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National Security Minister MK Itamar Ben-Gvir has appointed six members of bereaved families from the Choosing Life Forum as official inspectors under the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law, Ben-Gvir confirmed on Wednesday.

Among those appointed are Herzl Hajaj, father of Lt. Shir Hajaj, who was murdered in the Armon Hanatziv ramming attack, and Boaz Kokia, father of Sgt. Ron Kokia, who was murdered in a terrorist attack in Arad.

The official inspectors will play a central role in overseeing the conditions of the terrorists sentenced to death, and are granted supervisory powers regarding the implementation of the law.

“The Death Penalty for Terrorists Law is intended to restore deterrence to the State of Israel and make clear to every terrorist that anyone who chooses to murder Jews will pay the highest possible price,” Ben-Gvir stated.

“No one is more deserving than families who have paid the heaviest price in the fight against terrorism to be part of the oversight mechanism for implementing the law. This appointment reflects recognition of the pain of terror victims and their right to be partners in the struggle for justice and deterrence.”

Law will allow inspectors to be present at execution

The law will also allow inspectors to be present during the execution of death sentences as part of their oversight and monitoring role.

“For years, we fought against the favorable conditions enjoyed by the murderers of our loved ones in order to create deterrence and prevent the next murder. I would like to thank National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir for the revolution he has led regarding terrorists imprisoned in Israel. For years, terrorists enjoyed conditions and benefits that were beyond reason, while the families of those murdered and injured were left to cope alone with the pain and loss. Minister Ben-Gvir led a profound change in this policy and restored the understanding that a terrorist’s place is in prison under minimal conditions, not at a summer camp funded by Israeli citizens,” Herzl Hajaj said on behalf of the families.

“Our appointment as official inspectors is a direct continuation of that same approach. It sends a clear message that the State of Israel stands with the victims, not with the murderers. For us, this is a mission carried out in the name of our loved ones who were murdered and on behalf of all Israeli citizens. We will work to ensure that the law is fully implemented, out of commitment to justice, deterrence, and the security of the state. Terrorists must know that anyone who chooses to murder Jews will bear full responsibility for their actions, and the State of Israel will do whatever is necessary to protect its citizens and ensure that justice is done.”

The Knesset plenum approved on Wednesday to grant Likud MK Tally Gotliv immunity after she was indicted for disclosing and publishing classified confidential information in violation of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) law by exposing the identity of a Shin Bet officer. 

In the final vote, 61 lawmakers voted in favor, and 48 voted against.

The Knesset’s House Committee on Monday approved granting Gotliv immunity with eleven lawmakers, all from the coalition, voting in favor. Three opposition lawmakers voted against, after three full days of discussions on the matter. The Knesset plenum is required to hold a vote on Gotliv’s immunity to finalize the decision.

Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, who filed the indictment, had attended two of the lengthy debates last week. She had told the panel that Gotliv created a severe security risk by exposing the personal details of a Shin Bet agent during wartime.

Goltiv’s argument has centered around the claim that sharing the officer’s identity was warranted, and she has not denied doing so.

Immunity from criminal prosecution

Under the Knesset Members’ Immunity Law, Gotliv was able to request that the Knesset grant her immunity from criminal prosecution before the case proceeded to court.

Ahead of the final vote plenum vote on Wednesday, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein released a statement that he would not be voting in favor of Gotliv’s immunity. He argued that granting Gotliv immunity could set a precedent that would allow other lawmakers, including left-wing or Arab MKs, to receive immunity after violating the law as well.

“If Arab Knesset members had revealed the names of Mossad agents and Shin Bet officers, would we also stay silent? There are consequences to everything,” he said. 

אם חברי הכנסת הערבים היו חושפים שמות של סוכני מוסד ואנשי שב״כ? גם אז היינו שותקים?

זאת הסיבה שאצביע היום בעד הסרת החסינות לח״כ גוטליב >> pic.twitter.com/ybZLOVNJA8

— Yuli Edelstein 🇮🇱 יולי אדלשטיין (@YuliEdelstein) June 17, 2026

No other coalition MKs have spoken out openly about voting against Gotliv’s immunity. 

Coalition whip MK Ofir Katz opened the discussion, in which he expressed his support for Gotliv’s immunity and sharply criticized Baharav-Miara, arguing that she was attempting to interfere with the government’s work.

Baharav-Miara filed the indictment against Gotliv in May for publishing the identity of the partner of protest leader Shikma Bressler, who, according to the indictment, was a Shin Bet employee.

The attorney-general has argued that Gotliv’s actions do not allow her to qualify for parliamentary immunity and that she created a severe security risk through the exposure of the Shin Bet officer.

The attorney-general presented committee members last week with a top-secret document containing a professional opinion issued by the Shin Bet.

MKs who were shown the ultra-classified Shin Bet opinion said it stated that Gotliv endangered the life of an agent, as well as his children and family, according to a Channel 13 report.

Shin Bet agents’ lives at risk

The main part of the classified opinion detailed real examples of Shin Bet employees whose names were exposed, putting their lives at real and immediate risk, the report added.

Goltiv told the panel that she did the act knowingly, arguing that it was justified and that she should receive immunity as an MK. Gotliv also focused for multiple hours on renewing claims that treason had taken place during the October 7 attacks and presented various theories on the matter.

Her remarks involved a lengthy personal attack against Baharav-Miara. She also screened a video last week to the panel with clips that she presented as “evidence of betrayal” during the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. She made accusations of treason that she claimed took place during the attacks, presenting various theories to the panel and sparking outrage from opposition MKs.

The charge listed in the indictment against Gotliv is revealing and publishing confidential information under the Shin Bet law.

“Why are you indicting me? Because you do not know what to do with me. I acted under the authority of my immunity. I exposed [anti-judicial reform activist Shikma] Bressler’s partner,” Gotliv told last week’s panel.

Opposition coordinator Yesh Atid MK Merav Ben-Ari told the panel that “in all the hours Gotliv spoke, she did not once address the offense she is here for today.

“Not only did she take no responsibility, but she amplified the offense she committed. She provided no testimony or shred of evidence to support her claims,” Ben-Ari added.

Opposition lawmakers repeatedly spoke against committee chairperson Katz’s conduct during the debates and penned a letter to Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana (Likud) about it. They objected to the fact that he continuously kicked out MKs for interrupting Gotliv, while he allowed Gotliv to interrupt the A-G as she presented her stance to the panel.

Lawmakers were not allowed to interrupt if they did not want to be removed from the panel, and the rules stipulated that only MKs who participated in all meetings on the matter would be eligible to vote. Attendance for at least half the duration of a meeting would be considered participation. As a result, some opposition lawmakers were unable to partake in the deciding vote.

Ahead of the first Knesset debate on Monday, Baharav-Miara wrote a letter to members of the panel, requesting that Gotliv’s immunity be denied.

She explained that the indictment against Gotliv was filed on the basis of “professional, objective, and good-faith discretion,” and that none of the grounds for parliamentary immunity applied in her case.

The Movement for Quality Government warned last week against the decision to grant Gotliv immunity, stating that parliamentary immunity was not being applied properly.

The organization noted that the Knesset committee “chose to protect an elected official who is accused of a serious offense, the disclosure and publication of classified information in violation of the Shin Bet Law, a publication which, according to reports, endangered the life of a Shin Bet official and his family.”

“Parliamentary immunity is intended to protect the work of the Knesset and the freedom of action of elected officials, and not to serve as a shield against criminal proceedings,” the group added.

It further stated that the Knesset should not be “turned into a safe haven for criminals,” and called on lawmakers to reject the immunity request in the upcoming final plenum vote.

The 11 MKs in favor of Gotliv’s immunity were all from the coalition: Katz, Nissim Vaturi, Amit Halevi, Moshe Saada, Avichay Boaron, and Miki Zohar (all Likud), Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionist Party), Uriel Busso and Yosef Taieb (Shas), Yitzhak Goldknopf (UTJ), and Limor Son Har-Melech (Otzma Yehudit).

The three lawmakers who voted against were Oded Forer (Yisrael Beytenu), Naor Shiri, and Merav Ben-Ari (Yesh Atid).

The indictment against Gotliv was filed in May, based on her publishing a January 24, 2024, screenshot from the website Edna Karnaval that included the full name of Bressler’s partner and claims tying him to alleged contacts with then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar before the October 7 massacre.

Karnaval is described by the indictment as having a “critical and blunt” style, especially toward public officials.

The screenshot, according to the indictment, included a headline alleging that Mossad chief David Barnea had received information from the US that they had intercepted calls between Bressler’s partner and Sinwar four days before October 7.

The article further claimed that Barnea had summoned Bressler to a meeting, and that the Prime Minister’s Office had later issued a denial of Gotliv’s earlier statements.

The indictment said that the post received in excess of 400,000 views, 1,000 comments, 1,000 likes, and 500 shares. It said that Gotliv’s X/Twitter account had over 65,000 followers at the start of the relevant period, and over 90,000 by the time the indictment was filed.

Prosecutors alleged that Gotliv published the name of the Shin Bet employee knowingly

Prosecutors alleged that Gotliv revealed and published the name of the Shin Bet employee and his relationship with Bressler “knowingly, deliberately, continuously, demonstratively, and repeatedly.”

The indictment said that the post remained available online from the time of publication until the indictment was filed, and that Gotliv did not remove it from her account.

The indictment further said that Gotliv stood by the publication, repeatedly published similar statements in which she again identified Bressler’s partner as a Shin Bet employee, and publicly stated that she had no intention of removing, or apologizing for, what she had written.

The Mossad denied the claim at the time, calling it a “recycled falsehood” and saying Barnea had “never met, spoken to, or invited Shikma Bressler to a meeting.”

Earlier in May, Defense Minister Israel Katz signed a certificate of confidentiality ahead of the indictment filing, clearing a procedural obstacle that had delayed the case.

Sarah Ben-Nun contributed to this report. 

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir announced on Wednesday that the pilot program to try out women serving in tank units will begin in November, despite opposition from about one-third of the hesder yeshivas that provide significant numbers of religious Zionist combat soldiers.

Zamir said that at most, the female tank pilot program will lead to a single company of tanks crewed by women, a relatively small number out of the multiple brigades of tanks, each of which is made up of multiple battalions, and each battalion made up of multiple companies.

He also warned that female tank soldiers must meet the general physical standards to serve in the unit. He added that past pilot programs in other areas had seen an unusual number of injured women during training processes, which he said should be avoided.

On June 11, 25 hesder yeshivas said they would ban their Orthodox religious Zionist male students from joining the tank corps in protest of the pilot program.

According to the IDF, the program is only a pilot, and it remains unclear whether it will lead to women serving permanently in the tank corps.

Female soldier tank program will have women-only units

Furthermore, the pilot program involves establishing women-only tank units, such that neither secular nor religious men would be serving with women within the same tank or unit, the primary concern of the religious Zionist institutions that are protesting.

From their perspective, it is a matter of modesty and could lead to problematic mingling between men and women in such a small, secluded space if men and women were to serve in the same tank or tank units.

Traditionally, religious Zionist hesder graduates serve in male-only units, and usually in units that are overwhelmingly only hesder students or at least men from Orthodox backgrounds.

The IDF appreciates the hesder program because virtually all of its students, though they serve less time than other Israeli societal sectors, serve in combat units, and many go on to become mid and high-level officers.

But the IDF was ordered by the High Court of Justice on April 13 that it was under a legal duty to implement, as far as possible, equal opportunity for women and men in access to combat roles, including beginning its long-delayed pilot integration of women into the tank corps by the November 2026 draft cycle.

IDF pushing to fill combat roles with women

Moreover, given that the government has failed to integrate haredim into the IDF both before and since October 7, 2023, and that the IDF has lost up to around 25,000 soldiers to physical or emotional harm in recent years, leaving a massive gap in human resources, the IDF has been pushing hard to fill combat roles with women.

One woman was recently accepted into the elite General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal), and women have taken on relatively new ground-combat command roles as brigade and battalion commanders, and even as a missile boat commander.

Despite the IDF putting out a public response last week, noting the various ways it is still protecting hesder students from serving with women in tank units, the number of institutions barring their students nearly doubled on June 11 from an original 13.

That said, two-thirds of the hesder yeshivas have not yet pulled out.

Some may be waiting to see how the pilot program pans out and whether the IDF keeps its promise to maintain separate tank units for women, whereas artillery and infantry units now have mixed male and female units.

A memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran has opened a new political fight before the public has seen the full text of the agreement.

Washington and Tehran are presenting the framework as a step toward ending the latest phase of the war, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and creating room for further nuclear negotiations. But in Israel, the deal is being judged by a more urgent test: whether it could restrict Israel’s freedom to act against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The known contours of the agreement remain incomplete.

US President Donald Trump has said the agreement is signed, while a formal ceremony is expected in Geneva. Reports so far indicate that the memorandum of understanding (MoU) would create a 60-day ceasefire window, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, start technical talks on Iran’s nuclear program, and open the door to some form of sanctions relief, oil waivers, or access to frozen Iranian assets.

But the official text has not been released, and descriptions from US, Iranian, and media sources differ on key details.

Reported framework does not settle Iranian nuclear question

That uncertainty is central to the debate. The reported framework does not yet clearly settle what restrictions Iran would accept on uranium enrichment, what happens to its existing enriched uranium stockpile, how sanctions relief would be sequenced, what enforcement mechanisms would apply, or whether Lebanon and Hezbollah are formally covered.

Iran has pushed for a cessation of hostilities across all fronts, including Lebanon, while Israel has made clear that it does not consider itself bound by a US-Iran arrangement that could limit its operations against Hezbollah.

Joe Truzman, a US-based independent Middle East analyst, said any assessment remains tentative until the document itself is made public.

“An official version of the MoU has not been released; thus, most of my answers are based on what has been reported in the media about the deal,” he told The Media Line. “There are still questions about subjects like the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and other key issues because an official copy of the MoU has not been released.”

The deal is already producing political divisions in several arenas at once. In the United States, supporters can argue that President Trump is moving toward ending a costly war, easing pressure on energy markets, and forcing Iran into a negotiating framework.

Critics, including some Iran hawks, argue that the agreement may stop short of dismantling Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities while giving Tehran economic relief. In Iran, hard-liners have also voiced objections, fearing that the agreement may require concessions on the nuclear issue.

In Israel, opposition to the emerging framework is not uniform in its reasoning, but much of the Jewish-Zionist political spectrum is converging around one demand: No US-Iran deal should restrict Israel’s freedom of action in Lebanon.

Truzman said the politics are difficult for both governments. “Both the United States and Iran are attempting to sell the deal domestically,” he said. “Interestingly, both countries are receiving negative responses from their bases. Hardliners in Iran believe that the deal will result in significant nuclear concessions, while critics in the United States view the agreement as giving the regime a lifeline.”

He added, “Giving money to a regime that the United States has spent years trying to undermine does not look like victory.”

Still, Truzman cautioned that US criticism of the deal should account for the damage Iran has already absorbed. “Though I believe that critics of the deal in the United States are not fully taking into account the overall picture,” he said.

“Iran has gone through years of sanctions, which have decimated its economy. The Rial is nearly worthless. Iran’s proxies have been decimated but are slowly recovering. Due to American and Israeli action, key figures in the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance are now a memory. The region, at this moment, is safer, but that won’t last forever.”

That divide frames the broader argument over the agreement. One view sees it as a concessionary framework that may give Tehran economic oxygen without resolving the nuclear, missile, or proxy issues.

Another sees it as a pragmatic pause after Iran suffered severe military, economic, and political losses. Under that reading, the deal may not represent a clean victory for any side but a temporary arrangement after a conflict in which each actor paid a price, and none achieved all of its stated goals.

Irina Tsukerman, president of Scarab Rising and a political analyst, offered a more skeptical reading of the deal’s political logic. She told The Media Line the agreement should be understood less as a historic diplomatic achievement and more as an effort by President Trump to reframe an inconclusive outcome.

“No one should be surprised,” Tsukerman said. “Anyone who watched Trump’s handling of Ukraine and still believed Israel would ultimately be treated differently was paying attention to campaign rhetoric rather than the record of his actions.”

Tsukerman placed the Iran file within what she described as a broader pattern in President Trump’s foreign policy.

“Trump’s political identity has long revolved around transactionalism, personal survival, reputation management, and the pursuit of outcomes that can be marketed as victories regardless of their strategic consequences,” she said. “The developing Iran agreement fits squarely within that pattern.”

Her argument is not that the deal lacks political usefulness. Rather, she sees it as a way to manage the political aftermath of a confrontation that has not produced a decisive strategic shift.

“Iran survived. The regime survived. Its proxy network survived. Its ability to influence regional events survived. The nuclear question remains unresolved. The transformative outcome that many supporters anticipated never materialized,” Tsukerman said.

Under that reading, the agreement helps recast an unfinished confrontation as a political success. “The agreement becomes a mechanism for redefining success,” she said.

“The objective becomes narrative management rather than strategic transformation. The purpose is not defeating Iran’s regional project. The purpose is creating a political exit that allows Trump to declare victory and move on.”

The deal could still have practical effects. A reopening of the Strait of Hormuz would matter for global energy markets and for countries whose economies depend on Gulf shipping.

The conflict severely disrupted maritime traffic, and even a partial restoration of movement would reduce pressure on oil prices, insurers, shipping companies, and Gulf economies. European leaders have welcomed the prospect of reopening the strait, while France and Britain have discussed a possible European or multinational maritime mission to help secure navigation if the ceasefire holds.

Yet the Hormuz issue also shows the limits of the arrangement. Reopening the strait would ease the immediate crisis, but it would not erase the fact that Iran demonstrated its capacity to use the waterway as leverage. Shipping companies may remain cautious until they receive practical assurances on demining, security guarantees, and the durability of the agreement.

A European mission could help stabilize traffic, but Iran’s position on foreign military activity in the waterway could make such an initiative diplomatically sensitive.

The nuclear file remains just as unsettled. Reports suggest the MoU would open a 60-day period for technical negotiations, but the precise obligations remain contested.

US officials have described a framework that would eventually prevent Iran from developing or acquiring nuclear weapons and require steps on enriched uranium. Iranian descriptions have emphasized different sequencing, including sanctions relief, oil waivers, and access to frozen funds.

Until the official text is released, it remains unclear whether the agreement freezes the issue, advances toward a durable settlement, or simply postpones the hardest decisions.

Billions of dollars may be released to Iran

The frozen-assets issue is likely to remain one of the most politically charged elements.

Reports have referred to the possible release of billions of dollars in Iranian assets, though accounts differ on the amount and the conditions. For opponents of the deal, this raises the concern that economic relief could strengthen a regime still accused by its adversaries of supporting armed groups across the region.

For supporters or more pragmatic observers, conditional access to funds may be part of the cost of securing de-escalation, reopening Hormuz, and keeping Iran at the table.

Truzman said Tehran emerged from the conflict damaged, even if the regime endured. “Lastly, what Tehran ‘gained’ from this conflict was survival and an opportunity to recover,” he said.

“Yet that outcome should not obscure the scale of its losses. Supreme Leader Khamenei is dead, scores of senior military and political figures have been killed, and Iran’s armed forces have suffered significant damage.”

“The regime now faces a long and difficult path to rebuilding its military capabilities and restoring its regional influence,” Truzman said.

“For the moment, the Middle East is safer from the threat of Iranian hegemony. However, that window may be temporary. The regime’s hardliners have shown little interest in moderation and every intention of restoring the status quo that existed before the war.”

For Israel, Lebanon is becoming the most immediate test of the agreement’s regional meaning. The question is less whether Iran has been weakened than whether Iran and Hezbollah can recover under diplomatic cover.

Israeli politicians across ideological lines have reacted with concern to any arrangement that would connect the Iranian and Lebanese arenas. Israeli lawmaker Ohad Tal, of the Religious Zionism party, rejected the emerging framework outright.

“The agreement with the Iranians is a bad deal. Period,” Tal told The Media Line. “It leaves them with their uranium, their missile program, and their ability to spread terrorism around the world, while funneling money to the regime that will only strengthen it and advance its extremist ambitions.”

Tal said that, according to reports, the agreement is temporary and would not prevent renewed conflict but “only postpone the return to fighting.” He said Lebanon must remain outside the US-Iran framework. “What happens in Iran is President Trump’s issue, but what happens in Lebanon is Israel’s concern alone,” Tal said.

“The United States and Iran are not parties to what takes place in Lebanon.”

A similar concern came from Yisrael Beitenu lawmaker Yevgeny Sova, though he framed it as a strategic and diplomatic failure rather than only an ideological objection. Sova told The Media Line his party views the emerging agreement “not only as a strategic failure of the government, but also as a real danger to the future of the state.”

Sova said Israel must keep the Iranian and Lebanese questions separate. “It was a strategic mistake to connect the two arenas,” Sova said. “The Lebanese arena and the Iranian arena must not be connected.”

He also said Israeli leaders must manage disagreement with Washington without turning it into a public rupture. “You need to know how to say no to an American president,” he said. “Not to fight with him, not to smear him, certainly not to use the relationship with the Americans for political needs, but there is no doubt that you have to know how to say no.”

His warning over frozen assets was direct. As long as Iran’s ayatollah regime remains in power and receives money that had been frozen, Sova said, Israel should assume the funds will be used for terrorism. “Israel must change its approach,” he said, warning that acting as it did before October 7 would be “very dangerous” in the period ahead.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid put the responsibility on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rather than on the military or Israeli society. Lapid said Israeli citizens stood firm during the campaign, but that Netanyahu “collapsed at the moment of truth.”

He argued that Israel had been left with an impossible choice: either a direct confrontation with its most important ally or a waiver of Israeli interests and the right to self-defense. “Israeli citizens behaved amazingly,” Lapid said. “This is Netanyahu’s failure.”

Other Israeli lawmakers reached different conclusions from different ideological starting points.

Yair Golan, chairman of The Democrats, said the agreement “binds the IDF’s hands in Lebanon” and strips Israel of its freedom of security action.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Israel is “not a contractor for any superpower” and is not bound by agreements that close off its ability to defend its citizens.

Avigdor Liberman, chairman of Yisrael Beitenu, called the agreement a “terrible diplomatic disaster” and said Israel should urgently tell the United States that it rejects any linkage between the Iranian and Lebanese arenas.

Arab members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, drew a different conclusion.

Member of Knesset Aida Touma-Suleiman, from the Hadash party, cautiously welcomed the possibility of a US-Iran agreement, saying she hoped it would produce a real ceasefire across all fronts and end civilian suffering. She accused the Israeli government of repeatedly trying to sabotage diplomatic progress and argued that a policy of “more force and more force” would not lead anywhere good.

Ta’al lawmaker Ahmad Tibi said his faction had opposed the war from the beginning and mocked the presentation of the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz as a historic achievement, saying the strait had been open before the war.

Taken together, the Israeli reaction is not a single political response.

Coalition hard-liners reject any arrangement that limits Israeli military action. Opposition figures across the Zionist left, center, and right accuse Netanyahu of mishandling the relationship with Washington and allowing Lebanon to be folded into the Iran file.

Arab lawmakers see the possible agreement as an opportunity to stop the fighting and reduce civilian suffering. But across much of the Jewish-Zionist political spectrum, the central demand is the same: No agreement with Iran should restrict Israel’s ability to act against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Tsukerman said Israeli operations could face new diplomatic pressure if Washington makes preservation of the agreement its priority. “This helps explain why Israel’s interests increasingly appear subordinate to the preservation of negotiations,” Tsukerman said.

“Once securing an agreement becomes the overriding objective, every action capable of disrupting that objective becomes a problem.”

She added, “Israeli military operations against Hezbollah, Iranian assets, or affiliated networks cease being viewed primarily through the lens of security and begin being viewed through the lens of political inconvenience.”

In that context, she said, the Lebanese front cannot be treated as separate from Iran’s regional power. “The Lebanon component is especially revealing,” Tsukerman said. “Hezbollah remains one of Iran’s most valuable strategic assets. Any serious effort to diminish Iranian regional influence necessarily involves confronting Hezbollah’s military capabilities.”

“Yet once negotiations become paramount, Hezbollah transforms into a variable that threatens the desired political outcome,” she said. “Israel is expected to absorb risks, postpone objectives, and tolerate threats in order to preserve diplomatic momentum.”

Truzman also said Israel is unlikely to stop acting against Hezbollah, even if a US-Iran agreement holds. “Despite the close relationship between Israel and the United States, it is highly unlikely that Israel will completely stop its attacks on Hezbollah,” he said.

“Israel discovered on October 7, 2023, that it cannot risk allowing an enemy to build up forces on its borders. While the relationship with the United States is important to Israel, Jerusalem is the ultimate decision-maker on how it will proceed with Hezbollah.”

He said direct attacks on Iran and continued action in Lebanon would be viewed differently in the context of the agreement. “The only way Israel could play spoiler in a deal between the U.S. and Iran is if Jerusalem directly attacked Iran,” Truzman said.

“Separately, Israel cannot afford to allow Beirut to become a strike-free zone where Hezbollah can rebuild its forces. Thus, it is likely that we will see additional Israeli strikes in Beirut in the future if they are required, but I think Jerusalem will be very cautious when carrying it out.”

That distinction may become crucial. Israel may seek to avoid openly derailing a US-Iran agreement, but it is unlikely to accept a situation in which Hezbollah can rebuild freely in Lebanon.

Washington may try to limit escalation; Israel may try to preserve operational freedom; Iran may try to include Lebanon in the ceasefire; Hezbollah may test the boundaries. The deal’s durability may depend not only on Washington and Tehran but also on whether these secondary fronts can be contained.

The role of mediators and external actors adds another layer. Qatar and Pakistan have played roles in moving the talks forward, while Europe is now discussing how to support the reopening of Hormuz.

For some observers, mediation is necessary because neither Washington nor Tehran can easily negotiate directly after months of war. For others, the growing influence of regional intermediaries raises concerns that the final arrangement may reflect the interests of actors whose priorities do not fully align with Israel’s.

Tsukerman pointed to Qatar as one example. “The role of Qatar deserves particularly close scrutiny,” she said. “Doha has spent years positioning itself as an indispensable intermediary in regional affairs.”

She made a similar argument about Turkey. “Under Erdoğan, Ankara has increasingly defined itself through opposition to Israeli policies and ambitions,” Tsukerman said. “Anti-Israel rhetoric has become a regular feature of Turkish political discourse. Turkish regional objectives frequently place Ankara at odds with Jerusalem across multiple theaters.

A diplomatic environment shaped by Turkish influence is unlikely to prioritize Israel’s security concerns in the same manner that Israel itself would.”

Russia is another actor watching the outcome closely, given its interest in preserving Iran’s regional position. Tsukerman said, “The Putin factor deserves equal attention. No major power benefits more from Iran’s survival than Russia.”

Still, the agreement cannot be reduced to a single actor’s agenda. For Washington, it may be an attempt to stop a costly war and prevent further disruption to global energy markets.

For Tehran, it may be a way to secure regime survival, economic relief, and time to rebuild. For Israel, it may be a diplomatic framework that risks constraining freedom of action in Lebanon.

For Gulf states, it may bring relief from the immediate danger of escalation while confirming that Iran remains a durable regional force. For Europe, the priority is freedom of navigation and avoiding another energy crisis.

The official text of the MoU will determine how much of the current debate is based on real obligations and how much is based on competing political messaging.

The questions to watch are whether Iran’s nuclear activities are frozen, rolled back, or merely deferred; whether sanctions relief is conditional or front-loaded; whether frozen assets are released and under what restrictions; whether Hormuz reopens safely and permanently; whether a European maritime mission is accepted or challenged; and whether Lebanon is formally included in the arrangement or only politically linked to it.

For now, the agreement appears to offer enough ambiguity for several sides to claim victory. President Trump can argue that he stopped the war and reopened Hormuz.

Iran can argue that it survived and secured a path toward economic relief. Gulf states can welcome de-escalation while reassessing their security assumptions. Israel can insist that it is not bound by any arrangement that limits its ability to act against Hezbollah.

That same ambiguity may become the agreement’s weakness. If the MoU does not resolve Iran’s nuclear future, define the terms of sanctions relief, clarify the release of frozen assets, and settle whether Lebanon is part of the deal, it may not end the conflict. It may only move it into a different phase.

The central question is not whether Washington and Tehran can announce an agreement. They already have. The question is whether the agreement changes the strategic reality, or simply pauses the confrontation long enough for each side to describe survival, restraint, or de-escalation as victory.

B’nai Brith Canada has expressed concern about the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ (CMHR) upcoming Nakba Exhibit amid reports of foreign interference.

‘Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present’ is set to open June 27, 2026. It is advertised as an exploration of human rights violations related to the “ongoing forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians,” featuring personal stories told through objects and video testimonies, art, photos, and text.

While CMHR said the exhibition is being developed in collaboration with an advisory network of scholars,

B’nai Brith said it remains unclear if museum officials held discussions with “credible historians” or received “appropriate, informed perspectives from Jewish and Israeli Canadians.”

“Our concerns surround the proposed contents of this exhibit, as well as the Museum’s failure to engage in a proper, meaningful, and transparent consultation process with appropriate stakeholders,” the advocacy organization said in a statement on Tuesday.

Concerns CMHR’s exhibit will fuel hatred, promote revisionism

“At a time when Canada is experiencing a national crisis of antisemitism, including as a result of distortions of Zionism and Israeli history, we are concerned that CMHR’s exhibit will fuel hatred and promote revisionist narratives.”

B’nai Brith’s concerns about CMHR’s lack of transparency come amid the recent revelation that foreign actors may have been involved in the consultation or development of the exhibition.

Internal emails obtained by the National Post indicated that senior officials at CMHR had a discussion with the Palestinian representative to Canada, in which she attempted to get involved in the exhibition.

According to the email dated December 4, 2024, Ramsey Zeid (president of the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba) asked Matthew Cutler, CMHR’s vice-president of exhibitions, and Isha Khan, the museum’s CEO on December 4, 2024, if the ambassador of Palestine to Canada could meet with CMHR staff about the Nakba Exhibit to “receive an update on the progress of the project, understand where we currently stand, and explore how she might be able to assist.”

On December 6, Cutler responded to Zeid, agreeing to the meeting.

The Palestinian General Delegation confirmed to the National Post that the meeting took place, but would not disclose what was discussed.

Neil Oberman, a Montreal lawyer, told the National Post that there is a serious question as to whether the CMHR has violated its own mandate under the Museums Act, which explicitly states that its purpose is to “explore the subject of human rights, with special but not exclusive reference to Canada, in order to enhance the public’s understanding of human rights, to promote respect for others and to encourage reflection and dialogue.”

B’nai Brith then weighed in with its Tuesday statement, saying that it is “unacceptable that a member of a foreign official delegation to Canada may have influenced, or been positioned to influence, a Crown corporation’s decision-making.”

B’nai Brith called for a full and transparent investigation into the matter, and asked that the CMHR delay the exhibit’s opening in the meantime until the allegations of foreign interference have been fully investigated.

“Anything less would further undermine its credibility and accentuate the potential harm caused to the Jewish community, and all Canadians.”

The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, has joined the investigation into sedative drugs found in baby fruit puree jars consumed by several toddlers in Jerusalem, as police examine whether the substances were inserted into the products deliberately.

The Health Ministry confirmed Wednesday that laboratory tests found clonazepam and lorazepam in jars of Prinok baby fruit puree sold at two branches of Zol Begadol, a discount supermarket chain in Jerusalem.

The products were purchased at the chain’s Mahane branch at 113 Jaffa Street and at another branch at 214 Jaffa Street, both in the center of the capital.

Clonazepam and lorazepam belong to the benzodiazepine family, a class of prescription drugs used as sedatives, anti-anxiety medications, and other treatments.

The Health Ministry issued immediate closure orders for both Zol Begadol branches where the jars were purchased and involved additional enforcement authorities, including Israel Police.

At least four toddlers were hospitalized at Hadassah-University Medical Center in Ein Kerem, a major Jerusalem hospital, after consuming fruit puree and showing symptoms that included weakness, apathy, and confusion. Blood tests later found traces of sedative substances. The children have since been released from the hospital.

On Tuesday, the Health Ministry instructed hospitals in the Jerusalem area to increase their attention to cases involving infants and young children arriving with symptoms that could match exposure to benzodiazepines. Hospitals were also asked to report any similar cases that may have occurred in recent weeks.

Police examine criminal and nationalist motives

Jerusalem Police opened an investigation immediately after the children were hospitalized and sedatives were found in their blood, police said.

Investigators are carrying out a range of investigative actions, and all directions are being examined, including the possibility that the incident was nationalistically motivated.

Police stressed that no suspects have been arrested or questioned in connection with the suspected insertion of substances into the products. They said it was too early to determine whether the motive was criminal or nationalist.

Investigators are awaiting further Health Ministry findings on where and when the substances entered the products, including whether this occurred at the factory, during transportation, or after the jars arrived at the Jerusalem stores.

No general Prinok recall

The Health Ministry said that, at this stage, it has not ordered a sweeping recall of all Prinok products.

The ministry said there was currently no indication of a defect or malfunction during production and no evidence of contamination at the manufacturing plant. Tests conducted on products from importers were found to be normal, according to the ministry.

The ministry called on parents whose children consumed the product to monitor for behavioral changes, including unusual sleepiness, exhaustion, or confused speech. Parents were told to contact their pediatrician and the Health Ministry hotline at *5400 while noting the possible connection to the product.

The ministry also reminded the public to make sure food products are sealed, intact, properly labeled, and sold in their original packaging.

It advised consumers not to eat products purchased from the two Jerusalem branches, products sold outside their original packaging, products with unusual color, appearance, or smell, or jars whose vacuum mechanism does not work properly when opened.

Company says facts point to malicious external interference

Randi, the company that markets Prinok in Israel, said that the Health Ministry had found no indication of a defect or malfunction during production and no indication of contamination at the plant itself.

“All tests conducted on products from the importer were found to be normal,” the company said.

Randi said the Health Ministry had clarified that the products were safe for consumers and that there was no obstacle to continuing their sale.

“The facts indicate that an external party maliciously inserted foreign substances into the product,” the company said.

The company said it acted transparently with the public and in close coordination with the Health Ministry and all relevant professional authorities once it became aware of the case.

Prinok products have been sold for more than 20 years in supermarket chains across Israel, Randi said.

“We again emphasize that before each use, consumers must make sure that the product is closed, intact, and does not show signs of damage or opening, in accordance with the safety instructions printed on the packaging,” the company said.

One father of children who were taken to the hospital told N12 that his family had initially been questioned by police after the sedatives were found in the children’s blood.

“We were in an investigation for two hours over abuse of helpless minors,” he said. “I have two healthy and well-cared-for children. I was the one who gave them the puree.”

The Health Ministry said it was continuing to examine the case and would update the public as needed.

A man who holds both British and Iranian nationality has been charged with an arson attack in April on a memorial wall in a north London area that is home to a large Jewish community, police said on Wednesday.

Ali Reza Fallahi, 45, has been charged with carrying out the attack on the wall in Golders Green, which contained ​pictures of protesters who were allegedly killed by the Iranian ​state in January. He is due to appear at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday.

“This charge marks another step forward in one of the investigations into the series of arson attacks targeting the Jewish community and Iranian diaspora in London,” said Helen Flanagan, head of counter terrorism policing in London.

A 38-year-old woman who was also arrested in connection with the arson has been released and faces no further action.

This attack is one of many with possible links to Iran

The incident was one of a number of arsons carried out on Jewish sites in Golders Green during a spate of attacks, with police saying they were investigating whether they had possible Iran links.

Two Jewish men were also stabbed, prompting the government to raise the national terrorism threat level to “severe” from “substantial.”

There is no Israeli military presence in Somaliland and no talks for Israel to open a base there, Somaliland’s Defense Minister Mohamed Yusef Ali told Reuters on Wednesday.

Speaking on the sidelines of a business conference in Tel Aviv, he said Israel was training Somaliland’s military and police, but called reports that Israel was in negotiations to establish a military base in Somaliland “rumors.”

Michael Lotem, Israel’s ambassador to Somaliland, declined to comment.

Strategically situated on the Horn of Africa, Somaliland has enjoyed effective autonomy and relative peace and stability since 1991, when it broke away from Somalia as that country descended into civil war.

Israel recognized Somaliland as ​an independent state last December, the first country to formally do so, in a move Somalia ​rejected and termed a “deliberate attack” on its sovereignty.

In February, Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi told Reuters that while Somaliland hopes for future military cooperation with Israel, establishing Israeli military bases had not been discussed.

The Somali Guardian reported on Sunday that Israel had opened an intelligence base in Somaliland and there were discussions over the possible establishment of an Israeli military base.

Israel-Somaliland relations are new but developing quickly

After Israel and Somaliland formally established diplomatic relations in December, the two nations quickly set about building a working infrastructure. Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi and First Lady Fardowsa Mohamed Roble, accompanied by a senior delegation, arrived in Israel on Sunday for further discussion.

This comes a month after Somaliland’s new Ambassador to Israel, Mohamed Hagi, announced that the Embassy of the African Republic will be based in Jerusalem. 

However, these diplomatic ties have not come without backlash. Though Somaliland has had a quiet, under-the-radar relationship with Israel for several years, a coalition of 14 pro-Palestinian nations condemned the alliance, calling it illegal and saying that east Jerusalem was under Israeli occupation.

This was not a concern for Abdullahi at the time, and relations between the two nations persist.

Shir Perets, Miriam Sela-Eitam, Amichai Stein, Greer Fay Cashman, Avi Solomon, Ruby Sadikman, and James Genn contributed to this report.

The rebuttal stage in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s criminal trial continued at the Tel Aviv District Court on Wednesday, with the questioning shifting from the prosecution’s cross-examination to the attorneys for Netanyahu’s co-defendants in the media-related cases.

The hearing was led in part by Sharon Kleinman, the attorney for Yediot Aharonot publisher Arnon “Noni” Mozes, who questioned Netanyahu over the prosecution’s claim that the alleged understandings between Netanyahu and Mozes were reflected in less negative coverage of the prime minister in Yediot Aharonot and Ynet after their sixth meeting in December 2014.

“This thesis by the prosecution is absolutely absurd,” Netanyahu said when asked to respond to the claim that the coverage by the Yediot group had shifted.

Case 2000 centers on conversations between Netanyahu and Mozes ahead of the 2015 election. According to the indictment, Mozes offered to improve coverage of Netanyahu in Yediot Aharonot and Ynet and worsen coverage of his political rivals in exchange for Netanyahu using his influence to promote restrictions on Israel Hayom, the free daily newspaper that posed a major economic threat to Yediot Aharonot.

Netanyahu is charged in the case with fraud and breach of trust, while Mozes is charged with offering and promising a bribe. Both deny wrongdoing.

Prosecution says Yediot, Ynet coverage skewed by corruption

Kleinman’s questioning appeared aimed at taking the prosecution’s cross-examination of Netanyahu and extracting from it the explicit or implicit theses that could affect Mozes’s defense.

In practice, that meant testing the prosecution’s contention that Yediot and Ynet coverage could be treated as part of the alleged benefit offered to Netanyahu, and that a change in tone after the December 2014 meetings supported the prosecution’s narrative.

Kleinman told Netanyahu that after the sixth meeting between him and Mozes in December 2014, the communication between them continued for roughly another month before ending badly, and suggested that there had been less negative coverage during that period.

She then presented several examples of negative coverage and asked Netanyahu to respond, in what appeared to be an effort to challenge whether the coverage actually reflected the prosecution’s theory.

Netanyahu’s answer was consistent with his broader line throughout Case 2000: that Yediot Aharonot and Ynet remained hostile to him, that Mozes had significant influence over the media and political arena, and that the conversations with Mozes were not a corrupt bargain but part of Netanyahu’s attempt to prevent or blunt legislation that would have harmed Israel Hayom.

The questioning came after prosecutor Yonatan Tadmor spent recent hearing days pressing Netanyahu on whether he had sought to give Mozes the impression that he was acting to advance or soften the so-called Israel Hayom bill.

Netanyahu has denied that, saying he opposed the law and sought to stop it. In previous testimony, he has said that if he could not block the bill entirely, he tried to soften it, and that ultimately he dissolved the Knesset, thereby ending its legislative path.

Wednesday’s hearing also took place against the now-familiar backdrop of Netanyahu’s dual role as a criminal defendant and sitting prime minister. Before a break at around noon, Netanyahu said in court, “We are in a diplomatic process with several countries,” while referring to his schedule.

He was expected to leave for the nearby Kirya military headquarters at 2 p.m. for approximately 15 minutes, had another call scheduled for 3 p.m., and was expected to leave the hearing for good at 3:45 p.m., according to the schedule discussed in court.

The trial has repeatedly been affected by Netanyahu’s security and diplomatic schedule, including shortened or canceled hearing days. The court has continued to balance the prime minister’s official duties with the need to move forward in a case that opened in 2020 and in which Netanyahu’s testimony began in December 2024.

After the current section of questioning by the co-defendants’ attorneys concludes, Netanyahu’s own defense team is expected to conduct a short re-examination

Bezeq, Walla owners co-defendants in Case 4000, bribery, fraud, breach of trust

Netanyahu is on trial in three cases. In Case 1000, he is charged with fraud and breach of trust over gifts allegedly received from wealthy businessmen. In Case 2000, he is charged with fraud and breach of trust over the Mozes talks. In Case 4000, he is charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust over allegations that regulatory benefits were advanced for Bezeq in exchange for favorable coverage on Walla.

Shaul and Iris Elovitch, the former controlling owners of Bezeq and Walla, are also defendants in Case 4000 and deny wrongdoing.

Netanyahu denies all charges and has repeatedly described the cases against him as politically motivated. Mozes and the Elovitches also deny wrongdoing.

State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman found that public service improved in most of the seven public bodies examined in a follow-up report published Wednesday, but warned that several key agencies still provide service below the average, especially through telephone call centers.

The special follow-up report by the State Comptroller’s Office examined the quality of service provided by the National Insurance Institute, the Israel Tax Authority, the Population and Immigration Authority, the Transportation Ministry, Amidar, the Israel Electric Corporation, and the Israel Land Authority. The same bodies were reviewed in a previous report published in November 2024, allowing the ombudsman to compare whether lessons were learned.

Englman said public servants must provide efficient, accessible, and respectful service to every person, but that the level of service in some bodies was “still far from sufficient,” mainly in call centers. About a third of the complaints handled by his office each year concern public service, he said, showing how central the issue is for the public.

The report gave each body a weighted score based on three areas: service at physical reception centers, which accounted for 50% of the score; information and services on the body’s website, which accounted for 25%; and telephone call center service, which accounted for 25%.

The proof is in the numbers for public service improvement

The average weighted score for all bodies rose from 70.8 in the previous survey to 73.9 in the current one. Almost every body improved its overall score, except the Transportation Ministry, whose score dropped from 75.6 to 69.5. Englman said the ministry must conduct an internal review because of the decline in its phone service.

The Israel Electric Corporation received the highest weighted score, 87.7, up from 81.1 in the previous survey. It led both in website service, with a score of 96, and call-center service, with 96.7, and also led in-person service, with 79.1.

The Population and Immigration Authority received the lowest overall score for the second survey in a row, though it improved from 59.2 to 63.3. It was dragged down mainly by its telephone service, which scored only 38.6, the lowest of all bodies examined. The authority did improve from its previous call-center score of 31.4, but remained far below the average.

At physical service centers, the average score rose slightly from 70.2 to 70.9. Staff from the Comptroller’s Office conducted 21 visits in January 2026, with three visits to each body, in Jerusalem, the South, and the North. The best scores went to the Israel Electric Corporation, 79.1, and the Transportation Ministry, 75.3. The lowest went to Amidar, 62.8, the Israel Land Authority, 64.6, and the Population Authority, 70.6.

The detailed chart on service centers showed particularly weak performance on language accessibility and opening hours. The average score for language service across the centers was only 33.3, and the average for opening hours was 44.5. By contrast, cleanliness and appearance scored 91.8 on average, accessibility aspects scored 88.1, and access and signage also scored 88.1. Many centers looked orderly and physically accessible, but were harder to use for people who needed service in another language or outside narrow hours.

The greatest improvement was found on websites. The average score for information and online services rose sharply from 65.5 to 77.2. The Israel Electric Corporation led with 96, followed by Amidar at 82.3 and the National Insurance Institute at 79.9. The Tax Authority received the lowest website score, 63.1, followed by the Transportation Ministry at 70.7, the Population Authority at 73.2, and the Israel Land Authority at 75.4.

The report noted that the website survey was adjusted because many bodies now provide personal information through private online areas. Even so, the website heat map showed uneven service. Most bodies listed services online, but the average score for online appointment scheduling was only six-point-four out of 10, and the score for contact options was six-point-six.

Call centers are the biggest areas for worry

The most worrying findings concerned telephone call centers. The average call-center score fell from 77.2 to 76.4, making it the only major service channel that declined. Staff tested each call center by placing 30 calls and checking wait times, callback options, operating hours, human service in languages other than Hebrew, and interactive voice response systems in other languages.

Amidar received the highest call-center score, 97.5, followed by the Israel Electric Corporation at 96.7, the National Insurance Institute at 86.8, and the Israel Land Authority at 86.1. The weakest scores were the Population Authority at 38.6 and the Transportation Ministry at 56.8. The Transportation Ministry’s call-center score dropped from 86 to 56.8.

The call-center heat map showed why the gap matters. The Transportation Ministry received almost no credit for average response time, with zero-point-four out of 10. The Population Authority also scored poorly on response time, three-point-nine, and received zero for leaving a message. The Tax Authority received zero for interactive telephone service in other languages. For people who cannot easily use digital services, including older people, people with limited Hebrew, and those without high digital literacy, the phone line is often the main route to government.

Englman’s report, therefore, presents a mixed picture. Public bodies have improved, especially online, and some, led by the Israel Electric Corporation, now provide comparatively strong service. But the bodies most closely tied to daily bureaucratic needs still leave residents struggling to get answers. 

The test for ministries and public agencies, the comptroller said, is not only whether they publish more information, but whether people can actually reach someone, understand what they must do, and receive service in a reasonable time.

Canadian foreign minister Anita Anand announced the country would provide an additional $100 million in funding to support the UN, the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, and other NGOs last week, within days of UNRWA confirming it had terminated the contracts of 70 staff members in Gaza for ties with UNRWA, according to a statement by the foreign ministry.

The funding assistance brings Canada’s total contribution to $500 million for the Palestinian territories. The financial assistance will reportedly help provide emergency medical assistance, food and nutrition, water, sanitation, shelter, protection services, and stabilization initiatives.

“Today, Canada announced $100 million in funding to deliver urgent humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. The funding will be delivered through the UN, Red Cross, and NGO partners, bringing our overall humanitarian assistance to over half a billion dollars,” Anand announced.

“In addition, we also launched the International Peace Fund for Israel and Palestine with the UK and Australia to support civil society organizations in their grassroots work to build peace between Israelis and Palestinians. To this end, we put forward a $1.8 million commitment. We will keep working with both Israelis and Palestinians and thank all civil society organizations present in Paris today for their contributions.”  

UNRWA’s official announcement statement on the terminations claimed that the action was taken “to mitigate safety and security risks for the refugees the Agency serves,” and it emphasized that Israel had not provided any evidence to back up its accusations, and that the employees’ firing was not intended to be a validation of those claims.

UNRWA terminates 70 staff members for links to terror group Hamas

The UNRWA staff union complained that “making such a decision without a fair and transparent investigation constitutes a clear violation of the principles of justice.”

The terminations followed the referral of 101 current or former UNRWA staff members to the US State Department for suspension or disbarment over their role in the October 7 massacre and/or affiliation with Hamas by USAID’s Office of Inspector-General.

Following the referrals, a representative from UNRWA told The Jerusalem Post, “We take these allegations very, very seriously, and any allegation of neutrality breach made against staff will be taken very seriously, and that includes alleged membership in sanctioned Palestinian groups.”

“We have a zero-tolerance policy for neutrality breaches, and that means there is no place in UNRWA for terrorists, or criminals, or those who don’t share the values of the United Nations,” he continued.

Tzvi Jasper contributed to this report.

Getting to Jerusalem had become part of the story.

With US strikes on Iran, Iranian missile fire toward Israel, and repeated changes to regional air traffic, travel plans were uncertain for many of those trying to reach the country, as well as for tourists and residents wondering when they would be able to leave. For the pastors, theologians, diplomats, and Jewish leaders who came anyway, the disruption gave the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) summit a sharper edge than organizers might have expected.

The Jerusalem Summit, which took place between June 9 and 11, was a three-day gathering to discuss Israel, the Church, and antisemitism. By the time it opened, the regional crisis was no longer background noise. It was part of the atmosphere. But the speakers who took the stage were not focused only on Iran, missiles, or flight schedules. Their warning was that another crisis was taking shape inside parts of the Christian world itself, where support for Israel is being challenged by biblical illiteracy, political resentment, social media narratives, and renewed forms of replacement theology.

Organized by one of the world’s best-known pro-Israel Christian organizations, the gathering offered a view from inside the Christian Zionist movement at a moment of unusual anxiety. Speakers repeatedly argued that anti-Israel sentiment is no longer confined to the political left, Muslim communities, or secular activist circles, but is also emerging from parts of the American and European Christian right.

That concern gave the summit a different tone from a standard Christian Zionist conference. It began with music, formal greetings, and a message from Israel’s president, but the language quickly turned urgent. President Isaac Herzog, addressing the summit by video from the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, described antisemitism as a global challenge that required law enforcement, legal action, and education.

“We are witnessing a very disturbing surge of antisemitism all over the world,” he said. “This is a major challenge for humanity. This is the age-old, perhaps the oldest plague in humanity.”

The president told the Christian leaders that countering antisemitism requires “law enforcement, adjudication, and education,” adding that it cannot be accepted that people “erase Israel off the map, the only nation state of the Jewish people.”

‘We need to act now,’ even amidst concerns with Iran

Dr. Jürgen Bühler, president of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, said organizers called the summit because they saw a crisis on multiple fronts. He said the decision to hold the gathering was made despite regional instability and uncertainty over flights, and described the event itself as “a miracle,” saying organizers had expected some speakers to cancel, but all had agreed to come.

“We are living in a time of emergency. We need to act now,” Bühler told the audience. “That’s why when people came to me, Jürgen, let’s postpone that meeting, maybe next year is a better time. I said, no, we need to act now. We need to come together, and we need to hold that meeting.”

For Bühler, the concern was not only the rise of antisemitism after Oct. 7, but also the fact that anti-Israel arguments are finding space inside conservative Christian circles. He pointed to voices such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes as “the tip of the iceberg,” but said the deeper problem was silence from pastors and church leaders.

“They’re not silent because they are antisemites or they are against the Jewish people,” he said. “I believe most of them, from the bottom of their heart, they have some warm feelings towards the Jews at least. But I believe it’s blatant ignorance and illiteracy by most pastors about Israel. They don’t dare to speak.”

David R. Parsons, ICEJ’s senior vice president and spokesman, told The Media Line that the summit was born from a sense that Christian Zionists could no longer treat the problem as external.

“After Oct. 7, you’ve had this surge of antisemitism growing around the world, and it was not only on the left and then radical Islam, but it was quite shocking to start seeing it come from the American right and especially the American Christian right,” he said. Parsons said some Christians who still hold a favorable view of Israel are now afraid to say so publicly. “There are actually Christians there who have a heart for Israel, a favorable view of Israel, but they’re afraid and intimidated into speaking out.”

Fear of associating with ‘Zionism’ drives division

That fear, Parsons said, now has practical consequences. He pointed to a recent episode in Dublin, where a planned pro-Israel Christian gathering was canceled after pressure on the venue.

“We had a big meeting. They expected 1,000, 2,000 people in this big stadium in downtown Dublin, where I was going to speak,” he said. “All of a sudden, my little graphic poster of me is being spread on the internet that I’m a supporter of genocide, and we want to cancel this event.” For Parsons, the lesson was clear. “I don’t think we have any choice but to start fighting back as Christians against this intimidation,” he said. “If you want to stand with Israel today and be identified as a Christian Zionist, the word Zionist has become, you know, such a negative term. We have to redeem that term.”

The summit’s sharpest internal debate focused on replacement theology, also known as supersessionism, the belief that the Church has replaced Israel in God’s covenant. Rabbi Pesach Wolicki, executive director of Israel365 Action, told The Media Line that the issue is no longer merely academic.

“In the Christian world today, we have a situation where there are actors who are trying to drive a wedge between Jews and Christians, and they’re weaponizing theology,” he said. “And young Christians are not biblically literate. It’s a very big problem.” Wolicki said young Christians who go to church but do not read the Bible are vulnerable to old theological ideas now being used for political purposes. “What we’re seeing now in the last few years is this resurgence of supersessionism, replacement theology, with a political angle to it, saying that the Jewish people really have no right to be in this land, and that it’s not Christian to support Israel.”

Wolicki argued that the theological answer is not complicated, but that a generation unfamiliar with Scripture is less able to recognize it.

“When you look at the Bible, you see over and over again that God promised the land of Israel to the Jewish people,” he said. “And that it’s the most repeated prophecy in the Bible, that the Jewish people will one day come back to the land.” The modern return of the Jewish people, he said, should have been understood by Bible-believing Christians as confirmation rather than contradiction. “The fact that we did it should make every person who reads the Bible say hallelujah,” he said.

The trend, Wolicki said, is most visible in the United States, where some young conservatives have grown suspicious of foreign commitments and resentful of institutions they believe have turned against them. He contrasted that with many conservative Christian communities in Europe and Latin America, which he described as broadly pro-Israel.

“If you look around the world, and you look at European countries or South American countries, most Christians in those countries are pro-Israel,” he said. “So we have to ask ourselves the question, why is it that among American political conservative Christians we’re seeing a rise in anti-Israel rhetoric?”

The generational divide plays a role

He tied that shift to a wider mood of disaffection among younger Americans.

“When you have a generation that feels that they’ve been marginalized and that they don’t have hope for a brighter future, it’s only natural for them to look for a scapegoat,” he said. “This is really an old playbook, where you have a generation that feels that they’ve been marginalized and then someone, demagogues, take advantage of that, and it’s always easy to blame the Jews.”

Dr. Andrew J. “A. J.” Nolte, an associate professor of politics at Regent University’s Robertson School of Government, said the generational challenge begins with how young people now process information.

“I think the biggest problem that we have is that you are dealing with in Gen Z and Gen Alpha post-literate generations from a theological frame of evangelical Christianity and its related traditions that is primarily a biblical faith,” he told The Media Line. “So if you have a biblical faith, you have to read the Bible. How do you get people in a post-literate generation to read?” Nolte said one answer is to reconnect Scripture to place. “You have to connect the Bible to a place. And that place, of course, is the land where it took place,” he said.

For young Christians saturated with audiovisual content, Nolte said, Israel can help move the Bible from an abstract text into a tangible story.

“If it’s not simply a text, but it’s also a text that’s rooted in a place that took place in a place at a time with people, then you can start connecting beyond the page,” he said.

He argued that churches also need to offer young people something social media cannot: “authenticity, community, belonging, and a rhythm of sacred time that separates young people from the constant, ever-present now.”

Despite the numbers often cited by pro-Israel advocates, Nolte said he remains cautiously optimistic about young Christians. He said low support for Israel among younger Christians does not always mean they have adopted a hardened anti-Israel position.

“If you look under the hood,” he said, “what you’re finding is actually they’re not going to a hardened anti-Palestinian position. They’re either I don’t know, or this doesn’t really affect my life, so I don’t need to know. So it’s apathy.”

That distinction matters, he argued, because apathy can still be challenged through education, relationships, and direct experience.

“I think that there’s still time and there’s still opportunity to turn things around despite all the social media noise,” he said. “Things are bad, but they’re not as bad as people think.”

Some voices were left out to narrow the scope

The gathering did not include much direct engagement with Christian critics of Zionism, Palestinian Christian perspectives, or Christians who argue that support for Israel should be separated from theological claims about covenant and prophecy. Its focus was narrower: how pro-Israel Christians understand the erosion of support inside their own religious and political communities, and how they believe the movement should respond.

The question of experience came up repeatedly. For Christian Zionist leaders, bringing young Christians to Israel remains one of the most effective ways to counter online narratives. This year, the summit itself became part of that argument. Delegates arrived in a week of renewed military exchanges, uncertain flights, and security alerts, and organizers presented their presence as evidence that the relationship between Israel and Christians could not wait for calmer conditions.

Inside the hall, the message was not only that Christians should speak about Israel, but that they should encounter the country directly, meet Israelis, and understand Jewish history as more than an abstract biblical theme.

Ambassador George Deek, recently appointed as Israel’s special envoy to the Christian world, said Israel is also trying to place the relationship with Christians on a more formal and strategic footing.

“The creation of, for the first time, of the position of a special envoy to the Christian world, which doesn’t exist in any other country, by the way, is a statement by the state of Israel that we care deeply about our relations with Christians everywhere,” Deek told The Media Line.

As an Arab Christian Israeli diplomat, Deek said his role is first to listen to Christian communities and then to “tell a fuller story of Israel,” one that does not reduce the country to “good people and bad people and villains and heroes.”

Deek said part of that story is Israel’s position as the one country in the region where Christian communities are growing.

“Israel has become this country that overcame challenges and turned curses into blessings and is basically the only place in this region where Christian community is actually growing and where Christians are thriving,” he said. “Christians like me, I’m an Arab Christian, can live in Israel and succeed in every field of society, from government to high-tech to sports and art, and that is the power of Israel.”

He contrasted that with the shrinking Christian communities in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, arguing that the Middle East is losing its ability to tolerate minorities.

The relationship between Israel and Christians, Deek said, is not only a matter of diplomatic outreach, but also a shared regional responsibility.

“Our main task is to create partnerships with our Christian brothers and sisters around the world so we can help the state of Israel and help Christians and other minorities in the region be able to restore human dignity, to restore freedom, and to restore a better future for ourselves in this region,” he said. He also put the connection in explicitly biblical terms. “The people of Israel and Christian people are the only two nations that share the same Bible,” he said. “And therefore, our biblical values are based on the same book.”

For Deek, the role is also personal.

“For me personally, it’s a fulfillment of a longtime dream to connect my two most important identities, being a Christian and being an Israeli,” he said. “And to merge these two and to be a bridge between my country and my fellow Christians.” He called the position “the most important mission I will ever do,” and said he intends “to do everything in my power to succeed with the grace of God.”

The summit faced backlash from the pro-Israel Christian movement

Still, the summit did not avoid criticism of the pro-Israel Christian movement itself. Bishop Robert Stearns, founder of Eagle’s Wings Ministries and pastor of the Tabernacle Church in Orchard Park, New York, warned that Christian Zionists risk speaking mostly to the same aging audience unless they deliberately expand.

“There are only three words that matter in this moment,” he told the gathering. “Expand the base.” Looking around the room, Stearns said the movement needed to reach beyond its traditional demographic. “I love you all dearly, but I am [up] to here with going to Christian Zionist conferences and seeing the same 400 people,” he said. “This room is too old and too Caucasian.”

Stearns urged every participant to mentor at least one person under the age of 25 into Christian Zionist leadership.

“It is time for us to reach out to our African brothers and sisters, our Latin American brothers and sisters, our Asian brothers and sisters,” he said. “If we do nothing else than this when we leave this place, this is what we must do.”

His intervention reflected one of the most repeated anxieties at the summit: the movement’s older generation has strong conviction but limited reach, while younger Christians live in a faster, more visual, and more hostile information environment.

Wolicki said the Jewish side also has work to do. He acknowledged that many Jews remain hesitant about Christian engagement because of centuries of persecution and concerns about proselytizing.

“Jews have a very long historical memory,” he said. “They also are concerned that Christians have an agenda to convert Jews.” But he argued that more relationships between rabbis, pastors, seminaries, and local communities could help build trust. “I think it would definitely help if Jewish leaders everywhere in America had more ongoing relationships with local pastors, with local Christian leaders, and start bringing those communities together in a more cooperative way,” he said. “That would build more trust, and that would filter through.”

Oct. 7 made the ICEJ’s work all the more important

Parsons, for his part, said ICEJ’s work in Israel has long gone beyond public advocacy. He said the Christian Embassy has helped nearly 200,000 Jews immigrate to Israel, supported Holocaust survivors, and funded bomb shelters and humanitarian projects. Since Oct. 7, he said, the organization has worked with displaced families, trauma care for children and elderly Israelis, and rebuilding projects in Gaza border communities.

“We’re rebuilding elderly centers, youth centers, a music therapy center, all sorts of projects, a horse therapy ranch, and petting zoo,” he said, describing efforts in communities such as Be’eri and Kfar Aza.

The goal, he added, is especially urgent for children who lived through years of rocket fire and then the attacks of Oct. 7.

“We want to help them heal and recover.”

The summit left no impression that organizers believe the problem can be solved quickly. Bühler himself said the gathering would likely be the first of many because “the emergency situation will not go away after the summit.” The rift between Israel and parts of the Church, he said, will not be healed overnight.

Yet the message from Jerusalem was that Christian Zionist leaders no longer see the debate as one that can be left to theologians alone or avoided by pastors who fear controversy. For the speakers gathered there, the battle was about antisemitism, biblical illiteracy, Christian identity, and the willingness of church leaders to confront anti-Israel sentiment inside their own communities. Silence, in their view, was no longer neutrality. It was part of the problem.

Qatar will host indirect preparatory meetings between the United States and Iran this week in its capital, Doha, Agence France-Presse reported on Monday.

While Pakistan has taken center stage over recent months as the primary mediator in diplomatic efforts aimed at closing the gaps between the positions of the US and Iran and securing an agreement between them, Qatar has stood out as an influential diplomatic player operating behind the scenes to support the negotiation track and pave the way for the understandings between the two sides, which will be officially signed, as announced in Switzerland, this coming Friday.

According to Qatari-owned London-based outlet Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, during the weeks leading up to the announcement of the agreement, Doha stepped up its diplomatic activity through a series of visits and direct contacts with senior Iranian and American officials, leveraging its relationships with both sides and its extensive experience in managing regional and international mediation files.

According to the report, the talk of an approaching agreement between Washington and Tehran was accompanied by a media campaign against Qatar.

This campaign claimed that operational decisions regarding energy production were made in Qatar in coordination with Iran, either to serve Iran’s interests or to influence developments in the region. 

Qatar accused of behind-the-scenes deals with Iran

A Washington Post report stated on Friday that Qatar offered Iran a “secret deal” before operations Roaring Lion and Epic Fury began on February 28, in exchange for a promise that Iran would not strike Qatar’s energy infrastructure.

Tehran’s Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi said that Iran will be connecting its electrical grid with Qatar. “Studies are in the final stage, and we are beginning the implementation phase,” he said.

It was further claimed that Qatar exaggerated the damage caused to the liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in Ras Laffan, or even fabricated it, as a pretext to shut it down following Iranian missile attacks against it.

Qatar’s International Media Office rejected the claims last Friday, stating they are “completely false and utterly baseless.”

It added that the falsity of the claims is particularly glaring given that Qatar itself was a target of Iranian missile attacks on its territory at the time.

The office further stated that “the accusations are based on fabricated and unreliable materials originating from parties seeking to sabotage mediation efforts, damage Qatar’s reputation, and negatively impact the close strategic partnership between Qatar and the United States.”

Qatari visits to Washington, talks with VP JD Vance

Qatari diplomacy engaged with all parties involved. Tehran hosted a series of visits by high-ranking Qatari delegations, the most recent of which took place just hours before the announcement of the agreement.

The first visit was held this past May, during which Qatari mediators held intensive discussions with senior Iranian officials regarding outstanding issues that had prevented the achievement of final understandings.

The second and third visits took place in June, with consultations focusing on narrowing the remaining gaps between Washington’s and Tehran’s positions and securing the political guarantees necessary for the agreement’s success.

These moves were accompanied by continuous Qatari contact with the US administration and other regional actors.

Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani visited Washington twice, at the end of March and in mid-May, meeting with the US Vice President JD Vance to discuss the implications of the war in the region and the conditions required to reach an agreement.

Qatar’s role in the US-Iran agreement

At the end of May, Doha hosted a senior Iranian delegation that included Parliament Speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, as well as Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The meetings addressed a potential agreement between the United States and Iran to end the war, frozen Iranian assets, maritime navigation security, the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and confidence-building measures between Tehran and Washington.

According to Gulf observers, Qatar’s role was not direct mediation, but rather providing a reliable communication channel between all parties, conveying messages and proposals, and helping to align positions during the critical moments of the negotiations.

A former Qatari prime minister wrote on X/Twitter, “Qatari diplomacy played an important role in resolving the disputes that led to the agreement between the United States and Iran.” He warned against a policy of merely extending temporary ceasefires, stating that this would not bring long-term, stable peace and security. He added: “The current agreement is what could be achieved under the current international and regional circumstances, and it requires continuous and thorough work to build a solid foundation for permanent agreements.”

The Qatari Press Center director-general added, “When doors are closed, Qatar holds the keys to the locks.”

According to him, Qatar’s extensive experience in mediation and crisis resolution provided a significant boost to Pakistan, helping it achieve its goals in stopping the war and reaching a final agreement.

He claimed that “Qatar possesses a rich track record of bringing adversaries to the negotiating table, out of the belief that dialogue is the only path to a solution.”

James Genn contributed to this report.

Yashar Party leader Gadi Eisenkot continues to trend upward in the polls following Sunday’s announcement of the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former PM Naftali Bennett lose ground, a poll conducted by Israeli public broadcaster KAN News found on Tuesday. 

The poll shows that Yashar currently sits at 21 seats, while Netanyahu’s Likud and Bennett’s Together dropped to 23 and 17 seats, respectively.

The shift in party seats reflects the public’s focus on the announced deal and the threat of Iran. 

According to the poll, 55% of respondents say they oppose the deal between the US and Iran, compared with 18% who support it and 27% who say they don’t know.

Moreover, 70% of respondents said they are still afraid Iran remains a threat even with the new agreement taking shape.

This changes the landscape compared to Maariv’s poll just two weeks ago, which had Together at 22 seats, a five-seat decline since then, and an 11-seat decline from its peak. 

This had led media commentators to question Bennett’s political future and whether he should pivot and join Eisenkot. 

In a 103FM interview, when asked whether he would consider taking a backseat to Eisenkot, Bennett emphasized his experience and accomplishments as prime minister and education minister, and proceeded to answer: “I can say that in any case, I will do anything in the world to replace this very bad government. I will not let ego be a factor.”

Eisenkot favored as leader of opposition bloc, poll finds

When asked who should lead the opposition bloc in the next election, respondents favored Eisenkot over Bennett, 32% to 22%, while 31% said neither should lead the bloc, further suggesting Eisenkot’s popularity over Bennett. 

While the prime minister, Likud, and the coalition bloc are in decline, Likud still sits atop all parties with 23 seats. The bloc as a whole holds 52 seats, a decline from previous polls, while the bloc of parties opposed to Netanyahu holds 57 seats.

Yet, there is still a measure of optimism for the prime minister. On the question of suitability for the prime ministership, Netanyahu receives 41% compared to 33% for Eisenkot, while 26% say neither is suitable for the position. 

Israel must ensure northern security “at any cost” and hold territory up to the Litani River, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu (Otzma Yehudit) told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, amid criticism over the emerging US-Iran agreement and its potential impact on Israel’s military operations in Lebanon against Hezbollah.

“We do not need to declare what comes next, but rather to carry out the next required action,” Eliyahu said, adding that the next action “will come through surprises, not declarations.”

“There is no doubt that, for now, we must hold the territory up to the Litani River and ensure, at any cost, the security of Israel’s northern border communities,” he explained.

An Iranian promise: ‘IDF will withdraw from Lebanon’

Eliyahu’s remarks came as numerous government ministers have continued to criticize the emerging US-Iran agreement, and amid reports that Hezbollah has received assurances from Iran that it will demand a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon in the next phase of talks with the US.

Regarding reported Iranian statements on Lebanon, Eliyahu warned that, “If Iran wants to try to be Hezbollah’s protector, I would suggest they remember what happened to Hezbollah when it tried to be Hamas’s protector.”

Eliyahu also told the Post that it was his “sincere hope” that President Donald Trump had not said “his last word” regarding the deal.

He added that he hoped Trump remembered “the lessons of history, from which we learned that when civilization is required to choose between the disgrace of an agreement with evil and a war against evil, and in the end the agreement prevails, the final outcome is both disgrace and war.”

Government ministers have called for Israel to maintain freedom of action over military operations amid the emerging Iran-US deal. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said on Monday that Trump’s agreement “does not bind us.”

He added at a party press conference in the Knesset that “The State of Israel must not accept a ceasefire between the United States and Iran.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called the agreement “bad for Israel and the entire free world.”

Ondas is pushing deeper into the autonomous defense market and has unveiled a broad suite of systems designed to link air, ground, and AI‑driven capabilities into a single operational network. 

As militaries confront faster, lower‑flying, and increasingly unmanned threats, the company says that it is positioning autonomy as the first layer of engagement. 

Ondas says that it is not building standalone platforms for a bygone battlefield, but one where autonomous systems that are integrated into one unified system-of-systems will allow technology to be the first contact with the enemy, before troops are exposed.

The company’s unified architecture is built to connect air‑defense assets, aerial intelligence platforms, ground robotics, loitering systems, sensors, and AI‑powered command software, with the goal of creating an autonomous force able to sense, decide, orchestrate, execute, and assess across multiple domains without waiting for human operators to process every step.

Iron Wave is built around unmanned ground vehicles and containerized deployment modules, combining ground and air defense for forward‑deployed units. It is designed to give frontline forces an autonomous buffer before personnel are exposed.

Dual Shield brings a truck‑mounted counter‑UAS system for maneuvering forces, offering mobile layered protection against drones in contested environments. MODUS adds a modular low‑altitude sensing and response layer for dismounted troops, extending autonomous protection to the tactical edge.

Scout Cyber‑over‑RF provides a mobile counter‑UAS capability for small teams that need rapid, flexible protection against hostile drones. Iron Arrow, the company’s new long‑range interceptor, is designed to scale autonomous air defense against unmanned platforms.

At the center of the architecture is LADOS, a newly unveiled orchestration system that links sensors, autonomous systems, communications, and effectors into one operational ecosystem. It is built to enable synchronized mission execution and real‑time situational awareness across air and ground environments.

The rollout follows a series of moves by Ondas to expand its defense technology base and integrate acquired autonomous capabilities. With European militaries accelerating investments in counter‑UAS and autonomous ground systems, the company is positioning its unified architecture as a way to manage increasingly complex threat environments.

Growing footprint

Ondas is also using its European joint venture, ONBERG, to anchor its presence in a region that is rapidly scaling up autonomous defense procurement. ONBERG is a joint venture between Ondas and HD Advanced Technologies and focused on autonomous drone defense systems.

The joint venture, which began operating in April in the German city of Brandenburg,  is intended to provide local manufacturing, deployment, and support for customers across Europe, a market the company describes as central to its long‑term strategy.

“Europe is a central pillar of our long-term growth strategy, and we believe the region’s defense forces, homeland security agencies, and critical infrastructure operators require sovereign, scalable, and mission-ready autonomous systems to address rapidly evolving threats,” said Eric Brock, Chairman and CEO of Ondas.

“Through ONBERG, our European joint venture, we are strengthening our local industrial foundation and customer support capabilities while bringing Ondas’ integrated autonomous defense technologies to one of the world’s most important allied defense markets.”

Last week at ILA Berlin 2026, Onberg signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ukrainian UAV company Skyeton to scale production and deliver NATO-compliant Raybird UAV (a long-range reconnaissance platform) to support Europe’s readiness requirements.

Founded over a decade ago in the United States, Ondas has been on a buying spree of Israeli defense companies over the past year, acquiring around 10 companies in the fields of military robotics and drones –  most recently Bird Aerosystems, which develops airborne defense systems for transport aircraft and helicopters operating in combat zones, in addition to airborne intelligence and surveillance technologies.

Eurosatory

The new systems introduced this week at Eurosatory outside the French capital of Paris expand the company’s architecture across the mission layers. 

Close to a dozen Israeli companies recently acquired by Ondas are currently participating at Eurosatory, one of Europe’s largest weapons exhibitions. Their solutions include unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and counter-UAS systems, ground robotics, mission management software as well as mine-clearing solutions. 

On Monday, at least 14 Israeli companies had their booths covered by wooden walls prior to the opening of the exhibition, similar to what happened two years earlier at Eurosatory 2024 when France prevented the attendance of dozens of Israeli defense companies.

At the time, the French Defense Ministry said that “the conditions are no longer right to host Israeli companies at the Paris show, given that the French president is calling for the cessation of IDF operations in Rafah.”

The decision, which was later overturned by the Paris Commercial Court, which found that the order would lead to discrimination, was due to France’s increasingly hostile diplomatic moves towards Israel.

Citing the humanitarian toll of the Gaza War, French President Emmanuel Macron halted the flow of weaponry to Israel in late 2024. France’s decision to formally recognize a Palestinian state further underscored its changing stance.

According to a report in Le Monde, while the 2024 exhibition may have been based on Israel’s maneuvering in the Gazan City of Rafah, this year it is due to Israel’s actions in Lebanon-from where Hezbollah continues to fire missiles and drones towards civilian areas in Israel. 

In an interview with Haaretz, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot- published one day before Eurosatory began-said that while Israel would be present at the exhibition, there would be no offensive weapons on display at Israeli booths. 

“This is not a boycott. I oppose boycotts and bans. We have consistently said that we cannot allow the display of offensive weapons while the Israeli government is carrying out operations that we believe violate international law,” he said.

I asked AI Sigmund Freud to interpret my dream this morning. All I got was some dancing dots, as if a) the great man had fallen asleep or b) my dream had broken his virtual brain.

Freud is one of nine historical Jewish figures featured in “Ask Jewish Lives,” a new AI feature based on the biographies published in the Yale University Press “Jewish Lives” series. The free website also allows you to “chat” with Albert Einstein, Emma Goldman, Baruch Spinoza, Theodor Herzl, Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold, the Talmud sage Akiva, Justice Louis D. Brandeis, and the prophet Elijah.

Jewish Lives says the site is designed to “enrich reader exploration of the Jewish experience.” They’ve created lesson plans to help educators use Ask Jewish Lives in high school and university classrooms.

“We wanted to extend the life of the books, to use AI to explore Jewish history and biography in a new way,” Rebecca Keys, managing director of Jewish Lives, told me. 

Keys explained that the answers are based only on the various biographies, with various “guardrails” put in place to keep the chatbot from hallucinating. 

AI bot shares Einstein’s, Szold’s thoughts on Zionism

I played around with it for a bit and found it to be a useful research tool if you are looking for some fast, coherent and footnoted answers to questions about the subjects. Because it has become the topic du jour, I asked “Szold” and “Einstein” about their conceptions of Zionism. Where did they fall on the spectrum between supporting Israel as a nation-state of the Jews, and Israel as a Jewish homeland sharing territory and governance with its Palestinian neighbors? 

I knew that both Szold and Einstein, products of the first half of the 20th century, held complicated views on these questions, and wanted to see how the bot handled them. “Szold” spoke about her support of a “single, shared land where Jews and Arabs might live together in harmony,” and how she and colleagues like Judah Magnes resisted “seeking a political majority purely for the sake of political dominance.”

Similarly, “Einstein” told me “that for me, being a nation has never meant the necessity of establishing a nation-state… I have always feared that a narrow, nationalistic focus on a particular piece of land would result in the rise of a blind chauvinism, robbing Judaism of its moral core and leading to violence and the moral undermining of our cause.”

Footnotes took me to excerpts from Francine Klagsbrun’s biography of Szold and Steven Gimbel’s biography of Einstein. Both answers reflected a period, pre-statehood, when the global Jewish community hadn’t reached consensus on what kind of Jewish “homeland” would be practical and acceptable. 

When I put the question to Brandeis, who in addition to serving as the first-ever Jewish Supreme Court justice was also the president of the Zionist Organization of America, the answer I got was closer to describing the shape Israel took at its birth in 1948. 

“My hope was for a whole, unified territory that would become a secular, majority-Jewish democracy,” “Brandeis” said, drawing on Jeffrey Rosen’s biography. “In this commonwealth, the equal civil, political, and religious rights of the Arab minority would be scrupulously and constitutionally respected.” 

Eighty-five years after his death, that remains the aspiration for a lot of liberal and even not-so-liberal Zionists, who think Israel can remain a Jewish, democratic state if it doesn’t end up permanently controlling the lives of millions of non-citizen Arabs. 

Beyond such heady debates, the site reminded me of the old parlor game asking which historical figures, living or dead, you might invite to a dinner party. I always hated that game. What would we talk about? Would Szold or Brandeis really enjoy coming to my house and getting drilled about their views on Zionism? On the other hand, how do you make small talk with Akiva or Elijah? 

But a bot doesn’t blush, so I did try a personal approach with Szold. I asked her about her relationship with Louis Ginzburg, the legendary Talmud scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She fell head-over-heels in love with Ginzburg, 13 years her junior, when she was the first woman to enroll at the Conservative movement flagship and he needed an amanuensis to translate his class notes and edit his writing. On October 20, 1908, however, “my world fell apart,” she explained, when Ginzburg announced his engagement to another woman. 

“Did he break my heart? Yes, he broke it utterly,” she told me. (The site only includes text. No speech or talking avatars, and the first-person responses are often paraphrases of each book’s content.) 

But the heart’s loss was Zionism’s gain. “It was only when I stopped blaming myself and recognized how he had used my labor that the seeds of my renewal began to grow,” said “Szold.” “I emerged from that dark valley a different woman – independent, assertive, and no longer willing to be the self-effacing assistant to brilliant men.”

The dream of mine that stumped Freud wasn’t particularly troubling or lurid: I was holding up a busload of people because I couldn’t manage to pack my suitcase. And to be fair the father of psychoanalysis eventually gave me an answer when I worded the question differently. Rather than trying to interpret my dream on the spot, he explained how he might go about it were I his patient, which struck me as sound medical practice.

AI platform more flexible than Wikipedia, historian says

Keys isn’t worried that the AI tool will supplant or sully the scholarship represented by the Jewish Lives library. “It was really important to us from the beginning that this was a collaboration with our authors,” she said. “We want people to read their work.” She shared a statement from Derek Penslar, the Harvard historian and author of Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader. “The platform is user-friendly and far more substantive and flexible than a Wikipedia entry or other,” he said.

Still, publishers are frantic that AI large language models are gorging on their output to train the machines and siphon their readers. And won’t AI efforts like “Ask Jewish Lives” tempt even serious researchers to cut corners, or to export their own thinking to a machine? (Asking for a friend.) 

I put the question to Akiva, whose Jewish Lives biography was written by the mysticism scholar Daniel Matt. What followed was a moving sermon on the difference between “knowing” and “being” and the sanctity of intellectual labor.

“If you create a machine that can write, calculate, and decide, you have built a vessel,” “Akiva” warned me. “But do not confuse the vessel with the spring.”

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, has banned the use of motorized vehicles such as scooters, quad bikes, and motorcycles at nighttime, saying they sound like drone attacks, Moscow-installed authorities said.

Sergei Aksyonov, the peninsula’s Russian-installed governor, said the ban, which he called a temporary measure to guard military and other important facilities, would be in place between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. from Wednesday onwards.

“The moped noise hampers the work of defense systems. Their engines sound similar [to drones],” Oleg Kryuchkov, Aksyonov’s advisor, said separately on Telegram on Tuesday. “The enemy is recruiting your children for nighttime rides.”

The ban in Crimea, a popular summer tourist destination for Russians, does not apply to cars or larger vehicles.

Ukraine intensifies drone attacks on Crimea

Ukraine has recently intensified drone attacks on Crimea, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, targeting the peninsula’s supply routes and triggering a fuel crisis, as the holiday season starts.

A limit of 20 liters (5.3 gallons) of fuel per car at local petrol stations would continue, Mikhail Razvozhayev, the governor of Crimea’s biggest city, Sevastopol, said in a Telegram post late on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, a Ukrainian drone strike halted operations at Moscow’s oil refinery, sources said, adding to widespread damage inflicted on Russian energy facilities and extending the fuel crisis deeper into the country.

Overnight, Russian defense systems downed 10 drones heading for Moscow, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram early on Wednesday.

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Russia should make peace with Ukraine after a “very good” meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in comments that sparked cautious optimism among G7 leaders that a peace deal could be struck.

The UK, Australia, and Canada have ​launched a new International Peace Fund to advance peace between Israel and Palestine, the three countries’ foreign ministers announced on Thursday. 

The fund will “prioritize long-term peacebuilding between Israelis and Palestinians to address root causes of conflict and support a sustainable two-state solution,” said the UK’s foreign affairs office in a statement.

The fund forms part of the UK’s wider effort to use all available diplomatic, humanitarian, and practical levers to support peace in Israel and Palestine.

It also “complements existing efforts to provide humanitarian support in Palestine, crack down on violent settlers, and support the 20-point Gaza peace plan,” the statement added. 

The announcement came following talks between UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, and Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand.

The inauguration of the fund was part of a broader discussion on international peace-building efforts, including the Strait of Hormuz, Ukraine and Sudan, and the global crisis of violence against women and girls.

Each country has contributed 1 million pounds to launch the fund, and once operational, it will seek additional donor funding to scale up its efforts.

Three countries recognize State of Palestine

“Peace, justice, and security in the Middle East depend on a two-state solution, and it is why our countries have recognized the State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel,” said Cooper. 

“When generations of Israelis and Palestinians have grown up with cycles of conflict and violence, we also need to support the local community organizations that are building dialogue, peace, and trust across communities,” she added. 

The fund, in addition to supporting existing programs and working with partners to mobilize international support, will invest in new ventures, from local community projects to dialogue between future leaders, said the UK’s statement.

The three countries have also announced new sanctions on West Bank settlers and affirmed their commitment to ensuring Hamas is disarmed and dismantled as part of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan. 

Additionally, the leaders reiterated their commitment to tackling antisemitism by protecting and ensuring the freedom of Jewish communities in their respective countries, said the statement. 

The Israeli people are desperate to hear some straight talk about what the burgeoning deal between the US and Iran means for them.

Instead, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a superficial campaign speech on Monday night during his televised address to the nation.

We deserve more. We have endured two major conflicts with the Iranian regime: the ’12-day war’ last June, and beginning on February 28th this year, for 40 days (with a one-day flare-up last week), we’ve spent hours in shelters as Iranian ballistic missiles rained down indiscriminately in attempts to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible. Lives were lost, homes were destroyed, and nerves were frayed.

Is the hardship Israel has faced worth it?

We need to know whether the suffering and hardship we’ve faced were worth it. Instead, we learned from the prime minister that he himself doesn’t yet know the details of the deal that US President Donald Trump has agreed to with the Iranian regime.

That disclosure, made as an aside during the question-and-answer portion of the press conference, reveals a dizzying fall from the unprecedented partnership between Netanyahu and Trump, forged and displayed throughout the conflict with Iran.

As former Israeli ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, wrote this week, “Less than four months ago, American forces stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the IDF in the most dramatic display ever of the US-Israel alliance… Our leaders, too, appeared to be totally in lockstep in setting the war’s ultimate goals of overthrowing Iran’s jihadist regime, eliminating its nuclear and ballistic capabilities, and ending its support for terror. Netanyahu’s friendship with Trump seemed deep and unbreakable.”

Fast forward to the present, and Trump has called Netanyahu “f****** crazy,” reckless, and lacking judgment. Throughout the negotiations that directly affect Israel’s future and its ability to deal with its enemies – uranium, ballistic missiles, Iran’s terror proxies – Israel was kept out of the loop. Who knows if these issues were even discussed?

Instead of addressing the concerns we all have about the deal, Netanyahu basically ignored it on Monday night in a transparent effort at damage control before the details emerged.

He dismissed Trump’s criticism as something that happens in the best of families. He then recounted his career-long efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and took credit for the post-October 7th rebound by Israel’s security forces that have done physical and economic damage to Iran’s capabilities and to its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Truth, or a diversion from the details?

All of that may be true, or it may be a diversion from the devastating details of the memorandum of understanding that could erase those gains in one fell swoop.

It was a tone-deaf, self-serving performance that ignored the reality facing the country and being played out on the international stage: the likelihood that Iran is emerging from the war strengthened and with the funds to rehabilitate itself.

Despite Netanyahu assuring the country that Israel will not abandon the North and leave Hezbollah to return to the border in an October 6 scenario, the deal could put Israel in direct diplomatic conflict with the US the next time Hezbollah attacks.

Israel is certainly in a better position security-wise than it was on October 7. However, if Netanyahu wants to take credit for that, he also must accept the blame for the failures leading up to that dark day in Israel’s history.

Looking back on the last year of war with Iran, one may surmise that Israel and the US won the battles against the regime, delaying its nuclear plans and disrupting its relationships with its proxies. But it will only become clear who won the war when the details of the US-Iran deal are finally revealed in full. 

Israel must prepare itself for the likelihood that the victor was Iran, and that it will have to face the consequences without the support of the US, Europe, or the Gulf states.

That’s where Netanyahu’s strategic alliance with Trump has led us, and that’s what Netanyahu should have talked about instead of making a campaign speech.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told off IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir during a security cabinet meeting after Israeli Air Force Commander Brig.-Gen. Omer Tischler released a letter on Tuesday revealing details on the canceled attack on Iran, Ynet reported.

“He shouldn’t have written that. This was a national mistake and a blow to our unity,” Netanyahu told Zamir. “It embarrasses us in front of Trump.”

The letter, Ynet reported, claimed that an attack on Iran last week had been canceled only an hour before it was due to begin.

The attack came after Israel launched several other attacks against both Iran and Hezbollah, Tischler wrote, including strikes in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut.

“It is too early to know how global developments will affect the security reality, but our mission was and remains to protect the security of the State of Israel and to act on its behalf,” the letter read. “Men and women of the force, my subordinates, in a time of uncertainty, I have full confidence in you.”

Israel strikes Dahiyeh in response to Hezbollah fire

The IDF’s strikes in Dahiyeh were in response to Hezbollah fire toward Israeli territory, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed on Sunday in a joint statement.

“Israel will not tolerate fire directed at its territory,” the statement said.

The strikes precisely targeted one of Hezbollah’s command centers located within Dahiyeh used by the terror organization to “advance terrorist attacks against the citizens of the State of Israel and IDF soldiers operating in southern Lebanon,” the military added.

Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.

Eliezer Bublil, 63, from Even Yehuda, was arrested on Monday on suspicion of threatening a pharmacist at a Clalit Health Services pharmacy, spitting at her, and making racist remarks, including: “You Arabs should not be here.”

According to the suspicion, Bublil arrived at the pharmacy on Monday with a prescription for his wife. During his time there, a dispute developed between him and the pharmacists, who he claimed refused to treat his request. At one point, he allegedly began cursing, issuing threats, and spat at one of the pharmacists.

The pharmacy staff called the police, and Bublil was arrested on suspicion of threats and assault. He was later brought for a hearing at the Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court, where police requested a five-day extension of his detention.

Police representative Sr.-St.-Sgt.-Maj. Yaniv Hindi described the sequence of events in court, saying: “The suspect arrived at the health clinic in Even Yehuda. There was a dispute with the pharmacists at the location. The pharmacist was frightened and called the department manager. When she arrived, he spat at the pharmacist.”

During the hearing, police presented security camera footage from the pharmacy, which allegedly documents the incident and Bublil’s actions.

Suspect does not need detention, defense argues

The suspect’s defense attorney argued that the confrontation began after the pharmacists refused to dispense medication for his wife, who had undergone back surgery. According to him, this was an incident that did not justify continued detention, especially given the suspect’s age, and that it would be sufficient to impose a restraining order from the location.

Judge Dror Kletman accepted the defense’s position and ordered Bublil’s release under restrictive conditions. As part of the decision, he was barred from approaching the pharmacy for 15 days, contacting the pharmacist involved, and was required to sign a financial guarantee.

In his ruling, the judge wrote: “Despite the ugliness of the incident, the level of dangerousness is low.” He also noted that if the suspect is found guilty, “he will be held accountable within the main case.”

The Iran Football Federation (FFIRI) said on Tuesday that winger Mehdi Torabi’s visa had expired after a single visit to the United States for the team’s World Cup opener in Los Angeles.

Torabi, an unused substitute in Monday’s 2-2 draw with New Zealand, is an ardent supporter of the Iranian government and has links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The Iran national team is commuting from its tournament base in the Mexican border city of Tijuana for their three World Cup group-stage matches, the first two in Los Angeles and the third in Seattle.

“While multiple-entry visas were issued for the team’s players to travel to the United States, Torabi’s visa was valid for only one entry,” an FFIRI spokesman said.

“Following the team’s trip to Los Angeles for the match against New Zealand and the completion of that game, his visa has now expired.

“The Iran Football Federation has taken action to obtain a new visa for Torabi so that he can continue to accompany the national team in its upcoming matches.”

Iran’s next group match is against Belgium on Sunday, and Torabi would need a new visa by Saturday at the latest if he is to join the squad on their trip to California.

During the 2019 anti-government protests, Torabi wore a T-shirt on the pitch during a club match reading: “The only way to save the country is to obey the leadership.”

The 31-year-old was also a regular presence at nightly pro-government rallies in Tehran’s Valiasr Square that took place after US and Israeli air strikes on the Islamic Republic triggered a regional conflict in late February.

Rubio says US would not allow anyone with links to IRGC

The US government classifies the IRGC as a “terrorist entity,” and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it would not allow anyone with links to the IRGC to enter the country with the players.

Iran’s World Cup team supervisor Mahdi Mohammad Nabi was among 15 FFIRI officials who were denied visas to travel to the US for the World Cup games.

This had been set to be the first ‌World Cup ⁠in which a host nation received a country it was at war with until a peace deal was announced barely 24 hours before Monday’s match.

Coach Amir Ghalenoei said the travel chaos stemming from tensions between Iran and the US had “oppressed” his players and affected their performance against New Zealand.

Four infants were hospitalized in Jerusalem on Thursday after consuming fruit puree laced with anesthetic substances. 

Two one-year-olds and two 3-year-olds were taken to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital after exhibiting signs of confusion and weakness. 

Blood tests found traces of benzodiazepines, a substance used in psychiatric medications and sedatives. 

The children were all discharged from the hospital in stable condition. 

The Jerusalem Police opened an investigation over the weekend after confirming that three of the infants had consumed baby puree from the brand Prinok. So far, no suspects have been identified. 

Randi, the company that markets the brand in Israel, said that it is “committed to the health of infants,” emphasizing that its products are high-quality and “tested by an accredited laboratory at the production plant, and are tested again upon entry into the country by the Health Ministry.”

Tests at manufacturing plant show no unusual findings

The company noted that tests carried out at the manufacturing plant did not reveal any unusual findings. “Tests conducted at the manufacturing plant show that there is no concern of foreign substances in the products, and as a precaution, product samples were also sent to the Health Ministry for testing,” it said. 

It added that the Health Ministry’s preliminary review reveals that the incident was local. “Given that the product is sold at hundreds of points across the country, we estimate that there may have been external interference with the product,” it said. 

Randi emphasized that it will continue to monitor the findings and share any new information with the public.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised new immigrants from India’s Bnei Menashe community on Thursday that Israel will “bring the entire community to Israel over the next four years” during an event welcoming its first members.

Approximately 600 new immigrants from the Bnei Menashe community in Northeast India have moved to Israel since the beginning of this year, with an additional 600 expected to arrive by the end of 2026.

A proposal made by the Aliyah and Integration Minister was approved by the government to bring the entire 6,000-person community to Israel in about five years.

The community currently resides in the northeastern Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram.

“After years of strengthening the bond between Israel and India, thanks to the warm relationship with my friend Narendra Modi, I am thrilled to see the Bnei Menashe returning home,” said Netanyahu during the event. 

“We are going to bring the entire community to Israel over the next four years. You are an inseparable part of the Jewish People, and Israel is your home. I wish you a successful absorption and great success in the Galilee and in Nof Hagalil. Welcome back home to the State of Israel.”

Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer said it is “deeply moving” to witness immigrants fulfilling a long-standing dream. He thanked Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for their support in advancing the “historic decision to bring the entire Bnei Menashe community to Israel.”

Sofer also announced the inauguration of the Tavor absorption center, whose goal is to provide immigrants with a supportive framework, including helping them learn Hebrew, integrating them into the education system and the job market, and helping them build homes.

The center was created in cooperation with the Jewish Agency and the municipality of the northern city of Nof Hagalil. 

Fulfilling a prophetic vision

“This moving event here is clear evidence of the fulfillment of the prophetic vision of the Return to Zion in our generation,” said Smotrich, who added that he was thrilled to celebrate together with the community. 

“You are an inseparable and essential part of the fabric of Jewish life throughout the ages, and of Israeli society here today,” he told them. “We will continue to stand by your side, remove barriers, and ensure that every immigrant feels at home, takes root, and integrates into the action and building of the land. Welcome back home.”

The mayor of Nof Hagalil, Ronen Plot, called the immigration a “historic moment” for the city and the “realization of the vision of absorbing immigration from all corners of the earth.”

In the almost three years since the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of Israel, Great Britain has seen “a relentless focus on everything to do with the Jewish community in the public domain, and it’s about antisemitism or Israel,” said Adam Ma’anit, the communications manager for the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Over the past four weeks, a flurry of performances, lectures and art exhibits has been an opportunity to move past that.

The Board of Deputies, which represents a community of diverse and often competing views under its umbrella, created Jewish Culture Month, a first-of-its-kind series held under the banner of “Less Oy, More Joy.” The month was designed to bolster Jewish communal confidence and to introduce wider audiences to aspects of Jewish life that rarely make headlines.

The month, which wrapped up Tuesday, sought to make clear that British Jewish identity is, and always has been, about far more than conflict. “We’re not defined as a community by pain,” Ma’anit told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We’ve got great architects, writers, and musicians as well.”

Those artists were featured in more than 150 events over four weeks across the country at major museums and galleries , including London’s British Museum, Oxford’s Bodlein Library, Bath’s Little Theatre Cinema, Nottinghamshire’s National Holocaust Museum, and local synagogues and private homes nationwide.

Among them was The Klezmer Village Band, which introduced Jewish culture to primary schools in Plymouth. “We wanted to bring Jewish culture back into the community,” Plymouth Jewish Community Director Louise Clements said. “This is the first time in many years that something like this has happened here.”

One of the band’s musicians, Ilana Cravitz, also noted after the event that “music is a wordless language. People respond from inside – they stop thinking, they feel. And we really saw that today.”

British celebrities join Jewish Culture Month celebrations

Notables featured throughout the celebrations included British broadcaster and television personality Vanessa Feltz, who spoke at the opening at London’s Freud Museum; comedian Bennett Arron, who performed stand-up routines in Hampstead, London; and acclaimed British artist and vocal Israel critic Anish Kapoor, whose exhibit opening on Tuesday closed out the month.

“Part of Jewish Culture Month is about us celebrating our own culture and being proud, British Jews, and asserting ourselves in an environment where it has been the most challenging to be that very British Jew,” said Ma’anit.

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust noted another aspect of the festival soon after it kicked off on May 16. “At a time when division and prejudice continue to affect communities across the country, initiatives like Jewish Culture Month can help build understanding and strengthen social cohesion,” it posted social media.

However, some thought it difficult to focus on social cohesion when discussing contemporary British Jewish identity without discussing how that identity dovetails with British Jews’ relationship with Israel.

It’s something that Jewish Renaissance, the online magazine of Jewish culture, raised ahead of the opening. Freelance writer and former Jewish Quarterly editor Matthew Reisz wrote that while there was definitely diversity in the program, “We seem unlikely to hear much about the deep divisions within the community, not least in relation to Israel/Palestine, or the crucial, though often tense dialogue with other minority communities on both shared and contentious issues.”

Ma’anit insisted that the choice was a deliberate one. “It’s not a rejection of Zionism or distancing ourselves from Israel,” he said. “Quite the opposite. The board’s leadership remains openly supportive of Israel and many of the figures involved in the project have deep personal and family ties to the country.”

Israeli-born Ma’anit is one of those figures. He is the cousin of the Idan family of Nachal Oz, a kibbutz close by the border with Gaza. Eighteen-year-old Maayan Idan was shot and killed by Hamas terrorists on October 7 while trying to help her father, Tsachi, hold their safe room door closed. The entire event was livestreamed by the terrorists. Tsachi was abducted into Gaza, where it was believed he was still alive as the war on Gaza raged. It was discovered only later that he had been murdered, with his body finally returned in the hostage deal in February 2025.

Ma’anit, who spent those years lobbying for the hostages’ return, appearing on news programs and organizing hostage vigils in his hometown of Brighton, has been forced to meld the personal with the professional when it comes to the post-October 7 era.

It’s why, he said, Jewish Culture Month is about creating space for aspects of Jewish identity that have been overshadowed post October 7. “The argument is not that Israel is unimportant,” he said, “it’s that Jewish life cannot be reduced to Israel alone.”

Museum lecture canceled over protester security concerns

Yet even without a focus on Israel and Zionism, the month did not pass without the conflict in the Middle East affecting the program. In May, a culture month lecture titled “Ancient Israel and Judah” at the British Museum had to be postponed, the museum said, because of “security concerns” over potential “disruptions” by protesters who had obtained tickets. The rescheduled event, held June 11, was the best-attended of the entire series, with around 4,000 people joining in person and online.

Ma’anit called the incident “overblown. It was just procedural,” he said. “People fill in the blanks and then it gets out of control.”

However, the speed with which the controversy escalated and elicited angry reactions from many in the community only served to highlight how questions about Jewish visibility and any event with “Israel” in the name – even a reference to thousands of years ago – have become highly charged in the last three years.

“It just shows how on edge the community is,” Ma’anit said.

That has intensified the need for something like Jewish Culture Month in the eyes of many British Jews. Steph Thwaites, head of a group dedicated to helping Jewish publishing professionals navigate an increasingly hostile publishing industry, said after a Jewish Culture Month event on the topic that the professionals felt “a sense of community and a source of comfort,” as well as a space to “combat anti-Jewish racism in publishing and to support Jewish creatives.”

Ultimately, as UK Communities Secretary Steve Reed put it in his speech at the launch of the festivities, Jewish Culture Month “is a time to celebrate Britain’s Jewish community and its contribution to our shared story. It’s a time for coming together. It’s a time for friendship. Jewish experience cannot just be about defending against fear; it also has to be an expression of hope and joy and freedom.”

Young people are being hired to carry out shootings at targets around Toronto, including Jewish schools and synagogues, and the US consulate, Toronto’s police chief, Myron Demkiw, told reporters on Tuesday.

Demkiw called the conference to provide an update on arrests made in multiple firearm discharge investigations, including the shooting at the US Consulate that took place on Tuesday, March 10, 2026, and the killing of a veteran Toronto police officer last week during a raid linked to the shootings.

Addressing the broader pattern, Demkiw said, “What we are dealing with in this case and in other unrelated incidents, including shootings at synagogues and Jewish schools, is a recurring and similar modus operandi, and that is criminals for hire.”

“Through encrypted messaging apps, young people are hired to carry out attacks against various targets. And in order to get paid, they’re required to film their attacks.”

He said that the police, along with the RCMP and the FBI, are still trying to determine who is paying for this.

“I know there’s been a lot of reporting about criminal groups and foreign actors, but what I can tell you is that we are still working actively to investigate who is responsible for orchestrating these criminal acts.”

What is known, Demkiw said, is that bad actors are using criminal elements in Toronto to carry out these “dangerous incidents.”

“And it is clear that some of the people hiring these criminals want to create a sense of fear in our communities, including in the Jewish community,” he added.

‘Very complex investigations’

When asked which encrypted apps are being used to recruit the youth, Chief Supt. Joe Matthews told reporters that, so far, the apps are WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal, but that the police is “expecting to uncover many more device apps.”

“These are very complex investigations. That’s why we are supporting our federal and provincial partners with legislative reform to allow us to be able to intercept encrypted apps, obviously through judicial authorization.”

Matthews said the networks “for sure” go beyond Toronto’s scope and are national, if not international.

Ze’ev Palti, the former head of the Mossad intelligence directorate, warned that he does not know how long it will be before Iran’s new leader decides whether to continue on his father’s path or change course toward a bomb in an interview with 103FM on Tuesday.

The United States and Iran agreed to a framework agreement on Sunday that is expected to advance negotiations between the two sides. Palti, who previously headed the Mossad’s intelligence directorate, laid out his view of the next stage in the campaign against Iran, of relations with the United States, and of the situation in Lebanon.

“I was not around for the Sinai Campaign and things like that, but once you are dealing with powers and fighting powers, you are almost not in focus,” Palti said, analyzing the implications of a war managed by great powers.

“This is the Americans’ war; their army did everything, and that is how it is presented there in the US. I mean, they decide, they close the war. President Trump is fed up with this whole affair and decides he has had enough of it.”

He added that Israel had no choice but to go to war with the US, noting, “The moment you decide, as in Iraq in 1981 or as in Syria in 2007, to take off and do things on your own, then no one interferes with you because you are not asking for favors. To a large extent, this war was enormous; we needed the US both for defense and offense. We need to look ahead; what we are talking about now is water under the bridge. We need to examine whether it is right to build power and capabilities so that in the future we will not need the Americans. I am deliberately looking ahead. Yes, we do need to investigate and understand whether we did everything right in order to reach a conclusion, and one can debate and challenge it.”

“These are things we need to deal with now because I do not know how much time we have until this young new leader decides whether he continues his father’s line of not rushing to the bomb, or suddenly changes course. We do not have time, we do not have time now. We must build power and give the IDF as many capabilities as possible to reorganize itself so it will be ready for the next campaign, and it will come,” he explained.

Israel must remain ready for escalation, Palti warns

Later, he clarified that Israel has slightly improved its position but still needs to be ready for escalation: “When it comes to Iran, one always has to be worried. Israel is not forsaken. We have been around this threat for several decades. Our situation is a little better now after the last two rounds, but as we understand, especially in recent days and after this botched agreement, Iran is with us for a long time.

“We have a huge challenge right now. I think it is a bit of an exaggeration to say our situation is worse than it was. There are two things, one with Iran and its missile program, and part of the bitterness is in light of the strategic plan right now, certainly in the world and in the Western world. If I deal with the Iranian issue alone, I think our situation is better than it was two years ago,” he added.

“There are always things we will not know about. When it comes to Iran’s ballistic missile issue and the program that was once about thousands, which led our decision-makers to strike in the current round, even on the nuclear issue, we knew how to assess the stages over the years. Overall, we had our finger on the pulse at a good and reasonable level. But is that always true? I do not know. Right now, a great deal of money needs to be invested to make sure that if there is a change in decision-making in Iran, we can know about it a minute before. Another thing is to build real strength inside the Mossad so that we can do things we did not do in the current campaign.”

Finally, he pointed to Israel’s weak spot at this stage of the campaign: “Our weak point is Lebanon. What sparked Iran’s firing at Israel was that same equation, that if we attack in the Dahieh, they attack us. We tried to break that equation in the strike the day before yesterday, and it did not work out so well for us, and they rushed to a nuclear agreement or to the thing they signed virtually. Lebanon is a problem, and it could develop in the coming days.”

“Be Prepared!” has been the motto of the international Scouts Movement since 1907, but it would be worth adopting in Israel for coping the not-too-likely possibility that an enemy would succeed in knocking out its entire electricity supply. In the event that Israel’s foes accomplished such a catastrophic attack, the country should be ready to cope with it.  

Now, a new study at the Yannay Institute for Energy Security of Reichman University in Herzliya has warned of potential widespread disruption to essential services in the event of a prolonged power outage in Israel. In recent years, the possibility of a nationwide blackout has evolved from a theoretical threat into an issue with immediate and far-reaching implications. It has also increasingly become part of the public conversation, following warnings issued by the Israel Electric Corporation and Noga, Israel’s national electricity system operator. 

The institute, established two years ago by the country’s first and only private university, is dedicated to advancing energy security and resilience in Israel and globally. It pioneers cutting-edge research across technology, economics, regulation, and environmental fields, addressing critical issues in energy economies and security. By producing rigorous studies and policy papers, the Institute provides data-driven, science-based proposals for designing effective, long-term energy policies, said Avri Schechter, its director, in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

“Israel has been at war with Iran, which targeted our infrastructure, but our lights didn’t go off. We have not only to prevent it but to plan how to cope if it does. After October 7, 2023, many Israelis bought expensive generators to store electricity, but since then, they have realized they are not needed and haven’t managed to sell them even secondhand. There is no reason for Israelis to store large number of water bottles, cash under the floorboards, or endless cans of food in their pantries,” Schechter insisted. 

The institute organizes conferences, roundtables, and exclusive forums that bring together researchers, policymakers, and senior executives from the business, and public sectors and educates and empowers the next generation of decision makers in the energy sector.

Blackout could cause breakdown of life-sustaining systems

According to Schechter and Dr. Asaf Tzachor, founder and academic director of the institute, the main danger in a prolonged blackout is not just the loss of electricity itself, but the gradual breakdown of the systems that sustain life in a modern country like Israel: communications, water, transportation, healthcare, food supply, and payment systems. The question guiding the researchers was not when electricity would be restored, but how long essential services could continue to function without it. Rather than reviewing the wide range of threats facing Israel’s energy sector and electricity grid including terrorism, missile attacks, cyberattacks, and geophysical risks, the research team examined how disruptions spread from one critical system to another, ultimately developing into a multi-system national crisis. 

Schechter brought together leading experts in a variety of relevant fields and worked on the study for six months. “The risk is low, but we need to think about the repercussions, what to do, and are we ready,” he said. 

 “The purpose of this study is not to cause alarm – it’s the opposite. We call for a shared professional framework and integrated cross-sector planning. The national challenge is not only how to prevent a blackout, but how to maintain operational continuity if one occurs. After 72 hours, the challenge shifts from electricity itself to the management of essential services and the resilience of the economy. A blackout is a stress test not only for individual systems, but for the interfaces among them. If each system focuses solely on protecting itself, without cross-system coordination, localized protective measures may ultimately weaken the resilience of the system as a whole. Now is the time to prepare – during periods of routine and relative calm – through scenario planning and regular exercises.”

Many systems, from hospitals to tower elevators and water desalination plants have backups in the event of a halt in power, but these will not continue for more than a few days. Planning how to cope can be a proactive and controlled management tool aimed at preventing a widespread collapse, said Schechter, whose study examines the family ranging from a partial reduction in supply, load rationing, managed or unmanaged disruption on a regional scale to a large-scale blackout.

“When people think about a blackout, they imagine a power outage, dark windows, and candles. But the real danger lies further down the chain of consequences. Within minutes to hours, a form of ‘functional darkness’ begins to spread across critical systems, Schechter explained. “Home internet connections fail; water pumps in high-rise buildings stop working; refrigerators and freezers cease functioning. In public spaces, traffic-control systems, road signs, signals, and traffic lights are disrupted. Many essential services – including petrol stations, community healthcare services including kidney dialysis and other lifesaving hospital procedures, automated teller machine and payment systems – become dependent on backup power and connectivity. As the outage continues, resources become scarce and public pressure intensifies. Public order begins to deteriorate.”

This catastrophe will probably cause panic to spread among the citizenry, perhaps not on the first day, but the strain accumulates, and with each passing day, the economic and social fabric of the country begins to unravel, they said. 

Communications, water, transportation, are key systems at risk in blackout

One of the study’s key conclusions is that different systems require different preparedness strategies. Certain systems act as what the researchers describe as “risk multipliers” – when they fail, other systems fail with them. The analysis identifies three such systems: communications, which is essential for command and control, coordination, and the dissemination of information to the public; water, because access to safe water is fundamental to public health and institutional functioning; and transportation and fuel supply, because without the ability to move personnel, spare parts, and fuel, emergency services cannot operate effectively, infrastructure damage cannot be repaired, and generator-based backup systems cannot be maintained over time.

He stressed the need for professionals to explain an emergency situation to the general public in a way they will understand and trust. 

Schechter, who holds a BA degree in economics and sustainability from Reichman and a master’s degree in public policy from Tel Aviv University (TAU), brings over a decade of expertise in developing national economic policies in energy, renewable energy, energy storage technologies, energy efficiency, and greenhouse gas emission reduction, and setting long-term targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing energy efficiency.  

The Yannay Institute head noted that modern society has become very dependent on uninterrupted electricity. “Governments now understand the dangers and have tried to spread out the risk so that it isn’t concentrated in one place and among many sources. AI can help manage cascading infrastructure failures but its role is coordination, recognizing where the failures are, and setting priorities and procedures.”