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Jared Kushner, Special Envoy for Peace and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, is planning to visit Israel and Egypt next week to discuss the situation in Gaza, five sources with knowledge of the plan told Axios on Thursday.

Kushner will meet with Nickolay Mladenov, the “high representative” for the Gaza Board of Peace, as well as meeting with Netanyahu and  other senior Israeli officials, Axios reported.

He is also expected to meet with mediators from Egypt Qatar, and Turkey in Cairo, a source told Axios.

This trip would be the first time Kushner has visited Israel since January, coming as the Board of Peace are trying to move towards the next phase of the Gaza peace plan.

CENTCOM Commander Cooper visits Israel

CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper visited Israel on Monday and spoke to senior IDF commanders about US-Israeli military relations and the war with Iran.

Cpt.Tim Hawkins, a spokesperson for US Central Command (CENTCOM) told The Jersualem Post that reports that Cooper said during his visit to Israel that he had pushed for renewed strikes against Iran were untrue.

Hawkins told the Post that claims that Cooper had pushed for a resumption of the conflict against Iran were “an outright fabrication. It’s not true at all.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Peggy Flanagan, the likely next senator from Minnesota, defeated a moderate pro-Israel congresswoman, accuses Israel of genocide and says she would oppose offensive weapons sales to Israel.

If the victory Tuesday of the state’s lieutenant governor over Rep. Angie Craig sounds like an echo of last week’s election in another midwestern state, Michigan, listen a little closer: Flanagan differs from Abdul El-Sayed in critical if subtle ways when it comes to Israel and Jews.

Flanagan has not joined El-Sayed and a number of left-wing challengers for Congress in saying that she would oppose US funding for defensive weapons like the Iron Dome missile program. 

Her platform says she would have joined the two incumbent Minnesota senators, Amy Klobuchar, who is running for governor, and whom she hopes to replace, and Tina Smith “in voting to halt offensive weapons sales to Israel.”

That places her within the current Democratic mainstream: 40 out of 47 senators who caucus with the Democrats voted in April for the bill banning offensive weapons when it came up.

Her platform also calls for “a two-state solution which allows for a secure Israel and Palestinian self-determination.” El-Sayed will not commit to recognizing Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, or to a two-state solution.

Temple Israel defaced with hateful messages on Oct. 7 anniversary 

The crisis moment in El-Sayed’s relationship with his state’s Jewish community came when he appeared to equivocate in condemning a violent attack on a Detroit area synagogue in March when pre-school was in session. 

Flanagan was unequivocal: “Our Jewish communities are facing unprecedented levels of violence and threats,” she wrote then on social media. “It is on all of us to call anti-semitism out when we see and hear it, and to make sure that all of our faith communities are treated with respect. Hate brings no one more safety, more dignity, or more peace.” 

She is equally as adamant when the threat is closer to home. In 2025, on the anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attack, a different synagogue called Temple Israel in Minneapolis was vandalized with graffiti in the shape of two inverted triangles, a symbol associated with Hamas, and reading “Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas’ name for its attack on Israel.

“Last night, Temple Israel in Minneapolis was defaced with anti-Semitic hate,” Flanagan wrote. “My heart is with the congregants of Temple Israel and our entire Jewish community. Hate has no home in Minnesota, and every house of worship should be a safe place to pray.”

There are things that Flanagan has done and said that nonetheless unsettled the pro-Israel community. 

Some Jewish Democrats voiced concern to the Minnesota Star Tribune that Flanagan played into antisemitic tropes by singling out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in her campaign against Craig, a page out of El-Sayed’s playbook in defeating AIPAC-backed Rep. Haley Stevens, and the playbook of a number of progressive congressional candidates this year.

During the lead-up to the primary, Flanagan was vocal about her opponent Craig’s support from the pro-Israel lobby, calling her “AIPAC’s candidate.” 

A Flanagan spokesperson told the paper that she has “consistently condemned antisemitism and will continue standing with Jewish Minnesotans against hate.” Flanagan’s campaign did not return a request for comment.

Flanagan had the support of Israel-critical progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who authored the proposed ban on the sale of offensive weapons, and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Like them, and unlike Smith and Klobuchar, she has accused Israel of genocide.

She also drew the endorsement of progressive Jewish organization Bend the Arc.

“She is a close friend of the Twin Cities Jewish community and a trusted ally in the fight against antisemitism,” wrote Bend the Arc’s CEO, Jamie Beran. “She understands that Jewish safety is bound up with the safety and freedom of all our neighbors.”

Now, Flanagan will take on Republican nominee Michele Tafoya, a former NFL sideline reporter who has expressed support for Israel and its war with the US in Iran. Minnesota has not elected a Republican US Senator since 2002. Flanagan is favored to win in a state which has trended increasingly blue in recent years.

Flanagan also says she will not support New York’s Chuck Schumer if he chooses to seek another term as party leader in the Senate. Schumer is a pro-Israel stalwart.

Republicans, who control the Senate, have unanimously voted against Sanders’ resolutions, rendering them essentially symbolic tools for Democrats to voice disapproval of the Israeli government.

If progressive Israel critics like El-Sayed and Troy Jackson in Maine win in November and help flip the Senate, and especially if Schumer gives up leadership, the pathway to blocking weapons sales to Israel would become clearer than ever.

This post was originally published on here. 

Pamela Laufer-Ukeles knows exactly what it feels like to stop playing tennis for the sake of focusing on her career and family.

She did it for 20 years. 

She also knows what it feels like to question whether you can trust your body.

Breast cancer taught her that.

And she knows what it feels like to discover, slowly and deliberately, that perhaps you can.

Tennis taught her that.

The lessons she received from playing tennis and from surviving breast cancer now intersect on the courts of Ra’anana, where the 50-year-old law professor and competitive tennis player is preparing for Sharsheret’s upcoming tennis tournament – an event that brings together two parts of her life that once seemed completely separate.

One is the sport she first discovered when she was an eight-year-old girl.

The other is the cancer diagnosis that changed how she viewed her health, her priorities, and her own vulnerability.

The result is a story that involves more than simply winning a tennis match.

Although Laufer-Ukeles would certainly like to win.

“I’ll train, and I’ll show up and give it my best shot,” she said. “That’s all I can do.”

That attitude has served her well.

Tennis talent discovered at day camp

Laufer-Ukeles first picked up a racket at age eight at a summer day camp. She had never played before, but the instructor immediately noticed something.

“Have you ever played before?” she was asked.

She hadn’t.

Soon, tennis became a major part of her life.

She played junior tennis from ages eight through 14, competed regularly, and earned Eastern Tennis Association rankings. She trained three or four times a week and sometimes played tournaments every weekend. Her parents invested heavily in her development, and the sport gave her an early education in competition, discipline, and perseverance.

She even played some tournaments in Europe, making the semifinals in a particularly juniors tournament in France.

Her game was built around a strong forehand and serve. At just 5-foot-3, she learned early that the net could be a difficult place for her against taller opponents, so she became primarily a baseline player.

By the time she reached Columbia University, tennis was still a major part of her identity, although for the past few years she had quit playing juniors and now was only playing for her high school team, which still involved training but with less pressure. She walked onto the college team and practiced with it for about a year, but ultimately decided to leave.

She wanted to concentrate on studies.

The decision made sense at the time. She watched student-athletes balance demanding schedules and felt that the limitations placed on her academic choices were not worth the trade-off.

So she put down the racket.

And largely left it there.

For approximately two decades, tennis gave way to school, career, marriage, and children.

She tried coming back intermittently, but the results were frustrating. Her instincts still belonged to an athlete, while her body was no longer conditioned like one. She suffered injuries, including a knee injury that left her unable to walk normally for months, and each setback made it easier to stop again.

Looking back, she has no hesitation about what she would tell her younger self, who barely hesitated before stopping regular play.

“Big mistake,” she said with a laugh. “Shouldn’t have done it.”

An unexpected diagnosis

In February 2019, at age 43, Laufer-Ukeles discovered that life had another lesson waiting.

She had asked her primary-care physician for a mammogram simply because she had heard about friends in the United States who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. In Israel, women are only referred to get mammograms at age 50 without a specific request.  

She had never had one before.

She did not feel sick.

She did not have a reason to think something was wrong.

But the mammogram led to an ultrasound, which led to the discovery of triple-negative breast cancer.

The diagnosis was traumatic in more ways than one.

During the ultrasound, she recalled, the radiologist discussed the possibility of cancer with an intern before properly explaining the situation to her. The doctor eventually told her that she had a medium-sized cancer and would likely lose her hair.

She had come in for a routine screening.

Suddenly, she was thinking about cancer, chemotherapy, and what would happen to her family.

“I was very scared,” she said. 

She underwent extensive treatment, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation.

And when it was over, the physical treatment was not the only thing she had to recover from.

There was the emotional aftermath.

There was the vulnerability.

And there was the unsettling realization that the body she had always depended on could suddenly betray her without warning.

For years, she had been a cerebral person – an academic who spends much of her professional life thinking, writing, and teaching. But cancer made her realize that she needed something else, too.

She needed to move.

She needed to be outside.

She needed to feel physically capable again.

She needed to regain trust in her body.

She needed to focus on her physicality and her health.

She needed tennis. 

The timing was almost strange enough to seem scripted.

Laufer-Ukeles began returning to tennis around the time COVID-19 was arriving in 2020. When courts were open, tennis offered a way to get out of the house without being in close proximity to other people.

At first, she played casually with local friends.

Then she saw tournaments.

And she remembered the player she had once been.

“I remember when I used to do that,” she thought.

So she started training.

Three or four times a week became normal. She hired a coach. She began competing in Masters tournaments. She started running and lifting weights, recognizing that simply playing tennis was no longer enough to prepare her body for the demands of the sport.

This time, she approached the game differently.

She stretched. She strengthened. She took care of her body.

And gradually, something returned that cancer had taken away.

Trust.

“When you have cancer, you’re not necessarily sick when you’re diagnosed,” she explained. “So, you doubt your health.”

Tennis provided a way to challenge that doubt.

The rules were familiar.

Work hard. Prepare. Compete. See what your body can do.

The same lessons she had learned as a child were waiting for her decades later.

“If I trained and I worked hard, I would see the results on the court,” she said.

Only now, the stakes felt different.

Tennis was no longer simply about becoming a better player. It was about reconnecting with herself.

“It reminded me of my youth,” she said. “It reminded me of my ability to count on my body and have trust in my body.”

She thrived.

The competitiveness came rushing back. So did the joy.

And then came the Maccabiah.

Laufer-Ukeles’s first Maccabiah experience was almost entirely accidental.

After returning to competitive tennis, she searched online for Masters tournaments in Israel. The next tournament she found happened to be the Maccabiah.

Her reaction was essentially: There is no way I’m playing that.

Her husband disagreed.

He signed her up.

The organizers initially called to tell her she couldn’t participate. The Maccabiah, after all, was for highly competitive athletes, and she had only recently returned to the sport.

Then circumstances changed.

There were cancellations.

There weren’t enough women in her age group.

The organizers called again.

Did she want to play?

She did.

Before that Maccabiah, she had played only a tournament or two since returning to competitive tennis. She had managed to finish second in one of them, giving her enough of a ranking to justify her place.

Then, only about a year after completing cancer treatment, she went to the Maccabiah and won silver in singles and bronze in doubles.

The experience was transformative.

She trained specifically for the event, ran extensively, and pushed herself physically to prepare for the heat and the demands of the competition.

Four years later, she returned to the 2026 Maccabiah with a ranking that earned her a place in the tournament on merit.

This time, she won bronze in her age group.

She has come to view the Maccabiah as one of the toughest tournaments she plays.

The competition is stronger because athletes arrive from around the world. The scheduling can be unpredictable. Matches can take place in the middle of Israel’s summer heat, sometimes twice in the same day.

There is no easy way through it.

Which is precisely why she loves it.

The Maccabiah gives her something to work toward. It gives her a reason to be in peak physical condition. And it has introduced her to people from around the world.

These days, she can play five days a week.

Tennis is no longer something she returned to.

It is simply part of who she is again.

The irony is that tennis also eventually helped Laufer-Ukeles find her voice about cancer.

When she was diagnosed, she did not want the entire community to know. Her close friends and family knew, but she was uncomfortable with the vulnerability that came with being identified as someone who had cancer.

She was scared.

She was worried about her children.

And she did not want to be defined by her illness.

She also felt profoundly isolated.

Through connections, she was introduced to Sharsheret, which provided access to women who had experienced breast cancer and could speak to her about what she was facing.

That support mattered enormously.

But even then, something was missing.

She did not have a regular in-person support group. She did not have a social worker she could meet with regularly. She wanted the opportunity to sit with women who understood exactly what she was experiencing and simply talk.

Years later, that circle has finally begun to close.

Sharsheret has invited her to participate in its support groups in Israel, and she has already attended two meetings.

For someone who once felt so isolated, the experience has been powerful.

She now finds herself sitting with other women discussing treatment, screening, preventative measures, diet and the challenges of survivorship.

It is something she wishes she had had when she was first diagnosed.

And that is why she is now willing to speak publicly.

“I want people who are diagnosed not to feel so isolated,” she said.

Her message is simple but powerful: breast cancer does not have to be the end of the story.

She is living proof.

For Laufer-Ukeles, the connection between Sharsheret, breast cancer, and tennis makes perfect sense.

The sport changes the conversation.

Rather than focusing exclusively on illness, it puts the emphasis on strength, perseverance and survivorship.

That matters as society can still instinctively associate sickness with weakness.

Laufer-Ukeles admits that she once did the same thing.

But cancer changed her perspective.

She does not pretend treatment was easy. It wasn’t. She went through an exhausting course of treatment and experienced the physical and emotional toll that comes with it.

But she also discovered that there can be strength on the other side of vulnerability.

Tennis became part of that process.

So can community.

So can mental-health support.

So can simply seeing another woman who has been through cancer and is now living a full, active life.

That, she believes, is one of the most important things Sharsheret can offer.

There is still a lack of awareness, she says, not only about how common breast cancer is but about how much support can mean to someone during treatment and after it.

The upcoming tournament in Ra’anana therefore represents more than a day of tennis.

It is an opportunity to bring women together, raise awareness, support Sharesheret’s work and demonstrate a different image of what survivorship can look like.

‘Everyone has a story,” notes Liora Tannenbaum, Sharesheret’s Israel Regional Director. “Where they are coming from or what they are dealing with isn’t always known to the people around them, even those they are close to. The first time I met Pamela, all the roads converged in one sitting… learning about the journey she had been on and is still navigating, her passion for tennis and the role it had and continues to play in her life, and how Sharsheret could connect so many of these dots. Her willingness to share her story publicly and champion all that we are trying to achieve here is what makes this event so meaningful.’

And Laufer-Ukeles will be right in the middle of it.

She regularly plays at the Ra’anana Municipal Tennis Center, where she has found a community she deeply appreciates. Her coach, Oded Yatskin, is also donating his time to support the Sharsheret tournament.

She is grateful for the people making the event possible and hopes it succeeds both as a fundraiser and as a way of strengthening Sharsheret’s presence and ability to support women.

She has been particularly impressed by the positive attitude of the people involved.

There were, she noted, plenty of people who might have looked at an ambitious fundraising event and said it wouldn’t work.

Instead, a group of people simply decided to make it happen.

She wants to be part of that effort.

And yes, there is still the small matter of the tennis.

Asked whether she expects to win the tournament, Laufer-Ukeles laughs.

There is probably a little pressure now.

After all, she is one of the faces of the event.

But pressure is familiar territory. So is perseverance.

She will train. She will show up. She will compete. And she will give it everything she has.

Because after everything she has been through, perhaps that is the greatest lesson tennis has given her.

The scoreboard matters. The medal matters. The competition matters.

But sometimes the greatest victory happens long before the first ball is served.

It happens when you decide to step back onto the court. 

This post was originally published on here. 

Club-wielding Palestinians ambushed a Jewish settler near Kiryat Arba, Army Radio reported on Thursday evening.

According to the report, the woman alerted authorities, which led to the Kiryat Arba police chief to rush to the scene. Upon his arrival, he was pelted with stones, leaving him slightly injured in the head, Army Radio said.

Despite this, he managed to fire shots in the air, after which the assailants fled, the report stated.

Woman abducted to Hebron by relatives, rescued in good health

In a separate incident, a woman in her 20’s living in central Israel who had been forcibly taken to Hebron was located and rescued by authorities on Thursday evening, KAN reported citing a police statement. 

Israeli police, IDF troops and Palestinian Authority police were involved in the rescue operation.

The woman had reportedly been taken to the West Bank city by her relatives, who were detained and will be transferred to the Tel Aviv district for further investigation, police said.

During the operation, KAN reported, forces were deployed outside of the city, stopping a suspicious vehicle and alerting police to the scene, whereafter the woman was found.

The woman was in good health at the time of her rescue, police said. 

This post was originally published on here. 

The IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) killed Hamas commander Jamal Mahmoud Abu Kamil in a targeted strike in Gaza City on Thursday, according to a statement from the military.

Abu Kamil was among the terrorists who invaded Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, and he continued to work toward the goal of harming Israeli soldiers and civilians over the past three years, the IDF said. 

IAF strikes terror cell in Khan Yunis, continues countering threats despite July deal

The air force on Thursday attacked a Gazan terror cell in Khan Yunis, the second “attack of choice” in two days after a pause in such attacks since a new US-Hamas deal in late July.

IDF sources told The Jerusalem Post that the cell was not extremely senior, but was in the process of planning and shortly carrying out an operation against the IDF.

According to those sources, since the US-Hamas deal, the IDF has halted attacks on Hamas members who were involved in the October 7 invasion and on other strategic Hamas assets or leaders, but it is still carrying out attacks against operatives who it knows are moving toward an attack.

IDF uncovers large weapons cache in booby-trapped structure in Lebanon security zone

Israeli forces in Lebanon located and neutralized a booby-trapped structure near the village of Mansouri on Wednesday, the military said in a Thursday statement. 

This building, the IDF said, was used for Hezbollah terrorist activity and was located near the village of Mansouri in one of the pilot security zones. 

Soldiers found RPG rockets and additional unspecified weapons in the building.

Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

If you are opposed to the enterprise of the resettling of Jews in the West Bank, ambivalent on the matter, or even an uninterested news consumer, the version of events of Friday, July 24, that you probably have absorbed since then has gone through a process of extreme distillation and ideological refinement.

One news site informed its readers that “Israeli settlers entered a Palestinian village.” Then, it added, residents of an outpost community “came out to repel the settlers.” After that, according to the same news source, one of the Arab villagers “snatched a settler’s weapon and opened fire.”

The background framing included additional information to wit: “Armed settlers had trespassed, [which is] consistent with the common strategy of ‘initiating friction.’”

Blame has been apportioned; Jewish guilt has been declared.

Reactions to the incident

At 1:40 p.m. on the day of the incident, only five hours or so after the shootings, Ksenia Svetlova posted on X/Twitter.

A decade ago, Svetlova was a member of the Knesset for the Zionist Union (an alliance of the Labor Party and Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua). Currently, she is an associate fellow at Chatham House in London, where former prime minister Ehud Barak memorably declared on March 27, 2023, that some members of Israel’s government were “lunatic racists on the extreme Right.”

In her tweet, Svetlova reversed the narrative, as if it were Arabs who had illegally entered a Jewish settlement.

She then returned to relative reality, highlighting the narrative of settler violence. According to Svetlova, the hike in which Israeli settlers entered a Palestinian region was in Area A (yet the road they were walking on was actually in Area B), and they entered the village (but in actuality, the Arabs came out).

Despite the video evidence she posted, Svetlova, as did others, ignored the fact that the hikers, as well as the IDF soldiers who arrived, and Capt. (res.) Benayahu Mellet, who was ordered to join in, all fired numerous shots in the air for over a minute, intentionally trying not to harm any of the Arabs.

Another, Dror Etkes of Kerem Navot, which is an anti-occupation NGO that “monitors and researches Israeli land policy in the West Bank,” also posted about the incident on Twitter.

He had a narrative that claimed the incident was in fact over, except that the “settlers” then arrived. Etkes’s perspective can be demonstrated by a later X post, from July 28, in which he called the head of the IDF Central Command “settler IDF apartheid General [Avi] Bluth.”

The military’s investigation into the incident was published on August 5. It was not withheld from the public, just as an investigation into another sensitive incident that occurred in November 2024, when two soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon while investigating a historical site, was published. The IDF found that Mellet acted with “extreme heroism” and defined the Arabs involved as “terrorists.” 

The participants insisted they were not properly in the village. True, the report found that security authorities had not approved the outing, but the Shomron Brigade did receive preliminary but very unclear information about it several hours beforehand, and that the Arab residents were those who initiated contact, confronting the hikers.

Hiking or a provocation?

I will not second-guess the act of unstrapping one’s rifle from one’s body, which seemingly led to the weapon being snatched, or even if it was wise to get so close to the rioters, even pushing and shoving them. Other points need to be addressed, nevertheless.

Walking through the Land of Israel should not be considered a crime, nor a provocation, and certainly not an act that permits local Arabs to throw stones at the hikers or to seek to do them violent injury.

I myself experienced a similar situation back in 1989, in the pre-Oslo Accords period. We were nowhere near a village but rather deep in a wadi, which provided an advantage to the stone throwers. Our presence was enough to have them initiate violence. We were not in a grove of olive trees, in a field of barley, or trudging through someone’s backyard. We were Jews.

We were doing nothing more than what president Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and his wife, Rachel Yanait, had done before World War I – we were walking throughout the country.

Hikes were also part of the early Yishuv school system, and Israeli writer, lecturer, and geographer Zev Vilnay made a living leading them.

Further, the Palmach marched across Samaria and through the Judean Desert and made sure to visit Hebron in the early 1940s, at a time when the British banned entry to non-residents.

Exploring the land was, and continues to be, a natural Jewish act, in the spirit of: “Arise, walk through the land, the length of it and the breadth of it” (Genesis 13:17).

Yes, some Jewish residents beyond the Green Line are or can be violent. However, the “settler violence” campaign is a travesty of the facts and the context.

Worse, it is intended to cover up the numerous acts of Arab violence and terror, and the seriousness of the damage done and intended. Friday’s hike participants were not a bunch of vigilante hooligans.

A third lesson from the incident is that objective news seems not to be of any interest anymore.

Yasmin Levy of Haaretz, for instance, was quite convinced, as her July 26 TV review column suggested, that “in the name of Jewish supremacy,” Israeli TV distorted this latest West Bank violence.

If you clicked on Arutz Sheva or the Srugim website, however, you would see a very different picture.

Israeli politicians and public figures have the right to criticize and oppose policies. What we are witnessing, though, is a campaign, still on the fringes, of justifying Arab “resistance” to “colonialist occupation” while downgrading Arab terror.

From the Democrats Party chair Yair Golan’s words that “Israel is a state that kills children for a hobby,” radical elements are now mourning a sheikh who grabbed a gun from a Jew who was using it to shove him away to then murder that Jew and shoot at a soldier. Even members of Golan’s party protested his description of the attack on the hikers as a “terror act.”

Hiking is a non-threatening endeavor and should not be thought of otherwise. It should not be considered a crime punishable by death.

The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.

This post was originally published on here. 

On Sunday, at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, Isaac Herzog welcomed a family from New York.

Jeffrey and Atara Douglas and their three children arrived in Jerusalem earlier this month. The youngest, Emilia, is six and starts first grade this year. She is the 100,000th North American immigrant brought here by Nefesh B’Nefesh since 2002.

That is a remarkable number, and I want to say so before anything else.

Now look at who stood in that room. The president. The aliyah and integration minister. The two men who founded the organization.

What the room lacked was an elected representative of the community those 100,000 people belong to. Because nobody thought to invite one. There isn’t one.

Why do Anglo Olim have no representation in the Knesset?

On Monday, Likud holds the primary that sets the list of the party that has governed Israel for most of this century. Somewhere on that list, at number 43, sits a slot reserved for a new immigrant. Likud is polling at 23 or 24 seats.

I have read plenty of columns that treat that number as an insult. I understand the impulse. But I think they stop one question too early.

Slot 43 is not really about Israelis looking down on olim from the West. What it points to is harder to fix.

Every immigrant community that took power here arrived angry.

Political power in this country has only ever been built by people who came running from something.

Jews from Morocco, Iraq, and Yemen arrived in the 1950s, were sprayed with DDT, sent to transit camps, and told their culture was an embarrassment. Thirty years later, that humiliation became Shas, which now decides who gets to form a government.

A million Jews left a collapsing Soviet Union in the 1990s. They found their degrees worthless and their Jewishness questioned by the rabbinate. Within four years, they had a party of their own, seven seats, and a grip on the Interior Ministry. They did not ask anyone for representation. They took a hostage.

Now look at us. Roughly 204,000 people have come since 1948 from the US, Britain, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Financially established, educated, and all over the officer corps, medicine, hi-tech, and every advocacy organization this country runs.

In 78 years, we have not produced a party, a faction, a bloc, or a minister.

It is not a numbers problem. French aliyah is 40% of the Anglo total and punches well above us. Religious Zionism’s slate this year has a French aliyah operator on it.

The Moroccans, the Russians, and now the French have all shown up with an account that Israel has to settle. We showed up having already been paid.

You cannot organize a grateful person.

The most successful failure in Jewish history

Nefesh B’Nefesh exists to make aliyah frictionless, and it is superb at it. It meets you at the airport with your identity card. It handles the bureaucracy, the paperwork, the sal klita (absorption basket). I am glad it exists.

But look at what an organization like that does politically. It takes what would otherwise become anger and turns it into a solved problem, one family at a time, before any of it can pile up into something a politician has to answer for.

Nobody met the Soviet olim at the airport. That is exactly why they went and built a party instead.

Twenty-four years and 100,000 people later, I think we can say which approach ends up with seats.

Israel gives us jobs. It does not give us seats

We have built a whole professional class of Anglo olim whose job is to explain Israel to everyone else. Ambassadors, spokespeople, English-language editors, think-tank fellows, advisers hired mainly because they can go on CNN without sounding foreign.

It is one of our better export industries, staffed largely by people who were not born here. I should know. I run part of it.

Every one of those jobs is an appointment. Not one of them is a seat.

Michael Oren is the case study, though not for the reason people usually give. He came from New Jersey, served as a paratrooper, wrote the definitive history of the Six-Day War, and gave up his American citizenship to become ambassador in Washington, which he later said was the hardest part of the job.

He entered the Knesset in 2015 at number four on Kulanu’s list, decided top to bottom by one man. In 2019, the same man told him there would be no realistic slot, and that was the end of it.

Voters never rejected Oren. They were never asked. There was nothing underneath him, and no way for someone who lands here at 19 to build it.

Look at what the law asks, too. Israel will take your son as a lone soldier, take your money and your advocacy, and let you keep your foreign passport through all of it. Ask for a vote in the room, and you have to give the passport up.

Apparently, divided loyalty is fine right until the moment it comes with power attached.

Before anyone says there is simply no room on a crowded list, look at what Likud has done with this one. As my colleague Herb Keinon reported this week, between his personal picks and the guaranteed places he demanded for Israel Katz, Gideon Sa’ar, and Haim Katz, Prime Minister

Benjamin Netanyahu will control 11 of the party’s top 29 slots. His first pick was a hi-tech entrepreneur with years in Silicon Valley, brought in to give the list economic heft.
So the room is there. This year, Likud decided its list needed Silicon Valley. It has never once decided the list needed an immigrant from the West in a seat that actually gets filled.

That is not a constraint anyone is working under. It is a preference, and someone wrote it down as a number.

This is about to change, and nobody is ready

For 78 years, Anglo aliyah has been the aliyah of choice. That is ending in front of us.

The people getting on planes now are leaving campuses where their children were told to hide their Judaism, as well as congregations that have hired armed guards. For the first time, Anglo olim are arriving with an account to settle.

This means Israeli politics is about to have an Anglo constituency with a grievance, the only thing our politics has ever really known how to hear.

The problem is that there is nobody to lead it. Dan Illouz has resigned from Likud. Sharren Haskel had to leave and found her own party to get a slot. Dov Lipman, the first American-born MK in 30 years, lost his seat in 2015 and now works from outside the system. The Knesset lobby for aliyah from the West, founded in 2008, has produced 18 years of nothing.

One question, before the lists close

I put it to one party leader this week. Interviewing Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who picks two names on his slate himself, I asked how many immigrants from Western countries would be in his realistic top 20.

Now, the same question will be put to the rest of them before September 9. If the answer is none, say it out loud and we will print it.

And to the Anglos reading this in Ra’anana, Modi’in, and Beit Shemesh, something harder. Nobody is keeping us out. We were handed every advantage this country gives an immigrant, and we spent all of it on being useful.

Being useful is not power. The Russians worked that out in four years. We have had 78.

Emilia Douglas starts first grade in a few weeks. By the time she can vote, there will have been four more elections, and judging by the record, none of them will put a candidate in front of her who understands where her parents came from.

She will not notice. By then she will just be Israeli, which is the happy ending we all say we want. It is also how a community vanishes without anyone deciding to end it.

This post was originally published on here. 

Eyal Eshel, father of Roni Eshel, an IDF observer who was murdered at the Nahal Oz base on October 7, told Israel’s KAN News on Wednesday that some of the terrorists who invaded Israel on October 7 were speaking Farsi. 

This claim, he told KAN, was uncovered recently and is based on witness testimony. 

“We know much more than we did [before] about October 7,” Eshel said. “Every day we are learning new things [about it]. So here, we’ve learned this too.”

Based on this claim, Eshel extrapolated that Iran also gathered intelligence on the Israeli Gaza border area towns before October 7. 

Eshel collected information via his own channels, not through the IDF

He noted that this information came from privately collected witness interviews, rather than the IDF. 

“This is all stuff we collect,” he told KAN. “I work on it, I live it. I am on a mission that Roni gave to me.”

“She has given me the task of making this country better,” Eshel explained.

“I’m trying with all my might. It takes a lot of resources and a lot of will, [but] children who are growing up here today deserve to grow up in a different reality.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Channel 12 political commentator Amit Segal on Tuesday published details of what he said was an attempt by Economy and Industry Minister Nir Barkat to oust and replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shortly after the October 7 massacre.

“In October 2023, Nir Barkat held feverish consultations with his numerous paid advisers. On the agenda: a plan to oust Netanyahu and replace him with Prime Minister Nir Barkat,” Segal wrote. “As usual, the execution was expensive, clumsy and unsuccessful.”

According to Segal, “From October 2023 to March 2024, Barkat tried to bring down the budget, came out against the government from the Right, and then outflanked it from the Left by calling not to attack commissions of inquiry.”

“In between, he met with ministers, MKs and media figures; I am not one of them, and explained to them why only he could save the country. The country, surprisingly, was not convinced,” Segal added.

Segal later additionally wrote that “on the last day of November 2023,  [Health Minister] Haim Katz came to Netanyahu and told him about the plot. Netanyahu foiled it by breaking the co-conspirators apart with personal talks and strategic promotions.”

“Having failed in his battle against Netanyahu, Barkat, in his distress, tried to appease Likud members through a legal claims fund against Channel 12. That did not catch on particularly well either,” he wrote.

Segal says if his report is untrue, Barkat should sue for libel

Segal concluded the post by asserting that “if Barkat denies what was written, the minimum required is a massive libel lawsuit filed first thing tomorrow morning.”

Segal was later asked by one user why Netanyahu had not fired Barkat from the government if he was aware of the attempted ousting.

Segal replied that it was an “excellent question,” explaining that “Netanyahu did not feel at the time that he had enough of a margin to give up a vote in the Knesset.”

“Today, in my opinion, it is because of Barkat’s legal claims fund, which also finances lawsuits by people who are close to the hearts of people in Netanyahu’s office,” he said.

Segal concluded by stating, “If I were a Likud minister on the eve of primaries and was falsely accused of a plot against Netanyahu, I would immediately file a libel lawsuit. [Barkat] has already sued Channel 12 for NIS 12 million. Money is not the problem. So what is the problem?”

This post was originally published on here. 

With Hamas saying it intends to participate in the Palestinian legislative election now scheduled for November 28 as part of a broad national coalition, it suddenly feels like 2006 all over again.

Why? Because 2006 saw tensions emerge between Ariel Sharon’s government and the George W. Bush administration over whether to allow Hamas to participate in a democratic election.

The Bush administration, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the forefront, was then pursuing its “freedom agenda” – an effort to spread democracy across the Middle East, based on the belief that democratic governments would ultimately produce greater stability and less terrorism.

“Only when Palestinians are able freely to express themselves through ballots rather than bombs will we be able to get on the road to security for Israel,” Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, declared in October 2005.

Nice idea. The only problem was that Hamas wanted both ballots and bombs.

Israel argued that allowing an armed terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction to participate in an election was a deeply flawed idea. Washington recognized what it called the “fundamental contradiction” between an armed Hamas taking part in democratic politics, but still did not insist that Hamas resolve that contradiction before standing for election.

The US prevailed. Hamas took part in the elections under the less menacing party name “Change and Reform” and won 44.5% of the vote, compared with 41.4% for Fatah. Because of the electoral system and deep divisions within Fatah, that slim popular-vote margin gave Hamas 74 of the Palestinian Legislative Council’s 132 seats, compared with Fatah’s 45.

An ugly, murder-strewn history

The result caught nearly everyone by surprise, including Washington. Rice acknowledged afterward that the US had failed to anticipate the magnitude of Hamas’s victory.

The rest is history. An ugly, murder-strewn history that might have turned out differently if Hamas had not been allowed to participate.

A little more than a year later, in June 2007, Hamas violently drove Fatah and the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza, turning the coastal strip into an armed fortress from which to launch rockets and, ultimately, an invasion of Israel.

The Americans, in what some may say was innocent naivete, did not imagine that a group intent not on coexistence, but rather on replacing Israel’s existence with its own, would prevail at the ballot box.

That naivete is neither uniquely American nor has it passed from the world. Nikolay Mladenov, director-general of the Trump-led Board of Peace, offered another taste of it in a recent interview with Channel 12’s Amit Segal.

Both Israelis and the people in Gaza, he declared, “have one strong shared interest, and that is to get out of this horrible cycle of violence that has cost so many lives and caused so much destruction on both sides.”

That is a noble sentiment, an echo of the familiar formulation that Israelis and Palestinians alike simply want to live side by side in peace, dignity, and security.

Were that it were only true. This phrase reflects the sentiment of most Israelis, evident in the fact that Israel, over the years – through Oslo, the Camp David negotiations, the 2005 Gaza withdrawal and the statehood proposal advanced at Annapolis by Ehud Olmert – has been willing to make far-reaching territorial compromises to live in peace with the Palestinians. The Palestinians have not shown a similar appetite.

The last Palestinian legislative election, the one in 2006, proves the point. Hamas – whose original charter calls for the destruction of Israel – won. Doesn’t that demonstrate that the phrase “both sides want to coexist in peace and security” is hollow, wishful thinking – at least at this point in history?  

Some will argue that the 2006 vote was not as much a vote for Hamas as it was a sign of opposition to the corruption of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority. But that doesn’t even matter. Voters may select a movement because they like its social services, ensure that the trains run on time, or dislike its rivals, but they still hand power to that movement’s entire program, which in this case was “armed resistance” and the erasure of Israel.

The October 7 Massacre cannot be separated from public opinion

October 7 translated that program into action: murder, rape, kidnapping, and pillage on a scale of medieval savagery.

And October 7 cannot be separated from public opinion. In the most recent comprehensive Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll, conducted in October 2025, 53% of Palestinians said Hamas had been right to launch the attack, and of those who said they would vote in an election, Hamas led Fatah 29% to 20%.

What that all means is that if Hamas is allowed to participate in the elections – either standing alone or as part of some broader coalition – then be prepared for the fact that it may win again and use that legitimacy to further entrench its control, not only in Gaza but also in Judea and Samaria.

October 7 is not the only date from which Israel – and the world – needs to learn. January 25, 2006, is another. And the lesson is simple: Never again allow Hamas to take part in an election; never again let it play simultaneously with ballots and bullets. Because if it wins, it is clear what will come next – and it is anything but coexistence, peace, and security.

This post was originally published on here. 

Former Montreal anti-racism commissioner Bochra Manai is suing the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) for alleged defamation and a campaign to discredit her.

The Montreal Gazette and CBS Canada first reported on the lawsuit, which Manai filed with the Quebec Superior Court in Montreal.

The specific accusation against CIJA revolves around a visual montage in which CIJA allegedly compared her to Adolf Hitler. The montage is not searchable online currently; however, it is featured in the lawsuit.  

Manai argues that the montage is just part of an almost three-year campaign orchestrated by CIJA with the aim of discrediting her and having her fired from the City of Montreal. She is seeking $125,000 in damages, split into $100,000 in moral damages for the alleged harm caused to her and a further $25,000 in punitive damages.

Manai’s history at City of Montreal

Manai was appointed as city commissioner for the fight against racism and systemic discrimination in 2021.

After October 7, 2023, her relationship with CIJA deteriorated.

The precipitating moment seemed to be on October 28, 2023, when Manai decided to take part in a pro-Palestine, pro-ceasefire rally in Montreal, during which controversial Imam Adil Charkaoui gave a speech about “Allah, take care of these Zionist aggressors. Allah, take care of the enemies of the people of Gaza. Allah, count them all, then exterminate them. And don’t spare any of them!”

Canadian police investigated the incident as a hate crime.

Manai: Attending the pro-Palestine rally in Montreal was her ‘duty to humanity’ 

Manai defended her position in an op-ed in Le Devoir, saying her choice to attend the rally is her “duty to humanity.” She did not publicly condemn the imam’s remarks. She did, however, condemn Islamophobic and antisemitic acts committed in the weeks after October 7, saying “all are unacceptable, and the violence must be strongly condemned.”

“Shooting Jewish schools and children is a crime that must be punished and has no place in a metropolis like Montreal. Targeting Muslim places of worship is just as important.”

A few weeks later, in November 2023, CIJA called for Manai to resign.

“The choice of when she was silent and when she was vocal is very telling,” said Eta Yudin, CIJA’s then vice-president, in the Montreal Gazette. “A step forward would be for her to resign or for the mayor to find someone to fill that role who would be aligned with the mayor’s own views on antisemitism and commitment to fighting antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism, and someone who has the moral clarity and leadership to gain the confidence of all minority groups and Montrealers.”

December 2023, CIJA called for the mayor to replace Manai

Then, in December 2023, CIJA and Federation CJA called on then-Mayor Valerie Plante to replace Manai, citing her attendance at several rallies while remaining silent about antisemitism. Manai’s lawsuit cites a sentence in this CIJA publication – that she is “complicit by refusing to speak out against hate” – as “a serious accusation capable of significantly damaging her reputation.”

CIJA again expressed concern in February 2025 when Plante promoted Manaï from Commissioner for the Fight against Racism and Systemic Discrimination to director of the Office of Commissioners of the City of Montreal.

“Such a promotion is simply scandalous,” CIJA said.

“She has been noted for her silence and inaction in the face of the antisemitism that has been rotting the city for more than 15 months.”

Manai alleges CIJA communications reinforced Muslim stereotypes

The accusations by CIJA of Manai’s antisemitism are featured prominently in the lawsuit. According to the Gazette, Manaï alleges CIJA’s communications contributed to stereotypes associating Muslims with antisemitism and extremism, including by suggesting that she supported or tolerated extremist violence. The lawsuit argues this amounts to discrimination based on religion prohibited by Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

She also said the alleged campaign caused “harm to her reputation, dignity and integrity, humiliation, stress, anxiety and loss of enjoyment of life.”

Regarding the alleged Hitler montage, the lawsuit says the comparison “equates the plaintiff with a figure who committed genocide against Jews and a leading figure of antisemitism, which constitutes an extreme attack on her honor and dignity.”

Manai is still the director of the Office of Commissioners of the City of Montreal.

CIJA declined to comment when asked by the Post, citing that the investigation is ongoing.

This post was originally published on here. 

Cyprus is ramping up pressure on Israel to allow them to purchase Merkava tanks (Mk3 or Mk4), pan-Cypriot daily newspaper Phileleftheros reported on Monday. 

The Merkava is the primary tank used by the IDF’s Armored Corps. While development for the tank began in 1970, it only entered service in 1979 and was extensively used during the First Lebanon War.

The Merkava Mark 4 Barak is the version of the tank that is currently in use.

According to Phileleftheros, opinions within the Israeli government are divided on the matter, with some in support of providing Cyprus with Merkava tanks and some against such a move, wanting the tanks to remain available to the IDF.

Phileleftheros noted that the Merkava’s suitability for Cyprus’s National Guard stems from two main reasons. 

Israel-Cyprus talks reportedly stall because of Oct. 7

The first, being the similarity between Israel and Cyprus’s terrain; and the second being the proximity of the two countries, which would ease logistical support for the tanks. 

Talks between Cyprus and Israel for the purchase of second-hand Merkava tanks had stalled with the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War on October 7, 2023, reported Cypriot media, with Israeli reassurances that discussions would resume once the security situation had eased.

Several other contenders for Cyprus’s National Guard have been put forth, according to Cypriot media, including Greece’s Leopard 1A5 and France’s EBRC Jaguar.

The Leopard, however, has reportedly been rejected by Cyprus for not meeting the country’s national guard’s operational requirements.

Several contracts for smaller equipment, such as drones and other equipment that have shorter production times, have already progressed, according to Phileleftheros. 

It added that contracts for larger equipment, such as armoured vehicles, are slated to begin in 2028.

Israel, Greece, Cyprus sign trilateral work plan

Currently, Cyprus’s National Guard is using Russian-built T-80 tanks, but Russia’s deteriorating relations with Western counties and sanctions placed upon it have made it difficult to reliably secure spare parts and ammunition.

In December 2025, Israel, Greece, and Cyprus signed a trilateral work plan for military cooperation for 2026. 

Among other things, the plans include joint exercises and training, working groups in various fields, and strategic military dialogue on issues of joint interest.

The signing of the plans constitutes another step in deepening military cooperation among the countries and contributes to strengthening stability, security, and peace in the eastern Mediterranean region, the IDF told The Jerusalem Post at the time.

In 2024, Cypriot media had reported that the Mediterranean country had taken a delivery of Israel’s Barak MX anti-aircraft system. 

Cypriot officials at the time declined to comment on the specifics of the report.

“The only thing I can say is we will and are doing everything necessary to bolster the deterrence force of Cyprus,” Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides told reporters in 2024. “Not only because we are a country under occupation, but an EU member state in a region of particular geo-strategic importance.”

Yonah Jeremy Bob and Reuters contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Director General of the Health Ministry, Moshe Bar Siman Tov, denounced the discourse surrounding Rambam Medical Center’s staff as racist and inappropriate on Tuesday while visiting wounded soldiers at the hospital. 

“The medical teams in our healthcare system are committed to the most noble mission that human beings carry out for others, saving lives, alleviating suffering, and improving quality of life,” Bar Siman Tov said, praising the system for continuing to deal with the “difficult national missions placed upon it,” both during times of emergencies and peace. 

“The trust the system receives stems from our commitment to this mission and from the fact that all parts of Israeli society are represented in the system, both as caregivers and as patients.

“Our shared existence within the healthcare system is not a constraint, but an ideal. It is the secret of our strength, and it should serve as a model for Israeli society as a whole,” he added. 

In response to one wounded soldier’s family’s complaints over staff conduct, Bar Siman Tov said that the complaints were reviewed “professionally and objectively” by the hospital director before being rejected.  

“I give her and the hospital teams my full backing and trust them completely in the care they provide to every person,” he said. 

Bar Siman Tov also added that parents of the wounded soldiers being treated at the hospital told the Health Ministry directly that they knew the healthcare teams at Rambam were doing everything possible to provide the soldiers with the best treatment and rehabilitation. 

Standing Together movement visits Rambam Hospital in solidarity

Activists from the Standing Together movement visited the hospital on Tuesday to demonstrate solidarity with the employees. Both Jewish and Arab activists distributed flowers to the medical teams in support. 

“We stand with the medical teams who are now under a racist attack. The first to embrace this attack were members of the government of blood, whose only offering is more division and more racism,” Amin Amara, a member of Standing Together’s leadership, said. 

“People in hospitals work day and night to save lives- people who provide care with dedication and endless patience- and now they are being forced to endure racism simply because they are Arabs.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Some 30 settler families have reestablished the settlement of Ganim in the West Bank on Thursday, 21 years after Israel withdrew its citizens from the area under the 2005 disengagement plan overseen by former prime minister Ariel Sharon. 

The comes several months after Israel’s security cabinet decided to give legal status to 19 West Bank settlements in December 2025, a move originally proposed by Smotrich and Defense Minister Israel Katz.

“We are erasing the disgrace of expulsion and strengthening Judea and Samaria, the security belt of the State of Israel,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich lauded the move in an afternoon statement. “When we are in Ganim and Samaria, there is security in Afula, Hadera, Kfar Saba and Netanya.”

“Remember: the Eisenkot-Lieberman-Golan government wants to destroy all of this. We must not let this happen,” he said.

Katz and MK Yuli Edelstein attended the inauguration ceremony, breaking ground alongside Samaria Regional Council Yossi Dagan and several other members of Knesset.

המוקד: הטקס הלאומי של העלייה מחדש לקרקע של היישוב גנים, שנעקר בגירוש מצפון השומרון – התחיל. ראש מועצת שומרון יוסי דגן, שר הביטחון כ”ץ, שר התקשורת קרעי וח”כים רבים גזרו את הסרט – יחד עם המשפחות היישוב הנרגשות. יוסי דגן בירך את הברכה על יישוב חדש: “ברוך…מציב גבול אלמנה”, והכריז… pic.twitter.com/GRAnqZDYti

— חדשות המוקד (@hamoked_il) August 13, 2026

“After leading the historic law to cancel the disengagement in northern Samaria in the last term, we took the ground today together with the head of the council, Yossi Dagan, for the inauguration of the new settlement of Ganim,” Edelstein wrote in a Thursday post to X/Twitter.

“Twenty-one years ago, I warned of the enormous danger involved in expelling Jews from their homes. Today, everyone understands that this terrible folly has brought upon us an unforgettable disaster.”

“The pioneers of settlement in Judea and Samaria are the guarantee of Israel’s security,” said Edelstein. “As the chairman of the Land of Israel lobby in the Knesset for many years, I pledge to do everything to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

“Homesh, Sa-Nur, Ganim and Kadim are just the beginning.”

Moment of ‘historical correction’

Dagan called the settlement’s reestablishment as a “moment of historical correction,” according to Ynet. 

“Twenty-one years ago, families were expelled from here, demolished homes and tried to uproot the settlement from northern Samaria,” he said. “Today we are returning to the gardens and reestablishing it.”

“Not only have we returned to the four communities that were uprooted, we are doubling and tripling the settlement in northern Samaria.”

Bringing life back to Ganim

“This day is much more than moving to the settlement, it is a moment of correction, revival and returning home,” Moriah Masalti, a woman who has moved to Ganim as part of the settlement’s rebuilding efforts, told Ynet. “Twenty-one years after families were displaced from here, the people of Israel are back and rebuilding in the place where they were forced to leave.”

“We are excited to be the families who are honored to bring back life, homes, community and children here,” she said.

“The people of Israel are returning to their land, and we are honored to be part of this historic moment. We are bringing life back to Ganim.”

This post was originally published on here. 

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit on Thursday by US President Donald Trump’s administration that alleged Harvard University failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment.

In his ruling, US District Judge Richard Stearns in Boston said the Trump administration’s lawsuit, filed in March, had not plausibly shown an ongoing violation of federal civil rights law on Harvard’s campus.

Stearns said the government’s allegations focused largely on incidents amid protests over Israel’s war in Gaza during the 2023/24 school year, with only a handful of later incidents alleged in March 2025 that were “too isolated and episodic” to support a claim of ongoing civil rights violations.

Judge says lawsuit didn’t adequately allege failures

The judge said the lawsuit did not adequately allege failures by the university after the government told Harvard in June 2025 that it was not complying with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It bans discrimination based on race, color, and national origin in programs that receive federal funding.

The White House and Harvard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This post was originally published on here. 

A 22-year-old French Jewish tourist wearing a kippah was targeted in back-to-back antisemitic assaults in Rome last Friday and Saturday, sparking widespread outrage and swift condemnation from Italian political leaders and Jewish community figures.

According to the formal criminal complaint filed by the victim with the Carabinieri stationed at Roma Piazza Farnese, the attacks took place on two consecutive evenings in the historic center of the Italian capital.

In the first incident, which occurred at around 8:00 p.m. in Piazza Cairoli, the tourist was approached and sprayed directly in the face with pepper spray.

The following evening, at around 8:15 p.m. near Largo di Torre Argentina, approximately 350 meters from the site of the first attack, the victim was cornered and kicked by a group of four individuals.

Assailants shouted the slogan ‘Free Palestine’ during both attacks

The tourist identified one participant in the second assault as the same perpetrator who had pepper-sprayed him the previous night. The assailants shouted the slogan “Free Palestine” during both attacks, according to the victim’s statement to law enforcement.

Local law enforcement launched an investigation following the formal complaint. Authorities have identified a 31-year-old homeless Algerian man with a criminal record and referred him to the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office, according to police and press statements released by the Carabinieri.

He is facing preliminary charges of battery aggravated by propaganda and incitement to crimes motivated by racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination. Investigators said efforts remain underway to identify and track down the remaining individuals involved in the group assault.

Jewish community leaders, Italian officials, and diplomats respond to the antisemitic incident

The two assaults drew concern from Jewish community leaders. “Unfortunately, man-hunting, the hunting of the Jew, has arrived on the streets of Rome as well. As Italians, we hope we will not have to witness a reaction of growing indifference on the part of public opinion,” Victor Fadlun, president of the Jewish community of Rome, said in a statement provided to local reporting outlets.

Italian officials and diplomats also reacted to news of the incident. Italians “must never grow accustomed to such incidents,” and antisemitism “must always be recognized, condemned, and confronted firmly,” Italian Senate President Ignazio La Russa said in a statement condemning the attack.

“I firmly condemn the antisemitic aggression suffered by a young French tourist of the Jewish faith, who was targeted in the center of Rome because he was wearing a kippah. To him and to the entire Jewish community, I express my full solidarity,” Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wrote on social media.

“We cannot accept that antisemitism and hatred against Jews find a place in our cities and in our society. We must react together, without ever underestimating or tolerating these incidents,” Tajani further emphasized. He concluded by assuring that “Italy is and will always remain on the side of religious freedom, respect, and living together.”

“This is yet another demonstration of how anti-Zionism and antisemitism are one and the same. It is necessary to counter every form of antisemitism and intolerance with the utmost firmness. When a person of the Jewish faith can no longer walk the streets of a city without being assaulted, it is not just the safety of a minority at stake: it is everyone’s freedom at stake,” Israeli Ambassador to Italy Jonathan Peled posted on X/Twitter.

This post was originally published on here. 

In a world of unintended consequences, few have done more to advance the Palestinian cause than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

His strident opposition to Palestinian statehood was well known. He resented earlier presidents pushing the issue, but he was confident US President Donald Trump didn’t share that goal. Instead, the billionaire president is more interested in courting the wealthy Gulf oil sheiks, who saw Israel as a source of trade and technology and especially protection from their shared enemy, Iran.

Many Arab rulers had grown frustrated by the Palestinian “veto,” the requirement that they avoid ties with Israel until the Palestinians’ maximalist demands have been met. Some leaders, however, had interests of their own, and Trump gave them the opening they needed with the Abraham Accords and its promises of new advanced weapons and other benefits. Netanyahu just had to agree not to annex the West Bank, despite promises to his coalition partners.

The prime minister had the Palestinians where he wanted them: off the American agenda.

Saudi Arabia, the prize catch, was on the cusp of signing up when the October 7 Hamas massacres in Israel halted it.

Global sympathy for Israel as the victim quickly began shrinking as the world watched the round-the-clock media coverage of Israel’s devastating response. And sympathy for the Palestinians (not Hamas) swelled.

The Saudis insisted they would not normalize relations until Israel and the Palestinians had made credible progress on negotiations toward statehood, something Netanyahu rejected.

Israel’s desire to destroy Hamas and its allies could be cheered by the Gulf state leaders, but not the pictures of mass destruction of homes, mosques, and hospitals, and reports of tens of thousands of women, children, and the elderly killed and wounded.

Former prime minister Golda Meir famously spoke of being able in time to “forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.”

There was no such empathy from Netanyahu or his government. Instead, the world heard threats to cut off water, food, and medicine for everyone in Gaza. Some top officials in Netanyahu’s extremist government celebrated the wholesale death and destruction, and called for pushing all the Arabs out of Gaza and reoccupying the Strip.

Netanyahu dismissed casualty numbers as Hamas propaganda, but they have since been independently accepted: more than 73,000 dead and over 173,000 wounded.

The focus on Gaza was exploited by ultra-nationalist factions in the government to distract from their campaign to drive the remaining Palestinians out of the West Bank by any means, including terrorism.

Netanyahu’s failure – or refusal – to stop anti-Palestinian violence by Jewish settler terrorists catered to the most extreme elements of his coalition. But it added to the international outrage and deepened the chasm between Israel and much of the American Jewish community. The prime minister disingenuously dismissed it as the work of some 150 “juvenile delinquents.”

Former IDF deputy chief of staff Matan Vilnai sent an open letter to Trump, warning that “members of our current government orchestrate much of this chaos.” He said if unchecked, it could spark a new Intifada that would threaten regional security and American interests. His warning went unheeded by an administration with few humanitarian concerns.

Running against Israel

The humanitarian crisis that engulfed Gaza and Israeli government indifference ignited international outrage. Demonstrations spread across the United States, particularly on campuses. Longtime supporters of the Palestinians seized the opportunity to draw attention to their cause, and it began percolating up the political tree from the grassroots.

Soon there were calls, and then votes, to restrict or even halt military assistance to Israel, eventually supported by a majority of Senate Democrats. They failed, so far, but the message was clear. The Democratic Party, which for most of the past century had been the home of 70-plus percent of Jewish voters, was falling out of love with Bibi’s Israel.

Progressives, and even some moderates, have been running away from Israel this election year, returning or refusing campaign contributions from pro-Israel (read: pro-Netanyahu) groups. Israel and AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby and its well-heeled PACs, became pariahs for many.

A growing number of candidates, including Jews, are running campaigns harshly critical of Israel. Some are winning. Most notably so far are a pair of high-profile, charismatic Muslims: New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan.

Political pros, journalists, and the pundit class attribute much of their successes, and those of like-minded candidates, to their anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian messages, and expect it to work for others this fall.

Polling shows a historic shift in support for Israel. The Palestinian cause, once barely noticeable, has become more popular than the Jewish state for many. Gallup reported a “stark decline in support for Israel” in a recent survey showing Palestinians with a 41%-36% favorability advantage. Pew Research Center found 69% of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Netanyahu.

The change is greatest among Democrats, progressives, and under-30 voters. It is also changing among the MAGA Right and the GOP’s America Firsters, who blame Israel for pushing Trump into war with Iran.

“We said no more foreign wars, and we meant it, and supported Donald Trump because he made that promise,” said former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a leading anti-Israel voice. “But he’s betrayed us all.”

The election season officially launches on Labor Day, and it will be an AI campaign on the Right and Left. Not “Artificial Intelligence” but “Affordability and Iran.”

The next Congress is likely to press for conditioning military aid to Israel, which gets over $3.8 billion annually. Many also see Netanyahu as responsible for convincing Trump to wage an unpopular war-of-choice against Iran. A Pew survey shows that by a 59-38 margin, most Americans say the war is unnecessary.

Trump may dismiss concerns over affordability as a “hoax,” but the candidates on this fall’s ballots can’t afford to. This war has driven up the cost of gas and groceries, and soon taxes, when Trump asks Congress for nearly half a trillion dollars in new spending to restock the Pentagon’s arsenals.

Meanwhile, Mamdani is planning mass anti-Netanyahu demonstrations when the prime minister comes to New York next month for the UN General Assembly. He even publicly toyed with the idea of arresting him on a World Court charge of war crimes. He knows he doesn’t have the authority, but he does have the stage and world attention to promote the Palestinian cause.

He will let everyone know that Netanyahu is blocking Trump’s Gaza peace and reconstruction efforts. Headlines across American media this week read: “Israel rejects Trump’s 15-point plan for Gaza.”

Mamdani and El-Sayed, who question Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, thousands of students and demonstrators across the country, and many others drawn to the Palestinian cause now have large national audiences and the wind at their backs for their cause. They may feel proud of their new popularity, but it is doubtful they’d be where they are without the contributions of Bibi Netanyahu.

The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

This post was originally published on here. 

The United States views stability in the West Bank as directly tied to Israel’s security, a State Department official told The Jerusalem Post, as the Trump administration turns increased attention to recent violence in the territory.

The comments come after US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee used unusually strong language to condemn Israelis involved in violence against a Palestinian family in Qusra, calling them “Israeli terrorists” and describing the incident as a “horrific act of terror.”

“We are in regular dialogue with partners about improving stability and security in the West Bank,” the State Department official said. “We condemn criminal violence by any party in the West Bank.”

“A stable West Bank keeps Israel secure and is in line with this administration’s goal to achieve peace in the region,” the spokesperson added.

The State Department’s comments broaden the administration’s message beyond the specific incident in Qusra that prompted Huckabee’s unusually forceful remarks, framing stability in the West Bank as part of both Israel’s security interests and Washington’s broader regional agenda.

Huckabee said Thursday that the US Embassy had intervened with Israeli authorities over the harassment of a Palestinian family in the West Bank village of Kusra, rejecting claims that US officials had failed to act and describing those responsible as “Israeli terrorists.”

“This is another lie,” Huckabee wrote on X/Twitter, responding to a claim concerning the US response to the incident. “The embassy has been VERY involved, and the IDF and Israel Police have gone at our request to remove the Israeli terrorists doing this.”

This is another lie. @usembassyjlm has been VERY involved & the IDF & Israel Police have gone at our request to remove the Israeli terrorists doing this. The actions of those doing this to this family’s home is criminal. The WH hasn’t “intervened” because we have kept DC… https://t.co/qrfnCYcOtB

— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) August 13, 2026

“The actions of those doing this to this family’s home are criminal,” Huckabee continued. “The WH hasn’t ‘intervened’ because we have kept DC apprised of the situation already.”

West Bank settler violence escalates

Huckabee’s comments came after a senior White House official told KAN News that the US believes Israel is not doing enough to prevent West Bank settler violence.

According to the KAN report, the official plans to broach the issue with the Prime Minister’s Office and have it explain why the security establishment has not been able to get the situation under control.

Ongoing tensions between Jewish settler extremists and West Bank Palestinians escalated after a group of extremists imposed a makeshift siege on Palestinian homes in the village of Kusra on Wednesday. 

When IDF troops and Border Police arrived in the area of the village and evacuated a settler outpost in an attempt to remove the settler extremists, clashes broke out, and as of Wednesday evening, the settlers still have not been removed from the village.

This post was originally published on here. 

Today, six years ago, on August 13, 2020, the Middle East changed. US President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohamed bin Zayed, announced an agreement for full normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

For the first time in more than a quarter-century, another Arab country chose to establish full relations with the State of Israel. A month later, the Abraham Accords were signed at the White House.

At the time, most of the attention was focused on the political breakthrough – and rightly so. The agreement broke a concept that had dominated Middle Eastern diplomacy for decades: the claim that Israel could not reach true peace with the Arab world before resolving the Palestinian conflict.

But six years later, after the Middle East has gone through one of the most turbulent periods in its history, a deeper lesson can be identified. The UAE’s lesson is that true peace does not begin at a signing ceremony. It begins in the classroom.

Since August 2020, relations between Israel and the Emirates have faced intense tests that none of the signatories to the agreement could have predicted. The October 7 massacre, the war in Gaza, and the regional turmoil created immense pressure on Israel’s relations with the Arab world. 

The UAE sharply criticized Israeli policy on various issues. There were disagreements, tensions, and periods in which the warmth that characterized the beginning of the relations was replaced by caution.

But relations were not severed.

The embassies remained open, channels of dialogue were maintained, and economic and institutional ties continued to exist. It is precisely the disagreements that illustrate the importance of the achievement.

Peace is not measured when everything is quiet. It is measured at the moment when the sides disagree, the public is agitated, and the political cost of maintaining relations rises.

Here lies the first lesson of August 13: an agreement that holds up only during periods of quiet is a temporary arrangement. True peace is tested by its ability to survive a crisis.

Peace cannot be built on decades of education toward hatred.

For decades, the international community in the Middle East focused almost entirely on leaders and agreements. Presidents met. Diplomats drafted. Governments signed. International money flowed. Institutions were established.

But the most important question was asked too rarely: What does the Muslim child learn in the classroom the morning after the agreement is signed?

You can bring a leader to the negotiation table through interests and pressure. You can establish an embassy by a government decision. You can even create security and economic coordination mechanisms.

But if the education system continues to teach the next generation that the Zionist entity is an eternal enemy, that its history is forged, that its religion is inferior, and that its very existence is illegitimate, an agreement has been signed between governments, but peace has not been built between peoples.

The UAE offers a different model.

On my visits to the UAE, I found an extensive emphasis on tolerance, coexistence, and acceptance of other cultures and religions – including a magnificent synagogue in the Abrahamic Family House complex in Abu Dhabi.

Studies by the IMPACT-se research institute that examined the Emirati education system also found positive changes regarding Judaism and Israel, and the Abraham Accords themselves were integrated into the learning materials.

This does not mean that all disagreements have disappeared, but it teaches that a country seeking to create long-term peace cannot settle for changing its foreign policy. It must gradually create a cultural infrastructure that allows the next generation to accept peace itself as legitimate. This is a strategic lesson, not just an educational one.

The Palestinian comparison that cannot be ignored

And here lies the difference that the State of Israel and the West must learn from.

Since the Oslo Accords, vast sums have been invested in building Palestinian institutions. Governance and security mechanisms were established, agreements were signed, and international aid was transferred on a massive scale. The assumption was that building institutions, improving the economy, and political progress would gradually create an incentive for peace.

But for years, research and reviews pointed to inciting content in the Palestinian education system, including the glorification of “martyrs,” content hostile toward Israel, and a consistent absence of education that recognizes the State of Israel and the Jewish people as legitimate neighbors with a historical connection to the land.

The West sometimes sought to build peace from the top down, while beneath it, mechanisms continued to exist that passed the conflict on to the next generation.

You cannot expect a child who is educated for years to view Israel as an illegitimate entity to become a natural partner for reconciliation at age eighteen just because leaders signed a document.

The Emirates teaches the other side of that same equation.

When leadership changes the public discourse, encourages religious tolerance, recognizes Judaism, and presents cooperation with Israel as part of a possible future, it creates an additional protective layer for relations even when severe political disagreements arise.

Peace through strength, interests, and awareness

The Abraham Accords also proved another principle: Peace does not have to be born out of weakness or out of giving up national interests. On the contrary.

The agreements were born out of a recognition of shared interests. Israel and the Emirates identified shared regional threats and understood the benefits inherent in cooperation in the fields of security, technology, trade, energy, innovation, and tourism.

Instead of the old concept according to which the parties must first resolve all disagreements and only then start cooperating, the Abraham Accords offered the opposite logic: cooperation itself can become an engine of stability.

But the past six years add a third layer to the equation.

Strength creates deterrence.

Interests create profitability.

Education creates resilience.

All three components are necessary.

Peace that is not backed by strength is liable to invite aggression. Peace that lacks shared interests is liable to become an empty document. And peace that is not supported by an educational and cultural infrastructure is liable to collapse when the first crisis arrives.

The lesson for the day after

This lesson has special meaning right now.

In any future discussion on regional arrangements, on expanding the Abraham Accords, on relations with the Palestinians, and on the future of Gaza, the State of Israel and its partners must not repeat the mistake of measuring peace through signatures alone.

Textbooks must also be measured.

When the international community invests billions in reconstruction, it must ask not only how many schools were built, but also what is taught inside them.

When new institutions are established, one must examine not only who runs them, but what worldview they convey to the next generation.

Does Israel appear on the map?

Is the Jewish people presented as a people with a history and a right to self-determination?

Is terrorism presented as heroism or as a disaster?

These are not marginal questions. These are questions of national security.

You can defeat an army on the battlefield. You can dismantle a terrorist organization. You can eliminate commanders and destroy infrastructure. All of these are necessary for the defense of the state. But long-term victory also requires preventing the ideology that birthed the war from passing intact to the next generation.

This is the greatest lesson of August 13, 2020.

The achievement of the Abraham Accords is not only that Israelis fly to Dubai, that Israeli and Emirati companies do business, and that an Israeli flag flies over an embassy in an Arab country.

The more important achievement is proving the possibility of creating a different model in the Middle East.

A model in which countries do not have to agree on everything to live in peace. A model in which shared interests replace the politics of boycott. A model in which tolerance is not just a diplomatic slogan, but a value that a country seeks to pass on to the next generation as well.

Leaders can sign a peace agreement in one day.

Strength and interests can preserve it in times of crisis.

But for peace to last for generations, it must be taught in the classroom.

This is the lesson of the United Arab Emirates, and it should also be the lesson for any future arrangement in the Middle East.

The writer is the deputy head of the Security Policy Institute of the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF/Habithonistim), and former policy adviser to strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer.

This post was originally published on here. 

Chaos continued for a third day on Thursday in the West Bank Palestinian town of Kusra, where the IDF has “tried,” but still failed, to permanently evict Jewish extremists, placing multiple local families under siege.

There were multiple storylines of confusion in recent days and continuing Thursday, both regarding whether the IDF had cleared out the Jewish extremists and whether the military had evacuated some of the Palestinians for their “own protection.”

Piecing together IDF reports that contradicted themselves and video footage, US and Palestinian reports, it appears that even on Thursday afternoon, multiple “attempts” to clear the Jewish extremists have fallen short.

The Jerusalem Post placed the words “tried” and “attempts” in quotations because it is now apparent that though the IDF plainly has sufficient power and forces to have removed the Jewish extremists in hours or less, there are some form of limits on the force they are using and some of the IDF forces are not fully cooperating in their mission.

Ongoing violence in Kusra leaves residents feeling ‘helpless’

After initial IDF statements suggested the Jewish extremists would be fully cleared already Wednesday morning, IDF sources implied later Wednesday that the structures built by the extremists had been cleared, but not all of the extremists themselves.

Further, after initial IDF statements suggested that military forces were properly carrying out their roles, later statements said that IDF reservist units would be court-martialed for improper sympathy toward the Jewish extremists and failure to carry out their roles.

Additional later statements on Thursday said that the military was taking the extremely unusual move of sending battalion 51 of the Golani Brigade to take over the operation.

This was a stunning rebuke of the IDF reservists who had been assigned to the mission, given that the Golani Brigade, with its higher level of training and lethality, is generally thought of as being used exclusively to fight Hezbollah and Hamas.

In addition, there were contradictory reports on Thursday about whether the IDF was partially evacuating some of the Palestinian families under siege in order to operate from their homes or to make it easier to protect them.

Later, the IDF said that it would not, or had stopped, any process of evacuating those Palestinians, but was using some of their homes as a headquarters to better understand and combat the nearby Jewish extremist threat.

Moreover, the IDF again suggested it had removed Jewish extremists on Thursday, but multiple sources indicate that the extremists merely undertook a tactical withdrawal.

In a bizarre sequence that no Israeli official has explained, zero civilian Jewish extremists have been arrested for physically confronting and blocking the IDF from performing its mission of removing them from trespassing on clearly identified Palestinian land.

Throughout the controversy, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has issued no statements, even as US Ambassador Mike Huckabee publicly condemned Israel for acting weakly to prevent what he called “Jewish terror” against the Palestinians and even as coverage worldwide has torn into Israel.

Huckabee even said that had the US not intervened, it was unclear if the IDF’s reaction to the incident would have been even weaker.

IDF sources suggested to the Post that military forces may remain in the area for an extended period, but without identifying how long.

Earlier on Thursday, the mayor of Kusra had told Qatari media outlet Al Jazeera that the IDF has closed the village off, imposed a curfew, and deployed numerous soldiers to try to dismantle the settler outpost, while asking local residents to evacuate ahead of a planned operation in the town.

In a clarification issued later that day, the Israeli military stressed that its forces “will not operate in the home of the Palestinian family located near the point where the shed was erected, evacuated, and dismantled.”

Settlers involved in Kusra violence ‘really need to be stopped,’ Ben-Gvir says

The ongoing violence in the Palestinian village of Kusra has left residents feeling helpless, with resident Marmar Odeh stating it was “the first time in [he felt] there was no law in the State of Israel,” in an interview with KAN Reshet Bet on Thursday.

“After the army left, masked men came to my house, searched me, and checked my ID. There were also journalists at my house, including Israelis, who saw everything and took pictures.”

Odeh recounted an incident in which a little girl in his family accidentally broke her arm and was not able to receive timely medical care due to the chaos.

“They tried to evacuate her in an ambulance, but the army turned it back, and the settlers wouldn’t let it leave either,” Odeh told KAN. “The next day they obtained permission from the army again, and managed to get the ambulance in to take the girl and her mother to the hospital.”

The settler extremists also previously had set up in a tent in the village and severed electric cables and water tubes, creating difficult conditions for Odeh and Kusra’s residents.

“They can’t even open the window of the house. They have no electricity, and they haven’t had water for more than two weeks. They had some water in the cistern; every house has a cistern, but it’s not the best water to drink from,” he added.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir told Reshet Bet that while he admires the settlers building outposts, “there are some among them who really need to be stopped.”

Yisrael Gantz, the head of the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council and chairman of the Yesha Council, described the Kusra incident as “improper and unacceptable.”

“There is no place for making a private decision to establish a hilltop outpost in the yard of a house, even when it is an illegal house or an attempt to take control of the area,” Gantz continued. “There is no justification whatsoever for violence against uninvolved people or against security forces.”

Goldie Katz and Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Reporters Without Borders, or Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), has been caught removing at least two Gazan terrorists from its database and list of Palestinian media workers slain in the October 7 War, after they had previously been identified as journalists by the Paris-based media rights non-profit.

This was first revealed by HonestReporting on Wednesday, and the information was verified by The Jerusalem Post.

On July 20, HonestReporting recorded 68 names of slain Gazan journalists on the RSF media abuses Barometer. By August 4, the Barometer listed 67 names. The missing name that had previously been recorded was Hamas terrorist Mohammad Jarghoun, who on July 1 had been announced by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades as part of its Rafah Brigade’s Martyr Muhammad Abu Harb Battalion.

By June 11, RSF also removed Jarghoun’s name from a running article featuring brief profiles of journalists “killed in connection with their work,” during the October 7 War.

Prior to the removal, his description read: “This 23-year-old reporter working for the Smart Media production company was killed by Israeli fire while covering fighting near the Rafah crossing point in the south of the Gaza Strip on 7 October [2023],” read an earlier edit of the ongoing article.

Names removed of terror operatives posing as press

Since June 10, RSF also removed the name of Mohamed Nasr Abu Huwaidi, who, according to RSF, “was clearly identifiable by his press vest when he was killed by an Israeli bombardment on 23 December in the Chajaya district, in eastern Gaza City, where he had gone to film the aftermath of an Israeli strike.”

According to Al-Quds Brigades, Huwaidi was a commander in its Central Military Media Unit. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found that he had participated in combat and has already removed him from its own database of journalists killed in the October 7 War.

HonestReporting also noted that, in addition to the removal of Jarghoun and Huwaidi from the article, an amendment about RSF’s methodology appeared at the bottom after June 10, noting that the organization “updates this registry on an ongoing basis as new information becomes available concerning journalists killed since October 7, 2023.”

“The organization applies a rigorous methodology of data collection and fact-checking despite severe operational constraints, including the continued lack of independent access to the Gaza Strip and parts of southern Lebanon,” RSF continued.

HonestReporting says over 25% of journalists still listed have terror ties

RSF says on its Barometer page that journalists are listed only if RSF has established that their death or imprisonment was “linked to their journalistic activity” and not if they were killed or imprisoned for reasons unrelated to their work.

According to a preliminary audit by HonestReporting, of the 67 remaining journalists in RSF’s database, at least 26.86% have terrorist ties. Three have had martyr notices issued by terrorist organizations, three have been linked to participation in hostilities through obituaries and other open-source information, four were employed by terrorist-affiliated outlets, and eight were alleged by the IDF to be terrorists. A nineteenth was affiliated with a news outlet of disputed terrorist affiliation.

HonestReporting noted that RSF holds significant sway over international reporting. From May 2025 until August 4, RSF was cited on the subject of the IDF ‘targeting’ journalists in 40 articles published by 13 different major Western English-language news outlets.

Given the importance that it has played as a source of information, HonestReporting called on RSF to publicly explain why it has altered its records and withdrawn ICC complaints featuring terrorists.

The Jerusalem Post reached out to RSF for comment.

This post was originally published on here. 

Four days before then-Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro was captured by US forces on January 3, the United States Treasury announced sanctions against 10 Iranian and Venezuelan individuals and entities involved in the two countries’ weapons trade.

Among them was Venezuela’s state-owned Empresa Aeronáutica Nacional SA, or EANSA. According to the US Treasury Department, the company maintained and oversaw the assembly in Venezuela of Mohajer-series unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) produced by Iran’s Qods Aviation Industries and had directly negotiated the purchase of millions of dollars’ worth of Mohajer-6 combat drones.

The relationship between the two companies dates back to 2006. The Iranian Mohajer-2 was produced in Venezuela as the Arpia and later developed into the armed ANSU-100, which the Treasury said was capable of launching Iranian-designed Qaem guided air-to-ground bombs. EANSA’s chairman had coordinated with members of both the Iranian and Venezuelan armed forces on UAV production inside Venezuela.

“The Treasury is holding Iran and Venezuela accountable for their aggressive and reckless proliferation of deadly weapons around the world,” Treasury Under Secretary John Hurley said when announcing the sanctions.

Now, a matter of months later, Venezuela’s relationship with Iran is back in the spotlight, but for very different reasons – reasons that may have Tehran worried. It was announced this week that Venezuela’s post-Maduro government is establishing an official consular channel with Israel for the first time in 17 years. After two wars with Israel in the past 14 months, Iran may worry its influence in Venezuela will now be tested.

Diplomatic ties strengthened by Israeli humanitarian aid following devastating earthquakes

Israel and Venezuela have not restored full diplomatic relations nor announced the reopening of embassies, but after talks between Venezuelan Foreign Minister Félix Plasencia and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, they agreed to establish a mechanism to provide consular services and to continue technical cooperation that began after Israel sent personnel to assist Venezuela following June’s devastating earthquakes.

“The two countries agreed to allow the continuation of bilateral technical cooperation arising from the emergency and recovery efforts following the double earthquake,” Plasencia said in announcing the agreement, adding that they would establish a mechanism for consular services.

“Both governments recognize the importance of the relationship between the State of Israel and the Jewish community in Venezuela, which constitutes an important historic bridge of friendship between the two countries,” Venezuela’s government said in a statement, which was also issued by Israel’s foreign ministry.

It is the identity of Venezuela’s new partner, rather than any specifics within the agreement, that makes it relevant to Iran, and a sign of how far things have come since the turn of the century. Many countries around the world maintain relations with both the Islamic Republic and Israel, but few are so close to Iran and have seen such a diplomatic about-face with regard to the Jewish State.

Former president Hugo Chávez condemned Israel during the 2006 Lebanon war in extreme terms, accusing Israel of “going mad and inflicting on the people of Palestine and Lebanon the same thing they have criticized, and with reason: the Holocaust. But this is a new Holocaust.”
In August of that year, Chávez had called for Israeli leaders to face a trial for genocide, stating the Jewish state had “done something similar or, perhaps worse, who knows, than what the Nazis did.”

In 2008, during a diplomatic disagreement with neighboring Colombia over the latter’s intrusion into Ecuador, Chávez said: “the Colombian government has become the Israel of Latin America.” Just one year later, during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, Venezuela expelled Israel’s ambassador and broke diplomatic relations, with Chávez declaring during a TV broadcast, “Damn you, State of Israel.”

In 2010, Chávez accused Israel and the Mossad of plotting against him and denounced Israel as a “terrorist and murderous state.”

In the early 2000’s Chávez pursued deeper ties with Iran and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

While relations with Israel reached new lows under Chávez, Caracas also saw a deepening relationship with Iran. Chávez and former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, both self-styled anti-American revolutionaries, struck up a close rapport after Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, and the two leaders visited each other’s countries three times apiece between 2005 and 2007. On a July 2006 trip to Tehran, Chávez met with former supreme leader Ali Khamenei and was awarded the Higher Medal of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the country’s highest state honor — a gesture that followed Chávez’s public backing of Iran’s nuclear program at the UN earlier that year. During the same visit, he accused then-President George W. Bush of having a “relationship with the devil.”

By the end of Chávez’s presidency in 2013, Iran and Venezuela had signed hundreds of agreements covering energy, banking, housing, agriculture, cement and automobile production. The Center for Strategic and International Studies later estimated Iranian investments and loans in Venezuela at between $15 billion and $20 billion by 2012, although many projects either stalled or produced substantially less than their governments had promised.

However, under Maduro, the relationship took on a different meaning. US sanctions progressively restricted both countries’ access to conventional financial, energy and industrial markets, giving each something the other increasingly needed.

The extent of that dependence was evident by 2020, when the deterioration of Venezuela’s refining industry led to acute gasoline shortages. Iran supplied fuel, refinery components and technical assistance to the isolated South American nation. The two governments subsequently developed oil swaps under which Iran supplied condensate and crude to Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), Venezuela’s state-owned national oil and gas company.

Venezuela imported around 73,000 barrels per day of Iranian crude and condensate in 2022 and approximately 40,000 barrels per day in 2023, according to company records and shipping data cited by Reuters.

Iran was also working inside Venezuela’s refining infrastructure. Tehran agreed to a roughly €110 million overhaul of the 146,000-barrel-per-day El Palito refinery, while plans were developed for Iranian state refiner NIORDC to work on the much larger Paraguaná refining complex.

The relationship was further strengthened in June 2022, when Maduro and then-Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi signed a 20-year cooperation plan covering oil, petrochemicals, defense, agriculture, tourism and culture, including Iranian repairs to Venezuelan refineries and the export of Iranian technical and engineering services.

“Venezuela has shown exemplary resistance against sanctions and threats from enemies and Imperialists,” Raisi said at the time. “The 20-year cooperation document is testimony to the will of the two countries to develop ties.”

Then-supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was explicit about what Iran believed it had achieved in Latin America.

“The successful experience of the two countries showed that resistance is the only way to deal with these pressures,” he said during Maduro’s visit. “The two countries have such close ties with no other country, and Iran has shown that it takes risks in times of danger and holds its friends’ hands.”

“You came to our aid when the situation in Venezuela was very difficult, and no country was helping us,” Maduro told Iranians in response to Khamenei’s comments.

Given such close relations and the departure of both Maduro and Khamenei from the geopolitical scene, the changes taking place in 2026 cannot be overstated.

Venezuela gave Iran a state partner in the Western Hemisphere to pursue anti-American policy

The Iranian-Venezuelan alliance also gave Iran an established state partner in the Western Hemisphere willing to cooperate with the Islamic Republic’s defense industry and support its challenge to American policy.

There were the occasional signs that this arrangement was becoming less attractive to Caracas before Maduro’s removal.

In March 2024, Reuters reported that PDVSA had fallen behind on its side of oil-swap agreements, prompting Iran to halt cargoes in May 2023. Projects had stalled, and the two governments had failed to come close to their ambitions for $25 billion in trade and investment.
Less than $10 billion in business remained active, according to the Reuters report. More significantly, when Washington temporarily relaxed sanctions and Venezuela gained greater access to international markets, PDVSA began favoring customers that could pay cash rather than sending cargoes to Iran under the swaps.

Iran’s greatest economic value to Venezuela came when Venezuela had few alternatives. If access to US and other Western markets, investment, technology, and customers is restored, Iranian cooperation has to compete with options that sanctions had previously removed.
Maduro’s capture helped to speed up that change.

The US made clear that reducing Iranian influence was among its objectives, and just days after Maduro was removed, American officials were pressing acting President Delcy Rodríguez to distance Venezuela from Iran, Russia and China. Initial US intelligence assessments reportedly questioned whether Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president, would comply, but the developments that followed have moved consistently in that direction.

Caracas began an exploratory process with Washington within days of Maduro’s removal. In March, Venezuela and the United States formally agreed to restore diplomatic and consular relations.

Public dispute with Iran, Israeli earthquake aid drew Venezuela and Israel closer

Then, in July, came a public dispute with Tehran.

On July 28, Venezuela summoned the Iranian ambassador and presented him with a formal diplomatic protest over what its Foreign Ministry called “contemptuous and inappropriate” remarks concerning Venezuelan institutions and authorities. Reports linked the dispute to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s assertion, while discussing negotiations with Washington, that Iran was “not Venezuela.”

Venezuela went further than simply complaining about the remark. The Foreign Ministry demanded “the cessation of any allusion or comparison that undermines the dignity, sovereignty, institutional integrity or good name” of Venezuela.

When set against Khamenei’s description four years earlier of two countries with ties so close that neither possessed an equivalent relationship elsewhere, it is a mighty fall from grace.

Less than two weeks after Venezuela protested against Iran, the establishment of official consular cooperation with Israel was announced.
 
The move also came just one month after Israel and Israeli aid organizations rushed to Venezuela to help deal with the aftermath of an earthquake which left over 6,300 dead according to latest estimates, and over 70,000 injured. The IDF also traveled to Venezuela to help with the aid efforts.

Rodríguez thanked Israel last month for sending “a highly specialized and professional group” after the twin earthquakes that recently shook the country. The team, she said, was brought in through the efforts of Venezuela’s Jewish community, allowing the Venezuelans “to connect with the Israeli government,” and was helping determine which damaged buildings might still hold survivors and whether they still contain bodies needing to be recovered.

This does not automatically mean that Caracas has decided to end its relationship with Tehran. Venezuela has yet to announce any withdrawal from the 20-year cooperation agreement or termination of Iranian military cooperation. The infrastructure developed during two decades of relations cannot be dismantled through a consular agreement.

The more useful question is what Venezuela still requires from Iran.

In 2022, Maduro could tell Tehran that Iran had helped when “no country was helping us.” In 2026, that is no longer applicable.

Venezuela again has access to diplomatic and economic arenas with the West that were previously unavailable, and its government has demonstrated that it is prepared to publicly rebuke the Iranians. With renewed ties with Israel, it offers Venezuela another friendly option when it appeared no one else would help them. And for the Iranians, that must be a worrying prospect.  

This post was originally published on here. 

Aviv Levy, a disabled IDF veteran, was asked to leave a McDonald’s at Gan Shmuel Junction in northern Israel on Monday because of his service dog, he told Israel’s Channel 12 News on Thursday.

In the interview, Levy explained that he does not often go out, especially to crowded places, because of his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Explaining why he relies on his service dog in such environments, Levy said: “I need the dog; he helps me in crowded places where there are children screaming and [lots of] noise. I absolutely would not have come to…McDonald’s with my family without the dog.”

He said that he and his family had already placed their order and sat down with the dog when he was asked to leave.

“The dog sat, didn’t bark, didn’t bother [anyone], nothing,” Levy told Channel 12. “People even came and asked if they could pet him.”

Soon afterward, an employee approached Levy and insisted that he could not have the dog inside the McDonald’s, telling him that the manager required him to leave.

This was despite the fact that Levy explained the situation and presented the employee with the relevant documents proving the dog’s status as a service animal.

Incident at McDonald’s leaves disabled IDF vet with heightened stress, anxiety

When it became clear that the situation would not be resolved quickly or easily, Levy and his family left the restaurant. The incident left him in a state of heightened stress that lasted for several days, according to Channel 12.

The incident continued to affect Levy after he left the restaurant. “I didn’t sleep all night,” he said. “It’s very frustrating. It’s not about money. I take one step forward and five steps back.”

PTSD service dogs were granted the same legal status as guide dogs in 2022, along with medical alert dogs and dogs that assist people with physical and developmental disabilities.

The law states that people with such service dogs, including those training and fostering them, are entitled to equal access to public spaces, workplaces, and services. This includes businesses, restaurants, and public institutions.

This post was originally published on here. 

Senior settler leaders on Thursday publicly denounced the violence surrounding the Palestinian village of Kusra, with the chairman of the Yesha Council declaring that the events were “not our way” and the head of the Beit El Council warning they were causing “irreversible damage” to Israel and the settlement movement.

Yisrael Ganz, chairman of the Yesha Council and head of the Binyamin Regional Council, said there was no justification for violence against uninvolved Palestinians or Israeli security forces.

“The events in Kusra are serious and are not our way,” Ganz said.

“There is no place for privately deciding to establish a hilltop outpost in the yard of a house, even when it is an illegal house or there is an attempt to take control of the area,” he said. “There is absolutely no justification for violence against uninvolved people or against the security forces.”

Ganz’s condemnation was joined by Beit El Council head Shai Alon, who gave an unusually blunt assessment of the events in an interview with Ynet on Thursday.

Alon said the violence was causing “irreversible damage” to Israel and to the settlement movement and described those responsible for attacks on innocent Palestinians as criminals.

“These are criminal offenders who take out their rage on an innocent population,” Alon said, adding that the phenomenon had to be eradicated.

Alon said he had warned for years about what he described as a group of “lost youth” in the West Bank and accused the state of failing to deal adequately with the problem before it developed into violence.

“The State of Israel is not doing enough to deal with this phenomenon,” he told Ynet. “It begins with education and welfare, and when it is not dealt with, it reaches the places we are seeing today.”

Alon criticizes Ben-Gvir, Son Har-Melech

Alon also directed criticism at National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech, saying the young extremists involved in such incidents were politically closer to them.

He argued that greater pressure should have been applied to prevent what he described as the “terrible and horrific scenes” being seen in the West Bank.

Alon also criticized the Israel Police’s Judea and Samaria District, saying that while he respected its officers, law enforcement had not done enough to address the phenomenon. He backed the IDF’s handling of the latest events.

He said West Bank municipal leaders were united in opposing the violence, describing those involved as a relatively small group that did not represent the broader settlement movement.

Alon added that reservists who participate in such incidents while wearing IDF uniforms should immediately remove their uniforms and be released from reserve duty.

The condemnations came after several days of tensions in the Kusra and nearby Jalud areas of the northern West Bank.

The IDF said Israeli civilians had entered Palestinian homes and land in the area earlier this week, describing the activity as “illegal, reprehensible, and unacceptable.” The area was subsequently declared a closed military zone.

Dozens of settler extremists clashed with IDF forces on Wednesday after security forces evacuated an outpost established near Kusra. Footage seen by The Jerusalem Post showed extremists dismantling fences, blocking roads, and surrounding the area.

Security forces demolished two unauthorized outposts near Kusra and Jalud overnight Wednesday, according to the IDF, which said one Israeli was detained. Golani Brigade Battalion 51 was also deployed to the area to carry out patrols and security missions.

Central Command chief Maj.-Gen. Avi Bluth visited the area and met with a Palestinian family living there, the IDF said.

Commanders expressed concern over the conduct of Israeli civilians toward the family and ordered measures to restore order.

Ganz: Critics exploiting events against settlements

Ganz said the violence should be condemned regardless of what he described as attempts by opponents of the settlement movement to exploit the events politically.

“There is no doubt that there are those who are exploiting these events for a campaign against the settlement movement, but that must not obscure the simple fact: What happened in Kusra is improper and unacceptable to us,” he said.

Ganz said the Yesha leadership would continue working to expand Jewish settlement through organized and authorized channels.

“We are leading and will continue to lead settlement in Binyamin, Judea and Samaria with determination and responsibility, in an organized and proper manner,” he said.

At the same time, he called on the government to repeal the Oslo Accords and permit regulated Jewish settlement throughout open areas of the West Bank.

“I call on the Israeli government to cancel the Oslo Accords and allow legitimate and regulated Jewish settlement throughout all the open areas,” Ganz said.

The statements from Ganz and Alon placed two veteran settlement officials publicly against those responsible for the violence while rejecting attempts to portray the perpetrators as representative of the hundreds of thousands of Israelis living in West Bank settlements.

This post was originally published on here. 

Poland has arrested a Russian man who was hired by Moscow to kill a Ukrainian-American citizen in Warsaw, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday.

The Russian was detained on August 7 and had been recruited to kill a man who was “inconvenient to the Putin regime,” Tusk told journalists.

The Russian embassy in Warsaw did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Moscow has regularly dismissed accusations by European powers of attacks, saying the West is stoking anti-Russian paranoia.

“Thanks to the truly brilliant action of our services … we detained a Russian citizen recruited by Russian intelligence services,” Tusk said.

The Russian had been hired to kill a man who had both Ukrainian and US passports, Tusk said, without giving any more information on his identity.

“At the last minute, thanks to the action of the Internal Security Agency and the police, we managed to prevent this execution, this attack,” Tusk added.

Russian artist critical of Putin killed in Poland in June

In June, a Russian artist critical of President Vladimir Putin was shot and killed in the eastern Polish town of Biala Podlaska, prosecutors said.

Poland says its role as a hub for military and other supplies to neighboring Ukraine has made it a target for Russian espionage and attacks.

This post was originally published on here. 

The Israeli Air Force on Thursday attacked a Gazan terror cell in Khan Yunis, the second “attack of choice” in two days after a pause in such attacks since a new US-Hamas deal in late July.

IDF sources told The Jerusalem Post that the cell was not extremely senior, but was in the process of planning and shortly carrying out an operation against the IDF.

According to those sources, since the US-Hamas deal, the IDF has halted attacks on Hamas members who were involved in the October 7 invasion and on other strategic Hamas assets or leaders, but it is still carrying out attacks against operatives who it knows are moving toward an attack.

This means that the IDF is even willing to attack such terrorists midstream and before the attack is imminent so as not to incidentally miss the ability to thwart the attack.

Unlike the West Bank, where the IDF and Shin Bet tend to arrest such terror plotters, due to the IDF’s current inability to go in and out of areas controlled by Hamas in Gaza, airstrikes will still be the preferred tool.

In addition, the IDF continues to shoot and kill Hamas fighters who approach the yellow line dividing the Israeli-controlled portion of Gaza from the Hamas-controlled portion.

IDF not restricting soldiers from defending themselves; US offers tacit approval until Hamas takes action

The IDF rejects allegations that it is holding its soldiers back from defending themselves.

Although it was not explicit, the implication was that the US is on board with this current IDF approach, at least until Hamas starts to actively partially disarm, which it has not yet started to do.

On Wednesday, the IDF undertook its first preemptive strike against a Hamas official since the late July deal regarding partial Hamas disarmament for partial IDF Gaza withdrawals.

Shortly after that deal, the US essentially instructed Israel to stop attacking Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complied.

Since then, there had been a limited number of instances where the IDF shot and killed Hamas fighters near the border who presented what they called an immediate threat, but there had essentially been no assassinations of Hamas officials who did not pose an imminent threat.

IDF continues operating within framework of US July deal

However, Wednesday’s airstrike was against a Hamas terror cell commander in northern Gaza who was nowhere near the border and presented no immediate threat.

Rather, the IDF said he was killed because he was planning to order or carry out future terror attacks.

There was no public condemnation from the US over the attack.

Alternatively, the late July deal was supposed to lead to Hamas starting to hand over some weapons within two weeks, and the airstrike could be a light reminder from Israel, with the US looking the other way, that if Hamas does not start handing over some weapons soon, Washington can easily remove its restraint on Jerusalem.

It is also possible that the cabinet and the IDF high command ordered the airstrike in response to Hamas’s recent planning of a potential large-scale military drill, with Israeli officials receiving public criticism for not firing on Hamas.

Earlier Wednesday, the IDF issued a statement saying that the Hamas drill never materialized, but ordering the airstrike could still be a message to the group that even planning such a drill is seen by Israel as out of bounds.

This post was originally published on here. 

For nearly five years, Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine Michael Brodsky has lived under the constant threat of Russian missiles and drones, watching a country at war struggle to preserve some semblance of normal life.

“There are attacks almost every night,” Brodsky told The Jerusalem Post as he prepares to conclude his tenure in Kyiv. “But we also know this from our experience back home; people eventually get used to everything, and Kyiv tries to live a normal life.”

While some residents still seek shelter in subway stations during attacks, Brodsky said most Ukrainians have learned to carry on with their daily routines despite the nightly threat.

“Some people prefer to go to the subway stations. But I think most people simply don’t do much anymore,” he said.

My five-year posting in Kyiv is coming to an end in the next few days. Wishing peace to Israel and to Ukraine. This video captures just a small part of what these five years have been. pic.twitter.com/9aAqu2Ed5K

— Amb. Michael Brodsky (@michael_brodsk) August 4, 2026

For Brodsky and his embassy staff, however, the war has never truly become routine.

How Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine speaks on how Putin’s war affected diplomatic relations between Jerusalem and Kyiv

On February 24, 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced what he called a “special military operation” against Ukraine, Brodsky and his team awoke to the sound of the first explosions.

“We woke up to the siren and immediately after heard booms,” he recalled. “Of course, we didn’t know what to do; no one was used to the new situation. So, we went down to the hotel parking lot, the whole team, those who were with us.”

By then, the Israeli Embassy staff had already relocated to Lviv in western Ukraine. But the outbreak of full-scale war presented an unprecedented diplomatic challenge: Israel had to evacuate its embassy while continuing to provide assistance to Israelis and Jews across the country.

“There is a very clear protocol for evacuating an embassy,” Brodsky explained. “First, we evacuate all secret documents and clear out the classified systems. We evacuated the families first, and then the staff.”

Carrying out such an operation in the middle of an active war, however, was unlike anything Brodsky had previously experienced.

“It is a very dramatic process because it also has political implications,” Brodsky said. “I don’t think there’s a precedent for this, certainly not in the Israeli Foreign Service.”

Despite the security challenges, Israel mounted a significant humanitarian response following the Russian invasion.

“In record time, we organized and established a field hospital in the Lviv area of western Ukraine,” Brodsky said.

“Between 100-150 people were treated there on a daily basis. There were amazing doctors there, an amazing Israeli team that provided aid at the highest level imaginable, and many people benefited from this assistance.”

Another area of cooperation emerged around Ukraine’s shuttered aviation sector.

With Ukrainian airports effectively closed because of the threat posed by Russian missiles and drones, Kyiv sought to draw on Israel’s experience operating an airport during wartime.

“They expressed interest in learning from our experience in operating an airport during wartime, in a state of war,” Brodsky said. “There were several delegations—theirs here in Israel, and our delegations in Kyiv.”

The Ukrainians ultimately came to understand that operating an airport under attack was technically possible, Brodsky said, but only if certain conditions were in place.

“They understood that, in principle, it is possible, but of course, several conditions had to be met, and in my opinion, those conditions were not met—including air defense,” Brodsky said.

“Living without any flights at all for four and a half years is not easy for anyone.”

Why hasn’t Israel given Ukraine more military aid?

Ukraine’s requests for Israeli military assistance proved far more complicated.

Kyiv repeatedly expressed interest in Israeli air-defense systems, including the Iron Dome, but Brodsky said there was never a realistic prospect of Israel supplying the system.

“Regarding aid, the Ukrainians occasionally raised the issue of air defense systems and the supply of weapons,” he said. “I don’t think there was ever a serious intention to buy Iron Dome from Israel, but there were various feelers.”

Brodsky recalled a visit to Israel by Ukraine’s defense minister in December 2021, shortly before Russia launched its invasion.

“But even then, it was clear that Israel could not provide Ukraine with what it was asking for, considering the channels of communication with Russia,” he said.

Ukraine’s frustration with Israel was evident throughout the following years. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky repeatedly lamented the absence of an Israeli-style air-defense system capable of protecting Ukrainian cities.

“Unfortunately, we do not have our own ‘Iron Dome,’” Zelensky said in a speech at the begining of the war. “We do not yet have a modern and effective air defense and missile defense system that could secure our skies.”

Brodsky said Israel understood Ukraine’s frustration, even when Jerusalem was unable to meet Kyiv’s demands.

“It’s hard to come to them with complaints,” he said. “Like any country under attack that feels it is fighting for its survival, it’s hard to blame them or say they didn’t consider others’ interests because they only saw their own interest.”

That dynamic changed dramatically after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

Brodsky says that on October 7th, and a day later, “all their questions disappeared”.

“They understood that we are also in a war, and you cannot come to us with claims that we gave them this or didn’t give them that, because ultimately, both countries are conducting wars that can be called wars of survival.”

According to Brodsky, the relationship between Israel and Ukraine changed significantly after October 7, with both countries now confronting wars they view through the lens of national survival.

He pointed in particular to Zelensky’s immediate public support for Israel following the Hamas attack.

“On October 7th, Zelensky came out unequivocally with a statement of support for Israel and even called on leaders to come to Israel to show solidarity,” Brodsky said.

“I believe the potential for relations in all areas is huge, and we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of that potential. After the war in Ukraine, we will be able to do many things there.”

That relationship could now receive a further boost from a threat both countries increasingly share: Iran.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Zelensky had a brief conversation last month during the funeral of Sen. Lindsey Graham, after the two leaders had reportedly not spoken for roughly two years.

Brodsky said the growing Iranian threat has created an area in which Kyiv and Jerusalem increasingly see eye to eye.

“You can’t even compare the first Shaheds at the very beginning of the war and today’s Shaheds,” Zelensky said in a recent interview with the Post. “They, of course, had this experience, a bloody experience on our people, on our land, and they attacked just civilians.”

“Both sides understand that we see eye-to-eye regarding the Iranian threat,” the ambassador said.

Ukraine has a direct interest in confronting Iran because of Tehran’s extensive support for Moscow, Brodsky said.

“They also have an interest in acting against Iran because Iran is a hostile country in every way,” he said. “It doesn’t just supply weapons to Russia, mainly UAVs, but it trains Russian forces and provides very extensive aid to Russia in all fields, including the economic field.”

Brodsky also pointed to what he described as a significant Israeli diplomatic achievement: Ukraine’s decision to recognize Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.

“It must be mentioned that, among other things, as a result of our pressure and our activity, Ukraine recognized the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization,” he said.

“This is a very important move in our view because it also serves as an example for other countries in Europe that are looking closely at what the Ukrainians are doing.”

The growing military cooperation between Iran and Russia, Brodsky argued, has created a strategic convergence between the interests of Israel, Ukraine, and the United States.

From Kyiv to Khan Yunis
For Brodsky, however, war was never simply a diplomatic issue unfolding around him in Ukraine.

While serving thousands of kilometers away in Kyiv, he received devastating news from Israel: his son had been wounded while fighting in Gaza.

“He was wounded in Khan Yunis, and we returned to Israel immediately,” Brodsky said.

“He was wounded by shrapnel. Unfortunately, two of his friends who were right next to him were killed.”

Brodsky and his family rushed back to Israel, reaching the hospital after his son had already undergone surgery.

“We managed to reach the hospital after he had already undergone surgery and the large shrapnel had been removed from his body,” he said. “Fortunately for us and for him, he pulled through and is recovering.”

Brodsky is now preparing to leave Kyiv, but the war that defined his tenure remains unresolved.

The expectation in the first days of the Russian invasion that Kyiv could fall within 72 hours has long since given way to a grinding war of attrition.

Yet Brodsky believes his tenure should ultimately be judged by what the embassy managed to accomplish under extraordinary circumstances.

“It’s not easy to summarize five years in general, and five such intensive years in particular,” he said.

“But I remember the very first moments after the war broke out on February 24th, and I remember receiving a message: ‘You are currently in, or going through, historic moments.’”

“I think we handled it worthily, and we have something to be proud of—both as an embassy and as a country.”

Brodsky leaves Ukraine without seeing the end of the war he witnessed from its first hours.

He saw the war. The next ambassador, he hopes, will see the peace.

This post was originally published on here. 

Ra’am Party leader MK Mansour Abbas confirmed on Thursday that there have been discussions over former Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovich potentially joining the Arab party’s slate ahead of the upcoming elections.

The joint statement from Abbas and Segalovich said that the two “held a cordial and positive discussion about the possibility of Segalovich joining Ra’am’s slate in the upcoming Knesset elections.”

“The two agreed to continue direct talks with the aim of advancing the matter,” the statement added.

There have been ongoing reports that Segalovich will soon join the Arab party ahead of the elections set for October 27. Last week, Segalovitz announced his resignation from the Knesset and departure from the Yesh Atid Party, which opposition leader Yair Lapid leads.

Segalovitz’s potential addition to the party has been widely seen as a way for Ra’am to be viewed as a more viable coalition partner ahead of the elections.

In 2021, Ra’am joined the coalition during the Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid government, marking the first time an Arab party was a formal member of a governing coalition. The move to include Ra’am in the coalition was highly criticized.

Most anti-Bibi opposition parties still reject possibility of forming government with Arab parties

Though Ra’am seeks to be part of the coalition again, most opposition parties in the bloc seeking to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have rejected the possibility of forming a government with any of the Arab parties.

Segalovitz was a former head of Lahav 433. He had worked in the Knesset during the Bennett-Lapid government on combatting violence in Arab society. 

The far-Right Otzma Yehudit Party, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, slammed the Thursday joint statement, accusing Abbas of attempting to “take control of the National Security Ministry.”

The party stated that “a plan to sell off the Jewish state is unfolding in cooperation with the Left.”

“Mansour Abbas is attempting, through Yoav Segalovitz, to take control of the National Security Ministry, to bring back the ‘terrorist summer camps’ in prisons, halt demolitions in the Negev, and take control of the Negev and Galilee Ministry in order to turn them into an Islamic territory,” Otzma Yehudit stated.

This post was originally published on here. 

A recent interview between The New Yorker’s David Remnick and Megan Romer, national co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, is making the rounds on social media. 

Like so many instances before it, the exchange exposes just how twisted and detached from reality parts of this movement’s thinking about Israel have become.

Remnick asked Romer about DSA-backed candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier, who recently won the Democratic primary for New York’s 13th Congressional District, defeating five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat. 

Specifically, he asked about Chevalier attending a rally in Times Square on October 8, 2023, the day after Hamas massacred approximately 1,200 people in Israel – and the same rally the DSA had promoted in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

October 8 was not weeks later. It was not after Israel entered Gaza and began its military operation. It was the very next day.

Israelis were still counting the dead, the burned, dismembered, and desecrated bodies. Rescue workers were still discovering naked women who had been raped and tied to trees. 

Parents were frantically searching for children who had disappeared from the Nova music festival. Search-and-rescue volunteers were entering destroyed homes and finding families burned alive, clinging to one another in their final moments.

Across the country, families had no idea whether their loved ones had been murdered, kidnapped into Gaza, or were still hiding somewhere in southern Israel.

Entire communities, including communities built by people who had dedicated years of their lives to peace and coexistence, had become crime scenes. 

Hamas terrorists had entered their homes, slaughtered and tortured civilians, abducted families, and live-streamed their crimes for the world to see.

Israel did not yet know the names of all its dead, let alone the full scale of what had happened.

And while all of this was still unfolding, the DSA was promoting a rally in Times Square in the name of Palestinian “resistance.”

Let’s set aside the fact that the DSA largely misrepresents the conditions in Gaza before October 7, which, while difficult, were in no way equivalent to a concentration camp, and the fact that anyone who attended or promoted the October 8 rally in Times Square should have to answer for the morality of that decision. 

But Romer’s comments about October 7 being “inevitable” reveal a fundamental flaw in how the DSA and parts of the progressive Left understand Palestinians, Israel, and the Middle East.

The DSA worldview depends so heavily on portraying Palestinians exclusively as powerless victims that it struggles to process Palestinian agency when that agency produces something horrific. 

The actions committed on October 7 challenge the notion of helpless victimhood, so the massacre instead becomes a justified reaction to Israeli policy rather than what it actually was: a deliberate terrorist attack planned and carried out by people responsible for their own choices.

In no way will I pretend that Palestinians have not suffered tremendously, but they are not helpless victims. October 7 required sophisticated planning and execution, and it could never have been carried out by helpless people.

Living with the consequences

I have seen Hamas operational materials with my own eyes, and I have held maps and instructions in my hands. 

Not only did it take them two years to thoughtfully plan out this massacre, but it was done so well and with such sophistication that the more I learn about it, the angrier I get over Israel’s security establishment dropping the ball. 

There were detailed maps of the southern communities, with the names of family members. Hamas had prepared hostage-taking kits that included zip ties, drugs, tourniquets, and tasers. 

There were clear instructions on beheading and filming, and even a dictionary transliterated from Arabic into Hebrew so that Hamas operatives could tell people to “take off their clothes” and “take off their pants.”

I saw the letter that the former leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, wrote to his movement, instructing them to create scenes of fear and chaos so that the world would see images of “burning kibbutzim.”

Anyone pretending that this massacre was a spontaneous eruption of desperation by Palestinians is wrong. Hamas spent years preparing for October 7, gathering intelligence, training fighters, and developing plans for an assault on Israeli communities. 

Whatever one believes about Israel or Gaza, October 7 cannot honestly be described as an inevitable act of desperation.

Palestinians are not helpless, and they are not stupid. They are human beings with political beliefs, ideological movements, and moral agency, just like everyone else. 

There was real suffering in Gaza before October 7, and acknowledging that does not diminish the horror of what happened. 

But suffering does not eliminate responsibility; poor living conditions do not make massacring civilians inevitable, and political grievances do not make kidnapping children or elderly people and then starving them in the dungeons of Gaza inevitable. 

Oppression does not make sexual violence inevitable. These were choices that people made, and they have to live with the consequences of those choices.

This worldview also allows the progressive Left to avoid confronting the parts of this conflict that do not fit comfortably into its narrative: the jihadist ideology of Hamas, antisemitism within parts of the Free Palestine movement, the glorification of violence against Israelis, and support of terrorism within significant segments of Palestinian society. 

They cannot confront these realities because doing so would mean admitting that Palestinian society, like every society, contains movements and individuals capable of making consequential – and sometimes monstrous – decisions.

This rhetoric is becoming normalized within the Democratic movement, with far-left figures like Hasan Piker who can say that “America deserved 9/11,” express views that support terrorist organizations, and say that “it doesn’t matter if rapes happened” on October 7. 

What is really upsetting is that his views, and the DSA’s views more broadly, are going largely unchallenged by mainstream Democrats.

The DSA and the far Left are completely hypocritical because, while they claim to defend Palestinian dignity, they refuse to treat Palestinians as fully responsible political actors capable of making moral choices, good ones and evil ones, just like everyone else.

It is okay to criticize Western policy in the Middle East that has contributed to Palestinian suffering, and it is equally okay to acknowledge the choices that Palestinian leaders and individuals have made that have also contributed to that suffering.

October 7 was not inevitable. It was planned, and it was chosen, and it is a major reason why Palestinians find themselves in the situation they are in today. 

Any political movement that cannot say that clearly has no business claiming to understand this conflict.

The writer is a co-founder and CEO of Social Lite Creative, a digital marketing firm that specializes in geopolitics.

This post was originally published on here. 

An explosion in Rotterdam port, Netherlands, caused at least one death and wounded several people, according to Rotterdam police. 

The cause of the explosion is still unclear and is being investigated.

According to a Shell spokesperson, the blast “has not impacted Shell’s operations,” the spokesperson said on Thursday. 

This is a developing story.

This post was originally published on here. 

The majority of Israeli youth are seeking combat roles in the IDF; however, draftees generally lack trust in the army leadership, according to an Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF) survey conducted earlier this month.

The survey found that 77% of young Israelis feel “highly motivated” to serve in the IDF, with around 57% saying they were highly motivated to draft into a combat unit.

It also found that 75% of teenagers think that the IDF should maintain the current model of mandatory conscription, while 25% said they would prefer a different model.

Teens have low levels of trust in the IDF senior command

The IDSF found that over 60% of participants view the IDF as a “victorious army,” compared to just 13% who disagreed with that statement.

However, despite their faith in the IDF, just 30% expressed high levels of trust in the IDF’s senior command, while 41% said that they had low or very low trust in the army’s senior leadership.

Almost 40% wanted to serve in an infantry unit, making it by far the most popular role for teenagers. The next most popular role was the Armored Corps, which trailed behind at 14% popularity. Other popular roles included Border Police, Air Force, and Education and Youth Corps.

It also found that teenagers in 2026 had the greatest desire in 10 years to serve in a combat unit, and the lowest desire to serve in Home Front Command positions. The data trends changed completely in 2024, with desire to serve in a combat unit rapidly increasing, before returning to a steady increase through 2025 and 2026.

The participants also said that the biggest motivator to want to serve in the IDF was the type of education received, and how religious it was. Parents’ army service was the second greatest motivation, with 38% viewing it as the key factor compared to 42% for education.

The IDSF surveyed 377 people between the ages of 16 and 18.

The IDSF is a forum of former senior Israeli security officials, including those from the IDF, Mossad, Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency), and the police. The survey was headed by IDSF CEO Ronen Itsik.

This post was originally published on here. 

The Tel Aviv District Court placed Yossi Mosli under house arrest until the eve of Yom Kippur on Thursday, using an unusual legal measure that allows restrictions to be imposed on suspected organized-crime figures without an indictment.

Judge Shai Yaniv also barred Mosli from using messaging applications. Mosli may remain at his father’s home in Tel Aviv’s Kfar Shalem neighborhood until Sunday, after which he must move to his home in Savyon.

Police identify Mosli as the head of the Mosli crime organization. The restrictions were sought against the background of what police described as an active and violent conflict between the Mosli and Jarushi crime organizations.

This is a developing story. 

This post was originally published on here. 

US intelligence officials were allegedly skeptical of Israeli warnings regarding Iranian threats against US President Donald Trump that led to Trump switching aircraft while leaving a NATO summit in Turkey, according to a Thursday Washington Post report citing current and former US officials.

One official told the Washington Post that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts who received Israeli information on the assassination threats were skeptical and did not see the intelligence as compelling.

Another official alleged that the threats were “Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence.”

Other intelligence officials accused Israel of only sharing the warnings as a means of influencing Trump’s decision-making in the region, with one claiming the alert “fit a broader pattern of Israeli intelligence reporting that some officials see as designed as much to shape presidential decision-making as to inform it.” 

Secret Service took threat to Trump’s life seriously

Despite the allegations, the US Secret Service took the intelligence seriously, initiating an operation to obfuscate Trump’s travel plan.

“The Secret Service has had three near misses with this president, so they’re not taking any chances,” one official told the Washington Post. “They did what they had to do.”

Trump, when probed on Tuesday regarding the matter, told reporters that such security decisions are made by the Secret Service and that he follows what they tell him to do.

“They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, for safety, but they wanted me to do it, so I do it. I do what they say,” Trump stated.

This post was originally published on here. 

More than 50 Muslim and Christian leaders have signed an interfaith peace accord in Abuja, launching a new body to promote religious harmony across Nigeria.

Nigeria’s more than 200 million population is roughly evenly divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a largely Christian south, with other groups practicing traditional religions.

Focus on the religious divide was heightened last November when US President Donald Trump called Nigeria a “disgraced country” and threatened military action over what he said was the treatment of Christians by “Islamic Terrorists.”

Islamist insurgents such as Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province have wrought havoc in the country for more than 15 years, killing thousands of people, but their attacks have been largely confined to the majority Muslim northeast.

While Christians have been killed, the vast majority of the victims have been Muslims, analysts and rights groups say.

Accord welcomed by faith leaders

No mention was made of Trump’s comments in the official statements about the accord signed on Wednesday at a conference organized by the Muslim World League, an Islamic non-governmental organization based in Saudi Arabia.

But the government and various other groups have been working to show progress on security since his remarks.

Muslim World League Secretary-General Mohammad Al-Issa said there was enthusiasm among the two faiths to “turn a new page.”

“We do not deny that extremist ideas have harmed everyone; all have been affected by it,” he said.

Christian and Muslim leaders from Nigeria described the pact as a turning point.

John Praise Daniel, chairman of the Northern Christian Religious Leaders’ Assembly, said he hoped it would curb divisive rhetoric by clerics.

“No hate speech, and no disrespect for other religious groups, no calling of people as infidels,” he said.

Khalid Abubakar, secretary-general of Jama’atu Nasri Islam, said: “It is not a call to leave your own religion, but a cooperation of working together in harmony.”

Deputy Senate President Barau Jibrin represented President Bola Tinubu at the signing ceremony. Three northern state governors were also present.

Jibrin said on the opening day of the two-day event: “The government is determined to make sure that we remain united as a country, despite our differences, whatever the differences may be.”

The accord comes ahead of the January 2027 election, when religion will again be a factor in Nigerian politics.

Tinubu’s ruling All Progressives Congress is running on the same presidential ticket of two Muslims that it fielded in 2023, breaking Nigeria’s long-standing practice of balancing presidential tickets between the country’s two main faiths.

This post was originally published on here. 

Saudi Arabia is weighing whether to back a Yemeni ground campaign to retake the Red Sea coast from the Houthis, an offensive that would test forces Riyadh has spent seven months assembling out of rival Yemeni militias.

Ballistic missiles hit the commercial vessel Tihama on Tuesday in Bab-el-Mandeb, the strait at the southern mouth of the Red Sea, killing four of its crew. They were the first crew deaths from a Houthi attack since the American and Israeli war with Iran began in February.

The Houthis are the Iran-backed movement that has held Yemen’s capital and its north since 2014. They now control the Red Sea shore facing Saudi Arabia, and their weapons reach into the kingdom itself. On Aug. 9, they said a drone struck the Aramco refinery at Jazan, in southern Saudi Arabia. Yanbu, the Saudi export terminal farther up that coast, ships about 4 million barrels of crude a day.

Yemen’s Transport Ministry said three missiles struck the Tihama in succession and that the dead were three Pakistanis and an Indonesian. The coast guard put the toll at six dead and 10 wounded, including two Yemeni rescue personnel it said were also targeted. The Saudi daily Al-Watan reported three. The first account came from Al-Jumhuriya, a network owned by Tareq Saleh, a commander in Yemen’s internationally recognized government.

The Houthis did not claim responsibility for several hours. That evening, the Houthi-run channel Al-Masirah carried a statement from what it called the Yemeni armed forces announcing an operation against a ship carrying Saudi military equipment. It did not name the vessel.

Commercial shipping repeatedly hit

Iranian outlets, which call the group Ansarullah, reported two events that day: a commercial ship hit in the morning and a second at midday. Ambrey, a British maritime security company, said the Tihama was neither Saudi-owned nor Saudi-operated and had sailed from Mocha on Saturday.

“The whole coastline, from Bab-el-Mandeb through Mokha and Hodeidah to Ras Isa and As-Salif, is strategically important,” Mohamed Qubaty, a former Yemeni tourism and mass media minister who is acting chairman of the Southern Civil Democratic Rally, told The Media Line. “The Houthis know that eventually the outcome of any major confrontation could be tested there.”

That government, seated in the southern port of Aden, has spent a decade fighting the Houthis with Saudi backing and a decade divided against itself. Its army is a set of rival militias, some raised by Saudi Arabia and some by the United Arab Emirates, and welding them into one force is the problem Riyadh has worked on since January.

“I think Saudi Arabia is keeping its options open and taking steps to ensure that, if confrontation with the Houthis becomes necessary, it enters it from a much stronger position,” Nadwa Al-Dawsari, a Yemeni conflict analyst at the Middle East Institute and the Center on Armed Groups, told The Media Line.

Houthi missiles and drones have hit Mokha, a government-held port on the Red Sea, in seven waves, the seventh on Aug. 9, said Col. Wadhah al-Dubaish, spokesman for the Joint Forces on the west coast. Yemen’s Health Ministry put the toll at seven civilians killed and 30 wounded, two of them children; Al-Watan reported eight killed and 26 wounded. An earlier attempt on a fuel tanker inside the port killed a fisherman nearby. Missiles also hit al-Khokha, farther north.

On Aug. 5, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree claimed a ballistic missile strike on the Saudi oil tanker Wafa off Yanbu, and later that day, a second Saudi tanker, the Daisy, in the Gulf of Aden. Riyadh confirmed neither.

Mokha is a base for the Joint Forces, al-Dawsari said. The Houthis are trying to weaken them before they can join a ground offensive and to keep any escalation on their own terms.

Qubaty said he does not believe the Houthis can degrade them decisively. “We are speaking about formations numbering in the thousands,” he said. “The more important question is whether those formations can operate together.”

He said the Houthis may be striking before the government completes its military reorganization. “The recent strikes should not necessarily be read simply as evidence of Houthi confidence,” Qubaty said. “Preemptive violence can also reveal strategic anxiety-an attempt to disrupt forces before an adversary recovers the initiative.”

Inland, the fighting is over Marib, the government’s stronghold and the center of Yemen’s oil and gas production. The death toll from Houthi strikes there and in neighboring Hadramout on Aug. 6 ranges from 17 to 58. A military officer told Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, that at least 35 government soldiers were killed.

China’s unique arrangement helps fund Houthis

China has an arrangement no one else does. Beijing opened direct talks with the Houthis after the July blockade and now clears its tankers one ship at a time, keeping Tehran informed, according to Chinese trade outlets and regional officials briefed on the matter. China buys most of Iran’s sanctioned crude, revenue that helps fund the Houthis.

At least four Saudi tankers bound for China have since crossed.

India has more riding on the strait than most. Saudi Arabia was its third-largest crude supplier in June, and with Hormuz shut, that oil crosses the kingdom by pipeline and leaves through Bab-el-Mandeb. Two Saudi tankers bound for India and China turned back last month.

Fertilizer is the larger exposure. Saudi Arabia supplies 42% of India’s diammonium phosphate imports under contracts signed last year for 3.1 million tons a year, and the Gulf about 70% of its urea. India buys roughly a third of the world’s traded DAP and grows its rice and wheat on it. Delayed or costlier cargoes land in the October sowing season, and from there on, food prices.

“The Houthis have demonstrated that relatively modest military capabilities – combining drones, precision-guided missiles, and small maritime platforms – can impose enormous costs on the global economy,” Harsh V. Pant, vice president for studies and foreign policy at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, told The Media Line.

The divided command has long kept the government from coordinating its forces, Qubaty said. New army and air force commanders have been appointed, and integration has accelerated over the past six months.

What changed in January was that the two patrons fell out. In late December, coalition aircraft bombed a weapons shipment that reached an Emirati-linked base in eastern Yemen without Saudi permission, coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki said. Riyadh accused the United Arab Emirates of pushing southern separatists into operations along its border, and President Rashad al-Alimi gave Emirati forces 24 hours to leave.

Saudi airstrikes stopped those separatists, the Southern Transitional Council, from taking the south outright. Its leader was charged with treason and removed from the governing council on Jan. 15, and much of the leadership is in exile or detained in Riyadh. Abu Dhabi still backs the movement, and the two approaches remain at odds, al-Dawsari said.

A Saudi general, Maj.-Gen. Falah al-Shahrani, now supervises the folding of those southern units into Yemen’s defense and interior ministries. He also oversees Nation’s Shield and the Emergency Forces, Saudi-created units struck this month.

For roughly three years, Saudi Arabia has sought to contain the Houthis while avoiding a return to full-scale war. What happens next turns on what Riyadh decides, Qubaty said. He distinguishes between preparing for contingencies and deciding to launch an offensive, and cannot conclude that Riyadh has made that decision.

Neither the United Arab Emirates nor Oman joined the 14-state maritime coalition Riyadh launched on July 30 to protect Red Sea shipping, and no Gulf partner signed the mutual defense pact Riyadh made in Mecca on Aug. 7 with Turkey and Pakistan. The Saudi Defense Ministry called the coalition purely defensive.

The Houthis called it an alliance to defend Saudi crimes, and denied charging ships to pass through the strait. Reuters reported in late July that the group was weighing transit fees, exempting Chinese vessels. “Instead of weeping over the targeted ships, stop your blockade and unjust aggression against the people of Yemen,” Saree said.

Saudi Arabia built the East-West Pipeline, known as Petroline, to move crude across the country to Yanbu and skip the Persian Gulf. But tankers leaving Yanbu for Asia must still sail the length of the Red Sea and out through Bab-el-Mandeb, past the Houthis. Houthi attacks there reduce the value of the alternative route and raise insurance and shipping costs, Qubaty said.

The Houthis have protected their military spending while many civilian employees go unpaid, Qubaty said. The group collects taxes, customs duties, and fees in the territory where most Yemenis live. Under a 2018 United Nations deal, revenue from the Houthi-held port of Hodeidah was to help pay those salaries, but about 50 billion Yemeni riyals, roughly $90 million at the rate used in Houthi areas, built up before the group took it, he said.

Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Aug. 8 that the Strait of Hormuz will not open until Washington changes its behavior. His conditions include an end to operations against Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and the Palestinian territories, an end to the naval blockade, and sanctions relief.

Iranian influence over Houthi decisions has grown lately, Qubaty said, particularly in areas that touch on the wider regional confrontation and the chokepoints. “I would not say Tehran is necessarily in the driving seat, but it is highly influential,” he said.

Yemeni security sources told Al-Watan that Houthi leaders have converted hotels in the capital and two other cities they hold into temporary headquarters, and that officers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard are running an operations room directing both the escalation and the group’s media line. Qubaty said Iranian and Revolutionary Guard-linked personnel have operated in Houthi-held territory for years, but declined to name individuals.

“Air and maritime power can degrade capabilities and contain immediate threats, but they do not by themselves change the territorial condition that generates those threats,” Qubaty said.

Any campaign has to be fought by Yemenis, not Americans, he said.

“A durable strategy requires three concentric circles of deterrence working together: Yemeni forces restoring sovereign control on the ground; regional partners providing the strategic support necessary to sustain that effort; and international powers securing the wider maritime environment,” Qubaty said. “None of the three is sufficient alone.”

“The strategic objective should not simply be military action for its own sake,” he said. “It should be to change the balance sufficiently that serious political negotiation becomes unavoidable.”

“The danger is that the Houthis demonstrate that an armed nonstate actor controlling strategically important territory can continue exercising coercive leverage over Bab el-Mandeb and international commerce,” Qubaty said. “That would have consequences far beyond Yemen.”

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A former Border Police officer was indicted on Wednesday on multiple counts of sexually harassing a child under 14 through Instagram, the Justice Ministry’s Police Investigation Department (PID) announced on Thursday. 

The indictment alleges that Yazan Goaya repeatedly proposed meeting the minor for sexual activity, offered money, requested photographs, and sent sexually explicit messages – even after being told that the child had not yet turned 14.

The charge sheet does not allege that a meeting or physical contact ultimately took place.

The indictment was filed with the Nazareth Magistrate’s Court by attorney Hila Cohen of the PID, the body responsible for investigating suspected criminal misconduct by police officers.

Goaya served at the time in the Jerusalem Border Police, according to the indictment.

Knowingly, repeatedly suggested meeting for sex with a minor

Prosecutors said they could not determine the precise dates of the alleged correspondence but that it occurred before September 15, 2024. The indictment was filed on August 12, 2026, nearly two years after the latest date provided for the correspondence.

Neither the indictment nor the department’s announcement explains the length of time between the alleged conduct and the filing of charges.

According to the charge sheet, Goaya knew the minor was under 14 but repeatedly suggested meeting for sex and proposed that the child come to his home and stay overnight.

He allegedly asked whether the minor had previously met or had sexual relations with adults, explained sexual acts, and continued sending explicit messages after the child disclosed their age and provided a date of birth.

The indictment further alleges that Goaya attempted to obtain the Instagram account of another minor for a proposed sexual encounter while continuing to make sexual proposals to the first child and offering money.

Goaya is charged under provisions of the Prevention of Sexual Harassment Law covering repeated sexual proposals and repeated comments focusing on another person’s sexuality.

Under the law, such conduct toward a child under 15 may constitute sexual harassment even if the child did not expressly indicate that the attention was unwanted, provided that the alleged harasser is not also a minor.

The investigation was conducted by the Jerusalem team of the PID. Prosecutors notified the court that they may seek a prison sentence if Goaya is convicted. 

PID’s institutional future in question

PID’s institutional future is currently before the High Court of Justice following the passage of legislation in June separating the department from the State Attorney’s Office and establishing it as a separate Justice Ministry investigation and prosecution body.

Supporters of the law, including its sponsor, Likud MK and former PID deputy director Moshe Saada, argue that the existing arrangement creates an inherent conflict because prosecutors routinely work with police officers while overseeing the department responsible for investigating them. The legislation passed 43-39 and gives the restructured department its own budget and authority to investigate and prosecute suspected crimes by police officers.

Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara and petitioners challenging the law argue that the new structure would replace that potential conflict with political dependence. They have pointed to the justice minister’s influence over the appointment mechanism, the ministry’s control of the department’s budget, and the transfer of powers currently exercised by the attorney-general and state attorney.

Baharav-Miara has asked the High Court to freeze implementation of the law while three petitions against it are considered. Earlier this month, the court ordered Justice Minister Yariv Levin to clarify whether he intended to advance appointments to the restructured department before the October 27 election. The court has not yet ruled on the petitions’ merits.

This post was originally published on here. 

A delegation from ZAKA’s International Division are providing assistance in cities across Colombia following the deadly earthquake that killed at least 250 people in the South American country earlier this week.

The earthquake struck on Monday, with a magnitude of 7.4 that shook Colombia’s coastal Choco province. According to the geological service, the quake struck at a depth of 79 km, with its epicenter near San José del Palmar.

Shortly after the initial tremor, the geological service reported an additional magnitude 4.8 seismic incident in the same region.

The delegation, which includes search and rescue personnel, doctors, engineers, and experts in preserving the dignity of the dead, have arrived in Cali, Pereira, and Chocó, as well at other locations where the earthquake hit and are working alongside local rescue teams.

In addition to the rescue and search operations, ZAKA has established a temporary clinic at one of the earthquake’s destruction sites to provide immediate medical care to those in need.

ZAKA operating for Jewish community, Colombian people

“From the very first moment, we began operating at the scenes of destruction, with the goal of saving lives and helping anyone who needs assistance,” said Yosef Garmon, ZAKA South America Commander and is leading the delegation. “Alongside the rescue operations, we established a temporary clinic at the scene of the destruction, where the medical teams are treating the sick and injured, providing medications, and delivering initial medical care under field conditions.

“We are operating here for the Jewish community, but also for all local residents. For us, this is a mission of mutual responsibility and one of human responsibility. We hope to sanctify God’s name and do everything in our power to provide hope, assistance, and relief to the Colombian people.”

Director of ZAKA’s International Division Baruch Nidam said that ZAKA’s International Division operates “wherever disaster strikes around the world.”

“At every scene, we bring extensive experience, professional knowledge, advanced equipment, and endless dedication,” affirmed Nidam. “In Colombia as well, ZAKA volunteers are working around the clock, shoulder to shoulder with local rescue forces, to save lives, locate missing people, and provide as much medical and humanitarian assistance as possible.

“Establishing the temporary clinic inside the disaster area is part of our effort to provide a comprehensive response to those affected, not only through rescue operations, but also through medical treatment and assistance to the population left without support as a result of the destruction.”

“ZAKA is an organization that goes to the most difficult places in the world in order to help and save lives,” ZAKA CEO Zvi Hassid echoed Nidam and Garmon. “In moments of disaster, there is no distinction between one person and another, whoever needs help, we are there for them.”

He added that the organization’s volunteers are operating in Colombia under difficult conditions in order to provide treatment and assistance, “and above all, the feeling that they are not alone,” to those in need.

Israel to send additional humanitarian delegation to Colombia

An additional humanitarian delegation from Israel is expected to depart for Colombia in the coming days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Wednesday statement, following a request for aid from Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella.

ZAKA’s volunteers already operating on the ground are expected to join the delegation and operate alongside it at the disaster sites, according to needs on the ground and the instructions of local rescue authorities.

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Qusai Abu Ridi, a Palestinian resident whose house in the village of Kusra, south of Nablus in the West Bank, has been targeted by radical Israeli settlers in recent days, said that despite actions taken by the Israeli military on Wednesday to remove the makeshift outpost outside his house, settlers are still present in its surroundings, posing a threat to him, his family, and his neighbors. 

“The danger has not gone away,” he told The Jerusalem Post.

While the tent’s structure was dismantled, Qusai said that a group of Israeli settlers returned. “The forces left, and the settlers came back, first to a spot at the doorstep of my neighbor Youssef Hassan, and now to the place where they originally set up their tent, which is about seven meters from our house,” Qusai said. “I can see them from the window, sitting on mattresses and chairs,” he added.

“They haven’t been evacuated, and we’re afraid they will attack us. They have already thrown stones at the house a couple of times, and we have no protection.”

Qusai attributed the recent escalation to the deadly clashes that erupted in the village of Tell in the northern West Bank a couple of weeks ago, and claimed that “settlers have increased their presence and harassment since then.” 

Settler violence in Kusra ramped up since January

He said that the establishment of the tent a few days ago was a continuation of a series of provocations and harassment by settlers, beginning in January this year. 

“What happened in the past days has been much worse, blocking us inside the house without being able to go out. We were running out of food and water. Who can imagine something like that?” he told the Post. “And even now, it’s like nothing has changed; we feel besieged because they are still here, and if we move out of our doorstep, we are afraid they will harm us or won’t let us enter the house.”

Extremist settlers aim to ‘drag family away from house,’ Qusai said

Qusai said he believes this group of extremist settlers aims to drag him and his family away from the house, which lies on the western outskirts of the village of Kusra, and settle there. “We will hold on to our land and property,” he said. “We will not let them expel us from this land and take over. Even if we are left only with salt and water, we’ll stay here,” Qusai told the Post.

He noted he moved to the house with his wife and two girls shortly after Israeli extremists started to target the compound, which belongs to his brother, who lives in America. The brother, Louay, has American citizenship and reached out to the American embassy for help, Qusai said, and added that he is scheduled to arrive in Kusra on Sunday.

This post was originally published on here. 

Senior US and Israeli officials on Wednesday night denied in conversations with The Jerusalem Post a Reuters report that Israel and Lebanon had already agreed on the countries that could participate in a future international mechanism in Lebanon that would oversee Hezbollah’s disarmament and verify the Lebanese military’s activities.

Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the matter, that Israel and Lebanon had agreed on the UK, Italy, Switzerland, and Indonesia as countries that could contribute troops to the proposed mechanism, under which foreign forces would be deployed in Lebanon to verify Hezbollah’s disarmament. 

However, an Israeli source familiar with the details told The Jerusalem Post that the report was incorrect. “There is no agreement on the composition of the body that will oversee and verify the Lebanese military’s work in the pilot areas. Negotiations on the matter are continuing,” the source said.

A US official also denied that an agreement had already been reached between the sides. According to the official, there is still no agreement between Lebanon and Israel regarding the countries that could deploy troops in Lebanon after the conclusion of UNIFIL’s operations, with the aim of assisting in the process of disarming Hezbollah. The US official stressed that discussions on the matter were still ongoing.

The dispute over the identity of the body that will verify the Lebanese military’s activities is one of the central issues the sides are working on as part of US-mediated talks.

Israel, Lebanon agreed to implement pilot zones

On Wednesday, a US State Department official said, following the conclusion of three days of technical talks in Rome, that while the sides had agreed on the details needed to implement the pilot areas and other aspects of the trilateral framework, including common definitions for “verification” and “clearing” the territory, significant details still remained to be resolved.

According to the US official, one of the questions still under consideration is who exactly will verify the Lebanese military’s clearing operations. The talks included discussion of the possibility of third-party verification as part of US-led diplomatic involvement that would complement the trilateral framework.

The military delegations agreed in Rome on operational parameters, shared maps, and a road map that would allow additional pilot areas to be opened at a later stage. During the next round of technical talks, Lebanon is expected to present detailed plans for securing new areas, while continuing to implement the plan in areas where it is already operating.

US expresses opposition to renewing UNIFIL mandate

The US also reiterated during the talks its opposition to renewing UNIFIL’s mandate, and Israel and Lebanon agreed to work with Washington on a future framework that would support the trilateral mechanism. The diplomatic track is expected to resume in Rome in early September, with contacts continuing in Beirut, Jerusalem, and Washington until then.

The State Department official stressed on Wednesday that despite the difficulties, Washington was satisfied with the direction of the progress. According to the official, the first pilot areas are already operational, and the teams succeeded in reaching common ground on professional terminology, maps, and procedures. However, the official warned that Hezbollah was attempting to undermine the process and that both Israel and Lebanon were facing domestic political pressure.

According to the official, the fact that teams from both sides sat together, communicated directly, and developed possible solutions was itself a significant change. The US plan is to move forward gradually, first demonstrating that the pilot areas work and only then expanding the model to additional areas.

This post was originally published on here.