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Foreign ministers from Jordan, the UAE, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt condemned Israel’s E1 West Bank settlement plan in a joint statement on Friday. 

“The E1 settlement plan constitutes a dangerous escalation that further advances settlement expansion and annexation and undermines the geographical contiguity of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly between the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” said the statement. 

The ministers alleged that the plan threatens the “viability and realization of an independent, contiguous Palestinian State” and “constitutes a direct challenge to international efforts aimed at achieving peace, foremost among them [US] President Donald Trump’s Comprehensive Plan.” 

Joint Statement

The Foreign Ministers of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, the Republic of Indonesia, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Republic of Türkiye, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the State of Qatar and the Arab Republic of Egypt unequivocally… pic.twitter.com/W3eGTOvnt9

— وزارة الخارجية وشؤون المغتربين الأردنية (@ForeignMinistry) August 21, 2026

The ministers’ statement comes only a day after France, Germany, Britain and Italy released a joint condemnation of the E1 plan. 

The countries called the project “unacceptable,” with the UK threatening to prepare targeted sanctions against those involved in settlement expansion. 

The government’s plan includes populating the West Bank’s E1 area, located between Ma’aleh Adumim and Jerusalem, with 3,412 new housing units expected to expand the settlement city by around 12 square kilometers. 

The Civil Administration’s Higher Planning Committee approved the project in 2025. 

E1 plan ‘tremendous,’ ‘major’ news, says Ma’ale Adumim mayor

Ma’aleh Adumim Mayor Guy Yifrach announced the launch of the area’s first 1,400 housing units on Wednesday, praising the plan as “tremendous” and “major” news for the settlement and for Israel as a whole. 

The countries’ ministers called for “immediate action” to halt the plan, “rescind all measures taken in connection with it, and cease all settlement activities and other measures aimed at altering the geographic and demographic character of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” 

The statement also called upon the UN Security Council and other international actors to “uphold their responsibilities under international law and take urgent and effective measures to halt illegal settlement expansion, and to ensure the protection of the Palestinian people, safeguard their inalienable rights, including their right to self- determination, and realize their independent State, in accordance with international law and relevant United Nations resolutions.”

The countries also expressed condemnation of recent violent attacks carried out by extremist settlers in the West Bank, and alleged that such attacks occurred with Israel’s support. 

“Such acts in no way diminish the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and constitute violations of international law and relevant United Nations resolutions, while posing a serious threat to regional and international peace and security,” the statement said. 

This post was originally published on here. 

A man armed with a sword severely injured two teenage boys, as well as a third person, at a Swedish high school on Friday, and one person was later detained, local authorities said, triggering a massive response from emergency services.

The incident occurred at the Brinell high school, which has 450 students aged 16 to 20, in Fagersta, a town of 13,000 inhabitants in central Sweden.

Two teenagers were taken to the hospital with severe injuries, regional emergency services said. 

“A call was received regarding a case of ongoing deadly violence at a school in Fagersta. Police have responded to the scene and one person has been taken into custody,” the police said in a statement.

The suspect was shot by police during the arrest, according to Sweden’s national public radio broadcaster, Sveriges Radio. 

His condition is currently unknown. 

Attackers previously targeted schools

The same school had received a threat in May of this year, according to Sveriges Radio. 

Last year, a shooting at an adult education center in the Swedish city of Orebro left 10 people dead in what Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said was the worst mass shooting in the country’s history. 

“Police are continuing to work at the scene with a number of different resources. The public is urged to respect the roadblocks and listen to police instructions,” it added. 

Fagersta municipality said that the school was evacuated and all the students were sent home. 

The government is in close contact with the police following the attack, Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer said in a statement to Reuters.

“We have been informed of a serious incident in Fagersta. The police are on site and working very intensively on the incident,” Strommer said.

Director of health and medical services Jonas Cederberg said that authorities had been moved to “high alert status to marshal our resources and gain the clearest possible picture of the situation.” 

That will give us the best basis for making the right decisions,” he said. 

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said police were working intensively on the case and asked everyone to let them and the emergency services work undisturbed.

“Our thoughts are with all those affected,” he wrote in a post on X/Twitter. 

En allvarlig händelse har inträffat idag i Fagersta på en skola, precis efter sommarlovet.

Det finns uppgifter om skadade personer. Vi vet ännu inte vad som ligger bakom dådet men vi vet att polisen arbetar mycket intensivt.

Jag vill be alla låta polis och räddningstjänst…

— Ulf Kristersson (@SwedishPM) August 21, 2026

The school had just opened after summer recess, and for some students it marked the first day at the senior high school.

Local newspaper Fagersta-posten spoke with Madelene Jansson outside the school her daughter had been attending.

“I first got a text message from her that somebody had been stabbed and that the police were on their way. Then it all just went off. It feels unreal,” she told the paper.

Several other schools and public buildings in Fagersta were also placed in lockdown after the sword attack took place.

This post was originally published on here. 

Homelessness has become all too prevalent in Israel over the years, and the Israeli government’s system to combat it has not been entirely successful. 

As someone who attends university in New York City, where I can count at least 10 homeless people in a two-block radius from my dorm building, the small number of homeless people I’ve seen along Jaffa Street in Jerusalem shouldn’t trouble me all that much. But I could not be more wrong.

I hope that the research I have compiled sheds light on the homeless situation in Israel and brings awareness to NGOs like HomeBase that dedicate their time and resources to bettering the lives of those whom the Israeli government has struggled to reach.

Homelessness in Israel: An overview

Ori Shoham, founder-CEO of HomeBase, an NGO that helps Israel’s homeless transition back into society through group activities, told In Jerusalem that the State of Israel has reported approximately 3,500 street dwellers, the formal term Israeli policy uses for homeless. 

Of the 3,500 currently recognized homeless in Israel, approximately 1,500 live in Tel Aviv, followed by around 300 in Jerusalem, Shoham said. The number of homeless in Israel, and the general population living in poverty, has only increased in recent years since COVID and post-Oct. 7.

In 2024, the OECD had already reported a larger number of 3,900 homeless individuals across Israel, 87% being men and 13% being women. Back in 2021, Tel Aviv’s municipality reported 1,300 known homeless, according to Haaretz.

“Homeless people and street dwellers are the weakest link in our society,” Shoham said. “They have legal issues, they have money issues, they have physical issues, they have health issues, they have drug issues.”

The criteria for someone to be recognized as a street dweller in Israel, however, is harsher than in all other OECD countries, Shoham said. 

To be formally recognized as a street dweller in Israel, the individual must be at least 18 years old, “live in abandoned houses, gardens, public places, or building locations” and be “suffering from physical and emotional neglect,” according to the Welfare and Social Affairs Ministry’s Social Work Regulations. These individuals are “usually without active relationships with their family, don’t put in the effort to change their way of life, and cannot lead a normal lifestyle.”

This definition excludes individuals who many would consider to be homeless but, according to Israel’s harsh government standards, are not. According to this definition, minors under the age of 18, people who cannot pay their rent or mortgage and are evicted from their homes, released prisoners, and people removed from their home under a court order due to domestic violence are not considered homeless. 

Thus, they cannot receive the services and benefits the government offers the homeless population. The harsh criteria, therefore, do not capture the full picture of Israel’s homeless population, and the ministry’s estimate could be hundreds off from the true number.

Furthermore, in order to be formally recognized as a street dweller in Israel, each individual must go directly to their local municipality, which will then decide whether they fit the criteria of a street dweller. Not every homeless person is aware of this right, and some are not in the right mental or physical capacity to do this.

This is one explanation as to why non-profit organizations record a greater number of homeless people than official reports do. To know the number of street dwellers in Israel, the Welfare Ministry consulted reports of recognized street dwellers receiving social services. In 2019, this was approximately 2,000 people. In 2020, the number increased to approximately 2,250.

The Welfare Ministry also collected data from 89 municipal social service departments, and these numbers were vastly larger than those the ministry had reported from their internal information system alone. In 2020, approximately 3,470 street dwellers were treated by social services, a 54.2% increase since 2019.

Local authorities additionally reported about 800 street dwellers who aren’t treated, of whom a few hundred push away care and a few hundred are not legally recognized as street dwellers but are struggling with homelessness.

Furthermore, the Welfare Ministry collects its data on homelessness by cross-checking it with an annual questionnaire that local authorities fill out. Not every person who qualifies as a street dweller will go to their local municipality, as previously explained, and the data excludes those that many would consider homeless but aren’t according to policy. Thus, the Welfare Ministry’s numbers do not accurately reflect the true number of homeless in Israel.

At the end of the day, NGOs across Israel, who encounter the homeless on a much more personal level and reach those that the government does not, report larger numbers than the official reports do. Policies and funding can suffer from this, though, if the government is blind to the fact that the problem is worse than the Welfare Ministry’s inaccurate reports claim.

What government aid do street dwellers receive?

Back in 2022, the Knesset released a crucial report, commissioned by MK Yasmin Sacks Friedman (Yesh Atid), that gives a deep dive into the government’s homeless support and the holes in the system. Beyond not having a true estimate of Israel’s homeless population, many reports and articles similarly argue that the Israeli government does not sufficiently support its known street dwellers.

One of the many critiques of the Knesset’s aid for the homeless is that Israel does not have a national homeless strategy or provide a permanent housing plan, unlike the US’s Housing First strategy and other countries.

The Welfare Ministry provides treatment units where social workers can provide individual support for the homeless. “No one will be able to actually recover on his own if he doesn’t have any kind of support from outside,” Shoham said. The Welfare Ministry also provides “gagonim” – temporary overnight shelters for emergencies. 

In 2020, street dweller treatment units operated in 16 cities across Israel (6% of municipalities and 21% of all cities), with about 1,430 funded monthly slots with social services. In 2021, operations expanded to units in 19 cities (25% of all cities in Israel). 

The supply of social workers still cannot keep up with the demand, with a ratio of about 10 social workers per 150 homeless patients, Shoham said. This means a patient will, on average, only be seen about once a month, which is not sufficient support for any homeless individual.

Along the same lines, in 2020, gagonim operated in only seven cities, providing about 180 beds total.

The Welfare Ministry also works with nonprofit organizations to operate additional residential facilities for the homeless. One example is the Gagon and Lasova associations, which worked with the Tel Aviv Municipality to build 15 night shelters for Tel Aviv’s homeless, housing about 200 residents a night.

The government provides recognized street dwellers with two monthly stipends: NIS 800 to cover living costs and NIS 1,100 in aid in renting an apartment, which is paid directly to the landlords, Shoham said.

Despite the government’s efforts, the 2022 Knesset report concluded that only 27-33% of Israel’s street dwellers could be housed at any given time, which means there is a lot more work to do to ensure more homeless can be supported simultaneously.

What the system lacks in its approach to homeless aid

The government spent about NIS 28.5 million on services for street dwellers in 2020, which includes additional expenditures related to the pandemic. According to Shoham, the current amount of allocated money toward homeless people is only about NIS 15 million a year.

There is also no budget solely allocated to homelessness, the 2022 Knesset report said. Rather, different ministries – including the Welfare Ministry, the Construction & Housing Ministry, and the Health Ministry – allocate some of their budget toward supporting Israel’s homeless and broader poverty-stricken population. But despite their best efforts, this system does not efficiently support the homeless.

“Everybody is doing a bit, but no one is looking at the big picture,” Shoham said.

“They don’t use their resources in a smart way,” he explained. “So they put money in, but you will not see one homeless person that gets back to life because of this, because it’s really shallow.”

The 2022 Knesset report revealed the number of Israelis living on the streets has increased over the past few years, and government services have been insufficient in helping all homeless people. Friedman commented that “there is a lack of holistic understanding of all the resources needed [to prevent people from winding up on the street] and rehabilitation,” Ynet reported in 2022.

Another strong critique is that the Israeli government uses a lot of its allocated homeless budget on immediate (emergency) support but not long-term support, according to Shoham. They need to focus on reallocating the funds better, he argued. 

For example, there are not enough social workers per treatment unit to properly support the homeless. If more of the budget was allocated towards hiring more social workers rather than building additional hostels and shelters, then the homeless individuals could receive support that helps them in the long run and helps them get their life back on track, rather than just receiving emergency support that only helps in the short term.

Taking all the wars since Oct. 7 into account, the government has had to allocate funds to more immediate causes over the last three years. “The budget for the IDF, border security, police, has to come from somewhere and it results in necessary cuts in other budgets like welfare,” Jo Kaplan, CEO of Israel Relief Aid, told In Jerusalem.

“Nobody now cares about the homeless. They haven’t been at the top of the priority, but now they are less and less, and the numbers grow because their problems haven’t gone anywhere,” Shoham said in reference to the lack of attention the homeless population has received with the necessary demands of the war.

But the lack of homeless support did not materialize only after Oct. 7. “Even five, 10 years ago, they haven’t been in the top priorities of the government and the officials to handle,” Shoham said.

Who supports the homeless when the government cannot?

That is where NGOs like HomeBase and the Israel Relief Aid come into the picture. They meet the needs of the homeless where government aid does not, especially since Oct. 7.

“Israel is dependent on its amutot, its nonprofits, to pick up the slack in welfare and help for the homeless, and as far as I know, it always has been this way,” Kaplan said. The Israel Relief Aid supports all types of people living under the poverty line. They also run the Tel Aviv Homeless Cafe, which gives the homeless free meals daily and jackets in the winter cold and rain.

HomeBase, founded in 2013 by Shoham, is another one of the many NGOs across Israel that does its part to help the homeless get back on their feet and join a warm community.

At its core, HomeBase is Israel’s soccer team in the Homeless World Cup. There are currently 75 countries that participate in the Homeless World Cup Foundation, and the teams are solely made up of homeless people. It breaks derogatory stereotypes and assumptions about homeless people, and joining a team gives the players a sense of belonging and builds up their self-confidence. 

“When we play with them on the field, then the different backgrounds don’t matter,” Shoham said.

Especially for the homeless who fall back into their bad habits and decide to go to rehabilitation before joining the team, they know they have a community at HomeBase to return to once they are clean.

HomeBase’s players usually live on the streets, in hostels, or in shared apartments with other homeless people. Shoham explained the process of recruitment: first, HomeBase volunteers establish some form of contact with the homeless individual, through conversation and offering food. In the next interaction, they extend an offer to join the HomeBase community, which the homeless individual hopefully accepts after another few visits from HomeBase volunteers.

HomeBase also has lockers, a women’s choir, Friday night dinners, and a relatively new theater group for their homeless recruits.

Shoham stressed that HomeBase does not replace the efforts of the local municipalities but rather works directly with them to fill in the necessary gaps. HomeBase, like many NGOs, has access and can develop personal connections with the homeless population in a way that the local government establishments cannot. Shoham said HomeBase uses their interactive position to “try to bring them [the homeless] to the establishment and use the resources available in the community.”

Breaking misconceptions of the unhoused

A common misconception is that people become homeless because of their own bad habits and/or choices. Really, it’s the opposite, Shoham said.

“Most of the people are just like you and me and [at] some point in their life, they encountered some kind of a crisis,” he explained. “It can be an immigration crisis. It can be a mental crisis. It can be an economic crisis. It can be divorce; any kind of big crisis. And then if they don’t have a good, strong support network, or their family, their friends, or the community, then it’s pretty easy to get them into a bad situation.” 

Dues also begin to pile up, and it gets to the point where the individual has no way of paying them back.

Then, they resort to drugs. “It’s not [that] you are using drugs and then you become homeless,” Shoham said, demystifying a popular stereotype about homeless people. “Usually you end up in a bad situation, and then you try to use alcohol or drugs just to forget reality. And then it becomes your reality.”

“And then you don’t see any light,” he continued. “I would never be able to do that. And then they just continue, surviving their daily life.”

So how can we help? According to Shoham, a simple act like giving the homeless something to eat and treating them with kindness makes a big difference. 

“Imagine that, if you see him now in his worst situation, then that’s how he is now,” Shoham said. “He hadn’t been like that a year ago or 10 years ago.

“He is a person like you and me. And he’s also able to get back and change the way he is.”

Where do we go from here?

The reality is the Israeli government needs to do more to support its homeless population, whether it’s allocating government funds more productively or broadening the criteria for a street dweller so that more homeless people can receive government aid. 

Since Oct. 7, the Israeli government, understandably, has had other issues that must take priority over the needs of relatively “smaller” problems. The support from well-established NGOs across the country has, without a doubt, made a difference in the lives of hundreds of homeless individuals.

Kaplan has personally brought in around 700 aid containers since 2000, paid for by donors. 

“Huge aid containers really help the poor and homeless in Israel – but I learned through it that there is never an end to the need, and also never an end to the homeless,” Kaplan said. “I do believe, though, that this aid has helped to keep the percentage of poverty in Israel at bay, and maybe even lower it.”

But there is only so much NGOs can do alone. The Israeli government must step up where and when they can, amidst the demands of war, to better support its homeless population.

“I think that we haven’t seen the full effect of the war because there are soldiers in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza now. So the war isn’t going anywhere,” Shoham said.

“So if we can help more people, then we are blessed.”

Check out the writer’s upcoming podcast with Ori Shoham on The JPost Podcast for an enlightening conversation offering an overview of the homeless situation in Israel. www.jpost.com/videos.

This post was originally published on here. 

Prince Harry, Elton John and other high-profile claimants face paying millions of dollars out of their own pockets to cover the legal costs of the Daily Mail’s publisher after a judge ruled their failed privacy lawsuits were conducted in an unreasonable way.

Judge Matthew Nicklin’s judgment on costs, which was published on Friday, also ordered an interim payment from the claimants of £9.54 million towards the legal costs of Associated Newspapers.

Last month, judge Matthew Nicklin comprehensively rejected the case brought by King Charles’ younger son, John, and five other figures, rejecting allegations that the Mail titles had engaged in widespread unlawful activities, such as phone hacking.

Friday’s judgment delivered a damaging blow to Harry and the others by ruling that the outstanding amount should be paid on an “indemnity basis.”

This means that, as the losing party, the Prince and the others must pay towards Associated‘s costs without the publisher needing to show these were reasonable and proportionate.

Explaining his decision, Nicklin was highly critical of the way the claimants’ case had been put, including that serious allegations had rested on “speculative and inferential” foundations.

“In my judgment, the cumulative effect of these matters takes the case well outside the norm. The conduct was unreasonable to a high degree,” Nicklin said.

A spokesperson for Harry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

‘Another overwhelming victory,’ says newspaper spokesman

A spokesman for Associated Newspapers called the ruling “another overwhelming victory for the Mail and its journalism.”

The court was told at a hearing in July that Associated had incurred a legal bill of £34.5 million ($45.8 million), while Harry and other claimants had an insurance policy that covered only £16 million.

Associated’s lawyer Antony White argued the claimants had made wide-ranging and serious “egregious” allegations without supporting evidence, which had added to their costs.

He also said Harry’s statement following the ruling was an abuse of his position and celebrity status.

Nicholas Bacon, the lawyer for the claimants, said in their submissions that Associated’s £34.5 million legal bill was “eye-watering,” far exceeding an agreed budget.

This post was originally published on here. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied a request by National Missions Minister Orit Strock that the annual Elul rabbinical prayers be held inside the Gaza Strip, the minister said on Friday.

Strock made the announcement as part of a prayer event held at Kissufim Tower near Gaza marking the 21st anniversary of the burning of synagogues in Gush Katif, noting that the request was made two weeks prior at the conclusion of a security cabinet meeting.

“The prime minister seriously considered this request, but at the end of the day, to my great regret, he gave me a negative answer,” Strock said at the event.

The request came in the form of a letter signed by 20 prominent rabbis from across religious Zionism, Strock noted, reading a paragraph from the letter that emphasized Elul as a day of fasting and prayer meant to “mark the suffering in the Land of Israel.”

“We will not forget and cannot forget that Gaza is ours,” Strock added. “Gaza belongs to the people of Israel, and the new Gaza will indeed be built, but it will be built for the benefit of its true sons, the sons of the people of Israel.”

Gush Katif rabbis, security cabinet members attend prayer event

The Gush Katif residents’ headquarters and Professor Yoel Elitzur led the prayer event, which was further attended by Gush Katif rabbis Yaakov Midan and Yosef Elnakvah, and members of the security cabinet.

“We are in the process of a great national repentance, returning to the regions of the country that we abandoned and neglected, and we did it in northern Samaria, and we will do it here too, in the Gaza Strip,” she concluded.

This post was originally published on here. 

Over 20 victims of a case involving sexual harassment and assault of minors were identified by the Israel Police on Friday, a spokesperson said through the organization’s Telegram channel. 

Initial reports were received on the 105 hotline, which receives reports of online criminal activity against minors aged zero to 18, from a 12-year-old alleging that an individual had sexually harassed her. 

Police launched an investigation following the report, and a 40-year-old resident of central Israel was arrested shortly after.

Suspect passed off as minor for three years 

The suspect had presented himself as a 16-year-old minor on TikTok and Instagram using an image of another minor, the police said, and was contacting minors aged 11 to 15. 

The ongoing investigation found that the suspect conducted this activity from 2022 to 2025.

Unit 105 asked anyone who believes they have been harmed by the suspect to contact the hotline.

This post was originally published on here. 

Something peculiar has happened to Israeli politics: almost everyone’s supposedly “right-wing.” Politicians who fervently oppose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government claim the label, as do many others who disagree with Likud on fundamental things. 

Some declare the Left-Right dichotomy obsolete, yet still seem terrified that somebody might mistake them for “left-wing.” What’s going on? What exactly does “right-wing” mean in Israel?

It certainly doesn’t mean the economic Right. I’m basically a capitalist. I may not believe the market cures all social ills, but the market, with guardrails, is the best economic principle we have. By that definition, much of Israel’s “Right” is leftist. 

The constituencies most dependent on state transfers vote for parties of the Right, and unlike US working-class voters voting against their economic interests, these Israelis are being logical. They favor the huge public spending flowing to them from the pro-welfare “Right” and vote accordingly.

Fine. Perhaps being right-wing means being a Zionist.

Consider the strange case of me. I consider the Jews a people by any reasonable historical definition of that word, rather than merely adherents of a religion scattered among diasporas.

Peoples are entitled to national self-determination, and Jews, therefore, had every right to establish a nation-state in their ancestral homeland, even after a diaspora lasting 2,000 years, which I do admit is odd (many things in life are odd).

I also regard the fixation on the Nakba as disproportionate. Israel’s creation involved displacement and brutality, which was tragic for individuals, but the middle of the 20th century was filled with collapsing empires, border changes, and population movements. The partition of India uprooted many millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs to create coherent states.

Elevating the Palestinian displacement into a uniquely monstrous event that confers an eternal claim against the very existence of Israel is absurd. Much more unusual was the abuse of refugees in their host societies, from which they were mostly ethnically indistinguishable.

And while Palestinian national sentiment exists powerfully today – whether Israelis like it or not – its historical claims are far weaker than advocates pretend. 

Before the confrontation with Zionism helped forge a distinct Palestinian identity, the Sunni Arab inhabitants of (and migrants to) Mandate Palestine were part of the wider Arab Levant, with local and religious identities, mainly.

Being right-wing doesn’t alter the perspective on how the Palestinian identity was formed

On a national level, the differences between Palestinians and people in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon were minor at best. There was no ancient Palestinian nation marching through history toward sovereign statehood, and the world does not owe this. I do think it may offer a way out of the conflict – but the borders must be safe for Israel, and any Palestinian statehood must be demilitarized.

I am also extremely hawkish about terrorism. When lives are in imminent danger, I favor giving the security services extreme latitude to stop the threat. My concern for the rights of terrorists resembles my concern for the rights of mobsters: minimal, and mainly because one is innocent until proven guilty in a civilized society.

By this point, I should be safely ensconced on the Right – no? Yet by the bizarre twists and turns of Israeli politics I’m a left-winger (or, via the rebrand, a “centrist”).

Why? Well, I want Israel to remain a Jewish state. 

There are millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel can incorporate them with equal rights and not be a Jewish-majority state; it can rule them without equal political rights and not be a democracy; or it can attempt to remove them, which would be both immoral and strategically insane (as this would bring on global isolation on a scale that could devastate its economy, destroy crucial alliances, and undermine its ability to defend itself).

That leaves some form of partition. I have no particular attachment to the precise arrangement. The territory Israel relinquishes could become an independent Palestinian state, yes. 

But one of the great missed opportunities in Israeli history was Likud’s scuttling of the 1987 London Agreement pursued by former prime minister Shimon Peres and King Hussein, which might have enabled Israel to withdraw from much but not all of the West Bank while placing it under Jordanian rather than independent Palestinian control. 

Demilitarizing a region of an established country is easier than attempting to demilitarize an entire sovereign state. Likud’s

Yitzhak Shamir was not smart enough to see this.
My second “left-wing” credential is wanting Israel to remain a liberal democracy. Elections determine who governs, while democracy requires institutions that constrain what governments can do. 

Citizens possess rights that survive elections, minorities require protection from majorities, and an independent judiciary is critical in a country lacking a written constitution, a second legislative chamber, and other checks on executive power.

This was once an entirely respectable position on the Israeli Right. Former prime minister Menachem Begin’s reverence for independent courts was central to his political worldview, and Netanyahu long defended the independence and stature of Israel’s judiciary. 

The strange transformation of judicial independence into a supposedly left-wing cause attaches directly to Netanyahu’s criminal trials.

My third “left-wing” offense concerns the haredim (ultra-Orthodox), and here the ideological inversion approaches absurdity. I believe children should learn mathematics and English and acquire skills needed in a modern economy. 

I believe adults should support their families – not study Torah as a default vocation, receiving stipends rather than paying tuition. I believe citizens should equally share the obligations of citizenship, including military service when needed and as reasonable.

A desire to see all Israeli citizens share the military burden isn’t leftist 

Yet defending an arrangement in which an ever-growing community receives enormous public support while significant parts of it minimize their participation in the productive economy and the military is now a hallmark of Israel’s Right. This arrangement will bankrupt Israel, with consequences far beyond living standards. 

A poorer Israel becomes weaker and more vulnerable. Prayer will not finance Iron Dome interceptors, develop military technology, or generate the tax revenues required to sustain a first-world army.

So there we have it. My “leftism” consists principally of wanting to preserve Israel as a Jewish-majority state, prevent it from becoming an impoverished theocracy, and protect it from sliding toward elected autocracy.

I’m pretty sure most Israelis want the same – yet many of those same people insist that they are “on the Right.” The especially confused among them even vote for Likud and its allies, who undermine all these principles.

The first explanation lies partly in the failure of the peace process, the Second Intifada, and the waves of Palestinian terrorism that destroyed faith in its assumptions. October 7 deepened Israelis’ skepticism about peace.

Yet this should not logically make them want to become forever entangled with the Palestinians because of the settlements foolishly built by the Right.

Second, Netanyahu spent decades brilliantly delegitimizing “the Left.” The most revealing moment came in 1997 when he was caught on camera telling the revered Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri that “the Left forgot what it means to be Jews.” That gaslighting nonsense, repeated in different forms for decades, was politically brilliant.

This sad confusion about labels creates confusion about reality – in a country that desperately needs clear thinking.

I’m happy to call myself a capitalist, a Zionist, a security hawk, a liberal democrat, and a supporter of territorial partition. Those words convey actual information. So when someone announces they’re “right-wing,” I ask for something more useful.

I’d like to know about the Jewish-majority state, who will work and pay for it, who will defend it, and what limits will constrain its government from deciding to shut down The Jerusalem Post and calling it the will of the people.

Then we can decide who is conservative and who is radical. We can decide who wants the best for Israel. The old terms really are dead, but the disagreements are not. Resolving them requires us to end the confusion.

The writer is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and publisher of danperry.substack.com

This post was originally published on here. 

A British teenager pleaded guilty on Friday over an arson attack at offices linked to television station Iran International in northwest London earlier this year.

Nathan Dunn, 19, pleaded guilty to a charge of “arson being reckless as to whether life is endangered” at London‘s Old Bailey Court over the incident in April in which an ignited container was thrown towards premises belonging to Volant Media, the parent company of the London-based broadcaster.

The device landed in a car park, and the fire extinguished itself, causing no damage or injuries.

Dunn had originally been charged alongside a 21-year-old man and a 16-year-old boy, who cannot be identified because of his age.

At the time of the incident, a number of nearby buildings were evacuated as a precaution, although it was quickly established there was no wider risk.

Suspects attempted to flee scene of April arson

Nearby police officers were notified of the incident, and upon immediate investigation, it was determined that the suspects had fled the scene in a black SUV. A police vehicle then located a vehicle that matched the description of the getaway car.

The vehicle refused to stop for law enforcement, leading to a chase before crashing. The suspects were then arrested.

Iran International said a suspicious vehicle was denied entry to its London site shortly before the incendiary devices were thrown into a nearby car park.

This post was originally published on here. 

Turkey requested on Friday that the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) issue a “red notice” against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and 35 other Israeli officials on charges including genocide, according to an X/Twitter post by Turkish Justice Minister Akın Gürlek.

“We categorically reject the notion that the Netanyahu administration, which is implementing a genocide policy in Gaza, is untouchable and unaccountable,” said Gürlek. “We will not allow the crimes committed in Gaza to be covered up or the perpetrators to be shielded by impunity. We will resolutely utilize all possibilities of national and international law.”

Gazze’ye insani yardım ulaştırmak amacıyla yola çıkan Küresel Sumud Filosu aktivistlerine uluslararası sularda gerçekleştirilen saldırıya ilişkin yargı süreci kararlılıkla devam etmektedir. İstanbul 11. Ağır Ceza Mahkemesinin 2026/108 Esas sayılı dosyasında, aralarında Binyamin…

— Akın Gürlek (@abakingurlek) August 21, 2026

“We will continue to stand firmly by the side of the Palestinian people, the oppressed, and the conscience of humanity,” Gürlek added. “We will take all necessary steps with determination to ensure that those who commit crimes against humanity are held accountable before the law.”

According to Interpol’s website, a “red notice” is a request to worldwide law enforcement agencies to find and potentially arrest an individual “pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action,” noting that it is ultimately the local agency’s choice whether to arrest the wanted individual. 

Turkey originally indicted Netanyahu and the other 35 Israeli officials in April over the naval interception of the October 2025 “Sumud” Gaza flotilla, seeking sentences of up to 4,596 years in prison, Turkish media reported at the time.

The initial arrest warrant was issued by Turkey in November following Israel’s detention of over 400 of the flotilla’s participants, including anti-Israel and climate activist Greta Thunberg, before deporting them shortly after.

The request announced by Gürlek follows an IDF strike on the Abu al-Duhur military airfield in northwestern Syria’s Idlib province on Tuesday, with a souce telling The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that the strikes were necessary to avoid a clash between Israeli and Turkish forces.

Turkey: Forces in Syria posed no threat to Israel

Ankara rejected Israel’s allegations that the Turkish forces posed a threat to the country’s security, saying they are “intended to legitimize Israel’s unlawful airstrikes targeting Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

“Turkey will resolutely continue to cooperate with the Syrian Government on a legitimate basis for the establishment of ‌peace, stability, ⁠and prosperity in Syria, and will never allow the destabilization of Syria,” Turkey’s Presidency said on X.

PMO: Israel ‘unimpressed by Turkey’s hypocrisy,’ Erdogan an ‘antisemitic dictator’ 

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) responded to Turkey in an X post later on Friday, calling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “an antisemitic dictator who massacred Kurds, supports the massacre of the Hamas terrorist organization, and oppresses his own people.”

The Prime Minister’s Office:

Erdoğan is an antisemitic dictator who has massacred Kurds, harbors Hamas terrorists, occupies half of Cyprus, and jails record numbers of journalists and politicians who oppose him. He now seeks to extend his aggression against Israel into Syria.…

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) August 21, 2026

“Israel has long been unimpressed by Turkey’s hypocrisy,” the post said, noting that Jerusalem will “continue to act forcefully against Turkey’s attempts to destabilize the region and against any threat to its security.”

Danielle Greyman-Kennard contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian stated on Friday that Iran should end the war while it is currently in a “position of power” and the world recognizes its victory, according to a report from the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA).

“It is better to end the war today, when we are in power and dignity, and the whole world acknowledges our victory and emphasizes that America, contrary to all regulations, attacked our schools, hospitals, and infrastructure and is hated in the world,” Pezeshkian said.

“Today, we believe that all our commanders and armed forces are fully prepared to defend the country with all their might and with their lives in their hands. They also believe that the government is wholeheartedly seeking to serve the people.” He added.

This is a developing story.

This post was originally published on here. 

At least one Palestinian was shot and killed by a civilian security coordinator following a clash with a haredi (ultra-Orthodox) West Bank settler group, which had entered a village during an unapproved hike, the Israel Police announced on Friday.

The settler group had not received IDF approval before entering the West Bank, the military confirmed earlier on Friday.

On their arrival at the village, a number of Palestinians approached and threw rocks at them, lightly wounding several of the Israelis.

A civilian security coordinator who subsequently arrived at the scene fired into the air, and then shot at the Palestinians whom he claimed were endangering the settlers. As a result, one 18-year-old Palestinian was killed, and another teenager was heavily wounded, Army Radio reported.

Later, Palestinian sources said that the wounded teenager, a 17-year-old, had also died.

The IDF stated that a fire was started in a Palestinian home, and Army Radio reported that it had allegedly been set by the settlers. Footage circulated online showing the fire in one of the village homes. As a result of the fire, Army Radio said, a 65-year-old Palestinian was evacuated due to smoke inhalation.

The village is several hundred meters away from an illegal outpost, according to Army Radio.

The IDF entered the village in order to extract the group, and the police and the IDF have opened an investigation into the incident.

No injuries to the IDF soldiers were reported.

IDF arrests Palestinians for attempting to attack soldiers

Earlier this week, several Palestinians were arrested by the IDF after attempting to attack Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Hebron, Ynet reported.

The report cited an IDF spokesperson, who said the military arrived on the scene following an altercation between Palestinians and Israeli settlers who were throwing stones at each other.

Upon their arrival, a group of Palestinians surrounded the IDF soldiers and attempted to attack them, with the soldiers responding by firing shots at two of the attackers and arresting several others, according to Ynet.

Efrat Forsher contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

More than four years after his son murdered Tomer Morad, Barak Lufen and Eitam Magini in the heart of Tel Aviv, Fathi Hazem, the father of terrorist Raad Hazem, was killed overnight Thursday in Jenin.

According to the IDF, Hazem attempted to stab troops operating in the area and was shot dead. For Tal Morad, Tomer’s sister, his killing does not close a circle. In her eyes, the circle that began on April 7, 2022, cannot be closed as long as her brother is not here.

In a conversation with Walla, Tal said that just minutes before she learned of Hazem’s killing, her mother called her and told her about an unusual dream in which she had seen Tomer.

“Just before I heard, I spoke with my mother, and she called to tell me that she had dreamed about him. She dreamed that he was wounded in a hospital, and standing next to him was a wounded man wearing a galabeya. Tomer tells her: ‘Mom, don’t touch me, I’m wounded,’” Tal said.

She said the dream continued in a way that became especially chilling for the family after they learned what had happened in Jenin.

“She dreams that someone comes to her, an army officer, and takes her to Tomer in the hospital. She told her: ‘This can’t be; Tomer is not alive.’ Then, next to Tomer, stands someone wearing a long white galabeya, wearing a large knitted kippah, with his hands joined in front of his body, as if he is standing there guarding him. Then Tomer says to her: ‘They put him in his place.’ After he smiled at her, she woke up. He told her that this man was in his place.”

Shortly after that conversation, news arrived of Hazem’s killing. But Tal said her first thought was not about the man who had been killed, but about the soldiers operating in the area.

“The first thing I did was check that none of our forces had been injured and that nothing had happened, because that is the most important thing,” she said. “From what I understand, Hazem tried to stab a soldier, and they shot back at him. That is what brings us the most comfort and relief as a family, because if something had happened to a soldier, to one of them, in my eyes it would not be worth anything. Tomer is no longer with us, and that will not change it. The fact that Tomer is no longer here will never change.”

Alongside those comments, Tal did not hide her sense of relief that Hazem is no longer alive.

“I am mostly happy that a man with so much hatred, who spreads so much hatred, is no longer with us. He would hold conferences and send people out to carry out attacks, so mostly, thank God, this man is no longer with us.”

Jenin camp resident murders three, wounds 15

The attack in which Tomer was murdered took place on April 7, 2022. Raad Hazem, a resident of Jenin refugee camp, arrived on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv and opened fire at people spending time there. He murdered Barak Lufen, Tomer Morad, and Eitam Magini, and wounded 15 others. After the shooting, Hazem fled the scene and was located near a mosque in Jaffa after a nine-hour manhunt.

Two operatives from the Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency)’s operational unit who were patrolling the area identified a person matching the terrorist’s image and the details provided to forces. They exited their vehicle and ordered him to stop. Hazem raised his hands, but then ran to hide behind a vehicle, pulled out a handgun, and fired 10 bullets at them. The forces charged toward him, returned fire, and killed him.

After his son’s death, Hazem left his home in Jenin and delivered a speech in which he spoke about continuing the struggle and future victory. Among other things, he told a crowd gathered at the scene that he hoped they would see “victory,” “freedom,” and “independence,” and called for the liberation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Several months after the attack, IDF forces demolished Raad Hazem’s home in Jenin. During the operation, clashes and exchanges of fire broke out between armed Palestinians and the troops. As the soldiers left the refugee camp, heavy objects, stones, and firebombs were thrown at them. Palestinians reported one person killed and several wounded at the time.

For Tal, all these details are part of a story that has no ending point. When asked whether Fathi Hazem’s killing closes a circle for her, she breaks down in tears.

“My circle will never close,” she says. “I am happy he is not there. Our circle will close when we meet Tomer. But it is good that he is not here.”

Victim’s sister worried about endangerment of IDF soldiers 

On the very day the father of the terrorist who murdered her brother was killed, Tal sought to make clear that, in her eyes, such a killing does not restore the justice taken from her family. She also worries about the price soldiers may pay when sent to carry out such operations.

“No killing will bring justice. It only endangers our soldiers. It is another family destroyed like mine, and it is not worth it. They should not be here, and I wish we could take care of this without endangering our soldiers, for one terrorist, and another family like this will be destroyed. I choose that this should not happen.”

For her, even the killing of one person does not change the broader reality.

“You only think about how different we are from these people, and how much they are driven by hatred. And no matter how many generations pass, unfortunately, it will not change. I do not know whether the killings will change anything, because one person goes and another one rises. I only think about how bitter our fate is, that we are destined to live alongside them.”

Since April 7, 2022, she said, almost every incident of loss in Israel brings her back to the night her brother was murdered. Even four years and four months later, the memory does not need news about the Hazem family to awaken again.

“I always return to the attack, even during the war. Every face of a child that appears on television takes me back to that same evening. It is simply a cruel fate,” she said.

“Life in this country makes us see this not as a symbol or as someone specific. Every mother standing at a funeral, every person, every sister, every face of a child, with a uniform or without a uniform, everything brings us back. We live this. I do not need a news report to remind me. I am just happy that his father was killed and is no longer here.”

Most important thing is to prevent it from happening to anyone else

When asked how she thought Tomer would have reacted if he had heard that the father of the terrorist who murdered him had been killed, Tal said: “Tomer would have said that ‘every dog has its day’ [a Hebrew expression meaning that bad people are punished at their time]. That is Tomer.”

Alongside her memory of her brother, Tal said that, in her view, the story is bigger than simply commemorating Tomer. She wants him to be remembered, but more than that, she wants to see a reality in which more families do not have to go through what hers experienced.

“I cannot say that it is not important to me that everyone remembers who Tomer is, so we do things for that. But at the level of the country and the public, what is most important? The most important thing is that someday soon a solution will be found that will stop us from having to live this way. But if I am being honest, as the years go by, I believe this is the fate of the country, to live this way.”

Four years and four months after that evening on Dizengoff Street, time has not stopped the longing for the Morad family. Tomer remains present in every memory, every picture, and every moment that takes them back to the life they had before April 7, 2022. Even this morning, amid the news from Jenin, Tal ultimately returns not to the man who was killed, but to the brother she lost: his smile, the things he used to say, and the hope that one day the pain will become a little less heavy.

This post was originally published on here. 

From being boycotted, canceled, and outright attacked, many Israeli and Jewish artists have been the victims of antisemitic and anti-Israel abuse since October 7. Yet, for many of these singers, actors, comedians, and other performers, they have no choice but to keep working in their chosen fields. Suffering the attacks but soldiering on.

In this edition of The Jerusalem Report, we turn the spotlight on some inspiring Israeli artists and entertainers who remain proud of their identities despite the tension.

For the cover story, I interviewed the hilarious Yohay Sponder, an Israeli comedian who has been drawing huge crowds around the world with his stand-up, often off-the-cuff, comedy routine, which pokes fun at Israel, Jews, and those who hate both.

The Report’s staff writer, Chani Kaplan, talks to DJ Rafi, a formerly shy Israeli kid who has become an icon for millions of children around the world through his YouTube videos.

Hannah Brown, The Jerusalem Post’s culture writer, explores how Israel’s television industry appears to be booming but is still suffering from shrinking budgets, political battles, and fewer commissions.

The Jerusalem Post’s podcast studio manager, Shifra Jacobs, writes about efforts to preserve and even revive Yiddish music, and in a separate article, Jacobs shares her personal experiences singing in a mixed Israeli-Palestinian choir in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Lara Sukster Mosheyof, who also works in the Post’s studio, features the latest incarnation of the favorite children’s tale, Peter Pan, and how it is aiming to soothe a country dealing with collective trauma since October 7.

Feature writer Rachel Fink profiles musician Neta Elkayam, who brings her North African heritage to the world of jazz with a new band, creating a fresh and unique musical fusion. Tania Shalom Michaelian takes readers on a journey to an old Ottoman train station that has been converted into a creative space for artists to express themselves after October 7.

Moving away from the arts, we also look at the looming elections in Israel, with Prof. Amichai Cohen, vice president of research at the Israel Democracy Institute, weighing in on what’s at stake in the vote and the mammoth tasks facing Israel’s next government.

Maurice Hirsch, the director of the Palestinian Authority Accountability Initiative at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, looks at the lessons that need to be drawn from October 7 and calls for a new approach to the growing security threat posed by the Palestinian Authority.

Meanwhile, Andrew Fox, a former British Army officer and senior fellow at the UK’s Henry Jackson Society, examines the faults of President Donald Trump’s peace push in Gaza; and Prof. Kobi Michael, a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security and at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, profiles Hamas’s newly elected leader, Khalil al-Hayya. 

Feature writer Dana Ben Shimon talks to analysts from Syria about the new opportunities for their country since the fall of president Bashar al-Assad and the rise of Ahmed al-Sharaa. And Dr. Eric R. Mandel warns that Israel’s easternmost border with Jordan could one day become the next front in its regional wars.

Shiri Fein Grossman, CEO of the Israel-Africa Relations Institute, reflects on the legacy of the heroic Entebbe operation and what can be learned 50 years on.

And, as part of our special arrangement with the “Art of Journalism” workshop at the School of Communication, Reichman University, we are proud to feature an important story by Arielle Zabek about the conservation of thousands of vulnerable sea turtle hatchlings along Israel’s coast.

It’s another packed edition with a broad range of stories, and we hope you enjoy it.

– Ruth Marks Eglash

This post was originally published on here. 

Sometimes it’s hard to find the right word, especially when it comes to burials and reburials, but that was the situation in which the country found itself on Tuesday. 

The news that the remains and personal effects of IDF Sgt. First Class Yehuda Katz had been located and would be buried in Israel – 44 years after he disappeared in the Battle of Sultan Yacoub – was not a cause for celebration, but any measure of closure like this brings comfort.

Katz was just 23 when he was declared missing in June 1982, at the start of the First Lebanon War, following a brutal tank battle between Israeli and Syrian forces in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where 21 IDF soldiers fell, and six were taken captive.

For decades, he was one of the so-called “Sultan Yacoub III,” along with MIAs Zachary (Zacharia) Baumel and Tzvi Feldman. Baumel’s body was returned with the help of Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2019, and Feldman’s remains were retrieved last summer in a Mossad operation. 

The Mossad was also involved in finding Katz, the only one from that battle who remained unaccounted for. The location where his body was found was not initially published.

Chillingly, it was not initially clear whether his full remains were found, but at last his family has the relief of knowing that he died and has not been suffering in captivity all these years, a fear his sister repeatedly expressed. Knowing his fate, however awful, is better than not knowing.

Many Israelis and members of the Jewish community worldwide became involved in the plight of hostages during the Israel-Hamas War. On October 7, 2023, thousands of well-armed Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel and carried out the most barbaric attack perpetrated on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. 

Some 1,200 people were massacred, and 251 were abducted by the terrorists. The country became awash in yellow ribbons and posters of the missing and dead.

Despite the tragic politicization that surrounded the campaign for their release, the slogan “Ad hahatuf ha’aharon” – “Until the last hostage” – became part of our national psyche. It’s always been there. Redeeming captives is part of Jewish tradition. 

Sometimes the price has been unbearably high – like the release of thousands of terrorists from Israeli prisons in return for soldier Gilad Schalit in 2010. 

Many of these freed prisoners, including Hamas leader and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, went on to commit more atrocities. But the basic principle was understood – you don’t leave someone behind, alive or dead.

The body of the last hostage in Gaza, police officer Ran Gvili, was brought home for burial in January. 

But Israelis have not forgotten Ron Arad, the Israel Air Force navigator who has been missing since 1986 when his plane was shot down over Lebanon, and whose name is synonymous with a fate worse than death – a state of limbo, a dreaded unknown.

Others this week recalled Eli Cohen, the Israeli super-spy executed in a public square in Damascus in 1965. Although some of his belongings have been retrieved, his body still lies in foreign soil. There will be no rest until he, too, has received the burial he deserves in Israel.

The fate of Guy Hever, a soldier who disappeared on the Golan Heights in August 1997, also remains painfully unknown.

From the beginning of the state, there are still some 170 soldiers whose burial place is not known, some of them lost at sea. I have always been touched by the fact that the IDF Unit for the Location of Missing Soldiers never gives up trying to find the remains of missing soldiers, even after decades.

I have closely followed the fate of PoWs and MIAs since 1982, when the brother of the store owner next to my parents’ print shop was taken prisoner during what was still known as Operation Peace for Galilee. 

He eventually returned in an exchange after two years in Syrian captivity – missing his front teeth and translucently pale, but alive. 

As a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, I had asked international law scholar Prof. Ruth Lapidoth about his situation. 

She patiently explained that being captured and held by a state, however terrible, was better than being held by a terrorist organization. The former was obliged by minimal standards of international law, unlike the terrorists.

I kept her words in mind when my family later became friendly with the Baumels during the many long years that their son was one of the Sultan Yacoub MIAs. In the normal course of things, there can be no greater curse than to wish for a parent to say kaddish (the prayer for the dead) for a child. 

But when Zachary was finally laid to rest at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl Military Cemetery 37 years after he was killed, I couldn’t help thinking it was a pity that his father, Yona, did not live long enough to be there and at last know the fate of the son he had searched for, across continents, for decades. 

Katz’s parents also died before being granted closure.

It is easy to say “no one knows where they are buried,” but that’s not true. Somebody always knows. As time passes, the question becomes: “Is the person with the information still alive?” 

While technological advances have helped improve the location and identification process, the first-hand witnesses are dying out and taking vital information to their own graves. This includes those responsible for the missing soldiers’ deaths and those who witnessed the burials.

A promise to continue

Katz was one of the better-known MIAs, but with the frenetic pace of the Israeli news cycle, a small item was easily overlooked last week: the burial place of Shlomo Haimson was finally located after almost 78 years.

His story is a piece of history in its own right. Romanian-born Haimson traveled to pre-state Israel after the Holocaust with his mother and girlfriend on an immigrant ship that was intercepted by Britain’s Royal Navy. 

The Jews were transferred to a detention camp in Cyprus, then also under British rule. 

Take a minute to absorb that even after the end of World War II, when knowledge of the Holocaust was irrefutable, British Mandate authorities still refused to allow Jews into their own homeland to start a new life.

In the camp, Haimson joined the Haganah, the main pre-state paramilitary organization. In September 1948, after the establishment of Israel, Haimson was killed by guards at the detention camp during an escape attempt with eight others, who were recaptured.

It is now known that he was originally buried in a Jewish cemetery in Cyprus and re-interred in Haifa in 1970 with other unidentified former detainees. At last, his loved ones will have a grave where they can mourn properly. That is not to be underestimated.

Last month, the remains of Pvt. Ya’akov Zrihan, killed during the 1948 War of Independence, were identified after being found in a mass grave in Kiryat Anavim, in the Judean Hills. 

It was the initial burial site of many soldiers from that period, before the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery had been built and when graveyards, including the ancient Jewish burial grounds on the Mount of Olives, were cut off.

Born in Casablanca, Zrihan was 23 when he was among those killed when the convoy in which they were carrying food and supplies to besieged Jerusalem came under attack from Arab forces.

In 2010, I attended the military funeral of a sort-of cousin, Dov (Doveleh) Haberberg, killed in the Battle of the Castel in the War of Independence. His body was only identified more than 60 years later, along with two others, Eliahu Mouansa and Ze’ev Mandel. 

Mouansa’s brother recalled how his father had always believed Eliahu would one day return and had scoured the images of soldiers released from captivity following the 1967 Six Day War, looking in vain for his son.

The return of live hostages elicits cheers of “Veshavu banim legvulam,” the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “There is hope for the future, says the Lord, and your children shall return to their own border.” It is a different kind of hope offered when the children return in flag-draped coffins.

Every funeral entails a sense of loss, but some evoke emotions for finally being found – and a promise not to give up searching for the missing.

This post was originally published on here. 

Africa’s attempt to build a continent-wide market is entering a more difficult phase. The political agreement exists; the bargaining over how it will work has moved to customs offices, central banks, regulatory agencies and company boardrooms.

The African Continental Free Trade Area, known as AfCFTA, is intended to make trade in goods and services easier among African Union (AU) member states. It aims to reduce tariffs and other barriers while giving African businesses a larger home market in which to sell, invest and build supply chains.

The agreement was signed in Kigali in 2018, entered into force in 2019 and began operating in January 2021. Fifty-four of the AU’s 55 members have signed it, with Eritrea the lone exception. As of July 2026, 49 countries had deposited their instruments of ratification.

AfCFTA is often described as creating a single African market. That remains an objective rather than a completed reality. The arrangement is a free-trade area, not yet a customs union with a common external tariff or a fully unified regulatory system. National governments retain their own customs services, commercial laws and trade policies toward countries outside the bloc.

The scale is enormous. The World Bank has described AfCFTA as covering a prospective market of approximately 1.3 billion people with a combined gross domestic product of about $3.4 trillion. Africa’s population has since grown beyond 1.4 billion.

A Ghanaian food manufacturer, Kenyan clothing producer or Nigerian technology company should, in theory, find it less burdensome to enter neighboring African markets. Middle Eastern firms are watching closely. Gulf investors, logistics companies, banks and technology firms increasingly see Africa not simply as a collection of separate national opportunities, but as a region whose infrastructure and trade rules may gradually become more connected.

The central question is whether the agreement can survive contact with the border.

From a treaty to a working system

Reducing tariffs is only one part of AfCFTA. Trade also depends on whether a company can prove where its goods were made, move them through customs, receive payment, comply with national regulations and resolve disputes.

That is why negotiations did not end when governments signed the agreement. They moved from broad political commitments to the rules and systems needed to make those commitments usable.

The AfCFTA Secretariat said more than 12,000 certificates of origin had been issued and reported to it by March 2026. A certificate of origin establishes whether goods qualify as originating within the free-trade area and can receive preferential tariff treatment.

Without that documentation, a shipment may lose the lower tariff rate that makes a cross-border transaction commercially worthwhile. The certificates show that companies and customs authorities are beginning to use AfCFTA, but their issuance does not guarantee an easy border crossing.

A trader may still encounter incompatible forms, delayed inspections, uncertain procedures or disagreement over what a customs official will accept. Each participating country retains its own customs administration, computer systems and enforcement priorities.

The focus on customs reflects that obstacle. In August 2026, the AfCFTA Secretariat signed a 20-year, $3.1 billion concession agreement with Nigerian company Bergmans Security Consultants and Supplies Ltd. for a continent-wide customs-modernization project.

Reuters reported that the project is intended to operate across 50 participating countries. Plans include digital customs tools, electronic information exchange, one-stop border posts, cargo tracking, multilingual portals, data centers and risk-management systems.

The concession creates a framework for financing and operating the project. It does not by itself ensure that national customs agencies will adopt compatible technology, exchange sensitive information or apply procedures consistently.

Why negotiations continue after signing

A treaty can require easier movement of goods. It cannot settle every question about how two customs agencies exchange information, which digital documents they recognize, who bears responsibility when a system fails or what happens when officials suspect fraud.

Those matters must be negotiated among governments, regulators, border authorities, banks, logistics companies and private businesses.

Institutional differences complicate the process. One customs agency may be ready to adopt an electronic platform, while another may require legislative changes, security reviews and technical testing. A large company may have the staff to navigate several national systems; a small exporter may not.

Africa is not a single commercial or administrative culture, just as the Middle East is not. A Kenyan exporter, Nigerian bank, South African manufacturer, Egyptian regulator and UAE logistics company may share an interest in smoother trade while approaching risk, authority and accountability differently.

The most useful distinction is not between supposedly fixed national characteristics. It is between institutions with different decision-making structures, legal obligations and tolerances for risk.

A company negotiating across borders needs to know who possesses authority, which agencies must approve a decision, how commitments are recorded and what happens when circumstances change. Broad agreement on the value of trade is easy. Agreement over whose rules apply, who pays for new systems and how much information must be shared is harder.

Money, data and trust

Payment offers one of the clearest examples.

An exporter gains little from a tariff reduction if receiving money from a buyer in another country remains costly, slow or uncertain. AfCFTA’s operational architecture consequently includes the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), developed by the African Export-Import Bank in collaboration with the AU and AfCFTA Secretariat.

PAPSS allows cross-border payments to be initiated and received in African currencies rather than routinely passing through an intermediary currency such as the US dollar. By July 2026, PAPSS said its network connected 28 African countries, more than 190 commercial banks and financial-technology companies, and 16 payment switches.

The network’s expansion is meaningful, but technical connectivity is only part of the problem. Central banks and commercial banks must agree on settlement, liquidity, anti-money-laundering controls and the treatment of failed or disputed transactions. Businesses must decide whether the system is sufficiently reliable for real commercial obligations.

Digital trade raises similar questions.

The AU adopted the AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade in February 2024 and approved its eight annexes in February 2025. They address subjects including digital identities, cross-border payments, data transfers, financial technology, online safety, cybersecurity and advanced technologies.

National ratification and implementation are still required. Governments must decide how continental commitments fit with their domestic laws on consumer protection, privacy, taxation and financial regulation.

At the AfCFTA Digital Trade Forum in Lagos on July 1 and 2, 2026, officials, regulators, investors and entrepreneurs focused on moving those commitments into operation.

The technical language describes ordinary commercial problems. If a Nigerian company sells online to a customer in Kenya, which country’s consumer rules apply? If payment fails, who bears the loss? If customer information is stored elsewhere, which privacy law governs it? If customs officials receive an electronic invoice, how do they verify that it is genuine?

Such questions determine whether smaller companies can enter foreign markets without assuming legal and financial risks they cannot afford.

Under a program delivered by the AfCFTA Secretariat and Google, more than 7,500 small and medium-sized businesses in 19 countries received training between November 2025 and June 2026 in cross-border digital trade, cloud technology and artificial intelligence.

Training cannot remove regulatory fragmentation, but it can help prevent the emerging system from becoming usable only by large companies with specialized legal and technical departments.

The unfinished legal framework

Several of AfCFTA’s most difficult subjects remain under development.

The AU adopted protocols covering investment, competition policy and intellectual-property rights in 2023. The intellectual-property protocol’s eight annexes were adopted in February 2026. Protocols on digital trade and women and youth in trade have also been adopted, but ratification, incorporation into national law and practical implementation remain uneven.

These instruments sound technical, but their commercial effects are immediate. Investment rules influence how a company is treated after putting money into another country. Competition rules determine what authorities may do when a dominant business blocks rivals. Intellectual property rules affect whether a company can protect a brand, design, or technology outside its home jurisdiction.

For Middle Eastern businesses considering African investments in logistics, agriculture, renewable energy, financial technology or manufacturing, these rules will help determine the commercial landscape. They also matter to African companies seeking Gulf investment, partners or customers.

The negotiations contain a persistent tension. Investors want predictable rules and dependable dispute-resolution procedures. Governments want room to protect domestic industries, regulate sensitive sectors and change policy when economic conditions demand it.

No treaty can eliminate that tension. The implementing rules determine where the balance will fall.

Negotiating Across Institutions

AfCFTA shows how cross-border negotiation continues long after leaders sign an agreement. Governments have made the high-level commitment to freer trade. Customs agencies, regulators, banks and companies must now create the practices that allow it to function.

A customs authority may need to trust a document produced abroad. A bank may need to settle a payment in a currency it rarely handles. A company may need to work with a partner whose decision-making process is unfamiliar. A Gulf investor may discover that an agreement with a local company is only one step in a process involving regulators, financiers, local authorities and communities.

Misunderstandings can arise without either side acting in bad faith. A foreign company may interpret a lengthy approval process as disinterest. A local partner may regard demands for an immediate decision as evidence that the visitor does not understand who must be consulted. One side may consider an informal understanding sufficient to begin work; the other may require a detailed written agreement.

Effective preparation requires more than a list of etiquette rules. Negotiators need to determine where authority lies, which approvals are required, how decisions become binding, and how each institution manages changes or disputes.

AfCFTA’s progress can now be measured through practical tests: whether more countries deposit ratifications and incorporate the protocols into national law; whether businesses use preferential tariffs; whether PAPSS carries more commercial payments; and whether the customs-modernization project reduces clearance times and inconsistent procedures.

The 20-year customs concession places much of that challenge in unusually concrete form. Its success will depend not simply on installing technology, but on persuading dozens of national customs administrations to exchange data, recognize common documents and surrender some familiar procedures in favor of a system none of them controls alone.

This post was originally published on here. 

Houses under siege. Water and electricity cut. Families with children afraid to leave their homes because they fear that if they step outside, they could be beaten, attacked, or worse. 

Cars are torched. Homes are hit with Molotov cocktails. Farmers picking olives or grazing sheep are assaulted. Innocent people driving along roads have stones hurled at their vehicles.

And the forces responsible for enforcing the law? Too often, the military and police arrive, look around, try to separate the sides if a confrontation has already begun, and then leave.

In Israel, we have developed a convenient term for all of this: “Nationalistic crime.”

It is a wonderfully vague and laundered phrase. It sounds serious enough to suggest that something bad has happened, but sanitized enough to avoid saying what really happened. In other words, it is a crime, and somehow something nationalistic was involved.

But there is another simpler word for what is happening in parts of the West Bank, and we should not be afraid to use it. On the contrary, we have an obligation to use it. It is “terrorism.”

This should not be complicated. Imagine for a moment that the story was reversed. Imagine Palestinians surrounding an Israeli community in Judea and Samaria and preventing families from leaving their homes. Imagine them cutting the electricity and water, throwing stones at Israeli cars, attacking farmers in their fields or hurling Molotov cocktails at Jewish homes.

Would anyone in Israel hesitate for a second before calling them terrorists? Of course not.

There would be breaking news on television screens. The incident itself would be over in minutes since the whole place would be swarming with special forces. Arrests would follow. We would be told, correctly, that terrorism cannot be tolerated, and that those responsible must be hunted down and brought to justice.

So why, when Jews do the same thing to Palestinians, do we suddenly struggle with the vocabulary?

Terrorism is not determined by the religion or nationality of the person who carries it out. It is determined by the act. When violence is deliberately directed against civilians in pursuit of an ideological or nationalist goal – which is the case in the West Bank – we need to be capable of calling it what it is.

This does not mean settlers are terrorists, and it is for this reason that I cannot stand a term that is often used, “settler violence,” since it makes it seem as though all residents of communities in Judea and Samaria were somehow guilty. They are not. The people carrying out acts of violence are a small minority operating on the margins of Israeli society, and the overwhelming majority of the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria want nothing to do with this violence and oppose it.

But some of that minority are terrorists, and there should be no shame in acknowledging this. Because as long as Israel refuses to identify the problem, it will never be able to seriously fight it. If we cannot say what something is, how can we develop the tools, policies, and determination needed to stop it?

What has happened over the last week and a half in the Palestinian village of Kusra demonstrates the problem perfectly.

The story might never have attracted international attention had one of the homes not belonged to a Palestinian-American from Ohio.

Loui Ridi returned from the United States to protect his family’s home and raised a large American flag above it, hoping perhaps that an American flag would provide the protection that Israeli law enforcement had failed to provide.

This helped turn Kusra into an international story. And it drew an extraordinary response from US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who called the Israelis responsible for the siege what Israeli officials seem incapable of calling them: terrorists.

Israel should be paying more attention

Think about Huckabee for a moment. He is not a diplomat suspected of being hostile toward Israel or the settlement movement. Quite the opposite. Huckabee has been one of the most outspoken American supporters of Israel for decades. He has spoken repeatedly about the Jewish connection to Judea and Samaria as biblical, historical, and God-given.

If Huckabee is looking at what Israelis are doing to Palestinians in Judea and Samaria and calling it terrorism, Israel should be paying attention.

Instead, there is silence. No condemnation from the prime minister and no politician standing before the cameras and declaring that anyone who terrorizes Palestinian civilians will be arrested and prosecuted.

Israelis tend to underestimate how stories like Kusra are seen overseas. Yes, the perpetrators are few, and yes, the overwhelming majority of Israelis would never behave this way and do not support it.

But that argument only goes so far. Because when the violence continues; when arrests are not made, and charges are not brought; and then the perpetrators return again and again with impunity and no consequences, the distinction between a fringe phenomenon and something tolerated or even sanctioned by the state begins to blur.

Critics overseas increasingly claim that this violence is state-sanctioned. Israelis understandably reject that accusation since it is true that no one in government is giving orders instructing Jewish extremists to attack Palestinian civilians.

But when authorities know that the violence is taking place and consistently fail to stop it; when enforcement tools are weakened rather than strengthened, and when political leaders refuse to even condemn the perpetrators, it becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss this claim.

Take Defense Minister Israel Katz, for example. When he became defense minister, he ordered the IDF to stop using administrative detention against Jewish extremists in Judea and Samaria.

Administrative detention is a harsh and problematic measure, and while no democracy should use it casually, it is an effective tool which continues to be used regularly against Palestinians.

Katz simply decided that it would no longer be used against Jews. The message is unmistakable: the perpetrator’s identity determines how the act is defined.

Now, with violence escalating and pressure growing from Washington, Katz’s answer is to claim that the police need to take responsibility for law enforcement against Israeli civilians in the West Bank. In other words, this is not his problem.

But it is the defense minister’s problem. It is also the national security minister’s problem and the prime minister’s problem. Ultimately, it is all of Israel’s problem.

Again, this is a minority, and the perpetrators come from the margins of Israeli society. But here is the problem with making that defense: if a violent minority is not confronted, arrested, and prosecuted, eventually the world, with some justification, concludes that the majority – or at least the government representing it – is willing to tolerate what the minority is doing.

Israel is already fighting an increasingly difficult battle over its legitimacy and standing in the world. Israelis encounter growing hostility and protests overseas, and European governments are again considering imposing sanctions on the state. Friends of Israel are finding it harder to defend the country.

It is tempting, as many people do, to dismiss all of this as antisemitism, anti-Zionism, or the latest manifestation of the world’s double standard toward Israel. And sometimes that is what it is. But that argument can only carry weight when Israel can look its friends in the eye and say that it is doing everything possible to uphold its own laws and values.

Right now, when it comes to Jewish terrorism in the West Bank, it cannot say that. If Israel wants the world to believe that this violence is not state-sanctioned, there is a very simple way to prove it.

Stop it.

The writer is a co-founder of the MEAD Forum, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, and 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. 

Justice has been served. 

The ruling party’s members, in their primary election Monday, removed some of its most unfit and brazen lawmakers.  

The least significant of these is Nissim Vaturi, a coarse ignoramus who tried to impress Likud voters with preposterous statements throughout his parliamentary stint. These included a charge that the judicial coup’s protesters were deployed by Hamas, a call to kill all Gazans, and a conspiratorial hallucination that Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yair Golan helped Hamas on October 7 (in fact, he rushed to the Western Negev and fought.) 

Now, having shoved Vaturi down to slot no. 43, Likud voters told him he is too much, even for them. However, Vaturi was an anecdote all along, having held no executive position. That cannot be said of May Golan, the minister for social equality and women’s advancement. Having pushed her down to slot no. 30, Likud’s members effectively said they don’t think a suspect of fraud, bribery, and breach of trust, who ignored police summonses to investigate her, should represent them, whether in the government or in the Knesset.

Then again, Golan didn’t impact history, which will recall her as a footnote, if at all. That cannot be said of Idit Silman, the outgoing environment minister. 

Silman falls after controversial defection from Bennett coalition

Silman’s claim to fame is not about her ministerial record. Ever focused on herself, the Environment Ministry’s duties and dilemmas hardly interested her.  Instead, Silman will be recalled, for posterity, as the turncoat whose defection from the Bennett coalition paved the way for the regime that presided over the worst four years in the history of the Jewish state. 

Now, having pushed Silman down to slot no. 37, Likud’s members effectively said about her betrayal-for-office deal what a steady client might tell a prostitute when dumping her: this was never about love. 

Then again, Silman, an airhead whose campaign’s highlight was a video clip of her making somersaults (I am not making this up), is no loss to Likud, much less to the rest of the political system. That cannot be said of Ze’ev Elkin, a worldly intellectual and chess master who is clearly smarter than most people. 

Elkin and his friend Gideon Sa’ar ran as the disillusioned protégés of Benjamin Netanyahu who became his outspoken critics, a role they played with even greater relish after Likud had introduced its judicial reform. That was the ticket on which they were elected. But, alas, when they sank in polls, the duo betrayed their voters and fled to Netanyahu’s bosom, for a pair of cabinet seats. 

Now, having sent Elkin to slot no. 32, Likud’s members effectively said they see little difference between him and Silman. For that, too, these voters deserve applause, as they do for having ousted Finance Committee chairman Hanoch Milwidsky, a suspected rapist and documented misogynist who publicly disgraced his committee’s legal adviser, nearly bringing her to tears. 

You would think, then, that this primary election was a corrective act that cured the ruling party of its ailments. 

If only it were that. In fact, at a time when Israeli politics begs heroism more than ever before, Likud’s new candidate list brandishes, salutes, and prizes the hero’s exact opposite: the coward.

Sa’ar and Katz avoid Likud primary battle through reserved slots

Coward number one is Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar. The man whose political treason is second only to Delilah’s betrayal of Samson did not have the guts to run in Likud’s primaries. Yes, he had good reason to expect defeat. But in preferring disgrace and self-service over honor and the national interest, he unveiled a coward for all to see. 

The same goes for Defense Minister Israel Katz. No, he did not betray his voters, much less Netanyahu. On the contrary, he is where he is only because he has been servile to his party’s leader, for decades. However, he too manipulated for himself an exemption from the primaries, as one of the eight slots the party decided to let Netanyahu personally handpick. 

Never mind that when Likud’s members gave Netanyahu this power, they thought he would use it to bring in new faces from outside politics. The problem is that Katz, like Sa’ar, did not have the guts to face his party’s popularity test. Instead, he fled the contest that might have demoted him. That, too, is cowardice, as is Interior Minister Haim Katz’s similar deal. 

Nir Barkat survives primary battle amid Netanyahu tensions

Then again, these displays of cowardice dwarf compared with Economics Minister Nir Barkat’s. 

Barkat seems to have survived the primaries, but he did so by the skin of his teeth. The reason is that Netanyahu himself pushed for his ouster. And the reason for that is that shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attack, Barkat tried to have the Knesset remove Netanyahu. That is what Dan Illouz, until recently a Likud lawmaker, recently told TV’s Channel 12. Barkat denied this, but no one believes him. And the best proof of this report’s accuracy is Netanyahu’s effort to push Barkat out, which is why he ended up on slot no. 24. 

And so, the question to Barkat is not why he wanted Netanyahu replaced, but why he didn’t make that quest public. And the answer is that he, too, like Sa’ar and Katz, is a political coward. Had he been brave, he would have made his revulsion with Netanyahu known, regardless of the risk to his political fortunes. 

Katz, Sa’ar, and Barkat are not just another three of Likud’s candidates. They are Netanyahu’s aspiring successors. 

And so, the prime minister who did not have the courage to visit even one mourners’ family of the kibbutzim Hamas molested; the man who did not have the courage to confront ultra-Orthodoxy’s rabbis and demand their boys’ enlistment; and the man who did not have the courage to face a judicial commission of inquiry – is leading a list of candidates molded in his own image: the image of the coward-in-chief. 

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. 

In order for the “serving bloc”, the state-oriented Zionist bloc, to win the upcoming elections, the four main opposition parties must adhere to one clear strategy and understand that the key to victory is transferring 5 to 6 seats from the “evaders bloc,” rather than engaging in an internal bloc struggle and “stealing mandates” from one another.

The bloc strategy must be founded on five principles:

Increasing voter turnout

In the last election, voter turnout stood at less than 71%. In the 1988 election, turnout was nearly 80%. It is important to emphasize that turnout among the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) and haredi-nationalist public is very high. As we have seen many times in the past, among the haredim, even the dead exercise their civic right to vote on election day… By contrast, among mainstream Israelis, the working and serving public, the lowest turnout rates are in Gush Dan and the Sharon region.

If overall voter turnout in the upcoming election reaches 76%, the goal of replacing the October 7 government and restoring a Zionist government that will work for the people of Israel will be achieved. Therefore, it is important to focus efforts, encourage voters, and increase turnout.

Preventing the dispersion and waste of votes

In the last election, 40 lists ran for the Knesset, and 10 seats went to waste because of those that failed to cross the electoral threshold. It can be seen that since the 1977 election, all “atmosphere parties,” even those that crossed the threshold for the first time, disappeared afterward. It began with Yigal Yadin and the Democratic Movement for Change in 1977 and continued with countless parties: Kadima (Forward) and Backward, One People and Another People, the Third Way and the Fourth Way, the Pensioners Party and the Babies Party, all disappeared as if they had never existed, and this phenomenon only harmed governmental stability.

With all due respect and appreciation to Benny Gantz, Gilad Erdan, Chili Tropper, Yuli Edelstein, and Yoaz Hendel, they have no chance of crossing the electoral threshold, and their running will certainly cost the serving bloc at least 3 to 4 seats. Therefore, we must all call on Israeli voters to vote responsibly, with a strategic vote for only one of the four main parties in the serving bloc.

Do not embark on adventures that will end in failure, or as Rafi Ginat used to say on the investigative TV program Kolbotek: “Don’t be tempted by adventures and dubious deals, because otherwise you’ll pay the price hard and pay the price big.” In this case, it will not end only with spoiled hummus, but with a disaster for the country. This time, in the most fateful election in the country’s history, when all of our futures are on the table, we must not gamble.

Focus on common ground rather than divisive issues

There is no point talking about a Palestinian state or evacuating settlements, issues that will not happen, but rather we should focus on the issues we all share: a state commission of inquiry, equal burden sharing and enlistment for everyone, core curriculum studies, the loss of governance and restoring personal security, limiting a prime minister to two terms, establishing a constitution, and similar issues.

Any attempt to create divisions between future coalition partners must be prevented. Political cannibalism within the bloc must not be allowed, and I commit that there will be no alliances or factions aimed against one another. The demand that all opposition parties declare now that the head of the largest party will be their candidate for prime minister is a serious mistake, stemming from a lack of political experience. In the last election, Yesh Atid achieved an impressive result of 24 seats, but we all sat in the opposition and suffered along with all of the country’s residents, and therefore this must not happen again.

Maximizing each party’s electoral potential

Those who support Bennett and Lapid want to see Bennett as prime minister, and those who support Yisrael Beytenu want to see me as prime minister. If Bennett declares support for Eisenkot, he will immediately lose 3 to 4 seats, and if I do so, Yisrael Beytenu will lose at least 2 seats. Only a small portion of these votes will go to Eisenkot, while the overwhelming majority will move to the Netanyahu bloc or will not turn out to vote. This would be a small gain for Eisenkot and a major loss for the entire bloc. Therefore, we must all run until the end and present ourselves as candidates for prime minister.

Presenting a winning formula

I promise that after the decisive victory of the serving bloc, the state-oriented Zionist bloc, I will present a formula that everyone will accept and be satisfied with, and within days of the election’s conclusion we will announce our candidate for prime minister.

Only a firm decision by all of us to adhere to these principles and maintain a bloc-wide strategy will bring us a clear and decisive victory. To the attention of all my colleagues in the opposition.

This post was originally published on here. 

Studies examining the factors that contribute to a person’s emotional stability and success in life show that, alongside basic needs such as a livelihood, personal recognition, and a roof over one’s head, the human soul needs a place that is safe, stable, and familiar. A place that completes us, fills our hearts, and gives us a sense of continuity, belonging, and new creation.

That place is called family – a spouse and children. A warm environment, shared experiences, and, above all, the creation of life and the raising of a new generation, born from the bond between two souls who have connected and chosen to complete each other.

This need is already described at the very beginning of Creation. Immediately after the creation of Adam, the Torah says: “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make for him a fitting helper” (Genesis 2:18).

Since then, this feeling has been familiar to most human beings. In one way or another, a person encounters the soul that complements him or her. From that moment, they feel that there is a genuine connection between them. After some time, it may seem obvious that the right thing to do is to build a home together and create new life.

But a profound question arises. Those very people who once felt an extraordinary sense of completeness, who could not imagine their lives without the person who seemed to be their missing half, sometimes become strangers to each other over time. The magic fades, the sparkle dims, and suddenly they are no longer certain that they made the right decision.

How does this phenomenon fit with the wedding photographs and moving videos, in which two people appear to have found their entire world in each other? Was everything they felt at the time not real? How is it possible that so many people who married out of profound closeness eventually arrive at a place of distance and even separation?

The question becomes even more compelling when we read the verses in this week’s Torah portion that address the painful subject of marriages that have failed:

“If a man takes a wife and marries her, and she does not find favor in his eyes because he has found something improper in her, and he writes her a bill of divorce, places it in her hand, and sends her away from his house….” (Deuteronomy 24:1).

The reader is left wondering: How is it possible that the very woman he himself chose suddenly no longer finds favor in his eyes? How did all those dreams suddenly turn into a huge disappointment? All the good qualities for which they married have seemingly disappeared, and suddenly, in almost everything, they find something they dislike.

Indeed, our Sages said: “Whoever divorces his first wife – even the altar sheds tears over him” (Gittin 90b).

We are therefore called upon to offer a deep and genuine answer to this painful question: Why does this really happen?

Today, people want to know everything in advance

RABBI MEIR LEIBUSH – the Malbim, in his commentary on the Torah, presents a perspective very different from the one commonly accepted today.

In the modern world, people want to know everything in advance before making a decision. If they aren’t certain that they know the person standing before them completely and fully understand what they are entering into, they find it difficult to move forward. It is therefore common for two people to know each other for many years before getting married.

But this very approach can create a problem. When love is built entirely before marriage, a couple may reach the wedding ceremony after having already brought their relationship to its emotional peak. They expect marriage to continue that same feeling of exhilaration, but sometimes it is only after the wedding that differences, challenges, and weaknesses begin to emerge – things that were not apparent beforehand.

The traditional Jewish approach, known as shidduchim – matchmaking – is based, to a large extent, on the opposite idea. After examining the couple’s compatibility in the areas that matter for family life, they begin to build their love together. The goal is not to finish building the love before marriage, but to begin building it through marriage.

When a couple builds their life together, every shared experience, every challenge they overcome, every act of kindness, and every expression of devotion adds another layer to their relationship. Love therefore does not remain static; it can deepen, mature, and grow stronger over the years.

The ‘days of mercy and slihot’

The relationship between a man and a woman is also, in a sense, a reflection of the relationship between a person and his Creator. Both are founded on connection, giving and receiving, and the creation of a bond that does not rest solely on a passing emotion, but on deep commitment.

During these days – the “days of mercy and slihot,” when a person is called upon to draw closer to our Creator – we may approach God with that same attitude: First let me understand everything; first let me feel comfortable; first let me manage to connect – and only then will I commit myself. But the Jewish path suggests the opposite movement.

First, we connect. We observe the mitzvot. We increase our good deeds. We create a relationship through our actions, even when the emotion is not yet complete. Then, as the soul becomes filled, love grows, and the connection becomes deeper.

May we merit to walk the right path and to experience everlasting love. ■

The writer is rabbi of the Western Wall and holy sites.

PARASHAT KI TETZE

RABBI SHMUEL RABINOWITZ

This post was originally published on here. 

Parashat Ki Tetze represents an abrupt shift in the biblical narrative.

Parashat Shoftim is overwhelmingly collective in its orientation, outlining the structure of an ideal Jewish society. Judges administer religious and civil law, kohanim supervise religious life, a monarch provides effective government, and prophets deliver the word of God while checking royal authority.

Shoftim then turns to the laws of warfare and the settlement and defense of the Land of Israel.

The parasha thus sketches Jewish collective life: government and law, religious institutions, national settlement, and the wars necessary to defend our land.

Parashat Ki Tetze abruptly shifts from collective responsibilities to personal ones. It is the densest legal section of the Torah, containing more commandments than any other parasha.

These laws range from marriage, divorce, levirate marriage, and inheritance to charity, loans, returning lost objects, and agricultural practices. Almost no area of human experience remains untouched.

Despite their remarkable range, these commandments share a common feature. They address the responsibilities of individuals rather than the collective institutions and national concerns that dominated the previous section of the Torah.

The individual before God

This marks an important shift in Deuteronomy. Much of the book is delivered in a collective voice. Before his death, Moses looks toward the Jewish future and anticipates the challenges the people will face upon entering the Land of Israel and assuming its historical mission: military threats, cultural pressures, spiritual and religious challenges, and moral failures.

Haunted that he will not live through these experiences alongside the people, he offers guidance for the future. Much of his farewell address concerns how the Jewish people will navigate the transition from desert life to settled national life and preserve its identity across history.

Parashat Ki Tetze recalibrates that perspective. Life does not begin and end with collective identity, national mission, or our place within the larger arc of Jewish history. As essential as that broader vision is, Jewish identity also has an intensely personal dimension. Each of us stands constantly in the presence of God and bears responsibility for our own behavior: the commandments we observe, the prohibitions we avoid, the character we cultivate, and the way we treat the people with whom we share our lives.

These are deeply personal responsibilities. They do not depend on sovereignty, national circumstance, or historical mission. Jewish history moves through dramatically different eras, but the individual always stands before God. Our personal relationship with Him is timeless.

Continents and islands

John Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” We are bound to family, community, people, and history, and much of Jewish identity is shaped by those larger circles of belonging.

Yet religious responsibility requires that, in another sense, each of us also become an island. At times we must stand alone before God, stripped of collective identity and historical circumstance, and account for choices that are ours alone.

The voice of this Elul

Elul is upon us, beginning the lead-up to the High Holy Days. Each year, as we enter this season of reflection and self-improvement, we return to the classic elements of teshuva: prayer, charity, introspection, confession, and new commitments.

Yet each year we must also search for the authentic voice of that particular Elul. Teshuva cannot become performative or mechanical, something we simply shift into because the calendar tells us to. To be authentic, teshuva must feel fresh and contemporary. It must reflect our current experiences, respond to the world we are living in, and speak honestly to who we are at this particular moment.

Living collectively

This year, part of our teshuva journey should mirror the shift from Shoftim to Ki Tetze, from collective responsibility to personal experience.

For nearly three years, we have lived in an intensely collective space.

In Israel, wars have been thrust upon us by enemies who seek nothing less than our destruction, and we have shouldered the enormous burden of defending our country.

Jews overseas have confronted a frightening resurgence of antisemitism that is rapidly becoming normalized. The hatred was always there, simmering beneath the surface, waiting for an excuse to erupt.

In both settings, the assault itself has been compounded by the collapse of assumptions we once took for granted.

In Israel, we believed that a smaller, technologically sophisticated army, combined with the threat of overwhelming retaliation, could provide sufficient deterrence.

That conception has been shattered. We are confronting religious fanatics who are prepared to absorb enormous losses in pursuit of their goal of destroying Israel. The past three years have forced us to reconsider our security assumptions and confront questions about the size, strength, and manpower the IDF will require.

Overseas, many Jews similarly believed that after the horrors of the Holocaust, virulent antisemitism had been relegated to the yellowing pages of history. We imagined that we now inhabited tolerant and enlightened societies in which such open hatred of Jews could never return.

That assumption, too, has been shattered. The resurgence of antisemitism has created not only fear and insecurity but a profound identity crisis for Jews who believed they were fully accepted in the societies they called home.

All of this has forced us to rethink Jewish history and the future of our people. Inevitably, our mental and emotional space over the past three years has become more collective and less personal. Given what we have been living through, that is exactly as it should be.

One by one

With the onset of the High Holy Days, however, perhaps a different shift is required. Perhaps we must devote more attention to our individual lives and not only to the condition of the Jewish people.

During the “Unetaneh Tokef” prayer of the High Holy Days we describe how every human being passes individually before God, each life counted and examined for the coming year.

When we appear before God as individuals, we must account for our private world as well as the historical world we inhabit and the national moment for which we bear responsibility.

Imagine being transported 200 years into the past. The circumstances of the Jewish people would be entirely different, and nearly all of the collective questions that currently occupy us would disappear.

Yet the personal questions would remain remarkably familiar: What kind of person am I? How do I treat others? What are my commitments? Where have I failed morally and religiously, and where must I improve?

The same would be true if we were transported 200 years into the future. The challenges facing the Jewish people may be completely different, but the fundamental questions of personal character, religious commitment, and moral behavior would remain.

Both responsibilities

This does not mean retreating from our collective responsibilities. The challenges facing Israel and the Jewish people remain urgent, and our concern for Jewish history cannot be suspended during Elul. Ki Tetze does not erase Shoftim but follows it. Collective responsibility remains essential, but it does not exempt us from confronting our private religious and moral lives.

Perhaps that is the particular challenge of this Elul. After years in which history has demanded so much of us as a people, we must once again ask what God demands of each of us as a person.

We stand before Him as members of a nation with a historic destiny, but also one by one, carrying private choices, relationships, failures, and possibilities for change.

This Elul, even as we remain part of the larger Jewish continent, each of us must find that private island where we stand alone before God. ■

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. 

Poland’s foreign ministry said it was “very disappointed” and had summoned Israel’s ambassador in Warsaw after Israel decided not to pursue criminal proceedings over an attack on a volunteer convoy in Gaza in 2024 in which a Polish citizen was killed.

Damian Sobol, a volunteer from Przemysl in southeastern Poland, was among seven people working for celebrity chef Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen who were killed in the airstrike in central Gaza in April 2024, which caused an international outcry.

‘Very disappointed’

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland is very disappointed to receive the information provided on August 19, 2026, about the discontinuation of the proceedings,” the ministry said in a statement late on Thursday.

It said the Israeli Ambassador in Warsaw had been summoned to the ministry.

“The Polish side provided a critical assessment of the actions taken to date to clarify the causes and course of the tragedy, informed that a parallel investigation is being conducted by the District Prosecutor’s Office in Przemysl,” it said.

It also “expressed its expectation that the Israeli side will provide the relevant Polish authorities with all necessary explanations and materials requested by Polish investigators.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Ignacy Niemczycki told public radio PR1 on Friday that “we consider this a surprising decision.”

“We believe that the use of force must be proportionate, and that inappropriate use of force should have consequences, so we expect clarification on this matter,” he said.

Australia also summoned Israel’s ambassador in Canberra on Thursday after an Australian citizen was killed in the airstrike.

This post was originally published on here. 

One day after a surprise strike at Ben-Gurion Airport caused widespread disruption, Maj. Gen. (res.) Yiftah Ron Tal, chairman of the Israel Airports Authority, criticized the move Friday morning on 103FM and said those responsible would face consequences.

Ron Tal described the strike as “bullying and intolerable behavior,” as reports indicated that disruptions at the airport were continuing, with passengers still waiting extended periods to receive their luggage.

“I regret the distress and the damage caused to passengers, which is completely unjustifiable. In my eyes, this is bullying and intolerable behavior, and we will examine it in the coming days,” he said. “As soon as we identify who is responsible for this, they will pay the price,” Ron Tal said.

He added: “The steps that will be taken are not only administrative; they are also legal. I do not want to do things in a way that will not be correct.”

However, Ron Tal defended airport employees, saying they had continued working under difficult conditions.

‘Our employees work under difficult and complex conditions’

“Our employees are simply excellent. During the war and today, they work under difficult and complex conditions, and they do not deserve to be directed this way,” he said.

He later added: “We do not take unilateral steps; this will harm organized labor in the State of Israel.”

Regarding possible reforms at the airport authority, Ron Tal said changes would require time but were necessary.

“You do not change Rome in one day. You speak to the solution, not the problem; that is why I am here,” he stated.

“Not only is it possible to change, but we will change it, period. The authority has existed for 50 years, and its organizational structure is very problematic. We will find the way because we have no other choice,” he said.

Structural problems at Ben-Gurion

Ron Tal also pointed to what he described as structural problems at Ben-Gurion Airport.

“It is an inverted pyramid; there are far fewer temporary workers than permanent employees. Management needs to manage, and workers need to work. There will be friction, and perhaps there will be a struggle, but this will change. This is our obligation,” he said.

He rejected claims by the workers’ committee that the airport is currently short 400 baggage handlers.

“Where does this number come from? If you are getting this number from the workers’ committee, I suggest you check it. Even if there is a shortage of workers, it is among manual labor workers. This airport operated yesterday and the day before under conditions that were no less difficult,” Ron Tal said.

He also dismissed claims that airport workers must perform physical labor for 15 consecutive hours.

“They work 12 hours; this appears in the labor agreements, and there is a break between one plane and another,” he said.

Addressing the airport’s current operations, Ron Tal said normal activity had resumed and that officials were working to resolve remaining delays.

“The situation at the airport has returned to normal operations, and we are closing gaps. There were 16 flights that were canceled, and they will return. The airport is operating at full capacity.”

This post was originally published on here. 

In May 1946, less than a year after the end of World War II, the United States was trying to return to normal life. The economy was struggling to recover, inflation was surging, and workers were demanding wage increases after the war years. Then the trains stopped. A nationwide strike paralyzed the transportation of food, coal, and passengers, and for two days an entire country almost came to a standstill.

As the trains remained idle, a blame battle began at the highest levels of American leadership. Workers accused railroad companies of raking in profits during the war while refusing to pay them more. The companies accused unions of extortion and irresponsibility. US president Harry Truman accused both sides of “stabbing the nation in the back” and threatened to draft railroad workers into the military to force them back to work. Congress, meanwhile, accused Truman of dictatorial actions and violating the Constitution, while he responded by accusing lawmakers of blocking emergency legislation for political reasons. As the public was left without transportation and supplies, everyone was mostly busy explaining who was to blame.

Eighty years have passed since then. The trains have been replaced by planes, the US has been replaced by Israel, but one thing has not changed. Everyone is still passing the buck. Not just the thin cigarettes that help people deal with the unbearable stress in this country, but responsibility itself. Since the strike that paralyzed Ben-Gurion Airport, everyone involved has been explaining how everyone else is at fault and they are the victim of the circumstances.

Everyone is right, everyone warned, everyone tried to prevent the incident, and yet our skies were closed again. This time, to our regret, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, Jolani, and Erdogan cannot be blamed. An Israeli, blue-and-white failure is responsible. The question now is who is the weakest link in the food chain and will end up paying the price.

The workers blame management, which in turn blames them and insists it reported the staffing shortage to Transportation Minister Miri Regev in real time. Regev, who just a day earlier praised, celebrated, and elevated port workers at a ceremony marking the launch of the Morocco route, which she used as an opportunity for a light vacation with senior ministry officials, threatened, from Morocco, that whoever was responsible would be fired.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who stood beside her, basking in the moment, praised them even further, because those who carry passengers’ luggage on their backs for 12 hours in this heat really do deserve appreciation, as do those flying off for a family beach vacation with their children. He did not imagine that at that very moment he was standing before the people who would, less than 24 hours later, deliver a massive blow to the Likud election campaign, which had only just begun after a stormy primary.

Netanyahu cannot ignore hundreds of thousands of angry voters

This is not a localized crisis that can be solved with a creative video on social media. This involves hundreds of thousands of people who paid a lot of money for their annual family vacations, were already in the mindset of being abroad, and then found themselves stuck for hours in crowded airport terminals with their children, now looking for someone to vent their anger at.

Coalition funds worth hundreds of millions can be brushed aside with ease. Even a draft exemption law can disappear behind a sophisticated spin and determined statements promising exactly the opposite. But try dealing with hundreds of thousands of voters who lost money on a hotel they will not reach, attractions they already paid for, and hours of a crying baby who does not understand what is happening.

Netanyahu understands this very well. He has already found the scapegoat who will be placed on the altar, the person everyone currently hates and is ready to roast themselves. That person, of course, is Airports Authority workers’ committee chairman Pinchas Idan.

The message from above already came out last night. Netanyahu instructed officials to work toward removing Idan from his membership in Likud, following a party statement describing the event as “the wild and illegal strike at the airport that harmed the citizens of the country and damaged the economy.” And so, within a matter of hours, one of the strongest and most veteran figures at Ben-Gurion Airport became the person on whom all responsibility for the incident could be placed.

And Idan really is a veteran. Very much so. He started from the bottom, on the ground, was first elected to the workers’ committee in 1982 and was elected to lead the general committee in 1986. Since then, CEOs, transportation ministers, and prime ministers have come and gone, but Idan remained. For nearly 40 years, he has controlled one of the strongest labor committees in the economy, with a proven ability to bring the public to a standstill at its most sensitive point.

But Idan is not only a union leader. He is also a longtime Likud member, a party central committee member, served as mayor of Lod from 1998 to 2000, and over the years built a disciplined network of thousands of party members behind him. In other words, he was not just another central committee member who could be ignored, but a power center that Likud politicians knew well and generally preferred not to confront.

Idan orders flights halted following Gallant’s dismissal

This is also not the first time Idan has angered his own party. In March 2023, following Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s dismissal and the Histadrut labor federation’s announcement of a general strike, he ordered flights from Ben-Gurion Airport to be halted. At the time, he managed to survive the internal anger. This time, Netanyahu is deep into an election campaign, after a turbulent primary, and has no intention of quietly absorbing such a blow to his campaign.

The legal question surrounding the strike is important. Sudden labor sanctions without a prior declaration of a labor dispute can be considered illegal, but Idan claims there was no planned strike at all. According to his version, what occurred was the collapse of a system suffering from a shortage of workers.

That may be a legal argument that could hold up, but it interests Netanyahu less. Eden Ben Zaken interests him more. The fact that Regev knew about the intention to shut down the airport and asked, as Idan himself said in an interview, that he wait until after the primaries and after she flew to Morocco, also does not interest him. He is not willing to lose even one angry vote, no matter what.

Of course, no one should expect anyone to draw real conclusions from this incident, because investigative committees are for the weak. The Airports Authority will not conduct an internal review and try to understand how it reached the point of systemic collapse. Regev will not conduct a serious self-examination over a terrible term in office, whose only achievement has been stamping her passport every few weeks. Netanyahu sees only October 27.

And Idan? No one will mourn his departure. Like in a sketch from Eretz Nehederet, his place will surely be taken by one of the dozens of his relatives who work at Ben-Gurion Airport. The only question is who. His son Shay Idan, the father of the groom Moshe Idan, or his Filipino partner, Teresa May Idan.

This post was originally published on here. 

Almost exactly 80 years ago, in August, 1946, David Danielski made his way to the Katowice railway station in Poland.

There, he joined over 500 other Jewish children who had been orphaned by the Holocaust. The young passengers came from orphanages, monasteries, convents, and private Christian homes from all over Europe. They had been found and rescued by Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog and members of the Va’ad Hatzala (Rescue Committee), which Herzog had established.

Danielski, now known as Danieli, became one of Herzog’s many “children.”

On Tuesday, Danieli met with the rabbi’s grandson, President Isaac Halevi Herzog, at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem.

The president’s relatives refer to him as the family historian. Many of his kinfolk had distinguished careers, and the president knows all their stories.

He also knows about the train and the rescue committee founded by his grandfather. During his conversation with Danieli, the president rose several times to go to his study to bring out books about the rescue operation.

Herzog recalled that his grandfather often identified Jewish children by reciting the beginning of the Shema prayer when arriving at places that cared for displaced children. Those who completed the first verse of the prayer were obviously Jewish.

The train is only part of Danieli’s fascinating story.  

Danieli’s survival story

When the Germans entered the Rybnik region where he lived, Danieli’s parents sent him away to a farm. There, he helped with the chores, but after a while, the farmer realized that the boy’s presence posed a danger and sent him back to his home. The house was shrouded in darkness. A Gestapo banner on the door bore a notice forbidding entry. The boy did not know what to do. He crossed the road to the home of a non-Jewish neighbor who had been friendly with his mother. The neighbor told him that all the Jews had been taken away, but she did not know what happened to them.

He later learned that his parents were deported to Auschwitz. He never saw them again. The non-Jewish neighbor had promised his mother to protect him, and she kept her word. Her name was Martha Kapitza.

She, her husband Anton, and their children welcomed Danieli into their home.

They lived as normally as possible under the circumstances, and Martha even managed to get the boy baptized.

Danieli even went to school, and like all Christian children who attended German-run schools, he became a member of the Hitler Youth.

Kapitza, who was of German background, had never been searched or questioned. But suddenly, the Gestapo were all over the village.  Kapitza suspected that someone had reported her. She packed a few items of clothing, gave the boy some money, and sent him away. The Gestapo found no evidence of a hidden Jew in her home.

After a few months, Danieli returned to the Kapitza household. He remained there till the end of the war. Life had been hard under the Germans, but according to Danieli, it was even more difficult under the Russians, who ransacked everything.

Danieli told the president that although he knew he was Jewish, at the time, he didn’t know anything about Judaism.

While in the market in Rybnik, Danieli met a man who asked if he was Jewish. Danieli replied that he was but said no more than that. The man told him that he should learn about ‘Yiddishkeit’, and sent him to a Jewish orphanage where he imbibed a little Jewish history and some elementary Hebrew.

On August 22, 1946, Danieli, together with a group of other children from the orphanage, set out for nearby Katowice where there was a train packed with orphaned Jewish children and their supervisors.

Rabbi Herzog and his younger son, Yaakov, were in Warsaw making final arrangements for the train to leave Poland. The Herzogs arrived in Katowice when it was already night, and the train set out on its slow journey to Prague, arriving just before Shabbat. The children remained in Prague until after the High Holy Days.

Some of them were taken to Strasbourg in France, where members of Hapoel Hamizrahi, who were part of Rabbi Herzog’s rescue team, cared for them. Danieli was among them, and in July 1947, he boarded the SS Exodus, which set sail from Marseille with a total of 4,515 Holocaust survivors onboard.

Danieli’s arrival to Israel

The ship was intercepted by British Mandate authorities, who towed it to Haifa and then sent its passengers back to Europe. Danieli returned to Strasbourg and, from there, continued on to Hamburg in Germany, where he lived in a camp for displaced persons. In 1948, Danieli traveled to Emden, from where he again sailed to Israel, this time successfully.

He went through the transit camp and kibbutz immigrant absorption process, became an engineer, married, and eventually settled in Beersheba, where he lived for 42 years, raising a family and contributing to the development of the Negev. Two generations of his family accompanied him to his meeting with the president.

This month, Danieli celebrated his 94th birthday. He is a tall, slim man with a head of white hair, a hearty laugh, and a deep voice. He leans on a cane but walks at a fast pace.

He doesn’t remember much about his parents but was able to recount his wartime and immediate post-war experiences in detail.

At the conclusion of the meeting, President Herzog said that he felt privileged and honored to meet one of the hundreds of children rescued by his grandfather and brought back to the Jewish people.  

Listening to Danieli had been “a very moving experience,” Herzog said. 

This post was originally published on here. 

A terrorist armed with a knife attempted to stab an IDF soldier in the Jenin area in the West Bank, the IDF spokesperson announced on Thursday morning.

Soldiers responded by firing at the terrorist, killing him.

No IDF injuries were reported.

The terrorist was Fathi Khazem, father of Raad Khazem, a terrorist who had committed a mass shooting attack on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv in April, 2022.

N12 reported that soldiers from the 890th Paratroopers Battalion had been arresting terror suspects in the area when the incident occurred. The soldiers had entered the terrorist’s home in order to conduct an arrest, when the terrorist attempted to stab one of the soldiers.

Duvdevan arrests two terrorists, raids over 100 sites in counterterror operation

IDF soldiers raided over 100 houses near Jenin and detained two terrorist during a West Bank operation, the IDF spokesperson announced on Monday.

Undercover counterterrorism commandos from the Duvdevan unit operated with intelligence guidance from the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) to detain the terrorists in the area of Kabatiya, the military added.

The two terrorists were suspected of planning and promoting terrorist plots to harm the citizens of the State of Israel and the IDF, the military said.

The IDF later came under scrutiny when Army Radio reported on Tuesday that IDF soldiers wrote numbers on the bodies of Palestinian suspects during the operation.

The military responded to the allegations, telling Army Radio “security forces marked suspects who were being interrogated as part of the operation.”

Commanders added that “the seriousness of the act was explained to the soldiers, and lessons were drawn from the matter.”

IDF increased West Bank presence

This comes a month after The Jerusalem Post learned that the IDF increased its deployment across the West Bank to 26 battalions, adding two battalions amid a sharp escalation marked by Palestinian terrorist attacks and attacks from settlers.

The figure represents the number of battalions operating across the West Bank, not a disclosed number of soldiers. 

The increase directly followed the deadly shooting near Gilad Farm.

Sarah Ben-Nun and Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Eight people were reported dead after a charter plane crashed at a remote military radar site in western Alaska on Thursday, according to the US military’s Alaskan Command.

Clint Johnson, the chief of the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska region, announced that there were two pilots and six passengers on board the plane he Associated Press reported.

The aircraft reportedly took off from Anchorage and is thought to have crashed on Thursday afternoon while approaching Cape Newenham, according to Johnson.

He emphasized that the information received so far is preliminary. 

Search for the aircraft 

The Alaska Rescue Coordination Center launched a search and rescue mission after receiving a report of an “aircraft incident” near the Cape Newenham Long Range Radar Site, according to the AP report. 

The Alaskan Command later confirmed that the crash site was located on Friday and that both the crew and passenger were found deceased.

Rescue officials said they would release additional information as it became available, but did not respond to further inquiries AP reported.

This post was originally published on here.