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 The trains have been replaced by planes, the US has been replaced by Israel, but one thing has not changed.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. 

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) accelerated efforts to deport Iranian nationals in the aftermath of the 12-Day War, emails obtained by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) show.

The emails detailed by the NIAC concern deportation surges in 2025, which it claims were ordered directly from the White House. During June of that year, the organization claims ICE ramped up efforts to arrest Iranian nationals, apprehending 192.

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons ordered this wave of arrests only days before the US struck Iranian nuclear facilities and entered the war, the report claims. Despite ICE officials noting that Iran’s airspace was closed and that the country was in internal chaos, the expedited process went ahead.

This action led to a deportation flight on September 30, which landed in Qatar in order to transfer deportees headed to Iran onto another flight.

Report suggests Israeli government could have had involvement on ICE proceedings

During this stopover in Qatar, authorities realized that one Iranian deportee wasn’t on the flight manifest but was still repatriated to Iran, the organization said.

“These documents expose an operation that demands answers from the highest levels of government,” said NIAC Policy Director Ryan Costello.

“ICE somehow deported an Iranian who was not even on the flight manifest, an extraordinary breakdown that raises serious questions about unlawful or involuntary cross-border transfer. 

Moreover, the report states that an ICE attaché in the US Embassy branch in Tel Aviv was “heavily involved” in the process to deport Iranians. Based on this, the report appeared to suggest that the Israeli government could have influenced the operation, though no evidence was provided.

“As Israel and the US were dropping bombs on Iran and the President was warning Iranians to evacuate major cities, ICE in Tel Aviv was coordinating a mass deportation operation to force vulnerable Iranians in the US back to the country being bombed,” said Jamal Abdi, President of the National Iranian American Council.

“The same administration that would later promise Iranians ‘help is on the way’ was working to accelerate deportations of asylum seekers back to Iran, even as officials acknowledged that Iran’s airspace was closed and people were desperately trying to flee the country.”

“The US government cannot claim to stand with the Iranian people while bombing their country, arresting Iranians here at home, and forcing people back into the danger it helped create,” said Abdi. “We need to know who was wrongly put on that plane, why ICE’s Tel Aviv office was so deeply involved, and exactly what the White House ordered.”

“NIAC is committed to dragging these facts into the light and fighting to ensure Iranians are not treated as disposable collateral of US foreign and immigration policy,” Abdi concluded.

The NIAC has criticized foreign intervention in Iran extensively, including sanctions and military action, though it has condemned the regime in Tehran and previously stated its support for Iranians to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

This post was originally published on here. 

Retired Brig.-Gen. Tzuri Sagi was laid to rest on Thursday in Tel Mond after passing away at the age of 92. Dozens of people accompanied his family, including his wife Tzipa and his son Yair.

Sagi was one of the most renowned paratroopers in IDF history. During his 32 years of service, he held operational positions in the IDF’s regular Paratroopers Brigade, the reserve Paratroopers Brigade, and served as commander of regional brigades in the Jordan Valley, the Shlomo Gulf, and the Golan Heights.

In 2012, he was awarded the Ramat Gan honorary citizen award, as the city adopted and supported the Paratroopers Brigade.

Sagi was considered one of the most influential figures in the early days of the Paratroopers’ 890 Battalion and later became one of the architects of Israel’s ties with Kurdish rebels, earning admiration among the Kurdish people. His character combined the qualities of a respected commander and fighter, a farmer and man of the land, and an individual known for independent and profound thinking.

He was born in Herzliya, grew up in the moshav of Ein Vered, and enlisted in the Paratroopers in 1952. He commanded a platoon in a battalion under Arik Sharon and served as a battalion commander in Rafael Eitan’s brigade. Even as a young paratrooper officer, he helped shape the IDF’s approach, moving from a defensive doctrine toward initiative and offensive warfare, a concept that later became a cornerstone of the IDF but was considered groundbreaking thinking at the time.

Sent behind enemy lines for reconnaissance, intelligence gathering 

The beginning of his military career, following the integration of Unit 101 into Battalion 890, came during a period when the battalion was developing exceptional capabilities in reconnaissance, navigation, daring operations, and initiative beyond conventional limits. During this period, commanders were tested in reconnaissance missions across enemy lines. Sagi, then a sergeant and platoon commander, showed boldness and an innovative approach to reconnaissance.

During one deep reconnaissance mission in the Gaza Strip, near Deir al-Balah and the railway bridge, Sagi and his reconnaissance partner moved through Arab communities and refugee camps while disguised and concealed. Fearing they had been exposed, they stormed a tent occupied by armed Egyptian fighters, survived heavy gunfire, and completed their mission and intelligence gathering, demonstrating initiative, composure, and exceptional resourcefulness that ultimately earned praise from Sharon and Meir Har-Zion.

His qualities as an initiative-driven commander were also demonstrated during Operation Olive Leaves, in which Israeli forces raided a Syrian military post on the shores of the Sea of Galilee on the night of December 12, 1955. During the assault on the Syrian position, Eitan was seriously wounded, and Sagi, who served as his deputy, assumed command, completing the destruction of the Syrian machine guns and the capture of the post.

The high regard in which senior commanders held him continued throughout the years, as reflected in IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin’s remarks about his performance as commander of Battalion 890 during Operation “Rock Cliff”, the 1965 Kalkilya raid in Jordan. Rabin said that the battalion under Sagi’s command demonstrated excellent qualities and execution capabilities, operating with composure and impressive control even when it came under fire from a distance of only 10 meters inside a pillbox. He concluded: “It was a good performance in accordance with the objectives that were set. I have no words, only words of praise.”

During the Six-Day War, he went with the paratroopers to the Shlomo Gulf, led forces toward the Suez Canal, and took part in the capture of Sharm el-Sheikh. During the Yom Kippur War, he commanded a brigade-level force as part of the forces deployed on the Golan Heights, and later commanded the Paratroopers Brigade stationed in the Syrian “enclave.” His soldiers described him as a caring and courageous leader. Unlike traditional military perceptions that portrayed fighters as fearless, Sagi was known for his unusual honesty when openly discussing fear in battle, saying: “Anyone who was not afraid was either an idiot or autistic.”

In addition to his IDF roles, he became known for missions carried out on behalf of Israel, including advising in the training of the Ethiopian army and assisting the Shah of Iran in protecting oil facilities. However, a central part of his legacy was built around his deep involvement in the Kurdish struggle in Iraq. Sagi’s experience began with training special military courses for Kurdish officers and fighters and continued with his role as head of Israel’s military delegation in Kurdistan in 1966.

Sagi’s legacy centers on Kurdish support

At the time, Sagi served as an IDF military adviser to the forces of Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani and became a mythological figure among the Kurds. They viewed him with great admiration, and Barzani regarded him as a brother. Their close relationship developed because Sagi identified the limitations of Kurdish fighting methods and adapted for them an advanced military concept of defense and offense.

In May 1966, when fighting resumed against the Iraqi army, Sagi combined brilliant tactical planning with the ability to persuade Barzani to launch an offensive operation involving two battalions. The culmination of the operation was the famous Battle of Mount Handrin in May 1966, in which, under Sagi’s leadership, Kurdish forces defeated and almost completely destroyed the Iraqi army’s 4th Brigade.

Sagi’s activities during the 1960s and 1970s had a decisive and long-term impact on Israel’s relationship with the Kurds. His operations and assistance in their fight against the Iraqi army played a fundamental role in shaping the warm pro-Israel sentiment that exists in Kurdish areas of Iraq to this day, a rare phenomenon in the Muslim world that has even been reflected in the display of Israeli flags during Kurdish independence demonstrations.

In 1984, he retired from military service and returned to work his agricultural farm in Kfar Hess, the moshav where he had lived since marrying his wife Tzipa, a local resident. He viewed agricultural work not only as a source of income but as a way of life, a substitute for physical exercise, and a values-based environment.

Tzuri Sagi was a beloved friend who maintained close ties with his fellow soldiers and was a central figure in the group known as the “Eindeh Group,” whose members met every month to sing songs of homeland and the Land of Israel.

This post was originally published on here. 

Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party is projected to win 26 seats in the Knesset, increasing by three since a poll conducted last week, despite the Likud party capturing headlines this week with its primaries.

The findings come from a poll conducted for Maariv by Lazar Research, headed by Dr. Menachem Lazar, in cooperation with the Panel4All online respondents panel.

The Likud dropped by one seat and stands at 20 seats. However, due to the strengthening of Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism, the coalition bloc rose by one seat and reached 49 seats.

Following Eisenkot’s rise, the opposition bloc continued to climb and received 60 seats, just one seat short of a 61-seat majority coalition. The Reservists Party (Zionist Home) received only 2.9% support and did not cross the electoral threshold, after a series of polls in which it received four seats.

Other parties that failed to cross the threshold include the new party headed by Ofer Winter, Unity headed by Gilad Erdan, the new economic party headed by Prof. Yaron Zelicha, and Blue and White headed by Benny Gantz. Together, these parties are currently “wasting” the votes of 8.3% of all voters, equivalent to around 10 Knesset seats.

Arab parties to receive 11 seats after Hadash-Ta’al-Balad merger

The poll was conducted shortly before the announcement of the merger between Hadash-Ta’al and Balad. However, Hadash-Ta’al gained one seat this week, rising to six, and together with Ra’am’s five seats, the Arab parties receive 11 seats in the current poll.

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

Yashar: 26

Likud: 20

B’Yachad: 14

Yisrael Beytenu: 10

Democrats: 10

Otzma Yehudit: 9

United Torah Judaism: 8

Shas: 7

Hadash-Ta’al: 6

Ra’am: 5

Religious Zionist Party: 5

Eisenkot favored as PM over Netanyahu

Eisenkot also widened his lead over Netanyahu in the question of suitability for prime minister, reaching a record gap of 14 percentage points. The former IDF chief of staff received 52% support compared with 38% for Netanyahu. The gap in favor of Bennett (45% compared with 41% for Netanyahu) was similar to the previous poll, as was Netanyahu’s slight advantage over Avigdor Liberman (42% compared with 39%, respectively).

The poll also found that coalition voters are more likely to oppose (40%) than support (34%) Netanyahu reserving a spot on the Likud list for his son, Yair Netanyahu, in the Knesset elections. Another 26% have no opinion on the matter.

Among Likud voters, the picture is reversed: 49% support such a move, compared with 34% who oppose it and 17% who have no opinion.

Another concerning finding: Half of Israelis (50%) fear a situation in which the losing side in the Knesset elections refuses to accept the results. Some 38% do not fear this scenario, while 12% do not know.

The poll was conducted on August 19-20, 2026. A total of 3,916 people were invited to participate, and 501 respondents answered (13%), representing a representative sample of Israel’s adult population aged 18 and over, Jews and Arabs. The maximum sampling error in this poll is 4.4%.

This post was originally published on here. 

I asked former prime minister Yair Lapid about the Western Wall in a Tel Aviv café in 2018. He said that passing the outline would be among the first things he did as prime minister, and I wanted it on the record.

“That’s correct,” he said and then walked the file without notes. The cabinet approved the outline (Western Wall compromise) in 2016. Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) website Kikar HaShabbat was making noise in 2017, and a government that panicked over a website it does not read canceled the thing. American Jews, he told me, woke up to find they were being spat on.

That ran in Makor Rishon, in a series it called “Distant Relatives”: 23 interviews over six months about what Israel and world Jewry owe each other.

This week Lapid stood beside former prime minister Naftali Bennett and presented their alliance’s foreign policy. Six goals. World Jewry was the third, and it ran to about three paragraphs. No Western Wall, no conversion, no Chief Rabbinate, no Law of Return.

I speak with Lapid regularly, as I do with most of the people running in this election, and he is the Israeli politician most fluent in our concerns. That is why the speech is worth reading closely. It is the ceiling, not the floor.

Three politicians have now told me what they want from world Jewry. I agree with more of it than I expected, and I disagree with all three about the same thing.

Three answers

Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli said on a panel I moderated in July the part the others avoid. Diaspora Jewry is dying, he said, barely holding on. Seventy percent intermarriage is a catastrophe. The one growing community is the Orthodox one: 10% of American Jews today, with a projection of 30% by 2050. He said twice that this is data, not opinions, and noted that he is not Orthodox himself.

From that he drew one mission: formal Jewish education, and named as his proudest achievement not the money but that the federations and the large foundations now call it mission number one.

He is right, and I have written so. Identity is the variable, not advocacy. A community that cannot explain itself to its own children will not be argued into caring about us.

Then he closed with a sentence I cannot put down. Until our brothers come home, he said, we will do everything to make the communities there as strong as they can be. The generosity is real, and it is provisional. It funds Jewish life abroad while treating its survival as a failure. Lapid’s speech proposes to abolish this man’s ministry.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told me this month that he wants a million olim from North America and Europe within a decade, at the intensity Israel once applied to security and settlement. He is right about the scale, and nobody else is saying it. But Western aliyah does not fail for lack of ambition. It fails on licensing, employment, housing, and schools, and it remains a policy about our bodies rather than our judgment.

Lapid was right about the thing almost nobody here will say: that the collapse in Israel’s standing is not only antisemitism, and that claiming otherwise is lazy. He is wrong that the answer is folding the Diaspora Affairs Ministry into the Foreign Ministry. The portfolio is weak because it has no jurisdiction, not because it exists: Interior applies the Law of Return, the rabbinate controls conversion, Religious Services controls the Western Wall, and the ministry touches none of them. An envoy is not an address either, and he knows it, since in the same speech he attacks this government for leaving the public diplomacy directorate empty for two years.

The sentence that explains all three

Somewhere in that July panel, Chikli said something in passing I have been thinking about since.

Holding a Jewish identity abroad, he said, is nearly impossible unless you are traditional or religious. Here, he said, you are connected to the Hebrew calendar whether you want to be. Here we take it for granted.

He meant it as a description of our weakness. It is a description of Israel’s.

Sovereignty made Israeli Jewishness involuntary. That was the point of it, and it worked. An Israeli does not decide to be Jewish on a Tuesday in Tishrei. The state decides for him, and the calendar, and the army, and the language. A people whose identity arrives by default loses the ability to see that someone else’s is a standing decision.

So all three reach for the same kind of tool. Chikli sees ignorance and prescribes education. Smotrich sees exposure and prescribes evacuation. Lapid sees hurt feelings and prescribes respect. Those are sovereign instruments, and sovereign instruments produce students, immigrants, and audiences. They cannot produce partners, because a partner is someone whose judgment you have conceded in advance.

Not one of the three offers Diaspora Jews standing in an Israeli decision that affects them. That is not stinginess. You do not consult a patient about the treatment, or a rescue subject about the helicopter.

‘Kimu vekiblu’

The tradition is less confused about this than the Knesset is.

The Talmud in Shabbat asks what happened at Sinai and gives an uncomfortable answer: God held the mountain over their heads. Rav Aha bar Yaakov draws the obvious conclusion that a covenant signed under a mountain can be voided. Rava’s reply is this column’s argument. They accepted it again willingly in the days of Ahasuerus, he said, and quotes Esther: kimu vekiblu, they fulfilled and accepted.

The reacceptance happened in Shushan. In exile, after a decree of annihilation, with nothing holding anyone in place.

Now read Chikli’s numbers again. He sees 70% and calls it a death. Read it as a sorting instead. The Jews leaving were never choosing; they were carried by inheritance, and inheritance ran out. Everyone still standing in a Jewish community after October 7, with cheap flights, an open Law of Return, and the danger visible on their own street, has chosen. Manchester on Yom Kippur. Bondi Beach at Hanukkah. Nobody is unaware of the alternative.

A smaller Jewish people that chooses is not a weaker one. What is forming out there is the first Diaspora composed almost entirely of volunteers, and Israel is addressing it as though it stayed by accident.

The reshuffle

Since October 7, we have been reshuffled. Jews are moving in every direction at once and not on the axis Israeli policy is built to see. Out of one city and into another. Out of Europe and not to Israel. Into Israel and back out. Into communities they had not entered since childhood and out of institutions their parents built.

People in motion can be reached and are briefly willing to be asked. That window is the opportunity of this moment, and the answer three Israeli politicians have reached six weeks before an election is a recruitment campaign. Educate your children. Come home. Speak well of us.

None of this is a Lapid problem. Elyakim Rubinstein, who has served as cabinet secretary, attorney-general, and deputy president of the Supreme Court told me, for that same series, that Israel bears a double obligation toward world Jewry and, in his next sentence, that Diaspora Jews do not decide anything here and should not, because they neither vote here nor fight here. It is the house position, held sincerely, across the spectrum.

Covenantal instruments

If the problem is that Israel owns only sovereign tools, the work is to build covenantal ones inside a sovereign state.

Permanent professional Diaspora desks inside every ministry that holds a lever. Bennett told me he planted one in the Education Ministry while he ran it because a civil service post is hard to kill and a ministry may not exist next term.

Consultation with the affected community before an Israeli minister embraces a foreign political party in our name. Shira Ruderman, executive director of the Ruderman Family Foundation, raised the honest objection that nobody can say who represents American Jewry now that the organizations are a century old. Former MK Einat Wilf’s answer handles it: a council seated at the President’s Residence with the scope written down. Jewish questions, yes. Whether Israel goes into Gaza, no.

Antisemitism separated into a statutory authority with professional staff and a budget that outlasts a single Knesset.

And a standing Knesset committee, which we have never had. Ministries are traded away in coalition talks. Committees are written into the Knesset’s own rules.

The ones who don’t know yet

Alana Newhouse, the founding editor of Tablet magazine, told me something in that series I have never been able to put down.

Take a group of 14-year-old American girls. They have never heard of the fight over the Western Wall, and they do not care about it. In a few years they will get off a plane, walk to the Western Wall, want to pray, and find they cannot do it the way they do it at home.

Then they will care.

Those girls will decide, sometime in the 2040s, whether there is still a Jewish world outside this country. They will decide it the way Jews in Shushan did, by choosing, with the alternative in plain view. Three Israeli politicians have told them what they are for. Not one has told them what they get a say in.

This post was originally published on here. 

The most revealing detail in this week’s dangerous confrontation over Syria was not the Israeli strike on the Abu al-Duhur airbase. It was a phone call.

According to Reuters, Mossad chief Roman Gofman spoke on August 14 with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani about Turkey’s growing military role in Syria, including possible troop deployments, weapons sales, and drones.

Four days later, Israel struck Abu al-Duhur, saying Damascus was nearing a breach of what Israel described as an agreed security status quo by allowing Turkish forces to deploy there.

Consider what that means, as the stakes are higher than another Syrian strike. The head of Israel’s foreign intelligence service reportedly spoke directly with the foreign minister of Syria, a country with which Israel still has no peace treaty and remains technically at war, because of concerns over Turkey. 

Turkey seeks Western alliance privileges while treating Israel as adversary

Turkey is not simply another regional critic of Israel – it is a NATO member with growing influence over Syria’s new government. Ankara and Damascus signed a military cooperation memorandum last year, covering military training and consultancy, as well as Turkish support involving weapons systems, military equipment and logistics. Turkey has trained Syrian personnel, and Turkish officers were acknowledged to have visited Abu al-Duhur before this week’s strike. Damascus denies that any Turkish base or permanent deployment was planned, while Ankara has rejected Israel’s allegations about its military posture in Syria.

The disputed details matter, yet the broader trajectory is clear: Ankara wants the privileges of a Western alliance while increasingly behaving toward Israel as a strategic adversary.

Turkey spent the Syrian civil war backing opposition factions and building a military footprint across the north. In spring 2025, Turkish teams examined Syrian facilities including T4 (Tiyas) airbase, Palmyra airbase, and Hama military airport for possible military use. Israel then struck several of those sites. The episode was followed by Israel-Turkey deconfliction talks in Azerbaijan, designed to prevent their forces from stumbling into a direct clash.

Israel-Turkey relations soured after October 7

Israel’s relationship with Turkey had been improving before October 7, 2023. The two countries had restored full diplomatic relations and exchanged ambassadors, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in New York less than three weeks before the Hamas-led massacre.

Since then, Erdogan has repeatedly rejected describing Hamas as a terrorist organization, instead calling it a “liberation group”; Israel recalled its diplomats from Turkey, and Ankara subsequently recalled its ambassador from Israel; and Turkey halted bilateral trade with Israel. Erdogan’s rhetoric has also sharply escalated, including comparing Netanyahu to Hitler and suggesting in 2024 that Turkey could intervene against Israel as it had in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh.

Syria now gives that hostility a military geography.

For nearly three years, Israel has been forced to think about security across several fronts from Gaza to Lebanon and Iran. The emergence of a powerful Turkish military presence in Syria under an increasingly antagonistic government in Ankara would create a fundamentally different challenge: Turkish radar, air-defense systems, aircraft, or drones could restrict Israel’s freedom of action and turn an already volatile northern arena into one involving the armed forces of a NATO state.

Washington evidently understands the danger. US envoy Tom Barrack has said the United States is working on a three-way deconfliction mechanism among Israel, Turkey, and Syria after the Abu al-Duhur strike risked an unintended confrontation. Inadequate military communication between Israel and NATO member Turkey could produce exactly the kind of clash Barrack has warned about.

It also raises an uncomfortable question about the US-supervised “joint fusion mechanism” that Israel, Syria, and the United States agreed in January to establish for intelligence sharing and military de-escalation. Whatever it accomplished, it was clearly not sufficient to prevent this week’s events.

The answer, however, cannot be less dialogue. It must be more.

Syria remains uncertain, and Israel has every reason to distrust the intentions and durability of its new rulers. Yet President Ahmed al-Sharaa said last month that Syria was seeking a security agreement with Israel, and Shaibani has maintained that Damascus remains open to negotiations even after the strike. That is extraordinary and worth testing.

Turkey poses a serious strategic challenge. Precisely for this reason, Israel must combine credible military red lines with relentless diplomacy. When the alternative is an accidental clash with a NATO army on Syrian soil, communication is not weakness; it is national security. 

This post was originally published on here. 

When Democratic socialist Angie Nixon, an ardent critic of Israel, secured a surprise win in Florida’s US Senate Democratic primary Tuesday over Jewish former Soviet refugee Alex Vindman, pro-Israel advocates expressed alarm that even in the South, Democratic momentum seems to be shifting toward the party’s farthest-left flank.

Nixon is expected to face an uphill battle against her GOP competitor Ashley Moody. Given Florida’s status as a red state, Moody is likely to retain the seat, which she won last year after Marco Rubio, also a Republican, stepped down to become US secretary of state. She and Nixon will vie to complete the last two years of that term, in a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2019. The Cook Political Report currently rates the race as “solid” Republican. 

Nixon’s triumph in the primary, however, marks the first democratic socialist victory in a Senate contest this year, with all other democratic socialist wins in federal elections occurring in House races. She won over establishment favorite and Israel supporter Vindman, who dominated the spending game and was widely predicted to win the nomination. 

Her victory also comes as other candidates on the left flank of the party have claimed the Senate nomination in Maine, Michigan and Minnesota. Florida is the first red state to have gone with a Senate candidate this far to the left, and it raises the question of why Nixon prevailed and what it says about the larger dynamics among Democratic voters. But analysts caution that Nixon’s win may be more connected to local political dynamics, including the miscalculations by Vindman and his staff, than to the country as a whole.

“They did not take her candidacy seriously,” Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

Emphasizing that Vindman and his team members “are certainly kicking themselves,” Jewett stressed that while Nixon had wanted a debate, her opponent had refused. 

“I don’t know that he knew what he was getting into,” added Jacob Perry, a Democratic strategist who had at one point been in discussions to join Vindman’s campaign. 

Vindman was new to Florida, impacting campaign

Vindman, a retired US Army lieutenant-colonel, served on the White House’s National Security Council and was influential in Trump’s first impeachment. Born in Kyiv, he left the former Soviet Union for the US as a refugee with his father and siblings in 1979.

One obstacle that Vindman faced in this race, according to Perry, was his newcomer status in Florida. Having moved to the Sunshine State just three years ago, after retiring from the Army, Vindman was unfamiliar with its political and cultural dynamics, he added.  

“He knows about as much about Florida politics as I know about Ukrainian politics,” Perry said.

Reflecting on the loss on Tuesday night, Vindman credited Nixon for her “strong campaign” against him, noting in a post on X/Twitter that he “will be standing by her side in the fight against Ashley Moody.”

“Who would’ve ever thought that a Jewish refugee would make it to the US Army, to the White House, and to becoming a candidate for the US Senate,” he added.

Trump called Vindmans loss ‘gratifying’

US President Donald Trump celebrated Vindman’s defeat on Wednesday, describing the outcome on Truth Social as “the most gratifying loss last night” and calling Vindman “a real treasonous creep.”

The president lashed out about Vindman’s decision to testify in Congress over concerns about a Trump request from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former President Joe Biden. Trump described the conversation as a “routinely recorded” and “perfect call,” stressing that he was “completely innocent.” 

“Vindman should be prosecuted for what he did,” added Trump, who also described Vindman’s opponent, Nixon, as “a radical left lunatic” who will face a “certain defeat at the hands of Ashley Moody.”

Nixon on Tuesday thanked Vindman for his service and for his “efforts to make sure that Florida voters know what is going on right now is not normal in Washington, DC”

“I look forward to working with Lieutenant Colonel Vindman and others to bring the people of Florida together,” she said. 

Nixon wasn’t endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America 

Nixon, a state lawmaker from Jacksonville, has been an outspoken voice against Florida Republican efforts to redistrict congressional voting boundaries, which will likely result in fewer Democratic seats in the US House. 

Although Nixon joined the Democratic Socialists of America this year, she didn’t earn the group’s endorsement. She did, however, gain the support of young Florida progressives, as well as Michigan US House Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who are top DSA voices and Israel detractors. Nixon spoke at a controversial rally on Friday in Fort Lauderdale, where Tlaib was a featured guest, the Miami Herald reported.

Regarding Nixon’s lack of DSA endorsement, Politico said it had obtained an internal Discord chat that had raised concerns about Nixon being “opportunistic” because she joined DSA only recently. At the time, a DSA spokesperson explained that the message came from a specific DSA chapter and that Nixon hadn’t filed an endorsement request. The group did not immediately respond to a request from JTA for further comment.  

Israel became a dividing point in Florida’s Democratic primary

Nixon has repeatedly accused Israel of committing genocide and criticized Vindman for staying silent on Israel. In Florida’s legislature, she introduced a bill calling for a “de-escalation and ceasefire in the state of Israel and occupied Palestine.” She also voiced support for cutting US aid for the Jewish state and declared that she doesn’t take AIPAC money.

“Together we went up against a political establishment against millions of dollars of out of state spending,” Nixon said on Tuesday. “We were outspent 16 to one, and we won.”

Over the course of the primary race, Nixon brought in less than $1 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Vindman, on the other hand, amassed more than $16 million, a sizable sum in a conservative-leaning state. Records available thus far do not link these funds to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, while the Track AIPAC website describes Vindman as “pro-Israel” but lists his “Israel lobby total” as “TBD.”

Regardless of the funding sources, Jewett pointed out that Vindman still has millions of dollars left in his campaign chest.  

“He had millions left that he could have spent buying more ads or developing a better ground game, recruiting more volunteers to go knock on doors,” Jewett said. 

Vindman’s campaign focused on the wrong audience

The ads he did run focused less on Nixon and more on introducing himself and attacking Moody, with “the presumption that he was going to win,” Jewett added. 

Meanwhile, Perry observed that Vindman’s social media photos throughout the campaign usually featured meetings with people who “look like him.” These groups, he explained, often included veterans who weren’t registered Democrats and who weren’t “going to vote for him in a primary.”

Nixon, on the other hand, was capitalizing on her skills as a community organizer and was out hustling, Perry added.

“Angie understood the Democratic primary voter better than Alex or his team,” he said. 

Stephen Sussman, a professor of public administration at Barry University, said he was unsurprised that Nixon ended up beating Vindman because her platforms “resonated with the progressive left and the Democrats.”

Her messages, Sussman added, struck a chord “with the Democrats on the ground,” while Vindman had the reputation of being “more of a national figure.”

Jewett echoed these sentiments, noting that the reason political scientists had “called him the frontrunner was because of his national notoriety and name recognition, and his role in bringing Trump to the first impeachment.” 

In a general election, that national notoriety could have given him a slight advantage. Swing voters, Jewett explained, might have appreciated his overall moderate agenda, his military vet status, his pro-Israel stances and the fact that he still owns a weapon.   

While recognizing that Vindman could have had “a little better chance than Nixon” in the general election, Jewett stressed that Moody is the “clearly the favorite” in this red state.

“She’s always a top vote-getter,” Perry added. “There’s nothing really particularly interesting or that stands out about her. But she somehow brings in the votes.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Democrat Aisha Wahab, a member of the California state Senate, was projected on Thursday to win a special election to fill a vacant seat in the US House of Representatives, according to multiple US media outlets.

Wahab defeated Democrat Melissa Hernandez, an official with the San Francisco Bay Area mass transit system.

Once sworn in, Wahab, an Afghan American, will fill the seat that was held by Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April amid allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denied. That will give Democrats 213 seats in the House, while Republicans will hold 218.

The solidly Democratic district is near San Francisco and San Jose.

Israel-Hamas War focus in some Democratic races

The race drew millions of dollars in outside spending, including from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group whose super PAC had spent nearly $2.5 million since early August to boost Hernandez, according to the Washington Post and other media reports.

The lobbying group has become a focus of attention in some Democratic primary contests this year as the Israel-Hamas War has deepened intra-party tensions.

Wahab and Hernandez will again face each other in November. The winner of that election will hold the congressional seat for a full two-year term.

This post was originally published on here. 

An investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has uncovered an investment fraud network that allegedly has operated from Israel since 2021 and is estimated to have defrauded more than 4,000 Australians of hundreds of millions of dollars. 

The network, known as the Sapphire Network, used fake news articles, including pages designed to look like reports published by ABC itself, to lure victims onto fictitious trading platforms.

At the center of the investigation is 43-year-old Shefi Goldberg, a mysterious Israeli businessman about whom very little is known. He is alleged to have run telemarketing sales centers in Israel, Cyprus, South Africa, Spain, and the Philippines that sold, among other things, immigration services.

The investigation also allegedly links Goldberg to an opaque and concealed chain of companies through which victims’ money was transferred. 

These include the Cyprus-based payment processing company Allegiant Holdings (Smart Pay), of which the Australian investigation says Goldberg is the sole shareholder, and the Australian company Trigo XO, which allegedly served as a front for laundering money.

The investigation was conducted in cooperation with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Swedish media foundation Qurium, and South African investigative journalism center amaBhungane. Leaked documents indicate that the network operated from centers in Israel, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Cyprus, and Macedonia.

Two victims, one facing medical bills, lost $625,000 between them

Two Australian victims described in the investigation lost nearly $625,000 between them.

One was hospitalized and connected to an IV ahead of surgery when he tried to recover his money after investing about $125,000 through a fake platform called The FBTC. When he attempted to withdraw the money, his “broker” began providing excuses: the account had been frozen, there were liquidity problems, a fee had to be paid, the bank had to be changed, and so on.

He pleaded, “I need to buy a wheelchair,” and said he could not afford to buy holiday gifts for his children. According to the investigation, however, the broker coldly replied, “Sorry to hear that. If you can manage to get the 5,000 [additional dollars to invest]… that would be perfect.”

After that, he never heard from the broker again. The money disappeared.

According to the investigation, the fraud against him took place in June 2024. When ABC journalists spoke with him several weeks ago, two years later, he had already given up hope of recovering the money and moved on with his life.

The second victim was directed in early 2026 to a fake website designed to imitate ABC and was persuaded to transfer more than half a million dollars.

According to the investigation, he deposited the money into a bank account that his “broker” told him had been opened in his name, although in practice the customer had no control over it. On his screen, he saw supposed “trading” in oil and gold, including discussions about the effect of the conflict between the US and Iran on the markets. His money appeared to be growing.

According to ABC, however, no real trades were ever made.

The money had already disappeared, and at one point he was told that he had accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt because of “failed trades.” He was then pressured to take out loans against his home and business to “cover” the fictitious debt.

When ABC journalists spoke with him, the impact was still fresh. He was trying to understand the deception and the lies he had been told, knowing that his chances of recovering the half-million dollars were extremely low.

Goldberg denies accusations of fraud, claims no connection to companies involved

Goldberg told the Australian broadcaster he had not committed any fraud or been involved in such activity. He said he had no connection to the companies named in the investigation and that he “was not involved in processing such payments.”

Regarding Cyprus-based Allegiant Holdings (Smart Pay), in which he is registered as the sole shareholder, Goldberg said, “It is used to provide services.”

“I am only registered in connection with the company and am not involved in its management or day-to-day operations,” he added. 

Goldberg has not yet responded to Walla’s request for comment.

This post was originally published on here. 

A well-known Lebanese Shiite scholar and critic of Hezbollah said that Iran “brainwashed” people into supporting the terrorist organization in an N12 News interview on Thursday.

Sheikh Muhammad al-Fu’ani, who lives in exile, said that the group “has brought destruction to Lebanon, and made us the object of hatred and disgust.”

“Hezbollah claims to be religious and preaches modesty and morality, but its interior is not pure,” he told the network when asked why he opposes the group.

“Therefore, as long as its people do not keep their word, they are not speaking the truth,” he added.

Two groups of Lebanese Shiites back Hezbollah, Fu’ani claims

When asked about the state of Lebanon’s Shia population, Fu’ani told the interviewer that the population is divided in two groups. One group is made up of “mercenaries” that are ready to “abandon ship.”

The other group is being deceived, he claimed, adding that these people were brainwashed by the hands of Iran to believe in a fantasy of religious domination in the region. This group was a sort of “scapegoat,” he said.

“[Iran] made them fight, made their children die. Their livelihoods were lost, their dreams shattered, and their memories forgotten,” he charged, adding that “[Iran] misled them.”

Fu’ani described Hezbollah’s current situation as complicated as a result of the heavy losses for the group in past years.

“Those whose children were killed hold a grudge against Hezbollah,” he said, “and those who lost their livelihoods and their memories are waiting for the bottom line: that the funding for [Hezbollah] will run out, and there won’t be money to pay [salaries,] and they will turn on the group.”

As for the first group, he said, “when they see signs of the end of [Hezbollah] they will already abandon” the group.

“For them it’s nothing more than a business,” he added.

When asked on the likelihood of Hezbollah disarming, Fu’ani showed optimism, citing the aftermath of President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s successful overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.

“The Radwan force, militias from Iraq, Assad’s Syrian army, and all the mercenaries from Pakistan and Afghanistan, in one moment fled the holy places.”

Similarly, he said, Hezbollah will be forced to leave Lebanon.

The consolidation of arms in Lebanon has been mandated by the government but consistently rejected by Hezbollah.

“As far as we are concerned, you are ‘the people of the Book,'” Fu’ani said, addressing Israelis, adding that “originally there is no enmity between us and you.”

“Know that the Shiites are not part of the terrorist organization, and the Israeli public should tell its government: ‘We want good relations with the Lebanese people, and it is your responsibility to make this happen.'”

Direct talks between Israel and Lebanon have been held several times this year, marking the first time in decades that representatives of the two countries meet face to face.

Mediated by the US, discussions have covered a wide array of topics, including Hezbollah’s future disarmament and an Israeli withdrawal from positions in southern Lebanon.

The next round of talks are expected to be held in September.

This post was originally published on here. 

Jailed former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was transferred to a hospital in Islamabad early on Friday for medical examination, his party said, fulfilling a long-standing demand by supporters who say his health has deteriorated during more than three years in prison.

The move followed a Supreme Court order this week and is seen as a potential first step toward easing tensions between Khan’s party and Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, which have been at odds since his ouster from office in 2022.

“Former Prime Minister Imran Khan has been shifted from Adiala Jail to Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad following Supreme Court order,” Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, said in a text message to journalists.

His lawyers say his health has deteriorated in prison and that he has lost significant vision in his right eye. The government has said medical reports disclosed no condition requiring immediate treatment.

Party views the ruling as ‘ray of hope’

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered authorities to transfer Khan, 73, to Shifa International Hospital in the capital city within 48 hours and allow him access to a medical panel that includes his personal physician.

In an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, PTI spokesperson Zulfikar Bukhari called the ruling a “new ray of hope” but said the party would proceed with a nationwide march on September 27 to demand access to Khan, speedy hearings in his cases and his release.

Khan has been imprisoned since August 2023. He says the cases against him are politically motivated, an accusation the government denies.

This post was originally published on here. 

Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) protesters gathered at the Maccabim checkpoint near Modi’in on Thursday night, after rumors spread that police were arresting a draft evader at the scene, N12 News reported.

Soldiers at the scene reportedly told the crowd that the detainee was in fact an undocumented resident, not a draft evader.

Footage spread on social media appeared to show altercations between police officers and members of the crowd.

This is a developing story.

This post was originally published on here. 

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been allocated 70,000 doses of Merck’s Ervebo Ebola vaccine, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, as the country works to contain its biggest-ever outbreak of the deadly disease. 

Last week, the DRC had requested a release of Ervebo vaccines from the global Ebola virus disease vaccine stockpile, managed by the International Coordinating Group (ICG) on Vaccine Provision, according to WHO.

The Ervebo vaccine is approved to prevent disease caused by the most common Ebola strain, Ebola Zaire, and its effect on Ebola Bundibugyo in humans is still unknown. Out of the 70,000 doses allocated by WHO, 20,000 will be used in a late-stage trial to understand the impact of the vaccine on the Bundibugyo strain.

Outbreak now biggest in DRC’s history

The outbreak is now the biggest Ebola epidemic in the DRC’s history, with over 5,000 confirmed cases and 2,378 deaths, according to government data, surpassing the previous worst outbreak from 2018 to 2020. 

Earlier this week, WHO‘s Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo remains a global emergency. 

This post was originally published on here. 

The United States plans to bar Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas from traveling to New York City in September to address the United Nations General Assembly, a source told The Jerusalem Post. 

Last year, the US denied the visas to Abbas and members of the PA’s delegation to attend the assembly. 

The source told the Post that PA leaders are trying in every way to reverse the US’s decision. The person with knowledge added that Abbas reportedly asked Turkey for help to convince the US to reverse the decision. 

This is a developing story.

This post was originally published on here. 

The new Israel soccer season is upon us as 14 teams from across the country will battle it out for supremacy and will look to knock defending champion Hapoel Beersheba off its throne.

Hapoel Beersheba is still riding high after capturing the championship, and it has one of the best squads in the country, if not the best, along with the top coach in the land. But that doesn’t mean that the league title is already in the Southern Reds’ pockets for this coming year. That is far from being the case.

Beersheba is in the midst of Champions League qualification and finds itself just inches away from the league phase of the competition after having won last season’s Israel league title. The Southern Reds will be playing in Europe regardless, which means eight more matches and at least 16 flights, making the domestic league season even tougher. Other teams that won’t be playing continentally see this as a brilliant opportunity to knock the king off its perch, especially after the club sold its “king”, Kings Kangwa, who was without question not only the team’s best player, but the best player in the league.

However, Ron Kozuk’s team has plenty of quality players with more yet to come. For now, Eliel Peretz, Igor Zlatanovic, Zahi Ahmed and Javon East will provide the offensive punch, while Lucas Ventura, Pedro Amador and, perhaps most importantly, captain Miguel Vitor will shore up the defense. There is no question that Beersheba will be a threat to repeat.

Beitar Jerusalem will be a serious contender for the championship this coming campaign under the club’s new head coach Almog Cohen, who stepped down from his upstairs and sports director role to take over from Barak Itzhaki. After the yellow-and-black came so close last season and with Hapoel Beersheba playing in Europe, the Beitar faithful feel that this just might be the season that they see their side back on top after going almost 20 years without a league title.

New recruits – veteran Israeli striker Shon Weissman, along with Tomer Yosefi, who played in Ukraine last season – will look to make their mark on the club, along with a pair of young guns in Daniel Worko and Noam Muche. Plus, who can forget about the strike force of Omer Atzily, Yarden Shua and Johnsbosco Kalu, together with a rock-solid defense with Luka Gadrani and Brayan Carabali leading the way? Beitar has it all, as Cohen will need to make sure that Jerusalem can meet the expectations of the fans who are thirsting for success.

Hapoel Tel Aviv will be a threat at the top of the table, as Elyaniv Barda has put together a terrific squad with scoring, defense, muscle, and plenty of depth. It’s hard to imagine that two years ago, the Reds were languishing in the Leumit League, Israel’s second division, with very little hope of succeeding. But in came the Safra family, led by Moise and Edmund, and together with the management team, they put together a team that can compete with the best of the best both domestically and abroad.

Hapoel set for incredible season with Israeli, foreign stars

Stav Turiel is the star of stars; Roie Alkukin, Doron Leidner, and Daniel Dappa are all extremely capable Israelis. Foreigners including Mayembo, Chico, Falcao, Coco, and Emmanuel Boateng, along with Douglas Owusu, are game changers and are primed to lead the club to the top after going deep into European qualification this summer. Hapoel is set for an incredible season, and it will be super exciting to watch.

Maccabi Tel Aviv, meanwhile, is a team in flux. While the yellow-and-blue are competing for a place in the UEFA Conference League, Kenny Miller’s side has seen some movement, with even more expected to come. It has been widely reported that striker Sayed Abu Farhi will head to the Colorado Rapids in the MLS and that left-back Roy Revivo is looking to move to Europe.

While the team has brought in Slovenian marksman Ester Sokler, there will be an influx of foreigners once others are sold or loaned out. New Sports Director Steven Vanharen, who joined the club in the summer, has been busy and will remain so for the foreseeable future as he continues to retool the roster.

Maccabi Haifa and Sports Director Lior Refaelov, along with head coach Barak Bachar, have been busy overhauling the Greens squad as they have been playing musical chairs with their roster over the course of the past few months in order to give the bench boss the best chance to win. However, injuries have also piled up in Carmel, making things even harder.

Veterans, including Manuel Benson, are out indefinitely, and youngsters such as Yinon Feingezicht are also on the shelf for an extended period, making an already tough situation even harder. Kenji Gorre, who is back from the World Cup along with Cedric Don, will be key players for Bachar, while newcomers Tsunami and Bruninho will also be counted on to provide the club with leadership and top-notch play.

Maccabi Netanya will have veteran tactician Roni Levy on the sidelines and is expected to challenge for a championship playoff spot this season. The club has serious depth, including one of the best foreigners in Brazilian striker Matheus Davo, as well as veteran Dolev Haziza, who arrives from Maccabi Haifa. In addition to solid players such as Karem Jaber, Amit Cohen, Dor Hugi and Oz Bilu, the diamond city squad also features up-and-coming star Bassam Zarora along with 16-year-old wunderkind Yarin Abuhatzira.

Hapoel Haifa under Haim Silvas is still a work in progress, as it needs to add more players, both Israelis and foreigners. But to date, the team has performed admirably well in the preseason Toto Cup competition, with veteran striker Alon Turgeman carrying the scoring load, while youngster Yaad Gonen has been a revelation so far.

Hapoel Petah Tikva was last season’s surprise package under Omer Perez, who was able to guide the club to the Championship Playoffs just last season. Star player Chipyoka Songa is reportedly moving abroad, which would be a big loss for the club as it actively pursues new foreigners to fill out the roster.

Ironi Kiryat Shmona remains a nomadic club and will not play at home up north anytime soon, and will continue featuring at the Netanya Stadium. With that, Shay Barda has kept his charges battling each opponent and causing plenty of problems for every team they play.

Hapoel Jerusalem coach Lior Zada to move club up on table

Hapoel Jerusalem will look to move up on the table this season under coach Lior Zada, who helped the club avoid relegation last year. With newcomer Vitalie Damscan and youngster Israel Dappa, the capital city Reds should provide enough firepower to go along with rock-solid goalkeeping, with Nadav Zamir as their No. 1 ’keeper, to be a threat week in and week out.

Bnei Sakhnin and bench boss Yosi Abukasis will once again try to put together a season in which the club won’t have to struggle to stay up in the Premier League. Ghanaian midfielder Mathew Cudjoe will be a key contributor this coming campaign as the Galilee-based club tries to be competitive week in, week out.

Ironi Tiberias will be behind the 8-ball before the season even kicks off as the club will begin with at least a -6 points start, which may be even double that by the time the campaign gets underway as the story around the club hasn’t ceased. During last season’s relegation playoffs campaign, players under the direction of the head coach Eliran Hodeida were a part of a plan where they took saltwater through their veins prior to a critical match against Ashdod, which was a WADA violation due to the amount that was injected.

Hapoel Ramat Gan is one of the newly promoted teams to the Premier League and will play its home games at the brand-new compact Rehovot Stadium, which is the perfect spot for the club. Coach Messay Dego has plenty of solid experience and was a one-time bench boss of Maccabi Haifa a few seasons ago. David Asanka, Maxim Plakushenko and Srdjan Mijailovic are a number of players to watch over the course of the season.

Maccabi Petah Tikva is back in the top division and will look to make sure this time its stay is a long one under Ziv Arie, who spent close to a decade coaching Hapoel Jerusalem. The goal for Petah Tikva is a simple one – to survive and not head back down to the second division.

See more Israeli sports coverage at www.sportsrabbi.com/en

This post was originally published on here. 

Has the Baloch insurgency in Iran become a genuine pressure lever for Washington, now that its options with the Kurds have narrowed? 

A rise in armed operations in southeastern Iran might suggest this outcome, yet this reading outpaces available facts: the Baloch lever remains far from serving as a viable replacement for the Kurdish alternative.

The worth of any armed movement rests not in attack volume but in the capacity to alter internal power dynamics, secure political legitimacy, and sustain external backing. The core issue therefore centers not on the raw strength of the Baloch movement alone but on whether it holds attributes that make it a strategic asset major powers can viably invest in.

On-the-ground records confirm that the Sistan and Baluchestan province has been Iran’s weakest territorial segment since its military annexation under Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1928.

Three to four million residents live there; Sunni Baloch make up roughly three-quarters of the population. Official figures rank this province as Iran’s poorest, with the lowest scores for development, education, and life expectancy nationwide.

Systemic marginalization carried steep political and security costs. The Baloch people account for no more than five percent of Iran’s population, yet their share of individuals executed in political and security cases in recent years far exceeds their demographic weight.

The events of the Bloody Friday massacre in Zahedan in September 2022, when dozens of protesters and worshippers died, deepened rifts between the state and large groups of local residents and turned the province into one of Iran’s most persistent, chronic unrest hubs.

Such environments naturally breed protest movements and armed factions. The emergence of insurgency does not set strategic worth, however. True value comes from an evolution into a political project that enforces new realities.

From the rise of the Sunni Jundallah fighter group under leader Abdolmalek Rigi in Iran, through the Jaish al-Adl group’s activities, to the late 2025 unification of multiple factions under the People’s Fighters Front, the Baloch movement moved beyond scattered independent groups. It pursued a tighter unified political and military framework.

Most notably, this shift avoided open separatist rhetoric and instead framed goals as replacing the Velayat-e Faqih system (a political Shi’ite approach) alongside other Iranian societal groups. This nationalist stance gives the movement a wider margin for maneuvering than separatist messaging, which faces tougher acceptance domestically and internationally.

The Baloch card: Wishful thinking? 

These advances do not erase structural constraints limiting the movement. Its workforce and military capabilities stay small relative to Kurdish groups. The desert theater sits distant from Iran’s key political and economic hubs, and leading associated armed factions retain terrorist designations from the US. 

These factors make transition from indirect contacts to overt support a costly choice politically and legally and explain the absence of indicators pointing to a true partnership.

Limits inherent to the Baloch lever emerge clearly here – reliance on external actors ties to the nature and limits of achievable support. 

Near-term external engagement will likely stay confined to unacknowledged intelligence and financial aid in addition to limited media and political backing.

Overt military support is low-probability and costly; major powers favor deniable assistance channels and avoid direct involvement with armed groups tangled in complex legal and regional sensitivities.

Drawing parallels with Kurdish movements brings the core trade-offs into focus. The Kurdish track record bears out a basic rule: major powers select armed partners for their capacity to produce strategic gains at acceptable political and military cost, not for their operational intensity.

The Kurdish lever thus appeared more operationally useful to Washington during the 2026 conflict before colliding with Turkish national priorities. 

Ankara viewed empowerment of any armed Kurdish force near its borders as a direct threat to national security and applied political pressure that halted this path before realization.

The collapse of the Kurdish option proved a critical point: no lever inside Iran carries value solely through military force; regional allies must also stand ready to absorb its consequences.

Accordingly, the decision to dial back Kurdish support did not trigger an automatic realignment behind the Baloch movement.

Pakistan carries equal weight in this calculus. Islamabad combats domestic Baloch insurgency and recognizes that escalation on Iranian territory risks a rapid spillover across borders. Ergo, national interests drive containment rather than encouragement of unrest, even as Pakistani influence over Washington lags behind Turkish clout.

Consequently, moreover, any external bet on the Baloch factor remains governed more by regional balances than by developments inside Iran. The success of any such project requires a regional consensus that appears absent for now.

In this light, the Baloch card seems closer to an instrument of attrition than to a regime-change project. Although it does force Tehran to spread security resources across an added front and raises control costs for peripheral regions, it lacks the capacity to threaten the state’s center or impose a new political equation. 

Confusing security nuisance with strategic impact often leads to misleading assessments.

History records many armed factions drained state resources successfully yet failed to alter underlying power balances. 

Therefore, to correctly judge this option, analysts must use measurable indicators instead of impressions. Key measures include moving from scattered raids to holding inland territories permanently, coordinated external backing that grows past limited talks to regular political, logistical, or financial support, and wider splits in Iranian state bodies that weaken the IRGC’s grip on remote provinces.

If these three factors all come together, claims of a true strategic change would hold up. Without them, talk of a strong Baloch card is little more than wishful thinking.

The writer is a UAE political analyst and former Federal National Council candidate.

This post was originally published on here. 

The next government must bring together moderate Zionist parties from across the political spectrum and exclude extremists such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz told The Jerusalem Post in a recent interview.

Gantz has been calling for a “broad Zionist government” to bring together parties in both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc and in the opposition, calling for “one wide moderate coalition” to be formed after the October 27 elections.

“My goal ultimately is to not have Ben-Gvir and other extremists dictating Israel’s future; they need to and will be returned to the political margins,” Gantz told the Post, arguing that he could work to unite the camps.

“A broad Zionist government means uniting the responsible, moderate Zionist MKs around the key decisions Israel can no longer postpone: security, service for all, a constitution, and public education,” he added.

While underscoring the importance of a broad Zionist government, Gantz drew a red line to sitting in a coalition with the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties.

“The haredi parties can’t be part of the next government because they won’t agree to a fair enlistment law and public national education for all [teaching core curriculum subjects],” he said.

“The day the haredi MKs agree to those terms, come ask me again,” he said.

What is coming up for the Blue and White party as Israel nears elections?

The Blue and White Party has failed to clear the electoral threshold in recent polls.

Gantz has served in two unity governments under Netanyahu, and has been criticized for his back-and-forth approach.

When asked if he would sit in a government led by Netanyahu, Gantz said that his stance regarding the premier was that “Netanyahu should not continue as prime minister, and I will not give him his 61st vote.”

“Israel needs new leadership and a broad government, not another narrow coalition dependent on extremists,” he added.

When asked whether he would join a government led by Netanyahu’s rival Gadi Eisenkot, who heads the Yashar Party, Gantz said that their differences were not personal.

Eisenkot had been Gantz’s second-in-command before leaving the party to establish Yashar ahead of the elections.

“Regarding a partnership with Gadi, who is a friend and a worthy leader, my disagreement is not personal but strategic,” he said.

“If Zionist parties continue imposing blanket boycotts on one another, we may wake up after the election with the same disastrous government. I hope Gadi joins the effort to prevent that,” he added.

Sharply criticizing Netanyahu, Gantz said he believed the prime minister is “managing the survival of his coalition, instead of leading the country.”

 “Israel faces continuing challenges in Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza, while the IDF warns of a serious personnel shortage – only a broad Zionist government can effectively tackle those issues.”

“The government remains hostage to Ben-Gvir’s extremism and the haredi parties’ veto over conscription,” he added.

“Israel cannot confront historic threats with a government built around political survival. We need leadership capable of uniting and strengthening the country from within.”

Gantz also noted that he was not seeking to build the political framework of a broad Zionist government “merely to cross the threshold.”

“We are building the force that will determine the character of Israel’s next government.”

“Political arrangements often mature close to the deadline for submitting the lists. I have put ego aside before and done what’s best for Israel many times, and I will do whatever is necessary to bring a broad Zionist government across the finish line,” he added.

When asked about other parties that have called for a broad Zionist government, such as the new Unity Party led by former Israeli ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan and The Zionist Home-The Reservists party led by Chili Trooper, Gantz said he welcomed their remarks.

“Gilad and Chili are good people with good intentions, and I welcome their recognition that Israel needs a broad Zionist government,” he stated.

“This is the path we set out more than six months ago, and it is encouraging that others are now joining it. We do not claim ownership over the idea of unity – we intend to turn it into a government,” he added.

Regarding whether Gantz was considering political alliances with Brig.-Gen. (res.) Dedi Simchi amid reports of a joint run between the two, he said that he had “great respect for him.”

 “He is an important partner. We are speaking with a range of serious people who could contribute to the broad Zionist framework we are building. Partnerships like these must be based on shared values, experience, and the ability to serve the country – not on daily political speculation,” he added.

Gantz describes party’s primary goals if he joins next coalition

Gantz broke down some of the main aspects that his party was seeking to advance if he joined the next coalition, stating that the party would work to “restore Israel’s internal strength and public cohesion so that we can meet the security challenges of the coming decade.”

He said the party also planned on passing “a fair conscription law based on service for all, strengthen the IDF, advance a constitution and guarantee a strong public education system.”

Gantz also said that he planned to “rebuild effective cooperation with the US.”

He called for reducing Israel’s dependency on the US while continuing to bolster regional partnerships.

“Israel needs a government focused on the country’s future – not one consumed by its own survival,” he said.

This post was originally published on here. 

Two UN staff members detained by authorities in Afghanistan were released on Thursday in good health, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told a press briefing.

The two Afghan staff members of the UN’s Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) were detained in the western city of Herat on August 9, following a string of detentions by Taliban authorities. 

Dujarric said the circumstances of the staffers’ detention and what they had been accused of “remains very unclear, and we’re trying to get more details.” 

“We’re just delighted that they’ve been released, they’re in good health, and they face apparently no more judicial legal issues,” he said.

Taliban frequently criticizes UNAMA

As the UN’s political mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA is involved in human rights monitoring and data gathering. The Taliban have frequently criticized its reports.

The detentions became public days before the Taliban celebrated the fifth anniversary of their return to power.

This post was originally published on here. 

“I don’t think it was intended to be provocative. They saw the Turkish military moving at a level far further south than they were ever supposed to be,” US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Al Arabiya in a Thursday interview, when speaking about Israel’s strikes on the Abu al-Duhur military airfield in the Idlib province in northwestern Syria on Tuesday.

“When Israel sees a military start to build up closer and closer to them, and that the leadership of the country has said, uh, we’re going to rebuild the Ottoman Empire and take over Jerusalem. They take that seriously,” he added, saying that he hopes for both countries to agree about using dialogue to solve these disputes in the future.

He also said that, although Erdogan’s comment about taking over Jerusalem might not be “an imminent threat,” Israel’s actions can be seen as normal in a region like the Middle East, where tensions are high, and a fast reaction usually comes before an option to dialogue. 

“Nobody wants to see an escalation of the tension, an escalation of violence. So, every effort is being made to try to temper down any of the activity. And I feel like we can get there,” he continued.

‘Hamas must disarm,’ Huckabee insists

During the first segment of the interview, the ambassador was asked on repeated occasions about Israel’s negative response to the 15-point plan agreed by the US, Hamas, and international mediators to disarm the terrorist group in Gaza.

He explained that, even if there was an agreement, the lack of action by Hamas was what was delaying the implementation, while the Israeli response was only focused on ensuring that Hamas would disarm before any Israeli troops would leave Gaza.

“Everyone, mostly Israel, would love to pull out of Gaza completely and get back to their own borders; they will only do so when it is safe for them to do it and make it so that their people are not vulnerable to another attack,” Huckabee said.

He also addressed the rumors about a fight during the latest meeting between Israel and the US, calling it a “very good day” and adding, “I read press reports later that talked about there being disagreement and that there was even confrontation. And I’m thinking I was in the room the entire time. I missed that.”

Saudi, Pakistan, Turkey agreement is not a threat

Huckabee also said the agreement between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey didn’t threaten the region and was a welcome development if it helped bring stability.

“I think that those three countries believe it will be helpful to them to band together for security purposes. So, I don’t see it having a destabilizing impact,” he said.

He described how the three countries were affected by the latest war, with Saudi Arabia now caught in a new round of fighting with the Houthis in Yemen. 

“So having allies, whether it’s Turkey, Pakistan, or anyone else in the region, I’m sure that they welcome that, and let’s hope that it doesn’t have to become a regional conflict again,” he explained. 

He also talked about the possibility of pushing for a “tailor-made” agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia that would be set outside the Abraham Accords, pointing out that “anything that brings a greater level of cooperation toward normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. You know who would welcome it the most? Israel would.”

Huckabee condemns settler violence in West Bank

Earlier on Thursday, Huckabee warned extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank not to steal property owned by Palestinian Americans, describing such behavior as “a violation of God’s law.”

Huckabee, a Baptist minister and longtime supporter of Israel’s settlements, told Reuters in an interview that settlers found to have taken part in a siege of homes in the West Bank village of Kusra, including one belonging to Palestinian American Loui Ridi, could be punished with US sanctions. 

Israeli settlers began encircling homes in Kusra on August 9, in what rights groups said was an attempt to seize privately owned Palestinian land. The case has drawn international condemnation.

Israel’s military has deployed dozens of troops to the area and has since pushed the settlers back from the homes. But they remain nearby, and residents, including Ridi, say they fear the settlers will encroach on their properties again once those troops pull back. 

Asked what message US President Donald Trump’s administration had for settlers considering taking homes or land in the West Bank owned by Palestinian Americans, Huckabee, who last week denounced the perpetrators as “Israeli terrorists,” referred to Jewish and Christian scripture.

“I think the message is bigger than just even the Trump administration. It’s a message of basic civility and civilized behavior,” Huckabee told Reuters in Jerusalem.

“You don’t take something that doesn’t belong to you.”

 ‘Though shalt not steal,’ Huckabee tells settlers 

US officials have estimated that tens of thousands of Palestinian Americans live in the West Bank, ​many of them in a cluster of villages between Ramallah and Nablus, where Kusra lies.

Ridi, speaking to Reuters from his home in Kusra on Thursday, said he was in contact with Huckabee’s staff at the US embassy in Jerusalem but that he continued to be harassed by Israeli settlers near his property.

Citing the Ten Commandments, Huckabee said: “Thou shalt not steal” and that people should neither take nor “covet” – or “desire” – what belongs to others.

“If someone owns the land and they own their house, then having someone come and take it over and scare the family away from it, that’s a violation, not just of man’s law. That’s a violation of God’s law,” said Huckabee, a Republican former governor of the US state of Arkansas.

Huckabee is the first evangelical Christian to serve as US ambassador to Israel. He has long supported Israeli settlements in the West Bank and refers to the territory by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria, a term used by the Israeli government but not adopted by the US government.

Offering a defense of settlements in general, he said he believed violent settlers were a minority who do not represent the wider settlement community, who he said “just want to raise their families in Judea and Samaria peacefully and with a level of security.”

Palestinians and their supporters reject this argument, saying the settlements eat up territory they want for an independent state. UN bodies and most countries consider Israel’s settlements to be illegal under international law. Israel disputes this.

US ‘appalled’ by what happened in Kusra

The ambassador said the US was “appalled” by what had happened in Kusra. The Palestinian families targeted by Israeli settlers were victims of “inexcusable and repugnant” criminal activity, and those settlers found to have taken part should face significant consequences in Israel, he said. 

Huckabee also said that anyone found to be involved could also face US sanctions, such as a ban on entering the US, although he said he was not aware that any such measures were under consideration. 

Israeli police have not announced any arrests or charges against any settler allegedly involved in besieging the Palestinian homes, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not publicly commented on the incident. A senior settler leader has, however, condemned the actions of the settlers. 

This post was originally published on here. 

The Israeli Right does not have a voter problem.

It has a leadership problem. Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein have launched a new formation. Sharren Haskel has created Israel First. Yoaz Hendel and Chili Tropper have created Zionist Home. Ayelet Shaked and Ofer Winter hover over the same political territory. They are competing for versions of the same politically homeless electorate.

With Israel’s threshold at 3.25%, that is not merely vanity. It risks right-wing votes disappearing from the Knesset. Politics is philosophy until Election Day. Then it becomes arithmetic.

The multiplication of these parties is nevertheless hopeful. Israel’s voters may be less confused than its politicians. A real constituency exists for a national, Zionist, security-oriented, classically liberal and democratic right. These Israelis want Jewish sovereignty without apology, military strength without theater, economic freedom, the rule of law and a state that works. They respect Torah study but reject permanent exemptions from national responsibility. They do not want Itamar Ben-Gvir defining the Right or Yair Golan defining the next government. Some still support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Others believe his era must end. They have not become left-wing. They have become politically homeless.

That vacancy did not appear by accident. Likud historically defined itself as a national-liberal movement, combining Jewish nationalism, settlement and security with individual liberty, civil rights, the rule of law and a competitive free market. Its greatness was its breadth. Likud governed Israel because it represented more than one narrow version of the Right.

I believe Netanyahu has accomplished extraordinary things for Israel. Any fair account of his career must acknowledge his diplomatic achievements, his long campaign against Iran, his strategic instincts and his ability to navigate international environments that would have broken less capable leaders. But fairness also requires confronting one central failure of the latter Netanyahu era: he did not preserve the full breadth of the national-liberal movement he inherited. Likud increasingly contracted from a broad political home into a coalition-maintenance system built around one indispensable leader. Dependence on haredi parties pulled it away from shared national responsibility. Dependence on Ben-Gvir allowed one of Israel’s least disciplined politicians to become an international symbol of the entire Right.

The evidence is standing outside Likud. Erdan spent decades in the party. Edelstein was among its most senior leaders. Haskel began her parliamentary career there. When several prominent former Likud figures conclude that the national-liberal Right no longer has a sufficient home inside the party, Likud must ask what it stopped representing. It did not lose these voters because they stopped believing in the Right. It lost them because they stopped recognizing the right they believed in inside Likud. Netanyahu’s great political paradox is that he made himself indispensable to the Israeli Right while allowing the right to become increasingly incapable of surviving him.

But the new leaders do not receive a free pass. They cannot accuse Likud of abandoning the national-liberal right and then divide that constituency into electoral extinction. Put Erdan, Edelstein, Haskel, Hendel, Tropper, Shaked, and perhaps Winter on one serious list, and the names alone look more substantial than any of the parties they are separately building. Together they suggest experience, security credentials, ideological range and enough political weight to matter. Separately, several may never cross the threshold.

To Haskel’s credit, she has recognized this more clearly than most. She has publicly called on other right-wing figures to join forces, shown a willingness to compromise, and refused to make opposition to Netanyahu the organizing principle of her party. A combined formation need not carry her party’s name or put her first. She has simply posed the right question: does this constituency matter more than the chairmanship?

Israel needs a more serious Right

The missing party cannot be Likud without Bibi, Smotrich with better public relations, Ben-Gvir with better English or another centrist vehicle whose only principle is that Netanyahu has served too long. It needs political DNA of its own: security without theater, Zionism without apology, national service without permanent exemptions, economic freedom with a state that functions, and succession without returning to October 6. This is not a softer Right. It is a more serious one.

October 7 did not answer every strategic question. It changed who has to prove his case. Before the massacre, Israelis opposing another territorial experiment were repeatedly asked why Israel should reject the risk. After October 7, anyone asking Israel to accept another irreversible security risk must prove why it will not become another catastrophe. Palestinian sovereignty cannot remain the destination programmed into the diplomatic GPS while Israel debates only the route. The destination itself must be argued again.

A consolidated party would change the architecture of government. It could give Likud a major Zionist partner supporting a right-wing security doctrine while challenging it on national service and coalition dependence. It could make Ben-Gvir optional, work with haredi parties without making exemptions the price of government survival, and make room for Eisenkot inside a Right-led national government without surrendering the Right’s future to an Eisenkot-led coalition dependent on Yair Golan. A broad governing Right can negotiate. A fragmented governing Right gets extorted.

The distinction between Smotrich and Ben-Gvir matters too. I have serious disagreements with Smotrich, especially over haredi conscription, but he is the lesser of the two evils because he understands what political power is for. He has translated ideology into policy. Ben-Gvir deserves credit for expanding civilian access to firearms, but the Right must ask what he has achieved proportionate to the political and reputational price of making him its most visible face. Smotrich should be challenged to govern better. Ben-Gvir should be made unnecessary.

None of this works if Netanyahu believes unity means everyone else must surrender to him. Nobody gets to demand unity only from everybody else. If he wants to lead a broader Zionist government, Ben-Gvir cannot be sacred, permanent haredi exemptions cannot be sacred, and Netanyahu’s own indispensability cannot be sacred. This is the difference between ending the Netanyahu era and finishing it. Ending it means replacing the man. Finishing it means preserving what worked, correcting what failed, demanding accountability for October 7, and leaving behind a Right capable of surviving him.

Netanyahu’s final test is not whether he can remain indispensable. It is whether he can leave behind a Right that no longer needs him. The new leaders face their own test. Somebody has to decide that being number four on a list with 15 mandates matters more than chairing a party with 2.9%. Somebody has to understand that leadership is not always standing in the center of the photograph. You cannot cure political homelessness by building five houses that are all too small to enter.

The voters have created the constituency. October 7 created the strategic mandate. Likud created the political vacancy. Haskel has issued the call for consolidation. The others must decide whether they want to build the missing party or continue auditioning to become its messiah. Israel’s Right does not lack voters. It does not lack ideas. It does not even lack leaders. What it lacks is the humility to put them on one ballot.

This post was originally published on here. 

Three men were indicted on Thursday over the killing of a key prosecution witness and a private investigator in Bukata in the northern Golan Heights in June, with prosecutors alleging that the witness was deliberately murdered to prevent him from testifying in an ongoing extortion case.

The State Attorney’s Office charged Said Madaah, 28, Ronen Araida, 19, and Aiman Ibrahim, 43, with two counts of aggravated murder over the June 19 deaths of Marwan Abu Shahin and Saada Saada. The indictment alleges that the three planned the attack, waited for Abu Shahin near his home, and shot the two men at close range as they sat inside a vehicle.

What makes the case unusual is the prosecution’s allegation that Abu Shahin was killed specifically because he was expected to testify. His killing was charged under a provision of Israel’s aggravated-murder law, which applies when a witness or a prospective witness is killed to prevent or obstruct a criminal investigation or court proceeding.

The prosecution said this was the first time prosecutors had invoked that particular circumstance since Israel’s homicide offenses were overhauled in 2019. The offense of aggravated murder is the most serious level of homicide under the reformed law, and ordinarily carries a mandatory life sentence subject to a narrow statutory exception in exceptional circumstances.

Both killings were charged as aggravated murder on the grounds that they were allegedly planned in advance. Abu Shahin’s killing is additionally charged under the provision concerning the murder of a witness to obstruct judicial proceedings.

The indictment describes Abu Shahin, a contractor from Bukata, as the central prosecution witness in two criminal cases against 10 people accused of extortion, threats, and firearms offenses.

Prosecutors allege that members of the group had extracted hundreds of thousands of shekels from Abu Shahin and opened fire on his home after he stopped paying them. Earlier reports similarly identified him as a prosecution witness in an extortion case; one of the defendants in those earlier extortion cases, according to Thursday’s indictment, is Nasib Madaah, the brother of Said Madaah, one of the three defendants in the case.

Abu Shahin murdered to prevent his testimony, prosecutors allege

Prosecutors allege that the three men decided to kill Abu Shahin to prevent him from taking the stand and made preparations days in advance. The indictment says Madaah arrived in Bukata several days beforehand, stayed in vacation cabins under false names, and moved around the area. The other two later joined him using vehicles they acquired shortly before.

On the morning of June 19, Saada met Abu Shahin and the two later drove together toward Abu Shahin’s home, according to the indictment. Prosecutors say the defendants followed their vehicle and, shortly after noon, one of the three ran up to the driver’s side and fired approximately seven shots at close range while Abu Shahin and Saada remained inside. Both men were killed during the shooting.

The indictment describes Saada as a private investigator from Hurfeish, a Druze town in the upper Galilee, who had met Abu Shahin as part of his work concerning a traffic accident involving a vehicle belonging to Abu Shahin’s family. Prosecutors say he had no connection to the extortion cases and was with Abu Shahin when the shooting occurred only because of that separate case.

Araida is also charged separately over a July 5 shooting at a shawarma restaurant in Yarka.

Araida arrested after shooting victim, firing towards police officer

According to the indictment, Araida arrived at the restaurant armed and wearing a helmet and gloves, asked the owner’s nephew to call him out, and then fired three shots into the owner’s lower body, seriously wounding him. Prosecutors allege that Araida fled toward a nearby grove and fired another shot at a police officer who pursued him before changing clothes he had prepared in advance. He was arrested shortly afterward. This matches media reports from that incident.

In a separate request filed with the indictment, prosecutors asked the court to keep all three defendants in custody until the end of the proceedings. The state said its evidence includes security-camera footage, forensic findings including fingerprints and DNA, cellphone material, witness statements, and other investigative records.

This post was originally published on here. 

The newly elected representative for East Anglia on the Green Party’s governing council, Eleanora Sophie Folan, celebrated her victory on social media on Wednesday, saying, “I know there will be Zionists reading this who are utterly furious that I won. I welcome their hatred.”

Folan stated, “I intend to stand by my manifesto: defend freedom of speech regarding Israel, support members when they’re attacked and smeared by the feral Zionist press, and ensure all our members follow the same rules.”

Folan, who secured her position following a vote by Green Party members, expressed gratitude to the activist group Greens for Palestine for their backing during the campaign. She wrote, “I’m very happy to say Green members in East Anglia have elected me to be their female rep on the party’s governing council (GPC). I’m so grateful to them, and to Greens for Palestine for their support.”

Folan said in the statement, “Our party has changed, and my election as a proud anti-Zionist trans woman symbolizes that change.” She added that she looks forward to collaborating with colleagues on the governing council “to build a radical anti-imperialist Green Party – one that always stands shoulder-to-shoulder with queers, Palestinians, disabled people, migrants, refugees, and activists enduring state repression.”

Folan then concluded her statement: “Inshallah, we will prevail.”

Folan is a data journalist, political commentator, and the founder of the left-wing polling platform “Stats for Lefties.” A former columnist for Novara Media, Folan also stood as a Green Party candidate in the 2024 Norwich City Council election.

Folan posted antisemitic tropes on social media

In May, an investigation by GnasherJew, an open-source investigative team that tracks and exposes online antisemitism, alleged that Folan had used her social media presence to propagate antisemitic tropes. These included calling all Israelis “bloodthirsty child-killers,” advocating for the dissolution of Israel, blaming Israel for actions committed by other actors, and describing accusations of antisemitism as a “fake moral panic” orchestrated by a “Zionist lobby.”

Folan’s victory arrives amid a series of broader internal controversies within the Green Party concerning Israel, Zionism, and British Jews. Recent leaks from private WhatsApp groups, such as the “Greens Against Imperialism” chat created by parish councilor Sophus Magill, revealed discussions where members spoke about “killing Zionists” and described British Jews as a “weapon” for the Israeli state. Additional scrutiny has focused on party figures, including Green Party leader Zach Polanski, who recently faced backlash for wearing a T-shirt bearing the image of Marwan Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian leader serving multiple life sentences in Israel for his role in terror attacks during the Second Intifada.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said in a statement to The Jerusalem Post: “This is not a rank-and-file member of the Green Party; this is a member of its governing council unashamedly spewing extremist hatred. That she was endorsed by ‘Greens For Palestine’ – the group behind the scandalous ‘Zionism is racism’ motion – shows the kind of exclusionary politics with which she associates. Zack Polanski, as leader of the party, will sit alongside this individual on the same governing council. He must now decide whether to condemn this hateful rhetoric, or by his silence, appear to tolerate or tacitly endorse it.”

This post was originally published on here. 

“Independence means something very special for Ukrainian people,” Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Yevgen Korniychuk told The Jerusalem Post ahead of the August 24, 35th Ukrainian Independence Day.

“It means that about a million of our soldiers and the people working for law enforcement are willing to give their lives for the independence of the country. It means those people decided to participate in the effort defending the state against a much greater power, the Russian Federation,” Korniychuk, who has held the position since October 2020, said.

He added that when Russia invaded in 2022, not many countries in the world believed Ukraine would survive a year of war.

Now, four and a half years down the line, Ukraine has “proven that it is capable of keeping its borders, not allowing the Russian forces to go any deeper,” he said.

Korniychuk compared his country’s fight against Russia to Israel’s fight against its enemies, referring to both as existential.

He referenced the famous words of former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir (herself born in Kyiv): “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.”

“This is exactly the same for our situation,” Korniychuk told the Post. “If we stop resisting the Russian forces, there’s going to be no country, and there are going to be no independence days anymore.”

Iranian-built drones strike both Israel, Ukraine

“We have been feeling more and more like we’ve been fighting against the same axis of evil. You guys are against Iran, and we are against Russia. We’ve been shot by the same Iranian-made drones that are currently being improved substantially by the Russians. So we feel that we’ve been fighting against the same enemy in different corners of the same battlefield.”

The upcoming 35th Independence Day differs from the previous ones since the war started, he said, as “the war finally came to Russia.”

“That has not happened before. Currently, we are shooting with Ukrainian-made missiles and drones into Russian territory, pretty far up toward Siberia. We were able to demolish a substantial number, about 40%, of the refineries. So now there is a shortage of fuel in the gas stations all over Russia.”

While Ukraine has been careful to target only Russian military infrastructure or structures relating to its ability to export oil and gas, Russian rockets and drones are “basically shooting on civilian infrastructure.” Just last night, a Russian missile barrage killed at least 12 people in Kyiv.

Nevertheless, Korniychuk said that in the last year, Ukraine was able to produce its own cruise missiles, and it is now working on the ballistic missiles.

While it has been grappling with a shortage of anti-ballistic technology, he cited local reports that suggest Ukraine will be able to make its own anti-ballistic systems within the next six to nine months.

“Despite all problems, we are absolutely positive that we will win,” he said. “I don’t believe in any long-term peace agreement with Russia. But a stable ceasefire is something that is very possible.”

He noted that the Israel-Ukraine alliance extends to many fields, including technology and defense.

The Jewish presence in Ukraine

Korniychuk also spoke to the Post about Ukraine’s long Jewish history and his pride in the long-standing Jewish presence there, which remains today.

“We are proud that our Jewish population feels safe and they are serving in the Ukrainian army,” he said.

He spoke of the current preparations underway for the huge expected influx of Jewish pilgrims to Uman, the location of the gravesite of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, which many choose to visit for Rosh Hashanah. Korniychuk said 40,000 Jews are expected to visit.

“We expect that the Israeli government will send the Israeli police and interpreters in order to help the local authorities keep the order and fulfill the local legislation as much as they can,” he said.

He also noted another important event in the Ukrainian-Jewish calendar, which is the upcoming commemoration of the Babi Yar massacre, which will mark its 85th anniversary on September 29-30.

This event was the murder of over 33,000 Jews from Kyiv in 1941, who were marched to the Babi Yar ravine and shot.

Korniychuk said he hopes that a high-level Israeli delegation will come to commemorate the event.

Aside from this, he said he is “proud that economical and trade relations are growing” between the two countries.

“I am glad that Israeli importers are in contact with us related to the grain that they are not buying anymore from the temporary occupied territories of Ukraine,” he said. “So we achieved quite a lot over the last months, and I think both of the nations can be proud of what we are saying and how we collaborate at the moment.”

Korniychuk also told the Post that Ukraine is planning to hold a session in Kyiv for the strategic dialogue announced by the foreign ministers of Israel and Ukraine “in order to exchange views about common threats for both countries in the near future.”

He concluded by thanking Israel for its support for Ukraine in its struggle for “independence and peace and prosperity,” citing polls showing that over 85% of Israelis support Ukraine in its war.

“I am so grateful to the Israeli people for their support for our country,” he said.

This post was originally published on here. 

Shas Party spiritual leader Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef was selected to lead the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) party by Council of Elders head Rabbi Moshe Maya, KAN News reported on Thursday.

According to the report, the decision came amid tensions between Yosef and Shas Party chairman MK Arye Deri, with Deri arriving at Yosef’s residence to deliver the news in the form of a letter from Maya.

The report was unclear as to whether or not Yosef would be a member of Shas’s slate for the Knesset. 

KAN noted that Yosef has not ruled out a coalition with Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar Party, and that such a partnership is possible if Yosef sets the tone.

Yosef and Deri further agreed during their meeting that Yosef would participate in the party’s launch conference on Thursday, according to KAN.

The decision follows comments by Yosef in June in which he criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that there is “no chance” he will “repent.”

“We are in a secular country,” said Yosef. “There are those whom I don’t believe will repent.”

“Eisenkot might repent,” he added, 

Poll: Shas expected to win seven Knesset seats

Shas is expected to win seven seats in the upcoming October elections, according to a KAN poll published on Wednesday.

Yitzhak Goldknopf’s United Torah Judaism (UTJ), another ultra-Orthodox party, would receive eight seats, the poll showed.

The results further showed that Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar leads Likud by one seat, emerging as the largest party with 24 seats following Monday’s Likud primaries.

Keshet Neev contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Police asked the public for assistance on Thursday in locating 23-year-old Israeli man Amir Amberber, who has been missing since arriving in Japan about three weeks ago.

The Ramla resident left Israel on April 20 and later arrived in Japan on August 2.

Amberber is described as approximately 1.7 meters tall with a “thin” build, brown hair, and black eyes. 

The Israeli Consulate in Tokyo and the Foreign Ministry‘s Israelis in Distress Abroad Department are in contact with Amberber’s family and are working with Japanese authorities to assist in the search efforts.

The police appeal comes as Amberber’s family has approved making his missing-person status public.

Missing Israeli mother, daughter found in Argentina after disappearing in Austria

His disappearance follows the recent missing Israelis case involving mother and daughter Mali and Liel Yahalomi, who were found in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Saturday after being reported missing in Vienna, Austria, earlier in August.

The Israelis were found on an intercity bus in Buenos Aires, according to a report by the Jewish news agency in Argentina, AJN, with N12 News reporting that authorities used AI to track their whereabouts.

After the two were found, Israel Police released footage of its police representative in South America, Walter Alejandro Kogan, approaching Mali and Liel on the bus.

“Hi Mali, hi Liel. I’m Walter, the police representative in South America, okay? From the Israel Police Intelligence Division,” said Kogan. “I want to ask you a few questions. We were very worried about you, okay? I’m going to get everyone off the bus, and then we’ll talk, okay?”

Israel Police confirmed that its representatives had been operating in several countries under the direction of Police Commissioner Dan Levy, utilizing intelligence capabilities and conducting extensive investigative efforts that ultimately led to the discovery of the missing Israelis.

Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

A day after Israel carried out airstrikes on northern Syria, the country’s foreign minister arrived in Pakistan. On August 20, Syrian state media SANA noted that “Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani met Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif in Islamabad on Thursday as part of his historic visit to Pakistan.”

This is the first visit of this kind in 17 years. “The two sides discussed bilateral relations and ways to strengthen cooperation in various fields to serve their mutual interests. Al-Shaibani praised Pakistan’s constructive role in promoting regional peace and stability,” SANA noted. 

The visit is important. It comes in the wake of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey agreeing to a new alliance.

Syria was not included, but it is clear that these three countries back Syria.

Damascus has condemned the Israeli strikes. Israel carried out the strikes overnight between August 17 and 18. Jerusalem has demanded that Turkey not expand its presence in Syria. The strikes on a military airport south of Aleppo were aimed at sending a message to Ankara.

Ankara to work closely with regional countries

Ankara has its own message: that it will be working more closely with regional countries. It is slowly moving toward creating a system of alliances to contain what it sees as Israel’s aggression.

Israeli officials have increasingly made comments about the chances for conflict in Syria.

There is also a perception that Turkey could become the “next Iran.” As such, Jerusalem views Syria as a sphere of influence for Israel.

Ankara also views Syria this way.

Turkey invaded parts of Syria between 2016 and 2019, when the country was run by the Assad regime. Now, Turkey has a partner in Damascus with the new leadership of President Ahmad al-Sharaa. Syria has been careful not to get sucked into a conflict with Israel.

In this context, Syria’s foreign minister wanted to show that his country would continue to carry on high-level historic diplomacy despite the strikes. Instead of seeing the strikes as a crisis, Damascus sees it as an opportunity.

What is the Syrian media saying?

“Foreign and Expatriates Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani arrived in Islamabad, heading a high-level delegation on an official visit to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan,” SANA noted.

“The Foreign Ministry’s Media and Communications Department told SANA that the visit is the first by a Syrian foreign minister to Pakistan in 19 years, underscoring the importance of developing bilateral relations and boosting communication between the two countries.”

SANA added, “On August 14, marking Pakistan’s Independence Day, Syria’s Foreign Ministry reaffirmed the country’s commitment to strengthening bilateral relations with Pakistan and expanding cooperation across various fields.”

Meanwhile in Damascus, Sharaa “received Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar and his accompanying delegation at the People’s Palace in Damascus on Wednesday, in the presence of Minister of Energy Mohammad al-Bashir.”

This is also a message that despite the strikes, it is business as usual in Damascus. Turkey-Syria ties will improve on all levels.

“The meeting discussed ways to strengthen cooperation and partnership between Syria and Turkey in the energy sector, contributing to its development and supporting its stability,” SANA wrote.

As Syria positions itself to work closely with Pakistan and Turkey, there is also talk of expanding the new Pakistan-Turkey-Saudi Arabia alliance. This could include Egypt.

There are questions about why Cairo was not included in the group. One report said that Saudi Arabia had opposed Egypt joining. In a recent interview, “Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Egypt could join the joint defense agreement recently signed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, describing Cairo’s accession as ‘possible’ and the pact as open to further members,” Al Jazeera noted. 

“Speaking to Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview for Al Muqabala [The Interview], which will air on Sunday evening on Al Jazeera Arabic, Erdogan said the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement commits signatories to taking unified steps should any one of them come under external attack,” the report said.

The overall context is clear. Most of the countries around Israel prefer diplomacy. They are working closely together. Many of them view conflict as destabilizing. They want to bide their time and build up their capabilities. This could lead to a kind of policy of containment being aimed at Israel by these countries.

Talk of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, which still occurs in Jerusalem, appears to underestimate how much Riyadh and other countries have become concerned about Israeli strikes in places like Syria. They want to see major shifts in Jerusalem’s policy.

Jerusalem has said that such a shift won’t happen, that Israel will continue its policies of strikes in Lebanon and Gaza, and that Israel is drawing a red line in northern Syria

This post was originally published on here. 

This week, Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf traveled to Iraq. His visit comes as Iraq seeks to rein in Iranian-backed militias. Notably, this follows IRGC head Ismail Qaani’s recent visit to Iraq, in which he discussed the militias and the Strait of Hormuz.

As he was visiting the country, Ghalibaf posted a photo of himself in front of a map of the Strait of Hormuz. In the photo, Ghalibaf’s large bald head is positioned to physically block the Strait of Hormuz.

This image was created deliberately. Ghalibaf is one of Iran’s most well-known officials and rose to prominence after other leaders and officials were killed during the war.

Ghalibaf is known for his willingness to travel abroad to promote Iran’s interests. For instance, he piloted a plane into Lebanon during clashes between Israel and Hezbollah in October 2024. At the time, Iran’s Mehr News noted that his flight to Beirut during the conflict was intended to display Iran’s power.

Now, Ghalibaf is doing the same in Iraq.

Iran moves to prevent clash over Iraqi militia weapons

“Iran is pushing proposals to avert a confrontation between Iraq’s government and Tehran-aligned armed factions over their weapons, with Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf taking the effort to Baghdad ahead of a September 30 disarmament deadline,” the website Asharq al Awsat noted.

The report added, “Iraqi sources said Ghalibaf’s visit to Baghdad on Wednesday goes well beyond its stated parliamentary purpose, with talks focused on political and security issues – chiefly the fate of armed factions’ weapons as the deadline to bring all arms under state control approaches.”

According to Kurdish media outlet Rudaw, “Iraq’s constitution bars the presence of armed factions that pose a threat to other countries, Baghdad’s National Security Advisor Qasim al-Abboudi confirmed to Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf in a Thursday meeting in the Iraqi capital.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi hosted Ghalibaf in Baghdad, and reports say that they discussed bilateral ties and other issues. It’s quite likely that they discussed the Strait of Hormuz. Ghalibaf’s message with the image of his head is clear: Iran won’t budge on the strait.

Iraq wants to restore its capacity to export oil. Iraqi ships, like all the rest, are barred by Iran’s blockade. However, it is currently unclear if Iran and Iraq can come to an agreement regarding exports.

Iran seeks to preserve militia influence as Ghalibaf meets Iraqi leaders

Iran doesn’t want Iraq to rein in the militias. In Iraq, Ghalibaf and Zaidi “discussed prospects for cooperation and joint action, as well as ways to strengthen and further develop bilateral relations across various fields, in a manner that serves the mutual interests of the two neighboring countries and peoples,” Zaidi’s office said in a statement on Facebook.

In Iraq, there was some controversy over Ghalibaf’s head blocking the Strait of Hormuz. After he posted the image, which he labeled as the “Persian Gulf,” Iraq’s Parliament Speaker Haibet al-Halbousi responded with a picture of his own head blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Al-Halbousi labeled the waterway as the “Arabian Gulf.”

This post was originally published on here. 

A newly released report by the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), titled “A Crisis of Representation: Antisemitism and Inclusion in Higher Education Unions,” documented how antisemitism, extreme anti-Zionist activism, and institutional governance failures are leaving Jewish faculty and graduate students marginalized, silenced, and inadequately supported across higher education unions nationwide.

Drawing on incident reports, member accounts, union materials, and campus developments, the research explored how union governance structures and activist dynamics have allowed low-participation processes to advance anti-Israel positions without broad member consensus.

The report mapped out several emerging trends in faculty and graduate union activity across the country. According to the findings, activist factions have frequently capitalized on low-turnout union elections and general meetings to push their measures through. For instance, the American Association of University Professors, a national faculty union, reversed its longstanding opposition to academic boycotts in 2024, later hosting programming on “scholasticide in Palestine” while reportedly leaving requests from Jewish organizations for alternative perspectives unanswered.

The report detailed that the California Faculty Association urged the California State University system in 2025 to cut academic ties with Israeli universities, invoking terms like “scholasticide,” “apartheid,” and “genocide,” while the Santa Cruz Faculty Association co-authored resolutions alleging “scholasticide” and backing anti-Zionist departmental statements under the banner of academic freedom.

Examining why academic union spaces have become especially vulnerable, the report highlighted how complex procedural rules, low participation rates in internal meetings, and strong pressure to conform allow small, highly organized groups to bypass the wider membership.

‘Zionist’ used a slur

One faculty member noted in the report, “the term ‘Zionist’ is applied as a slur if you express an opinion other than full condemnation of Israel.”

The report noted instances of targeting have emerged, such as at the City College of San Francisco, where a union leader reportedly targeted a Jewish instructor by calling her a “colonizer” and making derogatory remarks about her name, and at Cornell, where Cornell Graduate Students United adopted a statement endorsing an academic and cultural boycott of Israel while affirming Palestinians’ “unequivocal human right to resist oppression by any means necessary.”.

According to the study, these ideological shifts and controversies had profound effects – pulling unions away from their foundational and mandated responsibilities, such as negotiating fair wages, protecting academic freedom, securing job security, and maintaining baseline working conditions for all members.

The report documented how this alienation erodes internal cohesion and organizational trust amongst Jewish academics. One faculty member stated, “I no longer feel that the national organization can represent me equally… Union leadership has not addressed antisemitism with any seriousness or clarity.”

Jewish concerns dismissed

The research said that when Jewish members attempt to raise grievances regarding antisemitic rhetoric or hostility on campus, leadership frequently dismisses them or frames anti-Zionist rhetoric as entirely separate from identity, leaving them vulnerable to silencing within inclusion frameworks.

AEN Executive Director Miriam Elman emphasized that unions risk undermining their core mission of solidarity and equal representation when members feel forced to conceal their identity. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt added that academic unions have an obligation to confront antisemitism rather than allowing it to become normalized under the guise of anti-Zionist politics.

To restore trust and internal cohesion, the report concluded with recommendations for union members, leaders, and university administrators. These include improving governance transparency, fostering broader participation, protecting viewpoint diversity, addressing antisemitism within inclusion efforts, and refocusing organizations on core labor priorities.

This post was originally published on here. 

Nonprofit Advocacy Organization Impact held a “This Shall Not Stand” rally in Midtown Manhattan, bringing together members of the Jewish community alongside Christians, Muslims, and Hindus to stand against antisemitism and hate, following the recent attack during Shabbat services at Central Synagogue.

The incident involved 46-year-old Larry Montes, who federal prosecutors state stormed into the sanctuary, shouted antisemitic slurs, vandalized property, struck a 63-year-old woman in the face, and headbutted a security guard. Montes is now facing federal hate crime charges.

Impact CEO and co-founder, Aaron Herman, said in a statement to The Jerusalem Post, the message “was simple: An attack on a synagogue or any house of worship is an attack on all of us. This shall not stand.”

Speakers at the Wednesday rally included Jewish leaders and activists, with the rally focused on demanding greater security, confronting rising antisemitism and demonstrating that Jews and our allies will stand together.

Daniel Rosen, president of Impact, spoke to the broader implications of the violence during the rally, and told CBS News New York, “It’s not just about this synagogue. It’s about all synagogues. It’s not just about this act of violence. It’s about the string of violence that has been happening across the city and really across the country.” Addressing the necessity of a collective response.

“The message is that it’s up to me and it’s up to you. It’s up to all of us. And you don’t have to be Jewish to care about people being attacked,” he added.

Addressing the rally attendees on the need for active resistance against bigotry, Rosen emphasized that community defense must be organized and persistent, “Gone are the days when on a Monday a Jew is stabbed, on a Tuesday is spat upon, on a Wednesday a synagogue is vandalized. Gone are those days. We have decided, we have resolved that we will organize our community every single time when such things occur.”

Highlighting the breadth of the interfaith coalition standing together in Manhattan, he added: “We’re celebrating the fact that we have Hindus, and Muslims, and Christians, and Jews here together with one voice saying enough!”

Carin Bail, also of Impact, echoed these sentiments during the rally regarding the importance of interfaith unity in combating hate. “If communities came together and really united across all faiths, and we sent a message that was loud and clear that hate shouldn’t be tolerated, that it wouldn’t happen anywhere,” she told CBS News, New York.

Muslim activist joins Jewish leaders in call for interfaith solidarity

The rally featured speeches from various community leaders and activists, addressing the rising climate of fear and insecurity in New York City.

Among the speakers was Atia Shahnaz, the founder of the Pakistani American Skilled Woman Organization and former Muslim woman liaison for the mayor, who addressed the crowd and stated, “As a strong Muslim woman activist, we have the strong Islamic values to respect your neighbors, protect and work on their safety.”

Shahnaz said that solidarity across different faiths is essential.

“So I’m here to show my solidarity with my Jewish brothers and sisters because an attack on a synagogue, we feel attack on our mosque,” Shahnaz said.

Other speakers addressed the challenges families and children face in the city. Addressing the gathering, Israel advocate Lizzy Savetsky said, “It is absolutely unforgivable for me as a Jewish mother that I have to fear for my children in New York City in 2026. My children, who are descendants of a survivor of Auschwitz, who came to this city for a better life.”

Activist calls for greater Jewish self-defense and communal strength

Savetsky spoke further about the broader threat environment and local political leadership, directing sharp criticism at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Savetsky told the crowd, “There are three things that I want to ask of the Jewish community. The first is, we need to be entering our unapologetic era because we have seen that pandering to the enemy has gotten us absolutely nowhere.” She added, “We are just as much of a target when we pander to Mayor Mamdani, when we stay silent while he is running for mayor as our congregants vote for him.”

Savetsky urged attendees to lean into their heritage during the Hebrew month of Elul, describing the Jewish community as part of “the greatest club in history.” Referencing the video of the disturbance at Central Synagogue, she noted, “And I didn’t see any congregant stand up and fight back. We don’t have the luxury anymore of relying on the security that we have to pay for while our mayor is funding Broadway tickets for high school students instead of funding security for our institutions that he has put in danger.”

Savetsky called on the community to take a stand, stating, “We have to fight back. We need to learn self-defense. We need to be exercising our Second Amendment rights. We can’t count on anyone else because the attacks are too frequent and too widespread all over this city. So, Jews, learn how to defend yourselves because we don’t have a choice anymore.”

New York State Assemblyman David Weprin, president of the National Association of Jewish Legislators representing Jewish state lawmakers across more than 40 states, said in an interview during the rally that the fight against bigotry transcends partisan lines.

“Every time a hate crime occurs – and in most of the hate crimes in New York City and nationally, they have been against Jewish people and Jewish institutions – we have to speak out each and every time,” Weprin told the crowd. Pointing to the recent assault at Central Synagogue, he stressed that while it was the latest prominent flashpoint, it was part of a larger, systemic pattern. “It’s not a partisan issue. It has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans or political activity. It has to do with Jews speaking out.”

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman – who serves as the county executive of Nassau County and is the Republican and Conservative nominee for New York governor. Stepping up to the podium, Blakeman praised the broad coalition gathered in Midtown Manhattan and sharply criticized local municipal leadership for failing to protect religious freedom and basic American values.

Blakeman told the crowd before pivoting to a direct condemnation of city leadership, “We have to fight antisemitism. We have to fight the attack on American values. We have to fight against anti-Christianity, which is raising its ugly head also with the same people who are attacking the Jews.”

Blakeman emphasized unity across political and religious spectrums, calling out by name fellow attendees in the audience: “It doesn’t matter what party we’re talking about. We’re talking about good people, Republicans, Democrats, independents, people of all religions, of all faiths, of every ethnicity, of every lifestyle, of every background. We need to stand up and say we will not tolerate attacks on Jewish institutions, on Jewish people. We will no longer tolerate your anti-American values.”

Rabbi Avi Weiss, from the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, told the crowd, “Mr Mamdani, J’accuse! When will you understand that your vile video has put a target on the face of, the sides of every synagogue and every house of worship.”

Rabbi Binyamin Krauss, of SAR Academy in Riverdale, said to the crowd, “Use your power. Speak the right words. Don’t speak words that encourage others to walk into a synagogue to attack us.”

The rally comes amid an increase in antisemitic incidents across New York City, where recent NYPD data indicates that anti-Jewish hate crimes have risen by 8.5% compared to the previous year and accounted for more than 56% of all hate crimes citywide, despite Jewish residents making up roughly 10% of the population.

This post was originally published on here. 

The government’s decision to shutter Army Radio in December was invalidated on Thursday by the High Court of Justice.

The reason, the ruling reads, is that those who made the decision acted in part because they felt the station did not align with their own positions – considerations the court found to be “improper and invalid.”

The court ruled unanimously in favor of petitions filed against the planned closure, striking down the government’s effort to shut the military broadcaster after 75 years on air.

The government unanimously approved Army Radio’s closure in December 2025, with the station initially set to cease broadcasting on March 1, 2026. The closure was delayed after the High Court agreed to hear petitions challenging the decision.

“It cannot be that someone in a position of power will decide that because they don’t like what a broadcaster is saying, that microphone should be ‘turned off,’” wrote Justice Yechiel Kasher. 

High court moves to block gov. order to shutter Army Radio 

“Such governance is unequivocally undemocratic, because a cornerstone of any democracy is the recognition that those in power cannot use it to silence voices they disagree with,” he added. 

All three justices agreed that the station, which was established by a government decision in 1950 and remains a military unit, could in principle be shut down without new legislation. The bench did not rule that Army Radio must remain open indefinitely, nor did it find that the government lacked the authority to close it. 

The case is rather about this particular decision that had been taken. Kasher drew a sharp distinction between closing Army Radio because the military should not operate a national current-affairs station – which he said could be a legitimate consideration – and closing it because ministers objected to the political character or criticism they believed was being broadcast.

The government had argued that the closure rested on legitimate concerns: the unusual arrangement of a military-run current-affairs station, the need to keep the IDF outside political disputes, the role of conscript soldiers in covering controversial political issues, and what it described as distortions in the commercial radio market.

Those reasons could, in principle, support a lawful decision to close the station, Kasher said. But the government had to show that they were the reasons that actually drove the cabinet’s December vote – and the court found that it had failed to do so.

Kasher pointed in particular to statements by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi and Defense Minister Israel Katz, who led the move. In a March 2025 letter to Katz, written before the advisory committee examining the station’s future had been established, Karhi called for the closure of Army Radio as part of what he described as the two ministers’ shared “right-wing liberal agenda,” and characterized the station as a political stronghold.

Katz later appointed an advisory committee to examine Army Radio’s future. After 19 meetings, the committee recommended two main options: stripping the station of its news and current-affairs programming while keeping it as a military broadcaster, or closing Army Radio while leaving Galgalatz operating. Katz chose the second option and announced in November that he would seek to close the station.

The attorney-general opposed the move before the cabinet vote, arguing that the process was flawed, that some members of the advisory committee had significant political affiliations, and that there was a real concern that the station’s coverage had become an improper consideration in the decision. Petitioners raised similar arguments and also challenged the government’s authority to close the station without legislation.

The government rejected those claims, maintaining that the committee had conducted an extensive process and that ministers were entitled to hold and express policy positions before making a decision.

High court maintains that government could shut down Army Radio with different evidence 

But the justices placed particular weight on what happened after the petitions reached court. Kasher said the government did not submit the full minutes of the December 22 cabinet meeting, despite being required to rebut the allegation that improper considerations had driven the decision. Justice Dafna Barak-Erez separately noted that no affidavits from the ministers were submitted after the court issued its conditional order in February.

Justice Alex Stein, who took the broadest view of the government’s authority and said he would otherwise have rejected the petitions, nevertheless joined Kasher’s conclusion because of Karhi’s letter. That letter, Stein wrote, turned an otherwise legitimate effort to separate government from broadcast content into government intervention in the content itself.

Barak-Erez went further on the defects in the process, finding that bias among the ministers and some members of the advisory committee, together with an inadequate factual basis, independently supported striking down the decision. Closing a public broadcaster because those in power perceive it as supporting a different political position, she wrote, amounts to “de-facto censorship.”

The ruling leaves the broader debate over Army Radio’s future unresolved. A government could still decide to close the station after a new process based on legitimate considerations, the justices made clear.

“There is a clear legal answer,” Barak-Erez wrote, to such a decision can be taken for political reasons and through a process biased in advance: “The answer is no.”

This post was originally published on here.