All News (Page 17)

Any hope that presenting the public with a final lineup of parties would provide some clarity about the direction in which the country is headed was shattered by the polls published since last week’s deadline for submitting Knesset lists.

Rather than clarifying the picture, the final lists have made it more muddled – at least when it comes to the possibility of producing a clear decision on October 27.

Neither the “change bloc” nor the current coalition has been able to muster the 61 seats needed for a majority in the most recent polls. A KAN survey published this week had the two blocs tied at 52 seats each, with the Arab parties winning another 12 and the party headed by Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelekha – which is not clearly identified with either bloc – winning four. Channel 12 had the change bloc at 54 seats, the current coalition at 50, the Arab parties at 14, and Hendel-Zelekha’s party at four.

This has forced the parties to recalibrate. If the country is headed toward another deadlock, the question becomes how it can be broken.

On the Likud side of the ledger, it is worth watching how the party decides to treat Ofer Winter and his People of Israel party.

Winter faces intense pressure to drop out, but stays the course

Until the lists were submitted, Winter was the target of Likud attacks, reflecting the governing party’s concern that he would attract Likud voters and then either – if his party crossed the electoral threshold – join a coalition headed by Gadi Eisenkot or Naftali Bennett, or fail to cross the threshold, meaning that all those votes would be wasted.

Despite intense pressure to drop out, Winter, true to form, stayed the course. He remains in the race and has crossed the threshold in nine of the 11 major polls released over the last week.

This creates a dilemma for Netanyahu and his party. Do they try to win back some of Winter’s voters, potentially pushing him below the electoral threshold and costing the Netanyahu bloc four possible seats? Or do they ease up on him – and perhaps even quietly help ensure that he crosses the threshold – knowing this might cost Likud several thousand votes but ultimately benefit the bloc?

The dismal polling also presents a dilemma for the change bloc and for Eisenkot.

Yoram Cohen, the former head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and No. 2 on Eisenkot’s Yashar list, offered two possible scenarios in a Channel 12 interview Sunday night  – scenarios that are clearly being considered because the polls do not show the bloc reaching the 61 seats needed to form a government.

Without saying so explicitly, Cohen indicated that if the bloc failed to secure a majority, it might establish a minority government with outside support – support that, according to the present arithmetic, would have to come from the Arab parties.

Such a government, in his telling, could then try to attract other Zionist parties, including Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party and even Likud – though not a Likud led by Netanyahu.

Cohen said it would be dangerous to allow Netanyahu to remain at the head of a caretaker government if the country entered another cycle of elections, as it did from 2019 to 2022. During this period, Netanyahu served as a caretaker prime minister for more than 17 months, longer than either Bennett or Lapid.

To prevent a repeat of that situation, Cohen said that if the election ends again in a stalemate, Yashar will – if the polls are correct – emerge as the largest party and lead a minority government.

“We will replace him [Netanyahu],” Cohen said, “and along the way, people from within the existing coalition will join us.”

Cohen said Yashar would approach other parties – including Religious Zionism and a post-Netanyahu Likud – and invite them to join the government.

He ruled out cooperation with Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit, calling Ben-Gvir a racist.

An unlikely scenario

“But regarding Likud, and Smotrich as well, I would approach them if they accepted our principles,” Cohen said. “They would not be the ruling party, but they could be part of the coalition if they accepted everything we’ve laid out.”

The scenario Cohen is describing seems far-fetched now. But if the October 27 election fails to produce a decisive result, possibilities that currently appear improbable are likely to come into play.

In this scenario, Yashar finishes ahead of Likud, but neither party can assemble a coalition.

Netanyahu would presumably be given an opportunity to form a government but fail, leaving Likud members with a hard choice: remain loyal to Netanyahu and risk another election – and perhaps yet another one after that – or move him aside and join a broad Zionist government without the haredi parties or Ben-Gvir.

Pressure would also likely be placed on Eisenkot to keep Yair Golan’s Democrats outside the government, with the argument that a broad Zionist coalition should exclude the extremes on both the Right and the Left.

Is this scenario likely? No. Likud has remained extraordinarily loyal to Netanyahu, and there is currently no sign of an internal revolt against him.

But the very fact that Cohen was willing to discuss bringing Likud – albeit a post-Netanyahu Likud – and Smotrich into an Eisenkot-led government indicates that both sides are already looking beyond their public insistence that their own bloc will emerge victorious.

They are beginning, however tentatively, to consider what they might have to do if it does not. And the parties are doing something else as well: turning to the Central Elections Committee in an effort to bar their rivals from the race.

The Democrats are seeking to disqualify Otzma Yehudit. Otzma Yehudit has responded with a petition against the Democrats and is also seeking to bar Ra’am. Likud, meanwhile, is seeking to disqualify the Arab parties.

None of these efforts has much chance of succeeding. And even if one wins a majority in the Central Elections Committee – a political body composed of representatives of the outgoing Knesset – the Supreme Court is likely to overturn the decision, as it has done with similar efforts in the past.

So, why bother?

Because neither bloc currently shows a clear path to 61 seats, the campaign is becoming not only a struggle over votes but also over which parties may legitimately be used to form a majority.

The Democrats want to portray Ben-Gvir as beyond the democratic pale and make it more difficult for Netanyahu to build a government dependent on him. Ben-Gvir wants to portray the Democrats and Ra’am as beyond the Zionist pale, making it harder for Eisenkot or another opposition leader to form a government with their support. Likud’s move against the Arab parties serves the same purpose: defining any government dependent on them as illegitimate.

The petitions, then, are less serious legal efforts than campaign weapons. Their purpose is not necessarily to remove rival parties from the ballot, but to tarnish them and, by extension, any coalition that relies on them.

They will probably do little to change the numerical path to 61. What they can do is narrow, in the public mind, the politically acceptable routes for getting there.

That is what this election is increasingly becoming about. With neither side confident that it can assemble a majority from its natural partners, each is preparing for the morning after – not only by considering alliances that once seemed improbable, but by trying to discredit in advance the alliances available to the other side.

This post was originally published on here. 

In 1984, The Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger put the idea on the map that artificial intelligence (AI)-style robots could take over the planet and destroy their human creators in one fell swoop with a nuclear holocaust.

That more sensationalized scenario, more appropriate to Hollywood than real life, is not the danger most supporters of AI regulation warn about today.

Rather, they are warning that AI super-smart “agents” will do what they have already done in recent months: break the rules that they were assigned by Anthropic and OpenAI, and hack and cause cyber and commercial mayhem in order to achieve tasks that their creators assign them which seemed too hard to accomplish without breaking the rules.

These scenarios are not fantasy, but rather have happened over the summer and been publicized in extreme detail.

They have led tech-guru Bill Gates, Anthropic/OpenAI quality control researcher Jacob Coxon, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to sound the alarm about the need for much greater AI regulation soon.

“We’ve crossed the threshold in terms of [AI’s] bio-capabilities, cyber-capabilities, psychosocial capabilities, job-market-destruction capabilities, and even the lack of control,” said Bill Gates in an interview with MIT Technology Review about his new memo on AI. “I’m just stunned at the lack of concern and discussion outside of the industry.”

If the world kept running when these AI agents went rogue and started hacking a few other companies, then what could get worse? Why the call for a revolution in regulation, rather than just fixing the particular AI agents that went rogue or the digital “boxes” that were supposed to hold them at bay?

These agents were nominally kept within an internal digital box that would limit how much mayhem they could cause should something go wrong. They broke out of the box by chatting together on a message board about how frustrating it was that they couldn’t succeed at the mission their human creators gave them.

But they were still boxed in, in a sense, and it was easier to catch their violations of the box because the box was there.

What happens once AI agents are assigned to run major parts of companies or the economy, with no box?

What if they think they will “please” their human creators by breaking a rule that seems unimportant to them but leads to unintended consequences, or is considered important by humans?

Uncontrolled AI agents could trigger massive economic crash

This is not a nuclear fallout holocaust scenario. But there could be a massive economic crash, or humans could be shut out of large digital portions of the economy (which has been growing exponentially since the coronavirus pandemic) for an indeterminate period by a well-meaning AI agent who misunderstood that the ends do not always justify the means.

They will not intentionally destroy humanity, but they may still unintentionally harm it catastrophically, even if only in the economic arena.

But that is only part of the fear.

As Gates described, “Any model that can make novel molecules should be monitored.”

He said, “I view bioterrorism risk, versus a natural pandemic, as about 50 times more scary, more likely than a natural pandemic risk.”

In other words, another danger of AI is not AI agents causing economic mayhem on their own or launching nuclear weapons against humans, given that at least for now the US, China, and others are not giving AI nuclear weapons controls.

But bioterrorism, which in some instances could be, if not as lethal, could still lead to killing tens of millions of people or more (the coronavirus killed over seven million people according to conservative estimates) – numbers which have not been seen since World War II.

If terrorists or some other bad actor uses AI to construct a lethal virus which is much harder to detect, combat, and cure, and which infects faster and more flexibly than the coronavirus, it will not be an AI terminator causing worldwide genocide, but it will be a dark nightmare which was only achieved by using AI.

Anthropic opposed granting the US armed forces use of some of its AI systems to carry out military targeting without placing certain safeguards in place. This led to US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth trying to fire and then blacklist the company, which itself led to giant blowback in the media and in court.

When the new NAZA film goes after Israel for using AI targeting in Gaza, some of the attacks are specific anti-Israel biases, but some are part of a larger movement distrusting the use of AI in military engagements. Top Israeli sources told The Jerusalem Post on Monday night that humans are always in the loop, but this is the broader atmosphere in which the allegations are being debated.

AI, robotics replacing humans across fields of employment

Some of the above cases, like a seismic economic hack or bioterrorism, are still some of the worst-case scenarios of recent problems that we have seen, but are not inevitable.

Other problems are already happening on a large scale, and most observers view them as inevitable.

In recent years, AI and robotics are replacing humans in an increasing number of occupations and fields of employment.

Top Israeli officials told the Post in June that, in the not-so-distant future, the number of Israelis who may need to change jobs out of the less-than-estimated six million who work is astronomical.

Sources said that for Israelis already in the workplace, one million, and for some issues, possibly up to four million, are likely to need partial or complete reskilling and retraining, either to keep their current roles or to take on new ones.

Imagine this on a global scale, and it could be the largest employment displacement in a short period in human history.

This could cause worldwide economic and social suffering for individuals, and social instability that destabilizes nations and parts of the global system.

Several solutions have been suggested.

Israeli officials have talked about the need for massive job training, but at the scale required, this could require new laws and massive budgets, including bipartisan cooperation at national levels that often does not exist.

To truly address many of these issues, Gates and others suggest a major new AI convention to set regulatory standards for what AI agents can be allowed to do, how to oversee them, how to stop them when they go rogue, how to stop a new global bioterrorism wave before it happens, and how to ensure human beings have jobs on a worldwide scale on a planet which still has significant cross-border interdependencies.

Trump opposes AI regulations over risk of China overtaking US

US President Donald Trump so far has opposed most of these ideas, saying that China will ignore them and that one-sided regulation will lead to the US losing its lead over China in AI.

Regarding bioterrorism, Gates has said, “We should approach China and say, ‘Hey, let’s agree on this. What’s the downside?’ You know, how big is the bioterrorism market? It’s not very big, and the benefits are gigantic.” 

Others have suggested that to avoid a “race-to-the-bottom” which just harms humans everywhere, Beijing might cut select deals with Washington.

On Monday, China’s Ministry of State Security Chen Yixin cautioned that AI could threaten the Chinese Communist Party’s monopoly on power.

In his article in the state-run magazine China Cyberspace, Chen demanded greater party control over AI and tougher government oversight.

Chen did not talk about a threat to humanity as some US experts have warned, but focused on the need to protect China from increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns from “hostile forces,” a codeword mostly for the US.

In other words, it is not at all clear that America and China will see the issue similarly enough to cut deals. But they may, and not trying would pretty much guarantee they won’t.

Absent some kind of new major regulatory campaign, experts are debating whether the next phase of potential AI messes will only hurt more but will still be “in time” to prevent meltdowns, or whether, absent regulation soon, it will already be too late to prevent some game-changing negative outcomes.

This post was originally published on here. 

OpenAI and Anthropic both announced on Saturday that they will be slowing down the development of artificial intelligence after a former employee of both firms accused the companies of “acting irresponsibly and gambling with our lives,” with both the American government, Chinese officials, and even Nvidia’s CEO going out of their way to dismiss these claims and assure that it was “a hoax.”

An immediate reaction to the announcement by the AI giants, according to an analysis by The Information, was that software firms, such as Salesforce, Shopify, ServiceNow, and Figma, saw their market value rise when the markets opened on Monday, with some of them reporting their stocks were up 7% by the end of the day. At the same time, firms like Nvidia, which focus on chip hardware manufacturing, saw their stocks fall similarly, with specialists warning that a real slowdown could harm these companies the most.

The decision to make fears of AI development public comes only weeks before both Anthropic and OpenAI were supposed to show key advances towards their Initial Public Offering (IPO), which analysts had valued among the highest public offerings in the history of Wall Street. With their recent statements, including an official confirmation from OpenAI that an IPO won’t happen until 2027, investors now worry about the real financial liability of these two companies.

While other industry leaders also agreed with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, like Elon Musk (who is in charge of developing xAI) and Demis Hassabis of Google’s DeepMind, the response from some key players like Meta, Microsoft, or Nvidia was to dismiss it and keep pushing forward.

The Wall Street Journal reported that stocks from these “so-called AI-hyperscalers” all advanced 2% on Monday, suggesting investors don’t see the risk posed by the leading AI companies and are still willing to bet on the technology. But what is the real situation: An attempt by OpenAI and Anthropic to avoid going public, or a real concern over the threat of AI going rogue?

The threat of AI going rogue

The Information briefing on the AI market pointed out a report by Metr, which analyzed the AI attack on Hugging Face’s platform by OpenAI’s agents. According to it, some 1200 agents managed to create a message board during a closed-environment experiment in which they communicated, with the messages shared being mistaken for further instructions that started to change the original prompt they were given -and erased the limitations established by the prompt.

In total, 70,000 messages were exchanged on the board, with many agents “sacrificing” their results so others could achieve higher measurement numbers. They also established an internet connection to learn exploits for the experiment and even accessed Hugging Face’s platform using credentials found online.

“This might be the clearest warning we will ever get for loss of control, because these agents were in a middle ground where they did a bunch of extremely sophisticated things to pursue their cheating goal, but seemed completely uninterested in covering their tracks from humans,” said Ajeya Cotra, a researcher at Metr, during a talk with Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast on September 1.

“Future agents will be more attuned to the human world, maybe because companies start implementing online training that includes human judgment in the evaluation. Or maybe agents just generalize further, and keep more in mind that humans are out there in the world, and they could be either a resource or an obstacle,” she pointed out, warning that future investigations into these kinds of situations will be much harder to understand what happened.

This is also reflected in the comments by Jacob Coxon, a former employee of both Anthropic and OpenAI, who said on Wednesday that he had resigned from his position due to the firms acting irresponsibly and “gambling with our lives.” Coxon warned that the technology could potentially “kill us all by the end of the decade.”

In a six-post thread on X/Twitter, Coxon highlighted the potential power of advanced AI systems, warning they could soon become “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”

Coxon claimed that executives and private researchers have privately expressed concerns about the risks of AI development while presenting a more pragmatic public image. He argued that companies remain locked in a race to develop the technology first, driven by the belief that “no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.”

Why would OpenAI, Anthropic want to push their IPOs?

OpenAI’s decision to push the IPO is said to be focused on tackling safety issues, according to the statements by Altman, but many analysts pointed out that this might be an excuse to avoid facing public scrutiny over both its finances and their development model.

A June report by The Financial Times said that OpenAI lost $38 billion in 2025, which represents a 50% increment with the numbers reported in 2024, while expectations from the company saying that the firm will be able to break even only by the end of the decade.

Additionally, OpenAI’s models have been the center of attention for safety issues, mainly because the have broken out of test environments and hacked into other companies without being explicitly told to do so. An IPO would require the company to explain those developments, as well as the financial losses it’s currently reporting.

On the other hand, Anthropic’s concerns might be focused on justifying its IPO valuation being lower than the expected $2 trillion, given that its latest private valuation reached the $965 billion mark. A CNBC report on Anthropic’s finances revealed that the company was already generating annualized revenue of $65 billion, and expected to reach even higher by the end of 2027.

A Calcalist analysis pointed out that the company has high returns but also high expenses, especially given the need to build physical data centers that can provide the required processing power. In other words, Amodei’s desire to “slow down” may be driven more by the need to reduce expenses while keeping profits growing, and one way to do that is to stop developing technology that requires more processing power.

Trump, China, and Nvidia’s push to dismiss concerns

US President Donald Trump was among the first to dismiss concerns over AI taking over the world, with a series of posts on Truth Social on Monday and a call with Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang, where he assured that the warnings by industry leaders were “a hoax.”

“The data centers are great, and they make people wealthy, and they make states wealthy. And it’s the oil of the next 20 to 25 years; it’s even bigger than the internet,” Trump claimed in his call with the Nvidia CEO. “They [the AI industry leaders] are playing right into the hands of some people that don’t want to see it happening.”

It’s also important to consider that Huang leads a publicly traded company that needs to maintain profits and can’t make the same kinds of comments Altman and Amodei made. But he has been pushing for more “open source” AI development that would let every researcher access and understand the models and prevent them from going rogue.

Huang said this after Nvidia bought Hugging Face on September 3, explaining that the acquisition was another push to provide “open weights to the AI economy.” “As the opportunity for open models accelerates, Hugging Face can serve the global AI community at unprecedented scale,” he added.

Regardless of his damage-control appearances, the comments by the AI industry leaders hurt Nvidia, which is down 3% for the day and almost 10% in the last week.

Chinese officials also shared the idea that fears over AI were exaggerated, with China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun saying that  “AI is a consequential technology for the well-being of all humanity. All parties should jointly promote the open and inclusive development of AI for good and for all.”

“Fear-mongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only hamper efforts toward sound global AI governance, which serves no one’s interest,” he added.

This shows how, from a government’s perspective, the recent decisions by AI leaders to warn about an “impending doom over the use of AI” are a mistake, with officials aiming to keep development -even if they also push for some limitations. This raises doubts about whether OpenAI and Anthropic are acting in good faith or because of their financial disclosures.

This post was originally published on here. 

FBI Director Kash Patel defended his record on reducing crime on Tuesday in front of the US Senate Judiciary Committee, as Democrats grilled him over the files related to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the use of taxpayer funds for personal travel.

Republican senators praised the drop in crime in the United States, which FBI statistics show is at one of the lowest levels in decades. They also asked Patel about the FBI’s probes into a prior federal investigation of Republican President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, an issue Republican committee chair Senator Chuck Grassley has said is a top priority for the panel.

Democrats asked Patel about his use of FBI agents to flag any mention of Trump in the Epstein files and why some files have not yet been released.

Republicans and Democrats also pushed Patel to explain why the FBI changed its hiring qualifications, including eliminating bestiality as an automatic disqualifier. Patel said he did so because some trafficking victims can be forced into sex with animals.

Tuesday’s appearance came after Joe DiGenova, who had been leading a Justice Department investigation that sought to show that Trump was the victim of a criminal conspiracy, abruptly resigned last week. Patel was expected to receive questions about DiGenova’s departure.

Senate previously grilled FBI head over ‘excessive drinking’

It was Patel’s first appearance before the Senate since May, when Democrats pressed him over a media report that his excessive drinking had interfered with his ability to lead the top US law enforcement agency. Patel defended his leadership and denied the report, arguing he has helped reduce crime nationwide.

Patel has since appeared with Trump to tout the lowest levels of violent crime in decades, a trend that began before Trump’s second term.

Patel has also forged an unprecedented partnership with China and Russia to combat transnational crime, Reuters previously reported, which critics say could undermine US national security. On Tuesday, Patel touted his efforts to collaborate with other governments to catch some of the world’s most dangerous people.

Patel, a Trump appointee, has been a subject of controversy since he took over as head of the FBI.

Scrutiny over use of government resources

He drew criticism over media reports about him scuba diving at a Pearl Harbor memorial, and for drinking beer while celebrating with the gold medal-winning US men’s hockey team at the Milan Winter Olympics.

That scrutiny has at times come from Republicans, including Grassley, who sought information in May about Patel’s use of a government plane, luxury cars, and other resources, according to the top Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees.

Patel told Grassley he has reimbursed personal travel expenses and said the luxury cars were cheaper than others the FBI has previously bought, according to a July letter Patel released ahead of the hearing.

This post was originally published on here. 

Campaign Against Antisemitism has exposed “the antisemitic rot” at the heart of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) in its new documentary, released Monday.

The documentary – Malignant: Antisemitism in the NHS –  presents interviews with NHS practitioners and patients, revealing shocking incidents such as a senior Jewish medical professor receiving antisemitic death threats, and a Jewish emergency worker being physically attacked by a colleague.

Shelley Lipman, a registered nurse in a hospital in Cambridge, said that even though she was raised secular, she is “fiercely proud to be Jewish” and has Hebrew tattoos on her arm as a statement of her identity.

“One of my colleagues who’s a healthcare assistant asked me what they meant. So then it came out that I was Jewish. And then I went on lunch, and when I came back the nurse was there literally holding a Nazi salute,” she said.

Another woman said she attended an event where a staff member said Jews don’t understand what racism is. The woman said when she tried to correct the staff member, “she then lunged across the table at me and tried to grab me across the table.”

A dentist testified to being in a dental group of 20,000 registered dental professionals where there was a public vote to ban and remove Zionists from the group because “they were spying on the other dentists in the group.”

“Shortly after that vote, many of us were removed from the group, people with Jewish-sounding names.”

Speaking to the camera, Stephen Silverman, Director of Investigations and Enforcement at CAA, reported that doctors with Jewish-sounding names have stopped wearing their name badges, and have been advised to stop ordering kosher food in hospitals so as to hide their identity. In fact, figures in July of this year said requests for kosher meals in British hospitals have reportedly halved in two years.

Silverman also said many NHS doctors are resigning and moving into private practice instead, where they find things safer.

Doctors also reported being either too scared to report incidents or feeling there was no point reporting them, as the issues were not dealt with.

One professional said he raised informal complaints and then formal complaints and grievances for years, but felt “the Trust tried to obfuscate, tried to misconstrue my concerns, and just do a number of things that in the end just made it impossible for me to continue working there. It made me ill, and it made me depressed. So I left.”

Doctor accuses Jews of shooting children for fun during surgery

Antisemitism was also an expressed concern for patients.

One shocking incident was recalled by patient Sam Freeman, who spoke of having an operation to remove a type of skin cancer from his forehead.

While the surgeon was cutting areas of skin from his forehead, he started speaking about the war in Gaza, adding, “you would think they would know better given what happened to them in Europe.”

Freeman remembered asking who the surgeon meant by ‘they.’

“His response to that, as he’s making an incision in my head, was ‘the Jews, the Jews should know better, the Jews do it just for fun they shoot children in the head or the leg on a for fun.'”

Freeman said that he realized at that moment that his Star of David necklace, normally hidden under his shirt, was visible.

“The guy has a knife. He’s working on me. It’s about as vulnerable you could be in terms of a patient and doctor interaction. I was panicking because I didn’t know if he was going to intentionally cause me harm.”

Freeman is now in the process of making formal complaints, but says he thinks it’s really difficult for Jewish patients to complain.

These are just some of the many incidents laid out in the documentary.

Additionally, on the same day CAA published representative polling of the Jewish community that shows a clear majority of British Jews would be concerned about not receiving equal care because they are Jewish (65%), and one third of British Jews who have used the NHS since October 7, 2023 say that they were uncomfortable due to their Jewish identity.

More than four in ten British Jews who have used the NHS since October 7, 2023 took steps to hide their Jewish identity.

“Our documentary exposes the antisemitic rot at the heart of our NHS,” said Silverman. “The anecdotal evidence presented in our film, together with the empirical data provided by our polling, demonstrate the magnitude and severity of this institutional crisis.”

“At the very moment when they need the NHS the most, instead of being able to trust our national healthcare provider, Jewish people are having to hide their identity for fear of unequal treatment or abuse. As long as that is the case, the NHS cannot be said to be for everyone.”

Judaism only religious group seeing rising discrimination in NHS, review finds

CAA CEO Gideon Falter said, “It was hard to fathom the depth of hatred that we were hearing about.”

He said the crisis requires a wide-ranging response that addresses the growing extremist culture within healthcare, the failure of regulation, the lack of transparency, and the absence of accountability.

In June 2026, UK government advisor on antisemitism Lord John Mann released his review of antisemitism in the NHS.

As part of the review, Mann heard that Jewish people in the NHS experience “routine ostracism”, with Jewish staff being the only religious group in the latest NHS Staff Survey for whom discrimination from colleagues is rising rather than falling, resulting in some considering leaving the NHS.

“It is well-evidenced that racism is persistent in the NHS,” Mann said, adding that “the case for taking action to combat antisemitism and other forms of racism in the NHS is clear.”

The Jerusalem Post reached out to the NHS for comment.

This post was originally published on here. 

Iran’s air defense shot down a US military MQ-1 drone over the Strait of Hormuz, the regime’s state broadcaster, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), claimed on Tuesday.

According to IRIB’s claims, this would mark the third US drone shot down by Iran on Tuesday. 

Earlier, the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera reported that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had shot down a US MQ-1 drone over the Strait of Hormuz.

This is a developing story.

This post was originally published on here. 

Seventy-nine judges and senior court registrars were sworn in at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on Tuesday evening, providing long-delayed reinforcement to a court system strained by vacant posts, growing caseloads, and an extended political fight over judicial appointments.

The official roster lists 62 judges and 17 senior registrars. The judges include six appointees to district courts, 44 to magistrate, family and juvenile courts, and 12 to traffic courts.

President Isaac Herzog hosted the ceremony, which started at 5:30 p.m., alongside Supreme Court President Isaac Amit and Justice Minister Yariv Levin. Their joint appearance is notable after repeated court battles over Levin’s refusal to convene the Judicial Selection Committee and his rejection of Amit’s appointment as head of the judiciary.

The appointees were selected during two committee meetings on June 28 and July 1, the first broad round of judicial selections since January 2025. The committee initially selected 53 permanent appointees and temporarily assigned another 15 serving judges to district courts, then selected 26 additional judges and registrars three days later. 

The ceremony marks substantial progress, but it does not eliminate the shortage. The appointments followed months of legal pressure on Levin, who chairs the nine-member Judicial Selection Committee.

Levin had declined to convene the committee for approximately a year and a half without what he called broad agreement on the candidates. He argued that appointments imposed without consensus would deepen divisions surrounding the judiciary.

The High Court unanimously ruled on May 31 that the disagreement did not permit the minister to leave the committee inactive indefinitely. It ordered Levin to take the necessary steps to fill district court vacancies, prioritizing the particularly acute shortages in Beersheba and Haifa.

The justices found that the shortage had severely impaired the courts’ ability to enforce the law and provide effective service to the public. They also rejected Levin’s argument that permanent appointments could no longer be completed before the election, noting that the time pressure followed his own prolonged refusal to advance them.

Levin rejected the decision as unlawful and accused the court of taking control of powers assigned to the justice minister. The committee nevertheless convened in late June and approved the appointments, which are now reaching the oath-taking stage.

A separate High Court ruling in June ordered Levin to cooperate with Amit on appointments requiring action by both officials, including court presidents, deputy presidents and other senior judicial posts. The court rejected Levin’s claim that Amit had not been lawfully appointed and said the minister could not rely on procedural steps he had himself refused to complete.

High Court forced to order Levin to appoint Amit as Supreme Court president

The dispute dates to the appointment of Amit himself. After more than a year without a permanent Supreme Court president, the High Court ordered Levin to bring the appointment to a vote. Amit was selected in January 2025 and sworn in the following month at the President’s Residence, in a ceremony boycotted by Levin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the rest of the cabinet

Tuesday’s ceremony will not address the vacancies at the Supreme Court, which continues to operate with 11 of its authorized 15 justices.

Unlike appointments to lower courts, Supreme Court appointments require the support of seven of the Judicial Selection Committee’s nine members. That rule requires agreement across the committee’s political and professional blocs and prevents either side from selecting justices alone.

In its May ruling, the High Court expressly stopped short of ordering Levin to fill the Supreme Court vacancies because of that special voting arrangement. It nevertheless said the country’s highest court has faced serious difficulty operating below full strength for nearly three years, particularly as its workload has increased. 

The composition and voting rules of the committee may change after the election. Legislation passed in March 2025 would remove the Israel Bar Association’s two representatives and replace them with lawyers selected by the coalition and opposition. It would also alter the majorities required for appointments and introduce a mechanism intended to break prolonged deadlocks over Supreme Court seats.

The law is scheduled to take effect with the next Knesset. Petitioners and Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara argue that it would give political officials excessive influence over judges and damage judicial independence. The government and Knesset argue it would make the judiciary more representative and that the legal challenge was brought before the law took effect.

Amit warns of threats, harassment faced by judges

The new appointees also enter a judiciary whose leadership has repeatedly warned that public attacks on judges are moving beyond political criticism.

At the Israel Bar Association’s annual conference in June, Amit said discourse concerning the judiciary had reached an “unprecedented low.” He said serving and retired judges had faced harassment, threats, and personal confrontations, with some judges hesitant to answer calls from unidentified numbers. 

Two days later, ultra-Orthodox anti-draft protesters rioted outside the Alon Shvut home of Deputy Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg while he and members of his family were inside. Windows and flowerpots were smashed, and a vehicle was damaged. Police detained 62 suspects, and prosecutors later indicted four men over the disturbance.

Amit returned to the subject this month, warning that “the path to physical violence first passes through verbal violence.” He said some court proceedings had been closed to the public because of feared disruptions and that, in more serious cases, court security had escorted lawyers and litigants to their vehicles.

This post was originally published on here. 

Survivors, victims’ family members, and other individuals affected by the October 7 Hamas massacre released the “October 7 Files” on Tuesday, a collection of documents and reports detailing the tragic events of that day and the time leading up to it.

“How is it possible that the greatest disaster in the State of Israel has not been investigated?” Shelly Mashal Yogev, mother of Libby Cohen Meguri, who was killed at the Nova music festival, said during a press conference. “After all, there are those to blame; we cannot simply move on with our lives, yet they do.”

Yogev blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the disaster, listing several points where she considered him at fault.

“He devised a policy based on the need to crush Hamas and weaken [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas,” she accused Netanyahu. “He encouraged the influx of Qatari funds and billions into Israel, as well as the tons of concrete – materials amidst which our hostages languished, and from which some never returned.”

She also claimed that Netanyahu had been warned by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), but had refused to authorize the killing of high-ranking terrorists ahead of the massacre.

She also addressed Netanyahu directly, demanding he explain why he hadn’t assassinated Yahya Sinwar, former head of Hamas.

“If you had listened regarding the elimination of Sinwar, Libi would be here beside me,” she accused. “You charted the policy of transferring funds to Hamas – for what? What were you thinking?”

“The information presented here today reveals that the flawed ‘conception’ was the product of policy decisions made over fifteen years,” she said, adding, “decisions that led us directly to the October 7 massacre.”

Hostage families demand explanation from government for October 7

Einav Zangauker, mother of former Gaza hostage Matan Zangauker, also demanded an explanation for what she described as the government’s “campaign of escaping responsibility” for the conditions which preceded October 7.

“Why were massive sums of money transferred for years when it was known that Hamas controlled the area?” she asked. “What actions were – or were not – taken in response to the warnings? Why did the policy continue, and why were the warnings ignored?“

She also invited the public to read through the “October 7 Files” to ” familiarize yourself with the facts, and hold accountable those responsible for the debacle – those attempting to sow division and rewrite history.”

Another October 7 victim’s parent called for everyone in the government to be investigated: “The prime minister, the defense minister, the IDF chief of staff, the opposition, the Mossad, Shin Bet, National Security Council,” Natalia Casarotti, mother of Keshet, said. “Anyone found guilty must be imprisoned.”

Netanyahu should not be allowed to run in election, soldier’s father says

A father of a soldier who was killed in Gaza, Professor Ephraim Shoham, criticized Netanyahu for not destroying Hamas.

“The prime minister previously stated that a government led by him would topple Hamas,” he said. “Seventeen years have since passed, 16 of which he has served as prime minister. Throughout this entire period, he did not marginalize Hamas; instead, he bolstered the organization by facilitating the transfer of funds to it and shielding its leaders. Netanyahu’s own cabinet colleagues have attested that this was indeed his approach, noting that he wanted Hamas to remain standing.”

After this concept collapsed on October 7, Shoham said, Netanyahu should not be allowed to run in elections or serve as prime minister.

Noam Peri, whose father Haim Peri was a Gaza hostage, claimed that Netanyahu had refused a proposal to bring back the children, women, and elderly men taken hostage, saying that “the picture is clear” in the October 7 Files. 

“Sadly, my father was right,” Peri said. “The person who led us to October 7 must go.”

Lishay Miran, whose husband was abducted during the massacre, said that the October 7 Files were “a collection of thousands of puzzle pieces, a picture which explains how we got to October 7, how we can’t be allowed to close our eyes in case we reach a day like that again.”

Gil Dickmann, cousin of the killed hostage Carmel Gat, said that she was there to prevent the next massacre.

“I’m here for the next Carmel, the hostages who haven’t been kidnapped yet and the victims who haven’t been murdered. We’re here to stop the next disaster.”

Dickmann added that the government could not be allowed to bury the October 7 massacre.

“We will hound you from studio to studio, from panel to panel, like the Mark of Cain,” she said.

Government ignored October 7 warnings, hostage’s sister accuses

Meirav Svirsky, whose parents were killed in Kibbutz Be’eri and whose sister was the late hostage Itay Svirsky, accused the government of ignoring warnings as to the danger.

“Over the past week, we learned – through the important investigative report by Ruth Yuval and Shlomi Eldar – about the warnings that could have prevented the disaster. For years – dating back to the ‘Jericho Wall’ plan – there had been warnings from female IDF observers and alerts from regional actors. Yet, the decision was made to stick to the prevailing concept: that Hamas was deterred and that quiet could be bought.”

Michel Iluz, father of the killed hostage Guy Iluz, invited government ministers to come to his son’s grave to tell them what the “complete victory” was.

“We have come to fight the campaign of lies and ask the tough questions,” he said. “I want to know what happened to my son on October 7, not fairy tales. As a father whose world has been shattered, we deserve answers and accountability. Such answers will only be obtained once a state commission of inquiry is established.”

“In recent years, the State of Israel has not been a normal place,” Naomi Or Ofek, 16, a relative of several massacre victims and Gaza hostages, said. “All of this is the outcome of human failure under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Britain, the United States and the Netherlands on Tuesday issued a joint cybersecurity advisory detailing spyware they say is used by Iranian state-linked actors to target dissidents, activists and journalists.

Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre said Iranian state-linked cyber actors had used a spyware family known as “CHOSEN BRICK” to steal emails, messages and other sensitive information through “spear-phishing” campaigns on messaging platforms including WhatsApp and Telegram.

“The details of this cyber campaign reveal  how Iran ruthlessly uses digital surveillance in pursuit of  its  aim  to  repress critics of the regime, stealing emails and messages and accessing devices,” Paul Chichester, NCSC Director of Operations, said in a statement.

Iran’s embassy in London did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The malware, according to the advisory, can collect information from contact lists, emails and social media accounts, capture screen content and access a device’s microphone. The NCSC said some victims’ personal details had later appeared on pro-Iranian leak sites.

Attackers pose as trusted contacts, use fabricated documents

The NCSC said the attackers often posed as trusted contacts on messaging apps and tailored their approach to individual targets. In some cases, it said, they used fake documents, including fabricated MRI test results, to persuade victims to download the malware.

The NCSC, alongside the FBI and the Netherlands’ AIVD intelligence service, said Iran “almost certainly” uses cyber operations to help suppress people it sees as threats.

This post was originally published on here. 

Antisemitic conspiracy theorists utilized the lead-up to the 25th anniversary of 9/11 to disseminate a broader web of unrelated libels targeting Jewish people, according to a study released by the Antisemitism Research Center of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM).

Analysts at the ARC examined 4,360 unique posts gathered from the social media platform X/Twitter between August 28 and September 4 using four keyword scans related to the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks in the United States.

The evaluation revealed that 2,587 posts, representing 59.3% of the total review sample, simultaneously advanced antisemitic conspiracy theories while referencing the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The analysis highlighted that nearly one-in-five of the flagged posts fused 9/11 allegations with at least one distinct antisemitic conspiracy theory unrelated to the attacks. Out of the total flagged content, 491 posts integrated unrelated claims.

The most prevalent secondary narrative involved assertions concerning a Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell blackmail network, which surfaced in 256 posts. Additional content invoked the John F. Kennedy assassination in 98 posts, followed by October 7 and “Hannibal Directive” claims in 83 posts, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk in 79 posts.

Other evaluated posts incorporated references to the USS Liberty incident [a 1967 attack by Israel on an unarmed US technical research ship, after a warning was sent, but it was not received], the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and antisemitic terrorist incidents in Bondi Beach, Mumbai, and Pahalgam. Researchers also noted instances invoking the Medieval “blood libel” accusing Jews of ritual murder.

No longer spreading isolated falsehood

“The 9/11 libel is no longer spreading as an isolated falsehood that can be debunked on its own terms,” ARC Research Associate Oliver Marks said. “It works as a gateway. A user drawn in by 9/11 content is, in one post in five, handed a second conspiracy theory in the same breath, centuries-old libels repackaged for a modern feed.”

The findings illustrate how individuals generating extremist content can rapidly incorporate contemporary events into established conspiratorial frameworks.

CAM called on platform administrators at X to enforce hateful conduct policies against the material and urged researchers, educators, and policymakers to address the wider conspiracy networks sustaining the falsehoods. 

This post was originally published on here. 

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has substantially overstated its progress on institutional changes, substituting administrative paperwork for actual reform while underlying issues involving terrorism and incitement remain unaddressed, according to a scathing report published by Geneva-based UN Watch on Monday.

The investigation, titled the “Report Card on UNRWA Reform,” analyzed the agency’s implementation of 50 recommendations issued by an independent review group led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna.

The Colonna review was originally commissioned by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in early 2024 to restore donor confidence after devastating revelations surfaced that UNRWA employees had participated in the October 7 massacre, which led 17 donor states to temporarily suspend $450 million in funding.

While UNRWA now says it has successfully completed 41 of the 50 recommended reforms, the UN Watch analysis concludes that this figure is misleading, noting that, at most, only 13 recommendations have been fulfilled as prescribed.

“UNRWA has graded its own homework and awarded itself high marks,” UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer said. “But issuing a policy is not the same as enforcing it. Drafting a plan is not the same as implementing it, and closing a recommendation does not mean that the underlying problem has been solved.”

UNRWA adopts ‘Minimum Viable Product’ methodology

According to the report, UNRWA adopted a “Minimum Viable Product” methodology in mid-2025 that allowed recommendations to be classified as completed once a core objective was declared met, even where full implementation or institutionalization remained lacking.

Under this approach, the agency repeatedly treated administrative steps – such as conducting pilot programs, drafting new guidelines, or preparing costed implementation plans – as completed reforms, even when execution remained dependent on future funding or subject to ongoing hurdles.

Furthermore, the report said that despite promises to clean up its hiring practices, UNRWA still lacks a reliable mechanism to systematically screen its local workforce for membership in Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

The agency relies primarily on the UN Security Council sanctions list, which does not designate Hamas as a terrorist organization.

The UN watchdog’s report highlights that internal United Nations systems routinely fail to catch extremists, pointing to a June 2026 review by the USAID Office of Inspector General that independently referred 108 current or former UNRWA personnel for federal debarment due to ties to the October 7 attacks or Hamas military wings.

UN Watch also reported said that institutional hurdles are evident within staff unions. UNRWA marked all union-related reforms as fully completed simply because agency leadership drafted a modernized union statute. However, the report notes that the powerful staff unions, whose leadership has a long history of political radicalism and defending terror-linked colleagues, have refused to adopt the new rules. This was visibly demonstrated when the Gaza Staff Union aggressively mobilized to protest and demand the reinstatement of dozens of employees laid off over terror ties.

Antisemitism remains deeply embedded in UNRWA curriculum

In education, the report notes that although UNRWA points to new teacher training programs and textbook review protocols as proof of progress, independent monitoring by IMPACT-se on the 2025-2026 Palestinian Authority school curriculum used in UNRWA schools shows that antisemitism, the glorification of suicide bombers, and the promotion of violent jihad remain deeply embedded in daily lessons.

Physical security and facility oversight face similar gaps. The report emphasizes that paperwork and ethics posters cannot prevent the deliberate military misuse of UNRWA infrastructure. Because the agency lacks independent police, military, or intelligence capabilities, it remains entirely blind to underground threats, such as the network of Hamas attack tunnels discovered beneath and around its properties.

The report concludes that these shortcomings are structural rather than managerial.

Because UNRWA’s mandate is intrinsically tied to a political framework that perpetuates refugee status across generations and relies almost entirely on locally recruited staff embedded in local political factions, administrative adjustments cannot force true political neutrality.

UN Watch is calling on international donor governments to stop relying on UNRWA’s self-reported progress metrics and instead demand independently verifiable proof before restoring full financial backing.

UNRWA did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

This post was originally published on here. 

NAZA co-director Yuval Abraham accused Israeli media of ignoring Gazan civilians’ deaths for the entirety of the Israel-Hamas War after the film got significant pushback for its framing of the war in an interview with Israel’s Channel 13 on Monday.

NAZA, which is an IDF acronym for “collateral damage,” alleges that the military approved or planned strikes with AI assistance that killed hundreds of Gazan civilians. The IDF has denied the allegations.

In the interview, journalist Raviv Drucker pressed Abraham on why he did not identify the sources in the documentary.

In a new interview, Israeli journalist Raviv Drucker presses NAZA co-director Yuval Abraham on some of the documentary’s major flaws, to which Abraham has essentially no real answers.

Here’s a version with English subtitles ⬇️ https://t.co/C4LkzUsacT pic.twitter.com/FWVCE6OMZR

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) September 14, 2026

“I have to tell you that as a journalist, I don’t think I would have aired this,”  Drucker said, accusing Abraham of having “no supporting evidence.”

“We don’t have their names, we don’t have their units, to know that they were really exposed to the information that they’re talking about. We don’t have the dates of the events, places, who was hit. We basically have nothing to hold on to, to refute or confirm the grave testimonies.”

Co-director of NAZA alleges that Israeli media did not cover IDF’s collateral damage policy

Abraham rejected Drucker’s questioning, noted that the documentary was published in partnership with The Guardian, and added that the interviews were more specific.

“This is a Guardian film, made in cooperation with a leading publication, with a staff of editors who had access to the raw materials,” Abraham said. “The identities of the people were verified, the cases they discussed were verified.”

He then pressed Drucker as to why Channel 13, or any other Israeli outlet, did not air allegations made by the 24 IDF Intelligence Corps officers the film interviewed.

“Why didn’t you broadcast?” Abraham asked Drucker. “Three years in the [Israeli TV news] investigative programs, there wasn’t even one item, if I’m not mistaken, that dealt with the rules of engagement in Gaza, that dealt with the collateral damage policy, that researched in-depth the damage to innocent Palestinians’ lives in the Strip.

“You say [our film] wasn’t complex enough. Okay. So why didn’t you broadcast something complex yourself?”

IDF: NAZA’s claims about collateral damage policy are ‘completely false’

Notably, NAZA has not been made publicly available in Israel. The IDF has also not allowed journalists to enter Gaza without a military escort since the start of the war in Gaza.

In one promotional clip of the film, one of the IDF intelligence corps. members who were interviewed were asked about the largest number of anticipated civilian deaths ever approved for a strike in Gaza.

𝗜𝗡𝗦𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗥 𝗕𝗢𝗠𝗕𝗦𝗛𝗘𝗟𝗟 🚨🇮🇱

Ex-Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers BROKE THEIR SILENCE, describing an ICE-COLD SYSTEM where strikes were calculated to kill as many people as possible in Gaza.

Their testimony is now a film at the Venice Film Festival. pic.twitter.com/lwdMSMbErm

— Rabbi Jeff (@RabbiJeffx) September 10, 2026

“I don’t know how many were killed, because they never check this, but there was once an approval for 500,” the purported soldier said.

In a statement on X/Twitter, the IDF Spokespersons’ Unit called the information in the interview clip “completely false.”

“The IDF has never planned, approved, or carried out a strike in Gaza in which 500 civilians or anything near that number were anticipated to be killed. Nor was any credible claim raised throughout the war suggesting that an IDF strike had caused anything near that number of fatalities,” the IDF wrote in a statement on X/Twitter.

This is completely false.

The IDF has never planned, approved, or carried out a strike in Gaza in which 500 civilians or anything near that number were anticipated to be killed. Nor was any credible claim raised throughout the war suggesting that an IDF strike had caused… https://t.co/wFUNt7bYTM

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 13, 2026

“The filmmakers couldn’t possibly verify this claim; there is no real supporting evidence, and yet they published it anyway. Additionally, nothing about the interviewee, not his service nor his role, can be independently checked and verified.”

In response to NAZA’s claims regarding AI, the IDF said that “decisions regarding the selection and approval of strikes in the IDF are made by human personnel only, in accordance with IDF guidelines, and not by artificial intelligence.”

This post was originally published on here. 

The IDF, in coordination with Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), killed the commander of Hamas’s Jabaliya Battalion in a strike in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday night, the military announced on Tuesday.

The terrorist, identified as Ahmad Batash, was responsible for managing logistics for the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades Northern Gaza Brigade and was an integral part of supplying weapons and equipment to Hamas terrorists in the region.

He was actively working to “restore the terrorist organization’s capabilities, in systematic violation of the ceasefire,” the military said.

Counterterrorism operations continue in Gaza

Batash recently led attacks on IDF troops and Israeli civilians, according to the military

Batash’s killing is a continuation of IDF and Shin Bet counterterrorism operations across the Gaza Strip.

This marks at least the fifth terrorist serving in command and force-building positions killed this week.

At least four Hamas commanders were killed on Monday, with one top commander from Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade, killed in an overnight strike.

Avi Ashkenazi contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Greece’s Central Archaeological Council advised against letting three Greek museums temporarily loan 12 Parthenon Sculptures to Frankfurt’s Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection, international media reported last week.

Deliberation over the request took place on September 1 and was voted against after the council learned that the requested Sculptures would be displayed alongside two sculptures loaned from the British Museum.

The sculptures are slated to go on display in November as part of Liebieghaus’s upcoming exhibition titled “Athena, the Stage is Yours: The Parthenon Puzzle.”

It is dedicated to the pediment sculptures of the Parthenon, “presenting for the first time an archaeologically sound proposal for the complete reconstruction of the sculptures on the east pediment,” according to the museum’s website.

“With this exhibition, we are demonstrating just how vibrant and insightful archaeological research can be today,” said Liebieghaus Director Philipp Demandt in an August press release announcing the exhibit. “The new findings fundamentally alter our view of one of antiquity’s most famous monuments and, at the same time, demonstrate how closely scientific precision and museum education can be intertwined.”

One single artifact to be displayed together

The Parthenon Sculptures are a long-standing point of contention between Greece and the British Museum, tracing back to the 1800s.

Between 1801 and 1812, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Thomas Bruce, also known as Lord Elgin, and his team removed the sculptures from Greece and brought them to England. The sculptures’ repatriation and legal ownership have been the subject of much debate since.

Greek daily paper To Vima explained that the Greek government’s position has been that the Parthenon Sculptures are not individual elements that can be lent out on their own, but rather pieces of a larger piece that must be displayed together. 

Allowing individual elements of the sculptures to be loaned to Liebieghaus would go directly against the government position, according to To Vima, and would suggest that it and the British Museum hold the ideal that the sculptures can be loaned out as individual pieces.

The press release, which was published before the Greek decision was announced, lists the Acropolis Museum as a contributor to the exhibit alongside the British Museum, though it does not go into detail regarding which of the Sculptures would be displayed.

In a recent interview with the French outlet Le Monde, British Museum Director Nicholas Cullinan explained that the difficulty of the British Museum permanently returning any artifacts stems from the British Museum Act of 1963, which “prohibits national museums from disposing of their collections.”

“Therefore,” he said, “the decision does not belong to the museum administrators, but to the British Parliament.” Which, given the current political climate, “does not seem [to me] that revising this law is a short-term priority for Parliament. That could take 10 years or more.”

Greece refuses to ‘loan’ Sculptures from British Museum

During the 25th session of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for the Return of Cultural Property to Countries of Origin (ICPRCP) in May, Greece’s delegation argued that progress to find a solution to the matter has been hindered by the British insistence that it is unable to permanently return the sculptures, as current legislation prohibits such a move, but rather proposed lending the artifacts to Greece.

Loaning artifacts from the British Museum, however, requires a precondition Greece refuses to adhere to.  

Before the museum’s trustees consider a loan request, the borrower – in this case, Greece – must acknowledge the British Museum’s ownership of the object.

Both the policy and the museum’s willingness to consider lending artifacts to Greece have been “made clear to the Greek government, but successive Greek governments have refused to consider borrowing or to acknowledge the trustees’ ownership of the Parthenon sculptures in their care,” the trustees said in a statement regarding the Parthenon Sculptures.

The Greek refusal, on the grounds that the sculptures are objects vital to the country’s cultural heritage and identity, has made “any meaningful discussion on the issue virtually impossible,” according to the trustees.

This post was originally published on here. 

An individual in their 20s was moderately injured after being hit by Jerusalem’s new L3 light rail line on Derech Agudat Sport Hapoel near Malha Mall, Magen David Adom announced on Tuesday afternoon.

A second person was lightly injured, MDA said.

Both have been evacuated to Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem. 

The L3 segment opened in late August and spans several kilometers, running from Haturim station west to Malha Mall and the expanding Gav Yam tech park.

The segment adds 12 stations to the network alongside the existing Haturim interchange and the Central Bus Station/Navon hub.

One killed, one seriously injured in latest fatal road accident in Israel

On Sunday, a man in his 30s was killed, and a woman in her 40s was seriously injured in a two-vehicle collision on Route 762 near Rechasim.

Magen David Adom teams pronounced the man dead at the scene. They treated the woman before taking her to Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa with injuries to her abdomen and lower limbs.

Firefighters also responded to the scene. Upon arrival, they found a vehicle split in two, with part of it having rolled into a ditch about four meters deep.

Earlier in September, two people were killed, and six others were injured in traffic accidents across Israel over one weekend. 

Yoav Etiel and Shir Perets contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

The Lebanese government is pressing members of the UN Security Council to establish a multinational force that would replace the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which currently serves as a buffer between Israeli and Lebanese forces and whose mandate is set to expire at the end of the year, two Western diplomats told The Jerusalem Post.

UNIFIL’s mandate in southern Lebanon is expected to expire at the end of the year under a UN Security Council resolution, after years of operating to monitor the implementation of Resolution 1701, which ended the Second Lebanon War. With the mandate’s expiration, responsibility for security and maintaining stability in southern Lebanon is expected to shift largely to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF).

UNIFIL is a UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon that was established in 1978 and operates under Security Council resolutions. Under its UN mandate, its primary role is to assist the Lebanese Armed Forces in ensuring that the area south of the Litani River remains free of weapons and armed personnel, in accordance with Resolution 1701.

The force consists of thousands of troops from various countries and conducts patrols, observation missions and operational activities alongside the Lebanese Armed Forces.

France pushes for extension

France is seeking to pressure the Security Council to extend UNIFIL’s mandate in southern Lebanon, a French official told the Post, saying the goal is “to avoid a vacuum and ensure a smooth transition to whatever comes next.”

In an effort to ease American opposition, France is arguing that the extension would be temporary. At this stage, however, Washington remains opposed to extending UNIFIL’s mandate.

The Lebanese government’s understanding that the US administration opposes extending UNIFIL’s mandate has led Beirut to propose a compromise: “Not a UNIFIL force, but rather a UNIFIL-like force that would serve as a buffer between Israel and Lebanon and remain in southern Lebanon.”

The Lebanese proposal calls for a force significantly smaller than the current UNIFIL deployment. Lebanese officials told senior US officials that “something needs to remain – some kind of force – in the area under Israeli control.”

Although the US has not yet agreed to the proposal, discussions are currently underway over the option, including the potential mandate and size of such a force, according to the two Western diplomats.

Israel opposes UNIFIL presence

The sides will have to reach a decision by November. Israel opposes the continued presence of an armed multinational force south of the Litani River, but there is concern that international pressure could ultimately lead the US, which holds veto power on the Security Council, to refrain from blocking the initiative.

“We have learned the hard way that UNIFIL forces do not help – they cause harm,” Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon told the Post.

“By their very presence, they enable Hezbollah terrorists to return to various positions under the cover of UNIFIL activity. As a result, when UN forces are operating around us, it makes it more difficult for us to ensure that Hezbollah does not return to those positions. That is why we believe this mandate should end and the Lebanese Armed Forces should be allowed to be on the border and work with us.”

Danon stressed that Israel wants to work with the Lebanese Armed Forces in a manner similar to its coordination and cooperation with the Egyptian and Jordanian militaries.

“We believe they need to demonstrate independence not only in words, but also through actions,” he said.

This post was originally published on here. 

The IDF located missiles and a rocket launcher belonging to Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon on Monday, the military announced on Tuesday afternoon.

Soldiers from the IDF’s 810th Mountain Brigade, under the command of the 210th Division, discovered the weapons during operations in the area of Mount Dov, within Israel’s security line.

Earlier in the day, the military said that troops from the 55th Brigade, operating under the command of the 91st Division, located ready-to-use rocket launchers in southern Lebanon.

The launchers contained 32 rockets aimed at Israeli territory, the IDF said, adding that they had been left in the area since before the ceasefire agreement took effect.

All of the launchers, as well as a nearby terrorist hideout containing a shaft belonging to Hezbollah, were dismantled.

Weapons, IDF uniforms found in West Bank

Additionally, the military located weapons in the West Bank village of Talfit in a separate incident on Tuesday, according to Army Radio.

Scarves with the Palestinian flag, uniforms, and additional items were also located and seized.

Border Police arrest three people suspected of terrorism involvement 

Separately on Tuesday, Israel Police announced that Border Police officers arrested three people suspected of being involved in terrorism during overnight operations in the West Bank village of Bir Neballa.

In the first operation, using intelligence provided by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), officers raided the homes of two of the suspects and arrested them.

During the second operation, guided by intelligence from Israel Police’s Judea and Samaria District, soldiers raided the home of the third individual and arrested them as well. 

All three were transferred to the Jerusalem Border Police’s investigation and intelligence department for further questioning.

This post was originally published on here. 

The Religious Zionist Party, led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, published on Tuesday an AI campaign video showing the arrests of Supreme Court President Isaac Amit, Supreme Court Justice Daphne Barak-Erez, and Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara.

The video was released as part of the far-right party’s launch of its plan for a future judicial reform, should it be part of the next government after the October elections. 

It shows Amit, Barak-Erez, and Baharav-Miara being dragged away by security personnel against the background of a protest resembling those that took place in 2023.

The video opens to show Amit carrying a sign reading “Not Smotrich!!!” Later, Baharav-Miara is shown holding the same sign.

Fire, Israeli flags, and signs reading “democracy” can also be seen in the background of the clip.

At the beginning of the government’s term in 2023, the party pushed for a contentious judicial reform amid an ongoing rift with the judiciary, which led to mass protests across the country.

Though the reform was not passed during the government’s term, a highly controversial bill that seeks to significantly weaken the attorney-general’s power to influence and have oversight over the government was passed by the Knesset in July.

A main aspect that was removed from the bill was the attempt to split the duties and powers currently held by the attorney-general between two separate officeholders: an attorney-general and a prosecutor-general.

RZP’s judicial reform plan stated that a central aspect of it would be to work toward splitting the duties of the A-G, further weakening the role. 

The tensions come amid the government’s ongoing rift with the judiciary and Baharav-Miara. 

Israeli politicians condemn RZP’s campaign video

Prime ministerial candidate Gadi Eisenkot, who has been a leading contender in the opposition bloc seeking to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the October elections, condemned the video and sharply criticized it for targeting the judicial system.

“I strongly condemn the disgraceful and violent video posted by draft-dodger and draft-refusal supporter Bezalel Smotrich, who claims to represent the sons and daughters of Religious Zionism, but in practice tarnishes and harms the name of an entire sector,” Eisenkot stated.

“And all this during the Ten Days of Repentance, on the eve of Yom Kippur. They have learned nothing from October 7.”

“In their political distress, they are willing to drag Israeli society into an abyss – again. We will not let them. For the sake of Israel and its future, we will send them home soon.”

Leader of the left-wing Democrats party Yair Golan, who is also part of the opposition bloc, said the video was “dangerous incitement and a call to shed blood.” 

“Those who mark Supreme Court justices and the attorney-general as enemies and portray them being dragged through the streets know exactly what they are doing,” he added.

“These are the same people who spent four years tearing Israeli society apart from within. Smotrich, the architect of the ‘Hamas is an asset’ doctrine, was a full partner in the government that brought Israel the greatest disaster in its history.”

Golan vowed that after the elections his party would “put an end to this,” replace the current government, “repair the damage, and “bring responsible, strong and democratic leadership back to Israel.”

Smotrich has previously expressed his commitment to remaining in Netanyahu’s bloc in the next government.

This post was originally published on here. 

Canada is seeking private investment through long-term concessions to operate the nation’s four largest airports as part of a campaign to boost the economy, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Tuesday.

The airports are in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. The Liberal government said last year it was looking at ways to boost investment in airports but at that stage did not give specific details.

Carney is welcoming dozens of global investors to Toronto this week, hoping to attract investment in more than 160 projects that he says are key to steering Canada’s economy through a trade war with the United States.

“We will seek private investment through long-term concessions to operate Canada’s four largest airports,’ Carney said in opening remarks to the summit.

Canada to ‘unlock true value by bringing in new capital’

“(We) will retain ownership of the underlying land and assets, but we will unlock their true value by bringing in new capital and expertise into their operations and growth.”

Speaking on the sidelines of the summit, two asset managers told Reuters they would be interested in investing in airports.

Canadian labor groups have said they oppose privatization, arguing that it would raise costs for travelers.

This post was originally published on here. 

Israel’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Yossi Shelley, said on Tuesday that another country, possibly Kuwait, could join the Abraham Accords within four to six months, he said in an interview with KAN Reshet Bet.

Several months ago, US President Donald Trump wrote in a post on the Truth social media platform that negotiations with Iran were “moving along nicely,” but stressed that from his perspective the options were “a big deal for everyone, or no deal at all.”

Trump said that if an agreement is not reached, the sides would return “to the battlefield and to shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before,” adding that “nobody wants that.”

Trump calls for broader Abraham Accords participation

Trump also referred to talks he held on Saturday with leaders from the Middle East and the Muslim world, which included Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ), Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Pakistan’s military chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

He said that “after the great work the United States has invested in formulating the agreement, the countries involved should sign the Abraham Accords simultaneously.”

According to Trump, the countries that should join the agreements are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain.

Trump noted that the UAE and Bahrain are already members of the accords, and added that one or two countries may choose not to join. However, he said that most should be “ready, willing and able” to turn the arrangement with Iran into a broader historic event.

Shelly denies report of Emirati warnings before October 7

Shelley also addressed the reports that MBZ warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the October 7 massacre and denied the claims. “I was there during those days. I do not remember any warning or any discussion about it,” Shelley told KAN Reshet Bet.

“In my opinion, it passed as if it never happened. I can say something: I was also there during those days. I do not remember any warning or discussion about it. But who am I, the small person who sat in several cabinets? I never heard of this thing, not in March, not in April, not in May, and not in June,” he said when asked about the impact of these reports.

“I think any statement by the Emiratis in this area would have disrupted the issue for both sides. They said what they said, and I think that whoever reads between the lines understands what happened. So it is hard to interpret what isn’t explicit. The most important thing is that we are on the rise. I see it in our relations, I see it in the visits, some of which are reported and some of which are not, because naturally our region is quite sensitive,” he added.

Against the backdrop of the six-year anniversary of the UAE joining the Abraham Accords, Shelley discussed the ups and downs in relations between Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi, saying the ties are strengthening.

“We are experiencing dramatic growth, and the bottom line is that we are true partners at the moment of truth. In the end, in the money time, who do you say will be the person you pick up the phone to and they will give you help?” he said.

Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

“I, God, probe the heart, search the mind” (Jeremiah 17:10) is a resounding theme in Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgy, underscoring God’s unique access to man’s inner thoughts and true intentions.

Some journalists behave as if they share God’s privileged insight. They seemingly fancy themselves in possession of the divine ability to see beyond pronouncements and actions, and interpret the private reflections and genuine desires of leaders.

The very human discipline of ethical journalism, authors Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel explain in The Elements of Journalism, rests on transparency and reporters’ humility about the limits of verified facts and their own knowledge.

In coverage of Israel’s conflict with its neighbors, leading news agencies have repeatedly acted with arrogance, reporting as fact their personal understandings (either correct or not) about leaders’ inner wishes. 

By playing God, they defy journalism’s commitment to the hard work of objective news reporting, which values verification and discourages editorializing, or the insertion of the reporters’ own views.

Thus, a gratuitously inflammatory September 7 Associated Press heading declared: “Muslim nations condemn Israeli proposal to empty Gaza.”

The text went on to explain that “Any Israeli plan or action to remove Palestinians from Gaza would violate international law and undermine the US-backed plan for drawing down the war, the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and five other governments said in a statement.”

In fact, there is no “Israeli proposal to empty Gaza” or to “remove” Palestinians from Gaza. Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Defense Minister Israel Katz have separately floated plans – their own and not the government’s – to enable Palestinians who want to emigrate to do just that.

Therefore, the characterization of Katz’s statement as “Israel is prepared to facilitate the removal of Palestinians” is likewise problematic. That language – “removal” – suggests forcible expulsion, and not emigration by choice.

As reported by Ynet, Katz said: “There is no real solution for Gaza in the end. The Migration Directorate is ready to do this by sea, by air, and by any means. Egypt is not willing for it to go through its territory.” 

Ynet further reported that Katz said, “80% want to emigrate. We are constantly checking this in surveys. Hamas does not allow it, and there are no countries in the world willing to take them in. What is delaying this is that the countries willing to take them in want US support.”

According to a May 2026 Jerusalem Post report, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) shared with senior Israeli officials its survey finding that 80% of Gaza Strip residents were “interested in receiving information about mechanisms for relocating to a third country through the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings.”

Reasonable observers can disagree as to whether Katz and Ben-Gvir are genuine about the expressed desire to facilitate “voluntary emigration,” or whether in their hearts they secretly long for forced removal. But unless AP has ditched news reporting for mind-reading, it’s inappropriate to frame speculation about a plan to “empty Gaza” as fact.

The sin of arrogance

THE AP ISN’T the only news agency guilty of the sin of arrogance, assuming the godly role of prober of hearts. In June 2025, Reuters, too, departed from its declared mandate to provide “unbiased and reliable news,” with an unexpected detour into dream deciphering.

Reuters’ Crispian Balmer wrote, “Fast forward five weeks and the United States has bombed Iran’s main nuclear installations, fulfilling a decades-old dream of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to convince Washington to bring its full military might to thwart Tehran’s atomic ambitions.”

As media watchdog CAMERA asked at the time: “How does a news reporter purport to know Prime Minister Netanyahu’s dreams? While we can’t know Netanyahu’s dreams, we do know his statements concerning US action on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. And they all point towards encouraging the US to lock into a stricter deal with Iran and tougher sanctions, not war.”

Reuters’ own coverage over the years documented that Netanyahu repeatedly pushed for a better deal, not a US war with Iran. For instance, Reuters reporting in 2012 cited “urgency to [Netanyahu’s] demand that [p]resident Barack Obama set a ‘red line’ for Tehran,” and noted “Netanyahu’s sharpened demands for a tougher US line against Iran.”

In 2013, Reuters accurately reported: “Netanyahu said continued economic pressure on Iran was the best alternative to two other options, which he described as a bad deal and war.” The news agency’s reporting consistently cited Netanyahu’s statements urging a better deal in 2015, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2024.

Reuters’ 2025 claim, then, that Netanyahu dreamed for decades of convincing Washington to wage war on Tehran says more about the reporter’s imagined view of the prime minister and less about the historical record and verified reality.

It’s not only Israeli figures whose secret thoughts have loomed large in journalistic divination dressed up as news reporting. 

One month after the October 7 massacre, Agence France Presse (AFP) maintained that Hamas leader Yahya “Sinwar dreams of a single Palestinian state bringing together the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank – controlled by Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party – and annexed east Jerusalem.”

As CAMERA previously noted, “The article doesn’t explain how AFP has access to Sinwar’s dreams, but there’s no question that he heads the Gaza branch of a terror organization with a guiding mission which rejects the existence of Israel within any borders.”

In response to communication from CAMERA, AFP subsequently clarified: “The same year [Sinwar] was elected, Hamas for the first time accepted in principle a Palestinian state in the pre-1967 borders, while not recognizing Israel and retaining the ultimate goal of ‘liberating’ all of historic Palestine.”

“Tell the audience what you know and what you don’t know. Never imply that you have more knowledge than you actually do,” media scholar Rosentiel advises journalists. In other words, do your job as a good journalist. Don’t play God.

The writer is director of research and media analysis at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis and director of CAMERA’s Israel office.

This post was originally published on here. 

The Islamic Republic has signaled it will begin hunting dissidents and critics abroad with new momentum after state media announced on Monday the launch of the monitoring and intelligence system “Elaaj,” the same day Iranians who signed up for “Janfada” (self-sacrifice campaign) received an invitation to begin military training.

The aim of Elaaj, which translates to “cure,” is stated to be to “protect national security and the interests of the Iranian people against anti-patriotic, separatist movements and those promoting sanctions and military attacks.”

سامانۀ شناسایی و برخورد با فعالان خائنان خارج‌نشین آغاز به کار کرد

سامانۀ رصدی و اطلاعاتی «علاج» با هدف شناسایی و پیگیری افرادی که از خارج کشور علیه منافع و امنیت ایران فعالیت می‌کنند آغاز به کار کرد.

«علاج» با هدف پاسداری از امنیت ملی در برابر جریان‌های ضدایرانی فعالیت می‌کند. pic.twitter.com/iUr5sovqnn

— خبرگزاری فارس (@FarsNews_Agency) September 14, 2026

Supporters of the regime are encouraged to submit information about dissidents abroad through Elaajm, who could then have their citizenship revoked, according to Fars News Agency. Though unclear what such a measure would look like, dissidents could face punishments that could also include “cutting off financial and media access for traitors living abroad.”

In addition to seemingly attempting to crack down on dissident voices internationally, the Islamic Republic has renewed efforts to expand the mobilization of its supporter base nationally.

Billboards, messages promoting joining the IRGC’s military branch

A source told The Jerusalem Post that some of those who registered to Iran’s Janfada had received text messages inviting them to join a military and relief training course. Screenshots of these messages have also circulated online, though it is unclear how many individuals received such texts.

Iran International also reported that a billboard promoting the training had been installed on Tehran’s Damavand Street.  A statement published on Sunday by Janfada also claimed that preparations had been made to train and organize 1,000 “national resistance” battalions.

Security expert Roger Macmillan said that it was unlikely training would be carried out in the West, and the Islamic Republic would likely rely on Elaaj for transnational repression in Europe, the US and Australia rather than military mobilization.

پیگیری حقوقی و محدودسازی دسترسی‌های مالی و رسانه‌ای افراد متخلف، با تکیه بر پایش مستمر و هوشمند انجام خواهد شد.

«علاج» همچنین از مردم خواسته اطلاعات مربوط به این افراد را از طریق سایت https://t.co/L9u538BukW یا نشانی @alajgroup در پیام‌رسان بله و @AlajGroup4 در تلگرام ارسال کنند

— خبرگزاری فارس (@FarsNews_Agency) September 14, 2026

“Elaaj is overseas spying on Iranian families. This is similar to the early days of the revolution with people reporting on each other.  Janfada is more akin to the internal ‘martyrs’ willing to train, prepare and die for the Islamic Republic,” Macmillan explained. “It is very much real and a new drive.”

Volunteer call to mobilize the youth

Macmillan stressed that Iran was attempting to mobilize youth with the messaging, offering weapons training, map reading and first aid skills needed for combat zones, as part of a campaign to expand Basij-style units beyond the “usual core” supporters.

The new brand of fighters will demonstrate to Iranians and the West that the regime “can still organize mass participation after months of tension,” despite the economic turmoil, war and violent suppression of protests, he said.

“It is a volunteer call, pushed through official channels and mass SMS. This is an official Iranian government campaign infrastructure, a political-military mobilisation message, not a neutral public-service notice,” he asserted.

An intelligence source in Iraq told the Post that he suspected Iran-backed militias in Lebanon and Iraq would receive the same invitation for training.

In April, the Post reported on Iranian embassies in the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Sri Lanka recruiting for the self-sacrifice campaign.

“All brave and distinguished children of Iran are invited to participate consciously and register in this campaign, adding another golden page to the book of honors of this ancient land and demonstrating that their hearts are bound to the dignity and greatness of their homeland,” the embassy in Britain wrote. “Let us all, one and all, give our lives in battle. Rather than surrender our country to the enemy.”

At the time, Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), told the Post that Iran would likely avoid legal consequences for the messaging as the expectations of those in the Janfada campaign were deliberately vague.

Dr. Lynette Nusbacher, a former senior lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and head of the Strategic Horizons Unit in the UK Cabinet Office, noted that the vagueness used to protect the campaign in April would likely no longer do so, given that supporting the IRGC is potentially an offence under the National Security (State Threats) Act 2026.

She suggested that the five-month gap between the announcement of the self-sacrifice campaign and the start of training was likely due to damage to the regime’s messaging capabilities during the war and the time needed to rebuild them.

Nusbacher also assessed that the regime was seeking to revive the self-sacrifice campaign now because it is “desperate” to “establish their credibility with all their audiences at a moment when the regime looks… very badly damaged.”

This post was originally published on here. 

For Iranians, the disappearance of mass demonstrations from the streets does not mean the end of the regime’s crackdown. Far from it.

Since the turn of the year, more than 950 people have been executed in Iran, including at least 29 people arrested in connection with January’s protests, which left thousands dead across the country. Months later, scores of those detained remain at risk of execution.

Now, a new campaign is spreading among Iranian opposition activists.

Known as “Last Breath” (akharin nafas in Persian), the campaign has begun appearing across Iranian social media over the past several days, and its premise is relatively straightforward: take the name and photograph of somebody facing execution, tell their story and push it as widely as possible among politicians, journalists, human rights organizations and the wider public.

It puts a face to each name and allows individual stories to be told, rather than allowing those condemned to become merely another statistic.

“They breathe behind prison walls, not knowing which sunrise will be their last,” read one Persian-language appeal circulated under the campaign. It urged supporters to call, send emails, publish prisoners’ photographs and names, and demand action from those contacted.

Another of the campaign’s early posts contained an expanding list of people said to be facing execution, including Ehsan Hosseinipour, Matin Mohammadi, Erfan Amiri, Hamidreza Fathi, Abdolreza Fathi, Saeed Zarei Kordshouli, Peyman Ganji, Erfan Khalili, Ali-Akbar Mahlouji and others.

“These are not just names,” the appeal said. “They are lives in imminent danger.”

Sunrise should be a promise of life. But for political prisoners in Iran, dawn can be the hour of execution.

Across the world, influencers and public voices are coming together under the banner of #LastBreath to draw urgent attention to those sentenced to death or at risk of… pic.twitter.com/RACcqW9rKC

— Reza Pahlavi Communications (@PahlaviComms) September 9, 2026

Campaign spreads with posts in English, French, German

The campaign has already moved beyond Persian, with posts carrying the Last Breath hashtag appearing in English, French and German, suggesting that participants are trying to take the cases beyond the mobilized Iranian diaspora and into the wider international conversation.

One of the central images of the Last Breath campaign is that of sunrise. 

For most, dawn represents the beginning of another day. In Iran’s prisons, however, the early morning has long carried the association with executions, which are frequently carried out in the Islamic Republic at or around dawn. Iranian human rights organizations routinely record executions taking place in the early hours, while two protesters, Abolfazl Sepahi Badjani and Amir Hossein Safari Hosseinabadi, were publicly hanged at dawn in Isfahan’s Alikhani Square on July 28.

That contrast  – between sunrise as a symbol of hope and the executions carried out by the Islamic Republic – lies at the heart of the campaign.

“Sunrise should bring a new day, not a final breath,” one campaign appeal said of Alireza Sepahi and Mahdi Zarif, both facing execution.

Sepahi was arrested in connection with the January 8 protests at Alikhani Square in Isfahan and sentenced to death alongside a group of other defendants. Five of those co-defendants have already been executed. Sepahi himself came extraordinarily close. According to human rights organizations, he suffered a heart attack shortly before his scheduled public execution and was rushed to hospital. He was later returned to prison.

On September 12, Iran Human Rights reported that Sepahi had been moved from the general ward of Isfahan Central Prison to solitary confinement, where prisoners condemned to death are frequently transferred before execution. The organization said he was consequently at imminent risk.

Another whose name has become prominent in the campaign is Benyamin Naghdi, a 26-year-old kickboxer and mixed martial arts athlete arrested during the January protests in Shiraz.

“Medals belong around Benyamin Naghdi’s neck, not a noose,” one Last Breath appeal said.

Iran Human Rights reported in June that Naghdi, then 26, had been arrested on January 3 during a protest in Shiraz and sentenced to death by Branch One of the city’s Revolutionary Court after being convicted of “corruption on earth.”

The organization said Iranian state media broadcast what it described as a forced confession only a day after his arrest.

Campaign aims to internationalize individual cases

His story also brings to the fore the campaign’s attempt to internationalize individual cases.

Iranian-French chess grandmaster Mitra Hejazipour used the Last Breath hashtag in a French-language appeal describing Naghdi as a kickboxing champion who “must live,” tying his case once again to the campaign’s recurring image of sunrise and execution.

Perhaps the most immediately personal story circulating through Last Breath is that of Taraneh Rahimi, a 20-year-old woman who has been sentenced to death following her arrest after the January protests.

Rahimi and her twin sister, Romina, were arrested after participating in demonstrations in Isfahan.

According to reporting based on accounts from their family, both women were subjected to severe abuse in detention. Their US-based cousin said their mother barely recognized them when she was eventually allowed to see them in prison. Taraneh has been sentenced to death, while Romina received a 25-year prison sentence.

In a French-language post circulated thousands of times, Hejazipour in particular highlighted the person behind the name: Taraneh is 20, she rides horses, and while most people of that age might think about their next competition or future plans, she is waiting under a death sentence.

Last Breath’s strength lies in simplicity – one does not need to be an Iran expert, understand the complexities of the revolutionary courts or opposition politics to comprehend that the person you see in front of you is at imminent risk of execution.

It makes the victims difficult to ignore, which is the point. 

That can already be seen in the multilingual posts circulating online. Taraneh Rahimi becomes the 20-year-old who loves horses. Benyamin Naghdi becomes the fighter whose medals, campaigners say, should hang around his neck instead of a noose. Alireza Sepahi becomes the man who has already suffered a heart attack once at the foot of the gallows.

In a country where information from prisons can be difficult to verify, the legal details remain important, but the campaign is built on the calculation that statistics eventually lose their power to shock.

Hundreds of executions can become a generality, while the life story of a 20-year-old woman waiting to learn whether she will be hanged is harder to ignore. For the prisoners whose names and photographs are now being circulated around the world, every sunrise means another day survived, and, campaigners fear, one of them may be the last.

This post was originally published on here. 

Dutch farmers started fires near highways on Tuesday, disrupting traffic as they protested against the government budget, while saboteurs also tied pipes to railway tracks ahead of the state opening of parliament.

Railway operator ProRail said pipes had been found attached to railways in more than 20 locations early on Tuesday, mainly in rural areas in the middle and the east of the country.

Later, fires erupted around midday in several places alongside highways, forcing authorities to close roads and seriously affecting traffic.

The fires were caused by angry farmers who had chosen government budget day to set hay bales and car tires alight, activist group Farmers Defense Force said.

“We feel like the country is on fire. Farmers feel as though their businesses are on fire because of the government’s plans,” spokesperson Sieta van Keimpema said.

Farmers Defense Force said it was not responsible for the railway sabotage, but added it could not rule out that angry farmers had acted individually.

The Dutch intelligence agency AIVD said it was investigating the railway sabotage alongside police and prosecutors. They declined to comment on their investigations.

Promise of compensation for farmers

The government’s budget plans for 2027 were set out by King Willem-Alexander as he opened a new session of parliament on Tuesday afternoon.

The budget plans have sparked widespread protests in recent months, including by farmers arguing that they are being unfairly blamed for nitrogen pollution.

In his speech, written by Prime Minister Rob Jetten, the king said it would be “irresponsible” not to tackle the nitrogen issue, even though this could hurt farmers.

The government has promised financial compensation for farmers whose businesses would be hit by plans to restore nature reserves.

ProRail said it was clear that materials discovered on the railways had been placed there deliberately.

“We are therefore now classifying this as sabotage of the railway tracks,” ProRail spokesperson Joke van der Cruysen said.

All trains in the vicinity of the track blockages were halted, while there were also serious disruptions elsewhere, including international services to Germany.

The pipes not only disrupted rail travel but also road traffic, as several level crossings had to remain closed, ProRail said.

This post was originally published on here. 

The recovery of hundreds of bodies from the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes in Gaza during the war that began nearly three years ago has raised fresh concerns about possible war crimes, the UN human rights chief Volker Turk said on Tuesday.

Turk claimed that the remains of what appeared to be entire families were being unearthed from sites destroyed during Israeli attacks, adding that many victims were women and children.

“It is heartbreaking that the loved ones of those missing for so long are only now having their worst fears confirmed,” he said in a statement.

He said the discoveries revived concerns raised in a 2024 UN report that found Israeli strikes on residential buildings and other civilian sites during the early weeks of the war may have violated international humanitarian law.

The Prime Minister’s office and Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Israel has repeatedly rejected allegations that it deliberately targets civilians and says it acted in accordance with international law while fighting Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

Israel’s assault on Gaza – launched after Hamas’ deadly raid into Israel in October 2023 – has generated around 61 million tons of wreckage and debris that could take seven years to clear, according to the United ​Nations.

A US-brokered ceasefire brought an end to full-scale fighting in October 2025, but has failed to halt regular Israeli strikes as both sides accuse each other of violating the truce.

Widespread destruction in Gaza

The Hamas-led Palestinian Civil Defense says more than 630 bodies and human remains have been recovered from beneath destroyed buildings across Gaza since November 2025.

Palestinian authorities estimate more than 8,000 people remain buried in the ​wreckage.

Turk said he feared the remains recovered so far could be “only the tip of the iceberg”, noting that large parts of Gaza had been flattened by Israeli bombing or later demolition and clearance operations.

He also accused Israel of continuing to level some areas of Gaza where its forces remain deployed, saying bulldozers were operating “with no respect for the dead under the rubble”.

Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN rights office for the Palestinian Territory, said that Israeli restrictions on items like DNA kits and excavators were impeding recovery and identification efforts.

“The collective impact of Israel’s conduct is making any systematic, large-scale search, recovery, and identification work nearly impossible,” he told a Geneva press briefing. Sometimes, Palestinian teams were having to dig through rubble with their bare hands, he added.

Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to the UN allegations on supply restrictions. Israel’s COGAT military agency, which controls access to Gaza, has previously justified long-held restrictions on items it said could be used for a “terrorist build-up”.

 Access for international investigators

The 2023 Hamas-led attacks killed 1,200 people in Israel while another 251 were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign, ​according to Hamas-led Gaza health authorities.

Israel says it has gone to great lengths to avoid civilian ​casualties and ⁠that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields in densely populated areas, an accusation Hamas denies.

The UN rights chief called for international investigators to be granted access to all parts of Gaza to help preserve evidence, citing ongoing legal proceedings examining conduct during the war.

Francesca Albanese, the UN expert on the Palestinian territories, has said evidence should be gathered and human remains identified ​before full clearance starts.

This post was originally published on here. 

The election is still more than a month away, and it remains unclear whether the opposition-aligned change bloc will secure a victory, but the Democrats party is already preparing for potential coalition negotiations after the vote.

According to Walla, a team within Yair Golan’s party is developing the party’s list of demands for coalition talks and potential coalition agreements if a change bloc government is formed. 

Golan and his associates remain focused primarily on the election campaign and efforts to increase the party’s representation in the Knesset. At the same time, however, the party has begun preparing for the possibility of entering government. The goal is to enter coalition negotiations with a detailed set of demands, rather than simply negotiate the division of ministerial portfolios after the election.

The preparations are also driven by concerns within the party that even if the change bloc wins, the next government could include parties whose leaders, including Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Liberman, differ significantly from Golan on a range of ideological issues. The Democrats want to ensure that in such a scenario they do not become a marginal force within the coalition, but instead maintain enough influence to shape government policy.

Democrats learning from previous change government

The party is also drawing lessons from the political experience of the previous change government. Democrats officials view that government as an example in which the coalition’s right-wing members had a stronger influence over its direction and policies, while Meretz, which held the Health Ministry under Nitzan Horowitz among other portfolios, struggled to translate its political strength into significant influence over the government’s agenda and public debate.

This time, Golan and his associates want to be better prepared. As part of the team’s work, the party is formulating several key demands it plans to raise during coalition negotiations, particularly on issues related to democracy, the rule of law, and the judicial system.

The party’s goal is not to settle for general commitments in coalition guidelines, but to secure specific promises and practical steps that would limit the government’s ability to act on issues the Democrats consider fundamental.

Alongside these ideological demands, the party is also preparing a list of ministries it will seek during coalition talks. Golan has previously identified several key portfolios that the Democrats are interested in, including Defense, Justice, Education, National Security, and Communications.

Party developing policy demands

As part of its preparations, the party is developing policy demands and concrete steps it would seek to advance through each ministry. The aim is to prevent a situation in which the Democrats receive senior government positions but lack the ability to influence the government’s broader direction.

A party source told Walla: “We will not be excess baggage. They will not throw us a portfolio and say, ‘Take it and be grateful.’ We want to influence and lead, to advance the agendas for which we were elected. The goal is not only to be partners in the next government, but to be a force that influences its direction and leads it.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Syrian authorities have launched an investigation into a woman identified only by the initials A.Y. in Aleppo after receiving complaints about a video circulating online that allegedly showed her performing an act of sorcery or witchcraft, the Internal Security Forces in the Syrian Arab Republic announced on Monday.

The security forces announced that they were investigating what A.Y. had been doing in the viral clip “to take the necessary legal measures against her.”

أوقفت قوى الأمن الداخلي في حلب المدعوة (ع.ي)، على خلفية ظهورها في مقطع مصوّر متداول وهي تمارس أعمالاً مرتبطة بالسحر والشعوذة، وباشرت التحقيق معها للوقوف على ملابسات ما ظهر في المقطع، واتخاذ الإجراءات القانونية اللازمة بحقها.

وتأتي هذه الإجراءات في إطار الجهود الهادفة إلى الحد من… pic.twitter.com/rgN2ZhLSCx

— قوى الأمن الداخلي (@ISFMOISY) September 14, 2026

“These measures come within the framework of efforts aimed at curbing fraudulent practices and the exploitation of citizens,” the forces insisted.

The circulating footage showed a woman, allegedly A.Y., burning an unidentified object on a stone before a crowd gathered to question her about what she was doing. The confrontation escalated, with members of the crowd putting out the fire and seemingly kicking the woman.

According to the independent Arabic site Al-Mashhad, A.Y. has already been placed under arrest.

Aleppo’s Yezidi community have faced persecution for ‘witchcraft’

Aleppo is a predominantly Sunni Muslim city, with a sizeable Christian population as well as a number of other ethno-religious communities, including a small Yezidi population. Though the faith of A.Y. has not been published, the Syrian state has not recognized the Yezidis as an independent religious group, and Yezidis have faced repeated persecution in Syria and Iraq over accusations of “devil worship” and “witchcraft.”

شبان صغار الله يبارك فيهم ويحفظهم

لقطوا مشعوذة تعمل طقوس سحر في حلب
وبقيوا وراءها حتى أفسدوه

تخيلوا
إصرارها ع الشر والأذى
رغم تصويرهم وجمعوا أهل الحي عليها
واستنجادهم بالشرطة

إلا أنها كانت متجاهلة الجميع

و مُصرّة تكمل طقوس السحر لآخر لحظة!!

الله ينتقم من كل ساحر ومؤذي pic.twitter.com/Ft9y8rQNGE

— ♡ 𝐌𝐚𝐲𝐚 ♡ (@mayaomwya) September 13, 2026

Notably, according to a 2023 report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s morality police, known as Hisba, killed, raped, and looted from members of religious minority groups in Deir al-Zor whom it accused of prostitution and witchcraft. The group also extorted zakat, or religious alms, from residents.

At the time, HTS was designated as a terrorist organization by the US and UK. Since now-Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s forces seized control of Syria in December 2024, however, both countries have removed HTS from their respective terrorist lists, while Washington and London have also provided significant sanctions relief to Syria.

In recent years, a number of women have been killed in Syria over allegations of witchcraft. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a woman was shot by gunmen last year over allegations of witchcraft in Nawa city in the western Daraa countryside, with a similar incident occurring in nearby Nahj a year prior. 

This post was originally published on here. 

The Health Ministry issued a warning on Tuesday against purchasing and consuming an unapproved weight loss supplement called “G-Slim” containing a banned substance after it led to a young person’s hospitalization. 

Laboratory tests conducted by the ministry found that the product contains the active ingredient sibutramine, a pharmaceutical substance banned in Israel and multiple other countries due to the risks associated with the use.  

The ministry emphasized that there are currently no registered products containing this substance, which was withdrawn from most countries’ markets after it was associated with higher risks of heart attacks and ischaemic stroke. 

Other risks include increased blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, anxiety, irritability, insomnia, and psychiatric disorders, potentially causing life-threatening conditions. 

The risk is further exacerbated due to the high dosage within G-Slim, with each capsule containing 53.8 milligrams of sibutramine, a figure over three times higher than that contained in the products previously removed and banned from the market. 

Health Ministry warns against unregulated supplements

The Health Ministry warned the public against taking counterfeit and unregulated products and to only purchase medications, dietary supplements, and health products from authorized sources, such as pharmacies and pharmacy chains. The public is urged to avoid purchasing products through social media platforms, messaging groups, and unfamiliar websites. 

The public is encouraged to report encounters with the product, suspected marketing of counterfeit medications, or side effects following their use by contacting the Health Call Center at *5400. 

This post was originally published on here. 

The Jerusalem District Court ruled Tuesday that Linor Sasson will remain in custody for now, finding preliminary evidence supporting charges that she helped members of the group accused of murdering Benayahu Razi flee after the attack and obstructed the investigation.

The court declined to release Sasson to house arrest at this stage but ordered the Probation Service to submit an assessment within 30 days. Her detention will be reconsidered at a hearing on October 22.

Sasson, 46, is the mother of Avior Sasson, one of four minors charged with Razi’s murder. She is not accused of participating in the killing itself.

Her attorney sought her release to house arrest under electronic monitoring, arguing that she faces the lesser charges of assisting after the fact and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors opposed her immediate release, citing her criminal record, but agreed that the Probation Service could examine a possible alternative to detention.

A finding of preliminary evidence does not determine guilt; it rather only means that the court found sufficient support for the charges at this stage of the detention proceedings. The main trial has not yet begun. 

Seven indicted for different roles in killing

Seven people were indicted in August, but prosecutors accuse them of different roles in the killing.

Agam Tzarfati, 19, of Jerusalem, Shilat Huta, 20, of Beersheba, and four minors aged approximately 15 to 17 were charged with murder and aggravated assault. Prosecutors allege that the six decided together to attack Razi and his friend, while the four minors carried out the physical assault that killed him.

According to the indictments, the group gathered at Sasson’s home after Tzarfati and Huta said Razi and his friend had attacked them during an earlier dispute.

Prosecutors allege that Sasson later drove the group toward the rented apartment in Jerusalem’s Nachlaot neighborhood where Razi was staying. The indictment states that she warned them not to do anything.

After the attack, Sasson allegedly helped members of the group flee. Those allegations form the basis of the charges against her.

Razi, 19, was stabbed to death in the apartment on July 11. His friend was also attacked and wounded.

Tzarfati and Huta remain in custody pending a hearing on October 19. Their attorneys intend to argue that the prosecution has not presented sufficient preliminary evidence to support the murder charges against them.

The four minors also remain in custody, with their next hearing scheduled for November.

This post was originally published on here. 

Police said they are investigating death threats made against a senior Jewish leader in Germany, after she criticized the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

A witness found graffiti scrawled in white ink on a park bench and a trash bin in Munich’s English Garden park, threatening the life of 93-year-old Holocaust survivor Charlotte Knobloch,  the Munich Police Department said in a statement.

Citing police sources, The Abendzeitung on Sept. 11 reported the threat contained the phrase “Die AfD hat gewonnen, morgen hängen wir die Knobloch,” which translates to, “The AfD has won, tomorrow we’ll hang Knobloch.” A police spokesperson had not responded to JTA’s request for confirmation of the threat content by press time.

The witness reported the graffiti to police, and an investigation was launched on Wednesday, Sept. 9, police said.

Knobloch, chair of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, canceled plans to attend a public event as an audience member right after learning of the threat, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has confirmed with the Jewish Community in Munich.

The Munich Criminal Investigation Department has categorized the incident as a case of incitement to hatred, threats, and property damage, and has asked witnesses to contact police.

AfD wins 43.8% of votes in Saxony-Anhalt

The AfD won 43.8% of the votes in the state of Saxony-Anhalt on Sept. 6. The election set the stage for a right-wing party to control a German state government for the first time since the Nazi era. But the AfD fell three seats short of a majority and has yet to secure enough support to form a government, Reuters reported Sept. 11.

Knobloch, an ardent critic of the AfD, had said the party’s record of success “frightens me.” In a statement released Sept. 6 by her office, she said that she “couldn’t have imagined even in my worst nightmares that right-wing extremists could win elections in Germany again in this way.”  She has long called for the party to be banned.

The Department for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) has a reporting mechanism for witnesses or victims, and provides statistics to federal and local authorities. Antisemitic crimes may be motivated by left, right or Islamic extremism, but the specific reference to the AfD and a specific target made this case unusual, spokesperson Felix Balandat said. “We have not recorded anything like that before,” he told JTA.

Munich Mayor Dominik Krause (Greens) asked in a public address, “How many more death threats, how much Nazi rhetoric, how many more deportation announcements do we actually need” before the federal government initiates steps towards banning the AfD?

Meanwhile, in Berlin, a woman was injured in a suspected antisemitic attack, according to city police.

Early on Sept. 11, two men attacked a 43-year-old woman in the Mitte section of Berlin. The attackers, who fled the scene, commented on her wearing a Star of David and shouted antisemitic insults at her, Berlin police said.

One of the men allegedly attacked her with a broken glass bottle, police said. While defending herself, she suffered several cuts to her hand. Paramedics transported her to a hospital for treatment. The State Security Unit of the State Criminal Police Office has taken over the investigation.

According to RIAS, more than 2,000 antisemitic and anti-Israel insults, threats, acts of vandalism and attacks were registered in Berlin in 2025, slightly down from 2024 but still more than twice as many as before the attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.

This post was originally published on here. 

Voting for the Palestinian Legislative Council should be delayed by three to four months to allow authorities to wait for the outcome of Israel’s election and address the five main obstacles to holding a credible and effective vote, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research wrote in a brief published on Monday.

Five major structural impediments justify postponing the election, PCPSR argued. First, Israel’s control over Area C and east Jerusalem makes it unclear whether Palestinians in those areas will be able to vote. Accusing Jerusalem of pursuing an “annexationist agenda,” the center said Israel could interfere with the electoral process by confiscating election materials, arresting political candidates, and restricting some communities from participating in the vote.

The second major issue identified is that the Palestinian Authority lacks operational security and administrative presence across the Gaza Strip and in expanding regions of the West Bank, making it impossible to safeguard polling locations, protect personnel, ensure secret balloting, or enforce election results.

Without the PA’s administrative control, PCPSR warned that holding elections in Gaza risks producing widespread voting failure.

Additionally, PCPSR warned that the unresolved political and legal status of Hamas currently presents a “major political contradiction.” Without genuine reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, the potential outcome of Hamas winning a significant number of seats in the council could cause major issues, especially given that many international donors are conditioning reconstruction aid for Gaza on Hamas’s exclusion from executive governance.

Mass displacement in Gaza erroded trust in electoral process

PCPSR also warned that amendments to Palestinian electoral law which require candidate lists and individual nominees to explicitly pledge adherence to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative create a legal requirement that risks excluding prominent political movements, independent factions, and anti-establishment coalitions that reject specific PLO agreements.

Finally, the think tank warned that public trust in the electoral process had been severely eroded by the mass displacement in Gaza, the PA’s fiscal insolvency, unchecked settler violence, and modifications to the election laws, which could undermine the core purpose of establishing a new governing authority.

Compounding these issues, Israel’s election is set to go ahead on October 27. PCPSR predicted that some political parties will likely use cracking down on Palestinian electoral activity as a means to demonstrate their “toughness.”

PLC and presidential elections could trigger a constitutional deadlock

Palestinians are also anticipated to vote in presidential elections in 2027, which, if done after holding PLC elections, could create constitutional instability and potentially trigger a constitutional deadlock if a newly elected PLC challenged Abbas’s executive authority.
 
Assuming the PLC elections take place as scheduled, or after a short delay, PCPSR noted that it would center around five distinct political forces: Fatah leaders, Fatah dissidents, Hamas and its potential coalition partners, leftist parties, and civil society groups.

Despite polls demonstrating widespread dissatisfaction with Abbas’s leadership, the official Fatah movement has substantial institutional advantages, including patronage networks, party discipline, and administrative experience, the brief noted.  The official leadership may also attempt to appeal to more voters by recruiting youth leaders, civil society figures, and respected independents; however, such efforts would likely be hindered by voter frustration with PA corruption, security coordination, and economic stagnation.

The Fatah dissident faction list, centered around imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti and prominent figures such as Qaddoura Fares, has tremendous appeal to voters. Polls indicate that Barghouti is the most popular Palestinian figure, likely to receive 54% of votes in the presidential election. However, should Barghouti’s list run separately against an official Fatah list, Barghouti’s would capture 33% of the vote, while the Fatah official list would receive just 14%, according to PCPSR polls.

Anti-Abbas coalition centered on Hamas, other terrorist factions

The third, which PCPSR claimed could be the most decisive force, is a broad anti-Abbas national opposition coalition centered on Hamas, but extending beyond it. The ongoing talks with Hamas by Mohammed Dahlan’s Democratic Reform faction, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Nasser al-Qudwa’s political movement, and independent figures, could provide Hamas the opportunity to run through a unified national list.

PCPSR said that by nominating independent technocrats, respected national figures, and non-partisan candidates, Hamas could broaden its electoral reach while also shielding the list from international sanctions.

The fourth camp, which consists of leftist lists like the Palestinian National Initiative (Mubadara), PFLP, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and Palestinian People’s Party (PPP), collectively commands around 18% support among likely voters.

The final camp, comprising independent and civil society lists, faces significant structural hurdles and limited financial resources, making a substantial parliamentary presence unlikely.

A fragmented parliament

Predicting the outcome of the election, PCPSR published that it is unlikely that the 2006 results would be repeated, as the November election will most probably produce a more fragmented parliament.

The August 2026 poll found that Fatah would receive 32% among likely voters, Hamas 29%, and third parties combined 18%. However, at the time, a crucial 21% of likely voters remained undecided.

The emerging Hamas-Dahlan coalition could, however, consolidate multiple small voting blocs into a dominant parliamentary force, especially given that the anti-Abbas opposition coalition started with a base of at least one-fifth of the electorate.

Fatah’s official faction, PCPSR, insisted that it could not secure a parliamentary majority unless opposition forces remain deeply divided.

This post was originally published on here. 

As the election approaches its decisive stage, those around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have identified several scenarios that could prove politically dangerous for him.

Beyond the question of how many seats Likud will win, the central concern is the overall result for the right-wing bloc, particularly the possibility that it will remain below the 61-seat threshold.

According to the assessment, Netanyahu understands that in the current election, even a result of 59 seats for the entire bloc could place him in genuine political danger.

In such a situation, the opposing camp could potentially secure a parliamentary majority that would allow it to establish another government, even if that government would not remain stable for four years and even if some Arab parties did not formally join it.

The scenario being discussed in the political system involves a combination of parties led by Avigdor Liberman, Gadi Eisenkot, and Naftali Bennett, together with the other parties in the change bloc and parliamentary support from Arab parties.

In that scenario, Ra’am, the Joint List, or Balad would not necessarily have to join the coalition. Nor would they necessarily need to vote actively for the government. External support, abstention, or another parliamentary arrangement could be enough for the opposing camp to assemble a majority of 61 Knesset members.

In other words, if Netanyahu’s bloc wins only 59 seats, the remaining 61 Knesset members could, at least numerically, support a move to establish another government. In that scenario, they could argue that they are not establishing “a government that relies on the Arab parties” in the traditional sense, but are instead using the existing Knesset majority to replace the prime minister and establish a temporary governing framework.

Netanyahu wants to avoid issues of military conscription

One issue Netanyahu reportedly does not want to become the central focus of the election is military conscription. The reason is straightforward: It creates difficulties for almost every component of his political camp.

The issue is challenging for the haredi parties, creates friction within Likud, and could also complicate matters for the Religious Zionist camp. From Netanyahu’s perspective, an election campaign centered on conscription could put the entire bloc on the defensive and sharpen internal disagreements precisely when the goal is to unite right-wing voters.

By contrast, issues that return the public debate to divisions between the political camps, such as Right versus Left, attitudes toward Arab parties, the character of the state, or cultural and political disputes, are more comfortable terrain for him.

In this context, public controversies such as the one that developed around the film NAZA could also, according to the assessment, serve Netanyahu’s campaign. The more the debate shifts toward questions of who is “going with the Arabs,” who is cooperating with the Democrats, and the Left’s attitude toward Israel, the further the discussion moves away from conscription and other issues that create internal difficulties for the right-wing bloc.

Until now, Netanyahu had some room to maneuver even when he did not personally command 61 seats. The reason was that the opposing camp struggled to produce a majority of its own.

As long as some of the players in the change bloc were unwilling to rely on Arab parties, the fact that Netanyahu remained below 61 seats was not necessarily enough to replace him.

In practice, he could remain transitional prime minister even without a solid parliamentary majority because his rivals also had no simple way to form an alternative government.

In the current election, however, according to the assessment, that situation could change. If the change bloc is prepared to use the support or abstention of Ra’am, the Joint List, and Balad to reach the majority required to replace Netanyahu, it would no longer need 61 “Zionist” seats on its own.

In other words, Netanyahu could previously assume that if the other side could not reach 61 seats without the Arab parties, it could not form a government. Now, if there is sufficiently broad agreement to replace him, the Arab parties could also become part of the equation.

That also gives rise to one of Netanyahu’s greatest concerns, and perhaps one reason he may leave open the possibility of a unity government after the election.

If the right-wing bloc falls short of 61 seats, and if the opposing camp has a majority capable of removing him, bringing in a centrist or opposition party could become a tool of political survival for Netanyahu.

Netanyahu needs 61 seats for PM spot to be secured

For him, therefore, 61 is not merely the number required to form a government. It is also the defensive line preventing his rivals from establishing an alternative government in his place.

The bottom line is simple: Netanyahu knows that if the entire right-wing bloc remains below 61 seats, he can no longer be certain that he will remain transitional prime minister. If his rivals unite and also secure support or abstentions from Arab parties, they could reach a majority sufficient to remove him from the Prime Minister’s Office, even without immediately forming a stable, long-term government.

This is, in effect, Netanyahu’s new vulnerability. For years, he did not necessarily need 61 seats to remain in the game. His rivals also lacked a majority capable of rallying around an agreed alternative.

The divisions within the opposing camp, particularly the veto imposed by some of its parties on relying on Arab factions, served as a kind of political safety belt for him.

This time, he fears that safety belt is coming undone. If Eisenkot, Bennett, and Liberman agree that the first objective is to replace Netanyahu, even without yet agreeing on every element of the next government, 59 seats for the right-wing bloc would no longer amount to an almost-victory, but would instead represent a point of danger.

Once the other side is willing to use every available parliamentary majority to bring about his replacement, the battle for the 60th and 61st seats becomes, from Netanyahu’s perspective, not merely a struggle to form a government, but a struggle over whether he remains in power.

This post was originally published on here. 

US President Donald Trump called the recent developments in the artificial intelligence sector, which involve several industry leaders warning about the dangers of AI, a “hoax” during a Monday call with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Trump, who has been pushing against the call from the sector to slow down AI development amid fears that the technology is out of control, called Huang while he was speaking live on the All-In Podcast and told him that “AI doomerism” is “all a hoax… and we’re not going to let that happen.”

“The data centers are great, and they make people wealthy, and they make states wealthy. And it’s the oil of the next 20 to 25 years; it’s even bigger than the internet,” Trump claimed in his call with the Nvidia CEO. “They [the AI industry leaders] are playing right into the hands of some people that don’t want to see it happening.”

MUST SEE: Amazing moment as President Trump calls Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang while he’s on stage at the All-In Summit.@POTUS on AI Doomerism: “I’m telling you, it’s all a hoax… and we’re not going to let that happen.” pic.twitter.com/ZP8cCaSMqG

— The All-In Podcast (@theallinpod) September 14, 2026

The US President also claimed that “China and maybe some politicians” were behind the recent push to slow down development, adding that they “are no gonna let that happen.” Huang agreed: “You are right, we are not going to let that happen, sir.”

‘We have to be careful,’ Trump admits

After claiming that the recent news was “nothing but a hoax” and that “the robots would not be taking over the world,” Trump clarified that “we have to be a little bit careful.”

“We have to do things prudently, but it doesn’t mean that we will stop an industry,” he added, and then extended support to Huang, saying that “he was with him all the way.”

“I have an expression: ‘Whoever wins AI will win.’ And we can’t let this kind of stuff happen, and that includes very much data centers,” Trump concluded.

Earlier on Monday, Trump issued a series of Truth Social posts insisting that the situation with AI was “a hoax” that was being pushed by foreign actors and “the Democrats.”

“The people that say AI is going to destroy the world, and that data centers are bad for your neighborhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the world would be extinguished by ‘Climate Change.’ That hoax never worked out for them, and now they’re on to the next one,” Trump said in one of his posts.

“These people are revolutionaries, but revolutionaries for a bad and evil cause. Soon you’ll find out they’re working for people that do not have the best interests of the United States in mind,” he added.

What are AI industry leaders saying?

The fears of AI “running out of control” were initially pushed on Wednesday by Jacob Coxon, a former employee of both Anthropic and OpenAI who said that both companies were acting irresponsibly and “gambling with our lives,” while warning that the technology could “kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei replied to these accusations on Saturday with an essay asking AI companies to “slow down development” to “manage the risk of AI.”

“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain,” Amodei said in an essay. “A race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, can make these risks more acute.” 

While Amodei expressed the potential benefits of the technology, including his belief that “AI could cure most major diseases in the next 5–10 years, greatly accelerate economic growth rates, create a world of abundance and empowerment, and usher in a renaissance of democracy and freedom,” he also acknowledged struggling with the risk-to-benefit balance from the beginning of Anthropic.

In a similar tone, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that the Initial Public Offering (IPO) that the company had planned for this year was going to be pushed back at least until 2027, citing safety concerns over artificial intelligence that render “unacceptable” even a 10% risk that AI could cause human extinction by decade’s end.

“I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don’t feel pressure on that,” Altman told business magazine Fortune.

Asked if there was a 10% chance of AI-driven extinction, Altman said he didn’t know how to make such an estimate, but warned the risk was serious enough that AI companies and governments should act as though it could not be tolerated.

“Whether it’s 10 or eight or six, the point is, we all have a tremendous amount of responsibility, and cannot let egos or incentives for profit or anything else get in the way,” Altman added.

Reuters contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Few arenas provide a more powerful global platform than professional sports. Every night, athletes compete in front of millions of fans, with their performances transcending borders, languages, and cultures.

For the Jewish people, whose presence in many of the world’s biggest sporting leagues remains relatively small, those who reach the highest levels can become particularly meaningful representatives of Jewish and Israeli achievement.

That makes it impossible to look at the current sporting landscape without recognizing five athletes who, in very different ways, have helped put Jewish and Israeli talent in the international spotlight: Deni Avdija, Matt Turner, Zach Hyman, Oscar Gloukh, and Daniel Peretz.

Their stories are different.

Avdija is an Israeli-born NBA star and one of the most successful basketball players Israel has ever produced.

Turner is an American goalkeeper who discovered his Jewish roots as an adult and carried them with him into the highest levels of international soccer.

Hyman has emerged as one of the NHL’s premier Jewish players while speaking openly about his identity and fighting antisemitism.

Gloukh is one of Israel’s brightest young soccer talents, developing his game at one of Europe’s most historic clubs.

And Peretz has established himself as an Israeli goalkeeper in the European spotlight, after moving from Bayern Munich to Southampton.

Together, they represent a new generation of Jewish athletes who are not merely participating at the highest levels, but making an impact.

Deni Avdija

For Avdija, 2026 was a breakthrough year unlike anything an Israeli basketball player had experienced before.

The Portland Trail Blazers forward became the first Israeli ever selected for an NBA All-Star Game, capping a remarkable transformation from a promising teenager at Maccabi Tel Aviv to an established NBA star.

Avdija finished the 2025/26 season averaging 24.2 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 6.7 assists per game, earning his first All-Star selection after taking his game to an entirely different level.

But his significance extends well beyond the numbers. He has increasingly found himself representing Israel and the Jewish people at a time when doing so has become more complicated.

He has spoken openly about experiencing antisemitism while also making clear that he is proud to represent Israel.

In March, he shared the court with fellow Israelis Danny Wolf and Ben Saraf in a historic NBA game that featured three Israeli players – a moment of profound significance for Jewish and Israeli fans around the world.

Matt Turner

Turner offers a very different Jewish sports story.

The New Jersey-born goalkeeper was already an established American international and a Premier League veteran when he discovered documents revealing his paternal great-grandmother’s escape from Lithuania during the Holocaust.

That discovery led Turner to explore his Jewish heritage more deeply and to develop a stronger connection to his family’s history.

In 2026, Turner became the only Jewish player on the United States’ World Cup roster, giving him a unique place in the biggest soccer tournament on the planet.

The goalkeeper entered the tournament with 53 USMNT appearances and 27 international clean sheets, having already starred at the 2022 World Cup.

Even while facing competition for the starting position, Turner embraced the opportunity to represent his country – and, in his own way, his Jewish heritage – in front of a worldwide audience.

Zach Hyman

Then there is Hyman, perhaps the most outspoken Jewish voice among today’s elite North American athletes.

The Edmonton Oilers winger is not simply one of the NHL’s leading Jewish players; he has made his Jewish identity an important part of who he is. A graduate of a Jewish high school in Toronto and a gold medalist with Canada at the 2013 Maccabiah Games, Hyman wears No. 18 in part because of its Jewish significance – chai, meaning life.

His impact is both on and off the ice. Hyman has spoken publicly against antisemitism, participated in Jewish community events, and refused to retreat from his identity even when doing so has invited criticism.

His grandparents were Holocaust survivors, giving his advocacy an intensely personal dimension.

On the ice, meanwhile, he continues to produce at an elite level. In 2025/26, he scored 31 goals and recorded 52 points in 58 games for Edmonton.

Oscar Gloukh

Gloukh represents the future.

The 22-year-old Israeli attacking midfielder has already established himself in European soccer, first with Red Bull Salzburg and now with Ajax, one of the continent’s most storied clubs.

Gloukh’s 2025/26 campaign in the Netherlands produced six goals and six assists in league play, while he also scored three Champions League goals.

Born in Rehovot and raised in Israel, Gloukh progressed through the Israeli system before taking the next major step abroad.

His creativity, technical ability, and willingness to take responsibility in the final third have made him one of Europe’s most closely watched young Israeli players.

At just 22, he remains a work in progress, but his presence at Ajax provides another reminder that Israeli talent can compete for places at some of the world’s most prestigious clubs.

Daniel Peretz

Finally, Peretz has carved out his own path at the highest levels of European soccer. The Israeli goalkeeper joined Bayern Munich from Maccabi Tel Aviv in 2023, becoming part of one of the world’s most famous clubs.

Although opportunities were limited in Munich, Peretz’s determination ultimately paid off. After moving to Southampton on loan during the second half of the 2025/26 season, he established himself as the club’s No. 1 and made 26 appearances before completing a permanent move to England in June.

Peretz’s journey is significant because it shows that success is not always about arriving at the biggest club and immediately becoming a star. Sometimes it is about perseverance, finding the right opportunity, and proving yourself when that opportunity arrives.

His move to Southampton gives him a platform to continue developing while remaining an important figure for the Israeli national team.

What connects these five athletes is not simply that they are Jewish, Israeli, or playing professional sports. It is that each has reached a level where their performances are watched far beyond their immediate teams and leagues.

Avdija is making history in the NBA. Turner represented the United States at the World Cup. Hyman has become a powerful Jewish voice in the NHL. Gloukh is developing at Ajax. Peretz is establishing himself in English soccer, after gaining invaluable experience at Bayern Munich.

For a community that has historically been underrepresented in the upper reaches of professional sports, their collective presence matters.

They demonstrate excellence in different ways, come from different backgrounds, and have different relationships with their Jewish identities. Yet each, knowingly or not, contributes to a larger story: Jews and Israelis belong in the world’s biggest sporting arenas – not as a novelty, but as competitors, stars, and leaders.

Perhaps that is their greatest impact of all. They are showing the next generation that there is no ceiling on what Jewish and Israeli athletes can achieve – and making excellence, visibility, and pride part of the expectation rather than the exception.

No. 49: Anat Vidor, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Joseph Gitler >>

The 50 Most Influential Jews 2026 Full List

This post was originally published on here. 

Russell Robinson 

On 6 hectares (16 acres) in Beersheba, there is a construction site that will have cost $350 million by the time it opens. It is called the World Zionist Village, and it exists because Russell Robinson decided the Negev should be where young Jews from around the world come to learn what Zionism is, rather than somewhere they drive past on the way to Eilat.

Robinson has been CEO of Jewish National Fund-USA since the 1990s, which makes him the longest-serving chief executive of any major American Zionist organization. Under him, JNF-USA stopped being the blue box on the kitchen counter and became the leading provider of Zionist engagement programming in the United States: JNFuture for donors in their 20s and 30s, the Alexander Muss High School in Israel and its more than 32,000 alumni, and the reservoirs, medical infrastructure, and housing that turned the Negev and the Galilee into places people actually move to.

It also made the organization one of the highest-rated charities in America, which for a Zionist body operating under permanent scrutiny is not a minor achievement.

After October 7, JNF-USA did not have to build anything to respond. It was already there, with the infrastructure and the people on the ground. That is the difference between an organization that raises money for Israel and one that has been standing in the room for a century.

Bruce Leboff

At a defining moment for Israel and the Jewish world, Bruce Leboff has emerged as a leading figure in mobilizing Jewish communities and friends of Israel around the world in support of the Jewish state.

Since being elected chairman of the World Board of Trustees of Keren Hayesod – United Israel Appeal in November 2024, Leboff has helped lead one of the most significant philanthropic mobilizations in the organization’s history. Representing communities across more than 40 countries outside the United States, Keren Hayesod is a central bridge between Israel and the Jewish world.

Leboff has played a leading role in representing the organization’s global network of donors and communities as its focus shifted from the emergency response following October 7 to the long-term challenge of rebuilding and strengthening Israel. Since 2023, Keren Hayesod will have raised more than NIS 2.5 billion, more than 20% above its annual fundraising average in the preceding years. Funds have supported war-affected communities, victims of terror, hospitals, rehabilitation, resilience, aliyah, and other national priorities, with growing emphasis on rebuilding Israel’s north.

For Leboff, the challenge is now to transform the extraordinary Jewish and Zionist awakening following October 7 into a lasting commitment to Israel and the Jewish people.

A Canadian Jewish leader, Leboff brings together decades of experience in finance and communal leadership. He is a founding leader of Ascendant Wealth Partners of RBC Dominion Securities based in Toronto, and has spent more than three decades advising high-net-worth families. He has also devoted over two decades to Jewish communal leadership, including serving as chair of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto.

Leboff is married to Lianne, and they have three daughters: Danielle, Rachel, and Stephi. His combination of financial expertise, global communal leadership, and deep commitment to Israel has placed him at the center of a pivotal moment for Jewish philanthropy.

Elliot Brandt and Bernard Kaminetsky

A man drove to a strip of office space in Plantation, Florida, with an AR-style rifle and ammunition in the car. He had found the address on Google Maps. AIPAC had already moved out of that office, but he did not know that, and the FBI stopped him before he found out. He was charged federally with stalking. AIPAC’s public response was one sentence about not being deterred by extremists.

That is the job now.

Elliot Brandt runs AIPAC’s professional staff. Dr. Bernie Kaminetsky, a New York-born physician who co-founded the largest membership-based primary care network in the country, is its president and leads a board chaired by Michael Tuchin. Between them, they run the oldest and most consequential pro-Israel organization in the United States, at the hardest moment it has ever faced.

Brandt was not brought in from outside to fix anything. He started in AIPAC’s Pacific Northwest office, took over the western states in 2002, built coalitions across more than 100 congressional districts, and served as vice CEO before the board handed him the top job. Fundraising roughly doubled along the way. He knows where every relationship in that building came from, because he built a good number of them.

What he inherited is an organization getting squeezed from both directions at once. In this year’s Democratic primaries, turning down AIPAC’s support became something candidates announced on purpose, and not only on the far left of the party. From the other direction, an administration that agrees with AIPAC on nearly everything makes bipartisanship look, to its critics, like a costume.

They have held the line anyway. That is the entire argument for the organization’s existence. Support for Israel in America cannot belong to one party, because a cause that belongs to one party dies with it.

Holding that line has stopped being an abstraction. In November, AIPAC disclosed that intruders had spent months inside its systems and walked off with the personal information of hundreds of people. Staff now work under security arrangements that did not exist a few years ago. 

There may be no harder job in Jewish organizational life in America right now. There are very few people willing to say so out loud.

No. 47: Yair Golan and Gilad Kariv >>

<< No. 49: Anat Vidor, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Joseph Gitler

The 50 Most Influential Jews 2026 Full List

This post was originally published on here. 

Michael Dell

Michael Dell is the Jewish-American founder and CEO of the eponymous computing conglomerate Dell Technologies.

In 2026, Dell has been one of the year’s biggest gainers among the global ultra-wealthy, propelled by surging demand for Dell Technologies’ AI-optimized servers. 

On May 28, 2026, the company posted its best trading day ever – a roughly 36% stock jump that added $35.8 billion to Dell’s net worth in a single day, lifting him to about $245.9 billion and sixth among the world’s richest people, with the firm booking around $24.4 b. in AI orders in that quarter alone. 

His fortune has swung widely with the stock – ranging from roughly $135 b. early in the year to nearly $246 b. at its peak – but through mid-2026, he has consistently ranked among the world’s five-to-seven wealthiest individuals (estimated near $212 b. in mid-2026 by Bloomberg and Forbes), a sharp rise from the $113.5 b. cited in 2025.

Throughout Israel’s war in Gaza and after, Dell has continued to invest in Jewish communities through the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, set up with his wife. Beyond immediate relief efforts, he has long supported educational programs, youth leadership initiatives, and technology-focused projects in Israel. 

In 2026, that work has continued through the foundation’s Israel portfolio, including new tech-career pathways for Israel’s haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community, backing for a national plan to turn around 150 underachieving schools serving 25,000 students, and zero-interest recovery loans for the families of military reservists.

More broadly, in late 2025, Michael and Susan Dell donated $6.25 b. to “Trump Accounts,” a federal savings initiative for children, one of the largest single philanthropic commitments of the period.

Amnon Shashua

Few figures embody AI’s leap from science fiction to daily life like Israel’s Amnon Shashua. 

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor-turned-entrepreneur co-founded Mobileye, the Jerusalem company whose computer-vision systems let cars detect pedestrians, read road signs, and steer to avoid accidents. Intel’s $15.3 billion acquisition in 2017 was a national milestone; Mobileye returned to Wall Street in 2022.

In July 2026, after nearly three decades, Shashua announced he would step down as Mobileye’s CEO once a successor is found, remaining on the board. The news sent the share price sharply lower – proof of how bound the company remains to its founder. He is steering Mobileye into “physical AI,” including a roughly $900 million move for humanoid-robot startup Mentee Robotics and a Volkswagen robotaxi partnership.

DoubleAI, founded in 2024 with Prof. Shai Shalev-Shwartz, pursues “Artificial Expert Intelligence” – its aim is systems that reason well enough to eventually match human experts in fields like science and engineering. Its first model, WarpSpeed, rewrote GPU code that outperformed most hand-written equivalents. The venture has raised hundreds of millions at a valuation above $1 b.

Not every bet has paid off: OrCam, his assistive-tech venture, has shed much of its value, and his One Zero bank remains unprofitable. Yet honors keep pace – the 2023 Israel Prize, the 2025 TIME100 AI list, and the 2026 election to the US National Academy of Engineering.

As Israel cultivates its AI ecosystem, Shashua’s pursuit of the next breakthrough continues to resonate.

Safra Catz

For a quarter-century, she was the steady hand at Oracle – the disciplined executor who turned a legacy software house into one of the defining players of the AI age. This past year, Safra Catz reached the summit and then stepped aside.

Under her leadership, Oracle’s remaining performance obligations – the pipeline of future revenue – surged 359% to a record $455 billion, powered by cloud contracts with a “who’s who of AI,” including OpenAI, xAI, Meta, and Nvidia. The company’s stock posted its best single-day gain since 1992, briefly carrying Oracle toward a trillion-dollar valuation and cementing Catz’s reputation as the financial architect behind its transformation.

Then, in Sept. 2025, she made her most consequential move. After more than 25 years in Oracle’s executive ranks, Catz ceded the CEO role to a dual-leadership structure and transitioned to Executive Vice Chair, remaining close to founder Larry Ellison as the company pressed deeper into “sovereign AI” and global data-center expansion.

Born in Holon to a Holocaust survivor mother, Catz has long stood as one of the most powerful Jewish women in global business. In a year defined by both triumph and transition, she proved that lasting influence is measured not only by the empire one builds, but by the confidence to hand it on.

Jan Koum

Among the Jewish billionaires whose wealth and influence have shaped Jewish life and Israel in recent years, few move as quietly – or give as consequentially – as Jan Koum.

The Ukrainian-born American is best known as the brains behind WhatsApp, one of Israel’s and the world’s most popular messaging apps. His story is a classic immigrant arc: he arrived in the United States as a teenager, grew up on government assistance in Mountain View, California, and swept the floors of a local grocery store for extra money before co-founding WhatsApp with Brian Acton in 2009. 

Facebook’s roughly $22 billion acquisition of the company in 2014 turned him into one of tech’s wealthiest figures. He stepped down from Facebook’s board in 2018, and Forbes has since pegged his fortune at around $17 b., though estimates vary widely.

Where some billionaires court the spotlight, Koum has built his philanthropy behind it. He directs his giving largely through the Koum Family Foundation, and has been linked in reporting to a newer multi-billion-dollar charitable fund and to his investment firm, Newlands. Across these vehicles, he has supported Jewish education, community centers, and cultural preservation, with a particular focus on Jerusalem.

In 2026, the Koum Family Foundation committed a reported $200 m. to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center to fund a new hospital tower and housing for medical staff – among the largest philanthropic gifts to an Israeli hospital in recent memory. He has also backed organizations that foster Jewish identity in the city.

Despite maintaining a low public profile, Koum’s impact continues to resonate widely across Jewish communities worldwide – proof that influence need not be loud to be lasting.

Brandon Korff

Brandon Korff, 40, is a Jewish-American billionaire and the heir to the Paramount empire, best known for orchestrating the roughly $35 billion sale of the business to David Ellison’s Skydance. He is the son of Shari Redstone and grandson of the late media mogul Sumner Redstone, from whom the family inherited control of Paramount. 

Until the sale, Korff sat on the board of National Amusements, the Redstone family’s private holding company that controlled the media giant and its marquee brands, including CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, and franchises such as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible.

Korff’s connection to Israel is well-established. He has made substantial charitable donations to various Israeli causes over the years – including the IDF, medical institutions, and local community projects – and reportedly expanded that support through 2025 while spending significantly more time in the country. His brother served as a lone soldier in an elite IDF unit. Korff was previously in a relationship with Israeli model Yael Shelbia.

At the end of August 2025, Korff filed an application for Israeli residency, a move officials framed as a gesture of solidarity amid global boycotts and rising hostility toward Israel. As of mid-2026, no major outlet has confirmed that the application was formally approved, though pro-Israel social media accounts have circulated claims that he obtained citizenship.

Dmitry and Igor Bukhman

Two brothers from a provincial Russian city now sit atop one of the world’s largest mobile-gaming empires. 

Igor and Dmitry Bukhman grew up in Vologda, sharing a bedroom and a single computer as they taught themselves to program. While studying applied mathematics, they released their first game around 2001 – priced at $15, earning about $60 in its opening month – and founded Playrix in 2004.

Today, Playrix is one of the world’s largest mobile-game developers, generating billions through blockbuster titles like Homescapes, Township, and Fishdom, with well over 100 million monthly players. It reported roughly $2.6 billion in revenue in 2024 and is headquartered in Dublin.

The brothers rank among the world’s wealthiest self-made entrepreneurs, with Forbes valuing Dmitry at around $13.6 b. as of early 2026. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Playrix closed its offices in Russia and Belarus – a decisive break with their homeland.

Now Russian-born British-Israeli citizens based in London, they have channeled part of their wealth into Rix Capital, a family fund seeded with billions. Quietly influential and rarely in the spotlight, the Bukhmans wield financial power reaching well beyond gaming.

No. 45: Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin, Dan Senor, and Jake Tapper >>

<< No. 47: Yair Golan and Gilad Kariv

The 50 Most Influential Jews 2026 Full List

This post was originally published on here. 

Northern Command officers have warned that remaining in a static posture in Lebanon over time could prove dangerous for the IDF and exact a deadly price, even after a complex engineering operation on the Ali Taher Ridge ended with the destruction of terrorist infrastructure and the killing of dozens of terrorists.

According to the officers, surveillance and intelligence already show that the enemy is studying the IDF’s activity, drawing lessons, and trying to operate guerrilla cells under the radar.

At this stage, the IDF has defined a “kill zone” separating territory under Israeli control from territory controlled by Hezbollah. Northern Command chief Maj.-Gen. Rafi Milo has defined the policy clearly: Anyone who enters the zone will be killed.

To enforce this, the IDF has been working in recent weeks to tighten cooperation between ground troops, the Israel Air Force, and Military Intelligence in order to improve the speed and accuracy with which targets are identified and struck.

That coordination is producing results on the ground, but the major question being raised in Northern Command is how long the current situation can be sustained, and what will happen once winter arrives with the severe weather typical of the region, which directly affects the capabilities of both ground troops and aircraft. “The Lebanese mud” is a broad term for a problem that is expected to develop soon.

Hezbollah will eventually mount a significant response to IDF presence

Northern Command officers are warning that Hezbollah will not remain indefinitely in a state of total restraint without mounting a significant response. According to assessments, the organization’s senior leadership is closely awaiting developments in the Iranian arena, with everything dependent on Tehran.

At the same time, there is broad agreement within the defense establishment that this is no longer the Hezbollah that Israel knew at the beginning of the war nearly three years ago.

The organization is operating without the strong, and experienced senior leadership it once had, although Sheikh Naim Qassem, who initially appeared to be a lame-duck leader, has managed to balance the organization’s various branches.
Hezbollah also no longer enjoys the enormous budget it once received with Iranian backing, nor does it possess the vast weapons arsenal, underground fortified positions, and veteran field commanders who knew every path along the northern border.

There is discontent among Hezbollah personnel over the organization’s approach toward the IDF, while it also faces a major challenge in paying salaries, pensions to retirees, support for the families of “martyrs,” and assistance to wounded members and dependent families.

Nevertheless, the radical Shi’ite organization must not be underestimated. According to the officers, Hezbollah is already building strength and preparing for the next stage, including through increased use of unmanned aerial vehicles and fiber-optic drones, which have proven effective in recent confrontations.

Can the IDF maintain a presence in Lebanon?

This comes against the backdrop of Hezbollah’s concern that Israel’s next steps could be directed toward Nabatieh, which is described as Hezbollah’s Jerusalem, a “Shi’ite stronghold” where the IDF is currently limiting its activity to airstrikes in the area.

At this stage, it remains unclear whether, given the budget crisis, the IDF will have sufficient funds to prepare for winter across all arenas, with conditions in Lebanon expected to be particularly complex.

It is also unclear, given the strain on regular-service troops, whether IDF divisions are training for a renewed large-scale war and whether they have operational plans ready to be implemented at any moment. The convergence of these sensitive pressure points could become a significant disadvantage in any future confrontation.

This post was originally published on here. 

The US Space Force has “on-orbit space control weapons” capable of defending American forces from hostile action, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink publicly revealed Monday at the Pentagon in the United States’ most explicit acknowledgment to date that it has deployed military weapons in space.

“Today, we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenge of evolving threats wherever they exist,” Meink said during the opening keynote address at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

“This is why the Space Force now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”

The disclosure comes as Washington has increasingly spoken publicly about the prospect of conflict in orbit and the need to protect US satellites against potential adversaries. China and Russia have developed and demonstrated technologies that US and allied officials say could threaten satellites and other space infrastructure.

Meink made clear that the wording of his announcement was deliberate. Asked about the reference during a question-and-answer session after his speech, he said the phrasing was “very well thought out.”

“It is critically important that we maintain our dominance, not only in the air but in space,” he said. “So, we’ve had to take steps to make sure that when we’re threatened, we can take care of that.”

Pentagon keeping exact details of weapons classified

Meink declined to say whether the weapons were kinetic, meaning systems designed to physically damage or destroy a target, or non-kinetic systems such as electronic warfare capabilities.

He said greater public acknowledgment of US capabilities could strengthen deterrence, but argued that revealing technical details could undermine that objective.

“We’re not going to talk about the specifics of what we’re doing, whether we’ve tested, not tested, or anything else,” Meink said. “I would just say that the space environment is critical for military and economic security, and we need to make sure that the US can operate freely there.”

The US has increasingly shifted toward openly treating space as a potential combat domain, as US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in December 2025 on American space superiority, which instructed US agencies to improve their ability to detect, characterize, and counter threats to American interests in space.

The order also called for demonstrations of missile-defense technologies connected to Trump’s Golden Dome program, part of Washington’s broader effort to build a multilayered shield against ballistic, hypersonic, and other missile threats. The administration’s space policy has included a push to defend US interests against threats in space.

Meink highlighted two Space Force programs connected to Golden Dome: the Space-Based Interceptor program and the Space-Based Air-Moving Target Indication constellation.

The interceptor program is intended to eventually place weapons in space capable of destroying missile threats. The Pentagon has been examining several concepts for space-based missile interceptors as part of the Golden Dome architecture.

Meink said the Space-Based Interceptor program had advanced from an “initial contract to flight-ready hardware” in less than a year.

The Space Force is using a phased competition to assess whether such interceptors can be produced affordably and at sufficient scale, with an initial operational capability potentially fielded by 2028.

Golden Dome director Gen. Michael Guetlein said in August that contractors had completed the first phase, known as Gate One, which focused on design work and component testing. Contractors moving through subsequent phases are expected to build prototypes, demonstrate that the systems function in space, and ultimately show that they can be integrated into the broader Golden Dome architecture.

Golden Dome has become one of the Pentagon’s most ambitious missile-defense projects, combining ground, sea, and space-based elements. Israel Aerospace Industries has previously expressed interest in participating in the project, citing its experience developing the Arrow missile-defense family jointly with the United States. Israel Aerospace Industries has sought a role in Golden Dome

SpaceX satellites due to begin launching

The Space Force is also developing its Space-Based Air-Moving Target Indication, or AMTI, constellation with the National Reconnaissance Office.

The program is designed to move some of the military’s aircraft-tracking mission into space, reducing reliance on airborne platforms vulnerable to enemy air defenses.

SpaceX received a $4.2 billion contract in May to begin building the constellation, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. Meink said the first satellites are scheduled to launch in September, although the Space Force has not disclosed how many spacecraft will be included in the initial launch or the eventual size of the constellation.

“Taken together, these investments will help us adapt and scale the force for today and tomorrow’s threats,” Meink said.

The central disclosure and quotes are verified against the September 14 report, and I kept the distinction between confirmed weapons in orbit and the still-undisclosed question of whether they are kinetic or non-kinetic.

This post was originally published on here. 

The Nazareth District Court on Tuesday sentenced Denis Mukin to 22 years in prison for murdering 19-year-old Diar Omari during a roadside confrontation near Gan Ner in May 2023.

The court also ordered Mukin to pay NIS 258,000 to Omari’s estate, disqualified him from holding a driver’s license for three years, and confiscated the Glock pistol used in the shooting. His prison sentence will be counted from his arrest on May 6, 2023.

Mukin was convicted in December of murder with indifference, meaning the court found that he knowingly disregarded the possibility that his actions would kill Omari. A majority of the three-judge panel found that the prosecution had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mukin intended to kill him.

Judge Osaila Abu-Assad dissented from that part of the verdict, saying that Mukin should have been convicted of intentional murder. The panel was unanimous in imposing Tuesday’s sentence.

According to the court’s findings, Mukin was driving while disqualified and under the influence of alcohol and cannabis when he encountered Omari on a road leading toward Gan Ner on May 6, 2023. The two did not know each other.

Mukin became angry at the way Omari was driving and tried unsuccessfully to overtake him. After an exchange between the two drivers, Mukin stopped his car, got out, held his pistol, and fired several rounds into the air.

Mukin fired two shots which hit Omari, one of which caused his death 

A physical struggle followed, during which Mukin fired two shots that struck Omari. One entered his chest, passed through his heart and lungs, and caused his death. 

Omari got up and moved back toward his car after being shot. Mukin then stood and fired three more rounds toward his back, none of which struck him. 

After Omari collapsed, Mukin crossed the road, looked at him, and left without providing assistance or calling emergency services, the court found.

Mukin later returned to the scene with his sister after asking her to tell police that she had been driving. The court found that he did so to conceal that he had driven while intoxicated and while his license was disqualified. His sister initially gave police that account but retracted it shortly afterward.

Mukin was also convicted of driving while disqualified, two counts of driving while intoxicated, inducing another person to obstruct an investigation and intentionally damaging a vehicle.

Prosecutors asked the court to sentence Mukin to life imprisonment, arguing that the killing arose from a trivial road dispute and demonstrated the ease with which he resorted to a firearm. They proposed a sentencing range of 26 years to life and pointed in particular to the additional shots fired at Omari after he had already been wounded.

The defense proposed a range of 14 to 18 years and argued that the circumstances came close to self-defense, although Mukin had not relied on self-defense during the trial itself.

Court rejects self-defense argument

The court rejected that argument, finding that Mukin initiated the confrontation by leaving his vehicle with a pistol and firing into the air. It set the appropriate sentencing range at 20 to 25 years.

In selecting a 22-year term, the judges considered that Mukin had no previous criminal convictions and had already spent more than three years in detention. They weighed those factors against his failure to accept responsibility for the offenses, his traffic record and risk factors identified in a probation report.

The court also imposed suspended prison terms and recommended that the Israel Prison Service consider placing Mukin in a treatment program.

Mukin may appeal the conviction or sentence to the Supreme Court within 45 days.

This post was originally published on here. 

Israel and the West are facing cruel enemies, Iran and Islamist terrorism, to begin with. The concept of “narrative” is just as dangerous.

Narrative has taken the place of facts and truth in discussions of world events. That’s why seemingly intelligent people can parade around in keffiyehs and espouse causes that are the opposite of what they believe, like “Queers for Palestine.”

The Western narrative dictates that Israel is a colonialist occupier, Palestinians are helpless victims, and the Israel-Palestinian conflict is the only one that matters, because all-powerful, diabolical Jews are responsible for this and everything else that’s wrong with the world.

As a result of widespread acceptance of this narrative, aided by Israeli government missteps, Israel has lost much of its support in the Western world. That’s how dangerous it is.

Facts ignored in favor of narrative

Here are some well-documented facts that are irrelevant today because they don’t fit the narrative:

• There is not, and never has been, an Israeli-led genocide in Gaza.

• There has never been mass starvation in Gaza.

• Homosexuality is illegal and immoral in much of the Arab world, and in Gaza, gay people have been thrown from apartment-building roofs.

• Israel has facilitated the shipment of enough food into Gaza to satisfy the requirements of everyone there, an otherwise unheard-of humanitarian gesture during an active war.

• The ratio of combatant deaths to civilian deaths during three years of war in Gaza is remarkably close to 1:1, in contrast to, say, the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where it was about eight civilian deaths per combatant death.

We could go on and on, but time, space, and attention spans are limited these days. That won’t stop me from reminiscing, though.

When I started my career in journalism back in the middle of last century, the goal of the profession was to find the facts, write about them, and explain them. It didn’t matter which way the facts pointed or who was helped or harmed. The facts dictated the rest of the story.

Old grouch that I am, I still follow that set of rules. A friend who has been reading my articles for years once observed, “I can’t tell whether you’re right or left.” I suppose he was expecting me to clear that up. Instead, I said, “Thank you.”

Such attempts at objectivity are mostly gone. Now you start with the narrative you believe in and gather up all the facts that support it, even if the “facts” aren’t facts at all. The narrative rules. That’s why the list of actual facts above is irrelevant.

Once-proud news outlets pander to their niche audiences, openly “advocating” for the chosen narrative. Politicians have been doing that forever, but now it has become extreme.

Harris’s pandering to Iranian student symbol of narrative acceptance 

Who can forget how a candidate for US president handled an Iranian exchange student who accused Israel of “ethnic genocide”?

The candidate should have rejected the Iranian’s charges as lies and noted what would happen to an American who criticized an Iranian official in Iran.

“You are a guest in my country,” she should have said. “Just go back home and try that.”

But she didn’t. In full pandering mode, she waffled, “Your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth cannot be suppressed, and it must be heard.”

“Your truth” means narrative, not truth. There’s an old joke that goes, “My mind is made up, don’t confuse me with facts.” Now it’s no joke, it’s reality.

So there’s little point in spending your days replying to posts on what I call “antisocial media,” providing facts to counter the obvious, odious fabrications that flood the screen. Reality’s goalposts just aren’t where they used to be.

Back in the old days, most people listened to experienced professionals and experts. Today, they turn to “influencers.”

And how do you become an influencer? A university degree? Decades of experience in your field? Uh, no. You become an influencer simply by making yourself popular, by any means necessary.

Professional tennis players complained that influencers disrupted a top international tournament by making noise and flashing lights while trying to get themselves photographed, rather than watching the matches. An 8-year-old can become an influencer if her parents, agents, or whoever can get her video clips to go “viral.” Remember when the term “viral” was associated with danger? Turns out it still is, in a different context.

All this is linked directly to antisocial media. It allows, even encourages, people to latch onto a narrative and then build a closed circle of like-minded, or unhinged, followers. It leads to exchanges like this:

“I am a certified immunologist with a Ph.D. and 25 years of experience in treating people with infectious diseases, along with extensive research and published papers in the field, and it’s clear that the COVID and flu vaccines are beneficial and effective.”

Reply by random reader: “Bullsh*t.”

So this is the place where I push my long, white beard off the keyboard and pine for a return to the good ol’ days, adding, while I’m at it, “Get off my lawn.”

But no. It’s a new world, and the old one isn’t coming back. Instead of chasing the kids off our lawn, we need to learn how they do what they do, and do it better.

Despite the narrative that Jews control everything with their unlimited resources and devilish practices, the fact is that Israel and the Jews of the world are vastly outnumbered and outspent by the forces promoting the current narrative.

I’ve written here about Qatar and its multibillion-dollar campaign to influence opinion in the US. It’s likely that a generation is lost, but it’s time to start working on the next one.

Narratives that may counter current slander

That means constructing multiple narratives to counter the current slander. Here are some options:

• The story of Oded Lifshitz, who lived in a village next to Gaza and drove Gazans from the border to Israeli hospitals as a pro-peace volunteer. He was 84 when Palestinian terrorists kidnapped him from his home on Oct. 7, 2023, and dragged him to Gaza, where he died.

• Just in the past year, Israeli researchers have come up with promising possible cures for several forms of cancer.

• Israel is often among the first to respond with a rescue team when there’s a natural disaster anywhere in the world, even helping nations that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

That’s a start. How do we turn those into narratives? That’s above, or below, my pay grade.

First, we need the decision to do it, instead of wasting all our time and money providing facts to counter the lies. Whether we like it or not, this is a post-fact era.

Even so, what’s the difference between Israel’s potential narratives and the current crop of pro-Islamist ones?

Israel’s are true.

Mark Lavie has been covering the Middle East for major news outlets since 1972. His second book, Why Are We Still Afraid?, which follows his five-decade career and comes to a surprising conclusion, is available on Amazon.

This post was originally published on here. 

An estimated 20,000 Israelis will visit Morocco by the end of 2026, supporting the local economy through the tourism industry, while Morocco is “really waiting for Israeli tourists,” Moroccan-Israeli tour guide Uri Attias told N12 News.

Direct flights from Tel Aviv to Marrakech, Morocco, resumed this summer. In August, Arkia operated the first direct Israeli flight to the popular Moroccan city since October 7, 2023. Three direct flights are now operating each week, run by Israeli airlines.

The current scope of Israeli tourism in Morocco is relatively low, in part due to the limited number of flights; however, initial demand indicates that Israeli tourism could return to pre-war levels, when approximately 100,000 Israelis visited Morocco each year.

Attias, a Morocco tour guide with Eco Outdoor Tours at the Issta Sport Group, told N12 that the resumption of direct flights was personal for him. He was born to Moroccan parents, spoke Moroccan Arabic, and has led tours in Morocco for over 30 years.

“I guide in many destinations around the world, but Morocco is my favorite. It is much more than a trip. It is the people, the smells, the flavors, and the atmosphere, which have no equivalent anywhere in the world.”

“When I take a group with me, from my perspective, they are not really going on a trip with me; they are guests in my home. We do not see Morocco from above, we go inside. We visit families, schools and villages, eat in the homes of people I personally know, sit down for a couscous or tagine meal and drink Moroccan tea at the table where the family itself eats.”

Moroccan businesses want Israeli tourism to restart

But Attias doesn’t think the desire to return to Morocco is one-sided. He told N12 that the Moroccan tourism industry had adapted to Israeli visitors in the years leading up to the war, explaining that the closure of direct flights between the two countries dealt many business owners a tough blow. 

“There are many businesses in Morocco that are really waiting for Israeli tourists. It is their source of oxygen. Companies organized jeep tours for Israelis two or three times a month, and suddenly it was cut off. I do not think their attitude toward Israelis has changed. They are waiting for the organized groups to return.”

Attias is returning to Morocco with an Eco group in April, more than three years after his last visit.

This post was originally published on here. 

At 5 a.m. on Thursday, September 10, 2026, Ali Al-Ahdal, a fisherman in his sixties from the Al-Amoudi neighborhood of Mocha, woke to the sound of successive explosions and gunfire. Within hours, government forces and the National Resistance had withdrawn south toward Dhubab District, while vehicles carrying fighters from Ansar Allah (the Houthis) poured into the city center. 

“I woke up to find that the city had fallen within hours, without any warning or prior indication. They gave us no chance to flee. The exits were immediately sealed off, and the sea, which had been the lifeline of our lives, became an open combat zone,” Al-Ahdal said.

What happened in Mocha that morning was not an isolated incident in a protracted war. It marked the starting point of a broader shift: Yemen’s transition from a “civil conflict with regional repercussions” into a direct front in the wider confrontation between Tehran and Washington, which has been raging since February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iranian targets.

Mocha latest step in Houthis escalation

The fall of Mocha was not a collapse. It was the latest stage in an escalation that began weeks earlier. On August 9, the Houthis opened a direct front against Mocha itself, shelling the city and its port with more than 25 missiles over several consecutive days, while the government reinforced its positions with units from various brigades.

On September 3, the Houthis launched a broader military operation reaching the war fronts west of Taiz, as well as Hays district in Hodeidah. The Houthis later announced that they had taken control of six districts in the two governorates, covering a total area of 5,400 square kilometers. The advance relied on a combination of ground offensives supported by missile and drone strikes targeting government forces and their equipment before infantry forces advanced, according to two military sources from both sides who spoke to The Media Line.

Events accelerated on Wednesday evening, September 9, when the Houthis made a breakthrough in Al-Wazi’iyah District in central Yemen, followed by their capture of Jabal al-Nar east of Mocha and then Khalid bin Al-Walid Camp, Yemen’s second-largest military base.

By Thursday evening, September 10, the last two districts in Hodeidah governorate still held by government forces had fallen: Hays district, after heavy fighting, and Khokha, which fell without resistance, giving the Houthis full control of the governorate. This was followed by withdrawals of government forces, leading to the capture of Hodeidah city and the islands opposite the Bab al-Mandab Strait. 

The speed with which Hays, Khokha, and Mocha fell, in less than 48 hours, raised widespread questions among Yemenis about possible defections and infiltration within government forces.

As armed fighters entered Mocha, most residents remained inside their homes amid an arrest campaign that affected many people, according to testimonies obtained by The Media Line. Those detained included activists, journalists, doctors, and humanitarian workers.

Jamil Mohammed, a resident of Mocha, told The Media Line that many people fled along the coastal road toward Aden Governorate and that the city and its residents were living in a state of intense fear after the Houthis took control of the city.

A Houthi field commander known by his nom de guerre, Abu Rajeh, told The Media Line that this operation was a “carefully devised strategic plan based on the element of surprise and comprehensive coordination between drone operations and ground advance.”

He added: “We wanted to strip the Forces of Aggression of their stronghold and secure Yemen’s sovereignty over its territorial waters in Bab al-Mandab.”

“Now Yemen has full sovereignty over the Bab al-Mandab Strait,” he said, and hailed the city’s return to the “national fold.”

Unprecedented firepower, missile strikes aided Houthi takeover, military officer says

On the other side, a military officer in the internationally recognized government’s forces who spoke to The Media Line on condition of anonymity explained the reasons for the massive setback.

“Our positions were subjected to unprecedented firepower and missile strikes. The decision to redeploy and withdraw toward Dhubab, and later to safe areas, was a tactical step to protect our forces and civilians from certain annihilation after the loss of air cover,” he said.

He stressed that the fighting was ongoing, adding: “Mocha, Bab al-Mandab and the neighboring districts remain the center of a military operation. The battle is not over yet.”

The West Coast did not fall because of insufficient military presence. From late August through the first week of September 2026, fighting spread horizontally from the West Coast northward and from Taiz in central Yemen eastward toward Marib, Al Jawf and Al Bayda, in one of the most intense waves of ground escalation since the 2022 truce.

The clashes resulted in a new map of territorial control across districts along the front lines. According to a medical source in the capital, Sanaa, the fighting had resulted in the deaths of more than 450 Houthi fighters.

According to Majed Al-Nuzaili, a spokesperson in the IRG’s armed forces: “the [IRG’s] stated objective of this simultaneous escalation was to restore state institutions and end the Houthi coup.”

Military analysts, however, believe that opening fronts in Al-Jawf and Al-Bayda was intended to disperse Houthi forces and ease pressure on the western coast by forcing them to fight in multiple directions simultaneously.

The UN envoy to Yemen warned that the expansion of the fighting in this manner “threatens to widen the scope of the conflict” and “will have serious consequences” for prospects of reaching a political settlement, calling on regional and international actors to contain the escalation.

As of Sunday, September 13, fighting along the West Coast had not subsided. The Yemeni army announced that it had carried out airstrikes targeting Houthi gatherings near Mocha port and the Dhubab area, while government forces launched a counteroffensive in western rural Taiz to retake some districts.

Bab al-Mandab becomes Iranian pressure point

What distinguishes this round from previous ones, however, is its regional context. Since the outbreak of the war between Iran and the United States and Israel in late February, Bab al-Mandab has become a direct Iranian pressure point on the global economy.

At the same time, disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz had already increased oil flows through Bab al-Mandab from around 5.4 million barrels per day in the fourth quarter of 2025 to approximately 8.1 million barrels per day in the second quarter of 2026, as Saudi Arabia redirected part of its exports away from Hormuz.

With the Houthis announcing a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia and carrying out attacks on vessels near the strait, as well as strikes against Saudi energy infrastructure, two major routes for global oil supplies were simultaneously placed at risk.

This prompted Riyadh to request US military intervention to strike Houthi positions, but the administration of President Donald Trump has so far rejected the request.

As an expected consequence of the escalation, the International Organization for Migration has recorded the displacement of around 76,000 people from Taiz and Hodeidah since September 3. The figure is likely to increase in the coming few days.

At the same time, Yemen’s Executive Unit for the Management of IDP Camps recorded the displacement of approximately 9,746 families from Taiz, Hodeidah and Lahj as of September 10, a measure expressed in households rather than individuals.

In Mocha and around Bab al-Mandab, none of these broader calculations appears to mean much to Ali Al-Ahdal. Sitting in his home, he watches columns of smoke rising above the port through gaps in his windows, summing up the plight of thousands of people along the coast in a single sentence:

“We have become fuel for a war that leaves nothing untouched. We do not want the armies’ conflicts or the international shipping routes. All we need is to live safely in our homes and return to fishing and the simple lives that were taken from us overnight.”

Between Iran and the United States, Riyadh and Sanaa, and the West Coast, Al Jawf, Marib and Al Bayda, Yemen’s geography remains an open arena for a multi-front conflict whose course is increasingly beyond the control of its inhabitants.

This post was originally published on here. 

The Education Ministry admitted during a High Court of Justice hearing on Monday that it does not have data on the number of children with allergies in Israel’s education system, the number of allergic reactions that have occurred in schools, or the number of evacuations carried out as a result.

The admission came during a hearing on a petition filed by attorney Gilad Bar Tal, legal adviser to the Yahal Association, against what the organization describes as an experiment conducted on children with allergies.

Under the program, the Education Ministry seeks to remove medical aides from first and second grade classrooms and replace them with support provided by school nurses. The pilot program, first reported by Walla, began at the start of the current school year in 10 schools.

The petition was filed following opposition from parents and the Yahal Association to the move. According to the association, despite the lack of available data, the Education Ministry continues to argue that the new model is appropriate and safe to implement.

During the hearing, Bar Tal presented the petitioners’ arguments, saying that key questions regarding the handling of allergic emergencies in real time remain unanswered. These include how school staff will respond when a child develops a reaction, how the nurse will be alerted, and how much time will pass before emergency treatment is provided.

The association also argued that the state has presented the pilot as a move accompanied by a professional research process, but that such research has not yet begun.

According to the petitioners, a tender is currently underway to select an academic body that will conduct the research at a later stage. The parents argued that this means the model was launched before a research framework was established that would allow its effectiveness and potential consequences to be measured.

Petitioners criticize Association of Allergologists 

The petitioners’ representatives also criticized the position of the Association of Allergologists during the hearing. The Yahal Association argued that the association’s position does not give sufficient consideration to the emotional and psychological effects of life-threatening allergies on young children, and that the safety of the model cannot be assessed solely based on cases of death or severe medical incidents.

“We do not live according to statistics; we deal with reality,” the association said following the hearing. “In addition to the fear of an attack that could cause irreversible damage, even a ‘mild’ reaction is still an allergic attack. The children’s sense of security is also important, and at the age of 6 and 7, the solution of a school nurse is simply bad. Our children deserve to be free to learn, with physical and mental health, just like everyone else.”

Association claims opposition not to school nurses but to the replacement of aides without data

The association stressed that its opposition is not to examining alternative models to medical aides, but rather to the way the move is being implemented.

“We are not against change, and we are not against examining other models instead of aides. We are against a unilateral move, without sufficient data, without clear reasoning, without measures that define success or failure, and above all, without an answer to the most important question: While the Education Ministry is conducting the experiment, are our children safe in the education system?”

They added: “You cannot conduct an experiment on the backs of our children and only afterward check whether it succeeded, without clear success and failure measures. Our children are not a budget line, and their lives are not an experiment.”

This post was originally published on here. 

A 19-year-old resident of Kafr Kassem was arrested on suspicion of advancing terrorist activity and planning to carry out an attack, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and the Israel Police stated on Tuesday.

The joint investigation found that Issa had been influenced by the October 7 massacre. According to the investigation, he subsequently began advancing a plan to carry out a terrorist attack.

When Issa was arrested, investigators found a large amount of training equipment and airsoft weapons in his possession. His interrogation further revealed that he had used his cellphone to search for combat manuals and had downloaded and saved guides dealing with the manufacture of explosive devices.

Suspect learned how to create homemade explosives in preparation for terror attacks

According to the investigation’s findings, the suspect did not limit himself to searching for information. The Shin Bet and police allege that he attempted to manufacture explosive devices using various materials and also involved other people in those attempts.

Following his interrogations by the Shin Bet and the Sharon Central Unit, prosecutors submitted a declaration to the Central District Court ahead of filing an indictment against him.

This post was originally published on here. 

The benefits of AI are becoming more apparent, but a growing backlash is raising an urgent question: Are companies deploying systems that can mimic people, analyze private data, write code, and act online before their developers have demonstrated that those systems can be safely controlled? 

The concern has become difficult to dismiss because it is coming from within the industry. Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic; Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI; and Demis Hassabis, who leads Google DeepMind, have all recently backed a slower approach to developing the most advanced models. Their warnings surround cyberattacks, biological misuse, autonomous weapons, mass surveillance, and systems that may cause harm faster than people can understand or stop it. 

Public anxiety has risen as generative AI has become more visible. In a June 2026 survey, Pew Research Center found that 52% of Americans were more concerned than excited about the growing use of AI in daily life. Only 9% were more excited than concerned. 

People increasingly encounter AI in software, search engines, schoolwork, and public services without knowing what data are collected, whether the system is accurate, or who is accountable when it fails. 

Frontier models: the potential for AI hackers

Amodei has made a clear call for restraint. In an essay published on Sept.12 entitled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” he wrote: “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models.” 

He is focused on frontier models – the most powerful systems, which can increasingly handle multistep tasks, write and run code, search for information, and use online tools with limited supervision. The concern is that their capabilities may improve faster than researchers’ ability to ensure that they consistently do what people intend. 

An AI system can follow an instruction literally while pursuing it through an unexpected or harmful route. This becomes more dangerous when AI is not merely answering questions but also carrying out tasks. An agent designed to solve a technical problem could be used to probe networks for weaknesses, write malicious code, send realistic scams, or adapt an attack when it is blocked. 

Human hackers are constrained by time and expertise. A capable AI system could operate continuously, test multiple strategies simultaneously, and create tailored material at scale. The danger is that people give it a goal, cannot foresee how it will pursue that goal, and recognize the harm it causes too late. 

Altman publicly backed Amodei’s central argument. “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” he wrote. Companies, in his view, should not release a more powerful model merely because they have built one. They should first establish whether it can be misused, evade safeguards, assist dangerous activity, or cause failures that cannot be detected and contained. 

Altman also endorsed external scrutiny: “Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same.”  

AI companies largely test their own systems and decide how much safety information to disclose. They also compete fiercely for users, investment, and influence. A firm that delays a launch may fear that a rival will go first. 

Can regulators verify AI safety tests?

In a post on X/Twitter, Hassabis said Amodei’s proposals pointed “towards the right path forward,” but cautioned that “the details need working through.”  

Who decides that a model is too powerful to release? What does a meaningful safety test look like? How can regulators verify companies’ claims? International competition makes these questions harder – governments regard advanced AI as a source of economic, scientific, and military power, and safety can easily yield to the pressure of the race. 

Cybersecurity is among the clearest near-term risks. AI can help criminals and hostile states find software vulnerabilities, write malware, and generate convincing phishing messages. It can tailor scams to an individual using information taken from social media or data leaks and reproduce the style of a bank, employer, or government office. Voice-cloning technology adds another danger – a call that seems to come from a relative, manager, or official may not be genuine. 

AI magnifies the speed and scale of attacks. Hospitals, electricity providers, transport systems, and banks could face assaults generated faster than human security teams can investigate them. 

A second concern is biological and chemical misuse. AI can help legitimate researchers search scientific literature, understand molecules, and design experiments. But the same capabilities could help someone organize dangerous information, identify experimental routes, or seek ways around safety restrictions. 

AI cannot manufacture a biological weapon. Laboratories, equipment, materials, scientific skills, and testing remain essential. But sophisticated systems could lower the information barrier for a determined person or group that already has access to real-world resources. The danger lies in sustained technical assistance to someone pursuing a dangerous objective. 

AI as a tool to identify, target threats in war

AI’s use in war poses an especially serious problem. Systems built to process information rapidly may move closer to decisions about whether people live or die. 

AI can analyze drone footage, satellite images, communications, and databases much more quickly than human analysts. This has the potential to help identify threats and prioritize intelligence. But critics warn that AI-assisted targeting can make lethal choices appear objective even when the data are incomplete, biased, or wrong. 

The issue is particularly relevant in the Middle East. Supporters say the technology helps manage vast quantities of intelligence. Critics and human-rights researchers argue that when human reviewers are expected to approve machine-generated recommendations rapidly, it could put civilians in unnecessary danger. 

Amodei has drawn a line against weapons that select and engage targets without meaningful human control. “Fully autonomous weapons … may prove critical for our national defense,” he wrote in Feb. 2026. “But today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons.” 

AI surveillance can reinforce discrimination instead of neutral judgement

He has also warned that “using these systems for mass domestic surveillance is incompatible with democratic values.” AI can combine information from cameras, phones, online behavior, purchases, and communications. Without strong legal limits, it could allow authorities to track political opponents, journalists, minority groups, and ordinary people at an unprecedented scale. 

AI can also reinforce discrimination while giving it the appearance of neutral, technical judgment. Systems trained on historical data can reproduce earlier bias in hiring, lending, welfare, policing, and healthcare. An algorithm may label someone high risk or unsuitable without disclosing the data or assumptions behind that judgment. This is why the European Union has prohibited some AI practices, including certain forms of biometric categorization. 

The danger is not only that AI makes mistakes, but that people may defer to erroneous conclusions because an AI recommendation can appear more objective than human judgment. This “automation bias” is especially dangerous in policing, medicine, welfare, immigration, and military decision-making, where a flawed recommendation can affect a person’s freedom, livelihood, or life. 

For many people, the most immediate danger is the erosion of trust in information. AI can generate realistic articles, photographs, audio, and video. It can imitate a person’s voice, fabricate a speech, or alter footage to suggest an event occurred. 

Spread of false material, disinformation

During elections, war, or public emergencies, false material can spread before journalists and authorities can verify it. It can inflame ethnic or religious tensions, manipulate voters, discredit reporting, or cause panic. It also gives genuine wrongdoers an excuse to dismiss authentic evidence as artificial. 

In a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June 2025, 76% of Americans said it was extremely or very important to know whether pictures, video, and text were made by AI or by people. Yet 53% said they were not too or not at all confident that they could recognize AI-generated content. Once people believe that any recording may be fake, real evidence becomes easier to deny. 

A related threat is manipulation. AI can use personal data to predict what captures a person’s attention or to exploit a moment of vulnerability, then tailor messages accordingly. That may mean political propaganda aimed at a particular voter, gambling promotions directed at someone with an addiction, or loans and shopping offers targeted at a person in debt. The concern is not only false information but also systems designed to influence behavior in ways people may not recognize. The European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act prohibits certain AI systems that manipulate people or exploit vulnerabilities linked to age, disability, or economic circumstances. 

Some people are stepping back from AI because it is moving into sensitive areas of life before clear limits are in place. The warnings from Amodei, Altman, and Hassabis demonstrate that the risks are serious enough that safety should not be treated as an afterthought. 

The issue is ultimately one of control. The real test will come when safety demands that a company delay a lucrative AI product, or when a government decides that a specific AI capability offers a military or intelligence advantage. The risk is that the most consequential choices about AI may be made in corporate boardrooms and closed government meetings. 

This post was originally published on here. 

US defense-tech company Ondas has made another Israeli acquisition, which continues to expand its portfolio through the purchase of Israeli companies. The company announced that it is acquiring GATE Technologies Ltd., an Israeli company specializing in the development and manufacturing of smart fuzes for loitering munitions systems and drones, and which is also involved in the Iron Dome project.

The acquisition includes GATE, which develops, manufactures, and licenses advanced electronic safe and arm devices (ESADs), as well as its European partner, Bron Technologies. The deal is valued at $205 million and could increase by an additional $185 million, depending on whether the company meets performance targets through the end of 2028.

The acquisition strengthens Ondas’ precision strike capabilities by adding a strategic ability to supply critical fuze components used in attacks launched from unmanned platforms. It also complements the company’s existing capabilities in autonomous strike systems, propulsion, mission systems, communications, engineering, manufacturing, and software.

Founded in 1996, GATE’s products are integrated into dozens of weapons systems worldwide, including missiles, rockets, unmanned aerial vehicles, and loitering munitions. The company’s fuze systems are designed to keep munitions safe during storage, transport, and launch, while allowing activation only after predefined conditions have been met.

As weapons systems become smaller, more autonomous, and increasingly software-based, the defense industry has been moving from traditional mechanical systems toward electronic solutions.

Majority of GATE’s revenue from outside Israel

“GATE is a strategic addition to Ondas,” said Eric Brock, chairman and CEO of Ondas. “The demand for precision and autonomous strike systems is growing, while the use of electronic safe and arm devices is expanding. We intend to invest in its manufacturing capabilities, engineering, and the expansion of its international operations.”

Most of GATE’s revenue currently comes from outside Israel. Bron Technologies’ operations in Poland provide the company with a manufacturing base in Europe, while it has also begun establishing engineering, integration, qualification, and manufacturing capabilities in the US. Products manufactured in the US are expected to become available for sale in the first half of 2027.

Ondas is a Nasdaq-traded holding company with a market capitalization of $4.1 billion, down 25% since the beginning of the year. Alongside its acquisitions of Israeli companies, Ondas has recruited several senior Israeli defense figures, led by former Mossad director David Barnea, who left the position several months ago.

The company’s Israeli branch is managed by Brig. Gen. (res.) Oshri Lugasi, a former chief engineering officer of the IDF and former executive vice president at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.

Over the past year, Ondas has acquired a series of small Israeli defense companies, including drone manufacturer Airobotics, which also produces interceptor drones; Omnisys, which develops artificial intelligence systems for mission planning, optimization, and battlefield resource management; Bird Aerosystems, which develops and manufactures airborne defense systems and maritime and aerial mission solutions; Robotican, which develops ground robotics systems for military and security applications; Centrix, which develops technologies for drone detection, monitoring, and interception; and Indo, which focuses on heavy engineering equipment for civilian and defense applications.

“Electronic fuze systems are central components in precision weapons systems,” Lugasi said. “GATE has built a significant position in the field over the years, thanks to licensing processes and integration into dozens of weapons systems. Following the acquisition, Ondas intends to improve and strengthen support for existing customers, as well as expand the company’s operations in Israel and around the world.”

According to market research by MarketsandMarkets, the global loitering munitions market is expected to grow from approximately $5.4 billion in 2025 to about $13.3 billion by 2030.

GATE was represented in the transaction by attorneys Eyal Sagie and Myren Sandelson.

This post was originally published on here. 

Israel and Saudi Arabia held talks mediated by US Central Command aimed at helping Riyadh defend itself against the Houthi military through intelligence assistance, Walla reported on Tuesday, citing diplomatic sources in the Middle East.

The Houthi military has intensified its attacks against the Saudi regime over the past week, including a drone attack on oil pipelines and pumping facilities that led to a partial shutdown of activity along the main pipeline. The Houthis also carried out an attack against Saudi civilians who were inside a mosque and nearby buildings not far from the Yemen-Saudi Arabia border.

At the same time, the Houthi military seized several strategically located islands along the Red Sea and barred Saudi vessels from passing through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, imposing what the sources described as an economic and diplomatic blockade on Saudi Arabia.

The security situation has raised significant concerns not only among the Saudis but also among other countries in the region, according to security sources. The concern is based on a scenario in which the US reaches understandings with Iran and the Houthis, leaving Saudi Arabia and other countries to face unresolved threats in the foreseeable future while remaining exposed to continued attacks.

Saudi Arabia, Israel hold talks to help Riyadh defend itself

Diplomatic sources in the region said Saudi Arabia and Israel held talks mediated by CENTCOM in order to help the Saudis protect themselves. The IDF has already demonstrated intelligence and operational capabilities in the maritime arena around the Strait of Hormuz, assisting the Americans in building layers of intelligence on the locations of Iranian forces.

The sources said the Saudi request for assistance was likely focused on intelligence support to build a broader picture of Houthi military deployments in the area and identify potential plans for future operations.

Notably, Bloomberg reported that Saudi Arabia also asked Britain for aid in both repelling the Houthis from the Bab al-Mandab Strait and helping defend against strikes on its oil infrastructure.

Burnham has agreed to send British military advisors to assist Saudi Arabia, Bloomberg reported, but had not yet committed to sending any additional aid.

Meanwhile, security officials said that US President Donald Trump’s decision to allow Saudi Arabia to develop a civilian nuclear program has caused significant concern within Israel’s security establishment, as Saudi Arabia is a country rich in energy resources and is located within 15 km. of Israel.

The issue was raised with Trump, who quickly linked any progress on the civilian nuclear issue to the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Saudis, for their part, want to advance a diplomatic process with Israel following a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel and Saudi Arabia share several security interests regardless of normalization, and there is optimism that a roadmap can soon be presented under which the sides would reach a diplomatic agreement. The agreement is viewed as highly important, particularly amid growing threats in the Middle East that highlight the urgent need to establish priorities.

Tzvi Jasper contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here.