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The IDF killed a former senior Jenin terror cell member and two additional terrorists in an IAF airstrike on their vehicle in the West Bank on Friday, the military confirmed in a joint statement with the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).

The senior terrorist, Qais Bitwani, was a Hamas operative in the now-dismantled Jenin terrorist network, according to the joint statement.

Qais Bitwani was a relative of the former Jenin terrorist network commander, Noor Bitawi, who was killed by the IDF in May 2025, the military and security agency said.

The statement noted that Qais Bitwani was involved in “significant” terror activities, including “directing, funding, and executing” terrorist attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Bitwani had maintained his connections to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, as well as international operatives, the statement added.

According to the IDF and Shin Bet, the other two terrorists in Bitwani’s vehicle were his accomplices, and the vehicle also contained weapons.

Netanyahu, Israel Katz congratulate IDF for Jenin strike

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated the IDF for the “successful thwarting of the terrorists in Jenin” in an X/Twitter Post earlier on Friday.

יוזמה והתקפה. אני מברך את כוחותינו על הסיכול המוצלח של המחבלים בג׳נין. שבת שלום!

— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) August 28, 2026

Defense Minister Israel Katz also congratulated the IDF in an X post later on Friday, as well as the Israel Police and security forces, describing the strike as among the “fruits of the offensive and proactive policy we are leading in Judea and Samaria.”

“We do not wait for terrorism,” said Katz. “We pursue it, conquer its strongholds, and thwart its people.”

אני מברך את צה״ל, שירות הביטחון הכללי ומשטרת ישראל על הפעילות המוצלחת לחיסול מפקד חמאס במחנה ג׳נין ביחד עם מחבלים נוספים בתקיפה אווירית מדויקת.

המחנה עליו פיקד פונה מתושבים ונכבש על ידי צה״ל, וטוהר ממחבלים ותשתיות טרור וצה״ל שוהה בו באופן קבוע, כמו מחנות טרור נוספים ביו״ש, והוא…

— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) August 28, 2026

He noted that the policy has led to an 80% decrease in West Bank terrorist activity, emphasizing that Israel “will continue to act forcefully and proactively to thwart any threat to its citizens, wherever it may be found.”

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Four young British men pleaded guilty on Friday to charges over an arson attack on community ambulances in London, the first of a spate of incidents targeting the UK’s Jewish community earlier this year.

Hamza Iqbal, 20, Rehan Khan, 19, Judex Atshatshi, 18, and Saif Ali, 18, appeared at London’s Old Bailey court on Friday and admitted destroying or damaging property, being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.

The torching of four ambulances belonging to Jewish volunteer emergency service Hatzalah on March 23 while they were parked near a synagogue.

Prosecutors said at a previous hearing that web searches for “how much do ambulances cost” and “how long does it take for police to (investigate) arsons” were found on Iqbal’s phone after his arrest.

A fifth defendant, 18-year-old Subhan Ahmed, pleaded not guilty to a charge of assisting an offender relating to the disposal of a vehicle used in the incident. He is expected to stand trial next year.

Prosecutors say the attack targeting Hatzalah, a not-for-profit volunteer service that works alongside Britain’s National Health Service and primarily serves the Orthodox Jewish community, cost around £1 million ($1.36 million).

Pro-Iran terror group claimed responsibility for series of arson attacks

Several other attacks followed the March arson attack on the Hatzalah ambulances.

A synagogue and a former synagogue were targeted, as was Persian-language media organization Iran International and a memorial wall dedicated to people killed in Iran, in a series of incidents in April and May.

British police said at the time that they were investigating possible Iranian links to those arson attacks, with pro-Iranian terrorist group Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya (HAYI) claiming responsibility for the ambulance attack and some others.

The SITE Intelligence ​website has said HAYI had been behind similar fires in Europe.

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A Dutch court on Friday sentenced a 67-year-old man to life in prison for war crimes and genocide committed in Rwanda in 1994, where it said he had been involved in the killing of around 3,000 Tutsis who had sought refuge from Hutu attacks at a stadium.

The defendant, identified only as Eugene N., had fled to the Netherlands in 1998 and later obtained Dutch nationality. Dutch prosecutors opened an investigation into him in 2020, which led to his arrest in the Netherlands in 2024.

The court said the man had been at the stadium in Byiza in April 1994 and gave the Hutus present “instructions to let no Tutsi escape the stadium.”

“In the afternoon, shots were fired at the Tutsis, they were pelted with stones, and hand grenades were thrown onto the field. One grenade was thrown by the defendant. Survivors of the afternoon attack were killed with clubs and machetes,” it said.

The defendant’s lawyers have denied that he had a role in the massacres. Instead, they said he tried to avoid the genocide.

Over 800,000 killed in 1994 Rwanda genocide

More than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in 100 days in the 1994 genocide, orchestrated by the Hutu ruling majority and meticulously executed by local officials and ordinary citizens.

The court said the man also took part in raids on two communities predominantly inhabited by the Tutsi population in Mbazi, the municipality where he was “a person of authority.”

During these attacks, houses were looted and set afire, after which people fled to the stadium, where they thought they would be safe – but instead were ultimately killed.

The Netherlands has tried and convicted other Rwandan genocide suspects before under universal jurisdiction, which allows courts to try certain grave international crimes regardless of where they were committed, and has in the past also extradited genocide suspects to Rwanda.

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Timco Mucunski had never been to Israel before this week, but North Macedonia’s foreign minister arrived in Jerusalem for a brief, 24-hour visit, at a time when relations between the two countries are gathering considerable momentum.

Mucunski and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar speak regularly, their governments have increasingly sought each other out, and since Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski took office in 2024, Skopje has deliberately elevated its relationship with Israel as one of its foreign-policy priorities.

Monday’s visit, Mucunski told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview in Israel’s capital, was an opportunity to begin putting more substance behind that decision.

“We have had a very strong relationship with Israel, but also myself with Gideon, over the last few years. We have collaborated in many areas,” Mucunski said. “I think that this visit is an opportunity to move the bilateral relationship to the next step, to move from a place where we’re at right now, which is excellent bilateral relations, to having that relationship develop into various areas of mutual importance.”

Earlier in the day, Mucunski met Sa’ar, with the two ministers signing cooperation agreements and discussing the expansion of ties in agriculture, water management, security, innovation, tourism, health, and education. Mucunski told the Post that investment and cooperation between the countries’ defense industries were also discussed, alongside an idea likely to be considerably more visible to ordinary Israelis and Macedonians: restoring direct flights between the countries.

North Macedonia aims to be gateway to Europe for Israeli businesses, tourists

“One of the first things that we talked about is if we can work together to establish a direct flight between Tel Aviv and Skopje, or Tel Aviv and Ohrid, which is our main tourist center and a city that I believe that every Israeli would love to visit at some point,” he said.

The aim is to encourage more Israelis to visit North Macedonia, but Mucunski’s ambitions go beyond tourism. Situated at the intersection of two major European transport routes, Corridors 8 and 10, and investing heavily in energy connectivity, North Macedonia wants to present itself as an entry point for Israeli companies looking toward Europe.

“We want to be a gateway for Israelis who want to visit Europe,” he said. “But we want to be a gateway not just for tourists, but also for Israeli businesses.

“We can also be a gateway for Israelis who want to invest in a European market that hasn’t been fully utilized by the Israeli business community. But we can also be a market for exports. So in that sense, I think that these are just some of the opportunities where there is a mutual interest between the two countries.”

Mucunski’s arrival was also the latest in a noticeable series of contacts between the countries this year. In January, Macedonian MP Rashela Mizrahi, the country’s first Jewish lawmaker, led what was billed as a first-of-its-kind parliamentary delegation to Israel, meeting Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana and other Israeli officials. 

Skopje mayor discusses learning from Israeli innovation

In June, Skopje Mayor Orce Gjorgjievski came to Israel for MUNI EXPO 2026, where he spoke to the Post about drawing on Israeli experience in municipal resilience, emergency preparedness, water management, and innovation.

Asked whether that tempo represented a deliberate change, Mucunski said it reflected a policy emanating from the top of the Macedonian government.

“Prime Minister Mickoski himself believes that stronger collaboration with Israel is a necessity for our country to also be successful,” he said of ties between two countries with diplomatic relations since 1995. 

“There are many things that we can learn from you. There are many common values that we share, both on a domestic as well as international level. And in that sense, since the formation of our government, we have made the bilateral relationship with Israel one of the priorities of our foreign policy.”

Although it took until his second year as foreign minister to make the journey himself, Mucunski said the lack of a visit should not be mistaken for a lack of contact, stressing that he and Sa’ar confer often about issues that affect their countries.

When Israel came to Kocani

There is also a more personal and painful episode behind the warmth with which Mucunski talks about the relationship.

On March 16, 2025, a fire tore through the Pulse nightclub in the eastern Macedonian city of Kocani, killing dozens and injuring scores more, many of them young people. The scale of the disaster overwhelmed a country of fewer than two million people and prompted offers of assistance from abroad.

Among the first foreign ministers to telephone Mucunski was Sa’ar.

The call left a great impression on the Macedonians. Israel dispatched a medical delegation to the Balkan state, and within roughly a day of the disaster Israeli doctors were working alongside Macedonian teams, treating some of the badly injured.

“Within a day of the tragedy itself, they were performing surgery in our hospitals and helping our doctors, with their experience and their in-depth knowledge, and helping to save the lives of many young individuals,” Mucunski recalled.

For a foreign minister, bilateral relationships are ordinarily measured in agreements signed, diplomatic votes, trade figures, and official visits, but Mucunski repeatedly returned instead to what happened after Kocani as an example of what he believes the relationship looks like when it is tested away from conference rooms.

“This situation was proof that Israel stands by my country,” he noted.

He sees Macedonia’s diplomatic behavior toward Israel in recent years as the other side of that relationship. “We have also proven that we stand together with Israel in the many different challenges that it faces, as all nations face,” he said. “We have collaborated very successfully in the multilateral forum in the last few years.”

Sa’ar publicly thanked him for precisely that during Monday’s visit, praising North Macedonia for standing alongside Israel in international forums, particularly since the Hamas-led massacres in Israel on October 7, 2023, with Israel facing increased diplomatic pressures.

“North Macedonia has demonstrated its friendship by standing up to these attempts in the international arena,” Sa’ar said. “We appreciate its voting record and its support for Israel. Israel values its friends who stand by it in difficult times.”

For Mucunski, that relationship can be developed without changing the broader direction of Macedonian foreign policy. His country, a NATO member since 2020, is a candidate for European Union membership, and maintains a strategic partnership with the United States. He described those as the three pillars on which his government’s foreign policy rests, with North Macedonia also maintaining full alignment with the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Within that geopolitical framework, Mucunski regards Israel as a natural partner.

“We are thriving democracies, nations that promote the free market and capitalism,” Mucunski said. “My nation and Israel – both on the basis of political ideology, but also on the basis of our global outlook – have more things that unite them rather than divide them.”

At a time when Israel’s relationship with parts of Europe has become increasingly difficult, Mucunski declined to pass judgment on the bilateral relations of individual European governments with Jerusalem. North Macedonia, he said, works with other countries according to its national interests and according to what they can offer one another, provided that cooperation does not conflict with the three central pillars of its foreign policy.

On Iran, however, he was considerably less circumspect.

Iran is a European problem, too

Mucunski places Tehran firmly among the authoritarian powers he believes threaten the democratic order with which the Balkan country identifies, and his assessment of the Iranian nuclear threat extends well beyond Israel and the Middle East.

“Iran is, without a doubt, a nation that is part of this axis of countries that aims to destabilize democracy and the way of life that we cherish as peoples, as nations in the 21st century,” Mucunski told the Post.

North Macedonia, he said, had been steadfast in supporting the US-led military and diplomatic effort against Iran. It was among the countries that did so publicly at an early stage, he noted, because his government believes US President Donald Trump has taken the correct approach toward the long-term deterrence of Tehran.

That deterrence, in Mucunski’s view, cannot simply mean stopping Iran at the final point of assembling a nuclear weapon. The objective must be to prevent the Islamic Republic from reaching the threshold at which it has the capacity to do so.

“We should not allow Iran, ever, to have the capacity – not to have a nuclear weapon, but to come close to having a nuclear weapon,” he said.

His argument is partly geographical. Iran is often treated internationally as an Israeli, American, or Middle Eastern security problem. But Macedonia views the issue from inside NATO and from the southeastern edge of Europe.

“As we saw, right after the conflict began, there is a substantial geographical proximity as well from Iran to the borders of NATO,” he said. “And the risk is there.”

Mucunski also pointed to the nature of the Iranian government itself, describing the Islamic Republic as an authoritarian regime that suppresses its own population. He pointed to the reaction of Iranians abroad during the conflict as evidence of the depth of opposition to the Islamic Republic.

“There is no doubt that we will stand for democracy,” he said. “We will stand for our common security. The threat of Iran having a nuclear weapon is not a threat to Israeli or American security. It is a threat to European security as well, and anyone who chooses to ignore that is not accepting the reality that we have on the ground.”

Macedonia, he added, would remain steadfast in its support for its NATO ally, the United States, and for Washington’s role in the region.

The discussion inevitably returned to what Israel itself has experienced over the past several years, from October 7 to the confrontation with Iran.

“One cannot even begin to imagine what you have gone through,” Mucunski said. “Not just the situation with Iran, but the horrific events of October 7.”

For him, those events fit within the same argument about the responsibility of democratic states to defend themselves.

“When someone chooses to use violence and terror to attack our democracies and our way of life, we have an obligation to react.”

Macedonia’s Jewish past and present

Another element to North Macedonia’s relationship with Israel predates the governments of Mucunski, Mickoski, and Sa’ar by centuries.

Jewish life existed in the region long before the creation of the modern Macedonian state, but the community was almost annihilated during the Holocaust. In March 1943, more than 7,000 Jews from what is now North Macedonia were deported to Treblinka during the Bulgarian occupation, and virtually none returned.

Today the Jewish community is tiny, but Mucunski was emphatic that its size does not diminish its place within Macedonian society or the country’s understanding of its own history.

“The Jewish community is an integral part of our constitutional order as a nation,” he said, also pointing to the Holocaust Memorial Center in Skopje. “The Jewish community is a very respected and valued part of our society. In that sense, we see this as a very relevant part of our national history.”

The issue, he added, reaches beyond whichever party happens to be in government.

“The Macedonian people will continue to cherish their relationships with the Jewish people,” he said. “We will continue to do everything in our power to fight antisemitism in our country, but also everywhere else that we can.”

This was seen in action earlier this year following an incident in Skopje that the local Jewish community described at the time as the first attack of its kind in the country’s modern history.

On April 12, two men were captured on surveillance footage climbing a fence at a synagogue and Jewish community center before igniting a firebomb. A door and the courtyard were damaged in the blaze, and two men were subsequently charged with terrorism in connection with the attack, while seven people were detained during the investigation.

The attack was all the more jarring because of the reputation North Macedonia had enjoyed among members of its Jewish community. Speaking to the Post in its immediate aftermath, Rahamim Mizrahi, the Jewish Community Board’s deputy head, described the country as having long been a “pearl in the Balkans,” while warning that the worldwide rise in antisemitism following October 7 had not entirely passed the country by. He also stressed that most Macedonians had condemned the attack, with expressions of solidarity that included the chief mufti of the country’s Muslim community.

When the subject was raised with Mucunski in Jerusalem four months later, he recalled the shock caused by the attack, but also focused on the state’s response.

“The national security authorities reacted very promptly,” he said, noting that the alleged perpetrators had been arrested and, to his understanding at the time of the interview, indicted.

“To these types of actions, there must be an immediate reaction, both political and institutional,” Mucunski continued. “Without that, you allow antisemitism to flourish within a society.”

It is a sentiment echoed by Gjorgjievski during his own visit to Israel in June. The Skopje mayor told the Post that the attack was an assault not only on a Jewish building or community but on “the values of Skopje, on peace, coexistence, and the dignity of all our citizens,” while telling the country’s Jews: “You are not alone.”

The prominence of both Gjorgjievski and MP Rashela Mizrahi in the recent exchanges with Israel also illustrates the different levels at which the relationship is developing. Mizrahi – a member of Mucunski and Mickoski’s VMRO-DPMNE political party, and North Macedonia’s first Jewish parliamentarian since independence – has been a prominent advocate of stronger ties with Israel, while Gjorgjievski has sought practical cooperation between Skopje and Israeli municipalities. Mucunski’s visit brought that growing engagement to the level of the two foreign ministries.

Yet on the question of antisemitism, Mucunski was careful not to speak for governments elsewhere in Europe, or to compare Macedonia’s record with theirs. He confined himself to what he could promise about his own country, and after the events of April, his language left little room for ambiguity.

“In our country, this will not be tolerated,” he said. “I cannot speak for other nations, but antisemitism will not be tolerated on the territory of our nation.”

Mucunski’s first journey to Israel ultimately lasted little more than a day, but it came after a year in which the relationship between Jerusalem and Skopje has reached new levels, and moved beyond ceremonial diplomacy. Parliamentary representatives have come to Israel, the mayor of the Macedonian capital has come looking for Israeli expertise, and now the foreign minister has arrived with an explicit mandate from his government to broaden the relationship.

For Mucunski, the experience of Kocani already provided one answer about what he wants the relationship between the two countries to mean. When his country was struck by tragedy, Israeli doctors arrived and went to work alongside their Macedonian colleagues. His government, in turn, has chosen to stand with Israel diplomatically during some of its most difficult years.

It is against that background that Mucunski viewed this week’s visit less as the beginning of a relationship than as an opportunity to deepen one that has already gathered considerable momentum.

“This is my first visit,” he said, “but I am absolutely sure that it will not be my last.”

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The United Nations refugee agency has scaled back its budget by 16% and lowered its official headcount by around 3,500 as it adapts to new financial constraints at a time when global displacement is forecast to climb to an all-time high next year, according to diplomats and documents seen by Reuters.

The total cuts, on paper, would amount to a near halving of the workforce and a drop in the budget of a third since 2025, laying bare the cumulative impact of cuts due to reductions in foreign aid budgets by the Trump administration and others.

In 2025, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had 16,126 budgeted posts versus 12,051 this year and 8,540 in 2027, the budget documents showed, excluding temporary roles and contractors.

UNHCR officials presented the latest cuts to member states at a UN meeting in Geneva on Thursday, according to three diplomats who attended.

However, a UN refugee agency spokesperson said that, in reality, such large cuts would not be implemented since many posts were never filled in previous budgets, which reflected needs and funding goals, rather than realized donations.

‘Budget constraints are real’

The spokesperson said income projections for next year were comparable to 2026.

“The organization experienced a significant funding shortfall in 2025 and as a consequence was already compelled to undertake substantial workforce reductions,” he said.

It would, however, be reforming “unjustified” policies affecting up to 1,000 staff, which had previously allowed them to remain employed during extended periods between assignments, he said.

“The budget constraints are real, but we are also moving forward with a comprehensive reform agenda to make UNHCR more agile, cost-effective, and accountable,” he said.

Agency plans to focus on emergencies 

The agency has been particularly hard hit by donor cuts and has already been forced to reduce aid to refugees, cut thousands of jobs, close a Southern Africa office and is moving from its Geneva headquarters to a cheaper building in the city to save money.

Created in the aftermath of World War Two to help refugees fleeing war, persecution and violence, the agency relies almost entirely on voluntary funding, much of it pre-designated by donors for politically favored projects in what many now see as a structural flaw.

The scale-back comes on the heels of the Trump administration weighing a potential split with the agency, although High Commissioner Barham Salih has since voiced hope the partnership will continue. Trump officials have also urged other nations to join a campaign to roll back asylum protections.

The UNHCR said in the budget documents it planned to prioritize helping refugees in emergencies, ensuring their protection, action on voluntary returns and promoting self-reliance.

Biggest budget cuts to have most impact on Americas

The planned budget for 2027 is $7.14 billion, the documents showed, down 16% from last year and the smallest budget in at least 10 years. The budget in 2025 was $10.6 billion.

However, UNHCR’s budget is seen as aspirational since it is rarely, if ever, fully funded.

The US, which sent a delegate to the Geneva meeting, was the top donor to UNHCR in 2025, giving over $800 million or nearly a quarter of the total contributions of $3.6 billion, the UNHCR website showed. That dropped to around $110 million this year.

Budgets will decline across all regions, with the Americas the worst affected and due to fall by almost a third to $485 million.

The other regions hardest hit were Asia Pacific, where some 1.2 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh already face worsening conditions, down 22%, and West and Central Africa, which hosts millions of refugees from Sudan’s civil war, down 21%, the documents showed.

Refugee host countries worried by budget cuts

The cuts come despite a forecast for a record high of 131.2 million displaced people in 2027, up from 129.4 million this year as conflicts such as Ukraine and Sudan persist, according to UNHCR projections, cited by diplomats.

Some states raised concerns at the meeting about both the impact of the cuts on refugees and how major refugee host countries, such as Uganda and Bangladesh, would pay for them, diplomats said.

“Everyone is fed up. But unraveling what is left of the system is even worse,” one diplomat said.

But other diplomats said they welcomed the efforts to streamline UNHCR’s work in a difficult environment.

The planned budget is preliminary and is pending approval by the Executive Committee in October.

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The IDF killed a Hamas commander in Gaza‘s Al-Shati area on Thursday who participated in the October 7 massacre, the military said on Friday.

According to the IDF, terrorist Nabil Ibrahim Bass infiltrated Israel on October 7, 2023, as part of the Hamas terror attack.

Also on Thursday, the IDF killed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) observation platoon commander Hamdi Ahmad Hamid Kahlil in a separate strike in Gaza’s Sabra area, the military added.

The military said that the strikes were conducted as part of Israel’s efforts to prevent the reconstitution of Gazan terror organizations, such as Hamas and PIJ, noting that the groups’ rebuilding efforts are a violation of the ceasefire agreement.

The IDF further noted that both Bass and Kahlil had continuously worked to advance terror attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians throughout the war.

The strikes followed an attack on Wednesday in which the IDF killed Hamas Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades commander Ismail Mohammad Ibrahim Barim, responsible for holding Israeli hostages Edan Alexander, Matan Zangauker, and Avera Mengistu in a southern Gaza tunnel, the military confirmed.

IDF kills Yahya Sinwar’s former bodyguard in Gaza strike

On Sunday, Hamas Nukhba terrorists Razek Sahil Suleiman Abu Shahma and Hazem Mousa were killed by IDF strikes in Gaza with the participation of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), with both terrorists having infiltrated Re’im during the October 7 massacre, the military said on Thursday.

Abu Shahma additionally served as former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s bodyguard prior to the death of the October 7 mastermind at the hands of Israeli soldiers, the IDF added.

James Genn and Corinne Baum contributed to this report.

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Finance Minister and Religious Zionist Party head Bezalel Smotrich and right-wing politician Moshe Feiglin began talks to run on the same ticket in the upcoming October elections, N12 News reported on Friday. 

Feiglin is a libertarian-leaning Israeli political activist who formerly represented Likud in the Knesset from 2013 to 2015.

He was sentenced by the Supreme Court to six months in prison for his protests with Zo Artzeinu, an activist group that opposed the Oslo Accords, which he co-founded.

Simultaneously, tensions grew between National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the Likud party after he announced that Otzma Yehudit would not run together with the Religious Zionist Party.

Likud calls on Ben-Gvir to ‘overcome his personal ego’ and run with Smotrich

“By deciding to waste tens of thousands of right-wing votes, Ben-Gvir has chosen to bring a left-wing government to power,” the party said.

Likud called on Ben-Gvir to “overcome his personal ego” and unite with Smotrich.

The public jabs come after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Ben-Gvir and Smotrich to run together.

In a video posted on social media, Netanyahu was asked, “Prime Minister, what about Smotrich and Ben-Gvir?” He replied: “They must unite. Every time we ran together, we won. When we ran separately, we lost.”

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The discovery this week of the sunken arms ship the Altalena, which almost sparked an Israeli civil war just one month after the fledgling state was created in 1948, has become a political battle ground for right-politicians seeking support in advance of the October 27 elections.

“There is no more mobilizing ethos on the right than Altalena,” Udi Lebel, a leading scholar of the affair at Bar-Ilan University, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

The ship’s detection, he said, bolstered what he viewed as efforts by both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of the far-right Otzma Yehudit to campaign in this election on identity and victimhood rather than policy. 

The Altalena had arrived from France in June 1948 carrying about 900 Jewish immigrants and a large shipment of weapons acquired by the Irgun, the more militant pre-state paramilitary group led by Menachem Begin. Its rival, the Haganah, was the largest military organization in pre-state Israel and formed the main foundation of the newly established IDF.

Begin wanted 20% of the weapons on board the Altalena for Irgun forces in Jerusalem, while then-prime minister David Ben-Gurion insisted that armed forces and weapons come under the authority of the newly established state. Sixteen Irgun members and three IDF soldiers were killed in the fighting, during which a shell hit the ship setting it ablaze as it was moored off the Tel Aviv shore.  

Until the battle, the Irgun had been a separate force from the emerging national army. The Altalena shelling established the authority of the army over all military forces, ensuring that the right-most flank of the war effort would be subordinate to the new leadership. 

The burned-out vessel remained there for more than a year before being towed farther out to sea and deliberately sunk. Its precise location was subsequently lost, prompting repeated searches over the decades. The story of the ship has remained embedded in Israel’s national consciousness as a warning of how internal discord can spiral toward civil war. 

Otzma Yehudit ministers announce discovery of Altalena

In a joint statement Monday, Ben-Gvir and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, both from Otzma Yehudit, announced that the vessel had been located at a depth of about 1,650 feet, roughly 12 miles offshore. 

The search, commissioned by the Heritage Ministry and carried out by the government’s mapping body called the Survey of Israel, which operated in this instance without involvement from the IDF, used a specially equipped ship with advanced sensors and underwater mapping systems, the ministers said, adding that the wreck was found largely intact. 

Lebel questioned whether the wreck had been located in its entirety, saying the government had yet to produce clear photographic evidence and citing archival records he said documented repeated efforts under Ben-Gurion to destroy and sink the vessel. He also noted that no American naval experts had been brought in, despite the vessel’s origins as a World War II US Navy landing ship.  

Monday’s announcement of the discovery quickly became part of the election campaign, with Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir invoking Begin’s legacy to make competing appeals to right-wing voters. 

Ben-Gvir publicized the find without first informing Netanyahu or Defense Minister Israel Katz, surprising both men, according to Israeli reports, a detail that quickly fed speculation about tensions between the coalition partners. Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir later delivered separate remarks at Tel Aviv’s Etzel Museum, which is dedicated to the Irgun, with the prime minister avoiding a joint appearance with his far-right coalition partner. 

It was not the first time Netanyahu had kept his distance from Ben-Gvir on the eve of an election. In October 2022, less than two weeks before that year’s vote, Netanyahu waited for Ben-Gvir to leave the stage at a holiday event rather than be photographed alongside him. Reports at the time said the two were nevertheless meeting regularly and coordinating their campaign and media strategy. 

Netanyahu used his remarks on Monday to focus on Begin’s decision not to retaliate after the ship was shelled, saying the Irgun leader had “stopped the fight” and prevented the nascent state from descending into civil war. 

“That’s the lesson of the Altalena,” he said, before tying the episode to his own campaign pledge to form a “broad national government” after the upcoming October 27 election. 

“We are brothers. Political rivals, yes, but we are brothers. We are of one nation, one future, one fate,” he said.  

Ben-Gvir described the Altalena as a symbol of the historic marginalization of Israel’s right, drawing a parallel between his own treatment and that of Begin, Ben-Gurion’s bitter political rival. The vessel’s recovery, he said, closes “an open wound.”

“Begin knew the taste of persecution, what it was like when people did not want to be photographed with you on the same stage,” Ben-Gvir said.

Begin went on to found Herut, the forerunner of Likud, and led Likud to power in 1977, ending nearly three decades of Labor-led rule. Ben-Gvir’s early political career was tied to extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, whom both Begin and his successor, Yitzhak Shamir, ostracized from the mainstream right.  

Ben-Gvir’s allies explicitly linked the photo-op snub to his repeated claim that Netanyahu plans to form a government after the election with Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the centrist Yashar party and the prime minister’s main rival in recent polls, saying it was “exactly what they did to Menachem Begin,” according to the right-wing Israel Hayom newspaper. 

Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir splitting voters in Altalena contest

The confrontation has been widely interpreted in Israel as part of the contest between Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir for the same pool of right-wing voters. Haaretz political columnist Yossi Verter described Ben-Gvir’s handling of the Altalena discovery as “genius.” 

Veteran political commentator Ben Caspit offered a similar reading, writing in Maariv that Ben-Gvir had effectively hijacked one of Likud’s most potent historical symbols and turned it against Netanyahu, “snatching from under the prime minister’s nose” the legacy of Begin. Caspit wrote that Ben-Gvir was relishing his appearance at the museum, while anyone familiar with the prime minister could see “how much he was suffering” by being there. 

Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, rejected that reading altogether, describing the apparent rupture between Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir as a political ruse coordinated between the two to mislead voters and shore up support for another right-led government.

“This is not a genuine fight, and there is no real estrangement,” Talshir told JTA. “They are coordinating with each other because they share the same goal of increasing turnout on the right.” 

Talshir said the apparent split allows Netanyahu to present himself as a more moderate figure to wavering Likud voters, who she said are “very troubled” by the country’s political divisions, while Ben-Gvir can present himself as the right-wing partner being pushed aside. 

“Netanyahu is using the rhetoric of a broad national government to create the illusion among right-wing voters that he wants to repair the divisions within the country,” she said, noting that he was deliberately avoiding the word “unity,” which would suggest a commitment to govern with opposition parties.

She added that there was “no chance in the world, under any possible election results, that Netanyahu would prefer a government with even one component of the current opposition over an extreme-right coalition like the one he had and still has.” One reason was Netanyahu’s ongoing criminal trial, which she argued made him unlikely to choose coalition partners for whom the rule of law is a central principle.

Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States who served under Netanyahu, rejected the idea that the Altalena clash was a coordinated ruse. He also disputed Talshir’s view of Netanyahu’s coalition preferences, saying the prime minister has historically preferred broader governments that allow him to occupy the political center. Oren pointed to Netanyahu’s 2009 government, which included former prime minister Ehud Barak’s Labor Party and embraced a demilitarized Palestinian state, saying that kind of ideologically diverse coalition was “comfortable” for him.

“The nightmare of the last four years is that he’s been the leftmost person in his coalition,” Oren said. “He would love to get [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and Ben-Gvir out” of his government.

Oren said Netanyahu could ideally seek what he called a “Zionist government” that excluded both Arab and ultra-Orthodox parties. The difficulty, he said, is that opposition parties have expressed their refusal to join a government led by Netanyahu, raising the question of what role he could play in such a coalition. 

“He needs to be prime minister because it’s existential for him,” Oren said, particularly in light of his ongoing corruption trial. “If he’s not prime minister, he’ll have to appear in court as citizen Netanyahu. That’s a potentially dangerous situation for him.” 

Altalena used to manipulate right-wing voters

Lebel said the Altalena story was being used to revive among right-wing voters a sense that they were again being delegitimized and persecuted. 

He also called Netanyahu’s invocation of Begin’s vow to prevent civil war “politically manipulative,” arguing that Begin made the statement during a genuine internecine confrontation in which his movement was treated as illegitimate, a reality he said bears little resemblance to Israel’s political divisions today. 

“Begin made his pledge during a confrontation in which there really was another side that did not want to see him or his supporters in power and viewed everything he represented as illegitimate,” he said. “Netanyahu today is not confronting another side that refuses to accept him, because he himself is the elite and controls the entire public administration.” 

Talshir argued that Netanyahu’s invocation of Altalena also ignored the principle at the heart of the original confrontation. Netanyahu, Talshir said, gave Ben-Gvir control of the police and empowered him in ways that undermined that principle.

“Netanyahu can keep saying until tomorrow that he opposes civil war. But in practice, he is the person who created Ben-Gvir politically and gave him the power to establish militias that are personally loyal to the minister, and that frequently challenge the police’s professional chain of command,” she said.

“Netanyahu’s presentation of the Altalena is just another part of a false campaign that he is trying to sell to the public, specifically to Likud voters,” she said.

This post was originally published on here. 

CIA Director John Ratcliffe delivered a grim assessment of Russia’s situation regarding the war in Ukraine during a secret visit to Moscow this past week, The New York Times reported on Thursday.

During Ratcliffe’s visit with FSB head Aleksander Bortnikov and Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, the CIA chief urged the Kremlin to start taking attempts to negotiate a peace deal seriously, the NYT reported. Notably, Ratcliffe reportedly did not threaten retaliation if the Kremlin ignored his warnings and continued fighting.

CNN reported that Ratcliffe also used the trip to warn the Kremlin to cut off economic and military support for Iran, which comes as the administration is working to economically isolate Iran.

Ratcliffe also reportedly directly warned Russia not to attack NATO territory, two sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN.

This comes as US and European officials grow increasingly concerned that the Kremlin will try to attack NATO territory, especially as eastern European countries ward off drone attacks that Russia has repeatedly denied.

Western assessments indicate that Russia could launch anything from a cyberattack to a small-scale incursion in order to test the NATO alliance.

Trump: Putin will not be attacking a NATO territory

However, US President Donald Trump has disputed that Russia would attack NATO territory.

“I am not concerned … at all. There is no problem,” Trump told Axios on Thursday.

“I’ve had good talks with him. He’s not going to be attacking a NATO territory,” he told CNN that same day.

“I don’t want to comment on that, but they’re not going to attack,” he said later when asked if Ratcliffe directly warned Bortnikov.

The New York Times noted that CIA analysts believe that Putin is getting inaccurate reports of the war. Some officials say that they hoped that Putin would see a direct warning from a US intelligence official as more urgent than communications through normal diplomatic channels.

Notably, Ukrainian officials seem to prefer Ratcliffe to other Trump officials who have previously negotiated Ukraine war deals, such as special envoy Steve Witkoff or the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Witkoff and Kushner communicate regularly with Russian officials, but some Ukrainian officials believe they are too close to the Kremlin.

This is not the first time Ratcliffe has delivered discreet messages for Trump. He was the first cabinet-level official to visit Venezuela after the US captured former president Nicolás Maduro in January. In May, he delivered a message for the president to Cuban officials, urging them to make a series of economic changes.

This post was originally published on here. 

It started with Joseph. 

The expat who made it big in Egypt commanded his people: “You must carry my bones up from this place” (Genesis 50:25). The Hebrew viceroy’s will was fulfilled to the letter, albeit centuries later, when “Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, because Joseph had made the Israelites swear an oath” (Exodus 13:19).

The same thing happened with Theodor Herzl and Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who died abroad and were reburied in the Jewish state they craved, but never saw.  

These precedents came to mind this week as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pompously announced the “finding” of the sunken Altalena ship, and his determination to pull from undersea the boat that starred in a deadly clash between Menachem Begin’s militia and the IDF’s troops. 

Sadly, this exhumation – an expensive and complex operation that will doubtfully happen – bears none of the spirit of reconciliation and consensus that animated Herzl and Jabotinsky’s reburials. In fact, it is their inversion. 

Altalena sailed to aid Begin’s Irgun in War of Independence

Named after Jabotinsky’s pen name (Italian for “seesaw”), the Altalena sailed from Marseilles on June 11, 1948, carrying some 5,000 rifles, 450 machine guns, and carts of ammunition. The shipment was commanded by Begin’s Irgun, in the declared hope that it would help in the fight of the unfolding War of Independence.

It had been three weeks since Israel declared its independence and the Arab armies’ invasion of the newborn state. As Begin biographer Avi Shilon noted, the Irgun’s very purchase of arms violated its previous agreement to have the Hagana – now the IDF – approve in advance any such deal (Begin: 1913-1992, Am Oved 2007, p. 127). 

Even so, after the ship reached Israel’s shores, a negotiation with prime minister David Ben-Gurion’s representatives ensued. Begin agreed to hand the arms to the IDF, but insisted that one-fifth go to Irgun units, which were still intact. Begin evidently thought, and certainly hoped, he could prolong his units’ separate existence. This, despite an agreement on June 1, 1948, that the Irgun’s fighters blend into the IDF. 

The road from this bargaining to bloodshed was short. On the political level, Ben-Gurion presented an ultimatum, which the Irgun rejected. On the military level – shots were fired. 

Who fired the first shots is a subject of debate till this day; all testimonies were partial. There is no argument about the location: the violence began north of Netanya, whence the vessel sailed to Tel Aviv – now with Begin himself on board. And there, opposite today’s Dan Hotel, rifle shots made way for the cannon fire that disabled the boat. By day’s end, 19 Israelis were dead, 16 from the Irgun and three from the IDF. 

The Altalena showdown was turned by Begin into a big myth, a clash between a brutal Ben-Gurion and a magnanimous Begin, who – in this narrative – held his people back with the call “no to a civil war,” broadcast on radio after the battle had ended. 

The opposite camp, needless to say, had its own narrative. Hundreds of Begin’s followers were defecting from their IDF units and thronging to Tel Aviv’s beach, spawning suspicion of a gathering revolt. And Begin’s brave call not to fight came only after he had been knocked out.

This is besides the sequel to the clash that Begin and his people conveniently ignored, namely, Ben-Gurion’s equally resolute dismantlement of the Palmach, the left-leaning crack units that spearheaded the IDF’s victory in the War of Independence. 

Ben-Gurion understood the need for unified army

Ben-Gurion understood that if Israel is to be a real state, it must monopolize violence, which meant one army with one command. To understand the alternative, one need only look at Lebanon’s two armies, or to the Kurds’ multiple militias, and understand that this is no way to build a nation. 

The Altalena’s wreck became a public hazard, drawing children to dive unsafely into the Mediterranean’s waves from its rusty rails. Heeding a call from Tel Aviv’s municipality, Ben-Gurion had the navy drag the ship’s remains west and dump it undersea. And that’s where the lies that animated this week’s farce begin. 

The Altalena was not “found,” because its location, 20 km. offshore and 500 m. undersea, was well known. Still, saying it was “found” is designed to create the impression that Benjamin Netanyahu has just discovered Atlantis. 

That is besides the insinuation that the wreckage can teach us something we didn’t know, the way US president Zachary Taylor’s body was exhumed in 1991 following suspicions he was poisoned (he wasn’t), or the way the grave of John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was opened in 1981 to verify it actually contained him and not a Soviet spy. 

Retrieving the Altalena’s decomposed skeleton would shed no light on what happened in June 1948. It would, however, be used to cultivate the myth that civil war was waged out of the blue by Ben-Gurion, and prevented by the man who, in fact, had provoked it. 

But to Bibi, the facts are immaterial. What he cares about is the chance, no matter how slim, to change the approaching election’s subject, which is his role in Israel’s worst-ever catastrophe. That is why he emerged near the Altalena battle’s location, stared into a camera, and with the Mediterranean azure behind him declared: “Civil war – never!”

This eye-rolling sanctimony comes to us from the man who consciously pitted us against each other; inciting against the courts, the police, and the media; sending the serving population to unending wars while exempting a multitude of his supporters from any service; and libeling the serving “Left” for having “forgotten what being Jewish is.”

Exhuming the Altalena would therefore not be about yesteryear’s civil war, but about today’s, and it would not be about unearthing history, but about fleeing its verdict – the verdict that will soon be issued by the people Netanyahu divided, and read to his ashen face between his era’s last dusk and the following morning’s dawn. 

www.MiddleIsrael.net

The writer, a Hartman Institute fellow, is the author of the bestseller, The Jewish March of Folly (Yedioth Books 2026), now available in English on Amazon. 

This post was originally published on here. 

Forget “Let’s go fly a kite” from Mary Poppins. The song from Disney’s movie sends spirits soaring, but in Israel, post-October 7, 2023, kites are not symbols of innocent childhood fun. They have transformed from symbols of freedom into weapons of physical and psychological warfare. It’s evil, but brilliant.

Over roughly the last two weeks, more than 10 kites from the Gaza Strip have landed in southern Israel. Each one carries a message. It’s not a message of peace. They carry a haunting reminder of the 2018 Hamas kite campaign that preceded the October 7, 2023, invasion and mega-atrocity.

In 2018, first kites, then helium balloons, and later even condoms were attached to incendiary devices and explosives and left to float across the border into Israel. In a couple of particularly twisted cases, falcons were attached to burning devices and let loose to die on Israeli territory. It was eco-terrorism and scorched earth policy at its worst, destroying thousands of dunams of agricultural land, woods, and nature reserves, along with much of the wildlife that lived there. But only Israel was blamed, because it retaliated.

As I noted in 2018, when regular Friday Palestinian protests in Gaza along the border with Israel were portrayed as innocuous, non-violent rallies, their stated aim was clear from their slogan: The March of Return.

Why Hamas’s kite ploy is stunningly simple

As a PR ploy, it’s stunningly simple. When you place the image of kite-flying kids next to an image of a soldier, Hamas wins, and Israel loses. If Israel takes action, it is a brutal army; if it refrains from action, it will be portrayed as weak. Either way, it provides more fuel for future violence that serves Hamas and Islamist terrorism so well.

And it didn’t stop there, as we now know. The March of Return was a declaration of intent, not a mere slogan. On October 7, 2023, thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, murdering, mutilating, raping, and carrying off captives. Communities were set on fire, homes were burned with families tied up inside, partygoers at the Supernova music festival and elsewhere were hunted down and killed wherever they sought shelter. Some 1,200 were murdered, and 251 were abducted to Gaza, of whom only 168 survived.

The terrorists were so proud of their deeds that they boasted about them in real-time, recording rapes and murders on GoPro cameras and sharing images of death and destruction on social media, in some cases streaming it directly to the victims’ own friends and family to intensify the terror and pain.

If you want to understand why, for Israelis, kites symbolize innocence lost, consider what happened to the annual “Kites for Freedom” festive event at Kibbutz Kfar Aza. For 15 years, local residents would send a message of peace and hope over the border to their neighbors in Gaza. In 2023, that year’s Kites for Freedom event was scheduled for October 7, the Jewish festival of Simchat Torah, but terrorists invaded the kibbutz in the early hours of the morning.

Among the 60 members of Kibbutz Kfar Aza killed that day was Aviv Kutz, the founder of Kites for Freedom, who was murdered in his home with his wife and three children. Their bodies were found embracing each other on a bed in the safe room of their home. An entire family wiped out.

In a statement this week, Hamas reportedly claimed the kites were just “children’s toys” from Gaza refugee camps and warned Israel against taking threatened actions. But these “toys” were attached to strings – in some cases 4 km.-long – and decorated with threatening slogans in Arabic. Mary Poppins it ain’t. It’s child abuse. Follow the thread, and it will lead you back to a Hamas terrorist, yet again shielding behind children.

The world media, fed by reports from Gaza, is full of sob stories of poor refugee children just trying to have fun and are now being threatened by Israeli might. That Israeli children are learning to be wary of kites and balloons, which might be attached to explosive devices, does not seem to bother even those who profess to care for human rights. The trauma of Israeli children doesn’t count.

PRESIDENT ISAAC HERZOG, visiting the South this week, met with residents to discuss their fears, and stressed that maintaining peace and security was the responsibility of not just the State of Israel but also of the international community.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz both declared that a return to the pre-October 7 days of the Gaza kite campaign would not be tolerated. On Monday, Israel reportedly gave a three-day ultimatum via the US-led international Board of Peace in Gaza that the kite launches be halted or that Gaza would face expanded targeted strikes.

Katz declared that “a balloon is treated like a kite, and a kite is treated like a drone.”

Disturbingly, however, there are still drones carrying drugs and weapons that manage to cross the border from Egypt and Jordan into Israel. It does not take many steps to go from kite-running to arms-running and full-blown attacks.

It’s been suggested that the kites might be employed without explosives or incendiary devices at this stage to gauge their range and where they land. One thing is clear: The kites are not toys; they’re a test, trying to ascertain at what point, and how, Israel will respond.

The Foreign Ministry posted a message on X in different languages, including Farsi, saying: “Even a child’s toy can be turned into a weapon by Hamas… We will not tolerate attacks on civilians.”

On Tuesday, the Board of Peace ordered that the kites be stopped but reportedly also warned Israel against taking action.

Gaza kites ‘an offensive strategy that operates in small steps’

DR. RON SCHLEIFER, an international expert on psychological warfare, says the use of the kites is an example, par excellence, of “an offensive strategy that operates in small steps.”

“Psychological warfare is a part of revolutionary warfare,” he says. “The revolutionary warfare technique is to take very small steps, so if you inspect every step separately, it seems that nothing is happening. But when you look at the greater picture from above, you see there’s been a tremendous advancement.

“It’s called conditioning. The whole idea is that you don’t create havoc for a small step because you’ll look ridiculous… This is what Hamas is trying to achieve.

“According to the doctrine of revolutionary warfare, every asset is dedicated toward victory, and that includes human lives – all human lives. The end justifies the means. It’s for the cause, and the cause is always ideological.”

Schleifer acknowledges the intense inherent difficulties in explaining the situation to the world, which sees the Israeli army threatening Gazan children “playing” with kites.

“It’s a very sophisticated trap. Their [Hamas] photographers are in the field and sharing the images with the international media, Reuters, AFP, etc. to see Israel’s response. Whatever the IDF does, it will not be good.

“If it doesn’t respond, it will be stupid, and in the Middle East it will be well understood as a sign of weakness. If it acts against the children, it will be even worse. They are managing to put the IDF – their enemy – on the horns of the dilemma.”

He supports the view of Netanyahu and Katz to treat every kite as a serious threat, and he is encouraged that Israel is “at last learning to understand the language of the Middle East.”

“We saw what happened in 2018 with the March of Return when the kites became balloons and gradually turned into grenades and RPGs,” he says. “It’s genius.”

There is no easy answer to the kites blowing in the wind, but there are certain actions that can be taken, according to Schleifer. Primarily, “Israel needs to turn to UNICEF [the United Nations children’s fund] and other children’s rights and human rights organizations in the West and show how Hamas shamelessly is exploiting children, not for the first time. You can also show the photos of the [Palestinian] children wearing [mock] explosive belts.”

Israel can’t afford to turn a blind eye, and neither can the rest of the world. October 7 didn’t come out of the blue. It started with kites – a campaign that takes Hamas’s cynical child abuse to new heights. Israel must find a way to cut the strings before more damage is done.

This post was originally published on here. 

Dozens of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) protesters attempted to block Route 443 in order to prevent the detention of a draft dodger, Israel Police announced on Friday.

According to the police, a 20-year-old had been caught driving a stolen car, after which it was determined that he was also a draft evader. 

Shortly after his arrest, the police stated, haredi demonstrators arrived at the scene in order to attempt to block the road.

Footage shared by Israeli media showed protesters sitting on the road in order to prevent vehicles from passing, as well as blocking a police jeep which the draft dodger was reportedly inside.

Protest group refuses to allow draft dodger to be handed to military police

According to N12, the haredi activist group which arranged the protest put out an announcement in which it stated that the draft dodger would not be given over to the military police.

Later, N12 reported that the protesters had begun to disperse.

This post was originally published on here. 

Seven protesters accused of daubing pro-Palestinian graffiti on US President Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland last year could face longer sentences if found guilty due to what prosecutors have described as a “terrorist connection.”

Activists from the now-banned group Palestine Action were charged last year with criminal damage for spray-painting walls at the course with the slogans “Free Gaza” and “Free Palestine” as well as insults against Trump.

“Gaza is not for sale” was painted on one of the greens, and holes on the course were dug up.

The indictment, provided by the Scottish courts’ service on Friday, stated that the seven accused “did maliciously dig up turf on the golf courses,” sprayed weedkiller on the fairways and greens, and painted “political and offensive slogans on the grass.”

Palestine Action activists ‘had terrorist connections’, Scottish judge says

It added that prosecutors would seek harsher sentences should they be found guilty because the alleged offenses were “aggravated by reason of having a terrorist connection.” The accused will make their first appearance in court on Monday.

Palestine ‌Action, which had increasingly targeted Israel-linked defense companies in Britain, was proscribed under terrorism laws in Britain in July last year.

On Wednesday, the US also designated it a terrorist group, as part of a Trump administration crackdown on “far-left extremists.”

The campaign group Defend Our Juries said the seven accused of damage would, if found guilty, face far longer prison sentences should they be treated as terorists even though they had not been charged with any terrorism offenses.

“It’s now all too clear why the White House has designated Palestine Action as a global terror organization, alongside al Qaeda,” a spokesperson for the group said. “It’s because members of Palestine Action upset the president in March 2025 by making a mess of his golf course.”

In June, four members of Palestine Action received longer jail terms after being found guilty over a raid on a factory ​operated by Israeli defense firm Elbit that caused more than £1 million of damage because the judge concluded there was a terrorism connection.

That drew condemnation from human rights groups and high-profile supporters who said it was disproportionate.

Days later, Britain’s Court of Appeal upheld the government’s ban on Palestine Action, saying the group “overtly promoted unlawful violence amounting to terrorism.” Its co-founder Huda Ammori is now seeking to challenge the implementation of the ban in the UK Supreme Court. 

“The news that the defendants could face terror sentencing — and that Trump is now following Britain’s lead by banning Palestine Action in the US — should be the final nail in the coffin of this ban, which has become one of the most extreme attacks on free speech and the right to protest in modern British history,” she said in a statement.

This post was originally published on here. 

More than 90,000 people are estimated to be directly affected by the Himalayan landslide and urgently need humanitarian assistance, the Red Cross said on Friday, as aid officials voiced fears of further flooding.

“We believe that at least 93,000 people have been affected and are in great need,” David Fisher, head of delegation for the International Federation ​of Red Cross and ​Red Crescent Societies in Nepal, told a Geneva press briefing.

“We’re of course very concerned about the secondary flood,” he added.

The flood tore through areas including Rasuwa district near the Chinese border, leveling entire towns, damaging hydropower projects and killing close to 500 people. Hundreds of foreign nationals are still missing.

Nepal says it has rescue efforts for Himalayan flood under control

Fisher said that the organization’s trucks with relief supplies were blocked after a lake formed by the landslide broke its banks, temporarily halting rescue operations.

Kamal Kishore, Head of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, warned of further “cascading hazards that might unfold.”

“In a sense, the disaster is not yet completely over. It is still unfolding in some ways,” he said.

World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said at the same briefing that the landslide damaged six health facilities and that eight healthcare workers were missing.

“Following a disaster of this scale, displacement, overcrowding and disruption to water, sanitation and health services can increase the risk of infectious diseases, including diarrhea and respiratory illnesses,” he said.

Nepal’s foreign ministry said it does not need foreign assistance for search-and-rescue operations following the devastating flash flood that swept through several towns, despite offers of help from several countries with nationals missing in the disaster.

“The offer for help is natural. Our security agencies are doing the search and rescue operation. For now we don’t require such help,” Lok Bahadur Chhetri, spokesperson for the foreign ministry, said without providing further details.

The Kathmandu Post reported that India, China, the United States, Britain, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh had asked the government to allow their search-and-rescue teams to assist in the operation.

South Korea’s foreign ministry said Nepal had indicated it was not yet planning to accept foreign rescue teams.

This post was originally published on here. 

Allison Alon, a transgender Israeli woman, is facing possible deportation from the United States after being released on parole from an American prison.

On Friday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) posted that Alon, a former IDF intelligence technology specialist and convicted kidnapper, was arrested during raids in New Hampshire. The post referred to Alon by her birth name, Avishay.

On Aug. 20, ICE Boston arrested Avishay Alon, a criminal illegal alien from Israel, during targeted operations in Concord, NH.

Alon’s criminal history includes conviction for criminal threat against person with deadly weapon, kidnapping, and drug possession. pic.twitter.com/6D7dagAW1P

— ICE Boston (@EROBoston) August 27, 2026. 

According to a memorandum filed with the court by her defense attorney, Michael Iacopino, before transitioning, she served in Unit 81, the technological unit of the IDF Intelligence Directorate’s Special Operations Division.

After completing her military service, her attorney says Alon worked in senior computer engineering roles at Amazon and Microsoft and later founded two start-up companies.

Why was a transgender Israeli woman arrested in the US?

Alon was arrested over the kidnapping of one of her acquaintances. According to court documents, in September 2024, Alon became suspicious of an acquaintance identified in the records only as M.P.

She suspected that he had put the date-rape drug GHB into her water bottle, and also suspected that he had stolen from her.

She shared her suspicions with her friend Brian Levy, who proposed what he described as a “somewhat extreme” idea: kidnap the acquaintance and interrogate him.

According to the indictment, when the acquaintance arrived at Alon’s home in Dover, New Hampshire, Alon and Levy held him there for hours and interrogated him at gunpoint. Alon was carrying two loaded handguns, one of which was equipped with a silencer. During the interrogation, she pointed a gun at him.

The kidnapping came to an unexpected end when police officers knocked on Alon’s door after receiving a report about a suspicious vehicle nearby. An officer who came to the house intended to ask those inside to move the vehicle, but the victim seized the opportunity and called out to the officers for help.

Following the investigation, Alon was tried as a male suspect for offenses including kidnapping, criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon, and possession of drugs found during a search of the house.

On July 7, 2025, she was sentenced to between two and six years in state prison. Her accomplice, Brian Levy, was sentenced to between one and five years in prison.

After the trial, Alon launched federal legal proceedings against the US prison authorities. Alon, who identifies as a woman and, according to the lawsuit, suffers from gender dysphoria, argued that her incarceration in a men’s prison and the treatment she received violated her rights. Among other remedies, she sought transfer to a women’s correctional facility and gender-appropriate medical care.

She was transferred directly from the state prison system to US immigration authorities on the morning of August 20. She is currently being held at an immigration detention facility in Folkston, Georgia.

Unusual legal battle with ICE

The transfer followed an unusual legal battle. The New Hampshire Parole Board approved Alon’s “release” directly into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

On August 17, it emerged that Alon had been eligible for release as early as July 14. Her attorney subsequently argued that from that point onward, the state no longer had the authority to continue holding her while waiting for ICE to decide when to take her into custody.

In an emergency petition, Alon asked a federal court to order her release. US District Judge Steven McAuliffe ruled on August 19 that she must be brought physically before the court to determine whether her detention and imprisonment were lawful and whether she should be released.

At the same time, after opening a new federal case on her behalf, McAuliffe ordered the state to explain by 5 p.m. the following day why she should not be released. He noted that federal law appeared, under the relevant circumstances, to limit detention pursuant to an ICE detainer to 48 hours. 

However, on the morning of August 20, the issue was resolved differently: New Hampshire transferred Alon directly into ICE custody.

In July, McAuliffe dismissed part of Alon’s lawsuit, but questions remained over several of its central claims. These included a claim under the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment, an equal protection claim, and a claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The focus of Alon’s legal battle has now shifted. She is no longer a prisoner of the State of New Hampshire and is instead being held by federal immigration authorities.

ICE has not yet specified the exact basis for determining that she is unlawfully present in the United States or what the next stage of the immigration proceedings will be. No date has yet been announced for a hearing on her possible deportation to Israel.

This post was originally published on here. 

Former Gaza hostage Emily Damari married her partner, Israeli food influencer Danielle “Dani” Amit, in a wedding celebration in Tel Aviv on Thursday.

The couple had gotten engaged in January, 2026, one year after Damari was released from Hamas captivity.

“For 471 days, she was held in captivity,” Damari’s mother, Mandy, said during the celebration. “And during those endless days and nights, there were moments when the thought of standing here tonight, seeing my daughter alive, safe, happy, and standing beside the person she loves, would have been impossible to imagine.”

Mandy added how grateful she was for Damari to have returned safely from Gaza captivity. “You fought so hard to survive, Emily. You fought for your life when you were in captivity, and you fought your way back to us. And today, seeing you here, alive, happy, and beginning this new chapter is something I will never stop being grateful for.”

The couple was joined by numerous other former hostages at the wedding, including Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher, Liri Albag, Danielle Gilboa, Omer Shem Tov, Keith and Aviva Siegal, and Gali and Ziv Berman.

Guests at the wedding were instructed not to wear any red at the wedding, as it is the color of the rival soccer team to Maccabi Tel Aviv, Damari’s favorite.

Yair Golan congratulates Damari, Amit on their wedding

Democrats Party leader Yair Golan congratulated Damari and Amit on their wedding in a post on X/Twitter.

“There are moments that remind us exactly why we’re here, and your wedding is one such moment,” he wrote.

אמילי ודניאל האהובות,

יש רגעים שמזכירים לנו בדיוק בשביל מה אנחנו כאן, והחתונה שלכן היא רגע כזה.

אמילי, עברת תופת בלתי נתפסת, עמדת מול החושך ויכולת לו מתוך תעצומות נפש נדירות. לראות אותך קורנת, מאוהבת ובוחרת בעתיד ובשמחה, זו התשובה הכי עוצמתית שיש.

ודניאל, עם הלב הענק, האנרגיה… pic.twitter.com/fhvbHnUuce

— Yair Golan – יאיר גולן (@YairGolan1) August 27, 2026

“You’ve chosen each other, you’ve chosen a shared future, and there’s nothing more heart-expanding than that. Keep holding hands, supporting one another, and building a life of truth, of freedom, and of plenty of laughter.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Naftali Bennett and Gadi Eisenkot spent part of this week doing what party leaders do before an election: filling a few more spots on their lists.

After adding several relatively unknown women – in what appears to be an effort to broaden his appeal among female voters – Bennett has now begun adding men, also mostly unknown and with little political experience. 

Eisenkot has gone in the opposite direction. He has already brought in the inexperienced newcomers; this week, he has turned to former Knesset members.

It is an interesting process to watch. Exactly how they choose their candidates, and according to what criteria, remains somewhat unclear. What is obvious, though, is that both men are looking for people who will function as “political soldiers” once they enter the Knesset.

Bennett learned the importance of loyalty the hard way in 2021, when two members of his Yamina Party, Amichai Chikli and Idit Silman, broke ranks and helped bring down his government. 

Eisenkot appears to have internalized the same lesson. Political experience might be useful, but loyalty comes first.

There is some irony here when remembering Yair Lapid. For years, Lapid was mocked by leaders of other parties for assembling a party that sometimes looked like a bus stopping at random stations and picking up passengers along the way. Yesh Atid, his critics argued, lacked an ideological backbone. What united its members, beyond Lapid himself?

Now Lapid has effectively been swallowed up by Bennett, who is assembling a party that, at least for now, does not look all that different from the one Lapid was once ridiculed for building.

But the composition of the lists is not the opposition’s biggest problem. Another is taking shape, and it could become far more consequential.

Who leads the opposition?

Despite having an overriding objective that should unite them – replacing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – the leaders of the opposition remain divided over the most basic questions they will face the day after the election. Most importantly of these is: Who actually leads their camp?

Eisenkot has been remarkably consistent on this question. From the beginning, he has said that whichever of the opposition parties – his Yashar, Bennett’s party, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu, or Yair Golan’s Democrats – wins the most seats will receive his recommendation to the president to form the next government.

He said this when Yashar was polling at six seats. He continues saying it now, when his party is polling at around 24. Bennett and Liberman, however, refuse to make the same commitment.

Bennett was asked about this in a comprehensive Channel 12 interview this past week. His answer was long and winding, but the bottom line was clear: he is not prepared to recognize Eisenkot’s current lead in the polls or commit to recommending the leader of the largest opposition party.

Liberman is playing a similar, if quieter, game. From their perspective, this makes political sense. There are still two months until the election, an eternity in Israeli politics. 

Polls will change, campaigns will flip, and voters will move between parties and even blocs. Neither Bennett nor Liberman sees a reason to crown Eisenkot prime minister before a single vote has been cast.

But their refusal to make that commitment tells us two things, and both should concern the opposition amid its effort to translate current polling into a coalition government.

The first is that Bennett and Liberman appear to understand that their ability to bring significant numbers of new right-wing voters into the anti-Netanyahu camp has probably reached its limit. 

IF THEY now concede that Eisenkot leads the bloc, they risk becoming little more than feeder parties for Yashar. Bennett has already watched hundreds of thousands of voters migrate from him to Eisenkot.

Declaring that he will recommend Eisenkot for prime minister this early will accelerate that process. Why vote for Bennett if Bennett himself is telling you that Eisenkot should lead the country?

The same applies to Liberman.

So they keep fighting for first place, hoping that doing so will pull some voters back from Eisenkot.

The problem is that this means the opposition’s focus is on the camp’s existing members, rather than expanding the camp itself. And that is precisely the opening Netanyahu needs.

The prime minister does not necessarily need to win over Bennett or Eisenkot voters. His more realistic target is the roughly 10 percent of voters who remain undecided, many of them former right-wing voters who have not yet decided whether to support an opposition party, return to the Netanyahu bloc, or simply stay home.

While Bennett, Eisenkot, and Liberman fight over who gets to lead their camp, Netanyahu gets to focus on bringing those voters home.

There is, however, a second and potentially more troubling explanation for Bennett’s and Liberman’s silence: The possibility that they will not recommend that Eisenkot form the coalition after the election, even if Yashar is the largest party.

There is precedent for this – Bennett created it. In 2021, he became prime minister with just six Knesset seats even though Lapid had won 17. Lapid agreed to let Bennett take the first rotation as prime minister because that was the price required to form a government.

At the time, there was political logic to the arrangement. Bennett was a right-wing politician agreeing to cross an enormous ideological divide and sit in a government with Meretz and Ra’am. So, once that precedent has been set, what is to stop it from happening again?

Liberman, for example, could make the same argument Bennett made in 2021: I am the leader of a right-wing party. If you want me to sit in a government dependent on an Arab party, then I need to be prime minister.

That scenario becomes particularly relevant if the opposition cannot reach 61 seats without Arab support, something that, according to current polls, is the case.

But even if the opposition does reach 61, another scenario cannot be dismissed. Bennett and Liberman could decide to form a technical bloc and recommend one of themselves instead of Eisenkot. 

Together, they could claim that their combined strength gives them a mandate comparable to Yashar’s and that the premiership therefore cannot automatically go to Eisenkot.

If they insist and Eisenkot refuses to budge, the opposition recommendations will be split, and Netanyahu could end up receiving more cumulative recommendations. President Isaac Herzog would then be compelled to give Netanyahu the first opportunity to form a coalition.

Think about the absurdity of that possibility: The opposition parties could win a majority of the Knesset and still enable Netanyahu to receive the mandate because they cannot agree among themselves who should replace him.

Seeing this happen would require an extraordinary amount of chutzpah from Bennett and Liberman, especially after the failure of the 2021 government. 

What happened then could at least be explained by the exceptional political circumstances that Israel found itself in after four elections – Bennett was making a political 180 and breaking a promise he had made to his voters.

That is not the situation today.

Bennett and Liberman are firmly and openly part of the opposition camp. If Eisenkot wins significantly more seats, on what basis would they claim that one of them should nevertheless become prime minister? Even contemplating this idea is simply wrong and needs to be stopped.

Another important detail is easy to overlook. Bennett’s current polling is somewhat misleading. His joint party with Yesh Atid is expected to separate again after the election. 

That means that if the combined list wins, say, 13 seats, Bennett may ultimately arrive at coalition negotiations as the leader of a faction with only seven or eight MKs – potentially smaller even than Liberman’s.

Would a leader of seven or eight seats really demand the premiership from the leader of a party with more than 20?

Avigdor Liberman’s argument for prime minister

Liberman will have his own argument.

Unlike Bennett or Eisenkot, he will point to decades of political and ministerial experience – as a foreign, finance, defense, and strategic affairs minister with a long list of other senior positions as well. 

Members of his party are already beginning to argue that Liberman has more government experience than any other opposition leader and that it is finally his turn.

The problem with this thinking is that prime ministers are not chosen according to seniority.

What the opposition seems to fail to understand is something that Netanyahu has implemented throughout his political career: Blocs matter, but leadership matters too.

Netanyahu’s camp has disagreements, rivalries, and competing ambitions – just look at the tension right now between him and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – but nobody questions who the Right’s candidate is for prime minister.

There is still plenty of time before Election Day, and Bennett and Liberman are entitled to campaign as aggressively as they want. Neither needs to concede the race just yet. Eisenkot’s lead in the polls could disappear just as quickly as it emerged.

But at some point, the opposition needs to get its act together and answer a simple question: If the anti-Netanyahu camp wins a majority, will the leader of its largest party be given the first opportunity to form a government?

Leaving that unanswered right now might help Bennett and Liberman hold on to a few seats. But if it carries on past Election Day, it will produce one of the strangest outcomes in Israeli political history: An opposition with the votes needed to replace the incumbent, but that refuses to agree on who should do it.

The writer is a co-founder of the MEAD Forum, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, and the former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. His latest book (with Amir Bohbot), While Israel Slept, is a bestseller in the United States.

This post was originally published on here. 

Former Gaza hostage Elkana Bohbot and his wife, Rivka, announced the birth of their daughter in a Friday Instagram post.

In an Instagram post, Bohbot shared a photo of himself, his wife, and the newborn baby in the hospital. Alongside the photo, he included a passage from the book of Psalms, thanking God.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Elkana Bohbot (@elkanabb)

Bohbot was released from Hamas captivity on October 13, 2025, after spending more than two years in tunnels under Gaza. As part of his recovery, he published a book titled 738 Days in Hamas Captivity, where he recounts his story of survival. 

Head of Yisrael Beytenu, MK Avigdor Liberman, congratulated the couple on the birth of their new daughter.

“The real victory!” he wrote in a post on X/Twitter. 

הניצחון האמיתי! שורד השבי אלקנה בוחבוט ואשתו רבקה הביאו לעולם בת❤️
שתגדלו אותה בנחת ובהמון אהבה.
עם ישראל כולו מתרגש יחד אתכם. pic.twitter.com/p4k9Wgc9rN

— אביגדור ליברמן (@AvigdorLiberman) August 28, 2026

“May you raise her in peace and with lots of love. The entire nation of Israel is thrilled together with you.”

Former Hamas hostage marries her partner in Tel Aviv

On Thursday, Former Gaza hostage Emily Damari married her partner, Israeli food influencer Danielle Amit, in Tel Aviv.

The couple had gotten engaged in January 2026, one year after Damari was released from Hamas captivity.

The couple was joined by numerous other former hostages at the wedding, including Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher, Liri Albag, Danielle Gilboa, Omer Shem Tov, Keith and Aviva Siegal, and Gali and Ziv Berman.

Dudi Patimer contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

In the stunned aftermath of October 7, as the dimensions of the horror and the failure became known, one feeling swept across the country: Israel needed a clean sweep.

There was a palpable sense that anyone in leadership positions at the time – in politics, the military, or the intelligence services – needed to be replaced; that new faces, untainted by the failure, were needed at the helm.

This applied not only to those inside the government, but also to those outside it who helped create a climate so divisive and toxic that Israel’s enemies believed this was the perfect time to pounce.

One phrase captures the sentiment: Sweep the bums out.

That was then.

Now, with the country just two months away from elections, a look at the party lists shows that the anticipated political clean sweep never took place.

On the contrary, all the familiar figures are once again ensconced at the top of their parties.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, as prime minister, bears ultimate political responsibility for October 7, remains at the helm of the Likud. Gadi Eisenkot, who served as IDF chief of staff from 2015 to 2019, during years when the policy of containing Hamas became entrenched, heads Yashar. 

Avigdor Liberman, who has held senior government positions for much of the past quarter-century, heads Yisrael Beytenu. Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid have both occupied senior decision-making positions for more than a decade.

This is not to suggest that all bear equal responsibility for October 7. They clearly do not. But they are veteran figures who have been involved, to varying degrees, in shaping the policies that brought Israel to where it is today.

Granted, their parties include new faces – survivors of October 7, bereaved relatives, reservists, and leaders of civil society – but those people generally appear farther down the lists. The familiar figures remain at the top.

A clean sweep this is not. Look at the lists, and one conclusion is inescapable: Many of those who were there then will be back again.

Ofer Winter’s People of Israel party sees experience as baggage

ONE STRIKING exception emerged this week: Ofer Winter, the former IDF brigadier-general who launched his People of Israel (POI) party in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

Winter’s slate includes Arab-Israeli public diplomacy activist Yoseph Haddad, who took a leading role in countering anti-Israel propaganda when the state institutions responsible for doing so dropped the ball; Laly Derai, who emerged as an articulate and moving public voice after her son, Sgt. First Class Saadia Derai, was killed in Gaza; former Channel 13 journalist Netali Shem Tov, a Metula resident evacuated from her home because of Hezbollah fire; and Sigal Kraunik, whose husband, Arik, was killed defending Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7.

At the launch, Derai explained what drove her into politics. On the morning of October 7, she said, one painful truth became clear: “We had become so preoccupied with sharpening our positions against one another that we sharpened the pencil until there was no pencil. And the enemy saw it.”

Predictably, the list immediately came under attack for its members’ lack of political and diplomatic experience.

“There will be those who say that we lack experience,” Winter said at the party’s launch. “Fine – we have already seen where that experience has led us.”

Experience is a tremendous card to play when things are going well. But after the catastrophic surprise attack on October 7, with Israel’s international standing deteriorating and its wars with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran still unresolved, experience can look less like an asset than baggage – especially when it is experience in pursuing failed policies.

That is Winter’s niche. Before October 7, a slate without familiar political figures might have been a liability. Now its candidates can say: We were not there. We did not create this mess. Give us a chance to clean it up.

The first polls capture both Winter’s appeal and the uncertainty surrounding his party. Channel 13 had POI below the electoral threshold; Walla gave it six seats and pushed Smotrich below the threshold; i24NEWS gave Winter eight and Smotrich four. The range – from zero to eight – shows only that Winter has injected an unpredictable element into the race. And Netanyahu is worried.

Winter made clear that he is firmly on the Right and wants to establish a broad right-wing government with Zionist parties. But he did not mention Netanyahu. He did not say that Netanyahu was his candidate for prime minister.

If Winter wins eight seats, and neither the Netanyahu nor the Eisenkot bloc can form a coalition, those seats could become pivotal. What if Liberman, with his expected nine or 10 seats, becomes the key to forming a right-wing government without Netanyahu? What if Winter conditions his participation in any future coalition on the Yisrael Beytenu leader becoming prime minister?

This scenario is remote but not inconceivable.

Winter has long enjoyed good relations with both Liberman and Bennett. During 2014’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, he got into trouble for holding unauthorized conversations with Bennett, then economy minister, about the military campaign. Later, he served as military secretary to Liberman when Liberman was defense minister.

When Winter was released from the IDF in 2024 after repeatedly being passed over for a promotion, both men publicly defended him. Bennett called him “one of the best field commanders in the IDF,” while Liberman said that if Winter had been the head of the Southern Command on October 7, that disaster would not have happened.

Winter risks losing seats for Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc

NETANYAHU’S more immediate concern is not whom Winter might recommend as prime minister. It is what his candidacy might do to the rest of the right-wing bloc.

If Winter fails to cross the threshold, tens of thousands of right-wing votes could be wasted. If he does cross, he could take enough votes from Smotrich to push the Religious Zionist Party below the line.

Either way, Netanyahu could lose seats from his bloc.

And Winter is not alone. Moshe Feiglin’s Zehut and Avi Maoz’s Noam parties are also running, and polling below the threshold. Other small parties – Gilad Erdan’s Unity, Sharren Haskel’s Israel First, Benny Gantz’s Blue and White, and Chili Tropper and Yoaz Hendel’s Zionist Home-Reservists – are also struggling to break through, though they draw from somewhat different pools of voters.

Netanyahu’s warning about wasted votes is obviously self-serving. But it is not invented. Israeli electoral history is littered with parties that won tens of thousands of votes, failed to cross the threshold, and altered the political outcome.

In a video clip uploaded just before Winter announced his new party, Netanyahu went back to 1992 to make his point.

“Let me tell you a story that perhaps some of you don’t know,” he said, sounding as if he were telling a bedtime story.

In that election, the Likud, led by Yitzhak Shamir, faced Labor under Yitzhak Rabin. Several small parties to the Right of Likud ran independently and failed to cross what was then a relatively low 1.5% threshold.

Tehiya received 31,957 votes. Geulat Yisrael received 12,851. Rabbi Moshe Levinger’s Torah Ve’Eretz Yisrael received 3,708. Together, those three parties won 48,516 votes – worth two seats, potentially enough to have enabled Shamir to form the government.

Instead, Rabin formed the government, leading to the Oslo process and, as Netanyahu framed it in his video, “the rest is well known – thousands and thousands of casualties.”

The prime minister, however, did not need to go back 34 years to make the point. He could have stopped at April 2019.

In that election, Bennett and Ayelet Shaked’s New Right received 138,598 votes – just over 1,400 votes short of the threshold. Feiglin’s Zehut won another 118,031 votes and also failed to enter the Knesset.

Together, the two parties burned more than 256,000 votes, most of them from the Right.

The parties aligned with Netanyahu won 60 seats without Liberman. Liberman’s refusal to join the coalition was the immediate reason Netanyahu could not form a government. But had either the New Right or Zehut crossed the threshold, the parliamentary arithmetic would almost certainly have been different, and Netanyahu might have been able to overcome Liberman’s veto.

Instead, Israel entered a cycle of five elections in less than four years.

Netanyahu learned from that experience.

For years, one of his favored election tactics was to cannibalize the smaller parties on the Right. In the closing days of a campaign, he would warn that the Likud was in danger of losing and urge right-wing voters to abandon the satellite parties and rally around him.

The tactic helped the Likud grow, but it carried an obvious risk: siphoning away too many voters and one of the smaller parties falling below the threshold, taking all those votes with it.

After April 2019, Netanyahu increasingly cast himself not only as leader of the Likud but as the conductor of the entire right-wing bloc. His tactic changed. Instead of cannibalizing the smaller parties, he pushed them to merge, brokered joint lists and offered inducements to persuade potentially dangerous competitors to drop out.

He played a central role in engineering the joint runs of Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Maoz, ensuring that their votes would not be lost. At other times, he used reserved places on the Likud list as currency to absorb politicians from smaller parties or encourage mergers.

It was an effective strategy. But it was built for the political world that existed before October 7. The question is whether it will work in the world that came after.

Netanyahu is again telling right-wing voters that they must vote strategically, that they cannot afford political adventures, and that only experienced leadership can protect the Right from electoral defeat.

New parties rise quickly in Israel – and often disappear just as fast

Winter is telling those same voters that the experienced leadership is precisely what brought Israel to its present condition.

And therein lies the clash.

Netanyahu can point to 1992 and 2019 and warn about what happens when right-wing votes are wasted. Winter can point to October 7 and ask what happens when political leaders fail to live up to the trust the public placed in them.

It remains far from clear whether Winter can turn that sentiment into a durable political force. New parties rise quickly in Israel and often disappear just as fast.

His lack of political experience may eventually prove to be exactly the liability his critics say it is.

But for now, during this lingering “sweep the bums out” moment, it is also his strongest selling point.

Netanyahu has dealt with the small-party problem before and is trying to nip it in the bud once again. Yet conditions have changed radically since October 7, and his success this time may be more limited.

Winter is betting that the public wants a fresh start. Netanyahu is betting that, when voters enter the polling booth, fear of wasting their votes will outweigh their desire for something new.

Two months before the election, it is not at all clear which wager will win out.

This post was originally published on here. 

In the modern world, financial accounting generally operates on an annual cycle. Companies issue yearly financial reports. Individuals file annual tax returns. Banks provide year-end statements detailing activity, gains, and losses. Once a year, we stop and take financial stock.

The Torah establishes a different rhythm for agricultural obligations. The cycle of terumot and ma’asrot unfolds over three years. During the first two years, ma’aser sheni is separated, while in the third year it is replaced by ma’aser ani, the tithe designated for the poor. At the conclusion of each three-year cycle, a person must ensure that all outstanding tithes have been properly distributed.

On the final day of Passover following the third year, a person formally declares that he has fulfilled these obligations according to Halacha. At its core, this declaration is a financial and moral accounting. He looks back over the previous years and affirms that the portion of his produce belonging to others, including the poor, has reached its proper destination.

Confessing success

Yet our tradition gives this ceremony of accounting a striking name: vidui ma’aser, the confession of the tithes. We generally associate confession with sin, failure, and regret. Here, however, a person confesses what he has done correctly.

This atypical use of the word “vidui” suggests that confession encompasses something broader than admitting wrongdoing. It means taking an honest account of ourselves before God. A genuine self-assessment cannot focus only on our failures. It must also acknowledge our strengths, our accomplishments, and the obligations we have successfully fulfilled.

Honest accounting

For many people, this is harder than it sounds. We are often more comfortable cataloging our shortcomings than acknowledging our accomplishments. Religious seriousness can intensify that instinct. We worry that recognizing our strengths will lead to complacency or self-satisfaction, and so our attention naturally gravitates toward our shortcomings and the work that still remains.

But honest accounting cannot be selective. Just as exaggerating our virtues distorts the truth, ignoring them does so as well. We need to identify the habits that require change, but we also need to recognize the values we already live by and the responsibilities we already shoulder.

Vidui ma’aser asks us to stand honestly before God, conscious of both our failures and our faithfulness. Only then do we raise our eyes heavenward and ask Him to look down on His people and bless them. Honest self-accounting becomes the prelude to prayer.

‘Vidui’ in Elul

As we enter the period of Elul and the High Holy Days, confession will take center stage in our efforts at teshuva and self-improvement. Obviously, our vidui will focus on our flaws and weaknesses, identifying areas that require improvement and personal growth. This is as it should be. The road to change begins with honesty and acceptance rather than denial and self-deception.

However, we must avoid diminishing ourselves by focusing solely on our failures while ignoring the areas in which we have succeeded and grown. For teshuva to be authentic, it must embrace the entirety of our experience, both our achievements and our shortcomings. Otherwise, vidui can become a ritualized catalog of failure, disconnected from honest self-assessment.

There is another reason this broader accounting matters. Recognizing our strengths is important not only because it gives us a more truthful picture of ourselves, but because those strengths can become the basis for further growth. Just as refusing to acknowledge our weaknesses prevents teshuva, failing to recognize our strengths leaves us unaware of what we already possess and can build on.

A national accounting

What is true of individuals is also true of generations. As we stand before God, we stand before Him not only as individuals but also as a people. God governs the destiny of nations, and certainly the destiny of the nation He chose to represent Him in this world.

Our generation has its share of moral and religious failures. We have fallen short collectively, and there are national sins and shortcomings for which we must seek forgiveness.

Yet ours is also a generation of giants, one that has heroically defended our nation under attack for three years. This struggle has placed enormous strain upon us collectively, and still we refuse to relent in our responsibility to defend the land God has restored to us.

A truthful national accounting must make room for both: our failures, but also the courage, sacrifice, and responsibility this generation has displayed.

Have the generations diminished?

One religious instinct can sometimes make it difficult for us to speak this way about our own generation. There is a phrase in our tradition that is sometimes applied too broadly: nitkatnu hadorot, literally, “the generations have diminished.”

In certain areas this is unquestionably true. Generations closer to the original transmission of Torah possessed a more authoritative understanding of its meaning and halachic structure. We therefore defer to earlier generations and grant their rulings greater weight in determining halachic practice.

Presumably, generations closer to revelation also possessed greater spiritual and moral potential. Living nearer to the direct transmission of God’s word created possibilities for religious refinement and moral greatness that later generations may find more difficult to attain.

But greater potential does not guarantee greater performance. Tanach itself records the devastating moral and religious failures of generations that lived far closer to revelation than we do.

Decline in authority or spiritual potential does not mean decline in every form of Jewish commitment, courage, and sacrifice. The principle of nitkatnu hadorot cannot mean that every succeeding generation is simply a pale shadow of the one before it. The past several generations have displayed extraordinary greatness. We rose from the ashes of the Holocaust, rebuilt Jewish identity and Jewish communities, restored Jewish sovereignty, and transformed a vulnerable young state into a powerful and flourishing country under almost unimaginable pressure.

The past three years have only reinforced that truth. Our people has stood courageously against enemies intent on destroying us, and against a global resurgence of hatred toward Jews. A generation capable of such courage, sacrifice, and commitment can hardly be described as a generation of diminished Jews.

During the coming weeks, we must make room for this as well in our emotional and religious self-assessment. Alongside our collective failures, an honest vidui must acknowledge our courage, resilience, and self-sacrifice. And perhaps we should do more than acknowledge these achievements; they should also shape the way we pray. Without arrogance or irreverence, we can approach God with a measure of humble confidence, pointing to the extraordinary courage our people has shown in defending the land He promised us and the people He chose. Our prayers should carry not only the voice of petition, but also a measure of expectation.

This is the posture of honest confession: clear-eyed about our shortcomings, but equally willing to acknowledge what we have achieved, both individually and collectively.

Like our ancestors, who fulfilled their responsibilities, we too can turn to God and say: we have tried to fulfill the responsibilities history has placed on us. We ask You now to fulfill the promises You have made to Your people.■

The writer is a rabbi and educator at Yeshivat Har Etzion (Gush). Find his latest book, Reclaiming Redemption, Vol. II: Faith, Identity, Peoplehood, and the Storms of War, at mtaraginbooks.com.

This post was originally published on here. 

The weekly Torah portion of Ki Tavo opens with a demand to be joyful. This instruction comes after the commandment concerning the bikkurim – the first fruits of the Seven Species that grew on the trees – and bringing them to the Temple.

“And you shall rejoice in all the good that the Lord your God has given you and your household, you, the Levite, and the stranger who is in your midst” (Deuteronomy 26:11).

The Torah demands that a person rejoice in all the goodness that has been given to him. Joy is not merely a private feeling in a person’s heart; it is also expressed by sharing with others the goodness that has been given to him.

We find a similar idea immediately afterward, in the mitzvah of ma’aser ani – the tithe for the poor. This mitzvah requires the owner of a field, in the third and sixth years of the seven-year shemittah cycle, to set aside a tenth of his produce and give it to the poor. The Torah does not suffice with the act of giving itself. The manner in which it is done also has significance. As Rashi quotes the words of the Mishnah regarding the verse:

“I have done everything that You commanded me” – I rejoiced and brought joy through it (Mishnah, Ma’aser Sheni 5:12).

A person asks the Creator to bestow goodness upon him because he rejoices in fulfilling the mitzvah, and he also brought joy to another person through it, with a warm countenance and a generous heart.

There is a great difference between a person who gives because he has no choice and a person who gives out of joy. The first carried out the act; the second revealed through the act what is taking place in his heart.

Joy as a religious explanation

Joy reveals that the mitzvah is not merely an external obligation, but an expression of love for the Creator and of trust that the path of Torah does not take goodness away from a person, but rather leads him toward it.

When a person gives another a portion of the fruits of his labor, there could be some resentment. After all, he invested his time, his strength, and his effort. Why should he give part of it to someone else?

It is precisely there that joy is tested.

If a person gives with a warm and welcoming feeling, that he is privileged to fulfill the will of the Creator, he reveals that his relationship with God is not a transaction of give and take, but one of absolute faith – that even when he gives, he does not lose, and his true gain is in fulfilling the will of his Creator.

For this reason, later in the parasha, after the 98 curses that may befall those who do not observe the Creator’s commandments are mentioned, the Torah points to a particularly surprising factor as the root of the problems and troubles that befall a person:

“And all these curses shall come upon you… because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and with a glad heart, out of the abundance of everything” (ibid., 28:45-47).

This statement is puzzling, since joy is perceived by most people as a luxury, and not as such a serious and binding requirement that someone who refrains from it would deserve to have all these curses come upon him.

The explanation is this: Imagine a person saying to his close friend, “I love you very much,” but his face is expressionless, his voice is cold, and he seems distant. Would his friend believe him? When a person truly loves someone and is in their company, that love is evident in his facial expressions and body language.

So too with the service of God. A person can fulfill mitzvot as external actions, but the question the Torah poses is deeper: What is happening within your heart when you perform them?

A person who is not joyful about what he has, and who finds it difficult to serve God “with joy and with a glad heart,” is lacking something deeper. It is not merely the action itself, but the inner connection with the One who commanded him to perform it. And this is one of the most difficult curses of all: to live a life in which one’s external actions and inner world are not in sync.

This is precisely the message of the month of Elul.

According to the teachings of Hassidism, Elul is a month of joy, the month in which “the King is in the field” – close to every person. It is a time when a person is given a new opportunity to change, to cleanse the past, and to turn a new page.

For this reason, the Torah portion being read during these days teaches a clear message: Before you enter the new year, learn to rejoice in who you are and in the path you have chosen. Rejoice in the privilege of being Jewish and in the opportunity to fulfill the commandments of the Creator. Rejoice in the goodness that has been given to you – and above all, rejoice even when you give some of that goodness to another.

The writer is rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites.

This post was originally published on here. 

Digital‑intelligence company Cellebrite has introduced a portable field system designed to help military teams extract and analyze data from digital devices directly on the battlefield. The Cellebrite Tactical Extraction Kit (C‑TEK) is built as a rugged, backpack‑sized mobile forensics kit intended for units operating in disconnected or time‑sensitive environments.

C-TEK combines the company’s digital forensics software with ruggedized hardware and portable power. The system is designed to support the extraction and initial analysis of data from mobile phones, SIM cards, drones, computers, and portable storage media at the point of seizure.

Cellebrite said the kit was developed primarily for military units conducting sensitive site exploitation and other missions where information obtained from seized devices could influence subsequent operations.

The company said C-TEK is intended to reduce reliance on centralized forensic laboratories, where transferring devices and processing their contents can delay access to potentially time-sensitive information.

“Battlefield intelligence has an expiration date measured in minutes, not months,” Marcus Jewell, the company’s chief revenue officer, said in a statement. He said the new kit was intended to give military operators the ability to capture and act on device data “exactly when and where it matters most” before the information disappears.

Cellebrite did not disclose specific device models supported by C-TEK, its extraction capabilities, price, or details of military customers using the system.

The launch comes as Cellebrite expands its product portfolio and tries to reach further into the defense and intelligence markets. The company is developing several systems intended to bring its digital forensics and analytics capabilities closer to the point of operations.

These include a portable version of its Pathfinder analytics platform, an on-premises artificial intelligence capability, an upgraded CFID V4 system for drone forensics, and a separate mobile kit designed to allow small teams to establish temporary digital forensics operations without existing local infrastructure.

Cellebrite lowers 2026 revenue

The push comes amid a period of transition for the Israeli company. Cellebrite recently appointed Shiven Ramji as chief executive, replacing Thomas Hogan. The management change followed the company’s second-quarter results, in which it reported revenue of $131.1 million, up 16 percent year over year, and annual recurring revenue of $507.8m., up 21%.

At the same time, Cellebrite lowered its 2026 revenue and annual recurring revenue forecasts, citing longer sales cycles and weaker-than-expected expansion of its Inseyets platform. The company now expects 2026 revenue of $555m. to $561m. and an annual recurring revenue of $550m. to $560m., according to reporting by Calcalist’s CTech.

The financial outlook highlights the importance of new products and markets to Cellebrite’s longer-term growth strategy. The company has increasingly positioned its technology not only for conventional digital investigations but also for defense, intelligence, and battlefield applications.

C-TEK represents a further move in that direction, putting extraction and analysis capabilities directly with forward-deployed personnel rather than requiring captured devices to be transported to a dedicated laboratory.

Cellebrite said the kit is the first step in a broader effort to develop end-to-end field intelligence capabilities for defense and intelligence customers.

This post was originally published on here. 

One of the biggest concerns during any escalation with Iran is damage to critical infrastructure in general and energy assets in particular. Consequently, Israel has been working in recent years to promote the interconnector project to link up its electricity grid to Cyprus and Greece and from there to the rest of mainland Europe.

However, Turkey’s opposition to the project has led to delays to date, preventing actual development of the plan which was launched in 2022, to actually lay underwater electricity cables between the countries in the Eastern Mediterranean. Recently, after a long period of delays, the project received significant support from the US and France.

A US State Department spokesperson said, “The US supports energy security and cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean, including through the Eastern Mediterranean Energy Center, The Trump administration remains committed to strengthening key energy partnerships that enhance global energy security and promote a safer and more prosperous future, with energy security for the US and its partners.”

On Capitol Hill, US lawmakers called on Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the US International Development Finance Corporation to support the interconnector.

The call came after French infrastructure investment firm Meridiam signed an agreement earlier this month that made it the majority shareholder in the interconnector development company. Greece’s electricity transmission company, ADMIE, remains a strategic partner in the project.

The age-old conflict

At the same time, the corporation leading the interconnector and ADMIE signed an agreement with the French cable manufacturer Nexans to accelerate work on the project, starting with the completion of ground surveys.

Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis strongly supports the interconnector, partly because of the energy security it will provide to Cyprus, the only country in the EU not connected to the European electricity grid.

As part of the project, underwater power cables will be laid along some 1,200 kilometers from Crete to Cyprus, and from there to Israel.

The problem is that Turkey does not recognize the boundaries of Greece’s economic waters as set by international law and the countries in the region. Turkey, which is not a signatory to the Continental Shelf Convention and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), sees the Greek islands as an extension of Turkey. This despite the fact that the prevailing belief in the international community that islands are independent parts of the mainland that are not connected to the mainland.

This gives each island has an independent continental shelf, as a result of which it is entitled to territorial waters of 12 nautical miles. The congestion in the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea led to a compromise, in which each island is entitled to about six nautical miles.

Alongside this, there is the Cyprus issue. Following a Greek-nationalist military coup in Cyprus in 1974, Turkey invaded the island. The same action, ostensibly intended to serve the Turkish minority in Cyprus, led to the establishment of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983, a de facto state that only Turkey recognizes.

In return for that recognition, Turkey demands the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ right to economic waters. Turkey is even deploying a permanent gas pipeline from it to Northern Cyprus.

Dr. Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak, an expert on Turkey at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University and the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, explains that Turkey’s goal in developing the gas infrastructure is not only to increase dependence on it, but also to ensure long-term dependence.

He tells “Globes,” “After they have already deployed a water pipeline between the countries, now the natural gas is coming. Ankara is aiming for the fact that if there is a future agreement in Cyprus that unites the parties on the island, then it will be required to deal with a significant Turkish incursion guaranteed in the eastern Mediterranean.”

The Erdogan regime is also denying Israel and Cyprus the energy security they need. In April last year, Greece brought the Italian ship NG Worker to lay cables in the area of the islands of Kasos and Karpathos (between Rhodes and Crete). However, Turkey threatened that if the cables were indeed laid, they would be cut. To prevent a confrontation, Athens decided to refrain from action.

The change in the Greek approach

But the Greek government is now presenting a much more aggressive line, in response to Turkey’s recent unexpected decision to declare the establishment of “marine reserves” in Greek areas.. The meaning on the ground is the denial of Greek rights, whether fishing, security, or the deployment of infrastructure on the seabed.

Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis told Greek TV that the Turkish move in the Aegean Sea is illegal and unacceptable. He said, “Any attempt to violate our sovereign rights will be met with all the means at our disposal. Greece is prepared for any scenario and if Turkey sends warships to the region, we will not refrain from responding.

Dr. Yanarocak observes, “Greece and Turkey have been in a constant state of rivalry, especially since the UN Law of the Sea was established. Turkey aims to resolve this with Athens bilaterally, while the Greeks do not want to lose their upper hand in the regional issue as a result of the Law of the Sea.”

Israel’s Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure said, “The Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure sees strategic importance in the Great Sea Interconnector project, which will enable the connection of the electricity grid to Cyprus, and from there to Greece and the EU. The project is currently in the cost-benefit analysis phase for Israel and Cyprus. After that, negotiations will take place between the countries on the division of costs and an application will be submitted for a grant from the EU, so the cost for Israel is yet to be set. At the same time, the ministry, together with the Electricity Authority and Noga, are examining other complementary aspects. According to the schedule, the cable should transmit electricity by 2034. The Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure will continue to work to develop and promote the Israeli electricity sector.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume held meetings this week at the company’s plants around the country to present streamlining plans to workers and unions and discuss the cuts needed to overcome the German carmaker’s financial troubles. As passed of these meetings he confirmed for the first time that Volkswagen is in talks to save the factory in Osnabruck by using the plant for military production.

“We are currently examining if and in what way we can participate in a future potential industrial solution for the Osnabruck site,” said Olef Lies, minister-president of Lower Saxony, according to the “Wolfsburger Allgemeine.”

According to the report, the federal government will also take part in establishing a new partnership that will manufacture Iron Dome parts at the plant, and a memorandum of understanding has already been signed with Rafael to produce parts for Iron Dome and other missile interception systems. “Talks are at an advanced stage,” it was reported.

Representatives of the trade unions at the plant have also expressed optimism over the past 24 hours, according to the report, which did not name the Israeli government company and spoke of a “future of continued production” at the plant, which produces convertible models for Volkswagen until the end of 2027 and is expected to close if an agreement is not signed.

The involvement of the state and federal governments is supposed to solve problems for Volkswagen, which is hesitant to define itself as one that enters the arms production business. The Qatari investment fund, which holds 17% of Volkswagen shares, has also expressed opposition to the plan in the past.

This post was originally published on here. 

The majority of former residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz have not yet returned home, and many of them never will, Brig.-Gen. (res.)  Tzvi “Tzviki” Tessler, Chairman of Nir Oz, told KAN News on Thursday.

“I didn’t think it would take so much time to recover,” he said. “We’re not giving up. Kibbutz Nir Oz will prosper so that new families will come.”

Many of the individuals who used to live in Nir Oz would not return due to the trauma they’d experienced on October 7, Tessler added.

“Maybe they want to, but they aren’t capable of it,” he explained. “We have to accept this, and it has nothing to do with how quickly they build and how nicely they build and how green the grass will be. It’s really about being able to go back to a place where you experienced an unbelievable hell.”

Tessler also discussed the current security situation in Nir Oz with KAN, saying that threats from Gaza persisted.

“I think that anyone who treats the current situation as quiet is mistaken,” he said.

Kites are sign of ongoing threat against settlements

One of the ongoing threats to the area is the influx of kites which have flown over from the Gaza Strip, Tessler said.

“It’s not safe enough, no matter what the kite carries on it. It’s the very fact that it’s a passage, that the border is not closed and doesn’t protect the settlements,” he explained. “Settlement in the envelope protects the entire State of Israel.”

This post was originally published on here. 

US President Donald Trump told its mediators and regional partners that it is uninterested in returning to the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding outlined in June, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The report noted that the administration’s stubborn refusal to go back to the terms it reached with Iran earlier this summer has significantly complicated the diplomatic process of restarting negotiations.

After Iran started attacking ships in the strait in an attempt to regain control, Trump began his “Economic D-Day” campaign on Iran, which the White House is calling Operation Economic Outcast.

In his announcement, Trump claimed that the campaign would bring “economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale,” though he provided few other details.

Trump wants to move past MoU, Iran warns of attacks on Hormuz

Sources familiar with the matter told the WSJ that Trump is no longer interested in the MoU, which has been heavily criticized as a deal that is too soft on Iran.

“As the president said, there are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said, as reported by the WSJ.

“The naval blockade remains in full force and effect, and Operation Economic Outcast is underway to sever every remaining economic lifeline sustaining the regime.”

The report indicated that Iranian hardliners’ positions will make it difficult for Trump to achieve a foreign policy win, which he has repeatedly pushed for.

Regime hardliners have repeatedly derailed talks by insisting that the US recognize Iranian authority over the strait and move its warships out of the area.

Iranian officials have warned the US administration against any departure from the June MoU.

The administration “should know that no proposal outside the framework of understanding will be accepted,” senior legislator Mohammad Rashidi told Iranian state news outlet Icana, as quoted by the WSJ.

Several regional mediators have tried to sway Iran’s demands, but have seen little progress. Sources told the WSJ that the sharpening demands leave mediators without a clear way to restart talks.

Oman, Qatar meet with Iranian officials to negotiate

Representatives from Pakistan and Oman traveled to Iran earlier this week with varying results. Sources told the WSJ that Pakistani army chief Asim Munir left Tehran with little to show for his efforts. Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi also traveled to Tehran this past week, and the two sides reportedly hammered out an agreement that would lead to talks to reopen Hormuz. The administration reportedly has been upset at Oman, believing that Muscat gave away too much to Tehran.

While Iran has claimed the meeting resulted in a deal, Oman has yet to comment on the matter.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani also reportedly recently traveled to Iran to meet with the country’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi.

A joint statement released after the talks said that the pair discussed how to avoid regional escalation and begin the groundwork for talks.

On Wednesday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said Hormuz would not reopen until the US returns to the June MoU terms, which included an end to the US blockade.

“If the United States stops obstructing and returns to the memorandum of understanding, we can open the Strait of Hormuz within the framework of the agreement reached,” Revolutionary Guard spokesman Brig. Gen. Hossein Mohebbi told state media.

“Our conditions must be accepted by the United States.”

Mohebbi also vowed heavy blows to US vital interests and energy chokepoints if Iran’s infrastructure is threatened, Press TV reported.

Last week, Iran announced that it shifted its policy from defensive to “fully offensive” due to the deadlock in efforts to agree on a permanent end to the war. 

“Iranian entities must be prepared to escalate tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and the wider region, as Iran will be ready to make decisions and take action on difficult decisions,” an Iranian official told Reuters, adding that Tehran would conduct a “timely and precise” military attack to break the US naval blockade if diplomacy failed.

Reuters contributed to this report. 

This post was originally published on here. 

Norway’s King Harald, a reformer who emerged from the shadow of his well-loved father and reigned for more than three decades, has died at age 89, the royal palace said on Friday.

“King Harald passed away peacefully at Oslo University Hospital on Friday 28 August, 0635,” the royal palace said on its website.

Harald, who was Europe’s oldest living monarch, was taken to hospital on August 17. The palace said doctors were treating him for a bacterial infection in his blood.

In 2024, he had been hospitalized for an infection while on holiday in Malaysia and received a temporary pacemaker at a hospital there. He was flown back home by the Norwegian armed forces and later fitted with a permanent device.

That same year, Harald, Norway’s ceremonial head of state since 1991, said he would reduce the number of official engagements he took part in but ruled out abdication, insisting that his oath as king was for life.

Harald’s death comes at a tumultuous time for the royal family.

Norway’s Royal Family faces public condemnation for relationship with Epstein, rape allegations 

Crown Princess Mette-Marit, married to Harald’s son Crown Prince Haakon, is facing intense scrutiny for her friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a relationship for which she has apologized.

Her son Marius Hoiby, born from a relationship predating her marriage to Haakon, was found guilty in June of ​two out of four counts of rape and one count of domestic violence and sentenced to four years in prison after a seven-week trial. Both he and the prosecution have appealed the sentence.

Two days after Marius was convicted, the palace said Mette-Marit had undergone a successful lung transplant, without specifying when the procedure took place.

After several weeks of recovery in hospital, she returned home and celebrated her silver wedding anniversary with Haakon in August.

Support for the monarchy dropped to 60% in February 2026, from 70% the previous month, according to a Norstat poll published by public broadcaster NRK, rising slightly to 64% in May.

Harald had consistently remained popular with Norwegians. According to the February poll, he was the royal who best represented the Norwegian royal family, with a score of 9.2, on a scale of 1 to 10.

Who was Norway’s King Harald?

A great-great-grandchild of Britain’s Queen Victoria, Harald acceded to the throne in 1991 and slowly introduced modern touches that brought a ceremonial post seen mainly as a symbol of national independence into the 21st century.

The popular king played a crucial role in comforting the nation in times of mourning.

When far-right, anti-Islam fanatic Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in 2011 in Oslo and on Utoya island, the king consoled the nation with a powerful televised speech. His voice trembling with emotion, he said that “freedom is stronger than fear.”

After floods, storms and other disasters, he would travel to the scene wearing rubber boots and a well-worn jacket to meet those who had lost homes or loved ones.

Late in life, he spoke up for tolerance, declaring in a 2016 speech that Norwegians could have many backgrounds, beliefs and sexual orientations.

In November 2005, Harald and his wife, Sonja Haraldsen, invited 550 Norwegians to a ball to celebrate the centenary of the country’s independence from Sweden.

Harald said in an interview at the time that Europe’s royal families should not be tempted to reverse moves towards openness and retreat to their palace towers.

“If you’ve opened the gate it’s very difficult to close it again,” he told Reuters. “I’m not sure I’d want to close it. So far so good, as far as I’m concerned.”

Like his father Olav, Harald was a sports and automotive enthusiast and often drove his own car, particularly to informal events.

A sailor, he captained his boat to win a world championship title and competed in several Olympics, but failed to repeat his father’s feat of winning Olympic gold.

Harald also took a great interest in the preservation of nature. He realized a lifelong dream when, aged 76, he spent four days deep in the Amazon jungle of Brazil, living with the Yanomami people and sleeping in a hammock.

Harald’s birth on February 21, 1937, was cause for national celebration – he was the first royal heir to be born in Norway in almost 570 years. Danish and Swedish monarchs had ruled over the Scandinavian nation for centuries, until 1905.

Just three years after Harald was born, Nazi Germany invaded the country. King Haakon and then-Crown Prince Olav fled to Britain, where they led Norway’s government-in-exile, while the 3-year-old Harald went with his mother, Crown Princess Märtha, to neutral Sweden, then to the United States.

After living briefly at the White House and then for five years in Bethesda, Maryland, Harald, his older sisters Ragnhild and Astrid, and their mother met frequently with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom Harald years later described as like a grandfather.

When he returned to Norway after the war ended in 1945, Harald attended state schools rather than the private lessons his father had received.

His 1968 marriage to a commoner broke with tradition and followed a nine-year standoff with his father that ended only after Harald threatened never to marry rather than give up Sonja.

In 1998, the king faced an unprecedented wave of public criticism over press reports that he had accepted a 4-million-crown ($400,000) yacht from a group of industrialists as a birthday present, and that palace repairs had cost the government 500 million crowns.

Around the same time, his former deputy private secretary suggested that Harald should abdicate at the egalitarian country’s normal retirement age of 67.

Opinion polls gave the king firm backing to stay on for life, however, and the criticism subsided. A year later, in another Reuters interview, Harald joked that he would remain on the throne for life unless he went mad.

“There is no tradition in Norway for that (abdication). But you never know. If you go completely bonkers,” he said. Queen Sonja laughed and said: “But who will ever tell you that?”

Harald’s son Haakon, 53, will be Norway’s fourth king since the country gained independence from Sweden in 1905, with Mette-Marit, also aged 53, as his queen.

Herzog sends his condolences to the Norwegian royal family

President Isaac Herzog sent his condolences to the Norwegian royal family shortly after the announcement. 

“King Harald V, who loved his people and was loved by them in return, served his nation as King with loyalty and devotion for more than 35 years,” he wrote in a statement on X/Twitter.

I am deeply saddened to learn of the death of King Harald V of Norway.

King Harald V, who loved his people and was loved by them in return, served his nation as King with loyalty and devotion for more than 35 years.

On behalf of the people of Israel, I extend condolences to the…

— יצחק הרצוג Isaac Herzog (@Isaac_Herzog) August 28, 2026

“On behalf of the people of Israel, I extend condolences to the people of Norway, the Royal Family, and the Government of Norway. May his memory be a blessing.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Two Arab teenagers, a minor and an adult, were indicted for suspected ties to ISIS and alleged plans to commit terror attacks, the police and Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency) announced on Friday.

The minor, a 16-year-old, was arrested earlier this month after an investigation uncovered that he had allegedly sworn loyalty to ISIS.

Several days later, as the investigation continued, the adult, 19-year-old Haifa resident Ibrahim Kaabiyya, was arrested as well, with police saying that he had also sworn loyalty to ISIS.

According to police, Kaabiyya had planned to commit a terror attack against an IDF base in northern Israel, while the unnamed minor had planned to attack Jewish police and military forces on Temple Mount.

The investigation also revealed that the minor had looked for instructions on how to make an explosive vest on the internet.

Bedouin man indicted for contacting ISIS, planning terror attack

Earlier this month, a 20-year-old Bedouin man was also indicted for alleged ties to ISIS and for planning terror attacks.

Abdullah Gergawi, 20, from the Bedouin town of Segev Shalom, was arrested on July 19 on suspicion of having contact with a foreign agent, possessing weapons, and planning to carry out a terror attack near the Forum Club in Beersheba.

Israel Police said that the investigation revealed that Gergawi had been in contact with ISIS activists and consumed related terror content, as well as planning to join the organization in Syria.

Yanir Yagna and Miriam Sela-Eitam contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Ofer Winter on Thursday declared that his party belongs to the right-wing camp, that Benjamin Netanyahu is the leader of that camp, and that “we will only recommend him,” in an attempt to put one question to rest, which actually raised several new ones.

Winter, leader of the People of Israel party, is seeking to remove from the agenda the campaign portraying him as a risk to the right, as someone who could help replace Netanyahu or siphon votes away from the bloc. Along the way, however, he also gave up some of the ambiguity that had served him until now.

Winter was careful in the statement to emphasize his independence from Netanyahu. “We do not work for any person,” he said, adding, “We will not dance to anyone’s tune.” But several lines later came the sentence that will define him politically: “The leader of the right-wing camp is Netanyahu and only him will we recommend.”

That is the sentence Likud, his opponents, and voters will take with them. The rest of the statement, regarding haredi enlistment, voluntary emigration from Gaza, moving from containment to decisive action, and the need for effective public diplomacy, was intended to sharpen what Winter offers right-wing voters that they do not currently have in other parties. But of everything he said Thursday night, his commitment to Netanyahu is what will follow him from now on.

Winter wants to open the door to Likud and right-wing voters who like him but fear that a vote for People of Israel could bring down a right-wing government. To them, he is saying they can vote for him without worrying that their vote will help install another candidate as prime minister. In the recommendations process before the president, he will be with Netanyahu.

Likud voters may be swayed to support People of Israel

The move could expand his support base precisely within the right. A Likud voter dissatisfied with the party list, with Bezalel Smotrich, or with Itamar Ben-Gvir could find a new address with Winter without giving up on Netanyahu as prime minister. Winter is seeking to take votes from the bloc without providing ammunition for the argument that he is weakening it: offering right-wing voters another option on the Knesset ballot while making a clear commitment regarding the identity of the prime minister.

It is possible that Winter’s campaign team concluded that his greatest potential currently lies among the more right-wing electorate rather than among center-right voters who oppose Netanyahu. If their in-depth research shows this, it represents a deliberate political choice: giving up some of the audience outside the bloc in the hope of gaining deeper access to the pools of Likud, Religious Zionism, and Otzma Yehudit supporters.

But the declaration also gives Netanyahu a new option. Until Thursday night, he could attack Winter by arguing that he was not truly committed to the camp. Now he can put that argument aside and choose a strategy that may be far more effective: embracing him.

Against a small right-wing party, that could work well. “Winter is with us,” Likud officials could say. “He will recommend Netanyahu, he will be a partner in the government, so anyone who wants Netanyahu to be prime minister should vote Likud.” After all, Winter could still be met after the election, perhaps even around the cabinet table and in a senior position.

From here, Netanyahu can run the campaign against him on terrain that is comfortable for him. He does not need to argue with Winter over who is more right-wing. He can talk about Likud’s size, the chances of forming a government, and the need for a strong governing party. There is also no need to portray Winter as a threat to the camp. It is enough to convince voters that they will get him anyway, even if they vote for a different party.

Netanyahu has done this before with Naftali Bennett. He presented Bennett as a certain partner and sought to convince his voters that the most effective way to guarantee a right-wing government under Netanyahu was through Likud. About a decade ago, during one election campaign when Bennett was polling in the double digits and even around 15 seats, the message was that Bennett would anyway be a partner and would even receive a senior position, so Likud needed to be strengthened. Bennett finished that election with eight seats.

Winter may not fall to tactics which worked on Bennett

If the same tactic works against Winter, the statement intended to protect him from attacks could help Netanyahu draw voters away from him. But in Winter’s case, it is far from certain that the old tactic will work.

Winter is not the Bennett of those years. He is relatively new to politics, comes with a clear security background, and, after October 7 and the war, is appealing to an audience seeking decisive action, strength, and direct military language. He does not have a long history of political partnership with Netanyahu, and he still benefits significantly from the advantage of someone who has not spent years inside the political system.

Netanyahu also understands the danger of attacking too aggressively. In the past, when the battle against Bennett became personal and also touched on the rabbis and the Religious Zionist public behind him, the result was not always what Likud hoped for. In Winter’s case, the risk is clear: after declaring that Netanyahu is the leader of the right-wing camp, an aggressive attack against him could provide Winter with a strong argument among voters: I am on the right, I recommend Netanyahu, but I do not work for him.

After this declaration, the question Likud will want to place before voters is no longer whether Winter is loyal to the camp. The question will be why they need him. If he supports Netanyahu for prime minister anyway, they will argue, it is better to give the vote to the party led by Netanyahu, which needs to form the government.

Winter’s answer is already contained in his statement: It is possible to want Netanyahu as prime minister and still not vote Likud. That is where he is trying to position himself, as a clearly right-wing party that supports Netanyahu for prime minister but is not subordinate to him within the camp.

It is also necessary to read carefully what Winter committed to, and what he did not. He said he would recommend Netanyahu. He did not say he would only sit in a government led by Netanyahu. If Netanyahu does not reach 61 seats and fails to form a government, the wording Winter chose leaves him room to maneuver. He closed the question of his recommendation to the president, but not everything that may happen afterward.

If Netanyahu receives the mandate and fails to establish a government, Winter’s statement does not commit him to staying out of any other government at all costs.

This post was originally published on here. 

The official entry of Ofer Winter into the political arena and the unification of three Arab parties are creating a shake-up in the political system, the latest poll published by Maariv revealed on Friday.

The bloc of Zionist opposition parties, weakened by one seat, now stands at 59 seats, while Arab parties together strengthened to 13 seats, according to the poll conducted by Lazar Research, headed by Dr. Menachem Lazar, in cooperation with Panel4ALL.

The data shows that Winter’s entry has created greater complexity within the coalition bloc. Without him, the bloc led by Benjamin Netanyahu receives 43 seats, while with him it rises to 48 seats. Winter, whose People of Israel party receives five seats in the poll, pushes the Religious Zionism Party led by Bezalel Smotrich below the electoral threshold.

Another interesting figure: none of the parties in the “third bloc” crosses the electoral threshold, and together with Religious Zionism, they account for around 8% of the vote, equivalent to about 10 seats, that are effectively lost.

The poll also shows that the unification between Hadash-Ta’al and Balad strengthens the bloc of Arab parties. The three-way merger gives them eight seats, in addition to the five seats Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, received.

The changes are evident both in the coalition bloc, where Otzma Yehudit loses one seat and drops to eight, and in the opposition bloc, where Yashar falls by one seat to 25, while B’yachad rises by one seat to 15. However, the changes are minor.

Overall, the coalition bloc stands at 43 seats, and when Winter’s party is added, at 48, one seat fewer than in the previous poll. Meanwhile, the Zionist opposition bloc stands at 59 seats, one seat fewer than in the previous survey.

Religious Zionism (3%), The Zionist Home-The Reservists (2%), the Economic Party (1.5%), and Blue and White (0.6%) do not cross the electoral threshold. The percentage of undecided voters in the current poll stood at 11.5%.

The latest poll results indicated that the complete Knesset composition would be as follows:

Yashar: 25 (-1)

Likud: 20 (Unchanged)

B’Yachad: 15 (+1)

Democrats: 10 (Unchanged)

Yisrael Beytenu: 9 (-1)

Otzma Yehudit: 8 (-1)

United Torah Judaism: 8 (Unchanged)

Hadash-Ta’al and Balad: 8 (+2)

Shas: 7 (Unchanged)

People of Israel, headed by Winter: 5 (New)

Ra’am: 5 (Unchanged)

Israelis dissatisfied with education system, concerned with content

Ahead of the start of the school year, the Maariv poll found that an overwhelming majority of Israelis (74%) are dissatisfied with Israel’s public education system, compared with 70% who were dissatisfied in August 2023.

Only 18% said they were satisfied, compared with 23% in 2023, while another 8% had no opinion, compared with 7% previously.

A majority of Israelis (62%) who have children in Israel’s education system, from kindergarten through 12th grade, are concerned about the introduction of content into their children’s schools that does not align with their values and worldview.

By contrast, 28% said they were not concerned, while 10% did not know.

The concern is shared among people from all political camps. The most concerned are voters of Arab parties (80%), followed by opposition voters (61%), while 57% of those intending to vote for coalition parties also expressed concern.

Among Jewish Israelis, the most concerned are secular Israelis (72%, compared with 19% who are not concerned), while the least concerned are religious Israelis (41%, compared with 50% who are not).

Netanyahu falling behind Eisenkot, Bennett, still leads over Liberman

The poll also found that Gadi Eisenkot leads Benjamin Netanyahu in suitability for prime minister, with 48% compared with 37%. Naftali Bennett also leads Netanyahu, with 45% compared with 40%.

Against Avigdor Liberman, Netanyahu receives 40%, compared with 37% who believe Lieberman is more suitable for the position.

The poll was conducted from August 16 to 27. A total of 4,116 people were invited to participate, and 506 respondents answered the survey (12%), constituting a representative sample of Israel’s adult population aged 18 and over, both Jewish and Arab. The maximum sampling error is 4.4%.

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The crew of a military helicopter carrying US President Donald Trump that came too close to a passenger jet on August 4 failed to contact air traffic controllers before departing, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday.

The incident involving a plane departing Reagan Washington National Airport raised questions about why the passenger airplane was allowed to depart while ​Marine One was nearby, a time when commercial traffic is typically halted.

The incident was tied to communication problems that have emerged since Marine One helicopter flights were moved off the White House south lawn in May to the nearby Ellipse, and have not resumed as work on a helipad continues.

The NTSB said the Marine One crew at least twice attempted to give controllers a required three-minute notice of departure but were hampered by communications issues. The NTSB said the crew also sought to contact controllers through the helicopter facility at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, which was also unsuccessful.

Marine One said communication ‘had been spotty’

On Tuesday, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, Bryan Bedford, said the agency relocated an antenna and changed a procedure after the incident. The NTSB said checks made after the relocation have shown no communications issues.

On July 30, Marine One and air traffic control staff met and controllers sought “to discuss concern with recent reports of their not receiving the required 3 minute to liftoff call,” the NTSB said.

The Marine One crew said communications “had been spotty,” the NTSB said and they agreed to use other means of communicating with the tower in situations where they were unable to reach them.

FAA rules require aircraft to remain separated by at least 1.5 miles (2.4 km) horizontally and 500 feet (152 m) ​vertically around airports. The NTSB said Marine One and the plane were at one point separated by 0.82 nautical mile (0.94 mile or 1.5 km) laterally and 700 feet (213 m) vertically.

Envoy Air 3742, an Embraer EMBJ3.SA E170 regional jet, was bound for Pensacola, Florida. Another regional flight, Republic 4700, was 3 ​miles from Reagan during the incident and was rerouted out of caution.

The FAA imposed permanent restrictions on helicopter operations around Washington’s Reagan Airport after the January 2025 midair collision between an ⁠American Airlines ​regional jet and an Army helicopter.

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Gilad Erdan, chairman of the Unity Party said Thursday morning that he is holding talks with Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz over a possible merger between the parties ahead of Israel’s upcoming election.

“We are in talks with Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party,” Erdan said in an interview with 103FM.

Erdan said that if several parties join together and the alliance passes the electoral threshold, voters will begin to consider more seriously what such a move could offer.

“Once several parties join together and the connection between them passes the electoral threshold, people will start thinking deeply about what this gives us,” Erdan said.

“Do we want to continue as we have until now, where it is either Netanyahu and then we get Aryeh Deri and Yitzhak Goldknopf controlling things, or Gadi Eisenkot and then we perhaps get Yair Golan the extremist or Mansour Abbas controlling the government?”

‘I have no ego on the matter’ of political partnerships, Erdan said

“I did not establish a party and leave 30 years in Likud to deal with personal matters,” Erdan said. “I want to fix the things Likud is not doing well. This is the prime minister’s responsibility, because he is leading it. He truly is not trying to extend a genuine hand to the other side.”

Erdan said he is open to additional political partnerships, including with Ofer Winter, Yoaz Hendel, and Hili Tropper.

“I have no ego about this matter,” Erdan said. “I preferred not my political security, but rather to leave and try to convince the public to think deeply about what is best for them. Anyone who is willing to unite with us, we will consider it, as long as we reach policy lines. I am a man of the right, I am not willing to support a government that advances things that contradict my beliefs.”

Erdan concluded by saying: “I hope this will be an election campaign that will bring a real message, and not just looking for victories one over another. Our enemies are Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, not the other political side.”

Gantz confirmed in an interview on Walla’s election podcast with Yehuda Schlesinger that he met with Erdan the previous day for a lengthy conversation, and said he remains open to additional partnerships ahead of the election.

“We sat for a long and serious conversation, we learned about each other, and there will be another meeting,” Gantz said. “There are no agreements at the moment, but we are talking about similar things.”

“I call on everyone to join the bloc of the people of Israel. Ofer Winter leans more toward the right, but there are good people around him. My door is open to anyone who promotes unity, but Feiglin, for example, is not realistic in my view.”

Gantz pushed back against calls for him to withdraw from the upcoming election, criticized his former political partners Gadi Eisenkot and Hili Tropper, and warned against another narrow coalition government

“It is not pleasant to see a ‘struggling garden,’ let’s look reality in the eyes,” Gantz said at the start of the interview, acknowledging his party’s weaker position in recent polls. However, he rejected calls for him to step aside and said he should lead any alliance formed before the deadline for submitting party lists.

“The demand that I step down in order not to ‘waste votes’ for the camp is not legitimate,” Gantz said. “No one should sign me onto a camp, I belong to the people of Israel. Nothing will move me from first place. I need to lead this path because I initiated the idea of the third bloc and I have the experience. I will not step down.”

‘We will establish a second change government,’ Gantz said

Gantz also criticized calls to form another narrow coalition without the traditional right, arguing that both a narrow “change” government and a fully right-wing government had failed.

“What is becoming clear as a mistake is that a narrow government, even if it is made up of good people, tears apart,” he said. “Bennett and Lapid were unable to maintain it, the right moved right, the left moved left, and it was torn apart in the middle.”

“We received a reaction that put Ben-Gvir where he is today. Now we will establish a second change government and we will receive another reaction, except the argument will not be whether Ofer Winter is suitable, but rather Ben-Gvir will be defense minister.”

“We saw that a narrow change government did not work, and we saw that a ‘full right-wing’ government is truly dangerous. The only solution is the third bloc and a unity government.”

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