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Yaki Dayan, Israel’s former consul general in Los Angeles, said that US President Donald Trump’s push for an agreement with Iran reflects a change in direction in Washington and has raised concern in Israel.

In an interview with 103FM, Dayan said Trump has moved into a new phase.

“Trump has moved into a phase. He is now focused on world peace, peace with the Iranians, and expanding the Abraham Accords,” Dayan explained. “He will want to show in signs and wonders that he is a president of peace.”

Addressing the details of the emerging agreement with Tehran, Dayan said the picture is not encouraging.

“From his point of view, the picture of victory is enriched uranium and stopping nuclear enrichment. However, they are talking about not even removing the enriched material, but diluting it, which is a problem in itself,” he said. 

“All of this is happening while, within 60 days, Trump is lifting the economic siege, the tool that was really effective and the only one left. It does not look great.”

US, Israel’s interests are dissimilar in Lebanon

Dayan confirmed that there is a clash of interests between the US and Israel regarding Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“There are many cases in which the interests of the US and Israel overlap, but there are cases, like in Lebanon and now in Iran, where they do not overlap, and then the American interest outweighs Israel’s.

“Israel did not want to see such an agreement, because we had the feeling that as long as the murderous regime in Iran remains, the motivation to destroy the State of Israel has not ended.”

At that point, 103FM asked whether Trump was humiliating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his remarks. Dayan said this is a characteristic style that is not reserved for Israel alone.

“That is the Trump style, there is no special treatment here,” the former consul general said.

“Sometimes when Trump’s Trump kicks in, there are no protected people and no immunity, including Netanyahu. There is no doubt that the two have a very good relationship, but Trump is now in a phase of world peace, and I am not sure he necessarily thinks Netanyahu is the natural partner for that.”

A new campaign calling for rallies in the Gaza Strip later this month has gained momentum in recent days. Launched under the banner of the June 26 Revolution, the campaign seeks to protest Hamas rule and the current political, social, and humanitarian reality facing Palestinians in the Strip.

The initiative – which appears to have been organized by a group of Palestinian activists, exiled social media influencers, and journalists, mostly from Gaza – highlights the need for change and calls on Gazans to take to the streets.

“The people of Gaza need to rebuild their lives. The suffering has to stop,” Gazan journalist Abed al-Hamid Abed al-Ati, one of the prominent figures pushing the June protests, told The Jerusalem Post.

Ati said the aim is to give hope to Gazans and show them a path to dignity and a normal life, away from ongoing displacement and daily struggles.

“We are not asking much; we just want to live like any other human beings,” he said. Ati is known for criticizing the political and living conditions in the Strip.

“I see my role as helping Gaza residents because no one else is stepping in. People have been displaced and left in tents, and they’re just not seeing, at least for now, any real signs on the ground that their lives are about to significantly change and get better soon,” he explained. “We reject the continuation of this war. It needs to end.”

Activists call on Gazan civilians to protest against Hamas 

The June 26 Revolution movement has released several statements. One reads: “The people are the source of authority. They are the ones who have paid the price with their homes, future, sons, and daughters. From this painful reality, the people declare their revolution as a renewed expression of their independent will, rejecting oppression and the continued occupation of the Gaza Strip.

“The people have the right to proclaim their lives and reject surrendering to reality imposed upon them. We refuse to have our dignity violated or to be humiliated by standing in bread lines. We reject reducing our lives to living in a tent and waiting for water.”

The call for popular protest has begun to draw attention among Palestinians, with some expressing solidarity with the campaign’s goals and implicitly criticizing Hamas’s rule.

“We are thrown away in the streets. Wake up! For God’s sake, what are you waiting for?” a young Palestinian man said about the movement’s initiative.

Another Palestinian who spoke out against the terror organization asserted that “Hamas is finished” and urged Gaza residents to join the protests set for the end of June.

“Don’t be afraid. Demonstrate for the sake of your children and the dignity that was taken away from you. Free yourselves from slavery and injustice.”

Another statement released by the June 26 campaign read: “Our revolution does not await promises from anyone. The people are the ones required to act. We affirm our commitment to the peaceful nature of our revolution, and we call on local, international, legal, and media institutions to provide support and protect the protesters on June 26.”

However, the call for popular protest against Hamas rule has sparked controversy, as some accuse campaign members of “betrayal and collusion with the Zionist entity” due to their criticism of the “resistance.”

Ati has also come under attack by Hamas affiliates who have portrayed him and his colleagues as “traitors and collaborators with Israel” who seek to “fuel anarchy.”

Yesterday, Ati announced his withdrawal from the protest campaign. Palestinian sources in Gaza said it followed death threats made against his family because of his activities.

However, shortly after, he reversed his decision, explaining that his return came in response to the will of the people, who rejected his stepping back and insisted on the importance of this vital move.

“We continue for the sake of our people’s dreams. Intimidation is not going to bring results,” he said.

“I don’t have any agenda but to serve my people,” he stressed.

Ati now lives in Cairo with his three young daughters. He left Gaza shortly after the war began, triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel. His mother, sister, brother, and brother’s wife were killed in bombardments in northern Gaza. He said he managed to flee with his daughters from the rubble in Nuseirat and was displaced several times before leaving the Strip.

“I lost a lot, like many others in Gaza,” he told the Post. “It’s now clear to me that if this unbearable situation continues, there will be no stability and relief, and we cannot afford for that to happen. We deserve a decent life and freedom,” he added, claiming that many residents in Gaza do not support Hamas.

“I hear from people that they want the Hamas regime to go and that it’s time to turn a new page,” he said.

In a clear reference to Hamas, Ati added, “those responsible for bringing war and destruction upon us do not deserve to continue leading and should relinquish power.”

“An entire people has been punished because of the reckless gamble of one organization [Hamas].”

During the Israel-Hamas War, only a few limited rallies emerged in the Strip, with participants demanding an end to the fighting and protesting worsening conditions.

In March 2025, a local demonstration in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, included calls for Hamas to step down. Those protests were quickly suppressed by Hamas operatives, cracking down on public dissent just as they did in 2019 during the “We Want to Live” protests.

“People are exhausted,” Ati noted. “They are dying and have nothing left to lose.”

“How can someone continue living like this? No health systems, no education, more than 70,000 killed, many others wounded, and so much devastation. We are human beings, not numbers,” he said.

Qatar offered Iran a “secret deal” before the Islamic Republic’s war with the United States and Israel, in which they offered to halt gas production in return for the promise of no Iranian strikes on Qatari energy infrastructure, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

The report cited Middle Eastern and Western officials as saying that the aim of the deal was for Qatar to protect its Ras Laffan gas complex from Iran’s attacks.

The site was ultimately hit by an Iranian missile attack in March, the Washington Post reported, causing significant damage to the plant.  

According to officials, Qatar’s offer to stop gas production was meant to raise global energy prices, thereby increasing pressure on the US and Israel to stop the war.

“You will achieve your objectives without striking us,” one official said of Qatar’s message to the Iranians.

A regional security officer told the Washington Post that Qatar likely sought “to avoid damage that would probably take 10 years to recover,” with the deal’s details identified through intelligence on communications between unnamed Iranian officials.

An official described the report as an example “of how hedging works behind the scenes with Gulf states and their communications with Iran.”

Ras Laffan closed in March

The officials added that Qatar closed the Ras Laffan plant in early March but never received any confirmation from Iran regarding the arrangement.

The Washington Post reached out to Qatar for comment, which denied the deal’s existence, saying the plan’s closure was due solely to security and safety concerns. 

“Any suggestion that operational decisions relating to energy production were, or have ever been, made in coordination with Iran, for Iran’s benefit, or to influence the course of the war is categorically false,” Qatar’s international media office replied, calling the report an attempt “to sabotage ongoing efforts to mediate an end to the conflict, damage Qatar’s reputation and undermine the strategic partnership between Qatar and the United States.”

One Qatari official acknowledged to the Washington Post that the country had “urged Iran not to attack in general,” but reiterated that no such negotiations had taken place, saying they would have set “a very dangerous precedent.”

He further said that the Islamic regime “has always been a threat, even before the Islamic revolution,” describing the war as a “nightmare scenario.”

Former ambassador: Qatar in ‘survival mode’

Former US ambassador to Qatar Timmy Davis said the country’s actions since the start of the Israel-Hamas war amount to a “survival mode.”

“Last year they were attacked by Israel,” said Davis. “This year, they are being attacked by Iran.”

Amid reports that Qatar may have fabricated or exaggerated damage to the Las Raffan facility as a pretext for its closure, Qatar’s media office told the Washington Post that the claims were “baseless.”

Later in March, Iran attacked Qatari energy infrastructure a second time, the report noted, following Israeli strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure.

Qatari Energy Minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi described the strikes as an attack “on global energy security and stability,” adding that repairs would take “three to five years.”

When the international community engages with Tehran, it repeatedly commits a fundamental methodological error. Western diplomats and analysts treat the Islamic Republic as a conventional nation-state driven by national interest, borders, and civil welfare. This is a dangerous illusion.

The Islamic Republic is a transnational revolutionary movement that captured Iran’s geography and resources, transforming a historic nation into a command headquarters to export fundamentalist ideology. At its core sits the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The IRGC does not merely serve the regime; the IRGC is the regime.

The constitutional betrayal

This regime operates as an anti-national occupying force. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic explicitly defines the military’s mission as fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad to extend God’s law globally, supporting “the struggles of the oppressed against the oppressors in every corner of the globe.” 

Strikingly, the Constitution does not even require the Supreme Leader to be an Iranian citizen. From inception, ruling clerics have viewed Iran not as a homeland, but as a captured prize of war to bankroll a global insurgency.

The birth of a parallel army

To understand how this entity devoured Iran, one must look back to the 1979 revolution. An alliance of leftists, followers of Mohammad Mosaddegh (notably the Liberation Movement of Iran), and Islamists shared a profound paranoia toward the Shah’s Western-oriented military.

Amid this distrust, Dr. Ebrahim Yazdi, then-deputy prime minister, proposed creating an ideologically loyal paramilitary force to protect the revolution. 

Thus, the IRGC was born. The word “Islamic” in its title was a deliberate declaration: its mission was never to defend Iranian borders, but to protect the theological survival of the regime. The Islamists quickly seized absolute control and systematically purged their naive allies.

Devouring the state: The parallel bureaucracy

Realizing that the modern bureaucracy built during the Pahlavi era was incompatible with its revolutionary mission, the regime constructed a comprehensive “parallel state” within the IRGC that gradually hollowed out every official organ:

• The regular military (Artesh): The IRGC established parallel armed branches, starving the conventional military of resources.

• The national police: The regime unleashed the Basij paramilitary force to enforce social control and crush internal dissent outside statutory law.

• Intelligence: The regime empowered the IRGC Intelligence Organization (SAS), which grew into the country’s most ruthless security arm.

• Economy: The IRGC established Khatam al-Anbiya, a massive financial cartel monopolizing major infrastructure, oil, gas, and construction.

• Foreign Policy: Regional diplomacy was handed entirely to the IRGC’s Quds Force, with Quds commanders serving as ambassadors to key regional capitals.

Exporting the nucleus: The creation of Hezbollah

The ultimate manifestation of this ideology is the regime’s proxy network. For a revolutionary movement, national borders are arbitrary. This worldview is perfectly illustrated by the genesis of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

In a supreme historical irony, this project was orchestrated by Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur, a figure later championed as an Iranian “Reformist.” Serving as Iran’s ambassador to Syria (1981–1985), his explicit directive was to plant Khomeinist ideology in Lebanon.

At the time, the Amal Movement was the mainstream Lebanese Shi’ite force and showed no desire for Tehran’s ideology. Utilizing limitless IRGC cash and weapons, Mohtashamipur engineered a bloody internal schism within Amal. 

Radical factions loyal to Khomeini were armed to eliminate moderate rivals. From the ashes of this engineered civil war, Hezbollah emerged; not as an indigenous Lebanese party, but as the IRGC’s first foreign franchise.

The global criminal cartel: Hezbollah as the IRGC’s hitman

Beyond Lebanon, Hezbollah evolved into the IRGC’s global hitman and transnational criminal syndicate. Operating across Europe, West Africa, and Latin America, it runs a shadow empire of drug trafficking, money laundering, and smuggling.

Whenever Tehran requires plausible deniability, it deploys Hezbollah for political assassinations, bombings, and hostage-taking. From targeting dissidents on European soil to training regional proxies like the Houthis, Hezbollah functions as a heavily armed mafia cartel executing the wet-work of its handlers in Tehran.

Atrocities on the home front and abroad

Hezbollah’s loyalty to the IRGC is written in civilian blood. When Iranians rose up in nationwide anti-regime protests, the IRGC deployed Arabic-speaking Hezbollah mercenaries onto Iranian streets. These foreign hitmen brutally suppressed and shot young Iranian protesters, feeling no cultural connection to the people.

Abroad, Hezbollah acted as Bashar al-Assad’s executioner during the Syrian civil war. Under IRGC command, Hezbollah committed systematic war crimes, starving Sunni towns, conducting sectarian massacres, and ethnically cleansing cities to preserve the regime’s land corridor to the Mediterranean.

This subversion reached deep into North Africa, leading Morocco to sever diplomatic ties with Tehran after intelligence revealed that Iran, via Hezbollah, was supplying surface-to-air missiles and urban warfare training to the separatist Polisario Front in Western Sahara.

Israel’s decisive blows

For decades, the West engaged in futile appeasement, but the strategic landscape shifted permanently due to the military resolve of the State of Israel. Beginning in 2024, Israel launched a historic campaign that systematically dismantled what the IRGC spent 40 years building.

Through unprecedented intelligence operations, Israel decapitated Hezbollah’s leadership. From the legendary exploding pager operation that neutralized thousands of operatives, to precise airstrikes eliminating longtime chief Hassan Nasrallah, Israel exposed the “hitman” as deeply vulnerable. 

By degrading missile stockpiles and destroying command bunkers, Israel did what the rest of the world lacked the courage to attempt.

In 2026, Israel masterfully exploited the fog of war surrounding the Islamic Republic’s conflicts and launched a massive aerial and ground offensive into southern Lebanon, obliterating Hezbollah’s strategic infrastructure in key strongholds like Bint Jbail, El-Khiam, and the Beaufort fortress. 

This dismantling explains why Tehran was driven to madness upon witnessing the destruction of its primary global hitman, culminating in its desperate retaliatory missile barrage on June 7, 2026. The sobering reality remains that every missile fired by Hezbollah and Hamas into Israel was pulled directly by the hand of the Islamic Republic.

A global debt of gratitude to Israel

As long as the parallel structures of the IRGC dictate Iran’s wealth, institutional moderation is an impossibility. The Islamic Republic will continue to sacrifice Iran’s national wealth and the future of its youth to sustain its revolutionary fronts.

In this dark landscape, the international community owes a profound, eternal debt of gratitude to the State of Israel for standing as the irreplaceable shield of civilization. 

By crushing the IRGC-Hezbollah terror apparatus, Israel has not only defended its own borders but has liberated the region from a lawless mafia cartel, protecting the sovereignty and security of the entire civilized world.

The writer is an Iranian journalist and former editor-in-chief of ManotoTV.

A social media-famous Border Collie was allegedly stolen, sold, and eaten in China, the dog’s owner told his followers last week.

Travel blogger Guo gained popularity on the Chinese social media app Douyin when he began documenting his adventures with his dog, eight-year-old Chutou.

According to the South China Morning Post, Chutou was reportedly stolen on May 11 from Guo’s father’s house, while Guo himself was overseas.

Guo reportedly tracked down a man he suspected of stealing his beloved dog and offered 10,000 yuan (about $1,500) for his safe return, only to discover that Chutou had already been sold to a restaurant for 180 yuan ($27) to be slaughtered and eaten.

The alleged thief insisted that he didn’t break any laws, saying he had mistaken Chutou for a stray, despite Guo saying his dog had been wearing a collar and a tracker.

Guo found that all traces of his beloved dog had been thrown away

“The dog is dead, so stop making a fuss,” Guo was reportedly told.

When Guo located the restaurant his dog had reportedly been sold to, looking for some of Chutou’s fur to keep, he was told: “The hair was thrown in the rubbish long ago.” 

While Guo has insisted he will pursue legal action, one lawyer told Chinese media that theft cases are pursued criminally only if the stolen property is valued at more than 2,000 yuan.

According to Humane Society International, some 10 million dogs are killed for China’s dog meat trade every year, even though many Chinese cities have outright banned the consumption of dogs and cats.

At this point, China has no standard national companion-animal protection law like Israel, and pets are generally treated as any other piece of property in the eyes of the law.

At a time when Israeli soldiers are fighting and dying to defend the country, Knesset members from Shas and United Torah Judaism recently sought to advance legislation that would have defined Torah study as a form of national service equivalent to serving in the IDF.

Following public criticism and objections from within the governing coalition, the proposal has now reportedly been revised.

While the bill’s sponsors may have intended to bring honor to one of Judaism’s most sacred values, the fierce public backlash demonstrates how easily efforts to legislate the status of Torah study can become entangled in political controversy.

The irony is that no such legislation is needed to establish the importance of Torah learning. There is no question that Torah study is one of the cornerstones of Jewish existence. Without it, the Jewish people would not have survived nearly 2,000 years of exile. 

It is Torah that defined and preserved our identity, sustained our faith, and transmitted our values from generation to generation. The pages of the Talmud and the teachings of our sages throughout the centuries have been the lifeblood of our nation.

No one can or should dispute that fact.

Indeed, the decision to remove the controversial language from the bill is a welcome step. It reflects a recognition that honoring Torah study does not require placing it on the same plane as military service. Both are worthy of respect, but they are not the same thing.

The importance of military service

That distinction lies at the heart of the controversy.

A young man who spends his days immersed in Torah is engaged in a noble and important pursuit. But a soldier who leaves his family, puts on a uniform and risks his life defending the nation is making a sacrifice of a different order altogether. Honoring one need not come at the expense of the other.

Nor is this merely a matter of common sense. It is deeply rooted in Jewish tradition.

Rabbi Eliezer Melamed – one of the leading rabbinic figures in the Religious Zionist world and a passionate advocate of Torah study – has pointed out that military service fulfills two of the most important mitzvot in Judaism: defending the Jewish people from their enemies and settling the Land of Israel. These are not merely civic responsibilities. They are sacred obligations.

At the same time, Rabbi Melamed strongly affirms the centrality of Torah learning. He notes that there is no mitzvah that has contributed more to preserving Jewish identity than the study of Torah.

Yet precisely because he values Torah so highly, he rejects the notion that Torah study can automatically exempt someone from military service when the nation is in need.

The Talmud (Moed Katan 9a) teaches that when a mitzvah cannot be performed by others, it takes precedence over one’s Torah study. As Rabbi Melamed notes, this principle applies directly to national defense. If additional soldiers are needed to protect the Jewish people, then the obligation to serve overrides the requirement to study.

The same conclusion emerges from the laws of war. The Mishna in Tractate Sotah (44b) teaches that in a Milchemet Mitzvah – an obligatory war – “everyone goes out, even a groom from his chamber and a bride from her canopy.” 

The Rambam codifies this principle as binding law, stating unequivocally that “a war fought to assist Israel from an enemy which attacks them” constitutes an obligatory war (Mishneh  Torah, Laws of Kings 5:1).

These sources are especially relevant today.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, thousands of Israeli soldiers have spent months in Gaza, Lebanon, Judea and Samaria and elsewhere.

Hundreds have fallen in battle. Thousands more have been wounded, some grievously. Families have buried sons, husbands and fathers. Reservists have repeatedly left their homes, businesses and careers behind in order to answer the nation’s call.

At such a moment, proposals that equate Torah study with military service are bound to provoke controversy.

Many Israelis who already feel that the burden of national defense is not being shared equally will see such efforts as an attempt to sanctify inequality rather than address it. Instead of drawing hearts closer to Torah, they risk pushing them further away.

That is a tragedy, because Torah deserves better than to become a political instrument in the debate over military service.

Of course, every society requires scholars. Every nation benefits from intellectual and spiritual leadership. It is entirely reasonable to create frameworks that allow a limited number of exceptionally gifted Torah scholars to devote themselves fully to learning.

Rabbi Melamed himself has argued that there is room for a select cadre of outstanding scholars whose continued learning serves the broader spiritual needs of the nation.

But preserving Torah’s stature does not require redefining it through legislation. Love of Torah cannot be created by legal declarations or constitutional formulas. It grows when people encounter Torah as a source of wisdom, meaning and moral elevation, and when those who study it exemplify humility, integrity and concern for the broader community.

Israel needs more Torah, not less. It needs serious scholarship, deep faith and greater spiritual purpose. But it also needs soldiers willing to stand guard on its borders and defend its citizens.

The challenge is not to blur the distinction between those roles but to honor both.

Torah should unite the Jewish people, not deepen existing divisions. It is time for all concerned to recognize a simple truth: Torah study is sacred, military service is sacred, but neither is enhanced by pretending they are the same.

Indeed, when Torah is invoked to justify avoiding burdens that others are expected to bear, it does not sanctify God’s name – it merely desecrates it

The writer, an ordained rabbi, served as deputy communications director under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Whenever Iran attacks Israel, Israeli society predictably divides into two camps: on one side are those who view the event as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to topple the ayatollah regime; on the other are those who dismiss this as a hopeless illusion. 

On the surface, this looks like the classic divide between “doves” and “hawks” – between those who favor diplomatic resolutions and those who believe in military force. 

However, a closer look reveals that this isn’t a debate about how to achieve our goals at all. Instead, it exposes a much deeper flaw: a fundamental failure to understand how those goals are determined in the first place.

In recent decades, terms like “strategy” and “exit plan” have become empty buzzwords, slogans stripped of any real, actionable meaning. As military historian Hew Strachan pointed out in his renowned article “The Lost Meaning of Strategy,” the concept has suffered from a dangerous political inflation. 

Drawing on Carl von Clausewitz, Strachan reminds us of a fundamental distinction: policy is the logic (the rationale and purpose) of war, while strategy is its grammar. Policy dictates what should happen, while strategy is the (traditionally military) means of making it happen.

If we agree that our ultimate policy goal is to overthrow the regime, we finally have a clear roadmap. From that point on, no military or diplomatic action can be judged solely on tactical metrics. Instead, it must answer one simple question:

Did this action bring us closer to our goal?

Returning to this logic, the most fundamental decision facing us is not a strategic one, but a question of policy. In the current context, I argue that Israel’s only relevant policy must be to actively seek the overthrow of the Iranian regime. 

This isn’t wishful thinking; it’s a matter of basic existential logic. Israel simply cannot survive in the long term alongside a regime with such extreme ideology and destructive capabilities. Only after establishing this policy can we – and must we – tackle the strategic question: How do we allocate our available resources to achieve this goal?

Unfortunately, our public and security discourse has devolved into a conceptual mess. Instead of engaging in a structured strategic debate, the arguments get tangled across four distinct channels. First, some attack the policy itself, claiming we misunderstand Iran and that it doesn’t pose a true existential threat. 

Second, others argue that toppling the regime is simply an unrealistic goal. A third group concedes the goal might be realistic, but argues the required resources and the price we would pay are too high. 

Finally, and ironically, those who do agree in principle on the need for regime change often abandon the strategic discussion entirely. They urge us to blindly trust our leaders, arguing that the public lacks the capacity to judge the situation properly.

To escape this conceptual maze, I propose a new benchmark. If we agree that our policy goal is regime change, we have a clear compass. Every subsequent military or diplomatic move must be judged not by tactical achievements, but by that single, simple question: Did it bring us closer to the goal?

We must ask ourselves what resources we are willing to invest – and what price we will ultimately pay – if we fail to achieve this objective. You cannot pursue a policy without a willingness to pay the price, just as you cannot promote military action without defining how to measure its success. 

If we are to have a serious discussion about our future, we must stop hiding behind hollow slogans. It’s time to start an honest, collective conversation – even if we don’t all agree on the final conclusions.

The writer is the CEO of the Ribo Center.

Haifa resident Amir Maron, 37, was arrested on Thursday night on suspicion of incitement to violence against the LGBTQ community after allegedly posting a comment on social media that “in effect called for harm” to the community participating in the Tel Aviv Pride Parade following coverage of Pride events in the city.

Police on Friday asked the Haifa Magistrate’s Court to extend his detention by four days after he spent the night in custody, but the judge ordered his release.

The investigation centered on a comment he allegedly posted in response to Pride-related coverage, in which he wrote: “Once they were destroyed, apparently it is time to destroy again. Sick people, disgusting.”

Sgt.-Maj. Mariana Khouri told the court that “this is a serious incident” and that he “in effect called for harm against the community participating in the Pride parade.”

Defense attorney Sami Faisal argued that this was a “one-time mistake” and said Maron had already expressed regret.

Haifa Magistrate’s Court Judge Jada Basul found there was reasonable suspicion that a crime had been committed, stating that “the wording of the comment contains a call for an act of violence against the LGBTQ community, which poses an unnecessary risk.”

However, she ruled there was no justification for keeping him in custody.

Suspect released under ‘restrictive conditions’

She ordered his release under restrictive conditions, including three days of full house arrest at his brother’s home, a requirement to report for questioning as needed, a 30-day ban on using social media “except for viewing only,” and a prohibition on entering the Tel Aviv area for 30 days.

The release was also conditioned on a self-bail of NIS 5,000.

Separately, the Haifa Magistrate’s Court released Haifa resident Or Talnov, who is suspected of making threats against former prime minister Naftali Bennett and the LGBTQ community in social media posts, to house arrest earlier this week.

Syria’s Interior Ministry announced on Monday that security forces had arrested 235 members of the Islamic State group (ISIS) over the past three months as part of a broad security campaign aimed at dismantling the group’s active cells and preventing attacks intended to destabilize the country.

The ministry said security and intelligence operations conducted across several Syrian provinces led to the discovery and disruption of seven ISIS operations. Those detained included 198 Syrians and 37 foreign nationals, according to figures released by the ministry.

Additional details released by the Interior Ministry showed that 80 suspects were detained in March, 99 in April, and 56 in May. Authorities said the operations dismantled seven ISIS cells in Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Deir ez-Zor, leading to the seizure of 22 explosive devices, 25 weapons, six vehicles, and dozens of electronic devices used by the group.

The operations come as Syria has expanded its role in international counterterrorism efforts. On November 10, Damascus signed a political cooperation declaration with the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, a move intended to strengthen coordination with coalition partners. Syrian officials have described the arrangement as political and security-related rather than participation in the coalition’s military mission.

Authorities said the campaign was carried out by the Counterterrorism Department in coordination with the General Intelligence Directorate. The operations included raids on hideouts and facilities allegedly used by ISIS cells for planning and coordination.

According to Syrian and regional reports citing the ministry, authorities also seized weapons, vehicles, explosive devices, and electronic equipment during the campaign. Officials said the materials helped investigators trace support, financing, and communication networks linked to the organization.

The ministry added that interrogations of detainees provided intelligence on the activities of sleeper cells and revealed methods used by ISIS to try to reestablish its presence in certain areas. Officials said the group continues to exploit complex security conditions and lingering challenges facing the country during its ongoing stabilization and reconstruction phase.

ISIS still a threat to Syria

Despite losing the territory it once controlled, ISIS remains a security threat in Syria. The group has increasingly relied on small-scale attacks, covert operations, and decentralized cells to target security forces, public facilities, and local communities while attempting to rebuild parts of its former network.

Meanwhile, the figures released by the Interior Ministry point to an increasing reliance on intelligence-driven operations rather than conventional military engagements. Analysts say such preventive measures can help thwart potential attacks and disrupt the group’s operational infrastructure and support networks.

In recent years, Syrian authorities have intensified efforts against ISIS remnants in several regions, benefiting from improved intelligence capabilities and growing coordination with regional and international actors involved in counterterrorism operations. Those efforts have restricted the group’s freedom of movement, though they have not eliminated its ability to operate through small cells.

Syria: Combating terrorism a top priority

The Interior Ministry stressed that combating terrorism would remain a top priority in the coming period. It pledged continued coordination among state institutions to pursue wanted members of armed groups, dismantle extremist cells, and disrupt sources of financing. The ministry also urged citizens to report suspicious activities that could help prevent terrorist attacks or expose individuals linked to extremist organizations.

Taken together, the latest results indicate that the fight against ISIS is far from over. Although the group has suffered major setbacks in recent years, Syrian officials maintain that sustained intelligence and security operations remain essential to preserving stability and preventing the organization from regaining momentum.

Those efforts continue alongside broader regional and international initiatives aimed at ensuring ISIS cannot reconstitute itself or once again threaten regional security.

Here’s something we can all agree on: Chocolate is delicious. But what if you are lactose intolerant? 

Chana Koenig did something about it, since she felt her lactose-intolerant nephew also deserved to enjoy the luscious taste of milk chocolate. So, in 2023, she founded Cacao HaGalil, a gourmet chocolate boutique at the entrance to Kibbutz Evron, with products based on goat’s milk. For people with dairy sensitivities, goat’s milk is often easier to digest. 

Koenig grew up in Woodmere, New York, and graduated from Central-Yeshiva University High School for Girls in Queens. She later graduated from the Institute of Culinary Education in New York and was certified as a pastry chef. After working for four years at Jacques Torres Chocolate, widely regarded as one of New York City’s premier chocolate destinations, she made aliyah in 2019 at the age of 29. 

During the recent ceasefire with Lebanon, the Magazine sat down with Koenig at a table outside her chocolate shop, a five-minute drive from the Nahariya train station.

Are all your chocolates made from goat milk?

No. That was true in 2023, when I first opened. Today, some chocolates are made from goat’s milk and are dairy, but most are made from Belgian chocolate. My dark Belgian chocolates are vegan and parve. I don’t use preservatives in any product.

Are your chocolates certified kosher?

Yes. They are certified mehadrin by the Nahariya Rabbinate. 

Can people allergic to milk products consume goat milk? Is anyone else in Israel selling chocolate made with goat’s milk?

I don’t know anyone else selling goat milk chocolates in Israel. I actually make my own goat milk powder.

There’s a difference between being “allergic,” “sensitive,” and “intolerant.” Before eating products made from goat’s milk, people should understand their own sensitivities.

Which is your most popular item? 

Dark chocolate with sea salt.

What is your personal favorite?

Dark chocolate with sea salt, and dark chocolate cashews.

Do you deliver?

Yes. Everywhere in the country.

What has been your largest order?

An order for 20,000 chocolate bars, all made in my shop. The hardest part was packaging everything within two months. For this, I’m grateful to my Anglo community in Nahariya, where I live. Fifteen to 20 volunteers came to help until the order was complete. 

Tell me about your Anglo community in Nahariya.

We are about 350 English speakers who meet regularly at the Nahariya Community Center for lectures, board games, and dance classes. I don’t work on Sundays, and I often go there to play mahjong.

What influenced you to make aliyah and settle in Nahariya?

I grew up in a very Zionistic home, and I always wanted to move to Israel. I planned to make aliyah when I was 19, but it didn’t work out. For different reasons, I pushed it off for 17 years. 

In 2019, my brother and sister-in-law were living in Safed, about 50 km. from Nahariya. I don’t like large cities, but I love the North, and we are a close family, so I decided on Nahariya. My parents moved here shortly after I did.

What advice do you have for new olim who want to open a business here?

Be very patient. There are a lot of business laws to learn. Take every piece of advice you can, and find out what government assistance is available. I had help from three government advisers on Zoom for six months.

Was Nefesh B’Nefesh helpful to you?

Yes, and I thanked them in a Facebook post, saying: “Nefesh B’Nefesh helped me actually get here, which was wonderful. I couldn’t have done it without them.” Since then, whenever I write to them, they’ve been very responsive.

Do you have help from others?

My mom is my manager. My father helps with packaging. In the summer, my nieces assist with workshops. We are a family-run business. I couldn’t do it without them.

How did you get started in the business?

I began by making chocolates at home. When Kibbutz Evron started offering shops for rent, this wooden structure felt perfect. The size is right since we make all our chocolates here, and the cool temperature is ideal for chocolate.

Any advice for storing chocolate?

Except in summer, keep chocolate at room temperature. Refrigerators can dull the flavor. When driving on hot days, it’s a good idea to place the chocolate on the car floor near the air conditioning. 

How have recent wars affected life in Nahariya? Your work?

We’ve had several missile attacks in Nahariya, which have been frightening. But this past Independence Day, during a ceasefire, our city felt alive and almost normal. I credit our mayor, Ronen Marelly, for his leadership.

The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel delayed our opening until December 2023. Workshops couldn’t begin until the summer of 2025, and even then, only for small groups. The nearest bomb shelter has limited space, and with an attack from Hezbollah, we have only 30 seconds to reach safety.

Tell me about your workshops.

I lead workshops in English and Hebrew for people ages four to 120. Participants learn to make a variety of goodies, including chocolate bars, pralines, and hot chocolate bombs. Everyone goes home with a bag full of chocolate.

For more information, visit
www.cacaohagalil.co.il.
Chana Koenig
From Woodmere, New York, to Nahariya, 2019

A collective sigh of relief swept across Wall Street after trading for SpaceX’s landmark Nasdaq launch went smoothly, setting a new template for the trading firms and exchanges that are bracing for the giant IPOs of OpenAI and Anthropic later this year.

SpaceX’s record-breaking debut on Friday dwarfed the previous largest flotation on US exchanges by nearly three times. The sheer size of the launch had worried market participants, who still had lingering bad memories of Facebook’s disastrous stock market debut in 2012.

However, trading systems at the banks underwriting the IPO, exchanges, market makers, clearinghouses, and other market infrastructure firms held up to the challenge of processing millions of client orders.

“People go back to the Facebook … days and ‘was this going to turn into one of those companies,’ but I honestly think the banks in the US did a fantastic job, the SpaceX crew did a fantastic job telling the story when they did their rounds. And as you can see, it went extremely smoothly,” said Jeff Parks, CEO of Canadian investment firm Stack Capital Group. Nearly a third of Stack’s portfolio is SpaceX, in which the company began investing in 2021.

He was referring to the turbulence that surrounded Facebook’s ill-fated IPO, when technical problems turned a landmark listing into one of Wall Street’s most notorious trading fiascos. It left investors and brokers in limbo for hours and ultimately cost market makers hundreds of millions of dollars.

SpaceX is biggest IPO ever recorded

According to Citadel Securities, the largest US retail market maker, SpaceX’s debut generated the highest retail order activity for an IPO auction ever. A Citadel Securities spokesperson said the firm handled the majority of the retail orders for SpaceX.

Morgan Stanley, the so-called “stabilization agent” for the glitzy market debut, had the key role in managing SpaceX’s market opening. The bank had to ensure an orderly rollout even as it grappled with unprecedented investor demand. A stabilization agent typically buys up shares in the open market to shore up stocks that witness steep declines on opening day.

One of the lead underwriters advising SpaceX, who requested anonymity as the matter is confidential, said the IPO was a monumental event for the exchanges and the banks and crucial to get right.

Trading platform Charles Schwab said it has seen well over a million orders in SpaceX in the first few hours of trading, which is a significant figure in comparison to past IPOs, according to a spokesperson for the company.

Reuters reported on Thursday that Wall Street traders, brokers, and exchanges had been stress-testing their trading systems for several weeks leading up to the blockbuster IPO.

SpaceX shares “are not going up in huge blocks, but they’re bleeding higher, and a lot of that is due to a little bit more of a boring and softer opening print than a lot of folks expected,” said Mike Dickson, head of research & quantitative strategies at Horizon Investments. “I’m a little surprised there’s not more volatility, given a lot of the oversubscription headlines.”

Elon Musk becomes world’s first trillionaire

Following the IPO, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire by combining his holdings in SpaceX (roughly 42% of the company’s stake), Tesla (worth approximately $174 billion), Neuralink, and the Boring Company, as well as prior gains from Tesla share sales.

The key to Musk becoming a trillionaire lies in the SpaceX-xAI merger, which can be traced back to the acquisition of Twitter and its rebranding to X.

Musk bought the social media platform in 2022 for $44 billion, rebranded the company, and eventually launched Grok, an artificial intelligence model that used the platform as its training ground.

To develop Grok, Musk then launched xAI, the AI company that eventually became X’s main company in a merger that valued the combined company at approximately $113 billion.

The subsequent merger with SpaceX valued the company at $250 billion, representing a net gain of $206 billion in valuation relative to the $44 billion initially needed to buy Twitter.

Now, both companies are valued at $2.1 trillion, with the stock jumping 19% on its first day and closing at a unit price of $161, in what experts call the biggest IPO ever. 

A 3-year-old boy arrived at the emergency department of Dana Children’s Hospital at Ichilov on Saturday morning in septic shock, with a clinical suspicion of meningococcemia. 

It should be noted that this was not meningitis.

Despite the staff’s efforts and resuscitation attempts, the medical team was forced to pronounce him dead.

In a separate incident, a 2-year-old child from Beersheba is suspected to have also died from meningococcemia at Soroka Hospital.

Meningococcus is a relatively rare but especially aggressive disease. In most cases, fever in children is caused by mild viral illnesses, but meningococcus can quickly lead to severe bloodstream infection, organ failure, and death. Alongside the need for early detection, pediatricians note that there is a vaccine against meningococcal B, intended to reduce the risk of serious disease from that strain.

What is meningococcemia?

Meningococcus, whose medical name is Neisseria meningitidis, is a bacterium that can cause a severe invasive disease. The two main forms are meningitis and severe bloodstream infection known as meningococcemia.

In meningococcemia, the bacterium enters the bloodstream, rapidly multiplies, and triggers an intense inflammatory response, a drop in blood pressure, coagulation disorders, and damage to vital organs. In some cases, a blood-colored rash also appears, red, purple, or bluish. The disease can develop very quickly, so any suspicion requires urgent treatment.

The bacterium spreads from person to person via respiratory and throat secretions, primarily through close, prolonged contact. Infection can occur through coughing, sneezing, kissing, prolonged exposure to crowded spaces, or exposure to saliva and other bodily fluids. In some people, the bacterium is present in the throat without causing any illness. This is called carriage. Carriers feel well, but in some cases the bacterium can pass to another person and, in rare cases, enter the bloodstream or the meninges and cause a life-threatening disease.

The disease can affect anyone, including completely healthy children. However, the risk is especially high in infants, toddlers, adolescents, and young adults living in crowded conditions.

Other risk groups include people without a spleen or with impaired spleen function, patients with a weakened immune system, people with complement deficiency, patients taking certain drugs that suppress the complement system, soldiers, boarding school and dormitory residents, and travelers to areas where the disease is more common.

What are the symptoms of meningococcemia?

The first signs may resemble a regular febrile illness: high fever, weakness, drowsiness, restlessness, vomiting, muscle aches, chills, cold hands and feet, or rapid breathing.

In infants and toddlers, the signs may be less clear: refusal to eat, unusual crying, apathy, lack of response, grayish skin, or a rapid deterioration in general condition. A significant warning sign is a pinpoint rash or small blood spots on the skin that do not disappear when pressed. However, even without a rash, the disease can be severe. Meningitis can present with severe headache, neck stiffness, sensitivity to light, confusion, and vomiting.

Diagnosis begins with clinical suspicion. A doctor who sees a child in poor general condition, with fever, signs of shock, a bloody rash, or suspected meningitis, does not always wait for laboratory results before starting treatment. In the hospital, blood tests, blood cultures, and sometimes a lumbar puncture to examine spinal fluid are performed, depending on the child’s condition and stability. In many cases, antibiotic treatment begins immediately, even before final laboratory confirmation.

Treatment is urgent and is carried out in the hospital. It includes intravenous antibiotics as quickly as possible, fluids, medications to support blood pressure, intensive care monitoring, and sometimes ventilation. At the same time, doctors treat coagulation disorders, kidney damage, low blood pressure, and other complications. The earlier treatment begins, the greater the chance of saving lives and reducing complications, but even rapid treatment does not always stop the course of the disease.

After a diagnosis or strong suspicion of the disease, the health bureau identifies the patient’s close contacts.

In appropriate cases, they receive preventive antibiotic treatment, usually household members, children who were in close contact, and staff members exposed to respiratory secretions. Broader prevention includes vaccination, avoiding sharing bottles, pacifiers, and utensils, and maintaining basic hygiene. However, since the bacterium can also spread from healthy carriers, vaccination is a key tool in reducing the risk of severe disease.

Is there a vaccine against meningococcal bacteria?

Bexsero is a vaccine against meningococcal B, one of the bacterium’s important strains in young children. The vaccine does not protect against all meningococcal serogroups, but it is intended to reduce the risk of invasive disease caused by type B. In Israel, the vaccine is recommended for infants and toddlers by pediatric associations, and many pediatricians advise parents to consider it as part of protection against a rare but deadly disease.

The vaccine can be given starting at 2 months of age. According to the Health Ministry information sheets, an infant who begins vaccination at 2 months receives one dose at 2 months, another at 4 months, and a booster dose around age 1. Anyone who starts the vaccine series at an older age will receive a different number of doses depending on age and medical guidance. Parents should therefore consult their pediatrician about the number of doses and the intervals between them.

In Israel, parents need to see the pediatrician to obtain a prescription for the vaccine, with instructions for the nurse to administer it. The vaccine is then purchased at a health fund pharmacy or another pharmacy, depending on the health fund’s arrangements and supplemental insurance.

After purchase, the vaccine is brought to the clinic nurse, who gives it to the child according to the instructions. It is important to keep the vaccine refrigerated and to come for vaccination as soon as possible after purchase, according to the pharmacy’s and clinic’s instructions.

The vaccine against meningococcal B has not yet been included in the health basket, after being postponed in recent years, and therefore is not given as part of routine vaccinations. It is purchased separately and administered by a clinic nurse at the health fund. In some health funds, there is subsidization through supplemental insurance, depending on the child’s age and the insurance plan.

The vaccine is considered very safe and is used in many countries. The most common side effects are usually mild and pass within a day or two: fever, pain or redness at the injection site, restlessness, drowsiness, reduced appetite, or crying. In young infants, fever is more common, so sometimes doctors recommend separating it from some routine vaccines or using fever-reducing medicine under a doctor’s guidance. In Israel, it is recommended by pediatric associations, and globally, vaccination programs and recommendations vary by country according to local policy.

In any case of fever with unusual drowsiness, apathy, shortness of breath, grayish skin, repeated vomiting, a bloody rash that does not disappear when pressed, confusion, neck stiffness, or rapid deterioration in the child’s condition, medical help should be sought immediately in an emergency room, or emergency services should be called.

In cases of meningococcal disease, time is critical, and waiting at home can be dangerous.

It is important to note that there is a vaccine against meningococcus B, which is recommended by the Pediatric Association, and the association is calling on the public to vaccinate infants and toddlers and save lives.

Jewish towns (or settlements) in Judea and Samaria stand as the forward positions of the pioneering spirit of Zionism, of the Jewish people’s return to sovereignty over our ancestral land. 

They embody the Divine command to settle every hill and valley of Israel. They also serve as a vital shield of safety, keeping Palestinian terrorists at a distance from the heart of our country. 

In a world quick to condemn every Jewish home built beyond the Green Line, it is time to speak this truth plainly: these communities are not obstacles to peace but the very bulwark of our survival and our destiny.

Rabbi Yoni Rosensweig recently captured the moral complexity of life in this land through a powerful analogy from the film A Few Good Men. In the climactic courtroom scene, Colonel Nathan Jessup thunders at his accusers: “You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns.” 

Rosensweig noted that while the movie wants us to side with the idealistic prosecutors, Jessup’s words ring with uncomfortable reality for Israelis. We inhabit a dangerous neighborhood. The settlers on the hilltops, even those whose actions sometimes shock us, create layers of defense. 

Without Gush Etzion, life in Beit Shemesh would be far more precarious. Without the smaller outposts, Gush Etzion itself would be vulnerable. And without the determined few in rickety caravans holding remote hilltops, much of the land would simply be lost to those who seek to overrun it.

Rosensweig does not shy from condemning settler violence. He calls it abhorrent, a desecration of God’s name, and politically disastrous. Yet he refuses the luxury of easy judgment from the sidelines. Those living shoulder-to-shoulder with hostile populations face daily friction that distant critics rarely encounter.

The hilltop youth, grotesque as some of their methods may appear, are in essence standing the post so the rest of us can sleep under the blanket of relative security. 

Rosensweig’s closing challenge lands heavily: if we believe in higher ideals, are we willing to pick up a weapon and stand that post ourselves? Or will we demand perfection from those on the front lines while enjoying the safety they provide?

This perspective demands intellectual honesty. Living in Judea and Samaria is not a suburban idyll. It requires resolve, faith, and yes, at times, the willingness to confront hostility. The pioneering spirit that built Tel Aviv and the kibbutzim of the Galilee did not evaporate. It moved eastward, to the stony hills where Abraham walked and where King David established his kingdom. 

Every new caravan, every modular home on a windswept ridge, echoes the Zionist ethos of draining swamps and making the desert bloom, only this time the challenge is both physical and spiritual. 

The Torah’s command is even clearer: “And you shall possess the land and dwell in it,” God instructs repeatedly. This is no mere suggestion but a mitzvah binding across generations. To treat Judea and Samaria as negotiable real estate is to ignore the covenant that has sustained us through exile and return. 

The settlers who plant vineyards on these hills, send their children to schools named for biblical figures, and defend every inch with their bodies are living that covenant daily. Their presence is an act of faith as much as strategy.

Renewal, not retreat

Security, too, is not abstract. October 7 taught us, if we needed reminding, what happens when barriers erode and terrorists gain proximity. The Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria create strategic, demographic, and psychological depth. They prevent the Palestinian Authority from turning the West Bank into a launchpad like Gaza. 

Every outpost pushes the front line eastward, away from Kfar Saba, Petah Tikva, and Jerusalem’s western neighborhoods. Critics who call for retreat never explain how ceding territory has ever brought peace. 

History shows the opposite: vacated areas become terror incubators. The settlers’ stubborn presence is the wall Jessup spoke of, imperfect, sometimes ugly in its friction, but indispensable.

Yet nuance matters, and Rosensweig’s analogy invites it. The greater danger arises when those who see themselves as guardians begin to view the state’s institutions as obstacles rather than partners. Colonel Jessup’s error was not his recognition of hard truths but his belief that he stood above the system he claimed to serve. 

Some recent incidents – attacks on fellow Jews, targeting of judicial figures, or unchecked vigilantism – suggest this same drift. The hilltop youth are not disciplined soldiers under clear command; they are often young idealists operating in gray zones. Their violence does not always enhance security. 

At times it endangers the broader settlement enterprise, hands propaganda victories to our enemies, and erodes the moral foundation upon which our claim to the land ultimately rests.

We must reject the notion that noble ends justify every means. Torah demands justice even toward the stranger in our midst. Prophets thundered against corruption and mistreatment of the vulnerable precisely because ethical failure threatens our hold on the land more surely than any external foe. 

Teenagers destroying olive trees or harassing civilians are not the “sword” this nation needs. We can name evil when we see it while still recognizing the context that breeds desperation and confrontation. 

The solution lies not in retreat but in renewal. We need more families moving to Judea and Samaria. We need educational frameworks that instill both fierce love of the land and rigorous ethical standards. We need leaders who support the settlers as pioneers while insisting on accountability. 

Those willing to stand the post deserve our gratitude, not reflexive condemnation. But they, in turn, must remember they defend a Jewish state governed by law, not a personal fiefdom of ideology.

Israel’s story has always required balancing competing imperatives: security and morality, pioneering zeal and institutional order, Divine promise and human responsibility. The settlements force us to confront these tensions daily. They are messy precisely because they are real. 

But without them, the Jewish people would be smaller, more vulnerable, and less sovereign in our land.

Settlements in Judea and Samaria deserve Israel’s and Zionists’ support. Let us strengthen them, perfect what needs perfecting within them, and recognize that in guarding these outposts, we guard the future of the entire Jewish state. 

The writer is a certified interfaith hospice chaplain in Jerusalem and the mayor of Mitzpe Yeriho.

What should an Israeli citizen do when the police and army don’t arrive for hours after being notified that settlers are attempting to enter Palestinian homes, scaring young children, cutting protective fences, sending their flocks and donkeys to eat a family’s fodder, and physically attacking Israeli human rights defenders who are nonviolently protecting with their bodies? 

In Taiba, settlers invade twice a day, although the army has told them grazing between the homes is forbidden and only sometimes expels them. 

Was I wrong to pull away the donkey settlers tied to the Palestinian bales while stealing my wallet and phone?

The police investigator claimed that it was illegal. I reminded her of Israel’s “Do not stand idly by while your fellow bleeds” law named after the biblical commandment. 

“Should I have just stood there and allowed the settler sheep and donkeys to steal fodder?” I asked. The expression on her face said yes.

Many who see the conflict as a zero-sum game unequivocally support settler takeover of Palestinian lands and therefore view our attempts to stop settler violence as “harassing Jewish shepherds” will agree. Is this who we are?

The automatic 15-day restraining order from Taiba was the condition for release. Sometimes the police admit they decided before interrogating me. 

As usual, upon receiving an unfair condition preventing me from fulfilling my human and Jewish responsibility to defend fellow human beings created in God’s Image, I chose a night in jail to be arraigned the next day and requested that the ban be canceled. Judges usually cancel or significantly reduce unwarranted conditions.

The judge greatly reduced the restraining order, although the remaining ban still supported continued oppression. He also said, “I don’t think that a citizen is supposed to put matters in order. The police must put matters in order.” 

I wanted to ask him what a citizen IS supposed to do when forces don’t put matters in order, and theft is taking place in front of his eyes. One rabbinical interpretation of “Where nobody is acting like a mensch, try to be one” (Pirkei Avot) is that the average citizen must act when officials are not fulfilling their duty.

The jail’s social worker told me that all Palestinians should be transferred, as should we. If a Palestinian commits terrorism, his village should be destroyed: “Jewish survival justifies collective punishment.” 

I told the social worker that even if he doesn’t care about non-Jews, hate engendered by oppression endangers Jewish survival. It drives masses into the arms of those Palestinians who will seek to destroy us even if there will be a just peace. 

I reminded him of the Haaretz report in which Central Command Commander Avi Bluth warned that settler violence is likely to trigger Palestinian violence. (But he was proud of his support for 150 outposts, many if not all home to settlers employing violence or the threat of violence to expel Palestinians.) 

The social worker scorned Bluth, as well as our sages who taught “The sword comes into the world because of justice delayed, justice denied, and the improper teaching of Torah” (Pirkei Avot).

Police and the army need to arrest the settlers

In Torat Tzedek’s High Court appeal to allow Wadi As Seeq residents to return home, the judges refused to believe that the police cannot be relied upon to protect Palestinians if they return alone, even though the outpost that expelled them at gunpoint along with settler soldiers is still standing. 

The state only promises army accompaniment for the first hours of the return and to “consider” not demolishing homes destroyed by settlers rebuilt without permits. The army has closed the area to Israelis but refuses to exempt human rights defenders. Residents told the court they won’t return without this minimum protection. The court hasn’t intervened.

In Mukhmas, Duma, and Taiba, the army declared year-long closures that would be positive, as would be the Wadi As Seeq order, if properly enforced. However, in all of these cases, soldiers told us that settlers had been granted exemptions. 

The orders have been enforced against those protecting residents, not those attacking. Palestinians consequently abandoned some neighborhoods. They had remained in their homes despite constant violence, but said they could not remain once we couldn’t be present. In Duma, the order has just been canceled, after threatened court action.

In Mukhmas, the outpost from which settlers descended to burn Palestinian homes, injure Torat Tzedek volunteers, burn cars, and break my car windows is within the closed zone. The Jaba outpost as well. 

I constantly send the army pictures of the settlers in the closed areas. The army occasionally evacuates the Mukhmas outpost, but they could arrest settlers daily who don’t obey the closure.

They could destroy the illegal access road.

In Taiba, most settlers who harass and steal come with flocks from a new outpost inside the subsequently closed area. They traverse additional closed territories to get to the homes they attack daily. 

The police promised the court they would turn back on the water at the station now controlled by settlers. They did, but it was shut off again after the police left. An officer told me they were only obligated to turn the water on once. 

Families lack water.

In court, arch settler Neriya Ben-Pazi said he had a contract renting the area for grazing. Government maps make that hard to believe. Palestinians say they have deeds. If so, I hope the courts will honor them, but I am not sure they will.

Protection as a problem

Back to my night in jail, the intake officer asked about my leadership of a band of anarchists. I asked where he received this false information. He said it was in the police report. 

After my police interrogation, there was discussion between two investigators about attaching a secret report to my file. Saying that in front of me, I didn’t know if they were serious. Maybe they were.

In the lobby of the police station, there is a recruitment flyer stating, “Join the Binyamin police station. We defend settlements and strengthen governance.” One officer joked about a settler video of me using my shirt to shoo away sheep from the fodder. Some officers enjoy watching settler videos of us protecting Palestinians without police assistance, but don’t feel obligated to do their job.

The police once had some understanding that their mandate was to defend all populations, not just settlements. Some Binyamin police officers try to enforce the law to protect all, but the culture of the station is to do the utmost not to take actions curbing settler violence. “Governance” is also a positive concept that has become code for controlling Palestinians on both sides of the 1967 border.

Once a police officer told the court, “Every time Ascherman enters Judea and Samaria it is to create a provocation.” 

A former commander of the Binyamin police station told me that everything would be quiet without us. It would be deathly quiet because many of the Palestinians still in their homes tell us that they could not remain if we were not present.

Despite condemnations from those responsible for stopping the violence, security forces, the state, and our courts either actively support settler violence to expel Palestinians, or allow it. Our non-violent presence protecting fellow human beings is therefore a problem to be limited as much as possible.

What should a citizen of conscience do when a crime is being committed in front of his eyes, and the police and army don’t come? What should the Jewish people and all people of conscience be doing in light of this betrayal of our highest Jewish values?

If one percent of those saying they oppose settler violence would join us on the ground to stop it or lobby, we would be much more effective than we are now.

The writer is the executive director of Torat Tzedek-Torah of Justice.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not attend an upcoming G7 bilateral meeting in France next week between US President Donald Trump and Middle East leaders, a senior United States official said on Saturday.

Trump is expected to meet the leaders of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and other regional countries at the G7 and to hold additional bilateral meetings with the leaders of France and India.

According to the official, the US believes it has reached a deal with Iran, which the official described as “a strong deal.”

In addition, the US will be involved in de-mining operations in the Strait of Hormuz upon the opening of the crucial waterway, the official said.

G7 countries may also participate in demining the strait, the official added.

Iran: No plans to send negotiating team anywhere

A spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that the country has no plans to send a negotiating team to Geneva or to any other location over the next few days, according to a report by Iranian state media. 

At the G7 summit, Trump is also expected to attend a working session with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to officials.

Trump plans to raise issues of shared importance with leaders at the summit, including economic growth and development, supply chain resilience, illegal migration, and AI, according to one of the officials.

He also planned to work on boosting resilience in the supply chain for critical minerals needed for advanced technologies.

Trump planned to attend a dinner at the palace of Versailles on Wednesday before returning to Washington, the officials said.

This is a developing story.

In the immortal words of baseball great Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over until it’s over!” Cluster bombs, guided hypersonic missiles, FPV drones with fiber-optic cables, and worse may be targeting Israel at any moment. Are our public safe rooms and private shelters prepared for the latest artillery being lobbed at Israel?

The IDF Home Front Command announced an update to its app, with clearer prompts – red for “shelter immediately,” yellow for early warning, green for all clear – plus better icons and sounds. It’s a welcome improvement. But the shiniest new app can work only if the people receiving the alerts actually have a place to go to.

According to the January 2026 State Comptroller’s Report, approximately “3.2 million Israelis or one-third of the population” lacked standard protection (safe room, public shelter, or equivalent) as of early 2025. This number has grown from about 2.56 million in 2018, an estimated increase of 600,000-640,000 people.

In Safed, for instance, according to Shayna Rehberg-Paquin, who, along with Klara Levy, founded Sparks to Life, half of the city has no access to a shelter, in spite of the fact that tens of thousands of rockets and missiles have been fired into northern Israel since the conflict began, with Safed serving as a recurring target.

Among other activities, the nonprofit organization has been raising money to fund shelters throughout Safed.

“The lack of protective infrastructure endangers lives,” said State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman in the press release issued with the report. “One-third of Israel’s residents are not adequately protected against missile attacks, including more than 42,000 residents living in communities located within 9 kilometers of the border with Syria and Lebanon.”

A personal wake-up call in Karnei Shomron

The Young Israel of Neveh Aliza in Karnei Shomron learned this the hard way. Our son’s bar mitzvah on Shabbat Zachor was interrupted by sirens.

Although the synagogue sits adjacent to a school bus stop and across the street from a popular playground and a separate community nature park, it was inexplicably built without a shelter. Until recently, members had been told to “run home” or to the nearest public shelter, which is two blocks away. Children waiting for buses and mothers with little ones at the park were left exposed.

During the war, the Home Front Command forced the synagogue to lock its doors for five-and-a-half weeks.

My husband, the synagogue president, immediately launched an international campaign to raise funds to build a protected space – not just for members but for the whole neighborhood.

When asked to help fund the shelter, Karnei Shomron Mayor Yonatan Kuznitz said the town was overwhelmed. It had requisitioned grants for 12 freestanding shelters but received only three from the Home Front Command, all earmarked for newer caravan neighborhoods. The older areas, he explained, could not receive municipal funding for a new shelter. The 35-year-old synagogue was on its own.

Longtime member Barry Kochanowitz put it plainly: “To the best of my knowledge, the synagogue needs a shelter because there’s a municipal obligation for a synagogue this size to have one. I don’t know how we got away with it all these years, but the past few years have shown how essential it is.”

Unfortunately, while some of the money has been raised, the shelters have not yet been delivered. This time the synagogue is embroiled in a debate over whether to close down or let members make a run for the nearest safe room or distant shelter, should sirens sound during services.

Shelters save lives – when you can reach them

Time and again, the pattern has repeated itself: protected rooms work. The problem is access.

The few confirmed cases of people killed while inside shelters have almost exclusively involved exceptionally powerful Iranian ballistic missiles capable of causing structural collapse.

The deadliest such incident took place on March 1, 2026, in Beit Shemesh, when an Iranian missile hit a synagogue and the public bomb shelter beneath it, causing the roof to collapse and killing nine people (including children and teenagers).

There were also isolated cases during the June 2025 12-Day War with Iran, including a strike in Petah Tikva where two people were killed inside a protected space after a heavy missile caused catastrophic damage between two protected rooms.

According to the Israel Builders Association 2025-2026 report, of an estimated 2.96 million homes in Israel, 56% (1.67 million) still lacked a private protected space as of the end of 2024. While newer homes tend to be better protected, older buildings – home to millions – rely on distant or inadequate communal shelters.

The evolution of Israel’s shelters

Israel’s shelter system has grown with its wars. The Civil Defense Law of 1951 required protected spaces in new buildings, focusing on communal shelters. Through the 1970s and 1980s, after the Yom Kippur War, the emphasis stayed on shared underground shelters built under 1969 regulations. Many taller buildings added floor-level shared shelters for every floor of the building.

The 1991 Gulf War changed everything. To protect against Iraqi Scud missiles purported to carry chemical warheads, gas masks and special tented cribs for babies were distributed throughout the country, and families sealed a designated room in their home with plastic.

In February 1992, the Home Front Command was established. By 1992-1993, the mamad (merhav mugan dirati or personal protected space), with thick concrete walls, steel doors, and independent ventilation, became mandatory in every new residential unit. Protection moved inside the apartment, reachable in seconds.

Until October 7, shelters were just supposed to protect against rockets. On October 7, terrorists shot at the steel doors – which were not made to withstand bullets, and were not required to lock from the inside. According to the head of protective engineering for the Home Front Command, new doors are being tested that are bulletproof and will lock from the inside.

Portable cement migunit units, shared floor-level shelters, and urban renewal rules (Tama 38) are recent upgrades to the shelter system. Under Tama 38, most buildings being refurbished add a mamad room. All new buildings being built must have private shelter rooms. Many pre-1990s homes still depend on older shared shelters.

D’vora Brand of Brand Realty said the vast majority of her clients won’t even consider a home that doesn’t already have a built-in safe room.

“When someone sells their home, and has renovated and applied for a building permit in a rural residential community, the Home Front Command comes to check whether there is a mamad room – or [whether] the home is near a specific public shelter that is within a certain distance. Only then can the seller get a permit. In cities, people use the nearest available shelter – which may be a shared shelter or a public shelter, depending on the building.

“In today’s market, homes without mamad rooms have gone down in price by 7%-15%. The first question a buyer asks me is ‘does it have a mamad room?’ If it doesn’t have a mamad, people will factor in the cost of bringing in a migunit or installing a mamad and will subtract it from the offer.

“But even in rentals, homes without mamadim are the least desirable.”

Advertisements for new housing projects even tout “mamad plus” – a mamad room that includes a bathroom and shower.

‘Everyone should have a mamad of their own’

One senior Home Front Command engineer agreed. “Ideally everyone should have a mamad of their own. No one should have to depend on public shelters.”

Each war brings new technology and threats, hence shelters may need to be upgraded. The good news is that our current shelters seem to withstand the new Iranian cluster bombs quite well, according to engineers interviewed. As drones grow more sophisticated and new weaponry makes its way onto the battlefield, shelters will likely need fixes.

The Home Front Command has a test facility that tests various types of shelters against explosives, drones, and other weapons.

The head of protective engineering said, “We are confident that safe rooms and shelters currently in use are performing and designed well. We are always discussing the possibility of making changes. So far, we don’t see something dramatic to change. But as new threats surface, we will make changes to maintain protection.”

Dual-purpose shelters

Of course, a shelter, whether private or public, does not function as a shelter all the time, so finding another purpose for a shelter is important, according to the Home Front Command. In many homes, the shelter is a spare guest room, office or playroom. Public shelters can double as karate dojos, exercise studios, or synagogues. Allowing someone to use the shelter tends to ensure that the maintenance and its cost are taken care of.

Zohar Shavit struck a deal with local homeowners responsible for a Ginot Shomron shelter to create her Contrology House Pilates studio. She agreed to pay for renovations to the shelter, and she designed it beautifully, with linoleum floors to add a layer of warmth over the cold tiles, and soundproof tiles on the ceiling to quell the noise. Mirrors on the wall and upgraded lighting make the room light and airy, even when the huge steel door is tightly closed. Pilates and yoga equipment are wall mounted and up on high shelves.

During the war, Zohar covered her Pilates chairs, which lined the sides of the room, and residents brought in mattresses, pillows, and cribs to create cozy corners for the eight families that shared the shelter. When the missiles were flying, most of the residents slept in the shelter.

The only downside to her beautifully appointed studio was that Zohar’s Pilates was forced to close to clients while the shelter was in use by families. After the war, Zohar came in and cleaned up and made her studio shine again for the next Pilates class.

“Having a business in the shelter helps those using the shelter offset the maintenance costs,” explained the head of protective engineering. “We encourage dual-purpose shelters because it keeps the shelter in good shape. Shelters that are not used for years and are suddenly opened can be moldy, dirty, and infested.”

When the shelter is not dual-purpose, maintenance tends to be inconsistent. The comptroller found that about 12% of public shelters are unfit – dirty, flooded, moldy, without electricity, or with blocked exits. Some are being used as storage sheds, making it uncomfortable for families to shelter in.

Music is a great way to counter stressful missile alerts. Shida Ruth Behrouz of Shida Interiors used her client’s hobby to make the Pardes Hanna room sing. With wall-mounted guitars and a cozy seating area, she helped her clients create a comfortable and happy space.

Ahuva Rhein of Ahuva Design was tasked with designing an addition to a home in Har Bracha – a mamad master bedroom with a private attached bathroom, including shower. After consulting with an architect who specializes in the rules of designing shelters, Rhein drafted the addition.

“This includes placing only one mamad window in the bedroom and special pipes for the air-conditioning system that will snake under the floors to drain outside the mamad into the garden,” she said. “In a mamad, you can’t dig into the walls, because that takes away from the strength of the walls. Instead, a plaster wall of 10 cm. will be built along the solid concrete 35-cm. walls of the mamad.”

Building safe rooms, she explained, presents unique challenges. With only one window in the bedroom and no window in the bathroom, the moisture from the bathroom can cause mold and mildew. To alleviate this problem, she designed a vent to go through a heavy cement pipe. Over that, she built a shelf.

She paid special attention to the lighting, using spotlights on the ceiling to create soft lighting near the beds.

To help make the room feel airy and spacious and not like you’re locked inside a bank vault, she added a regular door that opens into the safe room and closes inside the big steel door that seals off the mamad from the rest of the home.

Who pays? Who maintains?

Public shelters are primarily funded and maintained by local municipalities through property taxes (arnona) and sometimes through government grants. Groups of homeowners often pool their own resources – through fees or special campaigns – to maintain, clean, upgrade, and even retrofit shared shelters, adding better ventilation, lighting, or accessibility features, when municipal support falls short.

Even if the homeowners finance the shelter, it is illegal to turn someone away during an alert. That goes for all shelters – public and private. Whoever is in the neighborhood is entitled to enter your safe space until the risk is over, according to Section 15(f) of the Civil Defense Law, 5711-1951, which states, “The holder of a place that is a shelter must, during an attack, allow any person who is near the place to enter the shelter and to remain there for the entire duration of the attack.”

In some high-risk areas, the Home Front Command sets standards and may offer supplementary help in designing, building or inspecting shelters, and it has hotlines (#104 and #106) for anyone with questions.

Private mamads are paid for by homeowners, apartment buyers, and developers, with costs built into the price of new apartments.

In some cases, nonprofits and private donors are allowed to step in, especially near the borders, to build and equip additional shelters. The Jewish National Fund-USA has a bomb shelter program (sometimes called its Israel Resilience initiative). It is a major philanthropic effort by JNF-USA to build, install, renovate, and beautify bomb shelters across Israel, especially in high-risk areas like the Gaza border area and the northern border regions near Lebanon.

Most hospitals have created safe spaces in underground parking lots and other spaces, but 56% of beds remain unprotected, especially for patients who are not ambulatory.

When Soroka Medical Center suffered a direct hit by an Iranian missile, even the nearby buildings were affected, with windows, doors, and elevators blown out by the shock wave. First responders worked hard trying to move patients onto lower floors via the stairs and ramps. The strike on Soroka was a wake-up call that went largely unheeded.

While many hospitals developed underground facilities, one large hospital dealt with the challenge of an exposure to an infectious disease when alerts brought maternity patients and newborns together with patients battling infections and other illnesses in the closed protected space. Ensuring safe spaces in hospitals is still a work in progress.

The Starkest gaps: Arab towns and Bedouin communities

Nowhere is the inequality more painful than in Arab localities and unrecognized Bedouin villages. Per a 2018 special report by the State Comptroller’s Office, roughly 46% of Arab citizens lacked standard protection, compared to 26% nationwide. According to Home Front Command data (as of January 2025), only about 0.3% of Israel’s public shelters are in Arab municipalities.

According to Israeli media reports, local authorities, and NGO analyses following Iranian missile strikes in mid-2025, in Tamra, where four women were killed in an Iranian missile strike, there were no public shelters, and only 40% had private mamads. In Rahat (80,000+ residents), not a single public shelter exists. In unrecognized Negev Bedouin villages, tens of thousands live in tin-roofed homes with no protection at all. Residents shelter under bridges or in ditches. On October 7 alone, 20 Bedouin civilians were killed by rockets.

The city council of each town and village is responsible for funding and building shelters.

The human and economic cost

Neta, a mother on the northern confrontation line, told Almog Boker of Channel 12: “Do you know that according to the guidelines, I’m not supposed to open my business, because I don’t have a protected space – and nobody provides either a protection solution or an economic solution. But I still must make a living.”

She sends her children on separate school buses “so that if one is hit, I’ll still have another child left.”

Businesses across the country suffer. Owners without protected workspaces are forced to close during alerts or risk their lives and those of their workers. Chronic warfare has caused thousands of closures, lost revenue, and mental strain since October 7.

Keeping up with the shelters

The housing crisis worsens the problem. With Israel’s high fertility rates of almost three children per woman and its population growth outpacing many Western countries, it is also outpacing its infrastructure. More people need more places to live, but construction has slowed due to workforce shortages after October 7, with fewer construction workers in the workforce.

Meanwhile, illegal rentals in older neighborhoods and slow retrofitting mean fewer new protected spaces relative to the demand. As a result, existing shelters can get uncomfortably crowded.

Life inside the shelters: Strange bedfellows

It’s not all bad. Bomb shelters can create unexpected community.

In Haifa, student Faith was guided by a stranger to a shelter where seniors were learning bridge. She joined them for half an hour, made new friends, and even found a potential doctor.

Not every encounter is warm. One Tel Aviv woman described helping elderly neighbors to a nearby building shelter, only to be told, “Get out! This is not your sanctuary.”

Pets spark debate. Despite no legal prohibition, some owners are turned away. Advocate Amnon Keren reminds everyone that bringing pets is a right, aligned with Home Front Command guidelines and animal cruelty laws. In many shelters, dogs and children become stress relievers.

In Karnei Shomron, plumber Eliezer Cohen said their shared shelter of 35 regulars has hosted a wedding celebration, a two-day-old infant, traditional Shabbat songs, and whispered Psalms. “We always welcome strangers and dogs,” he said.

In Jerusalem, a friend recalled one mother’s 10-month-old baby turning the shelter into his personal stage, delighting the weary shelterers.

What to do if you have no shelter?

If you are among the 30% of people with no shelter nearby, the Home Front Command’s advice is clear: Move to an interior room or stairwell (at least two floors down), sit against an inner wall, protect your head, stay away from windows. Avoid kitchens and bathrooms. If you are in a car, stop beside an embankment.

The rush to safety itself carries a heavy price. Since the beginning of Operation Roaring Lion in February, more than 2,000 Israelis have been injured while rushing to shelters, according to Health Ministry data, as reported in multiple outlets (primarily Ynet) citing official figures up to late March 2026.

A detailed study conducted by Rambam Medical Center in Haifa examined 174 cases of orthopedic injuries recorded between October 2024 and June 2025 during periods of intense rocket fire from Lebanon and Iran. The researchers found that 88% of these injuries occurred inside the home, typically while people were running, stumbling, or falling on their way to a safe room. Over a third of the cases involved fractures, many of which required surgery. Elderly people were disproportionately affected – all the severe injuries in the study occurred among those aged 70 and older.

The Home Front Command and Magen David Adom observed throughout the war that the vast majority of serious civilian casualties since October 7, 2023, were not caused by direct rocket impacts inside protected spaces, but by people caught outside, either hurrying to a shelter, falling on stairs or in hallways, or while exposed to shrapnel and debris before reaching safety.

A national wake-up call

Despite decades of regulation and hard-won lessons, Israel remains woefully unprepared in too many places. Technology like Waze’s shelter finder helps, but many shelters on the map are moldy, unusable, or filled with storage. Underground parking and train stations are imperfect solutions, especially at 3 a.m. with children and pets.

We must do better. The government, municipalities, and the Home Front Command need to accelerate retrofitting, fully fund programs like Northern Shield, incentivize private additions, and maintain public shelters properly. Grants, fast-tracked permits, tax incentives, and support for homeowner-led upgrades should all be part of the solution.

Because when the next siren sounds – and it will – every Israeli deserves more than an updated app. They deserve a safe place.

Anthropic said on Friday it will “abruptly disable” its most advanced artificial intelligence models for all users after the US government ordered it to suspend access to the models for foreign nationals, citing national security concerns.

The company received the export control directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all foreign nationals, without being given specific details of its national security concern, Anthropic said in a statement.

It is Anthropic’s understanding that the government believes there is a method to bypass, or “jailbreaking,” a safeguard that would prevent Fable 5 from being used to identify software vulnerabilities, the company said.

The order comes just as a previous dispute between Trump administration officials and IPO-bound Anthropic showed signs of easing across parts of the US government.

Anthropic’s relationship with the government ruptured this year after it refused to allow the US military to use its AI models for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons systems. The government responded by putting Anthropic on a supply chain blacklist, set to take effect later in the year.

The action also marks a major escalation of US efforts to halt foreign adversaries’ AI capabilities. For years, US export controls have focused on the chips and tools that power AI rather than on restricting foreign access to AI itself.

Anthropic said the government has given it only “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak”.

“We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people,” the company said.

The government directive and Anthropic’s response highlight growing tension between AI developers and regulators over how to assess risks from so-called “jailbreaks,” or methods used to bypass model safeguards.

As recently as Wednesday, Anthropic had called for greater US oversight of AI, including the ability to block models with unacceptable risks. It said, however, that the government action on Friday did not follow principles of fair and fact-based regulation.

The Pentagon’s chief information officer, Kirsten Davies, said in a post on X that the Defense Department supported prioritizing national security.

“Some things are simply more important than revenue cycles, clickbait, and pre-IPO valuation. America First. Always,” Davies said.

We fully support @POTUS and @SecWar in prioritizing national security and the security of our warfighters, DIB partners, critical infrastructure, international partners and allies. Some things are simply more important than revenue cycles, clickbait, and pre-IPO valuation.… https://t.co/GU9kkHqiOu

— DoW CIO Kirsten Davies (@DoWCIODavies) June 13, 2026

Anthropic confidentially filed for a US IPO last month, edging ahead of rival OpenAI in the race to reach public markets.

Mythos pushes US to regulate in AI development

May reports by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal noted that Anthropic’s Mythos model pushes the US toward more regulation in the AI development market.

According to the WSJ report, US Vice President JD Vance was “alarmed” after a call with the heads of the biggest artificial intelligence companies, with the Mythos model among the most worrying because of its ability to find software vulnerabilities on its own.

The main factor, according to the WSJ, is that these new models could target critical infrastructure administered by local authorities rather than the national government, with the local governments lacking the tools to disrupt such attacks when they occur.

US National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said the Trump administration was working on a way to regulate how high-tech companies introduce new AI models to the market, with the main proposal being a system similar to the FDA’s for testing new drugs.

This would, according to Hassett, guarantee that “they’re released to the wild after they’ve been proven safe,” while an official working on the project told The Washington Post that the details of how it would work are “still being hashed out.”

Sophisticated cyberattacks

Earlier this week, Anthropic rolled out an AI model named Claude Fable 5, representing a new tier of capability it calls “Mythos-class.” The model is accompanied by guardrails barring its use in risky areas such as cybersecurity, which some users have complained are “overly broad,” Anthropic said.

Experts have said that Mythos models, in the wrong hands, could dramatically accelerate sophisticated cyberattacks, particularly in sectors such as banking that rely on complex, interconnected, and often decades-old technology systems.

Anthropic said it had worked with the US government, among others, on safety ahead of the Fable launch and that models from rival AI providers showed a similar ability to unearth minor bugs in code.

“The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance. Access to all other Anthropic models will not be affected,” Anthropic said.

Anthropic said that it believed there was a “misunderstanding” and that it is working to restore access to the models as soon as possible.

“If this standard were applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers,” the company said.

Amazon’s cloud unit AWS said late on Friday that Anthropic has asked it to revoke access to the models for “all users in all regions.”

A US official confirmed that the Commerce Department had issued an export control directive suspending all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for foreign nationals.

Dean Ball, a former White House official who contributed to the AI Action Plan the administration issued in the summer of 2025, said in a post on X that the order suggests all “non-Americans” would be restricted from using Anthropic’s latest models, including those based in the US

“This means you should expect to have to prove your citizenship to use Anthropic models,” Ball said.

Several key Anthropic personnel, including co-founder Chris Olah, AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, and philosopher Amanda Askell, were born outside the United States. Reuters was unable to determine their citizenship status, and an Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment on whether such staff would lose access to AI models.

Elyanna, a 24-year-old singer born and raised in Nazareth, took the stage at the opening ceremony of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Canada on Thursday night, performing alongside Canadian artist Jessie Reyez on “Illuminate,” one of the tournament’s official soundtrack songs.

The performance took place at Toronto’s BMO Field ahead of Canada’s opening match against Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Wearing an outfit that blended multiple cultural influences, Elyanna delivered a high-energy set featuring dynamic choreography and a powerful vocal performance. International media coverage noted that she is the only artist of Middle Eastern or North African descent featured on FIFA’s official soundtrack.

Born Elian Amer Marjieh on January 22, 2002, in Nazareth, Israel, Elyanna grew up in a Christian Israeli family in the country’s largest Arab city.

Music played a central role in her life from an early age. Her maternal grandfather performed Lebanese folk poetry known as zajal, while her paternal grandmother, a Chilean pianist, helped shape the diverse cultural influences that would later define her artistic identity.

Elyanna takes FIFA’s opening ceremony

She began singing at the age of seven and drew inspiration from artists including Umm Kulthum, Sabah Fakhri, Beyoncé, and Aretha Franklin. In 2017, at age 15, she moved with her family to the United States, first settling in San Diego before relocating to Los Angeles to pursue an international music career.

After arriving in the US, she was discovered by Canadian producer Nasri Atweh, signed with Universal Arabic Music, and developed a distinctive sound that blends Arabic music with pop, R&B, and Latin influences. She describes the style as “experimental Arab pop.”

Elyanna has since achieved a series of breakthrough milestones. In 2023, she became the first artist to perform a full Arabic-language set at the Coachella music festival. She has also appeared alongside Coldplay and performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In 2024, she released her debut album, Woledto, which translates from Arabic as “I Was Born.”

She frequently highlights her Palestinian-Chilean identity, referring to herself as “Your Pali girl.” Her upbringing to Nazareth remains a defining part of her story — the city where she grew up, found her voice, and first dreamed of performing before a global audience.

The song “Illuminate,” which she co-wrote with Reyez, who has Colombian roots, blends English and Arabic lyrics. Its message of cultural connection and shared identity closely mirrors Elyanna’s own background and artistic journey.

Her performance at the World Cup opening ceremony attracted widespread attention on social media and formed part of a broader celebration of cultural diversity. The event also featured appearances by Alanis Morissette, Michael Bublé, Alessia Cara, and several other performers.

Today, G. lives deeply embedded within Israeli society. He speaks, thinks, and dreams in Hebrew. He earned a degree in industrial engineering and management with a specialization in information systems, and built a career as a product manager in Israel’s hi-tech industry. His closest friends are Jewish Israelis, and he describes himself as fully immersed in the Israeli ecosystem.

Yet Lebanon has never left him.

For G., life in Israel has always existed alongside memories of South Lebanon and the unresolved pain of fleeing the way he and his family did. His personal story reflects the broader experience of thousands of Lebanese Christian families who fled to Israel after the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon in May 2000. More than two decades later, many still carry the emotional weight of displacement, divided identity, and concern for the future of Lebanon itself.

The transition into adulthood in Israel brought new challenges. While his Jewish classmates entered military service, for G. it was more complicated. His father, traumatized by years of war and by how the withdrawal from Lebanon unfolded, feared losing another generation to conflict. 

As G. embraced his unique dual nationality, and proud of both but realizing that the nation of his birth, and the nation where he grew up and became an adult were mired in history of war, he struggled internally with questions of belonging and contribution. Like many Israelis who have trauma associated with military service, the trauma of his family originated over the northern border. 

Then came another deeply personal struggle: relationships and identity.

G. entered a serious relationship with a Jewish Israeli woman, and for two years they built a life together. But beneath the love were difficult questions about religion, marriage, and children. Would their children be raised Christian or Jewish? Would they marry in a church or a secular ceremony overseas? Would they baptize their children?

For G., Christianity remained non-negotiable. Despite feeling fully Israeli culturally, his faith is central to his identity. Eventually, those unresolved tensions led to the end of the relationship.

The breakup triggered an identity crisis. G. questioned whether he would ever fully belong in Israeli society or whether his differences would always remain barriers. Once again, he confronted the feeling that had followed him since childhood: being caught between worlds.

But rather than retreating inward, he rebuilt himself through discipline, spirituality, and purpose. Sports and physical training became therapy. Faith became grounding. Reflection became transformation.

Belonging to Israel, Lebanon

Over time, G. came to understand that his life experience positioned him uniquely: he belongs emotionally to both Israel and Lebanon, yet sees that without contradiction. Instead of seeing that duality as weakness, he began viewing it as a mission.

That mission became especially urgent as Lebanon continued to collapse politically, economically, and socially under Hezbollah’s growing dominance.

G. speaks openly about what many Lebanese Christians and former South Lebanon Army members feel: heartbreak over Lebanon’s deterioration. They remember a country once defined by culture, tourism, openness, and coexistence. In their eyes, Hezbollah’s militarization of Lebanon – backed by Iran – transformed the country into a battlefield and weakened its sovereignty.

For G., Hezbollah’s threat is not theoretical. It shaped every chapter of his life.

It forced his family to flee Lebanon. It contributed to the collapse of the Christian presence in parts of the south. And even after resettling in Israel, the threat persisted. Northern Israeli communities have spent years living under rocket fire, border infiltrations, and recurring escalations with Hezbollah. Jewish, Arab, and Druze Israelis on one side of the border and Christian, Muslim, and Druze families on the other side continue to live with fear, uncertainty, and trauma, all rooted in the same source: Islamic extremists. 

G. understands both realities intimately: the fear of living under Hezbollah in Lebanon and the fear of living under Hezbollah’s rockets in Israel.

Yet remarkably, he refuses to define Lebanon solely through Hezbollah.

Through social media and public speaking, G. works to expose Israelis to another image of Lebanon – its mountains, beaches, culture, food, and people. He posts about the trips he would take if peace ever became possible. He speaks about Lebanese Christians, coexistence, spirituality, and the importance of accepting others across religions and identities.

His message is deliberately hopeful.

In recent months, G. has also begun sharing his story publicly through lectures across Israel. He speaks to schools, organizations, teachers, and communities about identity, resilience, and integration. His lectures combine history with personal experience, tracing the complicated relationship between Israel and Lebanon, while focusing on universal themes of belonging, perseverance, and empathy.

He explains how shame became pride. How trauma became growth. How obstacles became purpose.

At the heart of his talks is a call for greater understanding between people who often know very little about one another. He encourages Israelis to recognize the humanity and complexity of Lebanese society beyond the headlines of war and terrorism. At the same time, he emphasizes the importance of confronting extremism honestly and recognizing the devastating role Hezbollah has played in destroying opportunities for peace and stability in Lebanon.

G.’s vision for the future is deeply spiritual as well as practical.

He dreams of establishing a lifelong project as a refuge for people who feel lost, disconnected, or broken by life. The center would welcome individuals, regardless of religion, and help them rebuild emotionally and spiritually. Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others would gather not around politics but around healing, self-awareness, and shared humanity.

That vision reflects G. himself: a man shaped by war who still believes reconciliation is not just possible, but also necessary. 

He does not ignore reality. He knows peace between Israel and Lebanon remains distant as long as Hezbollah maintains military dominance and regional tensions continue. But he also believes that ordinary people can begin building bridges long before governments sign agreements.

For G., peace starts with storytelling, human connection, and the courage to see one another beyond inherited narratives of hatred.

His life embodies the contradictions of the region: Lebanese, yet Israeli; Christian, yet deeply integrated into Jewish society; a refugee who became a successful professional, a child shaped by conflict who now speaks about hope.

And perhaps that is precisely why his voice matters.

In a region where identity is often weaponized, G. offers something rare: the belief that identity can also become a bridge.

This is part two of a two-part series.

The writer is the president of the Genesis 123 Foundation, building bridges between Jews and Christians, host of the Inspiration from Zion podcast, and publisher of Israel the Miracle. FirstPersonIsrael@gmail.com. 

Workers stripped US President Donald Trump‘s name from the Kennedy Center early on Saturday, less than six months after it went up, complying with a judge’s ruling that the performing arts landmark cannot be renamed without an act of Congress.

The work began around 1:20 a.m. (0520 GMT), hours after the Department of Justice said the government would miss the court-ordered deadline of 11:59 p.m. on Friday to take Trump’s name off the Washington venue, created a half-century ago to honor an assassinated president.

The center’s board, which Trump chairs, voted in December to rename it The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Workers began affixing his name to the building the next day.

 Removal follows missed deadline, court filings

After erecting scaffolding late on Friday, workers draped tarps over the temporary structure in the predawn hours and were seen removing letters around 3:10 a.m. in an operation that took about 30 minutes.

Late on Friday, the DOJ had said in a court filing it would miss the deadline because of thunderstorms that could pose safety risks for the workers, seeking a 12-hour extension.

Democratic US Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, who brought the lawsuit that forced Trump’s name to be removed, called the request to extend the two-week-old deadline “inexcusable” and part of “a pattern of non-compliance,” according to the DOJ filing.

The center opened in 1971 as a memorial to President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat assassinated in 1963. Trump, a Republican, has packed its board of trustees with allies since resuming office last year.

Hours before the DOJ filing, a federal judge in Washington had declined the department’s request to pause an order to remove Trump’s name.

US District Judge Christopher Cooper said he would not lift the order while a federal appeals court considers his ruling that only Congress could rename the venue. The administration appealed that order to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which also rejected the government’s request for a pause on Friday.

The White House and the Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Cooper ruled on May 29 that only Congress could rename the arts center. His order had required Trump’s name to be removed from the building’s facade, its website and other materials.

In urging the appeals court to pause the order, the DOJ said: “It does not make sense to alter the Center’s name and signage now, only to potentially revert the name again after what should be a successful appeal.”

Trump in February announced a two-year closure of the center for a major renovation. He has made a broader push to reshape Washington’s monumental core, including plans for a ​250-foot (75-meter) arch and a 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom on the site of the East Wing of the White ​House, which Trump had demolished in October.

By 1873, Jakob Ferdinand Nagel saw his vision culminate in a spirits empire with 550 employees, exporting over 23 million liters of liquor annually across Europe, Africa, and beyond – and even receiving a gold medallion from Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph.

“J. Ferd. Nagel’s name became a mark of quality, his bottles recognized in foreign markets as the seal of a master distiller,” says his descendant Raphael Nagel.

Today, German-Spanish investor Nagel, founder of the Abrahamic Business Circle in Dubai, who believes that “economic diplomacy can bring people into practical relationships at a time when political language often divides them,” has launched a limited collection of his ancestor’s exclusive gin to aid the continuity of Jewish life in Spain.

In conversation with The Jerusalem Post, Nagel discusses the kosher gin’s origins in Germany’s Black Forest, the literary project it is twinned with, and the urgency of fighting antisemitism in Spain.

The importance of Nagel’s project is backed up by the shocking figures he quotes from a report by Spain’s Antisemitism Observatory. The year 2024 saw a 321% rise in antisemitic incidents over 2023, and a 567% rise vis-à-vis 2022.

“These facts have intensified concerns among Jewish organizations in a country where Jewish history is both extraordinarily deep and painfully marked by expulsion, conversion, and long absence,” he says.

While Nagel knows full well that “a bottle of gin is an unlikely place to look for an answer to rising antisemitism in Europe,” he has always believed that “a business can carry a meaning beyond the transaction itself.” 

Bereshit Serie (“Genesis” in Hebrew and “series” in German), named for the first of the Five Books of Moses, which was launched to the public last month, has sold 500 bottles since its March prelaunch.

The Post caught up with Nagel by phone as he traveled through Bavaria.

Tell us about your project.

The project is called Tannenblut (“Blood of the fir tree”), and the Black Forest gin is at its center. The Bereshit Serie is a limited series of 3,000 individually numbered bottles, stamped with kosher certification and designed as collector’s items. Some are priced conventionally for a luxury gin. Others, selected by number and symbolism, are priced as patron objects. Examples of these are 1/3,000, the Founder’s Bottle; 18/3,000, “chai,” for life; and 613/3,000, the number of mitzvot in the Torah.

How does it work as an investment?

It is a limited series of a physical object, conceived as ultra-collectible and intended for a select circle of collectors, families, and institutions. Every bottle drunk means one less collectible, which offers the added advantage that some numbers will be “lost,” causing each remaining bottle to increase in value. 

It is a certain investment. Physical luxury collectibles cannot be devalued by monetary policy or quantitative easing. The bottles are all hand-numbered, wax-sealed, and decorated with the Kaiser Franz Joseph medallion that my ancestor received in 1873. The series combines heritage, Jewish symbolism, and a strict private-invitation policy, with a pricing structure that reflects the scarcity and significance of specific numbers within the edition. Bottles are placed by private invitation and at the seller’s discretion.

What about the books you mentioned?

One book, Tannenblut – A Novel About Names, Brands, and Memories, is about my ancestor. The other is called Antisemitismus – Origins, Development, and Global Protection Mechanism s. The more expensive, premium bottles come with the books as token gifts, but these can also be ordered separately at tannenblut.co.

What gives the release of this gin its wider significance?

The pledge that 60% of the profits from the Bereshit Serie will go directly toward supporting Jewish life in Spain. This extraordinary commitment turns what might otherwise be simply another elaborate luxury launch into a more demanding experiment.

How will sales of the gin fight antisemitism?

While a bottle cannot solve antisemitism, it can become a reason for a collector, a company, or a family to support a specific purpose and to speak about why that purpose matters. The book is another part of the project. Tannenblut is a reflection on origin, identity, and what is preserved when a name is carried forward. The gin is presented as something drawn from the world of the book. 

Each bottle is also a conversation piece, whether it is Jewish clients who order the gin – whom I believe will be the majority of the customers – and it becomes a springboard for discussion about its origins and where its profits are aimed; or a non-Jew who invests in a collectible gin and now owns a “kosher” product and is motivated to learn more about what that means.

I like people to have Judaism in their homes, even if it is a bottle of collectible gin.

What inspired this need to support Jewish life in Spain?

The terrible antisemitism that is going on is reaching surreal levels, particularly in Barcelona. People in Spain associate Jews with baby killers and rapists. They spit at Jews in their faces and refuse them entry to certain places. There has been vandalism against Jewish premises and an atmosphere of intolerance since October 8, 2023, which is only growing.

Where will the 60% of the profits go?

The charitable commitment will support and protect Jewish life by covering legal costs for Jews to fight back. The Spanish justice system is still working, despite attempts to handcuff it, and the money will go to hiring lawyers to prosecute antisemites, as well as psychologists to help promote positivity and a healthy outlook. Jewish children are being bullied at school; adults are getting fired from their jobs. We have created a platform whereby a network of dedicated lawyers and psychologists can be contacted via a hotline.

Will you be selling other collectible spirits? 

Yes, we will be adding whiskey, Champagne, and others. The Chumash has five books, so, at a minimum, we expect to do one series for each. They will all be certified kosher, demanding the strictest definition of purity available in the international world of spirits.

Each exclusive collection will be dedicated to one Jewish community in Spain. This first is aimed at supporting the Jewish community in Barcelona. 

What else can be done?

As Jews, we all need to be more united. Where there are three Jews, there are five opinions. We need a more united front.

Iran has escalated efforts to seal off its stockpile of enriched uranium, collapsing tunnels, and placing explosive mines at entrances in recent weeks, CNN reported on Saturday, citing five sources familiar with US intelligence. 

This comes a day after a senior administration official told reporters that the US and Iran are close to a deal requiring Iran to relinquish its uranium, which has been enriched to near-bomb grade, to the US. 

Reuters also reported on Friday that the emerging US-Iran deal will include the dismantling of the Iranian nuclear program and allow the US to collect the regime’s enriched uranium.

However, details of how the uranium will be extracted have not been made clear. 

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that retrieving the uranium is one of the US’s priorities in negotiations, although he has claimed that only the US and possibly China have the capability to do so. 

US almost launched ground operation to retrieve uranium

A CNN report from Friday stated that the US had originally planned to launch a ground mission into Iran to recover the uranium, but that Trump had paused the operation. 

In an interview with 103FM, former defense minister Yoav Gallant said that the US and Israel could and should have combined forces to retrieve the uranium during the war. 

“We should have gone and brought the enriched uranium by force in a military operation during the campaign. That would have uprooted the nuclear program from Iran,” he said.

Former head of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Nuclear Material Removal, Scott Roecker, expressed concern over reports of heightened fortifications around the uranium. 

Roecker told CNN that such fortifications could lead to negotiators requiring Iran to bring the uranium to a central location for verification and removal, which would let Iran provide the inventory of the uranium. 

“In this scenario, I would worry that Iran would claim that some portion of the HEU was irretrievable. We wouldn’t have full confidence that Iran couldn’t retain access to it at some point in the future,” CNN quoted Roecker as saying. 

Here’s one side effect I never expected after cancer treatments: curly hair.

I shouldn’t have been that surprised. Hair growing back curly after chemo is a fairly common experience. My friend Laura Ben-David, who died in 2025 after a long battle with ovarian cancer, sported some lovely curls in her final days.

My new curls highlight a long history with hair, both my personal story and how changing hairstyles often mirror cultural developments in society at large.

Sociologist Rose Weitz writes in her book Rapunzel’s Daughters, “Hair is one of the first ways we learn to tell the story of who we are.”

UCLA historian Robin D.G. Kelley concurs. “Style is never superficial. It is how people make history visible on their bodies.”

My tale begins in elementary school, although I didn’t have much follicular autonomy back then. My parents kept my hair short and respectably suburban.

Entering junior high at the beginning of the 1970s, though, marked a turning point. I began sporting a quasi-Beatles cut with thick bangs (even if I was 10 years too late to culturally appropriate true Beatlemania).

The main thing was that my hair had to cover my ears. I wanted to appear like the hippies who populated nearby Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, even though I had no idea what a hippie actually was.

At that age, unfortunately, I didn’t look particularly masculine. That led to a traumatic experience where a math teacher, substituting for my beloved Mrs. York, called on “the young lady in the back row.”

Yup, that was me.

The class erupted in laughter, and I became known for several years as “Briana.” (Any former middle school friends reading this: If you were part of that crew, an apology would be more than welcome.)

By high school, my hair still covered my ears, but now that I had more masculine features, I was ready for some facial hair. I wanted to mimic the looks of my favorite progressive rock stars, all of whom (other than Freddie Mercury of Queen) were properly bearded.

However, my 10th-grade attempt to grow a mustache prompted my English teacher, Mrs. Andreski, to suggest I might want to consider using a black felt-tip pen to fill in the gaps.

Then, there was the summer when I tried to emulate the cool kids who parted their hair down the middle. I had my bangs cut specifically for that look, which would have worked out fine if not for Jeff Miller, reveling in his role as tormentor, who mocked me relentlessly until I sheepishly returned to the familiar side part before the school year started.

By college, I was finally able to grow a full beard and mustache, which I kept for the next 20 years. For two of the three years I attended Oberlin, I went entirely without a trim. When I posed with my friend Jane Segadelli next to a poster calling on support for the Sandinistas (as with the hippies, I had no idea what a Sandinista stood for), I looked every bit the Central American Marxist wannabe I wasn’t.

In the spring of my senior year, I came up with an experiment: I would cut it all – hair, beard, mustache – then show up to class, expecting that no one would know who I was!

Unfortunately, the weather took an unexpected wintry turn, and I had no choice but to come to campus in my highly identifiable orange down jacket.

Cover blown.

My hair grew progressively shorter as I gained in years. By the 1990s, then married and living in Israel, the clean-shaven look, bald-if-you-dared was all the fashion. I wasn’t ready to go entirely hairless, but let’s just say I never needed to run a comb through my hair.

When COVID hit in 2020, I stopped going to Dave, the only hairdresser I’d seen since we made aliyah 26 years earlier, and Jody became my in-house barber. She liked my hair longer. Cutting my hair in the living room meant I could get more frequent trims without needing to shell out NIS 100 a pop.

Two years earlier, when I was diagnosed with cancer, to acknowledge this unwanted status, I defiantly grew my beard back, although it was more like George Clooney’s five o’clock shadow than a revolutionary pose.

Last year marked perhaps the final turning point. My hairstyle this time wasn’t tied to a particular decade or fashion. R-CHOP, a particular chemotherapy I’d hoped to avoid, became inevitable. I lost most of the hair on my head, as well as my arms, legs, and pits. (Kept my eyebrows, fortunately.)

Curly hair post cancer treatment

A few months after the CAR-T treatment I received a year ago that saved my life, my hair began to return as well. Jody noticed it first: thick curls on the left side of my head in the back. The curls spread – first upward, then to the right side.

Jody loved it. Me? I’d spent 65 years with straight hair. What did I know from curls?

But as much as Jody loved running her fingers through my thick mane of flips and waves, it began to get unruly. Jody attempted a trim that would return some sense of order, but as she hacked away, the curls were inevitably sacrificed. The haircut looks great and the curls will, I’m sure, eventually grow back.

When they do, and assuming we can find a style that somehow maximizes both propriety and wild abandon, I will wear it with pleasure as a sign of my body’s resilience and the strange way it has of showing that off, both at the present moment and in the many hairstyles that have defined me through decades of personal and societal change.

The writer’s book, TOTALED: The Billion-Dollar Crash of the Startup that Took on Big Auto, Big Oil and the World, was published earlier this year as an audiobook. It is available on Amazon and other online booksellers in print, e-book and Audible formats. brianblum.com

An unusual overnight incident on Saturday at the Sea of Galilee left 11 campers injured after being attacked and bitten by jackals near Duga Beach.

Magen David Adom (MDA) said it received a call at 2:52 a.m. and dispatched medical teams to the scene. 

Several of the injured patients, including a 12-year-old girl, two men in their 30s and a woman in her 40s, were evacuated to the Baruch Padeh Medical Center Poriya Baruch Padeh Medical Center Poriya with bite wounds. They were treated, vaccinated, and released.

Two others were treated on site and did not require hospital transport.

‘My daughter was bitten on her face’

Elena, the mother of 12-year-old Alice, described the frightening incident in which her daughter was bitten in the face by a jackal. “We were all sleeping in the tent when suddenly, in the middle of the night, my daughter Alice screamed, ‘It hurts! It hurts!’ I quickly turned on the light, and her entire face was covered in blood. I was terrified,” she said.

“I saw the animal that bit her. I saw it clearly. It was big – enormous, in fact. They said there were five jackals on the beach, and many people had already been injured by them. Unfortunately, my daughter’s injuries were the most severe. Others were bitten slightly on the leg, but her face was severely affected.”

“We were evacuated by ambulance to the hospital, where they gave her four injections and three stitches on her face. Now that we’ve been discharged, we came back to the beach to collect our things, and we’re trying to calm down a bit, but she is terrified and traumatized.”

“It breaks my heart because in less than a month, on July 7, she has her bat mitzvah. And just a few days before that, on June 19, she has her school graduation ceremony. I really hope she feels better and that this trauma passes before her bat mitzvah.”

Rabies concerns raised from officals

Officials said the animals’ behavior was atypical and raised suspicion that the jackals involved may have been infected with rabies.

Dr. Noa Shacham Hadari, head of the emergency department at the hospital, said anyone bitten or in contact with a wild animal must seek immediate medical treatment and vaccination, and warned the public to avoid contact with stray animals and wildlife.

The Health Ministry reported that there have been 66 cases of rabies exposure in animals this year. Out of these cases, dogs are the most frequently reported, accounting for 37 instances, followed by jackals, which account for 19 cases. In a public statement regarding the recent incident, the Ministry noted that the animals have not yet been captured.

Authorities urged the public to avoid feeding or approaching wildlife and to seek immediate medical attention after any bite or suspected exposure.

The Kinneret Cities Association said it is taking the incident very seriously and called for increased enforcement and monitoring of the jackal population in the area during the summer season.

Asharq Al-Awsat, UK, June 6

Iran’s missile and drone attack on Bahrain and Kuwait crossed a dangerous legal and moral threshold. Whatever explanations Tehran offers, the reality remains that neither country was a belligerent party to the conflict, yet a civilian airport in Kuwait was struck, and innocent civilians paid the price.

Attempts to justify the attack by pointing to the presence of foreign military facilities fundamentally misunderstand the principles of sovereignty that govern international relations. Every independent state has the right to enter into defense partnerships and host foreign forces if it believes doing so serves its security interests.

Turkey, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Britain, Italy, and Spain all host foreign military installations, yet no one argues that this grants other countries the right to attack their territory. International law is clear: sovereign nations decide their own security arrangements.

What is far more troubling is the effort to shift responsibility from the aggressor to the victim, transforming a discussion about missile attacks on sovereign territory into a debate about the choices of the country that was attacked. Such reasoning opens the door to international chaos and undermines the foundations of the modern state system.

Kuwait has categorically rejected Iranian claims that its territory or airspace was used for hostile actions, stripping away the political rationale behind the strike.

Moreover, civilian airports are not military targets; they are essential public infrastructure serving travelers, commerce, and ordinary citizens. When they come under attack, civilians become casualties of conflicts in which they have no part.

The issue, therefore, is not foreign bases but respect for sovereignty itself. A state cannot claim to respect sovereign rights while simultaneously launching missiles at other countries because it disapproves of their sovereign decisions. When sovereignty is violated in this way, silence becomes a form of complicity.

– Mohammed al-Rumaihi

Lebanon’s talent for wasting crises

Nida Al Watan, Lebanon, June 7

Nothing is more dangerous than wasting opportunities except wasting crises, and Lebanon has mastered both. For decades, the country has allowed political, financial, and militia interests to squander moments that might have produced real change.

Today, the latest opportunity for national recovery remains exposed to attack from every direction. The central obstacle remains Hezbollah’s weapons. Although the government eventually declared the group’s military activities outside the law and endorsed the principle of state control over arms, implementation has been delayed, diluted, and transformed into an open-ended process.

Yet Hezbollah and Iran have never concealed their intention to preserve those weapons indefinitely, presenting them not as a temporary reality but as a permanent feature of Lebanon’s political landscape. The result has been the transformation of Lebanon from a traditional buffer state into a forward operating arena for Iran’s regional confrontation with Israel and, more recently, with the US.

This shift has brought destruction, displacement, and renewed occupation in the south, and the erosion of the state’s authority over decisions of war and peace. The same inability to confront reality has defined Lebanon’s economic collapse. 

The ruling class squandered a historic opportunity to use the financial crisis as a catalyst for reform, failed to distribute losses fairly, and blocked even modest efforts to restore stolen savings to ordinary citizens.

Lebanon has endured civil wars, foreign occupations, Syrian domination, Iranian influence, constitutional breakdowns, and repeated political crises, yet each lesson has been discarded rather than absorbed. The tragedy is not merely external interference but an internal system unwilling to break with the past and remarkably skilled at sabotaging the future.

Fear of a bad outcome has repeatedly led Lebanon toward an even worse one and, unless that pattern changes, the country risks wasting yet another crisis without producing a solution.

– Rafiq Khoury

Planning as a culture, not a document

Al Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, June 7

War, despite all its destruction, has revived an essential question: Is planning simply a government exercise, or should it become a societal culture? There is a profound difference between states producing strategic plans and societies cultivating a planning mindset rooted in foresight and anticipation.

Official strategies may provide direction, but communities thrive only when individuals and institutions develop the habit of looking ahead, recognizing emerging risks, and preparing for change before it arrives. A society that loses its capacity to anticipate events becomes reactive, constantly surprised by developments it should have seen coming.

The current regional turmoil has highlighted the limits of viewing planning as a government responsibility alone. Most people naturally plan for careers, finances, and family life, yet genuine foresight requires something deeper: the ability to understand how present decisions shape future realities.

Such thinking cannot be created solely through formal education. It emerges from a broader culture that values critical thinking, responsibility, and an awareness of how social, economic, and political developments interact. The challenges facing the region should prompt a reassessment of development priorities, educational systems, and national strategies.

More importantly, they should strengthen two complementary forms of awareness: individual responsibility and collective responsibility. The first reminds citizens of their role within society; the second reinforces the importance of social stability, security, and economic resilience. Together they form the foundation of any successful long-term project.

Strategic thinking is not always loud or dramatic. Sometimes it reveals itself through restraint, patience, and a willingness to prioritize long-term outcomes over immediate reactions. Planning is not merely a document stored in government offices. It is a mindset, a culture, and a way of understanding the future.

Societies that embrace it will be better equipped to navigate uncertainty, withstand crises, and shape their own destiny rather than simply react to events imposed upon them.

– Mashary al-Naim

The real debate over government subsidies

Al-Masry Al-Youm, Egypt, June 7

Ever since the emergence of the state as the institution responsible for managing society’s affairs, governments have wrestled with the question of how to support citizens who cannot meet their basic needs. The answer has usually taken the form of subsidies, whether through direct assistance or subsidized goods and services.

Yet behind this seemingly simple solution lies a complex intersection of economics, politics, and social justice. Subsidies have existed in one form or another since ancient Rome distributed grain to maintain social stability. They evolved into modern welfare systems during the 20th century, particularly after the Great Depression, when state intervention became a central feature of economic policy.

In newly independent countries, subsidies often served not only as tools of redistribution but also as instruments of political legitimacy. Around the world, governments have experimented with countless models, from India’s vast food distribution programs and Brazil’s conditional cash transfers to fuel and energy subsidies across the Middle East and the comprehensive welfare systems of Northern Europe.

The results have been mixed. Poorly designed subsidies frequently distort markets, weaken incentives, burden public finances, and deliver substantial benefits to those who need them least. Studies have repeatedly shown that wealthy households often capture a disproportionate share of fuel subsidies simply because they consume more.

Other programs have suffered from corruption, inefficiency, and massive administrative waste.

Yet the answer is not to abandon support altogether. Evidence from countries such as Brazil, Mexico, and Kenya demonstrates that carefully targeted assistance can improve education, health outcomes, and living standards while reducing poverty.

The real choice is not between subsidies and no subsidies, but between effective support and wasteful support. In societies marked by inequality and economic vulnerability, governments cannot simply walk away from their social obligations.

What is required is a transition from subsidizing products to supporting people, from universal distribution to precise targeting, and from broad entitlements to programs linked to measurable developmental goals. Modern technology and sophisticated data systems make this transformation increasingly possible.

The social contract still requires governments to protect vulnerable citizens, but that protection must evolve if it is to remain both effective and sustainable.

– Yasser Abdel Aziz

Translated by Asaf Zilberfarb. All assertions, opinions, facts, and information presented in these articles are the sole responsibility of their respective authors and are not necessarily those of The Media Line, which assumes no responsibility for their content.

For more than 20 years of writing this column, I’ve met countless English-speaking parents who have chosen to make Israel their home, temporarily or permanently. 

Despite their diverse backgrounds, they share a common challenge: raising children in a country where life can feel unpredictable.

It is also a place where transitions are frequent, and where parents themselves may be stretched thin by work, parenting challenges, security threats, cultural adjustment, or marital stress. 

When parents come to me concerned about a child – whether a five-year-old who suddenly refuses to go to school, or a teenager who seems angry, withdrawn, or failing – I always include an evaluation of the child’s attachment status as part of my diagnostic approach. 

John Bowlby’s attachment theory, decades after its introduction, remains one of the most useful tools for understanding children’s emotional worlds. 

Bowlby taught us that children thrive when they experience their caregivers as secure bases – people who are emotionally available, predictable, and attuned. A securely attached child seeks proximity when distressed and feels confident to explore when safe.

An insecurely attached child may cling anxiously, withdraw, avoid closeness, or oscillate between the two. Parent-child attachment patterns may shift not because parents don’t care but because stress can distract a parent, making it harder to stay attuned to a child’s needs.

The state-of-the-art treatment for children, especially pre-teenage kids, has been play therapy. It seems like a natural way to get into and understand the child’s emotional issues, which directly impact their attachment behavior. 

In fact, the literature lists many forms of play therapy for young children, including playing with games and toys, drawing pictures, or working with silly putty. 

I myself have used play therapy quite effectively with some of the younger children that I have treated. But whenever possible, I prefer to empower parents with tools and insights that can strengthen their role as parents. 

The empowering parental approach was originated by Bernard and Louise Guerney (1969), who developed filial play therapy, training parents to be therapeutic agents. 

This approach’s goal is teaching parents to better understand the emotional meaning of their child’s behavior and learn specific techniques that will help their child change. 

Let’s take a look at what this means. 

The immigrant child and the silent storm

An English couple brought in their seven-year-old son, Sam, six months after making aliyah. He had become aggressive in school, pushing children and yelling at teachers. The school suggested play therapy, but the parents wanted a broader understanding. 

In my treatment with Sam’s parents, I reframed his difficulties as issues of “dislocation” rather than anger problems. 

When Sam made aliyah, he had to learn Hebrew, a new language, and missed his childhood friends, his grandparents, and his familiar routines and surroundings. 

His parents, overwhelmed with settling into a new flat, jobs, and bureaucracy, were emotionally less available. They were unable to see that Sam’s acting out was his own way of protesting the move to Israel and how all of the changes were affecting him. 

I worked on helping the parents slow down, create predictable routines, and carve out daily one-on-one time. They learned to narrate his feelings (“This is hard. You miss home. You miss your grandparents. We’re here with you”). 

I suggested to his parents that they try to arrange a weekly Zoom meeting with his grandparents. Sam really enjoyed these meetings. Within weeks, the aggression decreased and his school behavior improved. Sam didn’t need punishment – he needed connection.

The teen and missile attacks

During the height of the rocket attacks, a 15-year-old girl, Maya, began refusing to leave the house. Each time the Red Alert siren sounded, she would freeze, cry, or cling to her parents.

Even on quiet days, she stayed close to the safe room, checked the news constantly, and monitored her younger siblings with hypervigilance. Clearly, she was exhibiting signs of trauma.

Her parents tried to reassure her with facts and calm explanations about the defense systems and how they work. 

But Maya wasn’t responding to logic. From an attachment perspective, her system was overwhelmed. The unpredictability of sirens and the fear of being separated from her family activated a primal need for closeness. 

Once her parents shifted from “explaining” to attuning, things changed. They validated her fear, stayed physically close during stressful moments, and created predictable routines even on uncertain days. 

Over time, Maya’s anxiety softened. Like Sam, her healing didn’t come from explanations; it came from connection.

A young mother alone with her newborn during the war

A young mother, Sivan, came to see me three months after giving birth to her first child. Her husband had been serving in combat for more than eight months, with only brief, unpredictable visits home. 

Sivan, overwhelmed with anxiety and feeling alone and clearly missing her husband and worrying about his safety, reported to me that she felt numb and was afraid she wasn’t providing the emotional bonding her baby really needed. 

From an attachment perspective, her own attachment system was in a state of chronic activation with her emotional resources stretched thin. 

We worked on creating small islands of safety – brief grounding moments, predictable routines, and ways to let others support her. I helped her reach out more to friends. 

Her parents, living far away from her, were encouraged to talk to her frequently and whenever possible come and visit. As she felt more “emotionally held” and less alone, she found herself connecting to her baby with more warmth.

The connection grew slowly but steadily. Her story was a reminder that a parent’s capacity to attach is deeply tied to their own sense of safety.

Older teens and the challenge of trust

Many adolescents resist therapy at first, not because they don’t want help but because trusting a stranger feels risky. 

Further, the age-appropriate developmental task is to seek independence, yet their emotional world still depends on reliable attachment figures. I always try to engage a teenager and motivate them to try therapy. 

My track record with kids and teens has been very good. When a teen makes a commitment to come to therapy, psychotherapy can be a goldmine for growth. 

In adolescence, a secure, attuned relationship, as it is for all children, can open the door to change.

The takeaway

Whether you are an immigrant adjusting to a new culture, a family living temporarily in Israel, or long-term Anglo parents raising children in a complex environment, remember this: Your relationship with your child is the most stabilizing force in their world. 

Play therapy and counseling both have their place. But, the heart of healing begins with looking beneath the behavior that often is a child’s cry for help, and then strengthening the attachment bond. 

When caregivers feel empowered, children feel safer. And when children feel safer, they grow.

The writers is a psychotherapist with over 40 years of experience helping individuals, couples, and families cope with the emotional impact of crisis and war. Many of his clients are olim.

drmikegropper@gmail.com

More than 30 years ago, just after we had our first child, my husband was walking down Ben-Yehuda Street when someone stopped him and offered him a free dinner at a Jerusalem hotel if we would attend a time-share presentation.

We even debated whether it was wrong to attend if we had no intention of buying the time-share. But we hadn’t been out in three months, so we got a babysitter and headed out. There were 19 couples who attended, and 10 bought time-shares at Club Hotel, which hadn’t even been built yet! We got the third week in May, which is a great time to visit Eilat.

When our kids were young, we enjoyed our week in May at the Club Hotel. As they got older, we joined RCI (a time-share trading company), deposited our week, and exchanged it for a week in resorts around the world. In the past few years, our kids have spent their week with friends.

But this year our week included Shavuot, so we decided to use it.

Usually, the time-share does not include any meals, even breakfast, but a few weeks before our stay, Club Hotel called and offered us half board from Thursday to Monday, which included Shavuot, if we would give up the first three nights of our stay. It made sense for us for a few reasons.

A ship on the Red sea

At the last minute, my son in the army was able to join us, so we were five adults, and the Club Hotel upgraded us to a two-bedroom suite, which made our stay more comfortable.

The hotel resembles a ship, and all of the rooms are suites, meaning there is a bedroom for the parents and a pullout sofa bed in the living room, which share one bathroom. It is far more space than a regular hotel room.

There is also a kitchenette with a small refrigerator, a microwave, and dishes. If you ask for kosher dishes, they will bring you brand-new ones just out of the box.

Club Hotel has seven swimming pools, which gives a lot of space even when the hotel is crowded. There is a very large toddler area, with a water park for young kids, including a huge bucket that fills up with water and then overflows. It is shallow, perfect for families with young children, but I didn’t spend any time there.

I spent most of my time either at the main pool, which even has waterfalls. There is also a large deep pool that is heated in the winter. With all of these pools, it was not hard to find somewhere to sit, although I did wish people wouldn’t reserve chairs or lounges by the pool with towels and then never use them.

The hotel was full for Shavuot and Shabbat with some 1,700 guests, but it didn’t feel overwhelming. I spent hours each day by the pool relaxing, and it didn’t feel overwhelming.

The food was surprisingly good. We had half-board, so we had breakfast and dinner each day. Breakfast was what you would expect – someone making omelets; cheeses; smoked fish; fresh bread; and lots of dessert, including very good cheesecake.

Dinner on Shavuot, on which you are allowed to cook according to Jewish law, included freshly grilled steaks, as well as more than a dozen salads. There was even someone scooping ice cream cones for dessert, which was a big hit with the younger set.

Friday night dinner had a choice of several types of meat. One server was carving lamb shoulder, another prime rib, and a third asado. My carnivore children were in heaven.

There was also a daily happy hour at the pool with free drinks, and a welcome party for kids almost every day with popcorn, snacks, and lots of gummy candies.

I heard several parents saying their kids were enjoying the activities at the kids’ club. And I saw lots and lots of happy children running around enjoying every minute of their vacation.

clubhotels-israel.com/club-hotel-eilat

The writer paid for her stay but received a free upgrade.

When I pick up my son Danny, who is 30 and on the autism spectrum, from the village where he lives during the week, one of the first questions he asks is whether he will type with Daniel that evening.

Daniel is Dr. Daniel Orlievsky, a professor and director of an international postgraduate diploma program in clinical practice and research in the autism spectrum at the Catholic University of Buenos Aires. A psychologist and researcher, he specializes in helping children and young adults on the autism spectrum learn to communicate through typing. 

That may set off a red flag in your mind because of recent media reports debunking scams involving a technique called Facilitated Communication (FC) and its variants. 

The best-known of these are the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM), Spelling to Communicate, and Spellers, whose practitioners claim that minimally verbal people on the autism spectrum can use these methods to write brilliant books or attend university.

In the FC method, a so-called facilitator holds a disabled person’s hand and moves it over a letter board or keyboard to point to letters, supposedly spelling out the words he or she wants to say or write. 

Often, the disabled people do not look at the board at all. With RPM, Spelling to Communicate, and Spellers, the facilitator does not hold the person’s hand but moves the letter board or keyboard; often, the person with autism does not look at the board.

But FC/RPM bears no relation to what Orlievsky does with his patients, including Danny. Danny sits and types completely on his own about what interests him; mainly ceiling fans, trains, buses, bagels, and cats.

FC/RPM and its variants would seem to have been debunked thoroughly in the ’90s, but they keep coming back, like a movie villain. Every day, my Facebook feed seems to show another autistic genius using FC or the RPM method to attend university, write a book, or publish articles.

But there was an especially dramatic moment recently in which an RPM facilitator making claims was finally exposed to public scrutiny and drew widespread skepticism. 

Woody Brown, a 28-year-old minimally verbal man on the autism spectrum, is credited with writing a novel, Upward Bound, with the aid of RPM administered by his mother, Mary Brown. In April, they appeared on NBC’s The Today Show. 

Host Jenna Bush Hager praised his novel, about young people on the autism spectrum, saying it was “deeply heartfelt and moving,” and chose it for her book club. “The reason it’s so authentic is that the author understands autism firsthand,” she said.

This last claim is not in dispute, but the issue of who really wrote the novel is, and was raised in The Atlantic, by Daniel Engber, after the Browns’ TV appearance. Many other media outlets followed suit. 

What emerged from their coverage was that in a recorded interview with Woody and Mary that aired on The Today Show after Hager’s introduction, Woody’s typing bore no relation to what he actually spelled out – contradicting Mary’s claims. 

At one point, Mary, who has a master’s degree in English literature from Northwestern University, said he typed: “To finally be in the room where learning was happening, I felt like I was in heaven,” but if you slow down the footage just slightly, Woody’s finger touches the letters: Tobgdhi nvza.

Not only did Woody attend high school and college at UCLA (where he graduated with highest honors) with his mother moving the letter board for him, he got an MFA in writing at Columbia University, and signed a two-book deal from Hogarth, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

There are many other such cases of autistic people attending university and even publishing books using FC/RPM. Woody’s story is simply the latest of many.

The skeptics weigh in

This might seem like a small issue, affecting few people, but the media’s generally uncritical reporting on FC/RPM shows how easily the press can be manipulated. And if it can be manipulated regarding one subject, it can be deceived in many other areas as well.

Psychologist Stuart Vyse, writing in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer, zeroed in on the main problem raised by the saga of Woody and Mary. 

“This young man was brought on The Today Show to mark Autism Awareness Month,” he wrote, “and yet, in a cruel irony, everything about this case suggests that his true nature was not acceptable to his parents. He has been required to perform a pantomime in the service of an appealing fantasy. 

“Worse yet, like all victims of Facilitated Communication, he has endured years of useless tapping on letter boards that could have been spent in more appropriate instruction. Rather than learning to live as independently as possible, Woody remains dependent on his mother.”

At least Mary allowed herself and her son to be photographed, which revealed the disparity in where Woody’s finger moved and where she said it moved. 

Many parents or caregivers who claim they have helped disabled people write articles or books through FC/RPM have refused to be filmed, or even to take the simple test that proves who is really choosing what to say: The child who is supposedly typing is shown a picture the facilitator cannot see and asked to type what it is. 

In the vast majority of cases that ever got to this stage, the whole story fell apart. There was even an episode of Law & Order on this theme in the ’90s. But most facilitators refuse to take this test, for obvious reasons, often saying they’re offended that anyone would ask them to.

In the most tragic cases, which are numerous and well-documented, facilitators claiming to type what a disabled person is saying have made accusations of abuse against parents and other caregivers; the accused were prosecuted and later exonerated when the FC/RPM turned out to be fraudulent. 

Conversely, and even more horrifically, some facilitators have used FC/RPM as a way to initiate romantic and sexual relationships without the genuine consent of the person who is supposedly communicating. Multiple court cases showed that FC/RPM was an abusive sham.

Danny, and the Phaedrus Approach

All of which brings me back to Orlievsky and the real work he and his team do to help people with autism communicate, using the Phaedrus Approach, which is the polar opposite of FC and RPM. 

I met Orlievsky a decade ago, when he came to Israel to give a series of lectures on how he teaches people with autism to communicate by typing. I thought it might help Danny, because he has always been interested in letters and words, although at school he received little formal academic education in Hebrew, and almost none in English. 

But he learned the alphabet after watching Sesame Street once, and can identify hundreds English words simply because he is interested in looking at words in books and on signs. 

At the schools he attended, they spent more time teaching other skills rather than academic ones, focusing on what are called Activities of Daily Living (ADL), which are considered necessary for people with autism to live as independently as possible.

I could understand their decision, but I longed to find a way for  Danny to express himself through writing. 

As a writer, I know that the part of my brain that controls writing works differently from the part that controls speech, because when I write, I often have ideas about a topic that do not come to me when I am speaking about it. I felt part of Danny’s brain might also work this way.

Orlievsky met Danny on this trip to Israel, and the two hit it off instantly. He agreed that Danny might benefit from learning to type with his method. 

After he returned to Argentina, I searched for someone in Israel who might be able to work with Danny, but didn’t find anyone. Perhaps because of the negative publicity surrounding FC/RPM scams, there is a shortage of psychologists and teachers who have learned this approach and who are willing to do the hard work of teaching people on the spectrum how to communicate through typing.

Fast forward to 2020. Orlievsky contacted me to see how Danny was doing during the pandemic. He suggested that Danny might enjoy working with him via Zoom, which we all had begun to use. I jumped at the opportunity, and Danny has been having Zoom sessions with Orlievsky ever since. His communication skills have slowly but steadily improved during the past six years.

There are major differences between Orlievsky’s Phaedrus Approach, named after the Platonic dialogues on writing and reason, and FC/RPM. Phaedrus has just one aim: that the person with autism learns to express him or herself through writing.

Orlievsky’s students sit at a keyboard on their own. No one touches or manipulates the hand of the person with autism. 

No one touches or moves the keyboard but the autistic person. The typing may go slowly, but that’s all part of the process. In his sessions, Danny uses the hunt-and-peck typing method and typically types between 50 and 100 words per session. He loves all public transportation, so he types about trains and buses, our weekend plans, songs he likes, and a cat we once had. 

His typing is filled with grammatical mistakes, but it doesn’t matter, because it isn’t about grammar. Sometimes he spells words phonetically; other times, he asks me how words are spelled. I tell him, and he types the words himself. Everything he tells Orlievesky comes from his heart and is important to him.

He does not type about literary or philosophical concepts, and he does not praise me extravagantly the way many of these purported FC prodigies often compliment their caregivers. In fact, he doesn’t write about me at all, except to mention that we had chocolate cake for my birthday. 

Danny’s writing is about Danny, as it should be. I sit nearby and help him focus when his attention wanders, but he does all the typing himself.

Orlievsky and his team have spent decades trying to show the autism community that reliable and verifiable literacy is possible for people on the spectrum. But the enormous media coverage and support of FC/RPM and similar techniques have not made it easy for them. 

People enjoy a good story, and they like the idea that a person who can communicate verbally only through uttering a handful of one-syllable words is actually capable of writing sentences like ones that Woody Brown (through his mother) supposedly typed on The Today Show.

These included: “I never thought there could be a life like this. I had no way of letting people know who I was. My intelligence was like the rock pushed up the hill by Sisyphus. I could never get it to the top.” 

It’s a common feature of this kind of FC/RPM that the autistic person employs sophisticated references, such as the Sisyphus myth, which are used to prove the facilitators’ contention that autistic people are always listening and pick up on everything.

But people with autism who, after much instruction and practice, type simple sentences about their daily lives and interests, the way Danny does, don’t present the same kind of drama as a minimally verbal person allegedly writing an entire novel, getting an MFA, and referencing Greek mythology. Danny will type, “I like ceiling fans because they go fast.”

Because many parents are interested in helping their children learn to communicate through writing but are skeptical of FC/RPM, I asked Orlievsky to explain how his Phaedrus Approach – also known as Language Habilitation through Writing, which he has developed over the past 30 years – works.

“The idea is for non-speaking autistic individuals, synchronous writing with the assistant is a pathway for language to emerge, not as a consequence of [their] already possessing it, although it is possible that in some cases it may be present,” he said. 

“The initial assessment consists of a meeting where the person is shown a series of pictures to see if they can point to what is asked. If they answer correctly, the next step is to determine if they can recognize words or letters. 

“This tells us if they have some level of receptive language comprehension and potentially some form of literacy.

“Depending on their comprehension, the literacy process begins. If the person cannot answer any questions, we try to begin the literacy process with other preliminary strategies. Depending on their age and individual profile, we will work with apps so they can begin the learning process, discriminating shapes and colors, etc.”

It may take some time before they begin to write, and some profoundly autistic individuals may need “motor modeling,” which is not the same as the “physical support” used in FC. 

The difference? “Physical support” in FC is actually moving the person’s hand while they are supposedly searching for the letter they want to press; “motor modeling” involves teaching the letters and helping the person gradually learn to type independently. 

For example, in motor modeling, if the subject has trouble finding the key they want to press, an assistant might suggest that they look at the entire keyboard, without touching it at all. People on the spectrum who are first learning to type might only look at one section of a keyboard, because the process is so new to them.

“Fine motor skills usually improve significantly in this process, and the ultimate ‘non-waivable’ goal is ‘fully independent writing’ with the keyboard or tablet placed on a table or desk,” Orlievsky said. “This way, there is no doubt about who is writing the text.”

The next step, he said, is helping the individual communicate what is important to them. 

“The approach is always based on the person’s interests, and writing begins by copying words related to those interests. For example, if the person likes ceiling fans” – here he was talking about Danny – “we will try to offer them a picture of those objects so they can copy that word.”

There is a scientific basis for all he does with his patients, he explained: “Just as Einstein speaks of space-time as a continuum, the same should apply to reading and writing, since one process cannot be conceived without the other. 

“In our understanding, the same occurs when accessing written text: increased brain connectivity leads to improved comprehension,” Orlievsky said.

“From this, the improved ability to communicate allows for another qualitative leap in language and, consequently, in the psychic structuring. 

“In our experience, the changes observed in areas of behavior, communicative intent, flexibility, improvements in attention span, joint attention, etc., are remarkable.”

He continued: “This approach fits in with Einstein’s space-time continuum by breaking down the ‘I speak first, then I write’ separation.” 

While some have theorized that spoken communication must precede written communication, Orlievsky challenges that overall general conclusion.

“For non-speaking or minimally speaking individuals, the process [of moving from spoken to written language] is reversed. Traditional methods assume that oral language must be developed before writing can be taught… 

“The Phaedrus Approach proposes that writing is where language is born… By typing with the assistant, the person is simultaneously reading, interpreting, and producing. Reading doesn’t precede writing; it sustains and shapes it.”

Spreading the Phaedrus Approach 

In addition to working with schools, hospitals, and clinics in his native Argentina, Orlievsky has consulted in the US, Brazil, Chile, and Serbia. The Phaedrus Approach has been used at the Imagine Academy in Brooklyn, a school for people with autism, since 2018. 

Elisa Chrem, principal of the Imagine Academy, said, “For all the students we have observed here [who are learning with the Phaedrus Approach], we see sustained shared attention; increased engagement; calm, regulated students; a lot of turn-taking going on; increasing circles of communication… We want to increase the levels of complexity when the students are ready for it.” 

Her words illuminate how this gradual process unfolds and how beneficial it can be.

Asked why writing matters for non-speaking people with autism, Orlievsky said, “Writing doesn’t come after understanding. It comes from understanding while reading and writing.”

“It is the synchronicity of writing and speech as a means of psychic structuring. Time dilates. There is no ‘I think first, then I write.’ Thinking happens while one reads and writes,” he said.

This aligns with my experience as a writer, and is why I feel that writing with Orlievsky has unlocked doors in my son’s mind.

Although Danny is already 30, he continues to develop and learn. I can see that, during the years he has been typing with Orlievsky, he has learned to communicate better verbally, as well as through writing. 

And if what he wants to communicate through writing is that he is excited that he will see a large ceiling fan in the store where we buy bagels, after we ride on the No. 78 bus, that’s what Orlievsky wants him to type, and that’s what I want to read.

Danny, who is bilingual, is keenly interested in the different languages he hears around him, such as Hebrew, English, Russian, and Arabic, all of which he may hear on a single day.

When I told him Orlievsky speaks Spanish, he asked how it sounded, and he recently learned three Spanish words. He also wanted to know where people speak it. 

Now that he knows that Spanish exists, and where it is spoken, he sometimes finds clips of his favorite songs in Spanish online. 

When Danny finished typing with Orlievsky last week, he told him, “adios” and later, he listened to “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” from Cinderella, in Spanish.

Danny’s unpredictable, but very real development, is fascinating to me, and more exciting than any words I could put in his mouth. 

I am happy and grateful that Orlievksy’s Phaedrus Approach is helping him broaden his ability to express himself.

More people need to know about this genuine method that teaches people with autism how to communicate, so that further research can be done on it, and people with autism or other conditions who have minimal speech can learn language and communication through writing.

Tammuz 1, 2199 (1560 BCE):

Birth of Joseph, son of the patriarch Jacob and his beloved wife Rachel, and progenitor of one of the Twelve Tribes. This is also the traditional date of his death (2309). His tomb in Shechem was a place of pilgrimage and prayer until it was destroyed by Arab mobs in the Second Intifada.

June 17:

Birthdays of François Jacob (1920), a French biologist who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965 for his discovery that control of enzyme levels in all cells occurs through the regulation of transcription; and George Akerlof (1940), an American economist who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in which he identified certain severe problems that afflict markets characterized by asymmetric information.

Tammuz 3, 5754 (1994):

Yahrzeit of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh and last Lubavitcher Rebbe. He led the Chabad movement from 1950 until his death, greatly expanding its activities and founding a worldwide network of institutions dedicated to bringing Judaism to Jews no matter where they might be found.

June 19:

Birthdays of two more Nobel laureates: Sir Ernst Chain (1906), who was awarded the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine for finding a method to purify penicillin and to produce it in mass quantities, thereby starting the “antibiotic revolution” that has completely changed the face of modern medicine; and Aage Bohr (1922), who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975. He and his father, Niels, are one of the four pairs of fathers and sons who have both won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Tammuz 5, 3258 (502 BCE):

Ezekiel received his first prophecy (Ezekiel 1:2). The book that bears his name is related to the Babylonian exile after the destruction of the First Temple and is filled with symbolism and visions. He is believed to be buried in Iraq.

June 21, 1948:

The Altalena ship reached the coast of Tel Aviv, carrying more than 800 new immigrants and weapons. The Irgun claimed they had an agreement that 20% of the arms on board would be used by its members to defend Jerusalem. 

Former prime minister David Ben-Gurion refused to accept what he considered an ultimatum and ordered the ship to be fired upon, killing 18 and wounding 10. The incident almost caused a civil war and was only averted by an impassioned speech made by former prime minister Menachem Begin on the radio that night, not to take up arms against fellow Jews.

June 22, 1906:

Birthday of Billy Wilder, Austrian-born American film director, screenwriter, and producer, whose career in Hollywood spanned over five decades. Brilliant and versatile, he won Academy Awards as producer, director, and screenwriter. Wilder directed 14 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances and was recognized with the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 1986, the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award in 1988, and the National Medal of Arts in 1993.

June 23, 1700:

King William III knighted the financier Solomon de Medina – the first Jew to be thus honored, and the last for another 137 years. 

June 24, 1914:

Birthday of Jan Karski, Polish resistance fighter and activist who was recognized by Yad Vashem as a “Righteous Among the Nations” for reporting Nazi atrocities and the extermination of European Jewry to the Western Allies. “He who does not condemn, acquiesces.” 

Tammuz 10, 3174 (586 BCE):

After rebelling against Babylonian rule, King Zedekiah was captured trying to escape through a tunnel leading out of the city during Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 39:4-5). He was forced to witness the slaughter of his sons, and then his eyes were gouged out and he was taken into captivity by the Babylonians. 

June 26, 1936:

Judith Haspel, a 17-year-old Vienna native who held every Austrian woman’s middle- and long-distance freestyle record in 1935, wrote a letter to the Austrian Swimming Association protesting Hitler and refusing to represent Austria in the 1936 Summer Olympics, stating, “I refuse to enter a contest in a land which so shamefully persecutes my people.”

June 27, 1967:

Israel adopted a Basic Law to protect all holy places: “The Holy Places shall be protected from desecration and any other violation and from anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings with regard to those places.”

June 28, 1967:

Israel annexed the Old City of Jerusalem and reunited it with new Jerusalem.

June 29, 1946:

Some 20,000-25,000 British security forces of the Mandatory government raided the Jewish Agency, searched for arms in 27 Jewish settlements, arrested 2,718 people, and killed four Jews in what came to be known as the “Black Sabbath.” 

Tammuz 15, 5503 (1743):

Yahrzeit of Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar, Torah scholar and mystic known by the title of his biblical commentary, Ohr Ha’Chaim. He was born in Morocco and earned his livelihood as a silversmith. Many stories are told of his holiness and miracles. Eventually, he moved to Italy and then spent his final few years in Israel. His grave, located on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, is a popular place of pilgrimage and prayer.

July 1, 1908:

Birthday of Estée Lauder (Josephine Esther Mentzer), named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential business people of the century for building her cosmetics company into the world’s largest family-owned beauty business.

Fast of Tammuz 17:

Beginning of the three-week period of semi-mourning for the destruction of the temples, leading up to the ninth of Av. The fast also commemorates five tragic events that occurred on this date (see dustandstars.substack.com for details).

July 3, 1883:

Birthday of Franz Kafka, Czech author who captured modern man’s anxiety-ridden alienation in an incomprehensible, hostile, and indifferent world. “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect” (The Metamorphosis).

July 4, 1976:

Israeli commandos, in a daring and spectacular raid under the command of Lt.-Col. Yonatan Netanyahu (brother of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) rescued 256 hostages from an Air France plane held hostage by Palestinian terrorists at Uganda’s airport in Entebbe. This number included the flight crew, who all voluntarily chose to stay with the Jewish captives rather than be released. Naturally, the United Nations condemned Israel for violating Ugandan sovereignty. Yonatan Netanyahu was tragically killed during the operation.

July 5, 1950:

The Knesset passed the Law of Return, granting every Jew the absolute right to settle in Israel. The Citizenship Law, enacted in conjunction with the Law of Return, automatically entitles every Jewish immigrant to Israeli citizenship.

July 6, 1938:

The Evian Conference convened in France to discuss the possible solutions to the Jewish refugee problem against the backdrop of increasing Nazi persecution. The delegates from all 33 countries opposed receiving Jews, thereby sealing their fate at the hands of the Nazis. The German government responded that it was “astounding” that foreign countries criticized Germany for its treatment of the Jews, but none of them wanted to open the doors to them when “the opportunity offer[ed].”

Tammuz 22, 5648 (1888):

Yahrzeit of the “Maid of Ludomir,” who experienced a vision and began to deliver erudite Torah discourses from her room to hassidim sitting on the other side – the only independent female “rebbe” in the history of the hassidic movement. 

July 8, 1967:

The Spanish cabinet approved a bill that granted religious freedom to Spain’s Jews as well as to other religious minorities. Since 1492, it had been officially forbidden to practice Judaism in Spain.

July 9, 1840:

After the first-ever organized protest of American Jewry took place throughout major cities to protest the Damascus blood libel, US president Martin Van Buren applied pressure on Syria, and eventually the remaining survivors were released.

July 10, 1969:

Egyptian commandos crossed the Suez Canal in dinghies and mounted an attack on the Israeli position on the East Bank, killing seven, wounding five, and taking others prisoners. This marked the official beginning of the War of Attrition, during which thousands were killed and injured on both sides until the ceasefire of August 1970. 

July 11, 1797:

The gates of the Jewish ghetto of Venice, Italy, were torn down.

July 12, 2006:

Hezbollah forces crossed into Israel from Lebanon and ambushed two IDF vehicles, killing three soldiers and capturing two others. Israeli forces began shelling Lebanese territory in response to the attack, launching the Second Lebanon War. The war ended after 34 days of fighting with the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1701. About 2,000 Lebanese and 159 Israelis were killed, and civilian infrastructure on both sides was heavily damaged.

July 13, 1930:

Birthday of Naomi Shemer, Israeli musician and songwriter, hailed as the “first lady of Israeli song and poetry.” Her song “Jerusalem of Gold,” written in 1967, became an unofficial second national anthem after Israel won the Six Day War and reunited Jerusalem.

July 14, 1900:

Birthday of Samuel Ruben, American inventor who held over 200 patents and made lasting contributions to electrochemistry and solid-state technology, including the founding of the Duracell battery.

The above is a highly abridged monthly version of Dust & Stars – Today in Jewish History. To receive the complete newsletter: 

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As an Israeli traveling abroad lately, the inevitable question, ‘Where are you from?’ usually brings a brief moment of hesitation, a quick mental bracing for the reaction. But in Cyprus, that anxiety completely melts away. The response is always a warm smile, a welcoming nod, and genuine affection. It is an incredibly comforting feeling to be in a place where we are not just accepted but truly welcomed with open arms.

“The tourist season is in full swing, and Cyprus is ready to welcome Israeli travelers with our signature warm hospitality,” says Louisa Varaclas, director for Israel at the Cypriot Deputy Ministry of Tourism. “With around 600,000 Israeli visitors in 2025, Israel remains a vital market. Israelis love Cyprus because it truly feels like a ‘home away from home,’ offering a familiar environment, friendship, and a deep sense of security.”

Visiting the island for the fifth time, I joined a press trip to experience the local hospitality firsthand. Each visit to Cyprus feels slightly different, shaped by the regions and hotels explored along the way. Our journey this time was split between Paphos and Limassol. The Imperial Island Resort in Paphos was our first stop. The hotel’s room design stood out, especially the Herringbone-patterned flooring, which gave the space a clean, contemporary feel. Its location directly on the beachfront promenade is one of its key advantages, offering an easy scenic walk along the coast. I loved discovering the Agios Nikolaos church, with its Santorini-style design, just a short walk away.

The resort has undergone a massive transformation to establish itself as a five-star family destination operating on a premium all-inclusive basis. Half of the 239 rooms were converted into family suites featuring separate sleeping areas for parents and children. The layout balances family energy with quiet escapes; while families gather around the main pool and the dedicated splash pool, adults can retreat to the quieter outdoor adult-only pool or unwind in the indoor spa pool. Public areas, from the lobby to the spa, reflect the renovation, featuring updated design and expanded facilities.

The dining experience was a pleasant surprise, particularly the main restaurant, which offered a wide selection of dishes and live cooking stations. In addition, the resort includes alternative dining options such as a Japanese restaurant and a burger-style venue.

Beyond the resort

While it is easy to spend an entire vacation by the pool, the surrounding region offers a range of diverse experiences. We divided our time between the city itself and day trips outside Paphos, combining urban sites with rural and coastal landscapes.

We began our exploration with the city’s ancient landmarks at the historic Paphos Castle. Originally built as a Byzantine fort to protect the harbor, this stone structure now serves as a striking backdrop along the waterfront, with the nearby promenade adding to the atmosphere. A short walk away, we visited the Paphos mosaics, a UNESCO World Heritage Site renowned for its detail and preservation.

We continued to Pano Paphos, the upper town situated on the hills above the coast, an area known for its narrow pedestrian streets, small boutiques, and cafés. At The Place (theplacecyprus.com), we discovered locally made food products and crafts, and even took part in an art workshop offered on site, a mosaic session where visitors can try creating their own small pieces.

For more mainstream shopping, Kings Avenue Mall offers a selection of international brands. Nearby, the Aphrodite Waterpark (aphroditewaterpark.com) provides a thrilling water park experience with slides and attractions for different ages, including a kosher food truck on site. Cyprus is known for hosting some of the largest water parks in Europe.

A trip here is incomplete without a traditional tavern night, and Demokritos Tavern (demokritostavern.cy) delivered a lively evening. The evening had a relaxed, communal feel with long tables, shared dishes, and music that gradually drew everyone into the celebratory atmosphere. The band even closed the night with a special gesture – singing in Hebrew.

Outside Paphos

Our day exploring the wider Paphos region began with a scenic drive through Peyia to the village of Kathikas. Our first stop was Vasilikon Winery (vasilikon.com), a family-owned estate founded in 1993 and one of the largest wineries in Cyprus. We tasted indigenous grape varieties like Xinisteri and visited the on-site wine museum, which showcases the history of winemaking in the village.

We continued to the Steni Museum of Rural Life, which displays traditional costumes, tools, and textiles from the region’s past. Admission is free, but it is best to visit with a guide to truly understand the stories behind the collection.

For lunch, we drove up to the Akamas Peninsula nature reserve to the Baths of Aphrodite restaurant, located right by the famous springs. Perched on a cliff above the water, we sat on the terrace and enjoyed a superb Greek fish and seafood meze, completely immersed in the spectacular, panoramic views of the bay.

On the way back, the Peyia Sea Caves and the dramatic Edro III shipwreck nearby are a definitive must-stop. The area offers a particularly striking stretch of coastline and is one of the most photographed spots in the region.

The Royal Apollonia

The second part of our trip took us to The Royal Apollonia in Limassol. Shifting from Paphos’s more relaxed atmosphere, Limassol is a modern, bustling city with a lively commercial and nightlife scene. The hotel has a compact urban layout, making effective use of its beachfront location. The pool area sits at the center of the property, with a swim-up bar overlooking a small sandy beach below, which quickly became my favorite spot during the stay. For wellness, the hotel also offers a spa with an indoor pool and a gym with fitness classes.

Beyond the main hotel restaurant, the property also includes a Greek restaurant and Akakiko, a Japanese fusion restaurant. While both offer good options, Akakiko stood out for me, serving a well-executed Japanese fusion menu with fresh sushi, sashimi, and a selection of hot dishes that I especially enjoyed.

After our time in Limassol, where we had already explored the city on a previous visit, we shifted our focus to the Ayia Napa and Protaras region. The following morning set the tone for a more coastal, relaxed experience, starting from the new marina with its mix of beach venues and dining spots. Among them is Riva Beach House by Frame, an Israeli venue originally from Tel Aviv that operates as a beach club with a pool and a neatly arranged beachfront.

After strolling through the marina, we headed to the port and joined a boat trip around Cape Greco and Turtle Cove – one of the highlights of our trip. The route follows the coastline, passing the Love Bridge natural rock formation, the sea caves, and several coastal churches, with a stop for swimming or snorkeling along the way. Different boat options are available, including larger vessels and others equipped with water slides. Boat trips also depart from Latchi, offering another access point to similar coastal routes.

For those looking to stay in the area, Louis Hotels (louishotels.com) operates several properties across Cyprus, including the Louis St. Elias Resort & Waterpark, a family-oriented all-inclusive hotel with water slides and child-friendly facilities. The group operates around 18 properties across Paphos, Limassol, and Protaras, with a portfolio that ranges from family resorts to urban boutique hotels and adults-only properties. While the hotels are not kosher, kosher meals can be pre-arranged through Chabad and served on-site upon request.

“The Israeli market has become one of our key source markets, which is why we have invested over €30 million in recent years to upgrade our properties and adapt them to the demand for both family all-inclusive resorts and adults-only hotels,” says Charalambos Lardas, business development manager at Louis Hotels.

The chain is currently offering up to 35% off summer stays for bookings made by June 20, subject to minimum-night requirements and free loyalty club membership.

When planning travel to Cyprus, note that Cyprus Airways (cyprusairways.com) operates flights to Larnaca Airport, which serves as a convenient hub for Israeli travelers connecting to various European destinations.

The writer was a guest of Louis Hotels, the Cyprus Ministry of Tourism, and Cyprus Airways.

Vilnius is beautiful in the old European sense of the word: narrow cobbled lanes polished by centuries of footsteps, the aroma of fresh coffee drifting through the cold northern air, little shops with display windows that seem to ask you to linger a while longer, lively pedestrian streets lined with markets and boutiques, benches scattered along hilltop paths overlooking the river, museums in improbable abundance, lookout points where the city suddenly unfolds in church towers and red rooftops. It is the sort of place where even silence appears carefully curated.

But to the Jewish traveler, Vilna (Vilnius) speaks in another language altogether. A language more intimate, almost familial – for this city left an immense imprint on Jewish civilization, not merely across the last three centuries of time, but across the geography of the Jewish world itself. There was a reason it came to be called the “Jerusalem of Lita.”

The word “Litvak” long ago ceased to describe only a place on the map. It became a temperament, almost a theology of character. Not geography, but a way of thinking. A Judaism of intellect and restraint, of disciplined thought and quiet endurance.

Here, in Vilna, that particular language of Torah scholarship was refined into something almost architectural in its precision. At its center stood the Vilna Gaon, an almost inconceivable figure. He mastered not only the breadth of Jewish learning but also mathematics, astronomy, and linguistics. He held no official position, sought no title, and yet became an authority whose influence stretched far beyond the city’s borders. Even non-Jews referred to him simply as “the Gaon,” “the genius,” in Hebrew.

His house once stood on Žydu 5 (Jewish Street 5). The original house did not survive, but a modest marker and a sculpted head were imagined by a local artist.

On the wall of the house adjoining the home of the Vilna Gaon, a sign hangs that reads: “The Vilna Gaon, Elijah, lived in the house that once stood here.” Today, the street leading there is called Gaono Street, as if the city itself refuses to forget.

The Great Synagogue

About 100 meters opposite the home of the Vilna Gaon stood “the Shulhof,” a large courtyard once filled with the Great Synagogue, about a dozen smaller synagogues (shtiblech), and the Gaon’s study hall. The religious and cultural heart of Jewish Vilna.

The Great Synagogue, built in the 17th century in Renaissance-Baroque style, was the city’s most impressive public building, with thousands of seats. Due to a local law forbidding buildings taller than churches, its Jewish architect cleverly lowered the floor two meters below ground level, making the interior taller while the exterior remained modest. The holy ark held 18 Torah scrolls, and some of its original elements are now displayed in the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem.

Though damaged by wars, fires, and even the Nazis, the synagogue did not survive Soviet rule, which demolished it in 1956. A high school stands on the site today.

The Vilna Gaon was a fierce opponent of the burgeoning movement of Hassidism. His resistance was rooted in his supreme devotion to rigorous Torah study. To him, the hassidic emphasis on serving God through emotional fervor and joy appeared as “bitul Torah,” a wasting of Torah-study time.

Furthermore, the Gaon lived in the shadow of the immense wreckage left behind by the Sabbatean movement. He feared that the hassidim might come to view their rebbes as false messiahs, much like the followers of Sabbatai Zevi. Consequently, he issued a formal excommunication against the movement. Today, however, we know that Hassidism did not lead to assimilation; on the contrary, it became a powerful force for Jewish preservation.

From Vilna, an intellectual tradition spread outward. The Gaon’s students established Volozhin Yeshiva, the prototype for the modern yeshiva world. The major and most prominent yeshivot in Israel nowadays, such as Ponevezh, Mir, and Hebron, continue the Lithuanian tradition. That model would also shape institutions in America, places like Beth Medrash Gavoha (Lakewood), Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin (Brooklyn), Yeshiva Torah Vadaath (Brooklyn), Yeshiva Ner Israel (Baltimore), the Chofetz Chaim Yeshivas network (across the US), as well as Telshe Yeshiva (Cleveland, where the same intensity of study continues, far from the forests and rivers of Lithuania.

Vilna Gaon – views on the Holy Land

The Vilna Gaon held profoundly proto-Zionist views and attempted to journey to the Land of Israel in 1782. Misfortunes and difficulties along the way forced him to turn back before reaching his destination.

Inspired by his example, many of his disciples began immigrating to the Holy Land from 1808 onward, in the historic movement known as the “Aliyah of the Disciples of the Vilna Gaon.” They first settled in Safed. From 1816, some of them gradually moved to Jerusalem, helping lay the foundations for the renewed Jewish presence in the city long before political Zionism would acquire its modern vocabulary.

But Vilna is not only about ideas. It is also about stones. There are many more Jewish heritage sites in Vilna.

The Shas Vilna edition of the Talmud was born in the printing house of the Widow Romm. Its graphic layout, the central text framed by commentary on either side, became so standard that it now feels inevitable, as though the Talmud had always looked this way. The press building still stands today at 4 Dvasiov St. Studying the Daf Yomi in front of this printing house is the most moving experience for any religious Jew. I had the strange sensation that the ink was still drying, that the act of study is part of an unbroken present. You’d try it too.

The Choral Synagogue, its pale façade striped in soft browns, crowned by a blue dome that seems to hold a piece of sky. Inside, the air carries the faint scent of old wood and time. Once, there were more than a hundred synagogues in Vilna. Today, only a handful remain, each one like a survivor who speaks softly but remembers everything.

Across the street lies the former ghetto. Around 30,000 Jews were confined here in 1941, and within a few years, most were murdered in the forests of Ponary. The streets are quiet now. Small plaques mark where gates once stood, where schools operated, where resistance leaflets were written. On a few shopfronts, one can still see faded Hebrew signs that have survived from before the Holocaust, like fragile echoes from another century. But what lingers most is absence. No children’s voices, no life pressing forward.

Another Jewish tourist site is the building of the Chief Rabbinate (corner of Ignoto and Benediktinu streets). Theodor Herzl visited Vilna in 1903 and met here with the Jewish community leaders. From this balcony, he addressed thousands of Jews gathered on the street below.

The three Jewish cemeteries of Vilnius tell their own layered story. When the Gaon passed away in 1797, he was buried in the Shnipishok Jewish cemetery. Shnipishok was a Jewish town, now a suburb within the expanded city. During Soviet rule, most of the cemetery was destroyed to build the “Soviet Sports Palace.” After a global outcry, in 1951, the authorities decided to move about a dozen graves of prominent Jews to the New Jewish Cemetery, with the Gaon and his family at the top of the list.

A canopy (ohel) was built over the Gaon’s new grave, becoming Vilna’s main Jewish tourist attraction. Almost every Jewish visitor comes to pray and leave a “kvitel” (a small note with a personal wish). Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a descendant of the Gaon, visited the canopy during his official visit to Lithuania in 2018.

For the Jewish traveler, Vilna is not merely a point upon a map. Vilna offers something deeper, almost invisible to the passing glance. Here, stones are never just stones, but layers of time, of silenced voices and others that have found their way back into the light.

And along these narrow streets, one senses that Jewish sociology has never truly departed. The old disputes between the Lithuanian scholars and the hassidic world, once carried through modest study halls, remind us how argument itself is woven into the fabric of Jewish life. Even now, in a wholly different age, the public divide between pro-Bibi and anti-Bibi camps may seem new, but the Jewish people have always had such disagreements, and likely always will. The issues may change, but the disputes remain.

There are moments in this city when you find yourself wondering which is stronger – what was built, or what was erased? Perhaps it is the erasure itself that shapes memory.

Perhaps that is the deeper meaning of Vilna. Not only a city of the past, but a place where the past continues to ask questions. What remains of a person after they are gone? What remains of a culture after it is destroyed? And perhaps, like a page of Talmud, there is no single answer here, but an ongoing conversation.

Vilnius invites you not only to see, but to listen. Not only to travel, but to remember.

The author is the editor of the blog jewishtraveler.co.il

Cells have always been the body’s original intelligence system – sensing, adapting, repairing, and communicating with remarkable precision. Today, artificial intelligence is beginning to mirror that same biological brilliance, transforming how we diagnose and treat disease. 

Stem‑cell therapy, once defined by painstaking laboratory work and slow trial-and-error experimentation, is undergoing a profound transformation. AI‑native platforms are beginning to reshape how scientists design, test, and manufacture living medicines. At the forefront of this shift is Cellular Intelligence.

The Boston‑based TechBio company co‑founded and led by Israeli entrepreneur Dr. Micha Breakstone, aims to transform stem cell research and bring innovative solutions to devastating diseases affecting millions around the world.

Breakstone, who previously co-founded the Israeli tech company Chorus.ai, has positioned Cellular Intelligence (previously known as Somite AI) at the intersection of computational modeling and regenerative medicine.

The company’s scientific base was built in collaboration with academic researchers, including Prof. Allon Klein of Harvard Medical School and developmental biologist Prof. Olivier Pourquie, and Dr. Nuno Mendonca, who heads the clinical advancement of the Parkinson’s program.

The company’s platform integrates high‑throughput multiplexing methods with a foundation model trained on large numbers of cellular perturbation conditions.

The system is designed to incorporate data generated during clinical and manufacturing processes, creating a feedback loop intended to improve predictive accuracy over time.

The aim is to support the development of cell therapies that can be produced consistently and at scale, addressing one of the major challenges that has limited the field.

Cellular Intelligence says that by combining large-scale cellular data with AI, the company is “decoding the rules of cell signaling and turning biology from observation into predictive engineering.”

The use of AI has excited scientists, and just one day after acquiring global rights to Novo Nordisk’s clinical‑stage cell therapy program for Parkinson’s disease, Cellular Intelligence held an expert symposium on the convergence of Artificial Intelligence and Biology at the Novo Nordisk Foundation headquarters in Copenhagen.

The day-long event in mid-May brought together 28 experts in the fields of AI, biology, regenerative medicine, venture, and company building for a day-long symposium on Engineering Cell Fate, something Breakstone believes will become the next AlphaFold moment for biology.

“We are using AI to understand how cells communicate and to make new tissue,” Breakstone said during a talk with Olivier Pourquie at the symposium.

During the talk with Pourquie, Breakstone pointed to Parkinson’s, Type 1 diabetes, epilepsy, and macular degeneration as other diseases that could be helped by their technology.

Parkinson’s disease affects millions of people worldwide, and current treatments primarily focus on managing symptoms rather than replacing the neurons lost to the condition.

The STEM‑PD therapy is designed to introduce new dopamine‑producing cells, offering a regenerative approach that differs fundamentally from existing therapies. 

“Bringing AI into this world has been challenging; we are trying to create noise in the room, to create a notion of urgency in this ecosystem,” Breakstone told the Magazine at the symposium.

According to him, much of the technology was already there to integrate AI into the field of biology. “The issue isn’t convincing people, it’s executing,” he said.

A Danish home 

Denmark’s capital has a long history of producing results in therapeutics, and Breakstone explained that the company “landed in a perfect home” when they signed the deal with Novo Nordisk. “We are infusing AI into the culture of this ecosystem here in Copenhagen.”

Biology is very complex, and for decades, finding cures to debilitating diseases has taken decades and cost millions of dollars. In recent years, the application of AI into the field has made significant strides, including allowing scientists to predict how cells would respond to external cues.

With Novo Nordisk’s clinical‑stage cell therapy program, Cellular Intelligence plans to apply its AI foundation model, which is trained on millions of cellular perturbation conditions, to accelerate the development and manufacturing of the therapy toward commercialization.

The company says its platform can compress traditional cell‑therapy timelines and reduce production costs, a key barrier to commercializing complex regenerative‑medicine products.

The program’s progress will be closely watched as researchers and industry leaders evaluate the potential of AI‑supported development pipelines to accelerate the arrival of next‑generation treatments.

“It can speed things up,” said Jens Nielsen, CEO of BioInnovation Institute (BII), Copenhagen, Denmark, and professor of systems biology at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. 

Speaking to the Magazine on the sidelines of the symposium, Nielsen said that AI can help speed up “preparations, analysis, development time and cost.”

Cellular Intelligence, he said, “is infusing technology to biology, which is super complex.”

The BII is a life science and DeepTech innovation institute in Copenhagen. It supports over 130 startups that have collectively raised over €1 billion in external funding. 

According to Nielsen, “Israel has excellent innovation and drive. We want to capture that for Copenhagen. The fusion of our history and that technology will enrich the ecosystem.”

Nielsen, who has visited Israel numerous times and has spoken to key stakeholders, explained that while Israel has a lot of biotech companies, there are fewer health-tech companies. Denmark, he said, “despite its small size, has a lot to offer in terms of drug development competence.”

It’s personal

For Breakstone, finding a cure for Parkinson’s is personal. Yet, it’s not only Parkinson’s that Cellular Intelligence hopes to find a cure for. 

“Cancer is really interesting. We are having initial thoughts about the disease and are optimistic about learning how cancer evolves and behaves.”

Vitaly Formin, CEO of Numenos, also hopes to use AI to match drugs to biology and thereby “cure everything, starting with cancer.”

According to the company, its CURE platform integrates and analyzes clinical trial data, revealing valuable insights that guide decision-making and patient stratification.

With a diverse team made up of entrepreneurs, biologists, physicists, and AI specialists, the company specializes in detecting biomarkers early in clinical trial development to allow for cheaper and more successful phase three clinical trial design.

Formin noted that Numenos aims to match drugs to a person’s biology and predict what the drug will do. 

“We look at the human as a whole biological system. We find the law of one disease and apply it to others,” he said on the sidelines of the symposium. “Cancer is a process of life. You can take data from a specific cancer and apply it to other diseases. The data is interconnected.”

Formin believes that with the help of AI, patients would have extended time to speak with their physician. “We want every patient to have a Ph.D in their disease,” he said. 

“The future of biotech will change human revolution,” Formin stated.

Not destiny, but designed

AI‑native platforms are not just accelerating stem‑cell therapy; they are now redefining what is scientifically possible. Cellular Intelligence’s fusion of computational power, biological insight, and global collaboration signals a turning point where living medicines can now be engineered with the same intentionality as any other technology.

What once depended on slow intuition is shifting toward predictive, data‑driven design, opening the door to therapies that are scalable, precise, and personalized.

The momentum building in Copenhagen, Boston, and Israel shows that this is no isolated trend but the emergence of a new biomedical architecture.

It is one where regenerative medicine is guided by algorithms that learn, adapt, and improve. If the field succeeds, diseases long considered intractable may become tractable, and conditions managed for decades may finally be cured.

As cellular intelligence guides the body toward healing, AI is guiding modern medicine toward a future where care is smarter, gentler, and profoundly more effective.

As Breakstone puts it, “Biology is no longer destiny, but designed.”

The writer was a guest of the symposium.

While society often assumes that finding a romantic partner is the ultimate key to happiness, tracking relationship changes over time reveals a distinctly different reality.

A massive longitudinal study carried out jointly by Prof. Elyakim Kislev at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) and Dr. Menelaos Apostolou of the University of Nicosia in Cyprus has proven that people actually experience higher emotional well-being when they are single compared to when they are enduring a poor- or moderate-quality relationship.

Ultimately, they stress, while a high-quality partnership does boost overall happiness, the data confirms that settling for an unfulfilling romance takes a far heavier psychological toll than preferring to be single.

Published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences under the title “Do relationship changes cause changes in emotional well-being? A longitudinal investigation,” it provides scientific backing to a well-known piece of life advice – that it is emotionally better to be single than to remain in a bad relationship.

Kislev teaches and researches at HUJI’s School of Public Policy and holds a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University and three master’s degrees – in counseling, public policy, sociology. He is the author of Happy Singlehood: The Rising Acceptance and Celebration of Solo Living, which has been translated into numerous languages, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, and Hebrew.

The researchers set out to test the hypothesis that relationship status constitutes a significant predictor of emotional well-being. To uncover these insights, the research team analyzed data from 13 waves of the Pairfam study (Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics, a German study for researching partnership and family dynamics) tracking a representative sample of 12,000 German participants.

While baseline findings indicated that participants’ emotional well-being was significantly higher during waves in which they were in an intimate relationship compared to waves in which they were single, Apostolou and Kislev discovered that the quality of the relationship is the ultimate deciding factor.

“What makes this study unique is that we followed participants over several years to see how their happiness shifted as their relationship status changed,” Kislev explained in an interview with The Jerusalem Post. “The results clearly indicate that it isn’t simply about being coupled up. The quality of the relationship is the deciding factor for our emotional health. If a relationship is poor or even just moderate in quality, an individual’s life satisfaction and positive emotions are significantly lower than if they had just stayed single.”

Higher emotional well-being

They found that participants reported higher emotional well-being when single compared to poor- or moderate-quality relationships, although high-quality relationships yielded the best outcomes.

“We analyzed data from 13 waves of the Pairfam study, a longitudinal project with a representative sample of 12,000 German participants, using mixed-model analysis. Our results indicate that participants’ emotional well-being was significantly higher during waves in which they were in an intimate relationship compared to waves in which they were single. We also found that singlehood was associated with more negative emotions for men than for women, though the observed difference was small,” Kislev noted.

Asked how, as an expert in public policy, he decided to research being single/married and happy/unhappy, Kislev responded that, “right now, the rise of singlehood is one of the most dramatic demographic shifts in modern human history. Yet, policymakers and society are completely blind to it. I realized that if we don’t understand the well-being of single people, we are failing a huge, growing percentage of the global population.”

In general, older adults, especially women, often adapt over time to singlehood, having built resilient social networks, whereas younger adults, especially around their 30s, might feel the immediate social pressures more acutely, he said.

Since many people assume that “being in a relationship” is automatically better than being single, Kislev suggested that “what fit humanity in the past doesn’t necessarily fit it now. This caused heavy socialization, media conditioning, and what researchers call “matrimania”: the over-celebration of marriage. The never-married tend to have the highest baseline of single well-being because they have optimized their lives for it. Divorced and widowed individuals experience a drop during the transition, but over time, their well-being frequently rebounds, although not entirely.”

Social pressure to be in a relationship causes some people to remain in partnerships that reduce their well-being. “People turn to and stay in relationships due to social and family pressure. In reality, we know that the fear of the stigma of being single is often worse than the reality of a bad marriage, keeping people trapped.” A considerable proportion of adults are not in an intimate relationship – 47% of American adults under the age of 30.

The evolutionary framework regarding emotion can be applied to understand the connection between emotional well-being and relationship status, the researchers suggested.

“Maintaining a long-term intimate partnership offers several fitness-increasing advantages – to reproduce, Raising children to sexual maturity requires considerable, prolonged, and reliable investment, a burden often too great for a single parent, so being part of a couple is best served by long-term, effective cooperation between parents; Additionally, a committed long-term relationship reduces the risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections, which are more prevalent in the context of casual sex, they wrote.

Fit and single

But being single also provides specific fitness benefits.

“They can focus their energy and resources on developing personal qualities such as higher education and better jobs that may later be used to attract higher-quality mates. By remaining single, they can concentrate efforts on addressing immediate fitness-compromising issues, such as health problems. But they can suffer from negative emotions such as loneliness and sadness. Although temporary singlehood offers advantages contingent on life stage and context, it is reasonably argued that the fitness benefits of a long-term intimate relationship generally outweigh those of singlehood, so being in an intimate relationship is typically more fitness-increasing than not being in one,” Kislev explained.

The new study began in 2008 with a nationally representative sample of over 12,000 young adults from three birth cohorts: 1971-1973, 1981-1983, and 1991-1993, who were interviewed annually to see if anything changed over time.

Intimate relationships were classified as good or poor quality, based on subjective relationship satisfaction. Participants who reported scores that ranged from “0” to “3” were classified as being in a poor-quality relationship, from “4” to “6” as being in a moderate-quality relationship, and from “7” to “10” as being in a good-quality relationship.

Only about 16% of participants said they were in a poor- or moderate-quality intimate relationship over the years, reflecting the tendency for people to end relationships they view as low quality.

They plan future studies to provide further evidence by replicating this finding in different cultural settings and by using more refined measures of relationship status.

Greece has reopened the Palace of the Despots in Mystras after 42 years of restoration and preservation work, the Greek Culture Ministry announced in late May. 

The Palace of the Despots, the only surviving Byzantine palace complex in Greece, dates back to they 14th century and served as the seat of the Despotate of Mystras, a province of the Byzantine Empire. 

It is the 30th museum selected since 2019 by the ministry as part of its plan for the permanent protection and preservation of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the country, with a focus on three main goals: protection from climate change, accessibility, and the integration of digital technology.

The archaeological site has been on UNESCO’s list since 1989. 

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis inaugurated the site in a formal ceremony alongside Culture Minister Lina Mendoni, and many other local and government officials.

“Today, the only surviving Byzantine palace complex in Greece reopens its gates, restored, legible and functional in terms of exhibitions,” Mendoni said during the reopening ceremony. “The Palace is the most important secular monuments of the Castle City.”

“Its complex building history vividly captures the transition from the Frankish to Byzantine rule and the evolution of the Despotate of the Morea.”

Accessibility, fighting climate change

Renovations of the site included preserving and reinforcing visitor pathways to maximize accessibility and installing an elevator in the palace structure itself, integrating a modern fire suppression and water supply system to defend against possible wildfires, and the conservation of churches within the ancient city.

“Today is of particular importance for Laconia and the Peloponnese, as not only is another restoration project being inaugurated,” said Mendoni in her speech, “A place of national historical memory and identity, a cultural asset of universal value and a timeless core of culture is being returned to society.”

The years of restoration and renovation will allow “Greek and foreign visitors to approach history experientially and to recognize the timeless importance of Greek culture and the historical continuity of Hellenism,” she added.

Featured exhibits that can be visited

Since 2022, the ancient city has included elements of Greece’s “Biodiversity and Archaeological Sites” program, which highlights the natural environment as an integral part of the historical landscape. 

Additionally, Mystras will be home to a permanent physical and digital exhibition titled “Hegemonic Narratives” which presents the role of the imperial families in the administration and intellectual heyday of Mystras.

Tours of the palace include visiting two temporary exhibitions.

The first, titled “In the Princess’s Court,” sheds light on the timeless reception and fascination that Mystras held for the European intelligentsia, from the 15th to the early 20th centuries. 

The second, titled “A Depiction of Glorious Garment,” focuses on clothing as a symbol of power and social identity.

It includes handmade garments that would have been worn in the Palaeologan court, inspired by Byzantine iconography, which were created by the monastic brotherhood of Pantanassa and with the assistance of the Greek National Opera’s costume department.

An ancient Greco-Roman cemetery was discovered at the Tel Kom Aziza archaeological site in Beheira Governorate in northern Egypt, the Egyptian Tourism and Antiquities Ministry announced last week.

Excavation of the site revealed multiple different types of burial, from simple burial pits where the deceased were directly interred in the soil to those with frames made from mud bricks. 

Several painted plaster and barrel-shaped pottery coffin, among those most common coffin types in the Ptolemaic period,  were also found at the site.

Dr. Hisham El-Leithy, Secretary-General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities noted that the burial orientations didn’t only vary in method, but it in position as well. 

Orientation of the burials varied between north–south and east–west axis, Leithy explained, adding that the hand positions of the deceased differed between folded or crossed over the pelvis, around the neck, in the distinctive Osirian position with arms crossed over the chest, or straight alongside the thighs.

Additionally, complete burials of wild boars were found at the site – a rare discovery in ancient Egyptian funerary sites given the animal’s association with the deity Set.

Older artifacts found at the site also show the cemetery had been built above older settlement levels, with finds dating back to Egypt’s Old Kingdom, New Kingdom, the Late Period, all the way into the Greek and Roman eras.

Such artifacts included pottery and stone vessels used in daily life, bread molds, multi-purpose stone tools, a collection of ovens and storage vessels, as well as a large quantities of fish, bird, and animal bones.

Mohamed Abdel-Badie, Head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Sector at the Supreme Council of Antiquities said that the excavations represents a “multi-period archaeological site, that witnessed settlement and habitation activities since the earliest phases of ancient Egyptian history, before transitioning in later periods into an area of intensive funerary activity.”

Further, the site serves as a “comprehensive archaeological record documenting diverse patterns of human interaction with the surrounding environment across successive historical eras,” according to Badie.

“This new archaeological discovery reflects the great importance of the Tel Kom Aziza site as one of the most promising archaeological sites in the Delta region,” said Egypt’s Tourism and Antiquities Minister Sherif Fathy. 

Its significance, he noted, is not limited to the discovered funerary remains alone, but alslo provides a comprehensive picture of the evolution of settlement patterns, daily life, and human-environment interaction across thousands of years.

كشفت البعثة الأثرية المصرية التابعة للمجلس الأعلى للآثار، عن جزء من جبانة أثرية من العصر اليوناني الروماني، بتل كوم عزيزة الأثري بمحافظة البحيرة، مما يلقي الضوء على تاريخ الموقع وأهميته الأثرية باعتباره أحد المواقع متعددة الفترات الزمنية في دلتا مصر. pic.twitter.com/fcdMyVmV7f

— Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (@TourismandAntiq) June 5, 2026

Ancient Egyptian tombs, coffins discovered at Luxor necropolis site

In May, archaeological excavations at a necropolis on the Nile River’s west bank have uncovered a plethora of previously unrecorded individuals and ancient Egyptian artifacts, the Egyptian Tourism and Antiquities Ministry announced on Friday.

The excavations, which began in November 2025, are taking place in the area of Draʻ Abu el-Naga’s necropolis, located on the Luxor West Bank in Egypt. 

It has been focused on the southeastern part of the tomb of Roy, an 18th Dynasty royal scribe and his wife, which has been covered in debris from archaeological missions from over a century ago.

In the courtyard between the tomb of Roy and the nearby tomb of Baki, archaeologists have discovered a collection of 10 wooden coffins hidden within a burial shaft. All 10 were found to be in good condition, bearing a variety of scenes and texts.

According to preliminary studies, four of the coffins date to the 18th Dynasty, including one bearing the name of Merit, believed to be a chantress of Amun.

A second coffin, dating to the Ramesside period (the 19th and 20th Dynasty periods), bears the name Padi-Amun (“he who Amun gave”), who was a priest in the Temple of Amun.

The remaining coffins dated to the Late Period of Egypt, circa 664–332 BCE, which encompassed the 26th-31st dynasties.

US President Donald Trump told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that it is time to end the war with Iran, Axios reported on Saturday.

A senior US official told Axios that Trump called Netanyahu on Thursday evening and described the potential US-Iran agreement as “a great deal.”

“This is the deal,” said Trump. “It’s a great deal, and it’s time to end this war.”

The official said that Netanyahu expressed to Trump his concern that the deal must address Iran’s nuclear program, but avoided any significant argument with the US president.

“Bibi probably understood that a deal was about to happen and that he could not stop it,” said the official.

Axios cited a source with direct knowledge of the call who said Netanyahu was caught off guard by the pending agreement.

The source added that the Israeli prime minister was not directly involved in the talks and had been contacting his Washington allies for information on the status of US-Iran negotiations.

Axios: Israel avoiding public criticism of deal

According to Axios, Israeli officials are concerned about the contents of the US-Iran deal, but have avoided publicly criticizing it.

“I understand the Israeli skepticism,” a US official told reporters on Friday. “Hezbollah killed a lot of innocent Israelis, especially Israeli civilians. So we don’t expect any country to give up their right of self-defense.

“What we do expect is that if we’re able to have everyone participate in the peace process, that everyone else will do the same,” the official said, adding that Washington is confident that Israel will “get on board” with the deal.

Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Friday that the pending deal was based upon Trump’s “assessment of American interests,” saying that Israel reserves the right to act independently against Iran’s nuclear program.

According to the report, Israel is further concerned that the deal could limit IDF operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The senior US official noted to Axios that further Iranian support for Hezbollah would violate the agreement, as would any Hezbollah fire upon Israel.

“We feel like when they see the full terms of the deal, and when they appreciate that fundamentally, that there has to be delivery from the Iranians before we deliver any of the benefits, that they’re comfortable with that,” the official concluded.

Three well-preserved large storage jars dating back to the Middle Bronze Age were discovered during annual excavations in ancient Shiloh ahead of the city’s annual Wine Festival on Friday.

The excavations – whose purpose was to reach the site’s bedrock – were led by Dr. Scott Stripling, the Ancient Shiloh site and the Mishkan Shiloh Foundation, in cooperation with the Archaeology Staff Officer and the Heritage Ministry.

The jars were found in a layer of earth dated to the iddle Bronze Age, hidden beneath Late Bronze Age remains and below those from the Iron Age.

Archaeologists had also previously uncovered approximately 10,000 animal bones, numerous Late Bronze Age pottery vessels, and offerings made of gold and silver in the same area.

Following their excavation, the jars will undergo careful scientific analysis in order to determine their exact age and their original use, currently theorized as being storage vessels for agricultural products, such as grapes, wine, olive oil, and other similar commodities.

In the Tanach, Shiloh served as one of the ancient Israelites’ central locations of worship and housed the biblical Tabernacle. The ancient city has been positively identified with Tel Shiloh, located in modern Israel, just over 30 kilometers from Jerusalem, in the West Bank.

Jars found days before Shiloh’s wine festival

Over the past several years, Shiloh’s annual excavations have become a significant archaeological research projects – and this year, despite the ongoing war and looming Iranian threat, dozens of participants from across the globe arrived at the ancient site to take part in unearthing the site’s history.

The discovery comes just days before Ancient Shiloh’s annual Wine Festival, which will feature dozens of wineries, workshops, and tastings and a lecture by Professor Shivi Drori, one of Israel’s leading wine researchers, who will discuss the connection between Israel’s archaeology and the modern wine industry. 

Recently, Drori has led groundbreaking research working to identify and revive ancient grape varieties through genetic analysis of archaeological remains, some of which have since been used to produce local wines. 

Shiloh holds proof that cannot be denied

“This is an especially exciting discovery,” said Stripling. “We set out to investigate the earliest layers of the site in order to better understand the history of Shiloh, and along the way we uncovered three impressive storage jars that have remained preserved for thousands of years.”

 “We now have the opportunity to examine what they contained and perhaps learn new details about the daily lives of the people who lived here long ago.” 

“Every year we come here with researchers and volunteers from around the world to uncover another chapter in the story of Shiloh, and this year people chose to come despite the war because they understand the significance of this remarkable place,” he continued.

Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu added that “anyone who wants to understand who this land belongs to need only get down on their knees and dig.”

“Every layer of soil in Shiloh tells a story that cannot be denied: the Jewish people lived here, worked here, and produced wine and oil here thousands of years before anyone ever dreamed of inventing a Palestinian people,” Eliyahu said. “We will continue to develop and excavate our history in Shiloh and throughout Judea and Samaria, revealing to the world these findings that serve as undeniable proof of the Jewish people’s ownership and connection to this land.”

Mateh Binyamin Regional Council Israel Ganz echoed Eliyahu’s sentiment, noting Shiloh’s ancient connection to the Jewish people in the land.

“While there are those who seek to distort, deny, or erase our history, the earth itself continues to speak,” Ganz explained, adding that “time and again, discoveries emerge here that tell the story of our ancestors, who lived, worked, prayed, and built their lives in this place thousands of years ago.”

The jars, he noted, join a “long line of evidence connecting the past to the present” showing that the Jewish people are simply “continuing the path of those who came before us, cultivating the land, building communities, planting vineyards, and developing the region.”

“This is a story of historical continuity that has never been broken and will continue for generations to come.”

The Civil Administration’s Archaeology Unit’s Staff Officer Benyamin Har Even affirmed the unit’s support for Shilah’s excavations, adding that each excavation season adds to Israel’s historical understanding of one of the most important biblical archaeology sites.

“There is something especially moving about the fact that just days before the Ancient Shiloh Wine Festival, jars thousands of years old, likely used to store grapes and wine, have been uncovered here,” Mishkan Shiloh Foundation CEO Kobi Mamo said.

“The discovery is unrelated to the festival and emerged as part of the annual excavation,” Mamo went on, “yet it beautifully illustrates Shiloh’s unique historical continuity, from the vineyards and wines of ancient times to the leading wineries operating here today.”

Last week, Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade published its obligatory Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) on the Irish government’s Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition on the Importation of Goods) Bill 2026 (the PIGS Bill), which was published the previous week.

The bill, in various forms, has consumed an unprecedented amount of parliamentary time and has been the subject of eight years of debate and controversy in Ireland.

Its enactment represents a repetitive demand of all Irish pro-Palestinian and antil-Israel groups and all of Ireland’s opposition parties. 

The central focus of the bill’s advocates is to ban the importation into Ireland of all goods and services originating from “Israeli settlements” in the West Bank, Gaza – where no settlements exist – and east Jerusalem. 

The bill, as published, applies to such “settlements” but is confined to goods and excludes services. The exclusion has enraged those who have campaigned for its enactment. 

These people favor applying boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) to the entirety of Israel and all Israelis, and many advocate Israel’s eradication. They perceive the bill as a Trojan horse for a broader boycott and its promotion as a mechanism for demonizing and delegitimizing Israel.

The bill’s publication coincides with all Irish anti-Israel groups and opposition parties campaigning for a boycott of the autumn-scheduled Ireland-Israel UEFA football matches as a follow-up to Ireland’s self-harming, irrelevant boycott of Eurovision.

Escalating boycott campaigns in Irish public life

The former follows failed campaigns to have Israel excluded from all international football and basketball games and is accompanied by a less prominent campaign to have Israel excluded from participating in the European wheelchair rugby championship! 

In today’s Ireland, even disabled Israelis are legitimate targets for opprobrium and discriminatory boycott!

The exclusion of Israeli services from the PIGS Bill has been justified by the Irish government on the grounds that they are impossible to regulate and that prohibiting them could jeopardize the export of Irish goods to the US – Ireland’s second largest trading partner, accounting for 32% of goods exported in 2024. 

The overall Ireland-US economic relationship is valued in the RIA as exceeding one trillion euros.

The government is also concerned that extending the bill to include services could jeopardize many of the estimated 245,000 jobs provided by US global multinationals based in Ireland, as well as the many jobs indirectly related to US companies.

It could also compromise further US investment in Ireland and the billions of euros in tax payments annually received by Ireland’s exchequer from US companies, which the Irish economy and public services are hugely dependent on. 

Additional concern relates to any potential impact on Irish multinationals operating in the US. 

This is due to US anti-boycott laws – both at the federal level and in 38 states – which prohibit companies from complying with or cooperating in boycotts involving pre-1967 Israel and the “Occupied Territories” and may affect how such companies can operate or implement related policies.

The concerns have been exacerbated by commentary from 40 members of Congress, who are critical of the Irish government’s plans.

International context and emerging legislative comparisons

When first proposed, the bill, if enacted in its original form, would have been the first Nazi copycat law specifically targeting Jews in Europe since the end of World War II. 

Spain has now achieved that distinction by enacting a ban on the importation of goods from Israeli settlements, including Jerusalem, similar to the PIGS Bill. 

The Netherlands and, reportedly, Belgium are currently considering such laws. Slovenia has abandoned any such plan upon its new government assuming office.

The RIA accompanying the PIGS Bill, while sounding serious warnings, also starkly illustrates its farcical nature. 

“Goods” under the bill are said to include things of every kind, whether animate or inanimate.

Their importation is to be prohibited if they originate from a postal code whose goods do not benefit from preferential tariffs afforded to Israeli goods under the terms of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. 

Under existing EU arrangements in place since February 2005, all Israeli goods commercially entering the EU must detail the postal code and name of the area where the products come from. 

To enable the arrangements’ implementation, the European Commission periodically publishes lists of non-eligible locations that do not benefit from preferential tariffs and their postal codes. 

They are all considered within the “Occupied Territories” and east Jerusalem.

Like Spain, the Irish government is now intent on weaponizing the published lists to identify goods to be prohibited from being imported into Ireland. 

Ireland’s customs authorities are charged with implementing the law when it is enacted and brought into force.

While the objective of the bill is to boycott Jewish goods originating from Judea and Samaria and also east Jerusalem – perceived as “illegally Occupied Territories” – unlike its draft predecessor, it excludes non-commercial imports “that form part of a person’s personal baggage and are intended for his or her personal consumption or use.”
 
This is to avoid Irish customs feeling compelled to check the baggage at every port and airport of every traveler entering Ireland. 

The initial draft included such goods: following the bill’s enactment, should I purchase a tallit, tzitzit, tefillin, a yarmulke, or a mezuzah in east Jerusalem for my personal use, there should be no difficulty in my importing these items upon returning to Dublin. 

I can even arrive with some dates grown on a moshav in the West Bank for my personal consumption. 

However, should I purchase any such item as a gift for family and friends, I could find it confiscated by customs or, if undeclared, be at risk of prosecution.

To what extent, if any, Irish customs will conduct spot checks on arriving passengers or identify travelers returning from the Holy Land as likely customs offenders – whether Jewish or non-Jewish – is unknown.

A concerning provision in the PIGS Bill, not present in the original draft, facilitates the creation – at the discretion of the foreign minister – of a database to enforce its provisions. 

An open question is whether the government intends to collect data recording the identities of every member of the Irish Jewish community and of Israelis residing in or visiting Ireland for specific baggage searches by customs officers.

Legal framing and the government’s interpretation of the bill

According to the RIA, the bill is based on Ireland’s perspective that settlements in “Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including east Jerusalem, have no legal validity” and that nothing should be done “to entrench” Israel’s “unlawful presence.”

This is a euphemism for it being Irish government policy that no Jewish person should reside or work in Judea or Samaria, nor in east Jerusalem, despite the Jewish people’s 3,000-year historical connection to the land. 

In the Irish government’s view, there is no validity to the Jewish connection to the Kotel, the City of David, and to the many archaeologically established Jewish sites, many referenced in religious texts and in established history for centuries.
 
The government appears to retrospectively validate Jordan’s illegal occupation of east Jerusalem from the 1948 War of Independence until 1967, as well as its expulsion of all its Jewish residents and expropriation of their property. 

It entirely ignores the continuity of Jewish residence in east Jerusalem going back millennia.

The RIA also depicts the bill as resulting from an “advisory opinion” of the International Court of Justice of July 2024 that states should abstain from trade dealings with Israel concerning the “Occupied Territories,” which assist in entrenching Israel’s “illegal occupation.” 

The “opinion” is regarded by the government as creating an international law obligation to impose the PIGS Bill ban on goods. Of course, if such an “obligation” existed, it would equally apply to services. The ICJ doesn’t distinguish between them.

The first problem is that under the EU’s Common Commercial Policy, the EU has exclusive competence over international trade. While the Irish government has referenced this as another reason for excluding services from the bill, it is also why it lacks the competence to enact legislation prohibiting the importation of goods.
 
The RIA points out that EU law permits states to prohibit the import of goods “on public policy grounds” but does not mention that under EU case law, this can only be utilized in very exceptional and narrow circumstances where there is “a genuinely and sufficiently serious threat to the requirements of public policy affecting one of the fundamental interests of society.” 

It cannot be credibly suggested that the import into Ireland of €685,000 worth of goods over the five-year period from 2020 to 2024, largely consisting of dates, olives, and avocados, constitutes any such threat nor “entrenches Israel’s presence” anywhere.

The second problem is that the ICJ’s opinion is merely an opinion; it has no binding effect. However, EU law is directly applicable, and the RIA admits that the European Commission, on October 17, 2025, rejected the proposition that the “opinion” requires any prohibition on the import of goods. 

The RIA asserts that the Irish government disagrees with the Commission’s rejection.
While repetitively asserting that it is Irish public policy for the state to comply with international law, the RIA bizarrely rejects compliance with Ireland’s primary international commercial trading obligations, which are enforceable by the European Commission and clearly prescribed under the EU Treaties’ Common Commercial Policy.

According to Ireland’s Central Statistics Office, imports of goods from Israel in 2024 were valued at €3.8 billion. 

Imports in 2024 directly from the “Occupied Territories” were €214,204.

The RIA also acknowledges that these goods may arrive through the port of another EU state, clear customs there, and, under EU free-market movement rules, enter Ireland clear of any Irish customs controls. 

The reality is that the Irish government is engaged in a symbolic and farcical legislative process to prohibit the direct importation into Ireland of a minimal amount of goods originating in the “Occupied Territories,” which, if the PIGS Bill becomes law, could still be indirectly imported into Ireland through any other EU state.

The RIA omits to reveal that such goods could simply be delivered to Belfast port and then transported across the Irish border from Northern Ireland under special arrangements put in place as a result of Brexit to ensure the free movement of goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The RIA acknowledges the economic and political risks created by enactment of the bill. They include:

The European Commission could initiate infringement proceedings against Ireland before the European Court of Justice for enacting a bill incompatible with EU Treaties, potentially requiring Ireland to pay damages.

The “potential” negative political impact from Israel and the US with “significant adverse impact on Irish economic interests and operators.”

This references the fact that all of the US-related economic perils previously detailed – which resulted in the exclusion of services from the bill – are equally applicable to its prohibition on the import of goods. 

The political perils also include damage to Ireland-US political relationships and the possibility that Israel may expel Ireland’s ambassador to Israel and to Ireland’s recognized state of Palestine.

The potential negative perception of Ireland in the US, among the Israeli public, and within the Diaspora – which presumably includes Ireland’s small Jewish community.

The RIA acknowledges that development of the bill has resulted in accusations of antisemitism, which the government rejects. It is a rejection that lacks any credibility in the real world outside Ireland’s political bubble.

As Israel continues to be confronted by existential threats posed by Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, various other terrorist groups, terrorist lone wolves, and a range of internal political difficulties, and as a general election looms, the political circus that is Ireland’s largely irrelevant engagement with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to dominate Irish parliamentary time, public protests, and political campaigning. 

The lunacy is a consequence of the Irish government’s repetitive, toxic anti-Israel rhetoric; its lack of backbone and consistent failed attempts to appease opposition political parties; and the escalating number of antisemitic Irish-Israeli hate groups and their cultish followers.
 
Attempting to overcome US hostility to the bill, the RIA asserts that the Irish government doesn’t support a BDS approach in relation to Israel and asserts the bill is not a BDS measure as it doesn’t apply to Israel within its pre-1967 borders.
 
That assertion lacks all credibility and is not assisted by opposition parties, who depict it as a flawed boycott measure that should be extended to services.

The Irish government is legally required to inform the European Commission of the PIGs Bill’s content, and the Commission can respond. Whether the Commission will make any public comment on the bill that inhibits its progress is unclear.
 
Meanwhile, as the Irish government is about to assume the presidency of the EU, it is continuing its futile and obsessive campaign within the EU for suspension of the EU-Israel Association agreement and continues, through its toxic rhetoric, to contribute to escalating antisemitism.

The writer is a member of the board of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations and a former Irish minister for Justice and Defence. The views expressed here are his own.

The Reform movement’s central rabbinical seminary filed a motion to dismiss the state of Ohio’s lawsuit against the school Friday, claiming the suit violates “foundational Jewish religious doctrine.”

It was the latest escalation in a pitched battle between Hebrew Union College and the state attorney general’s office, which has accused HUC of violating nonprofit law by shuttering degree-granting programs on its historic Cincinnati campus.

The suit, HUC argues, “violates the First Amendment by entangling government and religion.”

The suit was originally filed in April by then-Ohio AG Dave Yost, his second against the college related to its controversial plan to wind down its Cincinnati operations in favor of its New York and Los Angeles campuses.

Yost claimed HUC’s actions in Cincinnati misled its donors by leaving a city where they were actively fundraising to support operations, and also violated its charter, which states that the school would “permanently maintain” a residence there.  

The state seeks to seize HUC’s assets in Ohio and redirect them to a new, yet-to-be-decided nonprofit with a similar mission; an upstart rabbinical school founded by HUC alums says it wants them. 

HUC claims government interference is unconstitutional

Such a move “is an unconstitutional and illegal governmental assault upon religion,” HUC’s strongly worded motion reads. 

It continues, “The Attorney General has no role in dictating the religious affairs of institutions like HUC. The Court should reject his overreach into religious matters and should dismiss the Complaint because it is unconstitutional and unlawful.”

HUC also argues its vote to shutter the Cincinnati campus was done in full compliance with the law, adding that it intends to maintain the campus’s other assets, including the Klau Library, the American Jewish Archives, and the Skirball Museum. In addition, citing a passage in the Torah that states “God will come to his people wherever they welcome him,” the school argues that considering “Jewish demographic realities” is part of its religious mission.

“These decisions were made thoughtfully and responsibly to ensure the long-term success of the institution and our ability to continue graduating strong Jewish leaders,” HUC president Andrew Rehfeld said in a statement accompanying the motion. The lawsuit, he added, “improperly seeks to interfere in the decisions of a religious organization, and this cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.”

Yost himself resigned as AG this week to join the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group that, in 2022, represented a Tennessee adoption agency that refused to foster a child to a Jewish couple. The suit against HUC continues under the state AG’s office.

The United States military shot down several Iranian suicide drones in the Strait of Hormuz, US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced in an X/Twitter post on Saturday.

The drones were an attempt by the regime to target commercial vessels transiting the strait, CENTCOM said.

CENTCOM added that traffic flow through the Hormuz “continues unimpeded” and that the critical waterway “remains open for transit.”

Iran launched multiple one-way attack drones in an attempt to strike commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. forces have downed all of them in recent hours as traffic flow through the strait continues unimpeded. The international trade corridor remains open for…

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) June 13, 2026

On Thursday, Iranian media reported Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had fired drones at Kuwait’s Ali Al Salem Air Base in retaliation for US strikes on Iranian military assets on Tuesday.

Additional Iranian strikes were reported in Jordan, with the IRGC claiming to have fired four missiles at the US al-Azraq base, claiming the base housed F-35 fighter jet hangars and a command-and-control center.

In addition, alert sirens sounded in Bahrain on Wednesday, according to the country’s Interior Ministry.

Iran, Trump trade warnings against future attacks

The IRGC warned on Thursday that they were prepared to deliver a “crushing and decisive” response to any additional US strike.

US President Donald Trump warned Iran on Friday against firing more drones at ships attempting to transit the strait, saying Tehran “better get their act together.”

Also on Thursday, Iran’s state news site WANA reported an IRGC Aerospace Force Commander Brig.-Gen. Majid Mousavi as threatening the Middle East with harsh consequences if the US destabilized the Hormuz.

“Will you make the sacred Strait of Hormuz unsafe?” said Mousavi. “We will turn the entire region into hell for you from across Iran.”

Tzvi Jasper, Goldie Katz, and Danya Saperstein contributed to this report.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino has failed to deliver on promises to secure full access for the Iranian soccer federation to attend the team’s three games in the United States, Iran’s World Cup team supervisor told Reuters.

Mahdi Mohammad Nabi, who also served as Iran’s supervisor in charge of squad operations at the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in Russia and Qatar, is among 15 Iranian soccer federation members denied a visa to travel to the U.S. for the World Cup games.

He spoke to Reuters on Thursday evening, a day after Infantino gave a free-wheeling press conference in Mexico City in which he celebrated Iran’s participation in the tournament as proof of his organisation’s success in navigating complex political issues.

“We hope Mr. Infantino will indeed implement the words and promises he made to the Iran national team,” Nabi told Reuters on Thursday.

“The FIFA regulations and protocols must be properly followed by both member federations and hosts.”

FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The US State Department said the visas had been rejected because it “will not allow the Iranian team to abuse this system to sneak terrorists into the US under false pretenses.”

Iran team claims the US has denied entry to its members disproportionately 

The US has also denied visas to Iranian and African journalists covering the World Cup, implemented bond measures for countries flagged for high rates of visa overstays, and implemented travel bans against nationals from four countries that qualified for the World Cup.

The US this week denied entry to Somalian FIFA referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan, despite him having a valid visa to enter the US, for alleged links to “terror organizations.”

But Iran is the only World Cup team whose federation has seen large numbers of its members denied entry into the US.

The denials unfold against a backdrop of escalating strikes between the warring countries, which have threatened to reignite a full-scale war that was paused in April when the two sides agreed to a fragile ceasefire.

This is the first World Cup since its inception in 1930 in which a host nation is set to receive a country it is at war with.

The players were granted U.S. visas 10 days before their first match outside Los Angeles, which is scheduled for Monday against New Zealand.

FIFA confronts protests in Toronto over Israel ties ahead of Canada World Cup match

Protesters unfurled a massive red banner on top of the World Cup logo near a busy highway in Toronto on Friday, denouncing FIFA’s association with Israel, hours before Canada’s first game.

Demonstrators donning shirts that read “Jews for a free Palestine” mounted a nearby embankment and dropped the banner with the message “Kick Israel out of FIFA.”

The banner was visible to commuters on the Gardiner Expressway – one of Canada’s busiest – on their way to the home team’s opener against Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Toronto stadium.

Other actions organized by a group of activists included demands for the release of prominent Palestinian doctor Hussam Abu Safiya, who was captured by the Israeli military in Gaza in late 2024.

Faisal Ibrahim, a spokesperson for the activists, accused FIFA of being complicit with Israel’s actions against Palestinians.

“FIFA not only turns a blind eye to the Israel Football Association’s playing of games on illegally occupied West Bank and Syrian territory, it actually actively broadcasts those games, thereby normalizing occupation and erasure, which makes FIFA an active and complicit participant,” he told Reuters.

In March, global soccer’s ruling body said it would take no action against Israeli clubs accused by the Palestine Football Association of competing while allegedly based in Palestinian territory, citing the unresolved legal status of the West Bank under public international law.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed tens of thousands, caused a hunger crisis, and led to assessments of genocide from scholars and a United Nations inquiry.

Israel strongly denies genocide accusations and calls its actions self-defense after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages in an October 2023 attack.

UN experts have also appealed to FIFA and the Union of European Football Associations to suspend Israel from international football.

When people talk about the world’s centers of power, most immediately think of the United States, China, Russia, or the European Union.

It may seem that only the great powers are capable of influencing international developments, shaping the global agenda, and affecting nations and states. But the reality of the 21st century shows that size is not always what matters. Sometimes, it is precisely small states that manage to wield influence far beyond their population size, geographic area, or military strength.

The international system gives small states a significant advantage. In the United Nations General Assembly, countries with populations of only tens or hundreds of thousands have one vote, just like the United States, China, or India.

While the great powers clearly have greater influence in political reality, the principle of sovereign equality gives small states a diplomatic power that should not be dismissed. In a world where every vote can sometimes make a difference, even a small country can have major influence.

In the age of globalization, new tools of influence have entered the arena. In the past, a country’s power was measured by the number of tanks, aircraft, and soldiers at its disposal. Today, influence can also be exerted through capital, technology, media, social networks, and the ability to shape public consciousness. Soft power has become a strategic asset whose importance is no less significant than military power.

Singapore is one of the clearest examples of this. A small country with no natural resources became an international financial center and a hub of global economic influence. Israel, too, despite its small size, has managed to establish itself as a powerhouse of innovation, cybersecurity, medicine, and agriculture, with influence felt far beyond its borders.

But not all influence is used for positive purposes. Alongside small states that promote cooperation, development, and innovation, some countries use their economic and diplomatic power to promote extremist Islamist ideologies, influence public opinion, and shape political narratives.

How Qatar built international standing that far exceeds its size

Qatar is perhaps the most prominent example of this phenomenon. It is a small country in terms of territory and population, but it possesses enormous wealth from its gas and oil resources. Over the years, Qatar has managed to build an international standing that far exceeds its size. It hosts international conferences, maintains ties with leaders around the world and at times serves as a mediator in regional conflicts.

At the same time, criticism of its role in promoting extremist Islamist movements has grown. For many years, Qatar provided political, media and financial support to groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which became one of the central sources of inspiration for radical Islam.

Hamas, which sees itself as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, also emerged from this worldview.

For years, Hamas leaders operated from Doha, Qatar’s capital, enjoying freedom of movement and diplomatic legitimacy. At the same time, billions of dollars were transferred to the Gaza Strip under the label of civilian and humanitarian aid.

These funds allowed Hamas to divert resources toward building a murderous terrorist infrastructure, digging hundreds of kilometers of tunnels, purchasing weapons, and making preparations that ultimately led to the traumatic events of Oct. 7.

Qatar’s influence is not limited to the Middle East. According to various reports in the United States, vast sums have been funneled over the years to leading universities, research institutes, and academic centers. Some of this money was used for legitimate philanthropic activity, and some was intended to influence academic discourse, the appointment of researchers, and the shaping of anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives against Israel.

After the Oct. 7 attack, as leading campuses in the United States became arenas of harsh anti-Israel demonstrations, questions resurfaced about the influence of foreign money on the academic climate and the development of hostile attitudes toward Israel.

Qatar has also invested enormous resources in the international media arena. Through media organizations, public campaigns, and cross-border communication platforms, it has managed to influence global public discourse and the way conflicts in the Middle East are perceived.

This is a clear example of how influence today can be exercised not only through military force, but also through shaping consciousness.

Small states matter too

By contrast, the power of small states can also be used for positive purposes. An example can be found among the island nations of the Pacific Ocean, including Nauru, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Fiji. Although these countries are small in terms of population and territory, they have understood that through coordination and cooperation, they can increase their influence in the international arena.

In international forums, especially the United Nations General Assembly, Pacific states often coordinate positions and organize joint votes. Each holds only one vote, but when several countries act together, they create significant diplomatic power. 

Over the years, these states have stood out for their consistent support of Israel and their opposition to one-sided and unbalanced resolutions against it. They have proven that small states can act out of loyalty to principles of fairness, partnership, and long-standing friendship. Nauru was among the first countries after the United States to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel.

The example of the Pacific states illustrates the two sides of modern diplomacy. On one hand, small states can use their economic and media power to promote extremist ideologies, influence public opinion, and serve political interests. On the other hand, they can serve as a moral voice, a bridge between peoples and a partner in promoting stability and international cooperation.

From my experience as honorary consul of Nauru and in the diplomatic arena, I have learned that behind the scenes of international relations, conversations take place and decisions are made that do not make headlines.

Sometimes, a personal relationship of trust and cooperation built over many years can have more influence than speeches delivered in the halls of the United Nations.

The central lesson of the 21st century is clear: power is no longer measured only by the size of a country’s territory, the number of its soldiers, or the strength of its economy. It is also measured by the ability to influence ideas, institutions, media, and the consciousness of millions of people. 

The quiet diplomacy of small states can be a constructive force for peace and prosperity, but it can also be a tool for promoting dangerous ideologies. Small states, too, can be important players in shaping the global agenda, for better or worse.

The author is the CEO of Radios 100FM, honorary consul and deputy dean of the Consular Diplomatic Corps, president of the Israeli Radio Communications Association, and a former Army Radio monitor and NBC television correspondent.

There are too many mediocre crime series on all the channels and streaming platforms, but Legends on Netflix is a welcome exception.

It is based on a true story that is certainly not well known outside the UK about British customs inspectors in the ’90s who infiltrated the drug trade.

The suspenseful series brings to mind The Wire, particularly its second season, which was set in the Baltimore port, and Traffik, a British show from the ’90s that was adapted into the Oscar-winning 2000 movie Traffic, which focused on different aspects of the drug trade.

Legends contrasts the tedium of the work of Liverpool customs officers, who spend their days looking through luggage and cargo, and the daredevil exploits of those who choose to sign up for the mission, which they learn about when a notice is posted in their breakroom asking the question, “Could You Offer More?”

Steve Coogan, the star of Tropic Thunder and 24-Hour Party People, plays Don, the leader of the newly formed unit.

Alongside Coogan, Tom Burke plays Guy, a military veteran who is bored out of his mind by his job and is ready for anything, including bringing down a Turkish drug-smuggling gang.

All the members of the unit discover that they have special skills they were never aware of before. Some are great at tracking paper trails and following the money, others are good at surveillance, and still others shine at gaining people’s trust.

They are pressured to come up with results in a punishingly short timeline because then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher, struggling to stay on top, wanted high-profile arrests to show that the government was tough on drug crime, particularly the new opioid epidemic, which was taking lives all over the country.

This creates constant conflict between government officials who green-light the unit and the agents who risk their lives daily, which makes for great TV.

Pride month programming

IT’S PRIDE MONTH, a time of celebration for the LGBTQ+ community, and there is television programming to go along with it. Yes Docu and Yes VOD are featuring the documentary My Boyfriend the Fascist, about the relationship between Matthias Lintner, a left-wing Italian filmmaker, and Sadiel Gonzalez, an idealistic Cuban activist, who live together and find that their political differences threaten to derail their relationship.

Yes VOD is also presenting UnNamed by Ehud (Udi) Mordehay, about the aftermath of the attack on the Tel Aviv branch of the LGBTQ+ association in 2009, in which two people were killed.

The killer was never caught, and the film follows the director, who was 16 when he was wounded by a bullet in his stomach there, as he tries to come to grips with his trauma 13 years later.

On June 21, Yes Docu, Yes VOD, and Hot 8 will present Boy George & Culture Club, a documentary about that legendary band and its frontman, who is still making waves, particularly by speaking out against antisemitism.

It will be a treat for fans of the band, and they speak about their use of Hebrew letters and Jewish symbols in their costumes, explaining that they wanted to illustrate the band’s name by being truly multicultural. The movie is also available worldwide on Apple, Prime Video, and other platforms.

The medical drama that started it all

NOW THAT season two of the hit series The Pitt, starring Noah Wyle, on HBO Max has ended, if you want to see an intense medical drama, you can watch ER, the one that started it all, on Netflix.

Wyle was also one of the stars of that series, playing John Carter, a medical student from a wealthy family.

While ER may look rather tame compared to The Pitt, when it debuted in 1994, it was groundbreaking for its portrayal of the reality of emergency medicine.

It was more graphic than previous genteel medical dramas, although it had its share of soapy plotlines: Think of it as The Pitt meets Grey’s Anatomy.

Michael Crichton, the bestselling author of thrillers such as The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park, wrote it.

He studied medicine at Harvard, and although he was never a practicing doctor, he knew firsthand what life was like in an emergency room.

The series was co-produced by Steven Spielberg’s company, Amblin Television, and was a cut above most television series of that era, especially in writing and acting.

While doctors had previously been portrayed on television as selfless saints who healed every patient by the end of each episode, the doctors on ER were flawed and quirky, fond of black humor. They could only do so much in a medical system increasingly driven by profit.

The show launched the career of George Clooney, who played the devoted pediatrician and heartbreaker Dr. Doug Ross.

At a time when it was extremely rare for an actor to move from the small to the big screen, Clooney began getting major roles in movies such as From Dusk Till Dawn and Out of Sight, and left the series after a few seasons.

Another actor whose career was boosted by the series was Julianna Margulies, who went on to star in The Good Wife. The top-billed cast member was Anthony Edwards, who played the nerdy Dr. Mark Greene, the perfect foil to Clooney’s character.

ANOTHER NEW series running on Apple TV+ is Cape Fear, starring Javier Bardem as a psycho killer released from prison on a technicality who terrorizes the family of the lawyer (Amy Adams), who defended him.

Cape Fear was previously the basis of two films and proves that a good, scary idea can work across different eras.

The series is much gorier than the two movie versions, featuring enough graphic violence so that those who are missing Euphoria can still get their fix of torture and dismemberment.

If that description isn’t appealing, you might want to check out the two movie versions of Cape Fear, which are both available on Apple TV+.

The first version, made in 1962, stars Robert Mitchum as a former convict and Gregory Peck as the lawyer who must resort to violence to protect his family.

This movie version is in black and white and obviously not as violent as the later versions, but to my mind, it’s the best one of all.

In the 1991 film, directed by Martin Scorsese, who is an executive producer on the new series, Robert De Niro is convincing as the crazed killer, and much more over the top than the quietly menacing Mitchum, while Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange play the lawyer and his wife.

The Simpsons spoofed this film in an episode in the fifth season called “Cape Feare,” which is available on Disney+, as the show’s resident psycho, Sideshow Bob, kidnaps Bart in what turns into a shot-by-shot remake of Scorsese’s film, except for the part where the killer sings an entire Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

What does the average Israeli know about Taiwan? It’s a fair bet that the knowledge of the vast majority of us regarding that faraway place centers on the political tensions between the island country – officially called the Republic of China – and the mainland leviathan of China.

Anyone who pops over to the Jerusalem Cinematheque later this month stands a better chance of coming away with far deeper insight into what makes Taiwanese society tick, as well as the traditions and historical backdrop to the country of around 24 million people which traces its human timeline back at least 25,000 years.

The inaugural local Taiwan Film Week, which will take place at the Jerusalem Cinematheque between June 18-24, is a numerically modest affair with just a half dozen movies in the lineup. But what it lacks in quantity it appears to make up for in breadth of subject matter, genre, style, and cultural baggage.

Tel Aviv-based Taipei Economic and Cultural Office Representative Ya-Ping (Abby) Lee calls the festival “a celebration of storytelling and friendship” and says she hopes “Israeli audiences enjoy these films, discover new perspectives about Taiwan, and leave the cinema feeling much closer to Taiwanese people and culture.” 

With the spread of works offered during the upcoming film week, the latter wish seems a perfectly feasible prospect. 

The standout item in the lineup, at least in terms of global profile, is undoubtedly Left-Handed Girl, which has claimed prizes at film festivals around the world since its release last year, and was the Taiwanese entry for Best International Feature Film at this year’s Oscars, going as far as the shortlist stage.

Parallels between Taiwan, Israel 

Jerusalem Cinematheque head Roni Mahadav-Levin feels that hosting a Taiwan film event is a natural fit for his institution and sees some parallels between Taiwan and Israel, though they are not necessarily positive. 

“What interests me about the Taiwanese film industry, in comparison with the Israeli industry, is that conflict is ever-present. For them it is the conflict with China and, like in contemporary Israeli cinema, it is always there, and absent and then present,” he observed. “That is something that resonates in contemporary [Taiwanese] cinema. It is frequently there in the background.”

Mahadav-Levin singled out a couple of the items in the program he felt have political – with uppercase and lowercase “p’s” – divisions in the storyline. 

“I think it is an issue in the classic film, A Touch of Zen, from 1971, and also in Left-Handed Girl. Left-Handed Girl was launched at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, as part of Critics Week,” he noted.

It was something of a slow burner that went through a prolonged gestation stage before finally getting off the ground. It eventually happened, in large part, thanks to some input from an industry A-lister. 

“It was a project by director Shih-Ching Tsou that was talked about for a long time. The person who achieved the breakthrough for the film, which was in limbo, was Sean Baker,” he said. Baker is an acclaimed director, producer, editor, and writer who has four Oscars to his name, as well as a Palme D’Or at Cannes and a BAFTA. 

This is Tsou’s debut as a solo director, although she has shared that role before – with Baker – and taken on various slots in Baker films, such as the award-winning Take Out, as well as Starlet and Tangerine, which were all well received. 

Left-Handed Girl, similar to intense multilayered family drama Crown Shyness, has prominent generation gap vignettes embedded in the plot, references and traditional beliefs set against more contemporary viewpoints amid pressing existential challenges.

The festival blurb mentions LGBTQ+ issues featured in several of the films, and it is in the script mix in Crown Shyness and Silent Sparks. The latter film is a debut outing for director Ping Chu, which fuses gangster cinema with queer romance in a finely stratified work. 

“Taiwan is, today, the most advanced country in Asia with regard to LGBT rights,” Mahadav-Levin said. “It was the first Asian country to allow same-sex marriages. But there is also a generation gap. That comes through in Crown Shyness as well as in Silent Sparks.”

That comes across as a clear sign of robust societal and political health, and the willingness of filmmakers to portray such aspects of Taiwanese society in their work is also an encouraging element of the film industry and arts community as a whole there.

Following on from my dubiousness about the depth or breadth of the information we possess about Taiwan, quite a few of us may also identify that general part of the world with the practice of martial arts. That, for folks of a certain vintage, say the over-65s, might conjure up the name of Bruce Lee. 

While Lee was born in San Francisco and grew up in Hong Kong, the Hollywood superstar of the early 1970s was such a ubiquitous presence at the time in movie circles one could be forgiven for mistakenly latching onto his image in the context of Taiwan-martial arts, too. That is front and center in Kung Fu, by 47-year-old novelist-filmmaker Giddens Ko, and in A Touch of Zen. 

Literature and, possibly more poignantly, community-level life are cast in a gentle spotlight in Hou Chi-jan’s Poetries From the Bookstores: Somewhere I Belong. The delicately crafted film takes a loving look at a slew of independent bookstores, of numerous ilks, and how they serve as much-needed corporeal interfaces between booksellers and readers of all ages and walks of life.

There are also a couple of lectures lined up in the cinematheque program, including a talk in Hebrew by interdisciplinary expert in Asian cultures Zevik Rylski before the screening of Poetries From the Bookstores. 

Maybe, considering the achievements of the likes of stellar Taiwanese multi-Oscar Award-winning director Ang Lee, one should not be too surprised by the quality of filmic material coming out of the Eastern Asian country. 

Taipei representative Lee, naturally, hopes we all enjoy her country’s cinematographic fare and, who knows, perhaps watching the movies may even whet the travel appetite of Israelis always on the lookout for some new vacation destination. Lee clearly does not rule that out. 

“Cinema is a powerful cross-cultural bridge between people,” she declared. “Taiwan and Israel are both dynamic, innovative, and democratic societies. We look forward to strengthening the cultural and friendly ties between Taiwan and Israel through cinema.”

Screenings of Taiwanese films are also scheduled to take place, in parallel, at the cinematheques of Tel Aviv and Herzliya.

For tickets and more information: jer-cin.org.il/en (Jerusalem), www.cinema.co.il/en/ (Tel Aviv), and www.hcinema.org.il/ (Herzliyah)

An indictment was filed against a 44-year-old resident of Haifa for contacting a foreign agent and providing information to Iran.

According to the indictment, Raanan Ben Haim Ohana carried out a series of missions for an Iranian agent, some of which directly impacted state security in the context of Israeli operations in Iran.

Ohana was arrested in May on suspicion of working for an Iranian intelligence agent over the course of several months.

According to police reports, he transferred intelligence to Iranian-linked actors from January to March 2025, including during the recent Israeli-US war with Iran.

Accusations against Ohana include providing the agent with detailed information about loopholes in security checks at ports and how weapons could be smuggled into Israel. He provided photographs of sensitive locations, including the Haifa waterfront and American warships.

Ohana reportedly received cryptocurrency payments totaling approximately NIS 2,500.

Latest of several espionage arrests

Since the outbreak of the war with Iran in March, several Israeli citizens have been arrested and charged with espionage for Iran. 

Superintendent Maor Goren, head of the security division at the Israel Police’s Lahav 433 major crimes unit, told KAN Bet that the arrest of Roi Mizrahi and Almog Atias in mid-May marked the 20th case his unit and the Shin Bet have handled over the past year involving Israelis suspected of spying for Iran.

Thai authorities arrested two Israeli citizens on suspicion of business and real estate crimes as part of a wider crackdown on foreigners circumventing the country’s laws.

On Tuesday, police in Thailand arrested an Israeli citizen at Koh Samui airport on suspicion of being involved in the purchase of land through Thai frontmen, in an attempt to circumvent the restrictions on foreigners purchasing real estate.

The Thai government is increasing enforcement of these laws following complaints from its citizens that foreigners are stealing their livelihoods in the city’s tourist areas.

According to local media, Surat Thani immigration police, in collaboration with Koh Phangan Police Station, arrested Eden Elisa, a 30 year old Israeli citizen who was one of the owners of “Elisa Paradise” in Thailand. He is suspected of having, along with others, provided false information to the land registry in order to gain control of a plot of land through the company allegedly established by Thai citizens.

Elisa reportedly left the country before authorities carried out a search warrant and was arrested at the airport upon re-entering Thailand.

The arrests are part of a wider crackdown on foreign workers

Last week, authorities arrested another Israeli citizen on suspicion of illegally operating a business through Thai frontmen and providing false information on official documents. 

Israel DJ Gal Goren, 39, was arrested on suspicion of illegally operating a recording studio.

On the same day, an American citizen and a Spanish citizen were also arrested on suspicion of working without a permit.

The arrest, carried out by the tourist police, immigration police, and Pai district officials based on an arrest warrant from the district court, is also part of a broader operation against illegal foreign businesses in areas such as Pai, Koh Phangan, and Samui, where mainly Israelis, Russians, and Chinese operate. In April, authorities arrested an Israeli travel agency owner who operated on the island of Phuket.

Thai authorities are continuing their efforts to thwart the takeover of real estate and businesses by foreigners, with an emphasis on Israelis.

Under the direction of the Thai government, the country’s police have been acting vigorously and in a high-profile manner in recent months against foreigners who purchase land or operate businesses while using Thai citizens to hide foreign ownership, and last month another extensive operation was launched, which according to police reports has already led to the issuance of 45 arrest warrants.

So far, 27 suspects have been arrested, while efforts are ongoing to locate the remaining 18.

This striking, grimly satirical political cartoon expresses what is being said in diplomatic circles this week, capturing the strategic vertigo gripping both Jerusalem and Washington. It depicts an elevator labeled “Lobby of Hell.”

The newest Iranian cleric and his partner, the Hezbollah operative, stand hand-in-hand, staring out as an elevator car descends into an abyss watched over by a welcoming devil. On either side of the shaft stand US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, their fingers pressed firmly on the elevator call buttons. 

Above Trump, floating in an idealized cloud, is Uncle Sam; above Netanyahu floats Theodor Herzl. Both leaders look grimly determined, convinced their fingers are guided from above by foundational visions of American greatness and a safe, iron-clad Jewish state. Netanyahu, wanting to guarantee the future of the Jewish state, and Trump, who is out of options looking for an agreement and a way out of the quagmire, keep pushing the hold call button.

But look closer at the cartoon, and the unsettling truth reveals itself: we are all staring intently at the elevator buttons, but we have completely lost track of the shaft itself. We are trapped in a dangerous collective delusion, focusing on political theater while completely missing the structural architecture of the war we are supposedly fighting.

The shaft symbolizes that the Iranians are happy to pull us all down to hell with them in a jihad-like suicidal moment. Worse still, it is no longer clear whether Uncle Sam or Theodor Herzl possess the same binding relevance or moral authority in modern America or contemporary Israel that they once did. 

We are executing policies based on outdated paradigms, and in doing so, we run the risk of fulfilling the grim punchline of the old medical joke: the operation was a spectacular success, but the patient died on the table. 

Uncle Sam was created for the American public and reinforced by political cartoonists who wanted a symbol that represented the strength, authority, and government of the nation itself, rather than just its abstract ideals. The lack of American support for the war with Iran is evident in that the American people are not looking at Uncle Sam in the same way as they did before.

The illusion of tactical victory

Our leaders tell us that we are winning. We are treated to triumphant press conferences celebrating the degradation of Iran’s conventional capabilities. 

The United States and Israel have claimed sweeping, early victories after a series of highly sophisticated operations that decimated the Iranian conventional navy, shattered their sophisticated air defense networks, and severely compromised their targeted nuclear facilities.

Militarily, these were masterpieces of intelligence and kinetic execution. Strategically, however, they have exposed a profound, almost catastrophic misunderstanding of our adversary. 

Jerusalem and Washington measured victory by Western metrics – ships sunk, centrifuges smashed, radar screens gone dark. But we quickly discovered that this conventional infrastructure was never what the Islamic Republic considered its true center of gravity. 

Despite the devastation of their formal navy, the Iranians simply pivoted to their real naval doctrine: utilizing swarms of small, lethal “mosquito” crafts capable of harassing, damaging, and paralyzing massive oil tankers, maintaining a permanent chokehold over the Straits of Hormuz and destabilizing the global economy at will. 

Their conventional air defenses are gone, yet their massive, deeply buried ballistic missile stockpiles remain entirely capable of penetrating regional defenses and shifting global markets in a single afternoon. 

Furthermore, our fixation on “cutting off the head of the snake” has ignored the deeply institutionalized, hydra-like nature of the regime’s ideological apparatus. Time and again, as senior commanders and clerical figures are neutralized, a fresh cohort of fanatical, highly trained leaders stands ready to immediately step into the vacuum and continue the Jihad. 

Internally, the regime’s primary strength is not its external projection of conventional power, but its merciless domestic security apparatus. The internal police and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) hold the domestic opposition in an iron grip, demonstrating a horrifying capacity to kill without remorse, upward of 40,000 of their own citizens, to maintain their hold on power. They do not play by our rules, nor do they value what we assume they value. 

A war misunderstood and mis-sold

This war with Iran did not begin with the dramatic escalations of January 2026. It began decades ago as a meticulously planned, multi-layered, low-intensity conflict. For years, while the West hoped for diplomatic integration, Iran quietly constructed a matrix of power: a domestic paramilitary state, an impressive ballistic and naval asymmetric capability, and a sprawling proxy military, intelligence, and influence network. 

This network was designed specifically to challenge the “Great Satan” of the United States and the “Lesser Satan” of Israel. The catastrophic horrors of October 7 were not an isolated eruption of localized violence; they represented the major culmination of intensity in Iran’s long-term, low-intensity war against the West. 

Yet this reality has been completely obscured. The conflict has never been properly explained or sold to either the American or the Israeli public. Instead, leaders and the media have collapsed a complex, civilizational struggle into a single, monochromatic talking point: the nuclear issue. 

By framing the entire Iranian threat around the singular question of whether Tehran possesses a nuclear weapon, the public has been fundamentally misled. 

The hard truth is that even without a single nuclear warhead, the Iranian regime, as one of the world’s most prolific and sophisticated exporters of global terrorism and asymmetric Jihad, remains an existential threat. 

By over-indexing on the nuclear threshold, our leadership has allowed the public to believe that if the centrifuges are stopped, the threat is neutralized. This has created a dangerous cycle of false victories and subsequent disillusionment when the asymmetric onslaught continues unabated. 

The divergence of two fronts

Months ago, I was frequently quoted on Channel 14 asserting that Israel and America were “fighting the same enemy but not the same war.” Today, as I watch the political ground shift beneath our feet, it is clear to me that even that statement was overly optimistic. We are no longer even fighting with a shared understanding of the enemy. 

In the initial stages of his return, Trump’s rhetoric suggested a firm grip on the nature of the Iranian regime and its malevolent intentions. He spoke clearly of Iran as an unmitigated adversary of the United States. 

However, when the Iranians refused to fold under maximum pressure and instead outplayed the administration through calculated asymmetric escalations, Washington’s appetite for confrontation vanished. 

Trump quickly began looking for an exit strategy, seeking a grand bargain and shifting his rhetoric to suggest that there are “reasonable” factions within Iran with whom a deal can be struck. 

The American electorate, exhausted by decades of Middle Eastern entanglements, originally acquiesced to the concept of confronting an evil Iran. 

But as the current conflict begins to mirror the ghosts of the Iraq War – long, drawn-out, costly conflicts with no definitive end in sight, accompanied by rising gas prices, deepening global isolation, and widening strategic vulnerabilities opposite a rising China and an aggressive Russia – the public’s patience has shattered. 

Today, the broader American public no longer views Iran as an arch-enemy demanding a national mobilization. Instead, they view Iran much like North Korea: a distant, unsavory, nuclear-adjacent nuisance, but not a day-to-day American problem. 

Trump has reached the end of the elasticity of public support for this war; his “America First” base is signaling a profound weariness with foreign campaigns that offer no domestic return. 

Contrast this with the reality in Jerusalem. For Israel, this is not a discretionary foreign policy choice or a distant geopolitical chess match. It is a stark, absolute, existential war against a suicidal, fundamentalist Islamist enemy dedicated to the total eradication of the Jewish state – an enemy operating a ring of fire via Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen. 

Netanyahu now finds himself in a position where he has lost the public’s confidence that he possesses (in him possessing) a meaningful, reasonable, or executable plan for actually bringing long-term safety to the country. There is a pervasive, terrifying fear among the Israeli public that Israel is becoming globally isolated, locked in a forever war with no end in sight for the threats raining down on its borders. 

The coming electoral reckoning

Both leaders now face a brutal, high-stakes election season in a matter of months, and both are standing on exceptionally shaky ground. If the current trajectory continues, we will face a scenario in which we may win tactical engagements against Iran yet lose everything that matters. 

Trump and his base risk losing the American midterm elections as an explicit sign that middle America has lost confidence in his approach to global stability. Simultaneously, Netanyahu faces electoral defeat driven by an Israeli public terrified of permanent international isolation and perpetual vulnerability. 

Most alarmingly, a recent piece in The Wall Street Journal highlighted a devastating structural shift: Netanyahu has lost “Middle America.” This is not the loss of progressive activists or fringe political groups; it is the erosion of the vital, centrist, foundational support that has undergirded the US-Israel strategic alliance for generations. 

If Israel loses the broad middle of American society, it loses the logistical, diplomatic, and moral lifeline that allows it to survive in a hostile region. 

We cannot afford to continue operating in isolation, blinded by our own leaders’ domestic political agendas for survival. Both democratic electorates have endured enough confusion, strategic incoherence, and suffering for this decade. 

It is time to step away from the elevator buttons. We must immediately level-set, rigorously coordinate our strategic narratives and messaging with our most vital ally, and responsibly manage expectations on both sides of the Atlantic. 

If we do not realign our visions of the future, the elevator will continue its descent, and we will find that we might have won the battle but lost the war, only to find ourselves in the lobby of hell that we were hoping to send our enemies. 

If Iran is an enemy, it is not just their nuclear ambitions, their ballistic missiles, their proxies, or support of global terror that needs to be confronted alone; it is either regime change or the illusion of victory. 

America must decide, in an America-first approach, to choose its own direction and whether to be in or out of the real solution. 

Israel independently must make the same decision as an independent entity. 

Weakening the Iranian threat is also a strategy, but it is not a victory. It is a temporary, perhaps acceptable short-term solution – but it is not a victory. Fooling ourselves is clearly not a good long-term strategy and should end now.

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

On June 13, 2025, Israel launched Operation “Rising Lion,” a military campaign that will likely reshape Israeli security doctrine for generations.

For many years, the debate surrounding Iran revolved around one central question: What are its intentions?

Does the regime in Tehran truly seek to destroy Israel? Are its threats aimed primarily at domestic audiences? Is the Iranian leadership rational? Is deterrence working?

These were important questions, but they were not the right questions.

The great lesson of “Rising Lion” is that national security cannot be based on assessing intentions. It must be based on preventing capabilities.

Intentions can change overnight. Leaders change. Regimes fall. Political circumstances shift.

Capabilities remain.

A state possessing thousands of ballistic missiles, a vast drone arsenal, and a military nuclear infrastructure does not become less dangerous simply because one expert or another believes it has no immediate intention of using them.

Jewish and Israeli history teaches this lesson again and again.

In the 1930s, there were those who argued that Nazi Germany merely sought to correct the injustices of World War I.

In May 1967, many focused on analyzing Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s intentions. Israel’s government ultimately chose to focus on facts: the closure of the Straits of Tiran, the expulsion of UN forces, and the concentration of Arab armies in Sinai. These were not declarations. These were military capabilities.

In October 1973, senior intelligence officials assessed that Egypt and Syria were not interested in war.

On October 7, 2023, Israel paid a heavy price for a conception that focused on intentions instead of capabilities.

Hamas possessed a terror army of tens of thousands of terrorists, a vast rocket arsenal, tunnels, and Nukhba forces. For years, the public was told that Hamas was deterred, that it sought arrangements, that it was focused on economics and governance.

The capabilities remained. One day, the intentions materialized as well.

‘Rising Lion’ shows a shift in Israel’s actions

This is precisely why Operation “Rising Lion” marks a profound strategic shift.

Israel did not wait for the moment Iran crossed the nuclear threshold. It did not wait for nuclear warheads to be mounted on ballistic missiles. It did not wait for final proof that the Iranian regime truly intended to carry out what it had declared for decades.

It acted to deny the enemy the capability.

During the operation, nuclear facilities, missile sites, command centers, and senior figures within Iran’s security establishment were targeted. The entire world was exposed to the depth of Israeli intelligence penetration and the extraordinary operational capabilities of the IDF, the Mossad, and Israel’s other security branches.

The message was clear: when an existential threat is in the process of being built, a responsible state does not wait for the threat to mature. It acts beforehand.

This is, in fact, one of the oldest principles of Zionist security doctrine.

Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion understood that a small state cannot afford to absorb the first blow.

Prime minister Menachem Begin applied this principle when he destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981.

The same principle guided the strike in Syria decades later.

Operation “Rising Lion” continued that same strategic tradition.

It serves as a reminder that the first duty of leadership is not to predict the future, but to prevent dangers before they become reality.

One year after the operation, it is still too early to know the long-term extent of the damage inflicted on Iran’s nuclear program. It is also too early to know what Iran will look like a decade from now.

But one thing is already clear.

On June 13, 2025, Israel returned to one of the most important principles of its security doctrine: never to entrust our existence to assessments regarding an enemy’s intentions.

Enemies are not judged by what they say they will do.

They are judged by what they are capable of doing.

And that is precisely why a nation that seeks life must remove strategic threats while they are still in the realm of capability, rather than waiting for them to become reality.

Those who remember prevail.

The author is the deputy chairman of the Institute for Security Policy of the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF) and served as a policy adviser to former strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer.

‘The tension between us was real when Yitzy said he was signing up for his sixth round of reserve duty. For me, it’s my family first, then nation and border. But he believes that by going to the border, he is defending his family here in Jerusalem. It was like that for him in his first round of reserve duty, and it’s still like that with his sixth.”

When Yitzy Friedman received a call-up notice for the reserves on October 7, 2023, his wife, Roni, watched him pack his things and leave within minutes.

Nearly three years later, as Yitzy serves in a sixth round of reserve duty, Roni is preparing to give birth to their fourth child while also wrestling with the cost of her husband’s decision to serve. She spoke to The Jerusalem Post about the tension between family obligations and national service.

Roni grew up in Petah Tikva, one of three siblings in a “religious but open” family. Today, she is a team lead in the Tel Aviv office of an American hi-tech company.

Prior to working in hi-tech, she worked in the public sector for over a decade (with MK Uri Orbach, the Jerusalem Municipality, and the Student Union), but said she is better suited to her current job as she “loves connecting people, whether around a product, or around technology, or around values.”

She met her husband, Yitzy, on a blind date while at university in Jerusalem 12 years ago, and they have been together ever since.

On October 6, 2023, the family was in their Jerusalem home, celebrating Simchat Torah with the rest of their community. Roni had just given birth to her third child a few weeks prior and had a tiny baby in tow.

“It was beautiful; I remember it like it was yesterday,” she recalled.

Tension, uncertainty loom as reserve duty call ups begin

However, the next morning, the family awoke to the sirens and went straight down to the building shelter. For the next few hours, Roni said she saw people “called up for miluim [reserve duty] in front of our eyes.”

“We joined our community in the synagogue across from us. I remember one person going to the army and then his wife sitting and crying like crazy,” she said.

“This guy didn’t die that day, but he had such a strong trauma that this was the last time we all saw him acting like himself. He is not functioning three years later. He was one of the first ones in Kfar Aza,” Roni continued.

She said she felt tension and uncertainty about what the situation would mean for the family, but never imagined Yitzy would leave.

“And then the first second he got the phone call that he needed to come up North, he started getting ready to leave. I was completely shocked. I couldn’t stop him, I couldn’t communicate with him,” Roni said.

“It was very surreal. He just started organizing stuff and said, ‘Roni, I’m sorry, everybody has to go.’ He took me outside. He hugged me. And then he just left. And you couldn’t stop him. It was a force stronger than nature,” she continued.

Left alone with two small children (ages three and four) and a newborn, Roni felt overwhelmed.

Then she heard a knock on the door: It was Yitzy’s brother. “He told me: ‘I came to be with you because he’s going to be out for a while. So don’t worry, I’m staying until everything gets clearer.’

“He moved in with us, which was the most surreal situation. He slept in the other room, and the kids slept with me in my bed. And we just passed the time together.”

Yitzy was gone for 40 days. During this time, she didn’t see him once and could barely speak to him on the phone either.

LATER, YITZY recounted what that time was like for him.

“On October 5, we had come back from a trip up North in the Golan with a group of friends and family and kids, and we did apple picking in a beautiful field in the Golan.”

When he left home on October 7, he took a tank and started driving in the Golan, passing through the same apple-picking field.

“Two days before, I was here with my family and friends picking apples; two days after I’m in a tank ready to fight any second, thinking I’m going to meet terrorists, and it was just surreal,” he recalled.

Yitzy fought consistently for the first six months of the war. “I understood completely that October 7 was an SOS, but with the months passing, I felt like I was drawn into this at the cost of putting my family in distress,” he said.

During this time, Roni was worried but at the same time felt a lot of resentment and anger.

She understands that for Yitzy, protecting his family means serving in the army. But she feels differently.

Roni shares conflicting feelings

“For me, it was his way to protect a country, a border, and other people who are not my family. And I felt like he was not seeing the price of what’s happening inside my house,” Roni said.

“With time, this anger unfolded. On the one hand, I’m always admiring him for putting his values in front, and the society and our nation in front, but I cannot pretend that it doesn’t create tension when our house is literally falling apart. We’re not in this good place, and [he] choose to go and defend the border.

“The perspective is just different. I don’t think my perspective is recognizable to him. I think it’s foreign to him in so many ways,” she said.

In those first few months of the war, Roni said that her feelings were not taken into account, and there was no conversation that involved her.

She also said that, as a citizen, a woman who didn’t do the army but did national service, she felt she couldn’t fully comprehend the situation, and therefore it was not her place to say anything.

The first time she says she ever spoke about her feelings was when the two did a recorded interview with KAN 11 about the price that reserve-duty couples were paying during the war.

“It was seven months into the war, and a crew came to our house, and we sat and just talked. I think it was the first time he heard me saying that when he is in miluim, I walk down the street and my state of mind is: ‘One step I take, Yitzy is alive. The next step I will take, he might not be alive.’ This is the anxiety I experience when he’s away.

“I think it was hard for him to hear that, but it’s very hard to bring it into the conversation in the day-to-day life because it really hurts the rhythm of a house, and it creates hard discussions that you don’t usually have time for, as we are either on rounds or in between.”

‘Family first, then nation and border and country and values’

THE THINGS Roni said helped her come to terms with the situation at the start of the war have become less powerful over time. She told herself at the start that Yitzy’s leaving to defend the border was necessary, that it was an emergency.

“But by the third round, the fourth round, the sixth round, I really didn’t understand.”

She began to recognize the difference between her and her husband: “For me, it’s my family first, then nation and border and country and values. I think he believes that going to the border defends us in Jerusalem.

“I think a lot of women will recognize that, during rounds, you just need to swallow that feeling to make sure the house will keep on running when he’s coming back. You don’t want a bad environment for your kids to grow up in.

“It’s very, very hard because you feel betrayed, in a way, every single time [he leaves]. I kept thinking that every moment, a rocket could come and drop on the building, and my husband would be somewhere else defending the border.”

This feeling of tension is exacerbated now, since Roni is six months pregnant with their fourth child.

She thought the pregnancy would allow Yitzy to say no to his current round of miluim (he is now serving his sixth round of reserve duty).

“I’m working additional US hours, and my support system is not the same at this point – people are busy. And there is pregnancy, and the kids are growing up and have more demanding activities. 

“I wanted him to say ‘no’ just one time. It was such a big trigger for both of us, because I was sure that this was the one time it was okay to say no. But for him, it’s just not an option.”

Roni also said that she feels a lot of guilt about being “this wife who is not happy and is always the one saying ‘no.’”

“I don’t know if they will be honest enough to say it, but a lot of women feel very guilty being the one who’s saying no [to their husbands serving]. 

“Why do I need to say ‘don’t go’? Look at me; see how I’m extremely scared of you going to Lebanon. Added to that is the lack of support. You should say, ‘This is not good for my family.’”

So much of Roni’s anger is also directed at the government. “I feel almost like they are using me and the status quo.”

She pointed out that the government relies on the fact that reservists will keep on coming to fight, keep on dropping everything. But she said that “at a certain point, you need to very naturally say that you cannot come anymore because life happens.”

Roni wants the government to make a plan, “so my husband will go to the sixth and seventh round [of reserve duty], but someone else will do the eighth one.”

“I never felt so used and hurt and angry at the government as I have since our kidnapped, the living and the dead, came back home,” she added.

Building a ‘new normal’

RONI ALSO addressed what it’s like when Yitzy comes home – how her family tries to build a “new normal” that may only last two or three months.

“It can really throw me off. I can be very ‘not myself’ for three months now because I know there will be an end to this. In a way, miluim became the routine, and the in-between became the time that we get allowance for. 

“In the first month, I’m on a high. I’ve got my family back. I can sleep at night. I don’t need to be worried about what’s happening.

“And then in the second month, I’m suddenly seeing all the gaps and frustration in our relationship. So many things come to the surface. All the tension that I built up and held when he was away, because I didn’t want to create a bad environment for the kids, and the frustration at home – it suddenly bursts because I need to say this stuff.”

She acknowledged that her experience of Yitzy coming home does not match his experience of coming back home.

“His experience of coming back from reserve duty is shocking, it takes time. His frustration comes up; he’s more agitated. He’s dealing with his work stuff, and he’s been out of the loop. Then, by the third month and fourth month, he’s going to the reserves again. 

“So it’s very messy and not a linear kind of relationship. When we get sometimes half a year between rounds, stuff can become a little bit better.”

Roni stressed that Yitzy is an amazing father, and their kids have a very close relationship with him.

“He works really hard to make sure that his relationship with the kids stays the best,” she said. “When he comes back, he’s fully with them, really devoted, doing everything needed, talking to them, communicating with them. I think they have a very close relationship where they can reopen themselves to him and they can count on him.

“It is amazing to see that he really prioritizes the relationship with the kids. When he’s with us, he’s fully with us and takes all the responsibilities. He’s an extremely involved parent in general.”

HOWEVER, RONI, who is with the kids every day, spoke of her sadness that her parenthood is negatively impacted by the situation. “When it’s just you [taking care of them] for so long, the ability to be a patient and nice parent gets harmed. In a way, I hate that I got to this point that also my parenthood gets hurt by this.

“I have one child who is really angry at me when Yitzy’s in a round in the army; he takes all the frustration out on me. And I’m accepting it because I understand the psychology behind it. But it’s another price we pay with miluim – our parenthood is being compromised.”

Nevertheless, Roni said she has no doubt that the family will come out the other end a united unit. “We are a strong family. It takes a lot of therapy, but we will work on it, and we will do our best to come out as strong as possible.”

She said that she hopes the new life she is carrying will create a little bubble for the family. “I’m excited just to have a really good reason to focus on us.”

Roni also spoke of her love and admiration for her husband.

“I admire his values, even if they’re very different from mine. And he’s a very good-hearted person. Anyone who meets him can see it in his eyes; he’s an angel. 

“It’s part of his flaws, too, because he will help anyone at any time, anywhere. Part of the scary thing about being his wife is that he will help someone until it can hurt him. So in a war zone, it’s extremely scary.

“He sounds tough, but he’s the most sensitive person. If I’m pretty sensitive, he’s an extremely sensitive person. That sensitivity really leads him in this world, and you can see it in his eyes. His heart is in his eyes.”

She has also learned to really admire herself.

“I think every woman, if they are asked how they have changed in the last three years and how proud they are, the answer will always be very positive. None of us thought we could hold so much for so long. I don’t want to do it for another second, but I’m definitely proud that, no matter what, I held the fort.”

The IDF killed two Palestinian Islamic Jihad platoon commanders and a Hamas deputy company commander in precision strikes in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, the military announced on Friday. 

The two commanders from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization were identified as Qasslam Hassan Saleh and Sami Jamil Abu Dalal, while the Hamas commander was identified as Ubay Mamoun Saleh Farwana. 

The terrorists, according to the military, had been planning to execute imminent attacks on IDF troops. 

IDF strikes, destroys Hamas weapons storage facilities

Earlier on Friday, the IDF announced that it had struck and destroyed three Hamas weapons storage facilities in the central Gaza Strip overnight. 

The facilities contained launchers, mortar shells, RPGs, explosive devices, firearms, and additional military equipment, according to the IDF. 

The weapons, said the IDF, were intended to be used against Israeli troops operating in the area surrounding Gaza’s Yellow Line, as well as against Israel. 

The IDF emphasized that measures, including aerial surveillance and the use of precise munitions, were taken before the strikes to reduce the risk of harm to civilians in the area.