7 October 2023 as a precipitating factor in Israeli policy in the West Bank, B’Tselem does not describe the massacre as an act of terrorism.

Instead, it refers to Hamas as an “armed Palestinian organization” which carried out a “criminal attack.” B’Tselem also argues that the 7 October attack cannot be detached from the history that preceded it, and that “context is essential for understanding the circumstances in which those crimes occurred.”

Hamas is mentioned only seven times in the 250-page report. Three of the mentions are within the testimony of a Palestinian resident in the West Bank when relaying how he was accused of being a Hamas member. Only four are in the report proper. This is despite the pervasive presence of the terrorist group in the West Bank, including in cultural institutions.

‘Impunity’ of Israelis

B’Tselem claims that Israelis – whether soldiers, police officers, or settlers – who harm Palestinians enjoy almost total impunity. This, it argues, is reflected in the “absence of punishment after the fact, backing in advance, and a broad institutional and public understanding that harming Palestinians will carry no cost and may sometimes even be rewarded.”

To evidence this claim, B’Tselem cites the Force 100/Sde Teiman affair as an example of alleged impunity.

This involves a case filed by former IDF military advocate-general Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi in February 2025 against five soldiers for alleged crimes against a Palestinian security detainee held at the “Sde Teiman” detention facility.

B’Tselem claims that the incident was cast in political discourse as a story about “heroic soldiers” persecuted by the military justice system, and that the indictment in the case was withdrawn because of this.

This entirely omits large parts of the story. While the indictment was dropped, it was not because of the soldiers’ actions. The case was dropped because Yerushalmi illegally leaked a video of the alleged beating prior to trial, where it could have been legally and publicly presented. She then resigned, saying her actions were an attempt to counter a false smearing campaign against the IDF law-enforcement agents handling the case.

If the video had been kept until trial, the soldiers might have been convicted. The IDF actually angered cross sections of the Israeli public by arresting the soldiers, interrogating them, and indicting them anyway.

Also, in February 2025, an IDF court convicted and sentenced an IDF reservist who abused Gazan detainees in Sde Teiman to seven months’ imprisonment despite political criticism of such decisions in the post-October 7 context.

There have also been several cases where Israeli soldiers have received punishment for harming Palestinians in the West Bank.

A notable example is the sentencing of 21-year-old Ben Deri, a Border Police officer, who shot and killed a Palestinian during the Nakba Day clashes in 2014. Deri was convicted of negligent homicide, with the court determining that he had aimed what he thought was a rubber bullet at the victim’s chest. Deri was sentenced to nine months.

Then there is the case of IDF soldier Elor Azaria in 2016. Azaria shot a wounded Palestinian terrorist in the head in Hebron, after the latter stabbed an Israeli soldier. Azaria was arrested and convicted of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment and demotion in rank.

Open-fire policy and unprovoked violence

A lot of the fallacy of B’Tselem’s later discussion of Israel’s military action in the West Bank is that it is depicted as purely instigative rather than responsive.

B’Tselem spends a great deal of time detailing how “at any time, soldiers may break into a home, settlers may arrive at a grazing area, a checkpoint may close without explanation, gunfire may erupt in an ambush or raid, a child may be detained, a person may be arrested or beaten, a home, a road or a piece of infrastructure may be demolished, or access to medical care, work or school may be blocked” – as if these actions by Israel are entirely spur-of-the-moment.
There is no acknowledgment that arrests, checkpoints, or the blocking of roads may occur due to the existence of Palestinian violence or terrorism against Israelis.

There are frequent Palestinian attacks on Jews in the area. Just last week, Palestinian attackers carried out a terror stabbing at Maoz Yehuda Farm near Kusra that left one moderately to seriously wounded.

IDF raids frequently uncover weapons caches in Palestinian villages, and several hundred to sometimes over 1,000 attacks are foiled per year on a regular basis.

But, according to B’Tselem, all military or security actions against Palestinians in the West Bank happen spontaneously, vindictively, and as part of the pattern of “settler colonialism.”

Later in the report, B’Tselem dedicates a section to the notion of an “open-fire” policy in the IDF.

B’Tselem claims that Israel has changed its military’s practices since October 2023 and now permits soldiers to “open fire in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including situations in which forces on the ground face no life-threatening, or any other, danger.”

It also says that “Since 2021, soldiers have been officially permitted to shoot fleeing Palestinians even when they posed no real and immediate danger to the forces, if they had previously thrown stones or Molotov cocktails.”

This narrative grossly oversimplifies a highly complex and constantly evolving situation in both the West Bank and Gaza.

In Gaza, after October 2023, the IDF, after spending weeks evacuating specific areas of civilians, often did give temporary permission to be more aggressive to open fire, given that all or most of the people left in those areas were combatants (especially since often even some of the combatants would evacuate under the guise of the civilian evacuation, and only the most hardcore combatants remained).

In the West Bank, IDF open-fire regulations changed in March 2022 when a wave of Palestinian terrorism swept over Israel, but at times those regulations were walked backward to be more conservative.

Open-fire regulations changed again in January 2025 when the IDF saw that the Palestinian Authority had failed to regain control of the Jenin refugee camp from Palestinian terrorists who were acting against both Israel and the PA.

However, at times after that, open-fire regulations have again become more conservative, and in any case, they have never been as aggressive as in Gaza, because most of the West Bank where the IDF acts is still populated by Palestinian civilians.

Strangling the Palestinian economy

Next, B’Tselem discusses the intentional “strangulation” of the Palestinian economy, which it presents as purely eliminative in objective.

“Israel has revoked or suspended almost all work permits held by Palestinians for employment in Israel, cutting tens of thousands of Palestinian workers and their families off from a major source of income. At the same time, it intensified delays and deductions from the Palestinian Authority’s tax revenues and impaired its ability to pay salaries and provide basic services; Israel also threatened to sever the Palestinian banking system from Israeli banks, through which it is also connected to the international banking system,” the report reads.

B’Tselem does not take into account that the suspension of Palestinian work permits followed the October 7 massacre and was driven by complex calculations, including security concerns, rather than being some kind of unprovoked attempt to economically harm Palestinian civilians.

Additionally, the description of Israel “intensifying delays and deductions” from Palestinian tax revenues also omits the legal and security framework governing those transfers, including Israeli deductions connected to funds that the PA pays to prisoners and families of terrorists (“pay for slay”).

This is not to say that every Israeli decision concerning PA revenues and Palestinian employment is beyond criticism. But B’Tselem’s implication that Israel is simply withholding Palestinian tax money arbitrarily in order to cause economic suffering is false and reductive.

NGOs and social organizations

B’Tselem argues that, since its establishment, Israel has tended to cast any Palestinian political, social, and community organizing – particularly when such organizing articulated demands for collective and national rights – “as a security threat and a challenge to the political order it seeks to impose.”

It criticizes Israel’s closure of “civil society” organizations that it has deemed to be terrorist organizations, saying that Israel’s definition of terrorism is too broad.

As an example, B’Tselem cites then-defense minister Benny Gantz’s designation of six prominent Palestinian organizations as “terrorist organizations” in 2021, including Al-Haq and the Palestinian branch of Defense for Children International.

B’Tselem describes Al-Haq as a veteran organization that “documents human rights violations against Palestinians,” by and large ignoring Al-Haq’s extensive connections to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (designated a terrorist organization also in the US, EU, and Canada) and the fact that Al-Haq itself is also sanctioned in the US.

B’Tselem also accuses Israel of “waging a sustained attack on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA),” which it describes as the main body that provides Palestinian refugees with education, healthcare, employment and social services. Israeli policy for some NGOs has been controversial in the West, but even most critics acknowledge extensive evidence of the pervasive infiltration of Hamas into UNRWA.

B’Tselem also denies that PA textbooks are “rife with incitement to violence against Israelis and even antisemitism,” arguing instead that the textbooks contain “emotionally charged portrayals of Israeli violence” but no incitement to terrorism, demonization of Israelis or Jews, or calls to harm them.

As of November 2025, according to an IMPACT-se report, PA textbooks and educational materials still include content that glorifies jihad and incitement to violence.

So much so, in fact, that the European Union – not known for holding the PA to account – has passed several resolutions condemning PA educational materials containing antisemitism and glorification of jihad.

The issue of prison systems

However, this section of B’Tselem’s report includes claims that may have more merit.

For example, B’Tselem claims that Israel’s prison system has seen more incidents of violence and abuse against prisoners since Itamar Ben-Gvir was appointed minister of national security.

“Ben-Gvir and others exploited the public mood and embedded a logic of revenge in the prison system,” the report reads. “The abuse of Palestinian prisoners and detainees became declared policy, with almost no attempts by the Israeli public, legal system, or media to restrain it.”

The Post reported in June 2026 that there has been a massive influx of prisoners into Israel’s prison system.

According to a State Comptroller’s Report, the prewar totals of 16,200 total prisoners and 5,200 security prisoners had jumped to 23,400 total prisoners and over 10,000 security prisoners by early 2025.

Settler violence and police inactivity

A discussion of settler violence takes up a large part of B’Tselem’s report.

B’Tselem writes that settler violence is an “integral part of the Israeli regime’s violence,” that violent settlers are “backed by Israeli forces and protected by various state mechanisms,” and that Israeli forces “again and again escort attacking settlers, enable and participate in the attacks.

“The lines between the different perpetrators of violence have blurred, as military, police, and settlers cooperate more closely, operating as complementary parts of a single mechanism of control,” it said.

Speaking to the Post on Monday, the IDF said it strongly condemns incidents of violence on nationalistic grounds. In such cases, it said, soldiers must act to stop the violation and, when necessary, detain or arrest suspects until the police arrive at the scene.

“IDF soldiers are required to act in accordance with this mission and IDF orders. In situations where soldiers fail to adhere to these orders, the incidents are thoroughly investigated, and disciplinary measures are taken accordingly,” the IDF added.

For example, in addition to prosecutions of individual soldiers for misconduct against Palestinians, during the recent incident when some IDF reservists were found to be too cooperative with violent or harassing Jewish extremists near the Palestinian village of Kusra, OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Bluth gave special orders to bring in the highly trained Golani Brigade and Paratroopers Brigade to ensure the safety of the local Palestinians.

The IDF also said that B’Tselem’s implied claim that the IDF supports acts of violence by Israelis is false and misleading.

“As stated, the IDF, together with the other security forces, works to prevent violent incidents and thwart attacks of this kind. The IDF is committed to combating violence on nationalistic grounds, which harms IDF operations, directly contradicts IDF values, and poses a threat to the security of civilians.”

Due to the IDF’s constant presence in the area, the IDF said, soldiers do encounter cases of law violations by Israelis, some of which may involve violent incidents or incidents directed against Palestinians or their property. In cases of law violations by Israelis, the primary body responsible for handling such allegations is the Israel Police.

Here, the IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) have repeatedly slammed the police under Ben-Gvir for failing to fully uphold their missions to arrest violent extremist Jews who have harmed Palestinians. At times, they have also criticized Defense Minister Israel Katz for taking away the power to place Jewish extremists in administrative detention.

In that sense, most of the defense establishment believes that enforcement against Jewish extremists in the West Bank should be tougher, but that the IDF is doing all it can, and that more improvements can be achieved if Ben-Gvir is removed from running the police.

In any event, the IDF said it does not direct its actions against civilians and takes all operationally possible measures to prevent and minimize harm to civilians. It rejected any claim or implication that it is acting to harass or persecute the Palestinian population.

As already stressed, this is not to say that the IDF does not kill Palestinians terrorists, and that Palestinians, both terrorists and innocents, are not killed by Israeli non-military individuals.

But even by B’Tselem’s own figures, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli nonmilitary individuals is small.

The report says that between 7 October 2023 and 30 June 2026, Israel killed 1,087 Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Of the total number, 35 were reportedly killed by Israeli civilians, and 15 by Israelis whose status as civilians or members of the security forces is unknown. The rest were killed by Israeli forces.

In the same time period, over twice as many Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists – 77 Israelis were killed in Palestinian terrorist attacks in the West Bank and Israel between October 7, 2023, and December 25, 2025.

B’Tselem does correctly document some problems in the police and prisons that should not be dismissed. However, many of its claims appear to be exaggerations of the available facts or lacking context for the massive Palestinian terror problems which Israel must constantly confront.

Its sweeping conclusion that Israel is engaged in a comprehensive project to “eliminate” Palestinian life relies on a narrative in which Israeli actions are foregrounded while Palestinian terrorism and the security rationale behind many Israeli measures receive comparatively little attention.

The result is a deeply one-sided account of an extremely complex reality.

This post was originally published on here. 

The United States is investigating whether Iran was behind cyberattacks on two energy tankers bound for American ports that were struck while transiting the Strait of Gibraltar in August, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing US officials familiar with the investigation.

The incidents have raised concerns among US officials that Tehran or an Iran-aligned actor could be seeking new ways to expand attacks on global energy shipping beyond the Middle East’s existing maritime flashpoints.

The ships, an oil tanker and a liquefied petroleum gas carrier, were traveling toward ports in Texas when they were targeted in early August, according to vessel-tracking data and officials cited by the WSJ.

A specialized US Coast Guard team, joined by FBI agents, boarded both vessels after they arrived in the Gulf of Mexico later that month. Investigators examined their information technology and operational systems after authorities found indications that the ships’ networks had been compromised.

Rear Adm. Amy Grable, commander of the Coast Guard’s Cyber Command, declined to discuss the specific vessels but told the WSJ that cyber response teams spent three to four days aboard the ships assessing the incidents and ensuring that they could continue operating safely.

Cyberattack risks aboard modern tankers

“Unfortunately, many ships’ IT systems are interconnected with other systems on a ship, the systems that control the engineering plant, propulsion, navigation, et cetera,” Grable said. “So if those systems can be breached and controlled, then the crews could lose control of the vessel, and it could cause a mishap or a collision. And that’s what we’re looking for.”

One of the vessels, the VL Prosperity, was carrying more than two million barrels of oil from Egypt to Galveston, Texas, when it was targeted in the Strait of Gibraltar, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence tracking data and a US official cited by the WSJ.

Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News reported in August that hackers had infiltrated the VL Prosperity’s engine-room systems, reduced engine cooling flow, increased the engine’s speed, and interfered with fuel and engine-oil systems. No organization claimed responsibility for the attack, and the WSJ said it could not independently verify the account.

The VL Prosperity’s manager confirmed that US authorities conducted a cybersecurity inspection aboard the vessel and said it was subsequently cleared for normal operations.

The second vessel, the Kohaku, was passing through the Strait of Gibraltar on its way to another Texas port, where it was scheduled to load liquefied petroleum gas. Tracking data showed that it was approached by the same Coast Guard vessel involved in the response to the VL Prosperity.

The Coast Guard has said there were no reports of operational disruptions, vessel instability, physical danger to crew members, or environmental damage following the incidents. US authorities have not publicly attributed the cyberattacks to Iran.

Maritime trade routes play key role in US-Iran conflict

The investigation comes as maritime routes have become a central arena in the conflict between Washington and Tehran. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has faced repeated attacks and severe disruption during the fighting, with commercial vessels reducing transit through the strategically important waterway.

Earlier this week, an oil tanker was attacked in the Strait of Hormuz, with US Central Command saying the vessel had recently been struck by an Iranian drone. Iranian authorities offered a different account of the incident.

The Iran-backed Houthis have meanwhile intensified pressure on shipping around the Red Sea. The group has sought greater control around the Bab al-Mandab Strait and Yemen’s western coast, another major chokepoint for global commerce and energy shipments.

US officials’ concern over the tanker incidents reflects the potential consequences of moving such attacks into the cyber domain. Modern ships rely on interconnected digital systems to control propulsion, navigation, engineering and cargo operations, meaning that a successful intrusion could potentially cause a collision, fire, explosion or environmental disaster.

The threat comes amid broader concerns over Iranian cyber activity. The US, UK and Netherlands this week issued a joint warning over Iranian state-linked cyber operations targeting journalists, activists and other individuals.

Rear Adm. Jason Tama, head of Coast Guard Cyber Command, previously warned that cyber interference aboard oil tankers could pose particularly serious risks because of the nature of their cargo.

“For a vessel that’s carrying tens of millions of gallons of crude oil, which is highly volatile, there’s always a risk of fire or explosion,” Tama told the WSJ in June. “The atmosphere in the tanks has to be very carefully managed to ensure that you’re not going to get a situation where there’s a fire or explosion. And then there’s always a risk of an oil spill.”

US authorities have not disclosed how many suspected maritime cyberattacks they have investigated since the war with Iran began or whether investigators have established a connection between the attacks on the two tankers.

This post was originally published on here. 

The demand for political renewal after the October 7 massacre was central to Ofer Winter’s election pitch: Give new people enough power, and they could change Israel’s Right, even under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Hamas’s massacre prompted expectations that a new generation of leaders would emerge, yet familiar figures continued to dominate. Former ministers Yoaz Hendel and Chili Tropper formed a joint party, then split. Tropper joined former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar slate.

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Winter, who had never served in the Knesset, offered another route. His Amcha Yisrael, or People of Israel, party made recruiting parliamentary newcomers part of its appeal, including immigrants, advocates for Israel abroad, and people whose families had been affected by the war.

Israelis vote for party lists. Governments normally depend on alliances commanding at least 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, allowing a small party whose support is essential to bargain for ministries and policy changes. Winter wants the Defense Ministry. First, he has to win enough votes to enter the Knesset.

He spoke with The Jerusalem Post from his temporary office in an old Jerusalem building, where he hosted activities for different parts of Israeli society. On the stairs, people approached him one by one: a haredi (ultra-Orthodox) man, a settler, a man without a kippah, and others.

Each person who approached expressed support for Winter

They expressed support. One asked why he had not joined forces with a small new haredi party advocating military conscription. Winter stopped for everyone, shaking hands, hugging people, and answering questions. His directness appeared to resonate.

“I don’t work for Netanyahu,” he said. “I don’t work for anyone.”

His candidates had other options, he said. “If we had been looking for a seat, we could have found a seat,” he added, meaning he was offered seats on different slates but declined immediately.

Winter acknowledged that supporting Netanyahu had cost him potential voters. He said he was choosing among available alternatives and seeking enough strength to change policy within government.

Calls to send all 120 MKs home were an impractical slogan, Winter said, adding that change would take time.

He refused pressure to merge with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party, and he resisted Netanyahu’s efforts to consolidate smaller parties. Parties that fall below the electoral threshold receive no seats.

Winter challenged the assumption that his voters would otherwise support existing right-wing parties. He also objected to the hostility toward him from that camp.

“I’m not Hamas,” he said. “Don’t confuse a friend with an enemy.”

“There are people who cannot bring themselves to vote for the current Right, for the existing government,” he added, citing younger voters and reservists as his core constituency.

Asked what distinguished him from Smotrich, Winter replied: “Look at my list.”

He described it as closer to what the Likud, Netanyahu’s party, should have been: “Religious, nonreligious, Jews, Arabs, Druze.”

No. 2 on his list, Yoseph Haddad, is an Arab Christian advocate for Israel who volunteered for military service and was wounded in the Golani infantry brigade. Winter wants him to become public diplomacy minister and defend Israel’s positions abroad.

Former television journalist Netali Shem Tov’s family was displaced from Metula, near the Lebanese border.

Sigal Kraunik-Atia lost her husband, Kibbutz Be’eri’s security coordinator, in the October 7 massacre.

Winter repeatedly highlights new immigrants to Israel

Winter repeatedly highlighted the olim (new immigrants).

Former Jerusalem deputy mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum immigrated from Gibraltar and became prominent in international advocacy.

Lali Deri arrived alone from France at age 14 and a half and became an activist and commentator. Her son, Saadia Yaakov, was killed fighting in Gaza.

Their experience connected his slate to Jewish communities abroad.

Winter also described a roots trip with his immigrant parents that reinforced his appreciation of having a Jewish state.

The diversity came with clear ideological boundaries. He opposed a Palestinian state and wanted Israel’s Jewish character preserved. He also opposed religious coercion and welcomed non-Jewish citizens who identify with Israel into its leadership.

Winter commanded Givati during the 2014 Gaza war, Operation Protective Edge, and later led the 98th Division. His religiously worded letter to soldiers before the 2014 fighting provoked controversy. He left the military in 2024 after being passed over for promotion to major-general.

“I lived with a sense of mission,” Winter said. “Otherwise, I would not have been able to do it, nor would my family.”

His wife raised eight children while working as a school principal, he said. He insisted he had left the army without anger.

As defense minister, Winter said he wants to change military doctrine “from containment to decisive victory.” He acknowledged wartime achievements but expressed disbelief that Hamas remained standing after years of fighting.

“Reservists are not supposed to serve in the IDF for three years,” he said. “Reservists need to be at home.”

They need to work, educate children, develop the economy, and help absorb immigrants, he added.

Winter described Eisenkot as an architect of the prewar security approach he opposed. Eisenkot could, nevertheless, join a broad government.

“But I don’t think he can be defense minister,” he said.

Winter also welcomed former prime minister Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Liberman into such a coalition “as ministers.”

Regarding Netanyahu’s responsibility, he was unequivocal.

“Netanyahu is responsible,” he said. “Whether he says it or doesn’t say it, he is responsible. He was prime minister. There wasn’t somebody else here.”

Winter distinguished the immediate failures of the military and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), Israel’s domestic security service, from political leaders’ responsibility for accepting assessments and approving policy. The failure had developed over at least a decade, he said.

“Nobody can take the responsibility away from Netanyahu,” he added.

Winter has publicly made military-service legislation a condition for joining the government.

His plan combines greater benefits for those serving, Defense Ministry oversight of yeshivas, and military units accommodating haredi religious requirements.

“The more you serve, the more you receive,” he said. Combat and reserve service should bring greater benefits, he added, and those failing to report would lose access to dealings with the state. He did not elaborate.

Drawing on his experience establishing a haredi company in Givati, Winter said recruitment required the army to honor its promises to religious soldiers.

“Don’t reeducate them,” he said.

Winter said there was room for women combat soldiers alongside religious accommodations, supported continued Torah study for exceptional scholars, and wanted other haredim to have routes into service, education, and work.

Regarding Gaza, he advocated what he calls voluntary emigration.

“Let them choose where they want to go,” he said.

Winter said the government had considered him to lead its emigration initiative, but then backed away after hearing his intentions. He did not identify the officials involved.

Winter’s account of his proposed wartime strategy included moving the population, besieging those who remained, and allowing emigration. He also advocated separating civilians from Hamas and striking the organization with full force.

The interview left unanswered how voluntary departure would operate alongside that pressure and what conditions civilians choosing to remain would face.

“Our soldiers come before enemy civilians,” he said, regarding his wartime instructions.

Winter hopes for a double-digit seat tally, drawing support from the Likud, other right-wing parties, the center, and first-time voters. That remained his assessment of the party’s potential.

Whether he could reshape a Netanyahu government depended on voters giving him enough influence to enforce his demands, he said.

“We will act from within, but we will not compromise on certain things,” Winter said.

This post was originally published on here. 

The US State Department approved the possible sale of around $24.3 billion worth of F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter jets and related equipment to Saudi Arabia, the department announced on Thursday.

Saudi Arabia requested to purchase 48 of the jets, as well as 49 engines and other materials. 

According to a State Department statement, the F-35 sale is intended to support US foreign policy and national security objectives by strengthening Saudi Arabia’s ability to deter threats to the kingdom’s security.

It is also intended to improve cooperation between Saudi Arabia’s military, the US, regional allies, and NATO forces. 

US says sale will not alter military balance in region

The State Department claimed that the proposed sale would not alter the military balance in the region or have an inverse impact on US defense readiness.

Word of the potential deal first spread in late 2025, leading many to question whether Saudi Arabia obtaining F-35’s would pose a challenge to Israel’s military advantage as the only country in the Middle East with access to the advanced aircraft.

US President Donald Trump confirmed that the US would allow the sale in November 2025 after meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to sign a series of diplomatic agreements.

Reuters contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Watch this episode without interruptions.

Morgan Ortagus has a simple way of describing the situation between Israel and Lebanon.

“We’re halfway down the aisle,” she says.

Then comes the inevitable American analogy. “This is not a football game,” the senior diplomat says, explaining why she cannot predict when the negotiations will produce a final agreement. “I don’t know when we’re going to spike the football in the end zone.”

For Ortagus, who in 2025 served as the administration’s lead envoy on Israeli-Lebanese relations, the possibility of peace between Jerusalem and Beirut represents one of the region’s most consequential – and most fragile – opportunities in decades. It is an opportunity she believes emerged from the dramatic weakening of Hezbollah and the changing balance of power between Israel, Lebanon, and Iran.

And unlike many diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East, Ortagus insists, this one did not begin in Washington. It began with Lebanese people telling her that they wanted peace. “The genesis came from the Lebanese people saying to me, ‘We have to go for peace. It’s now or never,’” she tells the Magazine.

Ortagus, who also served as a senior policy adviser at the US Mission to the United Nations, has spent recent years operating at the intersection of American diplomacy, Middle Eastern politics, and the Trump administration’s approach to the region. During US President Donald Trump’s first term, Ortagus, then a spokesperson for the State Department, was part of a small team around secretary of state Mike Pompeo and special envoy Jared Kushner that worked on what would eventually become the Abraham Accords.

It was a small group of officials working behind the scenes, often without knowing whether their efforts would succeed. “We knew that it was something that would last for, we hoped, generations. That this would be a new era for Israel,” she says.

When Trump returned to the White House in 2025, the ambition remained. But the Middle East had changed. “The backdrop was Oct. 7,” Ortagus says. “Things had changed so fundamentally for both Israel and America since the Abraham Accords.”

Lebanon presented Washington with an intractable problem

The new administration entered office facing multiple wars and crises. Gaza dominated the headlines. Iran remained at the center of regional strategy. And Lebanon, once again, presented Washington with an intractable problem.

But Ortagus saw something others might have missed. The transformation began with the dramatic weakening of Hezbollah in September 2024. For decades, the terrorist group had been treated as one of the most powerful non-state armed groups in the world, deeply embedded in Lebanon’s political system and backed by Iran. Then Israel went after its leadership and military infrastructure.

During Trump’s first administration, Ortagus watched the US eliminate Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force. She said she believed Washington had been handed a historic opportunity to increase pressure on Tehran. “I was disappointed to see [the Biden administration] squander that opportunity,” she says.

When Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2024, Ortagus immediately saw a parallel. “I thought to myself, we cannot squander this opportunity,” she says.

The opportunity, in her view, was not merely to weaken Hezbollah militarily. It was to change Lebanon itself. And that is where her Lebanese contacts entered the picture. “They were so excited about the prospect, potentially, for peace, for normalization,” she says. “Principally because the boogeyman had been taken out in such a dramatic fashion by the Israelis.

It was an extraordinary moment. For years, Hezbollah had been the dominant military force in southern Lebanon, while Iran used the organization as one of its most important regional proxies. But suddenly, the political equation looked different. “Hezbollah has been a massive problem,” she says. “Obviously, it’s a security risk. But there’s so much more to Lebanon than just Hezbollah.”

She describes Lebanon as a complicated society divided among Christians, Sunnis, and Shi’ites, each with its own political history and relationship with Hezbollah. For decades, Hezbollah was able to establish itself in southern Lebanon not simply through its weapons, but by filling a vacuum left by the state. “If you’re a mom in southern Lebanon, this is the entity that was providing health care, infrastructure, schooling for your children,” Ortagus says. The Lebanese government, she argues, “completely abdicated its responsibility.”

An opportunity for Lebanon to reclaim political, economic, and military agency

BUT AFTER the war and Hezbollah’s weakening, she saw an opportunity for the Lebanese state to reclaim some of that territory – politically, economically, and, eventually, militarily. The problem is money.

Lebanon is emerging from years of economic crisis. Syria has its own enormous reconstruction needs. Gaza will require billions of dollars in assistance. For potential Gulf donors, southern Lebanon can therefore look like another enormous bill.

And there is a second problem: Why spend billions rebuilding southern Lebanon if Hezbollah is eventually going to return? “That’s the chicken-and-egg problem,” Ortagus says.

The Lebanese government needs resources to replace Hezbollah. But potential donors need confidence that Hezbollah will not simply reclaim what is rebuilt. Ultimately, Ortagus believes the most important audience for any future Israel-Lebanon peace agreement may be Lebanon’s Shi’ite population. “The billion-dollar question is: How do you make the Shi’ites understand that their life will be exponentially better” through normal relations with Israel, she asks, “as opposed to continuing more decades of being beholden to Iran?”

That alternative, she says, is not necessarily an American security guarantee or another international aid package. It is the possibility of normal relations with their closest neighbor. “Israel and Lebanon are neighbors,” she says. “If anyone’s going to have peace, that should be the two of them.”

The most revealing part of Ortagus’s story may not be a dramatic summit or a secret diplomatic meeting. It may be a small room in southern Lebanon, during the time she was Trump’s deputy special presidential envoy to the Middle East and his special envoy to Lebanon.

After Israel released five Lebanese prisoners in March 2025, Ortagus decided that the next step was to build something that diplomats often speak about but rarely manage to create: trust. She revived a military mechanism established following the November 2024 cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah after more than a year of fighting. The meetings were deliberately small, with Israeli and Lebanese officers sitting together, face-to-face, in the same room.

Ortagus pushed for the meetings to happen regularly. She describes herself jokingly as “the annoying teacher” forcing everyone to attend class. “I said to both sides, listen, I don’t care if I have to kill myself to do this, but I will get on a plane, and every two weeks I will be here, and we’re all going to sit here,” she recalls.

The point was simple: Get Israelis and Lebanese to see one another as “humans.” “Sharing the same coffee, looking across each other, realizing that your neighbor is not the boogeyman,” she says.

At one point, an Israeli officer told the Lebanese delegation that he lived only 15 minutes from Lebanon. His children and family were there. For Ortagus, the comment captured the strange reality of the Israeli-Lebanese relationship: two societies living incredibly close to one another while knowing remarkably little about each other. The meetings eventually helped lead to civilian negotiations. “We didn’t make peace,” she says. “But I think what we did is we put into motion… we took away the stigma that Israelis and Lebanese could sit in the same room and talk to each other directly.”

There is a generational problem on both sides of the border

ORTAGUS POINTS out that there is a generational problem on both sides of the border. A 20-year-old Israeli was born around the time of the 2006 Lebanon War. That young Israeli has grown up knowing Lebanon primarily through the threat of Hezbollah. The same is true in reverse. “If you’re 18 or 20 years old in Lebanon, what do you know about Israel except the propaganda that you see from Al Jazeera and other places?”

Ortagus says social media could become an unexpected diplomatic tool. Israeli and Lebanese citizens already interact abroad. They discover that they share interests, culture, food, and a sense of humor. But those encounters remain largely confined to elites. The next step, she argues, is to bring that interaction to ordinary people – particularly those living closest to the border. “Those communities are the most crucial and the most important to understand why peace will be beneficial for them,” she says. And, eventually, she hopes, Israelis drinking coffee in Beirut and Lebanese visiting Tel Aviv.

When asked about mistakes made by the Israeli government, she pauses before replying that Israel initially viewed Lebanon too tactically. “There was so much going on with Gaza,” she says. “Israel had a seven-front war to deal with.”

As a result, she says, the Israeli approach was often focused on individual Hezbollah threats. “Where is Hezbollah moving a weapon? Where are they? What’s buried under a house? Is there a tunnel there?”

Those questions were necessary for Israel’s security, she says, but they did not constitute a broader strategy for Lebanon. “I was almost like a cheerleader with pompoms,” she recalls, trying to convince Israeli officials that there was a historic opportunity.

She points to Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s speech right after his inauguration. “It was clear that he was very open toward making history between Israel and Lebanon. He was very open to a path towards peace. But with so many competing interests for the State of Israel, Lebanon was dealt with extremely tactically.”

Now, however, she is more encouraged. She points to the current talks led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa, and other officials. But she cautions against expecting instant results. The Abraham Accords themselves took many years. “Everybody wants to know where’s it going, where’s it going,” she says. 

None of this, however, can be separated from Iran. Ortagus describes the Islamic Republic as the “thousand-pound elephant in the room” when discussing Lebanon. Hezbollah’s money, weapons, and equipment come from Tehran, she says, and the IRGC has increasingly taken operational control.

For that reason, she says she believes Hezbollah’s eventual demilitarization will have to be connected to the wider US strategy toward Iran. But Ortagus also cautions against using sanctions as the whole game plan. “Sanctions in and of themselves never bring any regime down,” she says. “Sanctions are tactics, not a strategy.”

“Economic, military, and diplomatic steps have to work cohesively together,” she says. “President Trump has said that his overarching goal is to make sure that Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon on his watch.” For Ortagus, that is not simply an Israeli concern. A nuclear Iran, she argues, would fundamentally alter the entire Middle East.

Raising a Jewish child

FOR ALL the strategic calculations, Ortagus’s approach to the region also has a deeply personal dimension. Raised as an Evangelical Christian, she began her journey to Judaism while serving in Iraq and later in Saudi Arabia. While she once had to practice her faith quietly in those closed societies, since Oct. 7, 2023, Ortagus has made a conscious effort to visibly express her Jewish identity. She wears Jewish symbols – a necklace, a ring, a bracelet – wherever she goes, even in the official meetings she had in Beirut with the most senior officials in the Lebanese government. It is not, she stresses, a political statement. “It is about my daughter,” Ortagus says.

Her daughter recently started kindergarten, and Ortagus says Oct. 7 changed how she thinks about raising a Jewish child. She wants her daughter to grow up seeing her mother openly proud of her faith. “I wanted her to grow up knowing that we are proud to be Jews,” she says.

The message is one she carries into diplomatic meetings, including in countries where being openly Jewish can carry a very different meaning. “I will live as a proud Jew, and I will die as a proud Jew,” she says.

There is another personal motivation behind Ortagus’s continued involvement in regional diplomacy: the memory of Sen. Lindsey Graham. The longtime supporter of Israel and a major voice on American foreign policy was a close friend and mentor to Ortagus. “His belief in the American-Israeli alliance was a deep core conviction,” she says. “It wasn’t about electoral votes.”

Ortagus traveled with Graham to Saudi Arabia and Israel as part of efforts to advance quiet negotiations between Riyadh and Jerusalem. Later, she brought him to Lebanon. She recalls that he was among the first major American politicians to see the possibility of a deeper US-Lebanon relationship, including eventually a defense agreement.

Their final conversation took place only hours before his death. They spoke about Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Lebanon. He was, she says, optimistic. “He died, I would say, in his final moments… with hope,” Ortagus recalls. “He believed this was going to happen.”

Graham had also told her something that she has not forgotten. “You have to carry this forward.” And that is exactly what she says she intends to do.

Ortagus has not been back to Beirut since December. She misses it. Her description of Lebanon is strikingly warm for someone whose career has largely revolved around one of the country’s most difficult security problems. “It’s a beautiful place,” she says. “It’s a historic place.”

She talks about the food, the hospitality, the nightlife, and the resilience of the Lebanese people. “They’ve been dealt a terrible hand with all of these wars and economic catastrophes,” she says. “Yet everybody in Lebanon keeps a smile on their face.”

She hopes that one day Israelis and Lebanese will be able to visit one another openly, without fear, and without the shadow of Hezbollah or Iran hanging over every interaction. She does not want that moment to belong to the next generation. Her hope is that it happens now. “I don’t think this is a conversation we’re going to have in 20 years,” she says.■

This post was originally published on here. 

US President Donald Trump told Axios on Thursday that he faces a “big decision” on whether to significantly escalate military action against Iran.

“I have a big decision coming up,” he said. “Do I want to go in and annihilate them, or do I not? It’s a big decision. Anything could happen with me.”

Trump also discussed his upcoming meeting with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman on Tuesday, saying he wants to “find out where they are and how they are doing.”

“We have been very protective of them,” said Trump.

Trump: ‘Not one ship’ has reached Iran since start of US blockade

He further told Axios that “not one ship” has reached Iran since the start of the US naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, noting that the US is in direct contact with the regime, which he claimed still wants to make a deal.

Regarding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming visit to New York, Trump told Axios that he “may” meet with the Likud leader.

This post was originally published on here. 

A core delegation of Iranian regime officials will be allowed to enter the US to attend the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) summit in New York this month, a US State Department spokesperson said on Thursday.

According to the spokesperson, the Iranian officials will face travel restrictions and will be barred from purchasing luxury goods during their visit to the US.

This year’s delegation is expected to be smaller than last year’s delegation, which was headed by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and faced similar shopping and travel restrictions.

US bars Palestinian officials from attending UNGA summit

On Wednesday, the US announced that it would extend sanctions that bar Palestinian Authority officials and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) members, including PA President Mahmoud Abbas, from obtaining visas necessary to attend the UNGA’s annual summit.

The State Department stated that the visa ban is intended to serve as a consequence for the PA and PLO’s “ongoing activities that undermine the prospects for peace” and glorification of terrorism.

Abbas was also denied a visa ahead of last year’s meeting, where he addressed the UN through video rather than making an in-person speech.

The UNGA voted on Thursday to allow Abbas to address the annual gathering of world leaders next week via video once again.

The resolution received 152 votes in favor and three votes against, while four countries abstained. It also allows Abbas and any other high-level Palestinian officials to take part in UN meetings or conferences via video over the next year if they are prevented from traveling to the US.

The US said last year that Abbas and about 80 other Palestinians would be affected by its decision to deny and revoke visas from members of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. Washington announced on Wednesday that it had extended the visa bans.

“If the PA wants to be treated as a partner, it must stop subsidizing terror and stop using diplomatic theater as a substitute for serious governance,” Deputy US Ambassador to the United Nations Tammy Bruce told the assembly before the vote.

Palestinian leaders rejected and condemned the move by the United States, Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour told the General Assembly.

Reuters and Idan Kweller contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

At least two General Atomics MQ-1 US military drones were shot down by Iranian fire in recent days, two anonymous US officials familiar with the matter told CBS News on Thursday.

The officials noted that it is not yet clear where the drones were shot down, nor is it confirmed which MQ-1 variants were involved.

The report emphasized that the variant matters because it would determine US monetary losses: the older Predator variant is worth about $4 million, while the newer Gray Eagle is worth tens of millions of dollars each.

Citing a report from the Congressional Budget Office, CBS reported that the US military has lost about $720 million since the start of Operation Epic Fury through the downing of at least 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones, plus an additional $150 million from the loss of an MQ-4C Triton.

CBS reached out to US Central Command (CENTCOM), which declined to comment.

Iran claims air defenses shot down MQ-1 drone over Strait of Hormuz

The report follows claims by regime state broadcaster Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) on Tuesday that Iran shot down an MQ-1 drone over the Strait of Hormuz.

Earlier on Tuesday, Qatari-owned Al Jazeera reported that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) had downed a similar drone over the international waterway.

Miriam Sela-Eitam contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Without introspection and without self-critique, we, as individuals, as a society, and as a nation, cannot evaluate whether policies and priorities meet their goals, and we cannot know whether they are successful or not.

There is no better time of year than now for these personal, communal, and national acts of introspection and evaluation.

Israel as a nation and Jews worldwide are now confronting a converging series of threats and challenges. Iran, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, Gaza, international sanctions, diplomatic isolation, the alarmingly aggressive rise of Jew hatred, physical attacks, and political attacks are fast becoming our new norm. 

The security of Jews – not the future of Judaism, and certainly not the future of the Jewish state – but certainly the security of Jews and Jewish communities is at risk.

The greater danger we face is not external. It is not simply that these challenges exist. The greater danger is that we have begun to meet these challenges with the assumptions that we have not failed in the battle to confront these dangers and emerge triumphant – or at least somewhat unscathed.

These issues are neither theoretical nor are they rhetorical; the threats are real. Israel and Jewish leadership are responding, but are they responding properly? Perhaps they are. Though to make that determination, proper evaluations are required.

Asking for those evaluations, it must be noted, is not a sign of disloyalty. Demands by those in leadership positions that the general populace not question policy is a sign of weakness, not of strength.

This is the time – the exact time, the proper time – to begin the process of asking and answering questions.

Israel today views military and diplomatic issues as separate. They are not separate; they are inextricably bound. Not just because what the IDF does impacts diplomatic relations, but because the security of Israel is deeply intertwined with diplomatic connections.

Israel not Iran’s only target

Vis-à-vis Iran, Israel must not think of the Jewish state as the main or only target of the Persian Empire. Iran is not just an Israel problem. It is a part of the problem. It is a link in the chain also occupied by the United States, large swaths of the Arab world, and parts of Europe.

To think that Israel can absorb diplomatic isolation is delusional. Isolation is not a problem to be relegated to hasbara (public diplomacy) or public relations. It is an act, or multiple acts, of diplomatic hostility. Israel needs to embrace the criticism, talk through the issues, and do it behind closed doors.

And finally, Diaspora Jews are no longer silent observers. They are targets, and they need to be protected. Israel needs to understand that unity does not mean silence; that one can, at the same time, disagree with a policy and not hate Israel, and that disagreeing with Jerusalem is not the equivalent of, or synonymous with, being an antisemite.

As for the public, it must work hard to understand that their leaders are not making decisions because of stupidity or cowardice. Trauma, genuine danger, communal fear, and political survival are essential factors in the decision-making process. That is why political and personal blindness is so dangerous, and why disagreements are turned into tests of identity and loyalty.

Israel can survive hard choices and even absorb mistakes. But to do so it must, like every other nation, be able to pivot, consider new options, and be open to admitting mistakes. 

Israel may be winning battles, crippling Hamas and Hezbollah, and degrading Iran, but at what price? Jerusalem is losing allies, and internal cohesion has been lost. The all-out cost of battling for survival has overtaken the mission of defining a sustainable future.

That 14 countries, including the United Kingdom, France, and Canada, have moved beyond editorializing and simple condemnation of Israel toward enacting sanctions against it would have been unimaginable once. These countries’ responses have shifted from symbolic verbiage to real-time actions.

Over 20 nations have moved to condemn settlement projects in E1. Why? Israel certainly – and legally – has the right to build where it wants and to defend itself however it wants. The question is whether this action, now, is strategic. Diplomatic isolation is unwise. It makes Israel vulnerable and severely degrades security.

In that same vein, Israel has the right to disagree with the world – as does every sovereign nation. The question is whether Israeli leadership is choosing their battles or are they piling on and snubbing their noses at allies.

Israel needs to distinguish between threats, interests, and options. And Israel needs to do it now. 

Every critic is not an enemy. Every compromise is not a surrender or a failure. Every proposal is not a trap, and every disagreement is not a betrayal. And most importantly, every person who thinks differently is not naïve and Pollyanna-ish. Political choices are not non-negotiable truths; they are points to be discussed.

This is the perfect time to discuss and to debate. It is the perfect time for introspection: the High Holy Days, the 25th anniversary of 9-11, the third anniversary of October 7, and elections converge as if one.

Israel has real enemies and will continue to have real enemies. Israel should not battle windmills.

The writer is a columnist and a social and political commentator. Watch his TV show Thinking Out Loud on JBS.

This post was originally published on here. 

As Israel enters election season, digital deception threatens not only the truth, but the ability of citizens to make a free and informed democratic choice.

We are already seeing old, disproved claims brought back to life. The recent revival of a conspiracy theory targeting Yair Golan is one example. No new evidence emerged, yet the claim moved through social media, commentators, and media outlets until it again reached a wide audience.

In the digital age, a lie does not have to stand up to scrutiny. It only has to be repeated often enough.

Political lies are nothing new. What is new is the technology. A fake photograph, a recording of words never spoken, or a convincing video of an event that never happened can now be created in minutes. Fake accounts can make it look as if thousands of people share the same view.

Why is this a threat to democracy rather than simply another ugly part of politics?

Because democracy depends on citizens making political choices based on information they believe to be true. People can look at the same facts, reach completely different conclusions, and vote accordingly. But when voters are deliberately fed fabricated “facts” about a candidate, an opponent, or an event, their choice may be based on a lie.

When fake accounts create the illusion that thousands of others support a position, even the public mood influencing that choice can be manufactured.

There is also another victim: the individual.

A person can wake up one morning to find a fabricated video, a false accusation, or a forged document spreading to hundreds of thousands of people. His reputation, career, or public standing can be damaged within hours, while the legal system may take years to provide a remedy.

These are two sides of the same problem. We need to protect citizens both as voters, from deliberate manipulation of their democratic choices, and as individuals, from lies and digital attacks against which they currently have little immediate protection.

Israel is particularly vulnerable. We are entering an election period after years of war and internal crisis. Society is deeply divided, trust in institutions has weakened, and the lines between politics, media, and social networks are increasingly blurred.

The threat comes from abroad and from within. Hostile states can use bots, fake identities, and AI-generated content to deepen divisions and weaken trust. They do not need Israelis to believe them. Sometimes it is enough to make Israelis trust one another less.

The internal threat is more complicated. Political actors can use similar methods to shape the reality presented to their supporters. The danger grows when media outlets, influencers, and online networks become closely identified with one political camp while still enjoying the authority of journalism.

A claim may start with a politician or social media account, be repeated by a sympathetic media outlet, and then return to social media as a “media report” supposedly confirming the original claim. There is nothing wrong with a newspaper or television channel having a political point of view. 

The problem begins when political loyalty becomes more important than checking facts, and claims known to be false continue to be promoted because they serve a political purpose.

Fighting fabricated facts

Other democracies have started to respond. Sweden created an agency for psychological defense to deal with hostile influence without policing legitimate political debate. The European Union has placed more responsibility on digital platforms and introduced transparency rules covering political advertising and manipulated content.

Israel needs its own answer, without giving the government the power to decide what is true.

An independent professional body should be able to identify bot networks, fake identities, deepfakes, coordinated campaigns, foreign interference, and hidden financing. It should deal with methods, not opinions.

But the most important step, in my view, is a specialized court for information and digital offenses.

The reason is simple: time. A lie can cause enormous damage within hours. A court case can take years. Someone targeted by a fake video, forged document, or clearly false factual claim may eventually win a defamation case, but by then the damage may be irreversible. And during an election campaign, the lie may already have influenced voters before the truth catches up.

We already use specialized courts and tribunals in areas such as labor and traffic law because some issues require particular expertise and faster procedures. The digital world now creates a similar need.

An independent court should be able to hear clear cases within 24 to 72 hours and, where appropriate, order a prominent correction or right of reply, stop further distribution or, in serious cases, order content removed.

But it must never become a court of truth. “The government is destroying the country” or “the courts are politically motivated” are political opinions. Judges should not decide whether they are true. A fake AI video showing someone saying words he never said, a forged document, impersonation, or a false claim of a criminal conviction are different.

The same principle should apply to the media. Government must never decide who a “real” journalist is, but press freedom does not remove responsibility. If a news organization publishes a factual claim shown to be false, its correction should receive similar prominence.

The safeguards must be strict. Political opinion is not disinformation. Criticism is not an offense. Satire is not fake news. An honest mistake is not a crime. A professional authority may investigate and warn, but only an independent judge should have the power to force action.

For Israel, there is also a national security dimension. False information can deepen divisions, weaken trust in state institutions, and help enemy influence campaigns. But national security must never become an excuse to silence legitimate criticism.

Every democracy will have to face this problem. Israel has a particular reason to face it now. 

The goal is not to decide for citizens what is true or what they should believe. It is to protect their ability to make democratic choices without being deliberately manipulated by fabricated facts – and to give individuals a real chance to defend themselves when a lie is aimed directly at them.

When lies can spread across a country in hours, democracy – and the people who live in it – cannot afford to wait years for the truth to catch up.

The writer is a retired IDF colonel who served in the Prime Minister’s Office and currently advises on national security issues.

This post was originally published on here. 

Typically, the Israel Navy signs new recruits to join the naval command course from the start of their IDF service.

They then spend years in a mix of in-classroom, in-university, and out-at-sea operational training, in one of the military’s longest and most complex courses, until they are given command roles on the navy’s ships.

Nearly everyone except “O”, who just recently graduated the naval officer cadets course, but only after he had spent a nearly unprecedented 18 months as a regular non-officer mandatory service navy combat fighter before being selected to join the course.

One of O’s first supporters in making this highly unusual midstream career shift was Lt.-Cmdr. “Y.O.”, one of O’s two commanders, with around eight to nine years in the Navy under his belt, also serving as the deputy commander of a naval ship.

Y.O. told The Jerusalem Post that “for a navy combat fighter to go to attend the naval officer cadets course after already completing 18 months of mandatory service is unusual.”

O described as exceptional, high-level combat fighter

“From the first day I saw him, I knew he was exceptional. You do not see a navy combat fighter of that high level every day,” continued Y.O.

Further, Y.O. stated, “The truth about officers is that it does not necessarily matter how good the technology is, you need good people. So I pushed him. I knew he could be a great officer. He has already given four years and will give many more, including beyond three more years.”

What was so unique about O?

According to his commanders, part of it was his own character, but part of it was timing and his readiness to step up at the right moment.

Y.O. noted that his entire naval career there had never been anything close to the operational stresses and complexities following October 7.

Yet, O early on in his service as a naval combat fighter participated in a “once in a generation” intense combat period of complexity and uncertainty.

Naval forces called up on Oct. 7 without knowing their mission

All of the interviewees talked about being called up suddenly on October 7 in the same fog of war that enveloped most of the country, quickly going out to sea, but not really knowing what their mission would be or what they would be up against.

Y.O. noted that an additional challenge in the navy is that the soldiers do not have access to their phones for days or sometimes weeks, and so will be much more disconnected than even the air force, let alone the ground forces.

Many naval soldiers had suspicions that friends and people they knew had already been killed during Hamas’s invasion, but they had to hold down the feelings of wanting to find out until they returned to shore, so they could focus on their mission.

This is where O excelled the most said Y.O., with a maturity far beyond his age.

According to Y.O., O was one of the few on the ship who truly understood the significance of their mission and still volunteered for specific tasks, while many others were trying to navigate their way through the emotional turmoil they were feeling internally.

“He always understood what was required, whereas keeping the soldiers focused is one of my hardest roles as deputy commander of the ship, and having someone like him was a big advantage for this” for the whole ship.

Next, Y.O. said all of this operational experience in the hardest circumstances gave O a major edge over even some of the most talented course cadets, who simply lacked that life experience.

In fact, Y.O. went so far as to say that O will become a far better commander than he is at a much younger age, because in that short first 18 months, he had more operational experience than Y.O. had for most of his much longer career until October 7.

O praised for his calming influence

Likewise, Lt. Cmdr. “Y.A.”, with more than 15 years of naval service under his belt and the chief of the ship where Y.O. and O served, complimented O on his broader influence to keep others around him calm and focused on the mission.

Y.A. added specifically about O that, “The level of how articulate he is is very unusual for someone who is only 20-years-old.”

Moreover, Y.A. said O could always explain to others “why a specific task needed to be done, and now, and somehow was always extremely alert no matter how little sleep” he was functioning on.

O described the officer cadets course, which he started in February 2024, as highly challenging both in the classroom and physically. He said that he had to learn about a wide array of systems which the navy now employs on its ships.

He said that he felt the proudest that, “We helped the IDF forces in Gaza a lot. I knew friends who were fighting in Gaza at that time [in 2023], and they told me we could and were concretely helping them. We received calls from battalion and brigade commanders saying: please help us! Here, we go to see our impact and influence.”

Y.O. added that later in the war O was involved not only on attack, as he had been versus Hamas in Gaza, but also in defending Israel’s skies during Operation Roaring Lion as well as defending Israel’s strategic assets, often a code word for the natural gas fields.

O said that his commanders “saw my potential when I did not see it yet.”

He added that he was “very happy with my choice to go to the officer cadets course. I could have stayed in mandatory service and been released with most of my friends, but I believe in the navy and our ships. There are incredible people here and we have a very significant hand in the war.”

This post was originally published on here. 

In addition to Israel’s established political parties, several newly formed smaller parties are also vying for citizens’ votes in the elections for the 26th Knesset, which will be held on October 27.

These parties, including Brig.-Gen. (res.) Ofer Winter’s People of Israel; Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelekha’s The Reservists-Economic Party; Moti Leitner’s Haredi Public Party; and Sharren Haskel’s Israel First are also among the parties whose fate could be determined by a matter of a few thousand votes.

Winter’s People of Israel party is seeking to pull right-wing voters away from established parties while backing Benjamin Netanyahu for prime minister. Israel First is also a right-wing party, but calls for building a broad Zionist government that does not depend on either the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) or Arab parties, regardless of who is prime minister.

The Haredi Public Party is attempting something different: to challenge the established haredi parties – Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ) – from within the ultra-Orthodox community, particularly over military service and education.

And following a split in a previous alliance that occurred only days before the deadline for submitting party lists, Hendel’s The Reservists has merged with Zelekha’s Economic Party.

All four are therefore entering an election in which crossing the electoral threshold could mean entering the Knesset – and falling short could mean receiving no representation at all and result in votes cast for them going to waste.

People of Israel: Ofer Winter’s new right-wing force

Founded in August 2026, Winter’s People of Israel has positioned itself firmly on the Right.

Winter has said that his party is part of the right-wing camp and that he will recommend only Benjamin Netanyahu for prime minister.

The party’s list includes Arab-Israeli activist Yoseph Haddad in second place, alongside figures from the military, agriculture and other sectors. It calls for bringing in new faces to the Knesset who were not part of the political or security failures surrounding October 7.

Winter ultimately submitted the party’s list independently rather than merging with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism Party, which called for an alliance.

That decision has made the party particularly relevant to the right-wing electoral map. Likud officials had previously expressed concern that Winter could draw votes from established right-wing parties and potentially leave votes below the electoral threshold.

Winter has also made haredi enlistment a central issue. He has said his party would not join a government unless a conscription law is passed before the government is sworn in. He has rejected calls for a blanket exemption for yeshiva students.

On Gaza, Winter has called for voluntary emigration rather than continued containment, saying that “there will be a decision here, not containment.”

The party’s platform is therefore built around a combination of right-wing security policy, military service and a challenge to the current political establishment, while remaining explicitly within Netanyahu’s political camp.

Haredi Public Party: A challenge from inside the ultra-Orthodox community

While Winter is trying to build a new force on the right, Leitner’s Haredi Public Party is trying to build a new force within the haredi community itself.

The party was launched in July with the stated goal of addressing what it describes as a disconnect between the haredi public and its existing political leadership. It had also sought representation on the Knesset lists of Shas and United Torah Judaism.

Leitner, the deputy mayor of Beit Shemesh, has differentiated his party most clearly from Shas and UTJ over the matter of military service.

While he said some haredi men who study Torah full-time should continue doing so, Leitner argued that the majority of haredi men should serve in the military or national service.

“It’s a Jewish, moral, conscientious, national obligation,” he told The Jerusalem Post in an interview after establishing the party.

The party also supports enforcing that core-curriculum studies, such as Math and English, be taught in haredi schools. Leitner has additionally spoken about improving support for immigrants entering the haredi community.

In September, the party announced that Dr. Nechumi Yaffe would join its Knesset list, making her the first woman to run for the Knesset with a haredi party.

Unlike Winter, Haskel or Hendel, however, Leitner’s party is not primarily trying to redraw the broader Israeli political map. Its challenge is more specific: whether haredi voters support an alternative to the established ultra-Orthodox parties.

Israel First: Sharren Haskel’s right-wing alternative

Sharren Haskel launched Israel First in July after resigning as deputy foreign minister over contentious legislation passed by Netanyahu’s coaltion concerning haredi draft evasion.

Like Winter, Haskel describes her party as right-wing and supports a hard security policy. But she has deliberately avoided tying the party’s future solely to Netanyahu.

Haskel has proposed a broad Zionist government that could include parties currently sitting on opposite sides of the political divide, while excluding dependence on haredi or Arab parties.

She has said that she is not automatically opposed to sitting with far-right figures such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir or Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, saying she agrees with some of their policies and disagrees with others. 

“I want to build a bloc of six mandates that will not allow Netanyahu to build a bloc with the ultra-Orthodox and will not allow [Yashar party leader Gadi] Eisenkot to build a bloc with the Arabs,” she told the Post in an interview after establishing the party.

“I’m not in the pocket of either of them, and I’m going to force both of them at the end of the day to sit together. And yes, it is most likely that Netanyahu will get most of the mandates.”

Haskel has called for “real solutions that will recruit the ultra-Orthodox,” and stated that she refuses any legislation that could enable haredi draft evasion.

She has also called for reducing bureaucracy and regulations and directing government spending toward Israelis who work, serve and pay taxes.

Israel First therefore occupies a position seen in many of the small parties: it describes itself as right-wing and is against some of the legislation passed during the government’s term, but it still calls for a broad Zionist government and does not rule Netanyahu out.

In August, Jonathan Pollard, a former US Navy intelligence analyst who was jailed for spying for Israel, joined the party. Pollard has advocated positions including annexing Gaza and resettling it with Israelis.

The Reservists-Economic Party: Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelekha’s merger after split from Zionist Home

Hendel’s party in this group has undergone the most recent change.

Hendel and ex-minister Chili Tropper initially launched Zionist Home-The Reservists together in July, presenting themselves as a new Zionist political force that could potentially sit between the major blocs.

But on September 6, the two announced that they would pursue separate political paths. Tropper subsequently joined Eisenkot’s Yashar party, while Hendel announced a joint run with economist Yaron Zelekha.

The new Hendel-Zelekha slate combines Hendel’s emphasis on Zionism, security and military service with Zelekha’s economic background.

The two have agreed on two major principles: they will join only a Zionist government, and they will demand that a universal conscription law be passed before a government is formed.

That makes the party’s position on the haredi draft one of its clearest policy distinctions.

It also means that voters considering this party are no longer voting for the same political framework that Tropper and Hendel presented in July.

Where the four parties stand on the major issues

Regarding Gaza, Winter has called for voluntary emigration from Gaza and an end to what he describes as containment. Haskel has said Hamas must be destroyed and disarmed before Israel moves to a second stage, while explicitly rejecting Jonathan Pollard’s proposal for annexing and resettling Gaza as party policy. No detailed Gaza policy has been reported from the Haredi Public Party or Hendel-Zelekha slate – though Hendel holds a strong right-wing security stance.

However, the clearest common thread among the parties is the issue of the haredi draft.

The four parties all distinguish themselves from parties that support a blanket exemption for haredim, although they approach the issue from different political directions.

Winter has made haredi enlistment a central demand and said his party will not join a government without a conscription law, as have Hendel and Zelekha. Leitner supports military or national service for the majority of haredi men, and Haskel supports universal haredi enlistment and opposes exemption legislation.

What is a vote for one of these parties likely to produce?

The answer depends first on whether the party crosses the electoral threshold.

That question has become particularly relevant as the polling picture has shifted from survey to survey.

In a September 7-8 Maariv poll, People of Israel fell to 2.8% and did not cross the threshold, while Hendel-Zelekha crossed with four seats.

Just days later, a Maariv poll showed the reverse: People of Israel crossed with four seats, while Hendel-Zelekha fell to 3%, with the Haredi Public Party and Israel First failing to cross either time.

Additionally, a five-poll roundup published September 10 found that Winter’s party crossed the threshold in all five surveys, while Hendel-Zelekha crossed in only one.

The four parties also offer very different coalition possibilities.

With at least two of the parties potentially securing four seats each, these new factions may also find themselves in the role of kingmaker in the upcoming election.

A vote for People of Israel is a vote for a party whose leader has committed to recommending Netanyahu, while conditioning participation in a government on a conscription law.

A vote for the Haredi Public Party is a vote for an attempt to create a new haredi political voice that supports military or national service for most haredi men and challenges the established Shas-UTJ model.

A vote for Israel First is a vote for a right-wing party whose leader says she wants to build a broad Zionist government that does not depend on either haredi or Arab parties.

And a vote for Hendel-Zelekha is a vote for a new political framework formed after the breakup of the Tropper-Hendel alliance, with universal conscription and participation in a Zionist government as stated conditions.

For all four, however, the first question is the same: will enough voters put them above the electoral threshold for those positions to translate into Knesset seats?

This post was originally published on here. 

Israel Bar Association head Amit Becher sent a warning letter to the Religious Zionist Party and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Thursday, demanding the immediate removal of an AI-generated campaign video and warning that the association would otherwise petition the Central Elections Committee.

The Bar Association’s National Council approved Becher’s proposal to send the letter and also decided to seek the issuance of an official condemnation and to approach the Israel Police with a demand for an investigation.

The warning letter demanded that the party immediately remove the campaign video uploaded on Tuesday.

The video depicts Supreme Court President Isaac Amit, Supreme Court Justice Daphne Barak-Erez, and Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara being forcibly and violently dragged from a demonstration on the Ayalon Highway by civilians dressed in black and wearing reflective vests.

Israel Bar Association demands RZP deletes AI-generated campaign video 

“The message in the video is a violent, inciting message that presents the judges and the attorney-general as enemies of the public… The violence directed at the senior heads of the law-enforcement system is reminiscent of dark regimes that, as part of their rise to power, remove representatives of the law from their path,” Becher wrote in his letter.

“This is not the way of Zionism, Judaism, or the State of Israel. The video is not legitimate criticism, but rather an attempt to intimidate, undermine public confidence in the rule of law, and interfere with the proper conduct of the elections in violation of the law,” the letter stated.

Becher demanded that the party leadership immediately remove the video from all platforms and social media networks, halt any paid promotion or distribution of it, and provide a written commitment that it would not be published again.

If the demands are not met, Becher said the Israel Bar Association would immediately approach the chairman of the Central Elections Committee and request injunctions and emergency orders to stop what it described as improper, election-inciting propaganda.

Yashar tells RZP AI-generated video harms Baharav-Miara’s standing 

At the same time, the Yashar party also sent a warning letter, through attorney Uri Haberman, to Smotrich and the Religious Zionist Party, demanding the video’s immediate removal.

The letter claimed that the video depicts Amit, Barak-Erez, and Baharav-Miara as though they had taken part in a political demonstration against Smotrich, rioted, and were forcibly dragged away by police officers.

According to Yashar, the video amounts to the offense of contempt of court under Section 255 of the Penal Code, which prohibits publishing statements about a judge in connection with the judge’s office with the aim of harming the judge’s standing, casting suspicion on the judge or bringing the administration of justice into contempt.

The party further claimed that the offense carries a sentence of up to three years in prison and that the video makes prohibited use of the likenesses and official status of senior judicial officials for election propaganda.

“This is not criticism of the judicial system, but the creation of a false reality that attributes political and criminal conduct that never occurred to senior officials in state institutions. Smotrich has turned their likenesses and the state institutions they represent into raw material for his election campaign,” the party stated.

“Fabricating a video in which judges and the attorney-general are presented as lawbreakers is dangerous incitement and a license for bloodshed. Smotrich is once again proving that, as far as he is concerned, there is no red line he will not cross and no state institution he will not trample for one more vote at the ballot box.”

Yashar has demanded that the video be removed from all accounts and advertising channels and that its distribution cease by 3 p.m.

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The IDF Manpower Directorate chief, Maj.-Gen. Dado Bar Kalifa released Lt.-Col. “A” from military service, the military confirmed on Thursday.

A served as the intelligence officer for the Gaza Division during the October 7 massacre.

This is a developing story.

This post was originally published on here. 

Nine people were rescued by firefighters after a fire broke out in a building on Jerusalem’s Meir Avner Street on Thursday, the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority said.

According to the authority, the fire, which began in the building’s shelter, was sparked by an electric scooter battery.

Firefighters worked to extinguish the fire, search for more trapped residents, and ventilate the five-story building.

Battalion commander: Firefighters operating under ‘complex conditions’

“Firefighters are operating under complex conditions, amidst heavy smoke and inside a residential building, while striving to save lives quickly,” said Battalion Commander Adi Mor. “Thanks to the professional and determined actions of the crews, nine trapped individuals were rescued from the building without injury.”

Mor added that firefighting teams “remain on-site to complete the searches and clear the smoke.”

The fire follows the September evacuation of Jerusalem’s Yitzhak Navon Railway Station after smoke reports prompted an emergency response.

The railway station was searched by firefighters, who determined that there was no danger, according to the Jerusalem District of Israel Fire and Rescue Services.

Shit Perets contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

The High Court of Justice on Thursday barred party representatives at polling stations from telling their parties which identifiable voters have cast ballots, ending a longstanding election-day practice six weeks before Israelis vote on October 27.

The unanimous ruling overturns a September 6 decision by the Central Elections Committee that would have allowed the reports to continue this election under restrictions. Parties can still contact voters and urge them to vote. What they cannot do, without express legal authorization, is use information obtained by their representatives while working at polling stations to identify who has voted.

That information has been valuable to campaigns, as party representatives can see when a voter is marked off the polling-station list. Campaigns have used reports from stations, including those sent through applications such as Elector, to compare turnout with their own databases and contact likely supporters who have yet to vote. The reports show whether a person voted, never how they voted.

Justice Yael Willner, joined by Justices Alex Stein and Khaled Kabub, ruled that the representatives receive access to voter information to help administer and supervise the election. Passing it to a party for campaign purposes has no authorization in election law and violates a provision of the Privacy Protection Law barring the use or disclosure of personal information for a purpose other than the one for which it was supplied, the court found.

The ruling concerns the transfer of identified turnout information from polling stations, whatever method is used, and is not a blanket prohibition on Elector or other campaign software. Kabub noted that parties remain free to approach voters generally and encourage them to cast a ballot.

Dispute over reporting practices began in August

The dispute began after attorney Shahar Ben-Meir challenged the reporting practice. Central Elections Committee chairman and Supreme Court Deputy President Noam Sohlberg prohibited it on August 4, finding that years of use did not supply the legal authority needed to disclose voters’ information.

Likud appealed, arguing in part that Sohlberg could not decide the matter alone. At a September 2 hearing, the High Court sent the question to the full committee without ruling on whether the reporting itself was lawful. On September 6, the committee reversed Sohlberg’s prohibition and permitted reporting from ordinary polling stations for the upcoming election.

The committee sought to limit the practice: parties could use the information only to encourage turnout, could not record the precise time an individual voted or pass the information to others, and had to destroy the material after the election. Its decision excluded special polling stations, including those in hospitals and women’s shelters. Thursday’s ruling dictates that those safeguards could not give the committee authority to permit a practice that violated the law.

Likud argued that parties had relied on turnout reporting for years, including before dedicated apps existed, and had organized their election-day operations around it. It maintained that the information was limited, that encouraging people to vote was a legitimate campaign activity, and that seeing someone arrive at a polling place did not reveal a private fact. It also sought, at minimum, to keep the practice for this election while the issue was considered for legislation.

Likud attorney Ilan Bombach told the court at an earlier hearing that the party had spent years building a voter database and investing in software to use it. Removing the reporting system so close to an election would cause the party substantial harm, he argued.

The justices rejected the argument that longstanding use amounted to permission. Earlier election committee chairmen had raised doubts about the practice, Kabub wrote, but had never ruled it lawful. Willner also rejected the proposed one-election exception: the Central Elections Committee could not temporarily authorize conduct for which it lacked legal authority.

High court decision challenged with petitions

After the committee’s September vote, Ben-Meir, the Reservists party and its chairman Yoaz Hendel, Choosing Israel, and the Movement for Quality Government petitioned the High Court to overturn it. The attorney-general and the Privacy Protection Authority also opposed allowing the reports. The court accepted the four challenges and dismissed Likud’s original petition, whose procedural question had been overtaken by the full committee’s decision.

Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister Yariv Levin responded by accusing the judges of trying to influence the election to prevent his government from completing its judicial overhaul. “As far as they are concerned, any means are legitimate to tilt the election results,” he said. He also accused them of “changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game” and trying to suppress turnout. 

Levin said the election would determine who appoints what he described as 10 Supreme Court justices in the next government. “The right will turn out in droves. We will vote and win,” he said.

The Movement for Quality Government welcomed Thursday’s judgment. “Information obtained through a role at a polling station cannot become a tool for tracking citizens and putting pressure on them,” it said, calling the ruling a protection for voter privacy and the freedom to choose.

The decision settles the rules for identified reports from polling stations ahead of the October election. Any future permission for that practice would require clear legislation, the court said.

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The University of Toronto (UofT) is facing public scrutiny on social media following the establishment of a new Jackman Humanities Institute working group titled “Bridging Theories of Anti-Zionism,” criticism that comes in the direct wake of a major antisemitism conference held at the university on Tuesday.

Launched for the 2026–27 academic year, the faculty- and student-led working group outlines its core focus by asking, “What does it mean to critique Zionism as a political ideology, and how have the last three years of genocide in Palestine changed the scholarly engagement with this question?” Designed to map varied intellectual streams of anti-Zionist thought and construct a critical genealogy, the initiative draws on recent academic frameworks, referencing joint programs such as the University of Toronto/Princeton University conference on the Anti-Zionist Idea alongside the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism.

The backlash of social media posts condemning the university arrived directly following a full-day conference held by the university on Tuesday, titled “A Canary’s Song: Antisemitism in Our ‘Free and Democratic Society.'” Anti-Zionism emerged as a major focal point during the event. Prominent historian and diplomat Deborah Lipstadt said that “anti-Zionism frequently functions as a proxy for traditional antisemitism by denying Jewish self-determination and applying double standards to the Jewish state.” Expanding on the broader societal danger of the ideology, Casey Babb, a security expert and academic researcher, described anti-Zionism as an existential risk and an “assault on reality” that “inverts historical victimhood to isolate Jewish communities.” 

Less than 24 hours after I spoke at @UofT about the civilizational dangers of antizionism, I’ve come to learn that the university has created a new working group to defend and actually legitimize this hate movement. Note the genocide reference on the page. Christ, I’m disgusted. pic.twitter.com/53cuXUDfiO

— Casey Babb (@DrCaseyBabb) September 16, 2026

In a statement to The Jerusalem Post, Babb, who posted critically about the working group on X, said, “Once again, university administrators are not only failing their Jewish students and the Jewish philanthropists who have funded their institutions; they’re failing all students by exposing them to ideological drivel that inverts the truth, inverts language, and inverts objective reality. How is that beneficial to any student?” 

“Antizionism is as much a hate movement as any other, and it should be treated as such, not legitimized through pseudointellectual working groups like this one. UofT President Melanie Woodin stood in front of several hundred Jews, including me, two days ago, and told us that she supports us, and now this? She should be ashamed of herself for what’s happening under her leadership,” Babb told the Post.

Toronto president highlights limits of ant- Zionist harassment claims

UofT President Melanie Woodin addressed Tuesday’s conference where she referenced a newly launched online resource for the university community titled “Addressing Antisemitism at the University of Toronto,” noting that while members of the community remain free to criticize the policy decisions and governments of any country, including Israel, the document includes a key distinction, “actions directed at individual members of our community because they are Jewish or Israeli or identify as Zionist can be harassment discrimination and/ or violate law or policy such actions directed at individuals do not cease to be problematic simply because the word Jewish or Israeli is replaced by the word Zionist.”

The Network of Engaged Canadian Academics (NECA) criticized the working group’s approval process in a statement to the Post, stating, “This Jackman Humanities Institute’s working group, ‘Bridging Theories of Anti-Zionism,’ was peer-reviewed within the JHI. That this group and its assertions were examined by a committee and determined to meet scholarly standards is immediately questionable.”

NECA pointed specifically to the group’s opening premise, noting that “the first sentence describes a ‘genocide’ in Palestine.” The network argued that “despite the widespread use of the term on social media and in popular culture, scholars would know that no authorized court of law has examined evidence and determined that the war in Gaza has met the legal standard for genocide,” adding that “abundant evidence in fact suggests otherwise.”

Because of this framing, NECA asserted that “the assertion made in the context of an academic unit subverts a scholarly process because it begins with an egregious false statement.” Instead of scholarly rigor, NECA stated that the initiative platforms “an ideological position that promotes discrimination against an identifiable group, i.e., Jews.”

NECA raises concerns over treatment of Zionist identity on campus

Highlighting the institution’s own guidelines, NECA noted that “The University should examine its own policy on addressing antisemitism,” citing the specific line regarding actions directed at individuals identified as Zionist. NECA added, “It behooves the University of Toronto, now that they are aware of this working group, to examine whether it has violated the antisemitism policy. One wonders whether JHI would platform a working group examining the scourge of antizionism and how it targets Jews for hate, especially given how difficult it was to hold the ‘Canary’s Song’ conference at U of T, which ultimately had to be held as a non-University event in a private U of T conference center.”

I would be remiss in my duties as a University of Toronto Governor if I stayed silent on this latest working group.

After the 2026 Canadian Heritage federal report revealed that 95.7% of Jewish post-secondary students in Canada experienced or witnessed antisemitism on campus… pic.twitter.com/zOG3oPWrkc

— David Jacobs (@DrJacobsRad) September 17, 2026

University governor raises concerns over campus antisemitism

Dr. David Jacobs reacted to the page on X/Twitter, saying, “I would be remiss in my duties as a University of Toronto Governor if I stayed silent on this latest working group. After the 2026 Canadian Heritage federal report revealed that 95.7% of Jewish post-secondary students in Canada experienced or witnessed antisemitism on campus over the prior year, I would expect the U of T not to indulge in this type of activity. This will be discussed in excruciating detail at the next Governing Council meeting.”

The Post received a statement from UofT after publication time.

A spokesperson for UofT said, “The existence of a research group examining theories of anti-Zionism does not imply institutional endorsement of the views expressed by its individual participants. The university takes persistent action to address discrimination and harassment against Jewish and Israeli members of our community, including conduct directed at individuals because they identify as Zionist.”

Professor Randy Boyagoda, who became Director of the Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI) on July 1, 2026, added: “The Jackman Humanities Institute affirms the academic freedom of the individual faculty members involved with all of its working groups and does not endorse particular perspectives associated with any of them. The JHI receives proposals from faculty members seeking to convene working groups on various subjects. These proposals are assessed by fellow faculty members. As the new director, I have focused on the re-conceptualization and renewal of the JHI’s programming since taking up my appointment in July. This includes working groups, among other activities.”

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A total of 295 people were injured in road accidents during Yom Kippur in 2025, averaging 12 people per hour, according to data from the Green Light road safety organization based on figures from Magen David Adom.

The figure includes people who required medical treatment after accidents involving bicycles, electric bicycles, electric scooters, roller skates, hoverboards, and motor vehicles. An analysis of the figures also found that 2,472 people were injured in similar road accidents on Yom Kippur over the past decade.

Moreover, six people were killed in road accidents on Yom Kippur during the past decade, two of them in 2025 alone.

Among the most notable accidents was the death of 12-year-old Barak Houri, who was struck and killed by a driver while riding his bicycle on Route 4 near Givat Shmuel in 2021. Eight-year-old Itai Margi was struck and killed by a vehicle while riding his bicycle at the intersection of Jabotinsky Street and Namir Road in Tel Aviv in 2019.

Even when traffic on the roads drops to almost zero, the danger does not disappear. Riders can fall on their own, collide with pedestrians or other riders, or encounter emergency vehicles. In some areas, including the South and parts of Jerusalem, there is more driving among the non-Jewish population, meaning there is vehicle traffic on roads that in the past may have been nearly empty.

“Yom Kippur carries many dangers, particularly for riders of two-wheeled vehicles. The atmosphere of the holiday is misleading, and many people tend to think that this is a day that allows for safe riding, when the reality is exactly the opposite,” Green Light CEO attorney Yaniv Yaakov said. 

“The Transportation and Road Safety Ministry must raise awareness of the dangers of riding two-wheeled vehicles in general and on Yom Kippur in particular. Bicycle riding can be both enjoyable and safe when awareness of proper riding is instilled in children and teenagers.”

Green Light issued a series of safety recommendations ahead of Yom Kippur.

Green Light’s road safety recommendations before Yom Kippur

Slow down at intersections: Even after regular traffic has stopped, an ambulance, police car, or another vehicle could still pass through. On Yom Kippur as well, riders should slow down, look to the right and left, and make sure drivers can see them before crossing.

Do not assume the road is empty: Vehicles continue to travel on Yom Kippur, sometimes at higher-than-usual speeds, particularly on intercity roads such as Route 4 in central Israel or fast urban roads such as Begin Road in Jerusalem.

Parents should establish a defined and familiar riding area for their children, away from main roads.

Bicycle maintenance: People who do not ride regularly should check the condition of their bicycles, or their children’s bicycles, in advance, including the gears, horn, tires, brakes, lights, and reflectors. Repair wait times at bicycle shops are expected to grow longer through Sunday.

Make sure the bicycle fits the rider: For children, parents should ensure the bicycle fits the child’s height so the rider’s toes can touch the ground.

Always wear a helmet: Wearing a helmet can make the difference between a minor and a serious injury at any age. Riders should therefore use a helmet that fits properly and is securely fastened.

Riding after dark: Riders should wear light-colored clothing that is visible in the dark and use bicycle lights and reflectors when riding at night.

Protective equipment: Children are advised to wear knee and elbow pads and gloves whenever they ride.

Electric vehicles are not for every age: Under Israeli law, children under the age of 16 are prohibited from riding electric bicycles or electric scooters.

Water: Anyone who is fasting is advised to avoid riding. Do not send children out to ride without water.

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The Pakistani national chess team forfeited its opening-round match against Israel at the 46th FIDE World Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, handing its opponents an automatic 4-0 walkover victory on Wednesday.

The match was scheduled for the opening round of the international tournament, but the Pakistani squad chose not to field players on any of the four boards in the Open section. Official tournament records listed the two national teams as opponents, but all four boards remained unplayed.

Team Pakistan 🇵🇰 gives walkover to team Israel 🇮🇱 in the first round of the @FIDE_chess Olympiad 2026 in Samarkand.
The whole Pakistani team didn’t show up and gave away the full match point. pic.twitter.com/zVOVr5TtXN

— Aditya Sur Roy (@adityasurroy21) September 16, 2026

Addressing the decision in statements to local news outlets, Pakistan Chess Federation President Syed Zeeshan Naqvi explained that the forfeit aligned with the country’s official diplomatic position regarding Israel. “We have boycotted the match to express solidarity with the Palestinian people,” Naqvi told local reporters.

Naqvi added that the federation had a clear and consistent policy that prevented it from participating in any match that contradicted the Pakistani government’s stance. Despite declining to play the fixture against Israel, the national team will continue to participate in the remaining rounds of the broader biennial tournament, which runs through September 27.

Dr. Zvika Barkai, President of the Israel Chess Federation, said in a statement to The Jerusalem Post, “We cannot change global political trends or the diplomatic relations between Pakistan and Israel. What we can do is keep showing the positive side of Israel through chess.

Barkai: Jerusalem to host two major international chess events in November

“This is exactly what we are doing. This coming November, Jerusalem will host two major international chess events – the Jerusalem International Open and the Jerusalem Masters – bringing players and guests from many countries around the world to Israel, including some of the world’s leading chess players,” Barkai said.

“For us, this is the right way to respond to the current atmosphere: to continue creating positive international events in Israel, to bring people together through chess, and to give participants from around the world the opportunity to come here and experience Israel for themselves. We are not discouraged by one incident or another. We will continue our work and our efforts to show the world, through chess, the positive side of Israel,” Barkai told the Post.

The International Chess Federation (FIDE) did not respond to the Post’s emailed request for comment by the time of publication.

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WASHINGTON – Jason Levien, the Jewish-American sports executive at the center of the ownership battle gripping Maccabi Tel Aviv Basketball, spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday about the possibility of becoming a significant shareholder in the Israeli powerhouse.

“There’s a lot going on there. It’s an interesting opportunity,” Levien told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview in Washington.

“I love the club and I love what it represents. I’m very close to some of the key shareholders, like Shimon Mizrahi, who has run the club for 50 years, and it’s an honor that they’re considering me for such a role.”

Asked directly whether he would move forward with joining Maccabi Tel Aviv if arbitration between the club’s shareholders clears the way, Levien declined to get ahead of the legal proceedings.

“Of course, we’re going to let the legal process play out,” he said. “I’m going to stay very close to Shimon, to Udi, the Recanati family, and to follow the process professionally and legally. But it’s an honor that they’re considering me for this opportunity and that they came to me and asked me to be a part of their community.”

A battle over ownership

The comments come amid a complex fight over the future ownership of one of Israel’s most prominent sports clubs.

The Recanati family has sought to sell Levien a significant stake in Maccabi, a move opposed by shareholder Richard Deitz, who argues he holds a right of first refusal. The dispute was referred to arbitration, with Dr. Israel “Rali” Leshem selected to serve as arbitrator. In recent days, a separate dispute has emerged over Levien’s inclusion as a party to the arbitration, prompting Deitz to take the matter to court.

Levien did not delve into the details of the fight and did not publicly take sides. His message was simpler: he is interested in Maccabi, sees the club as something special, and is prepared to wait for the legal process to run its course.

From Washington to Tel Aviv?

The Post met Levien far from the turmoil in Tel Aviv, at the launch event for DC Flight, Washington’s new professional women’s volleyball team, on the waterfront at The Wharf in Southwest Washington.

The event was held at The Anthem, one of the capital’s best-known concert venues, which is now preparing to transform itself into a home for professional volleyball. DC Flight is set to begin play in Major League Volleyball in 2027, joining what the league describes as the fourth professional women’s sports team in the Washington area.

For Levien, who already has extensive experience building sports franchises and venues, converting a concert hall into a home court is part of the project’s appeal.

“I think it’s a special place,” he said of turning The Anthem into a volleyball venue. “When The Wharf came together, it really impacted the district in a meaningful way. The Anthem doing that, it’s an exceptional venue.”

“I think visualizing it for volleyball, it’s going to be an incredible home-court advantage,” he continued. “But it’s going to be a place for the community to rally – a really unique opportunity for our community to celebrate the game of volleyball in a venue like this.”

A veteran of American sports

Levien knows the American sports world well. He has served as co-chairman and CEO of MLS club DC United since 2012 and was a driving force behind the development of Audi Field in Washington. Before that, he served as CEO and managing partner of the NBA‘s Memphis Grizzlies and sat on the league’s Board of Governors.

Asked what drew him specifically to women’s volleyball, Levien pointed to the sport’s surging participation numbers and fan base.

“Looking at the participation numbers among girls, among women, the excitement level, the fandom around volleyball – it is surging,” he said. “To be a small part of that, to participate in that excitement in our home community here in Washington, it was something that we just had to do.”

His interest in Maccabi Tel Aviv fits naturally into that trajectory. Levien is not a first-time financial investor in professional sports – he has already run an NBA franchise, owns and operates an MLS club, and is now helping build a new professional volleyball team from the ground up.

For the first time, Levien is publicly confirming his interest in Maccabi. Whether that ultimately ends with him taking a seat at the ownership table at Yad Eliyahu remains unresolved. But from The Anthem in Washington, as his newest sports venture prepares for takeoff, Levien made one thing unmistakably clear about the opportunity waiting across the Atlantic:

“I love the club, and I love what it represents.”

This post was originally published on here. 

The US House of Representatives passed a Russia sanctions bill on Wednesday intended to pressure the Kremlin to end the war in Ukraine.

The bill, called the “Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026,” passed by 262 to 159. It passed the Senate in August and is now en route to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.

The US sanctions bill targets Russia’s energy and defense industries, as well as its “shadow fleet” of tankers that evade existing sanctions, in order to deprive Moscow of revenues to finance the war.

It would also place sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, several senior Kremlin officials, Russian financial institutions, and state-owned companies.

It would allow Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100% on buyers of Russian energy, such as China or India, in order to reduce their dependence on Russian oil and gas.

What do the bill’s critics say?

Notably, the bill had critics on both sides of the aisle.

Republican critics of the bill privately expressed to party leadership that the tariff powers would drive up prices before the contentious midterm elections in November, two people familiar with the matter told CNN.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) rejected their request for changes, the sources added.

Democrats and a few Republicans argued that the bill gives Trump too much broad presidential power on tariffs.

“Why in the world would this Congress give this president additional authority to visit that kind of economic harm on the American people?” asked House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York).

“The manner in which this bill has been written doesn’t require the president of the United States to impose sanctions on Russia. In fact, there are so many loopholes written into the bill, I believe, that it’s very unlikely that the sanctions relief contemplated in the legislation will ever see the light of day.”

However, the bill’s supporters say that it is a necessary punch to the Kremlin before winter sets in, and argue that Trump would not end up with more power on trade.

“Today, we are now one step closer to securing Lindsey’s vision of enduring peace in Ukraine and beyond,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas).

Zelensky praises Russia sanctions bill as a ‘powerful tool’ to stop war

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky voiced his support for the bill on Thursday, saying that it was “an extremely powerful tool that can stop this terrorist war and bring Russia to the necessity of establishing peace.”

“I thank the members of the House of Representatives, senators, and leaders of the US Congress for supporting this bill. Russia needs to end this war of its own,” he wrote on Telegram. 

The Kremlin said that if Trump signed the sanctions into law, it would make it harder to reach a peace deal in Ukraine.

“We are, of course, monitoring the progress of this document. It falls under the category of unfriendly actions, and of course the imposition of any additional sanctions by the US would certainly complicate efforts to find a peace settlement in Ukraine,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

This post was originally published on here. 

“When I was a child in Beersheba, between Beersheba and Tel Aviv it was like light-years,” the mayor told The Jerusalem Post. “They called us the city of camels, the end of the world, a desert city.”

Danilovich, born in Beersheba in 1971 and mayor since 2008, has spent much of his political life trying to dismantle that image. Today, the city has around 223,600 residents and some 30,000 students studying at its higher-education institutions. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev alone has around 20,000 students and says roughly a third of Israel’s engineers graduate from BGU.

Those numbers help explain why Danilovich’s enthusiastic outlook on his hometown suggests a place seen less as Israel’s periphery and more as a place where several of the country’s largest national projects are now converging.

The IDF began moving units into its new technological campus in Beersheba in May, next to the Gav-Yam Negev high-tech park and close to BGU. Around 8,000 soldiers and career officers are ultimately expected to serve there. Northeast of the city, the Intelligence Campus near Shoket Junction is being built for well over 10,000 Intelligence Directorate personnel.

Across the road from the university, Gav-Yam says some 2,500 engineers already work for around 70 companies at its Beersheba technology park. Nvidia, meanwhile, has been expanding its presence in the city, tripling its office space and planning to recruit hundreds of employees.

Beersheba’s tech ecosystem draws global companies

“The companies come by themselves,” Danilovich said. “They are not philanthropic. They are business companies. They come where it is worthwhile for them.”

He reeled off Microsoft, Dell, Nvidia, IBM and Deutsche Telekom before turning to the geography itself: the university, Soroka University Medical Center, the National Cyber Directorate, military technology units and defense companies, all clustered within a relatively small area.

“Show me another city – not in Israel, in the world – where in such a small radius there is such a concentration of knowledge,” he said.

That concentration is at the heart of what Danilovich repeatedly calls the “new Israeli dream.” The Negev accounts for around 60% of Israel’s territory and is home to roughly 1.5 million people. He argues that successive governments have allowed too much of the country’s population and economic activity to remain concentrated in the center, while neglecting the South’s sheer size and potential.

“The Negev is not the problem of the State of Israel,” he told the Post. “The Negev can be the solution.”

Beersheba mayor looks to aliyah to reshape Israel’s periphery

Aliyah is central to that proposal. Danilovich wants Israel to set a national target of one million new immigrants over five to seven years, paired with housing incentives, employment, and community infrastructure intended to encourage many to settle in the Negev and Galilee.

Beersheba has precedent for immigration changing the character of the city. More than 60,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union arrived during the great aliyah wave of the 1990s, bringing doctors, engineers, academics, and a substantial new Russian-speaking community to Beersheba. Danilovich points particularly to Soroka, where some of the young immigrant physicians who arrived then would later rise to head hospital departments.

“When did we become the Start-Up Nation?” Danilovich asked. “When the gates of the former Soviet Union opened.”

Since October 7, he has also framed his aliyah drive around the rise in antisemitism abroad, particularly in countries such as Britain, France and Canada. His complaint is that while Israel has mechanisms for absorbing newcomers, it lacks the kind of large-scale national plan that could take advantage of a major new wave of immigration if one materialized.

“Come home,” he said. “We will receive you with open arms.”

Another part of that thinking is already taking shape in Beersheba. JNF-USA is developing a $350 million World Zionist Village in the city, whose master plan was approved in 2025. The organization now expects it to open in 2029, with plans for educational programs, accommodation and a center intended to bring young Jews and community leaders from around the world to spend meaningful periods of time in Israel.

Danilovich hopes some will stay. He is almost as interested, however, in those who eventually return to London, Toronto, Johannesburg, Melbourne or elsewhere after a year spent in Beersheba.

“Maybe you will want to make aliyah,” he said. “And even if you don’t, you will go back… but you will be a good ambassador for the State of Israel.”

War leaves its mark on Beersheba’s growth

Beersheba’s development has taken place alongside a less welcome constant: war. Soroka, the main hospital serving southern Israel, took a direct hit from an Iranian ballistic missile on June 19, 2025. The government subsequently approved NIS 360 million toward reconstruction, while philanthropist Sylvan Adams pledged another $100 million.

For Danilovich, the cranes that will rise at Soroka are something he has been through before. He was in his mid-30s when he defeated veteran mayor Yaakov Turner in the November 2008 election, after already serving a decade as deputy mayor. Within weeks, Beersheba was under rocket fire from Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

Since then, he has led the city through repeated rounds of fighting, each followed, in his memory, by the return of construction.

“After every round ended, I would see the cranes in Beersheba,” he recalled. “Suddenly we are building another neighborhood, suddenly the lake, suddenly the amphitheater, suddenly the high-tech park, suddenly the stadium. We don’t stop for a moment.”

The physical change is obvious to anyone who remembers the older city. Beersheba River Park occupies land where sewage, rubbish and industrial waste once lined the banks of Nahal Beersheba; the rehabilitation project now stretches for kilometers through the city.

From football stadium to high tech, Danilovich eyes the next stage

Danilovich has his own, rather less grandiose benchmark. A former amateur football player, he remembers Beersheba’s old stadium as so uninviting that women and children rarely attended, and even decent toilets were a problem.

Today, he can list the stadium alongside the high-tech park, university, cultural institutions and national park River Park when describing how far his hometown has traveled. Yet after nearly 18 years as mayor, he is wary of sounding satisfied.

“A mayor who is satisfied is not a serious mayor,” Danilovich told the Post. “A mayor should never be satisfied, because he always has to aspire to the next thing.”

Danilovich has received many offers over the years to make the move into national politics, including approaches from prime ministers and other political leaders. He said he turned them down.

“My mission for the State of Israel, for my people and for my country is here,” he said. “It is in the Negev.

“If we do not make it flourish, if we do not strengthen it, if we do not build it and make it attractive, if it does not become the new Israeli dream, the State of Israel will be in danger.”

This post was originally published on here. 

The Palestinian population, already critical of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, may view renewed US sanctions against the PA and Palestinian Liberation Organization as another sign that the current leadership’s approach to Washington has “not produced sufficient political results,” Dr. Nabil Kukali, president and founder of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (PCPO), told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

The US State Department confirmed on Wednesday that the PLO and PA had failed to maintain their commitments under the PLO Commitments Compliance Act of 1989 (PLOCCA) and the Middle East Peace Commitments Act of 2002 (MEPCA), resulting in sanctions against Palestinian officials.

Beyond citing the PA’s continued stipends to Palestinian terrorists and failure to reform textbooks to remove the glorification of terrorism, the department said that the PA and PLO were initiating and supporting actions at international organizations that undermine or contradict prior commitments. These included efforts to internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ), as well as attempts to bypass negotiations by seeking unilateral recognition. As a result, the department announced that the US would deny visas to PLO members and PA officials.

The sanctions will prevent Abbas from attending the UN General Assembly in New York in person for the second consecutive year.

Kukali said he would be “cautious” about determining whether the sanctions alone would be enough to weaken Abbas’s camp electorally, given that there is not yet “enough evidence to isolate their effect from the much broader set of factors shaping Palestinian voters’ attitudes,” including the economic situation, security, the war and its consequences, governance, institutional performance and the prospects for a political solution.

However, Kukali said there may still be significant domestic political consequences beyond the potential impact on the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, particularly among Palestinians already critical of the PA.

“The US measures may reinforce the argument that the PA’s diplomatic approach and its relationship with Washington have not produced sufficient political results,” he said, arguing that the announcement could spark a broader debate over Palestinian political strategy.

Pro-Abbas Fatah supporters may see sanctions as external pressure effort

Fatah supporters in the pro-Abbas camp may instead view the sanctions as an attempt to apply external pressure on the Palestinian leadership following its efforts to take Israel to international courts, Kukali said. In such a case, he explained, it would be inaccurate to assume that Abbas would suffer a domestic political loss.

He noted that while more than half (57.2%) of Palestinians polled by PCPO previously said that Washington would continue to support Israel, only 20.4% said they believed the US would adopt a “more balanced role in the future.” At the same time, he said there are significant indications that American voters support recognition of Palestinian statehood.

“The recent US measures toward Palestinian officials themselves illustrate how official Washington policy may continue to move differently from some of the trends emerging within American society,” he said, suggesting that the sanctions could potentially generate a greater reaction among American voters than among Palestinians.

“Some Palestinians may increasingly perceive a gap between attitudes within American society and the policies of the US administration toward Palestinians. Whether that perception will actually affect how they evaluate President Abbas or Fatah is a separate question, and I do not think its outcome should be assumed in advance.”

While Kukali said he doubted the measures would automatically affect Palestinian politics, he acknowledged that the timing of the sanctions mattered. The PLC elections are scheduled for November 28, and “any developments affecting the Palestinian leadership’s international standing, its relationship with Washington, or public perceptions of the effectiveness of its political strategy” could shape the electoral debate.

Though Kukali was uncertain about the impact the sanctions would have on the elections, Prof. Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and a visiting professor at the International Center for Policing and Security at the University of South Wales, told the Post that he thought Hamas would use Abbas’s failures as a way to demonstrate to voters that Fatah’s political struggle has been ineffectual compared to Hamas’s armed “resistance.”

Michael: Fatah reform bloc, Hamas will use Abbas’s failures against him 

The Fatah Reform Democratic bloc and Hamas “will use it to claim that [Abbas] is history and must leave and only they will be able to make the changes [needed] to recruit international support,” he theorized.

Although he saw the restrictions on Abbas as a potential avenue for Hamas to market itself as a more powerful and effective alternative, Michael said he doubted Abbas would let the elections go ahead in November as planned. 

This post was originally published on here. 

A Magistrates Court in Brisbane, Australia, sentenced Matthew Alexander Donald De Campo, 32, to six months in prison on Thursday for ramming his vehicle into the gates of the city’s Great Synagogue in February.

Despite the prison sentence, Magistrate Megan Power ordered De Campo’s immediate release on a good behavior bond, crediting him for the 83 days he had already spent in custody.

De Campo pleaded guilty to willful damage and two drug-related offenses. Queensland Police initially charged him with willful damage aggravated by the circumstances of a hate crime, but during the hearing that concluded with sentencing, the prosecution asked to remove the aggravating circumstance. 

De Campo caused AU$12,000 of damage

The incident occurred on February 20, shortly after 7:15 p.m. Security camera footage shows De Campo’s vehicle arriving at the synagogue on Margaret Street in central Brisbane, then accelerating in reverse into the gates. One of the gates was torn from its mountings, and the resulting damage was estimated at approximately AU$12,000.

No one was injured during the ramming, but a person standing behind the gate at the time spotted the vehicle and quickly moved out of its path just moments before the gate collapsed.

Brisbane has been rocked by a hate crime at the city’s main synagogue. A driver has deliberately rammed his ute into the front gates of the sacred building, where Jewish people had just congregated. He was later arrested outside the Holocaust Museum. @JdeRichards pic.twitter.com/qeksJ5qKPw

— 7NEWS Queensland (@7NewsBrisbane) February 21, 2026

Following the impact, De Campo fled the scene. Police tracked his vehicle with the aid of a helicopter and arrested him shortly thereafter. 

At the time of the incident, police stated that the impact on the gates was deliberate; however, there was no indication of an intent to harm anyone or to enter the synagogue, and the case was not investigated as an act of terror.

De Campo allegedly suffered from severe mental health issues

The court heard that De Campo was in a severe mental state at the time of the incident. The judge noted that his conduct toward police indicated that he appeared paranoid and was suffering from delusions. 

The defense argued that he had deteriorated into cannabis and methamphetamine use and that his condition at the time of the incident had been affected by the drugs. 

After he was released on bail in May, De Campo entered a three-month rehabilitation program. The defense presented the court with his rehabilitation progress, and he pleaded guilty to the charges against him.

The judge sentenced him to six months in prison for causing the damage, but ordered his immediate conditional release. The 83 days he had already spent in custody were recognized as part of the prison term, and he will serve the remainder of the sentence under the release conditions imposed on him.

This post was originally published on here. 

Lawmakers joined faith-based leaders and community advocates for a press conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to push for the swift passage of the Right to Worship Act, a bipartisan, bicameral bill that would establish federal protest-free buffer zones around houses of worship.

The legislation would create a 100-foot perimeter around religious institutions during services, making it unlawful to knowingly disrupt, impede, threaten, or intimidate individuals attempting to practice their faith.

The proponents emphasized that rising incidents of harassment and targeting at religious sites necessitate federal intervention to protect worshippers across denominations.

The breadth of support for the Right to Worship Act is deeply humbling. So many groups recognize the horrifying reality that the threat to the freedom to worship is not unique to any one faith or congregation. Our Right to Worship Act is for everyone, and I’m proud to stand with… pic.twitter.com/SKb1DFFAbM

— Tom Suozzi (@RepTomSuozzi) September 16, 2026

“Exercising your right to worship should not require you to exhibit particular courage as you enter your synagogue, church, mosque, temple, mandir, or gurdwara,” said Representative Tom Suozzi. “I will always stand up for people’s right to protest peacefully, but attendees of religious services should not be harassed, threatened, intimidated, or targeted for practicing their faith.”

The bill is sponsored in the House by Suozzi and Representative Brad Knott, alongside a companion measure in the Senate introduced by Senators Ted Cruz and Elissa Slotkin.

The legislation also imposes civil penalties for violations and authorizes individuals, the US Attorney General, and state attorneys general to file suit against violators, while explicitly excluding peaceful expression protected by the First Amendment.

Supporters at the press conference highlighted that the pressure facing religious communities extends across the political and geographic spectrum. “The breadth of support for the Right to Worship Act is very gratifying,” Suozzi said. “So many groups recognize the horrifying reality that the threat to the freedom to worship is not unique to any one faith or congregation. Every religious community feels it, which is why this bill will protect everybody.”

I held a press conference today with @RepTomSuozzi and numerous religious organizations supporting the ‘Right to Worship Act.’

Today, a right as sacred as the right to worship is only as durable as the government’s willingness or ability to enforce it. This bill closes the… pic.twitter.com/Yu17sOQWMT

— Congressman Brad Knott (@RepKnott) September 16, 2026

Knott echoed those sentiments during the conference, stating that the proposal strikes a necessary balance between safeguarding public assembly and ensuring safety. “The Right to Worship Act protects peaceful speech while restoring essential protections for Americans by empowering worshippers against those who seek to intimidate them.”

The legislation has garnered endorsements from more than twenty national religious and civil rights organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Islamic Society of North America, and the Hindu American Foundation. 

Alyza D. Lewin, President of US Affairs for the Combat Antisemitism Movement, emphasized the vulnerability faced by congregants since late 2023. “In the aftermath of October 7th, Jews have had to endure violent threats and intimidating harassment just to enter synagogues to practice their faith and gather as a community,” Lewin said. Drawing a parallel to existing protections, Lewin added, “We place buffer zones around polling stations so that individuals can complete their ballots in peace, without being heckled or intimidated. Surely religious worship, an activity covered by the First Amendment, deserves as much protection as voting. Americans must be able to practice their faith free from harassment and intimidation.”

Today on Capitol Hill, I spoke about the urgent need to protect everyone’s right to worship without fear.

This High Holiday season, too many Jews feel unsafe going to their own synagogues. In 2025 alone, @ADL documented nearly 530 incidents of harassment at synagogues in the US.… pic.twitter.com/Z1bBUVvh7m

— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) September 16, 2026

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL, stressed the urgency of the measure given recent security challenges. “No one should have to push through a hostile crowd or shout over a bullhorn in an attempt to pray,” Greenblatt said. “The Right to Worship Act gives law enforcement and communities the tools they need to prevent these disruptions before they escalate, while still respecting every American’s First Amendment rights.”

This post was originally published on here. 

The US helped evacuate 9,000 US citizens in the first months of the war with Iran. In addition, Iran carried out 600 attacks in Iraq, either directly from Iran or using proxies.

A Lead Inspector General Report to the United States Congress regarding the US war on Iran has provided new details about the extent of the war effort and the challenges involved.

Although some of the details were known, such as the Iranian attacks on US bases around the region, the report provides new data on aspects of the campaign. It covers the period April-June 2026. Usually these kinds of reports are released several months after the period they cover.

One of the key pieces of information provided is the extent of the US deployment in the region.

The report says that “more than 50,000 US Service Members were deployed throughout the US CENTCOM area of responsibility (AOR) in support of OEF [Operation Epic Fury].”

Report details scale of US military buildup in region

The report noted that “force flows continued into the region in the days after major combat operations began. CENTCOM reported that force presence and disposition have changed throughout the conflict.”

During the conflict, more than a dozen fighter squadrons, along with a similar number of navy destroyers and air defense batteries, were in the region.

The US also deployed the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile defense batteries. Some of these have already been deployed in the region over the years to counter missile threats. For instance, Iran launched large numbers of ballistic missiles at Israel in 2024 and 2025. The US also deployed the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) and elements of the 82nd Airborne Division.

The new report provides some spotlight on the funding for the war. This has been one of those issues that has popped up in Washington during hearings. The report says that the “Office of the Under Secretary of War (Comptroller) Chief Financial Officer (OUSW[C]) estimated the cost of OEF to be $33.4 billion as of June 29.” This includes more than 20 billion in munitions. The costs do not include all the needs for repairs of various bases and sites. New photos have revealed some of the destruction caused by Iranian attacks since February.

One of the issues the US had to address because of the Iranian attacks was to shift some military assets around the region. For instance, it is known that the US has used Jordanian bases and also moved refuelers to Israel.

The report says that while “Bahrain had been US Navy Central’s (USNAVCENT) main logistics hub to sustain operations in the Persian Gulf region…during major combat operations, Iran targeted Bahrain with OWUAS [attack drones] and ballistic missile strikes.

US shifted naval resources amid Gulf base vulnerabilities

CENTCOM stated that it initially shifted naval sustainment resources from Bahrain to alternate hubs.” This illustrates a key theme that has been raised during the war regarding the vulnerability of bases in the Gulf near Iran. Iran has targeted US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, and other places. It also targeted diplomatic facilities in Iraq.

The US supported local partners in the Gulf to counter the Iranian threats. “This has included the provision of military sales, training, and information-sharing to Gulf partners.” The US says that the Gulf partners demonstrated “significant air defense capabilities.”

This would likely refer to Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

The battle helped cement cooperation. “US forces embedded in partner air operations centers across the region, which supported coordination, deconfliction, and synchronization of air defense efforts. The Middle East Defense Network, an integrated missile defense architecture in the region, intercepted more than 6,000 OWUAS and more than 1,500 ballistic missiles that targeted US and partner forces.”

CENTCOM likely learned a lot from this conflict, and this also impacts CENTCOM’s work with the IDF. This work has been ongoing for years.

However, a real conflict situation, much like the conflict with Iran in 2025 and the missile barrages, helps militaries learn to fight in real time. US Central Command “reported that Iranian strikes damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan during the conflict. In addition, dozens of US aircraft were destroyed or damaged during [Epic Fury].”

Iran also targeted US diplomatic facilities. This included 600 attacks in Iraq.

The inspector’s report notes that “the US Consulate General in Erbil’s new consulate compound suffered damage to multiple buildings. The US Embassy in Baghdad suffered damage but to a lesser extent.

The Baghdad Diplomatic Support Compound, located near Baghdad International Airport, suffered extensive damage, but the facility was already in the process of closing due to a decision that was made before the current conflict began.”

US evacuation effort moved thousands out of conflict zones

Due to the war, the US helped citizens evacuate.  In total, around 9,000 were evacuated, with 6,500 of those evacuating from Israel. While the cost of evacuating people from Israel was quite low, the US did pay millions to evacuate people from other places such as Jordan and Iraq.

It was not clear why it was so expensive to evacuate people from Jordan, but not Israel. Around 50 people were evacuated from Jordan, while 850 left Qatar and 16 were evacuated from Bahrain. These were people in contact with the US State Department. 

This post was originally published on here. 

US President Donald Trump said that if Canada became an associate member of the European Union, he would consider it a “hostile act” in comments to the press on Wednesday.

“If they do that, if I think it’s at all a hostile act, I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things,” Trump said, calling the proposal “laughable.”

.@POTUS on Canada possibly becoming an associate member of the European Union:

“I think it’s laughable… Canada has been a terrible trade partner… If I think it’s at all an hostile act, I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things.” pic.twitter.com/AWOFLAZc8I

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 16, 2026

“If it’s a good intention, that’s fine. If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe, which is a possibility,” he said, adding that Canada had been a “terrible trade partner.”

Canada and the US are currently in a trade war, which is straining relations between the two neighboring countries and leaving Ottawa to seek new trade partners.

Von der Leyen pushes for Canada to become EU associate member

On Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that she wanted to work with Canada to join the EU as an associate member.

“We want to bring the relationship with Canada to the highest level possible,” von der Leyen said. “So, I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU.”

“Canadians are united that nobody is going to tell us what language we speak. No one is going to dictate our culture or with whom we can strike agreements internationally,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in response to Trump.

Hours after Trump’s trade threats, Carney spoke in the European Parliament.

Carney did not adopt the term “associate member,” which von der Leyen used a day earlier, but said he appreciated “the ambition” her suggestion conveyed.

“Europe and Canada are each strong. Europe and Canada are even stronger together,” Carney said.

He was not seeking to form a “third bloc” to act as “a great-power rival” to Washington and Beijing “only with better manners,” Carney said, drawing laughs.

“We do not seek power to dominate others. On the contrary, we are pursuing resilience, so that no one can control our open markets, impair our sovereignty, threaten our territorial integrity, or undermine our freedoms, our democracies, our rule of law.”

He told reporters after the speech that the EU would decide how to describe any future relationship, and that the substance of any agreement would matter more than the name.

Canada, of course, cannot fully join the EU because it is not geographically in Europe. But Carney said on Sunday that he was seeking a “unique alliance” with the bloc.

What would Canada’s ‘unique alliance’ with the EU look like?

The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that it could mean the EU and Canada would reduce trade barriers, lay underwater cables linking the two countries, redirect pipelines to grant Europe access to Canadian gas, and potentially allow Canadians the right to work in Europe without a visa. 

If the terms reported by the WSJ are correct, it would mark an unprecedented shift in how the bloc operates.

It is also unclear whether current EU member states would support the proposed measures.

One EU diplomat expressed surprise on Wednesday at the proposal, saying “nobody really knows what it means,” and added that there were concerns the European Commission chief was “overpromising and won’t be able to deliver.”

On Thursday, another European diplomat called it an “unfortunate proposal, which has never been discussed with Member States.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) canceled plans to resume direct flights between Israel and Denmark, the airline said on Thursday.

SAS, the largest airline in northern Europe, said the decision followed a reassessment of the planned Copenhagen-Tel Aviv route.

“Following the latest assessment we conducted in recent days regarding operational and commercial factors, we have concluded that conditions are not yet suitable for launching the planned Copenhagen to Tel Aviv route at this time.”

The airline added that “Tel Aviv remains an important destination for SAS and for our customers, and we will continue to monitor developments and examine the opportunity to launch the route in the future.”

Flights initially stopped in 2016, then briefly resumed in 2025

SAS stopped flying to Israel in March 2016 and briefly resumed service in October 2025. Several months later, however, it suspended the flights again.

The route initially operated three times a week, but after several months, SAS suspended its operations in Israel as well as at its other destinations in the Middle East.

This post was originally published on here. 

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Thursday that Serbia had opened a factory to assemble advanced Israeli-made drones, which will supply the Serbian military and armed forces in other countries.

The plant will assemble “state-of-the-art” Israeli-designed drones and will employ about 100 workers, he said in a post on Instagram.

The government and its Israeli partners expect to open at least three more factories across the country, he added.

Journalists were not invited to visit the facility due to the confidentiality of the production process.

Vucic released only limited footage of the facility, saying the public would be impressed by what was being produced there.

This is a developing story.

This post was originally published on here. 

Jewish students in Germany experience significantly greater psychological strain than their non-Jewish peers, a new study by researchers from the University of Regensburg and the Sigmund Freud Private University Berlin has revealed. 

Between June and September 2024, the researchers surveyed 320 students in Germany online, 151 of whom self-identified as Jewish. They examined stress, anxiety, depression, and self-esteem using established questionnaires, as well as personally perceived antisemitism, sense of safety, Jewish identification, and connection to Israel. 

Perceived antisemitism refers to respondents’ personal assessment of how widespread and severe antisemitic attitudes are, based on three areas: antisemitism in German society generally, Israel-related antisemitism, and antisemitism in academic settings. 

The study found that Jewish students reported significantly higher levels of anxiety, depression, and stress than their non-Jewish peers. The largest statistical difference appeared in anxiety. There was no difference between the groups in terms of self-esteem. 

The researchers found that, even after statistically accounting for age, gender, income, political orientation, and psychiatric history, Jewish identity remained an independent predictor of all three measures of psychological strain.

Within the group of Jewish students, the researchers examined which factors were associated with psychological strain. 

Perceived antisemitism had the strongest association: the more strongly respondents perceived antisemitism in society, in relation to Israel and in academic settings, the higher their levels of stress, anxiety and depression. A stronger connection to Israel was also associated with higher stress levels.

Over half surveyed said they do not feel safe as Jews in Germany

Of the Jewish students surveyed, 54.3% said they did not feel or rather did not feel safe as Jewish people in Germany, and 86.8% attributed the increase in antisemitism they perceived to the Hamas terror attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent social and political developments.

The study revealed another noteworthy finding: The respondents’ Jewish identification did not weaken as a result of antisemitism, but instead increased. This meant that the more strongly respondents perceived antisemitism, the more strongly they described their Jewish identity. 

“The study suggests that psychosocial counseling centers at universities should be sensitized to identity-related stress as well as subtle forms of antisemitism,” said study lead Dr. Irina Jarvers, a clinical neuroscientist at the University of Regensburg. 

Jarvers: Personal resource strengthening programs can help mitigate psychological strain

She also concluded that, since self-esteem was found to be a protective factor, programs that strengthen personal resources and coping strategies could help mitigate some of the psychological strain.

As a preventative measure, she suggested that universities explicitly address antisemitism in their diversity strategies and promote “respectful interaction” in politically charged debates.

This post was originally published on here. 

The Houthis pose a threat to the region, and they have demonstrated their capabilities through their recent offensive along the Red Sea. A new report by Conflict Armament Research examines the sources of their weapons and highlights their continued close ties to Iran.

Rob Hunter-Perkins, the Head of Research at Conflict Armament Research, said in a recent report from the group that “external support remains a key factor in the Houthis ’ ability to sustain operations, and the evidence suggests that there is a high degree of planning and coordination on these supplies.”

Hunter-Perkins added that “in some cases, the Houthis are even receiving missiles in ready-made kits with assembly instructions.

Conflict Armament Research has documented these assembly labels, which indicate which component belongs to what missile system, and all of these labels use Iranian missile designations, rather than the terms that the Houthis themselves use.”

CAR has produced important reports over the past decade, documenting the Houthis’ various weapons programs and also the origins of their drone and missile program.

CAR tracks Houthi weapons buildup across Yemen

Conflict Armament Research said that it “has worked with partner authorities in Yemen and the wider Gulf region to document weapons, ammunition, drones, and improvised explosive devices developed or acquired by the Houthis since 2015, with our most recent deployment to the country in September 2026.”

Fabian Hinz, a Senior Analyst at CAR noted that “Iranian support has been crucial to the buildup of Houthi military capabilities. Iran has managed to secure a seemingly steady flow of technology to the Houthis and has proven willing to share even some of its most advanced capabilities, such as the Kheybarshekan medium-range ballistic missile, with the group.”

CAR put out its most recent report in the wake of the new advances of the Houthis. Overall, the trends among the Houthis remain the same as in the past. They base their weapons on Iranian designs. They have anti-ship, surface-to-air, and ballistic missiles. They recently claimed to shoot down an F-15. They have also attacked various cities in Saudi Arabia.

“While much attention has focused on the Houthis’ buildup of longer-range strike capabilities, the group has also amassed a wide variety of systems aimed at strengthening its warfighting capabilities within Yemen, including small UAVs such as loitering munitions and first-person view (FPV)s, artillery rockets, close-range ballistic missiles, and anti-tank guided missiles,” CAR notes.

“Crucially, this includes evidence of Houthi experimentation with technology that Conflict Armament Research has not documented in the possession of any armed group elsewhere in the world, such as navigation modules and propellers that may be used in loitering torpedoes, which would greatly extend the Houthis’ ability to attack maritime targets.”

Houthi coastal advances could strengthen attacks on shipping

The new report argues that the Houthis capture of the Red Sea coast “would significantly improve their maritime posture. Using these areas as launch sites for short-range reconnaissance and strike assets would enable much closer surveillance of maritime traffic through the strait and more effective targeting of vessels attempting to transit it.”

Iran has shipped complete weapons in the past. In addition, it helped enable a local manufacturing base. With the US blockade, the Houthis will likely have a harder time acquiring weapons. “There is also evidence to suggest that the Houthis are now using the technological foundation provided by Iran to pursue their own research and development efforts, such as using hydrogen power to increase the range of its uncrewed systems,” CAR noted.

Hunter-Perkins noted, in the recent report, that “Conflict Armament Research has analyzed over 800 weapon components from Yemen in the past year, and the vast majority found in Iranian missiles and drones in Yemen are foreign.” That means Iran also isn’t building most of these items at home, but is instead finding a way to get components from other countries. In fact, the CAR report noted the components come from “16 countries and territories, and include commercially available components.

As much as the Houthis depend on external supply of Iranian-origin weapons, Iran itself clearly depends on critical foreign technology to sustain its production of missiles and drones.”

This post was originally published on here. 

The Houthi advances in Yemen have taken Saudi Arabia and the Middle East by surprise. Riyadh had been working on cementing a new defensive alliance with Turkey and Pakistan on the eve of the Houthi attacks. Now, some commentators seem to think the Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey pact may already be in jeopardy.

The question is whether this may be a misreading of what is going on. First, a sampling of articles. NDTV notes “the Houthis have exposed Saudi-Pak-Turkey pact for what it is.” Ynet News notes “Houthi attacks reach Mecca, exposing limits of Saudi defense pact with Turkey and Pakistan.”

Al Jazeera asks what is next for the defense pact. Middle East Eye noted, “Why the Mecca defense pact hasn’t triggered action against the Houthis.” It goes on to say that a “Turkish official argues new alliance with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan needs time to become operational.” Jacobin had argued that the “Mecca Agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan is a response to insecurity and waning American power in the region” and compared it to NATO.

Just days and weeks ago, reports suggested more countries might join the pact. Deutsche Welle, for instance, noted that “while Bangladesh weighs the risks of signing the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, experts warn that such a move could complicate relations.”

Also, The Japan Times noted, “Pakistan faces pressure to pick a side as Saudi tensions with Houthis escalate.” That article adds, “Fighting between Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement and Saudi forces is increasingly testing how long Pakistan can hold both positions at.”

The assumption that the Mecca pact might lead to Turkey and Pakistan fighting the Houthis may be part of the false assumptions about the alliance itself. It is a defensive alliance. It can be argued that the Saudis intervened in Yemen in 2015 and therefore it is not a “defensive war.”

In addition, the war was already ongoing when the deal was signed. There was no hint in the signing that Riyadh was going to call on these two countries to send troops to Yemen or send air defenses to the Kingdom. Furthermore, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were already working together on defense issues, and Pakistan was not being asked to go into Yemen.

Mecca Joint Defense Agreement vs North Atlantic Treaty Organization

It may be instructive to look back at other historic alliances to understand the challenges that are faced by the new partners. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was founded in 1949 by the United States, Canada and ten Western European countries amid growing tensions with the Soviet Union. Its central principle, Article 5, considers an attack on one member an attack on all.

NATO expanded during the Cold War and confronted the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the alliance admitted numerous Central and Eastern European states and conducted operations in the Balkans and Afghanistan. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 reshaped NATO’s priorities, strengthening its focus on collective defense and leading Finland and Sweden to join the alliance.

What was NATO’s role in some of the conflicts that the US fought around the world? It didn’t feel compelled to go into Vietnam, for instance. This war was far off, far from the concept of confronting the Soviets in Europe. It also was a war where the US intervened. The US was not attacked. NATO also was not involved in the Falklands War, even though the UK had been attacked. It didn’t get involved in Northern Ireland either.

Yemen may be more akin to a Vietnam for Saudi Arabia. It’s a complex conflict in which Riyadh backs the internationally recognized government. As such, it is like the US backing South Vietnam against the Vietnamese insurgency, or Viet Cong.

The Houthis are the Viet Cong. They are hard to beat in a similar manner. They have also been acquiring more sophisticated weapons from foreign powers, just as weapons from the Soviets or China were trekked down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Saudi benefit from Turkish, Pakistani advice limited

Saudi Arabia might benefit from some advice from Turkey and Pakistan. However, that benefit may be limited. Pakistan has a large army but has fought insurgencies for years. However, it has not been particularly successful at defeating those insurgencies. Turkey has also been fighting wars for years. For instance, it fought the PKK. Ankara’s experience was more successful than Pakistan’s.

The question for Saudi Arabia is what it wants now. It has to decide on its policy. Until it does so, its partners can’t ride to the rescue. In fact, the concept behind the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement seems more about starting a process than about enabling rapid deployment by these countries to any one of their partners’ homelands. 

This post was originally published on here. 

The wife of the late Peter Meagher, the retired NSW Police detective sergeant and photographer who was murdered in the Bondi Hanukkah attack last year, has revealed she is converting to Judaism in his honor.

Peter Meagher, 61, was a well-known photographer in the Jewish community and worked as a freelance photographer for many local Chabad events, including the Hanukkah party that Sunday.

Peter was raised a “good Catholic boy,” according to his wife Virginia, but found out shortly before his death that his maternal grandmother, and therefore he, was Jewish.

Speaking to News24’s Sharri Markson on Wednesday, Virginia said she had been considering conversion for “quite some time,” sparked actually by when she started working at a Chabad school in June 2017, just 6.5 months after the two got married.

“When I started working there, Peter’s cousin said, ‘You do know Peter’s Jewish? His grandmother was a Cohen.’ I didn’t know that.”

Virginia Meagher begins journey to Judaism

“But, with the events of December [2025], my contemplation from 2017 onwards was solidified, and I made the decision in February [2026] that I would start the journey to conversion,” she told Markson.

“This is my way of honoring him, them [the victims]. I may not have taken his name when we got married, but what ran through his blood, his history, is undeniable, and it should be celebrated and honored.”

Additionally, Virginia spoke of how her late husband’s photos have actually been instrumental in helping the police to piece together the last moments of the events and who was located where.

Some of the photos were uncovered only recently, as Peter’s camera was stolen in the immediate aftermath of the attack and pawned a few days later.

New South Wales Police arrested the suspect in May. The suspect had also been working as the tragic Hanukkah event’s photographer when he stole his peer’s camera.

Recovered camera offers final glimpse of Bondi victims

After recovering the camera and its data, police returned the equipment to Virginia last week.

“Having these images returned had a dual effect: firstly, the reminder that some of the people, either the subject or in the background, are no longer with us, having been murdered,” she told News24.

“Secondly, that these beautiful, innocent, everyday people, enjoying the event, were the last things in front of Peter’s eyes/lens. I am very moved by the images, extremes of both grief and comfort.”

Among the recovered photos are the last images of Chabad Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was shot and killed as he tried to plead with the gunman to stop shooting.

The Jerusalem Post reached out to Virginia Meagher for comment.

This post was originally published on here.