Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Construction and Housing Minister Haim Katz, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced a new program on Sunday to help IDF reservists find affordable housing, a joint statement announced.

The program, titled “From Reserve Duty to a Key,” is meant to expand housing benefits and provide approximately 20,000 housing solutions, including 16,000 apartments, in the years 2026 and 2027.

One feature of the program is increased priority in apartment discount lotteries. In the latest iteration of the lotteries, 25,354 reservists participated, of which 4,734 won. The percentage of reservist winners will increase, and the discount given will amount to more than NIS 500,000, the government said.

Katz praised the discount lottery system, saying that another 20,000 units would be added to the pool.

“Those who gave must also know how to receive,” he said, adding that “the state will give back to its reservists, because they are the main resource we have today.”

‘Heroic reservists’ deserve benefits, housing minister says

Reservists who wish to construct housing will also receive increased benefits, and will be exempted from payment for the value of the land.

Meant to “expand the supply of housing solutions for reservists,” Netanyahu praised the initiative as a historic move.

“Our heroic reservists give everything for the country, and they deserve everything,” he said.

“To date, the government has transferred, either through Government decisions or legislation, a massive sum of NIS 25 billion to the reservists and their families as well. And today we are bringing more news about massive support in housing.”

“There has never been anything like this. It is about time.”

Smotrich described the plan as only a part of a greater show of appreciation for the country’s soldiers.

“From the very first day of the war, we have been wrapping IDF fighters and commanders, in both regular and reserve service, in a huge umbrella of billions upon billions,” he said.

“Following the discounts and priority for reservists, we have made a significant decision together with the prime minister and the housing minister, according to which all reservists without housing who applied for the “Discount Apartment” lottery will receive an apartment. Dear reservists – you deserve this.”

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North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) Command on Sunday intercepted two general aviation aircraft that violated temporary flight restrictions as President Donald Trump attended a tournament at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

“NORAD F-16s intercepted multiple general aviation aircraft today that violated temporary flight restrictions over Bedminster, NJ,” according to a statement from NORAD on X/Twitter.

NORAD F-16s intercepted multiple general aviation aircraft today that violated temporary flight restrictions over Bedminster, NJ.

All aircraft were safely escorted out of the area by NORAD aircraft.

Pilots: check your Notice to Airmen (NOTAMS) and FAA Temporary Flight… https://t.co/yac5sDTp1j

— North American Aerospace Defense Command (@NORADCommand) August 9, 2026

NORAD declined to say whether the pilots of the two aircraft had made a mistake, saying that it is up to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to make that determination, Reuters reported.

Pilots are required to check with the FAA to stay up to date about temporary airspace restrictions, NORAD said.

The White House did not immediately return a request by Reuters for comment on the incident.

Trump is scheduled to fly back to Washington from Bedminster later Sunday after attending the LIV Golf event.

FAA investigates Marine One safety incident in Washington

The US Federal Aviation Administration is also reviewing an air-traffic safety incident involving a military helicopter carrying US President Donald Trump, the agency said last Tuesday.

“The FAA is investigating a safety incident involving Marine One but it didn’t appear to be a dangerous close call and the aircraft weren’t apparently converging,” the FAA said.

Trump’s Marine One helicopter took off from the White House on Tuesday afternoon, but air-traffic controllers had not halted commercial flights at nearby Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport as required under a policy set last year following a fatal collision, two sources told Reuters.

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For about 20 years, Joseph (Joe) J. Sitt, the chairman and CEO of the New York real estate firm Thor Equities, has been paying to restore Jewish graves in Syria, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Turkey, along with ancient synagogues in those countries old enough to predate the destruction of the Second Temple. He rarely talks about it publicly. When I asked him why he does it, he answered with a question of his own.

“People always have respect for their parents’ grave and their grandparents’ grave,” he said. “But why should their great-grandparents’ grave be nothing to them? And why should the ruins of the Second Temple be more important than the synagogues of the same period or older?”

That work, spread across two decades and half a dozen countries, has given Sitt something most American Jewish businessmen do not have: a working relationship with the people who run those countries. He has decided what he wants to do with it. He wants the Abraham Accords to stop being a set of agreements and start being an actual institution, with a building, a staff, and an address in Jerusalem.

“Why can’t we have a Brussels-like headquarters of an alliance organization, an Abraham Accords organization, that’s that unifier in the Middle East and be based in Jerusalem?” he asked me over Teams last week.

I asked whether he meant that as an image or as a construction project.

“Actually and physically,” he said.

He calls it the Abraham Organization, and he is deliberate about dropping the word “Accord.” “It’s not just a piece of Accord,” he said. “It’s the next evolution.” The name itself is the point. Abraham, he said, is the forefather of both the Muslim and Arab world and of the Jewish and Israeli one.

When I pointed out that Christians claim him too, he agreed immediately.

The kid from the racetrack parking lot

Sitt, decades later, is married and the father of four. He grew up in Brooklyn near Coney Island. His first job in business was working flea market booths in the parking lots of the Aqueduct and Roosevelt racetracks.

His first property was bought at a tax auction on East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx, in a stretch of the city that national chains had given up on. He raised the money from family and friends, put up a one-story retail building, and talked Rite Aid and Payless into signing leases.

He was still an undergraduate at New York University’s Stern School of Business when he founded Thor Equities in 1986. Somewhere in there, he also built a string of consumer brands, among them Ashley Stewart, a plus-size clothing chain aimed primarily at Black women in neighborhoods the mall retailers ignored, and staffed its senior management almost entirely with Black executives.

Thor today runs about $20 billion for sovereign wealth funds, government agencies, and private investors, with more than 50 million square feet in its development pipeline and offices in New York, London, Paris, Madrid, Mexico City, San Francisco, and Miami.

It has owned London’s Burlington Arcade and Chicago’s Palmer House Hilton. Its Mexico-focused Latin American arm, Thor Urbana, calls itself the largest developer in that country.

In 2012, Sitt put millions of dollars of his own money into founding the Global Gateway Alliance, a nonprofit set up to draw a development plan and push New York and the US federal government into fixing the city’s airports.

None of which explains why he thinks he should be the one to lead the effort to house the Abraham Accords. His answer to that is about who he is, and it is more complicated than his last name suggests.

Not exactly a Syrian Jew

In Israel, and increasingly in the United States, the Syrian Jewish community of Brooklyn is treated as a bloc, wealthy, cohesive, and politically confident. Sitt’s name gets attached to it automatically. He pushed back on that before I could ask about it.

“I don’t want to overposition myself as purely a Syrian Jew,” he said. “I’m a little bit of a hybrid. I straddle. I’m also part of that community, but I’m also part of the global Jewish community.”

Half of his Jewish friends, he said, are Ashkenazi. Part of his family came from Spain and the Canary Islands. His parents sent him to Yeshiva of Flatbush, an Ashkenazi school, rather than to one of the Syrian community’s own institutions, a choice he says was meant to give him that diversity at a young age.

He has spent his life half inside and half outside, which is more or less the qualification for the side job he has created for himself.

“If there was a country called Jewish, I would be honored to be the ambassador from that country to the Arab world,” he said.

What the Emiratis tell him

The Middle East, and specifically the Gulf, is where Sitt’s relationships are most concrete. He is closest to the Emiratis. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the UAE’s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs and a brother of President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is a personal friend.

Sitt calls him a mentor and describes him as a fine, loving, wise man he wishes he could see more often.

He knows the argument against taking any of this at face value. Abu Dhabi keeps its channels open to Iran, to China, to Russia. It is a small country, and it needs to balance.

“I think that they’ve been a real friend of Israel,” he said anyway. The Emiratis, in his account, are genuinely comfortable with other religions and genuinely want the region calm. He is close to people in Oman, Bahrain, Syria, and Saudi Arabia as well, and less so in Iran.

Why do they take his calls? He says it is because he never asks them for anything. He does charity in the Arab world the same way he does it in the Jewish one. “People see that I’m sincere.”

The plot of land

What Sitt actually wants from Israel is real estate, which is at least on brand. He thinks the government could donate a plot in Jerusalem for the headquarters.

His original plan put the building in Tel Aviv. Then someone inside the Israeli government, whom he would not name, came to him with a modification of his idea and argued for Jerusalem. Sitt was persuaded. “Jerusalem is the answer for an Abraham organization,” he said.

The organization he sketches is meant for the neighborhood, not for its sponsors. “The goal for the organization is not to necessarily be an organization for the French or necessarily for the Americans. It’s for the Middle East region,” he said. The Americans hold everyone’s hands at the start and then let go. “At a certain point, have America then step back and let them stand on their own two feet.”

I asked whether he wants to run it, fund it, or both. He would not say. What he offered instead was a pitch built on everything he is not.

“I’m not a politician. The fact that I have no politics, no connection to a politician, no family member that’s a politician, it makes me that independent arbiter,” he said. “Sometimes it takes somebody from the outside that’s motivated, that cares, that’s more independent.”

Betting on the businessmen

Sitt is one of the few people willing to go on record predicting that the businessmen now doing Middle East diplomacy will succeed at it.

Two of them sit on the Gaza Executive Board under US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace: Yakir Gabay, the Israeli-Cypriot founder and chairman of the property group Aroundtown, and Marc Rowan, the co-founder and CEO of Apollo Global Management.

“I think that Yakir Gabay and Marc Rowan, which you can quote me on, are going to be incredibly successful with the Board of Peace,” he said. “I know everybody’s saying no, and there’s the naysayers, but I think they’re going to be incredibly successful. I think because they think as business people.”

The Carlyle Group and Blackstone have been hiring former officials for years, he pointed out. Nobody has seriously tried it the other way. “You could have the same success in the reverse, but it’s never been tested before.”

He once asked Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and the White House adviser who brokered the original accords, how he had done it. Kushner told him it was listening. Sitt believes him.

Israel as the next theme

Thor does not pick buildings; it picks themes, and it holds them for 10 or 15 years before switching. Not asset classes, and not bargains.

“Most people buy because the deal is cheap, or based upon an asset class they do, maybe because their father did or their grandfather did,” Sitt said. “We’re much more thematic investors, and we pick themes globally that we believe in.” The themes come out of politics and demographics.

The current one is data centers. Thor moved its investors’ money out of office buildings and into them well before anyone was saying “artificial intelligence” on an earnings call. The first was in Madrid. Now there is Texas, Ohio, Georgia, and a European pipeline.

He would like Israel to be one of the next themes. He is having trouble getting in.

‘It’s like a club’

Here is where Sitt got sharp, and it was not about Iran or Gaza. It was about Israeli businessmen.

“Israelis at the highest level often live in a little bit of a bubble,” he said. “It’s like a club. Why? You should want to connect with the outside world. It’s an opportunity to do business, help Israel go global as well. And I find it surprising that they really don’t.”

He says the wealthiest Jews outside Israel have almost no real relationship with the wealthiest people inside it, and that the gap genuinely surprised him when he first noticed it. He first helped a friend who runs forums in Israel that put religious and secular business figures in the same room, and went on from there to connect Israeli and non-Israeli Jewish CEOs.

He gets a steady stream of requests from Israelis wanting introductions abroad. He has a long list of Israeli names he has connected to global networks, but asked me not to print them.

He has a stake in this, and he said so without being asked. Thor’s investor base includes sovereign funds and family fortunes from most of the developed world and almost nothing from Israel.

“I’m a little bit embarrassed that we don’t have the investor base from Israel also yet,” he said. “One of the things I’d love to see is more Israeli investors also be our partner.”

About Israel, he had no hesitation at all. “Israel just went through hell and back,” he said. “But I’m bullish. No industrialized Western nation has better future demographics than Israel does. I’m very bullish on Israel.”

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A class action lawsuit worth NIS 350 million against the Golda ice cream chain was approved on Sunday, alleging that several sugar-free options offered by the vendor actually contained sugar, the Central District Court ruled.

According to the ruling, laboratory tests showed that the offerings actually contained 6.6 grams of sugar per 100 grams of ice cream, which is over thirteen times the amount allowed for a product to be labeled “sugar-free.”

The application for the lawsuit was originally filed in February 2024, after the applicant, Sol Yarkoni, purchased what she thought was sugar-free ice cream from a Golda location on Ramat Gan‘s Jabotinsky Street.

Yarkoni, who was on a low-carb diet at the time, claims she later felt as if she had eaten sugar, prompting her to bring a sample of the ice cream to a Health Ministry-authorized laboratory.

Golda argued that the labels were not misleading to customers on the basis that a reasonable person would know that dairy products naturally contain lactose, or natural milk sugar. The company claimed that dairy products labeled “sugar-free” are clearly meant to imply that no sugar was added to them, rather than the natural sugar being removed.

The company cited the opinion of Hebrew University of Jerusalem Professor Elliot Berry, who noted that the Israeli Diabetes Association has approved ice cream products with similar amounts of sugar, and the consuming such ice cream is not deemed a health risk in this context.

Yarkoni rejected Golda’s argument, relying on the Prinir precedent, which, according to the court’s decision, recognizes cases of “total failure of consideration” where product characteristics differ materially from the expectations of the consumer.

Court: ‘Sugar-free’ label carries more value than Golda claims

The court’s decision stated that there was reason for Yarkoni and others to assume that ice cream labeled “sugar-free” was in fact sugar-free, noting the fact that most of Golda’s products are clearly not sugar-free, giving further value to the label.

The court concluded that sufficient grounds existed to allege financial damage, with the amount to be determined at a later date following further proceedings.

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Hamas‘s support network in the United States was left intact after the Holy Land Foundation trial and is active today in the form of the Council on Arab and Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other groups, a retired FBI agent who led the Holy Land Foundation case told the US Senate on Wednesday.

In a 2008 federal trial, the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) and five of its officials were convicted of providing material support to Hamas. The government revealed extensive evidence about the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and identified a decades-long conspiracy involving numerous individuals in the US and abroad to support Hamas via front organizations in the US.

Testifying before the Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights was Lara Burns, who led the investigation between 2001 and 2008.

Burns spoke of the FBI lawfully wiretapping a meeting of the leaders of the Palestine Committee in 1993 in Philadelphia. During this, Burns said members of the Palestine Committee defined the scope of the conspiracy, which included supporting Hamas abroad and infiltrating universities, media, and politics here in the US with the intention of “normalizing Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood extremist ideology in American society.”

“They also noted their intent to cleanse the curriculum in US-based schools because, quote, ‘We don’t want our children growing up surrendering to the idea of peace with Jews,’” she said.

Burns told the Senate that the leaders knew that Hamas would be designated a terror organization, and that they risked exposure, so they agreed to continue to pursue their agenda by “cloaking themselves under the cover of legitimacy.”

HLF’s role in the conspiracy before Hamas was designated as a terror front in 2001 was to send money to Gaza and the West Bank to support the Hamas social infrastructure, Burns testified. CAIR’s role, she said, “was to defend and protect the other elements of the Hamas support network and to pressure others to adopt its narratives or remain quiet.”

Burns: CAIR co-founder actively participated in conspiratorial meeting

She also noted that the co-founder of CAIR, Nihad Awad, was an active participant in this conspiratorial meeting and remains the executive director of CAIR to date.

While the conspiracy of 1993 did not remain intact in its original sense, Burns told the Senate that elements within this network have evolved and rebranded and “CAIR’s pressure tactics are still in play.”

“CAIR and other elements of this network appear to have continued their acts in furtherance of the conspiratorial agenda as detailed extensively in my written testimony today. For decades, narratives have been intentionally seeded into public discourse that portray terrorist organizations as resistance movements, excuse acts of violence, and intimidate critics into silence.

“On college campuses, in activist spaces, and across social media, slogans and rhetoric that once existed on the fringes have become normalized. And too often people who raise concerns are immediately labeled hateful, intolerant, or extremist themselves.”

“The First Amendment protects speech. It protects dissent. It protects protest. But it does not protect material support to terrorism. It does not protect criminal conspiracies.”

Burns: Some groups mentioned during prosecution still materially supporting terrorists

Burns was then questioned by the Senate on whether some of the groups mentioned during the HLF prosecution as likely providing material support to terrorists are “still in existence today.” She replied yes.

When asked whether she believes they are still actively members of the Muslim Brotherhood Network, she said she does. Burns also said she believes the conspiracy under which the Holyland Foundation was prosecuted is still in existence today.

She again referenced CAIR, noting that while it was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF prosecution, it has never formally disavowed HLF. Both founders of CAIR were captured on the wiretap in 1993, and, as mentioned, Awad is still ED today.

Burns also wrote in her written testimony of two calls in 1999 by Omar Ahmad (the other CAIR founder) which demonstrated he “was directing expenditures of a Hamas fundraising organization.”

Burns then testified that, while CAIR has told Congress it has no ties to Hamas, the documented record says otherwise and that if she were still an active FBI agent today, CAIR would be on her list of organizations warranting further investigation.

She also cited two other organizations as being part of this Muslim Brotherhood network: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).

She testified to the role of all three organizations – CAIR, AMP, SJP –  “reframing the atrocities [of October 7] as legitimate resistance and/or, as acts of self-defense, consistent with senior Hamas leaders’ messaging.”

“CAIR and AMP have continued to co-sponsor and participate jointly in anti-Israel events wherein narratives are often twisted,” and “CAIR has financially sponsored certain SJP members who violated campus codes of conduct, claiming the students were merely ‘targeted for their pro-Palestinian advocacy,’” she said.

Taken together, Burns said the recent activities of CAIR and the AMP “are consistent with the goals set forth by the original elements of this network in the 1993 Philadelphia Meeting and indicate the conspiracy is on-going.”

“In the 1993 Philadelphia Meeting, this network in effect plotted to silence the free speech of those who disagreed with them via intimidation. The pressure tactics are still in play today. CAIR and other elements of this network appear to have continued their acts in furtherance of the conspiratorial agenda.”

Burns said their conduct since October 7, 2023, further suggests that they have not withdrawn from the conspiracy.

She called on the FBI, the IRS, and the DOJ to instigate criminal investigations into the organizations referenced for violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), Violations of Section 2239B of Title 18 of the US Code, which criminalizes the provision of material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and tax Evasion/ Tax Fraud.

On a federal level, she called for enhanced transparency in reporting for 501(c) (3) tax-exempt organizations, with specific focus on requirements to identify foreign donors, as well as updated federal laws regarding the provision of material support to an FTO.

Burns also called on K-12 schools to report foreign funding and transparency.

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IDF Central Command Chief Maj.-Gen. Avi Bluth signed a notice of intent to demolish the home of terrorist Duas Hasson, who killed 18-year-old Yehuda Sherman and injured another Israeli in a car ramming attack in the West Bank in March, the military confirmed on Sunday.

The notice of intent was initially delivered on Friday, the military said.

On the day of the attack, Hasson, a resident of the West Bank village of Beit Umrin, drove his pickup truck to a road near the Beit Umrin entrance after hearing that Israeli settlers were heading towards the village.

Hasson then intentionally rammed the rear of Sherman’s vehicle upon seeing it, causing it to fall off a cliff. Sherman and another passenger were ejected from the vehicle, resulting in Sherman’s death.

Terrorist indicted for murder, additional charges

Hasson was indicted for Sherman’s murder on May 14, with additional indictments for intentionally causing the death of two others, obstruction of justice, and possession of weapons without a permit.

Prosecutors asked the court for an extension of Hasson’s detention until legal proceedings conclude.

Goldie Katz contributed ot this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be remembered as one of Israel’s most consequential prime ministers.

During his years in office, Israel strengthened its economy, expanded its technological leadership, demonstrated resilience through war and regional instability, and, together with Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, helped to achieve the historic Abraham Accords, reshaping the Middle East in ways few believed possible. 

These accomplishments deserve recognition. But history judges leaders not only by what they build. It also asks whom they prepare to lead after them. That is the question confronting Israel today.

Israel has become a military, technological, and economic powerhouse. Yet as its strategic strength has reached historic heights, its international legitimacy has increasingly come under attack. On university campuses, in international media, and across social media, Israel is too often portrayed as a European colonial project rather than the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. 

This is not simply a public relations problem. It is a strategic diplomatic challenge. 

For nearly two decades, the Netanyahu era strengthened Israel’s military, economy, and regional alliances. Yet it did not sufficiently cultivate a new generation of internationally respected Zionist leaders capable of communicating Israel’s story across cultures and languages. Leadership is measured not only by governing well, but by preparing capable successors.

As an Ethiopian-born Israeli and American educated across Africa, Israel, and New York City, my perspective has been shaped by three continents and multiple democratic systems. My academic and professional work has focused on conflict resolution, restorative peace, cross-cultural education, and moral diplomacy. 

Those experiences have convinced me that 21st-century diplomacy requires more than negotiations between governments. It requires trusted communicators who understand history, culture, and the concerns of international audiences.

Today, diplomacy is no longer conducted only in embassies. It is contested daily on university campuses, television studios, podcasts, digital platforms, and international forums where public opinion is often formed before governments begin negotiating. Israel possesses extraordinary military leaders, intelligence professionals, economists, scientists, and entrepreneurs.

Yet it has not invested enough in developing globally respected communicators who can explain Zionism confidently while engaging audiences beyond Israel’s borders. Winning wars remains essential. Winning understanding is equally essential.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks often taught that Moses’s greatest achievement was not simply leading Israel out of Egypt. It was preparing Joshua. That timeless lesson raises an important question for Israel today.

While the Netanyahu era achieved historic successes in security and economic growth, it did not sufficiently cultivate a widely recognized new generation of global Zionist leaders and diplomats prepared to carry that vision forward.

If Netanyahu returns to office, he still has a historic opportunity to lay the foundation for that Joshua Generation by identifying, mentoring, and empowering the next generation of Israeli leaders who can represent the Jewish state with strategic vision, moral confidence, and international credibility.

Civilizations endure because one generation intentionally prepares the next. Strong democracies continually develop new leaders capable of speaking to new generations.

One of Israel’s greatest untapped diplomatic strengths stands in plain sight: the Ethiopian Jewish community. For centuries before modern political Zionism, Ethiopian Jews prayed toward Jerusalem. We preserved Jewish life in Africa despite isolation and hardship. 

We did not arrive as colonizers. We returned as one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities to our ancestral homeland. 

That history powerfully challenges the claim that Israel is merely a European colonial enterprise. Yet Ethiopian-Israeli voices have too rarely been placed at the center of Israel’s international diplomacy. This is not about symbolism. It is about strategic effectiveness.

When the world asks whether Israel represents only European Jews, Israel should answer not only with historical documents but also with living testimony – from Ethiopian Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Persian Jews, Indian Jews, Yemenite Jews, and many other Jewish communities whose histories demonstrate that the Jewish people have always been diverse, indigenous, and globally dispersed.

Real representation begins not with promises but with meaningful responsibility.

The Joshua Generation – Israel’s next steps

Several political parties have recently included Ethiopian-Israeli candidates on their electoral lists. That is encouraging. But representation is not measured simply by appearing on a ballot. It is measured by whether candidates are placed in realistic positions to enter the Knesset, influence national policy, and help shape Israel’s future.

In conversations with rabbis, educators, and community leaders, I have repeatedly heard the same message: the Ethiopian Jewish community is no longer asking for symbolic representation. It seeks meaningful leadership based on merit, experience, and demonstrated ability. This is not the demand of one political party. It is a challenge to Israel’s entire political system. 

Any party that sincerely believes in national unity should demonstrate that commitment through genuine leadership opportunities. The next Israeli government should establish a new generation of global Zionist leadership: the Joshua Generation.

It should identify highly qualified Israelis with expertise in diplomacy, international affairs, communication, education, and public policy and prepare them to represent Israel worldwide.

I also offer one strategic recommendation to Israel’s next prime minister. The next government should intentionally broaden Israel’s senior diplomatic leadership by appointing highly qualified Ethiopian-Israeli professionals to strategic international affairs and public diplomacy positions. This recommendation is based not on symbolism but on Israel’s national interest. 

At a time when Israel is falsely portrayed as a European colonial project, accomplished Ethiopian-Israeli leaders can provide living evidence that the Jewish people returned to their ancestral homeland from every corner of the world, including Africa.

Netanyahu’s generation secured remarkable achievements, and history should recognize them fairly. But history will also ask whether that generation prepared Israel for what comes next. 

Moses needed Joshua. Israel now needs a Joshua Generation leader with strategic vision, international experience, cultural fluency, moral courage, and the ability to defend the Jewish state’s legitimacy with confidence and historical evidence. Military strength will always remain indispensable. But in the 21st century, moral diplomacy is also a national security asset.

The future of Israeli diplomacy should not simply preserve the achievements of the past. It should demonstrate, through the diversity of the Jewish people themselves, that Israel is not a colonial project but the restored homeland of an ancient nation.

If Israel develops that Joshua Generation, it will strengthen not only its democracy but also its ability to tell its story with confidence, integrity, and truth. In an age of misinformation, that may become one of Israel’s greatest strategic victories.

The writer is a former New York City Supreme Court detective, an investigator and educator in conflict resolution and restorative peace, and a moral diplomacy expert. His upcoming book, Moral Diplomacy for a Broken World, is inspired by the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

This post was originally published on here. 

A 16-year-old Italian boy has been arrested for association with ISIS and for possessing “neo-Nazi and antisemitic content,” Italian Police announced.

The teenager, from the province of Como, was arrested in Grosseto, where he was on vacation with his family, on charges of participation in an association with the aim of international terrorism, as well as propaganda and incitement to commit crimes motivated by racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination.

The investigation was conducted by officers from the General Investigations and Special Operations Division anti-terrorism section in Milan (DIGOS), with the cooperation of the Como DIGOS and the Service for Combating Extremism and External Terrorism of the Central Directorate of the Prevention Police.

This was done in coordination with the Milan Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office.

The investigation began following a report from AISI (the Internal Intelligence and Security Agency) concerning a user who disseminated jihadist propaganda material linked to the terrorist organization ISIS through several profiles on a messaging platform.

Further investigation enabled police to trace those profiles back to the boy, who had previously never been flagged for associations with radical circles.

An unusual case of a minor with no previous extremist ties, with evidence that the teen allegedly expressed support for ISIS

This arrest therefore marks an unusual case of a minor with no previous extremist ties being detained for offenses related to international terrorism.

A subsequent personal and digital search by DIGOS revealed a large amount of material on Islamic State translated into different languages, propaganda videos, and images on training sessions, executions, and content of a supremacist, neo-Nazi, antisemitic nature.

They also found videos and conversations in which the teenager allegedly expressed his support for ISIS and stated that he had previously helped produce propaganda material for the terrorist organization.

A video in Russian was also found containing instructions on how to make an improvised explosive device using easily available materials.

“Another well-mannered and perfectly integrated ‘Italian’ boy of foreign origin,” said Deputy PM Matteo Salvini. “Ready to build bombs in the name of Islamist terrorism…”

The police did not publicly mention the boy’s ethnicity.

This post was originally published on here. 

Syrian security forces arrested a nine-member ISIS cell in Khan Arnabah, Quneitra Province, the Syrian Interior Ministry confirmed on Sunday.

Khan Arnabah is located adjacent to the demilitarized zone that runs along the Israel-Syria border.

The cell carried out tasks for ISIS, including collecting weapons and transporting explosive devices and other related materials, as well as other terror activities intended to support ISIS’s operations, the Interior Ministry said.

One of those arrested was cell leader Musab Khalil al-Sheikh, who is also known by the alias “al-Sini” (“the Chinese”), and whom Damascus tied to terror operations across several Syrian provinces, including in the Damascus region.

Sheikh had also operated with a cell that was led by Abu Abdulrahman al-Iraqi, the then-southern commander of ISIS who was killed in Daraa in 2022, the Interior Ministry added.

This comes as part of the “ongoing efforts to track down ISIS members and disrupt the group’s supply networks,” the Interior Ministry said.

Interior Ministry announces arrest of hundreds of ISIS members during Q2 2026

In June, the Interior Ministry announced that security forces had arrested 235 members of ISIS over the previous three months as part of a broad security campaign aimed at dismantling the group’s active cells and preventing attacks intended to destabilize the country.

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

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

Also in June, US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that it killed a senior ISIS terrorist, identified as “Ali Husayn al-‘Ulaywi” in an airstrike in northeast Syria.

Rizik Alabi/The Media Line contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Mark Twain allegedly described golf as “a good walk spoiled,” a statement with which few members of the Caesarea Golf Club would agree. The only place in Israel where golf aficionados can indulge their sport, the place also houses a very good restaurant, Mariposa, which we visited recently for lunch.

A new chef, Raz Sela, took over the kitchen of Mariposa only four months ago. His previous experience included 10 years at Turkiz, a well-established non-kosher restaurant in Tel Aviv, but adapting to strictly kosher has not produced any problems for the young, versatile chef. On the contrary, the lunch we enjoyed recently was of a very high standard, with original dishes, creative presentation, and the pleasant ambiance of a well-run, friendly eatery.

We left it to the staff to choose the dishes they wanted us to sample, and two salads arrived at our table, together with a dish of pickled vegetables (carrots, celery, cucumbers, and peppers) and fried bread slices with tartar sauce (NIS 12).

The two salads were the Shmulik and the Herb. I was curious to know why any restaurant would call a salad by the name Shmulik, and turned to Google for an explanation. It seems Shmulik was a customer who lived nearby and came almost every day to eat at the restaurant (and still does).

Both salads were good. The Shmulik had arugula, grapes, peanuts and cranberries and a spicy dressing, while the Herb salad was made with rocket leaves and a variety of herbs. Both salads had the addition of vegan feta, which was practically indistinguishable from the real thing (NIS 64).

Paper-thin carpaccio, delicious ceviche

Another pre-starter appeared, consisting of a paper-thin slice of carpaccio, perfect for nibbling on until the real food arrived.

I chose ceviche as a first official course, and this was a winner: chopped white fish, tomatoes, cucumbers, and purple onion with a lemony, slightly spicy dressing. It was so good I couldn’t stop eating it, even though the mains were still to come (NIS 80).

My companion chose chicken livers with potato puree, declared it superb, and all conversation between us ended as he savored every mouthful (NIS 98).

My choice for a main course was Togarashi crusted salmon, which means the fish is dipped in a special mix of Japanese spices, including chili flakes, ginger, and nori (dried seaweed). All I could determine was that it was rather sweet and was perfectly cooked. It came with potato puree, although the menu promised pea cream and leek fondue (NIS 138).

My companion chose grilled sea bass with a white wine and herb sauce and the same mashed potatoes (NIS 149). He said it was a superb dish.

There are many meat dishes, too, with steaks of every shape and size, but we were very happy to stick with the fish.

The dessert course did not offer any great revelations. The pistachio ice cream sported a tuile which tasted like a slab of margarine instead of being crispy. The vanilla ice cream came with cherries laboriously cut in half with pips removed and pretty edible flowers. At least I hope they were edible, because I ate them.

I drank a glass of Yarden Chardonnay, which was suitably ice cold and very good (NIS 67); my companion chose a Guinness (NIS 40).

On balance, it was a very good meal, and with a bit more effort in the dessert department, it could be considered even better.

Mariposa
1 Rothschild Street
Caesarea
Tel: (04) 626-5000
Open: Sun.-Wed., 12 p.m. to 12 a.m.; Thurs., 12 p.m.-12.30 a.m.; Fri., 12 p.m.-3 p.m.
The writer was a guest of the restaurant.

This post was originally published on here. 

In the early hours of July 30, thousands of people began pouring across the border separating Morocco from the Spanish exclave of Ceuta. By the time Spanish authorities regained control days later, between 50,000 and 60,000 people had crossed, most of them Moroccan and many of them very young.

Dozens died as people drowned at sea or were caught in the chaos surrounding the crossings. Madrid deployed additional security forces to contain what quickly became one of the largest migration emergencies in the history of the enclave.

However, within hours, another story began spreading online. Instead of discussing why so many young Moroccans were willing to risk their lives to reach Europe, social media was filled with claims that Israel had somehow engineered the crisis because of tensions between Spain and Israel. Yet there is no evidence for such claims.

Moreover, they distract attention from the real issue. They encourage people to search for hidden plots rather than confront uncomfortable realities and often end up reinforcing antisemitic tropes about secret manipulation of world events. Indeed, the story of Ceuta began long before current tensions between Madrid and Jerusalem, and it will almost certainly continue long after them.

The debate about Ceuta and Melilla

At the same time, there is also a separate debate about Ceuta and Melilla themselves. Moroccans often argue that the enclaves are remnants of a colonial past, while Spaniards maintain that they are and should remain Spanish territory. People can debate those questions endlessly. Nevertheless, for understanding this crisis, the argument is largely beside the point.

Whatever one’s position on sovereignty, Ceuta and Melilla are today part of Spain and therefore part of the European Union. Consequently, the young people risking their lives were not doing so because they suddenly cared about territorial disputes. Rather, they were doing so because crossing that border represented entry into a world of greater opportunity, and that is the real story. 

Africa is by far the youngest continent on Earth, with a median age of about 19 years compared with more than 40 in Europe. For decades, economists have described this demographic reality as one of Africa’s greatest advantages. Indeed, while Europe and East Asia struggle with aging populations, Africa is expected to provide the labor force, energy, and innovation that could power economic growth for generations.

Yet, the scenes in Ceuta tell a different story. A young population is only an advantage if young people believe they have a future where they are. Instead, in Ceuta in 2021, in Melilla in 2022, and again in Ceuta this summer, thousands of young Africans chose dangerous crossings over staying home; some swam through rough waters, others climbed fences, some risked death, and many knew they could be deported.

Consequently, the message behind those choices should concern every African government far more than any conspiracy theory circulating online.

The reality behind the migration crisis

Many of those who crossed did not know what job they would find in Europe, where they would live, or whether they would even be allowed to stay. Nevertheless, they were still willing to take the risk.

Europe continues to represent something powerful in the imagination of millions of young Africans; not necessarily wealth, but stability, functioning institutions, decent public services, and the belief that hard work can improve one’s life. Whether that perception is entirely accurate is almost irrelevant. What matters, instead, is that, for many young Africans, it appears more convincing than the promises offered by their own countries.

Furthermore, the latest crisis is not an isolated event. In 2021, roughly 8,000 people crossed into Ceuta during a diplomatic confrontation between Morocco and Spain. In 2022, a mass attempt to enter Melilla ended in tragedy. This year’s crisis was larger than either.

The immediate trigger may have been rumors spreading online after a Spanish Supreme Court ruling concerning migrants intercepted at sea. However, rumors alone do not cause tens of thousands of people to leave; they simply accelerate a desire that already exists.

Thus, the underlying reality remains remarkably consistent: Large numbers of young people struggle with unemployment, limited social mobility, and economic uncertainty. At the same time, migration remains intertwined with the delicate relationship between Morocco and Spain, particularly regarding the Sahara and the status of Ceuta and Melilla.

Consequently, for Spain, the crisis has once again exposed its dependence on Moroccan cooperation to manage Europe’s only land border with Africa, making migration a recurring source of political leverage and diplomatic tension.

However, even that is ultimately a European debate. The African debate should be different. Africans should not be asking who is secretly behind the latest migration crisis. Instead, they should be asking why so many young Africans continue to believe that their future lies somewhere else.

No conspiracy theory can answer that question. After all, no foreign government created that sentiment, and no social media rumor can persuade tens of thousands of people to leave unless the desire to leave already exists.

Ultimately, that is the uncomfortable truth at the heart of Ceuta. Africa cannot simultaneously celebrate its youth as its greatest advantage while watching large numbers of that same youth risk their lives to leave. The real scandal is not that Europe continues to attract African youth. Rather, the real scandal is that so many African youths have lost confidence that their own countries can offer them a future worth staying for.

Therefore, if Africa’s young generation is truly its greatest asset, success will not be measured by how many young Africans make it to Europe. Instead, it will be measured by how many choose to stay because they genuinely believe they can build dignified and meaningful lives at home. Until then, Ceuta will not be remembered as an exception. Rather, it will be remembered as another warning.

The writer works for the Israel-Africa Institute.

This post was originally published on here. 

Three of the four major Arab parties, Hadash, Ta’al, and Balad, failed to reach an agreement on running together in a Joint List ahead of the upcoming elections after Ta’al leader MK Ahmad Tibi rejected the proposed Knesset slate for the alliance on Sunday.

The collapse of the negotiations could change the dynamics of how the Arab parties run in the October 27 elections. Polls have shown that the parties could win more seats if they run together than if they run separately.

The fallout came after the internal Arab-led Reconciliation Committee, which helped form the Joint List in 2015, presented how the alliance would be divided.

Hadash, Ta’al, and Balad had empowered the committee to determine the final makeup of the joint slate to avoid prolonging negotiations after disagreements.

The proposal showed the Ta’al party receiving the second and ninth slots on the slate.

“There has been a breakdown in the talks,” a Hadash spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post, following the announcement of the Reconciliation Committee’s proposal.

Both Hadash and Balad leaders had welcomed the proposal and agreed to work in accordance with it, leaving Tibi as the sole party leader rejecting the proposed slate.

According to a KAN News report, two members of the Reconciliation Committee announced their resignations after the breakdown of negotiations.

In the proposed agreement, Hadash chairman, Yousef Jabareen would first on the list followed by Tibi 

The committee’s proposal stated the order of who would be on the list, with the newly appointed Hadash chairman, Yousef Jabareen, first on the Joint List and Tibi in the second slot.

Jabareen replaced longtime party leader MK Ayman Odeh in leading the Hadash list after primaries were held in May.

The Hadash party stated that it welcomed the decision of the Reconciliation Committee and that, throughout the process of negotiations for the Joint List, “we made every effort to reach the broadest possible agreement, out of a commitment to respecting the public’s wishes.”

“Now, the responsibility lies with all of us to move forward without delay and prepare for the joint campaign, increase voter turnout among the Arab public, and ensure the strongest and broadest political representation possible,” Hadash added.

Jabareen stated that only “a large and strong Joint List will work with all its might to send the Netanyahu/Ben-Gvir/Smotrich government home.”

Jabareen told the Post last week that Hadash, Ta’al, and Balad had been negotiating the order of the reestablished Knesset slate, navigating “certain difficulties that arose over the parties’ demands.”

He also told the Post that the door would remain open for the fourth main Arab party, Ra’am, to join the three-party alliance until the deadline for parties to submit their Knesset lists, despite stalled negotiations with the party.

Even if negotiations between the three parties had not failed over the slate, Ra’am, led by MK Mansour Abbas, had not agreed to join the list.

His refusal had marked a setback in efforts to reunite all of the major Arab parties under a single electoral slate.

Currently, the two Arab-Israeli parties in the Knesset are Ra’am and Hadash-Ta’al. The latter is a reduced Joint List that agreed to run together in the 2022 election.

The Balad party, which is not in the Knesset, continues to fail to pass the electoral threshold in polls.

Arab parties achieved their greatest electoral success when running together

In past elections, the Arab parties had the greatest outcomes when running together, with a peak in success in the 2020 elections when the Joint List received 15 seats.

In 2021, the Ra’am party 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.

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.

Regarding the relations with Abbas, Jabareen also told the Post last week that there were currently no ongoing negotiations with Ra’am to join the three-party alliance.

The last major development for the four-party alliance was in January, when all the leaders, including Abbas, signed a commitment to work toward reestablishing the Joint List bloc.

Since the agreement was signed, Abbas had said he would form an alliance with the other Arab parties as a purely technical bloc, which could split up in the Knesset after the elections, opening the possibility for Ra’am to be part of a coalition again.

This post was originally published on here. 

US President Donald Trump claimed that the US is “only semi-negotiating” with Iran as it watches Tehran struggle to overcome economic pressure, stating that Washington is “low-keying it” in their approach during a phone call with Axios on Sunday. 

“We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” he stated.

Trump emphasized that the US blockade on Iranian ports along the Strait of Hormuz has contributed to Iran being “in very bad shape.”

According to Axios, Trump did not express frustration with Iran regarding Tehran’s reluctance to finalize an agreement with Oman that would allow for the waterway to be reopened. 

“It will work out. It always works out. It’s like a chess game,” Trump said.

This is a developing story.

This post was originally published on here. 

‘Summer at the Movies’ program brings family, films, and fun to Israel’s national parks, historic sites

If you’re looking for something to do with the kids, here’s a great idea: the Israel Nature and Parks Authority is presenting family films at ancient fortresses, Roman amphitheaters, desert landscapes, a hill overlooking the shores of the Kinneret, and other outdoor venues around the country this month.

The low-cost midweek events, part of the authority’s Summer at the Movies program, will combine films with guided tours, games, sunset views, and visits to some of Israel’s best-known historical sites.

Summer evenings offer visitors an opportunity to experience the parks after the hottest hours of the day, when the parks take on a quieter, more relaxed atmosphere.

“Evening hours give the national parks and nature reserves a different character – calmer, quieter, and more pleasant,” said Sarit Falchi Miara, the Nature and Parks Authority’s northern district director of visitor services and the visitor experience.

“We invite the public to visit the national parks and nature reserves during the more pleasant hours of the day, enjoy the unique atmosphere, and experience nature in another way.”

Advanced administration is required; Matmon members, residents of Yehiam are eligible for discounts

Admission is by advance registration through the Nature and Parks Authority website. Matmon members and residents of Yehiam are eligible for discounted admission.

At the Yehiam Fortress National Park in the Western Galilee, visitors can spend an evening exploring the remains of the Crusader and Ottoman fortress before watching the animated family film Night of the Zoopocalypse within its ancient walls. Visitors will be able to climb the fortress towers and enjoy views of the Western Galilee before the screening.

Sussita (Hippos) National Park, overlooking Lake Kinneret, will host a screening of Zootopia 2. Before the movie, visitors can join a guided tour among the remains of the ancient city, see its basalt columns, and learn about the history of Sussita while watching the sunset over the lake.

The Good Samaritan Museum, near Ma’aleh Adumim, will present two outdoor animation screenings surrounded by the site’s collection of ancient mosaics. Tom and Jerry: The Lost Compass and Friends on Full will be shown during the month at separate screenings.

Zootopia 2 and Ice Age: Collision Course will be screened at various historical sites

The Herodium National Park will also present Zootopia 2, against the backdrop of the remains of King Herod’s palace. Visitors will be able to take in the views from the summit and explore the site at sunset before the screening.

At the Tzipori National Park, families can combine an interactive historical adventure with a movie in the site’s ancient Roman theater, and visitors can take part in Mysteries in Time, a game that leads participants along the park’s paths, past its ancient buildings and celebrated mosaics. After completing the activities, families can gather in the Roman theater for a screening of Ice Age: Collision Course. Advance registration is required, and Matmon members receive discounted admission.

The Nature and Parks Authority’s annual Matmon membership includes free admission to approximately 65 national parks and nature reserves, as well as discounts on campsites, guided tours, and selected activities. A newly launched Matmon application also provides members with a digital membership card, QR-code entry, information about benefits and events, and navigation to nearby parks and reserves.

Visit the website for more information and the full schedule of the events. parks.org.il/category/summer-activities

This post was originally published on here. 

Police officers were attacked by dozens of men after arresting a Jewish Israeli suspect who assaulted officers during a weapons seizure near the Israeli settlement of Kochav Hashahar, in the northern West Bank, on Sunday.

Police said the suspect began attacking officers who were at the scene to seize a weapons cache found in the area. He injured a number of officers before being arrested.

Following his arrest, some 50 individuals arrived at the scene and began disrupting police’s activity, surrounding the officers and eventually causing the suspect to escape. 

Law enforcement launched a manhunt to locate the attackers, and bomb disposal experts were called to the scene to neutralize the seized arms.

This is a developing story.

This post was originally published on here. 

Israel Police on Sunday arrested a young woman in her 20s suspected of impersonating a man and maintaining romantic and sexual relationships with five different women, from her apartment in Petah Tikva.

Police officers seized a number of digital devices, including laptop computers, a mobile phone, and several digital storage devices, and will seek to extend her detention on Monday, while requesting permission to publish her name in order to locate additional possible victims.

Four of the women contacted the police, causing investigations to begin on July 26, which led to authorities locating another suspected victim.

Suspect communicated via phone, online communication

The suspect contacted them via phone and online communication over several years, the five women claimed.

“For months we were in a romantic and personal relationship, until I discovered that it was a woman,” one of the victims stated.

Each of the five women was in a relationship with the suspect during a different period and for an extended period, while convinced that they were communicating with a man, until it became clear to them at a certain point that it was a woman behind the persona.

This post was originally published on here. 

The current wave of antisemitism will – and already is – fundamentally altering Jewish life in the countries with the largest communities outside of Israel: the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Germany.

Almost three years since October 7, and the wave of antisemitism is not receding; it is becoming more pervasive and more commonplace. In the US, for example, one in three individuals said they were targets of antisemitism, and over half of Jews have changed their behavior out of fear of antisemitism, according to a recent survey.

The antisemitism genie will not go back into the bottle on its own. Political and social polarization, the convergence of left-wing and right-wing hatred, hostility toward Jews in academia, greater proclivity towards antisemitism among younger adults, well-funded Israel-defamation campaigns by state actors, and growing immigration from Arab countries with high rates of religious extremism – all signal that we have likely crossed a point of no return.

This doesn’t bode ill only for Jews in the West; there are major repercussions for Israel as well. Foremost, its strategic alliance with the United States is in jeopardy, as public sentiment turns increasingly anti-Israel and somewhat anti-Jewish. Israel will need to reassess its strategic situation and act.

First, Israel must continue to pursue military self-sufficiency. It must have the capacity to fight an extended war without dependency on the US (or any other country) for arms, munitions, and spare parts. After all, a future American president may simply refuse to provide them.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared Israel’s new situation to the ancient isolationist Greek city-state of Sparta, which successfully fought its wars alone. The analogy was useful but flawed: in a global world, Israel should not aspire to Spartan isolation.

Rather, Israel should redouble efforts to build robust alliances with non-Western countries that don’t fall along the trend-lines of rising antisemitism – including India, former Soviet Republics, countries in South America, the Far East, and Africa, including moderate Muslim nations.

Among Western allies, Israel should foster mechanisms of co-dependence, so that there will be a real cost for such countries should they choose to abandon their partnerships with Israel.

Counterweight to hate

In parallel, both Israel and the global Jewish community need to acknowledge the real danger of both state and non-state actors who promote delegitimization of Israel – which invariably leads to increased antisemitism.

Countries like Qatar, Iran, and Turkey, and offshoots of various Muslim Brotherhood organizations and the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, are increasingly motivated to undermine public support for Israel in the West, especially after Israel’s military coup-de-force following October 7.

An effective Israeli strategy does not necessarily mean confronting these perpetrators directly, but rather building alternative centers of power that will increasingly serve as a counterweight to the spreaders of hate.

Israel should also ensure that its relations with global Jewish communities are stronger than ever and based on as broad a “Zionist tent” as possible. The focus should be on maintaining national responsibility rather than narrow partisan or ideological considerations. 

Representatives from all corners of Zionism and swaths of Israeli society must be involved. Each can then more effectively engage their ideological counterparts in the West and the Jewish world.

Finally, Israel must come to terms with the fact that some of the harm is self-inflicted. Israeli officials and representatives should refrain from automatically or reflexively blaming all criticism on antisemitism, and should instead leave room for introspection and improvement. Failing to do so harms Israel from within, as much as it does from without. 

This includes the recent increase in Israeli Jewish extremist violence against Palestinians; Israel cannot expect that turning a blind eye or taking half-measures against the perpetrators will be sufficient at home or abroad. Israel’s image is also exacerbated by problematic statements from opponents of Israel’s policies on the Israeli far Left and Right.

These are leveraged by Israel’s opponents and antisemitic elements in the West.

The post-October 7 world is still taking shape. Yet it already appears that the long “golden age” of Jewish status and prosperity in the West, especially in the US (and Canada), is steadily eroding, and a different reality is emerging.

History teaches that the Jewish people have an extraordinary ability to adapt, survive, and even thrive in changing conditions. The question is not whether such adaptation will occur this time as well, but rather what it will look like – and what the accompanying costs and opportunities will be.

The more Israel accelerates the process of recognizing this new reality and developing responses to the challenges it poses, the more effective the adaptation process and optimal the new reality will be.

The writer is a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, an independent research institute focused on foreign and security policy, and managing director of the Comper Center for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at the University of Haifa. He is a major (reserve) in the Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit.

This post was originally published on here. 

Israel lost one of its staunchest supporters in the US Congress with the passing this past week of Rep. Kay Granger at the age of 83.

She was a trailblazing Texas Republican who served as the first female mayor of Fort Worth and later spent 14 terms (28 years) in Congress. 

Over those 28 years, she was in Congress during the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden, and both Trump administrations. She was also the first woman from her party to chair the powerful House Committee on Appropriations.

Earlier, as chair of the House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee from 2011 to 2017, Granger controlled the allocation of funding for the US State Department and foreign aid.

In 2016, she took the lead on an Obama-initiated $38 billion, ten-year military aid package for Israel, which she successfully pushed through Congress. The package included 33 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighters, actually built in Granger’s Texas district.
A former teacher and small-business owner, Granger served for four years as Fort Worth’s mayor before being elected to Congress in 1996. After becoming the appropriations chairwoman in 2019, she wielded immense influence over federal spending. 

She helped steer funds toward Fort Worth-based defense companies such as Lockheed Martin and the helicopter maker Bell Textron, many of which worked with Israeli defense contractors as well.

In 1996, while holding down the mayor’s chair, she ran for an open seat in Congress in a longtime Democratic stronghold covering parts of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Though Granger had identified as a Republican to the United States Conference of Mayors, the Fort Worth mayoralty is nonpartisan.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties courted her to campaign as their candidate. She decided to run as a Republican and fended off conservative primary critics who called her too moderate.

Her victory with nearly 58 percent of the vote ended the district’s century-long Democratic hold. She was the first Republican woman to represent a Texas district in the House and was reelected 13 times after her initial win.

In addition to spearheading the 2016 landmark $38b. military assistance agreement between the United States and Israel, she consistently advocated for full funding of Israel’s security and defense needs through her role on the House Committee on Appropriations.

A personal encounter with Fort Worth’s mayor

I met Granger at the Texas State Capitol some 25 years ago, as she had evidenced an interest in having Texas establish a state foreign export and direct investment promotion office in Israel, something our company, Atid EDI Ltd., had been doing for other states as well.

We spoke at length about various aspects of such an office, how it could benefit the Texas economy, and why Israel was the best location in the Middle East for such a regional initiative.

While the idea did not garner the state’s support at that time, I was moved by her obvious love and respect for Israel and what Israelis have accomplished here.

Although it is not clear how many times Granger visited Israel, documentation indicates she visited the country at least three times throughout her extensive career in public service.

Her first visit was in the early 1990s, during her tenure as the mayor of Fort Worth. She joined a delegation of municipal chief executives invited by legendary Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek.

Granger returned to Israel in 1998 as part of a high-profile congressional delegation led by then-House speaker Newt Gingrich to celebrate Israel’s 50th anniversary. 

Then, in 2009, as a member of the House Committee on Appropriations, she joined a congressional delegation that met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior defense and intelligence officials to discuss regional security.

Due to her long-running roles on the aforementioned House committees, she was frequently hosted by Israeli politicians on additional diplomatic and security missions.

AIPAC posted on X/Twitter, “We are saddened by the passing of Congresswoman Kay Granger, a trailblazer in public service and a steadfast friend of the US-Israel relationship.”

It added that as part of her political career, Granger “championed life‑saving security assistance to Israel for many years, ensuring that our ally had the resources it needed to defend its people. We extend our deepest condolences to her family, loved ones, and the Fort Worth community.”

Regarding her devotion to her home city of Fort Worth, Eric Fox, a former Lockheed Martin Aeronautics senior director of government relations, posted in the Fort Worth Report, “If there is a Mount Rushmore of Fort Worth, Kay Granger is on it.”

Israel, of course, needs all the friends it can get. So, thank you, Kay Granger, and we pray that your soul will occupy a high place in heaven above and that your memory will be blessed.

The writer, a 42-year resident of Jerusalem, is a former national president of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, a past chairperson of the board of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, and a board member of the Israel-America Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM).

This post was originally published on here. 

Since the beginning of July, Israel has had no state comptroller – the role responsible for inspecting, reviewing, and auditing policies and operations of the state. This is a result of Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana’s failure to take the necessary steps to implement a Supreme Court ruling ordering the Knesset to hold a repeat vote to elect the state comptroller, following misconduct that took place during the first votes.

Despite a clear and binding court order, the election process has not been completed, leaving the country’s supreme audit institution without a head.

Beyond the highly improper decision, to put it mildly, to disregard a Supreme Court ruling, the situation is causing immediate harm, particularly in the midst of election season. 

The role of the state comptroller

The state comptroller plays a critical role in elections, overseeing political parties in several different areas. After the elections, among other things, the comptroller issues reports on the parties’ conduct during elections, in which they can determine that a party has failed to comply with the law and impose fines on it.

In real time, they issue directives on the management of party finances, provide parties with advisory opinions on routine matters, have the authority to determine that a donation to a party is prohibited, play a central role in determining the status of non-party actors active in elections, and more.

Even more pressing is the state comptroller’s role in the processes by which parties select their candidates.

Primary season ahead of the election to the 26th Knesset is in full swing. Candidates are raising funds, hiring consultants and campaign managers, and racing from one parlor meeting to the next, all in an effort to win the confidence of their fellow party members and secure an electable slot on their party’s Knesset list.

This year, however, these intraparty elections are taking place under unprecedented circumstances: without the state comptroller, the institution charged with overseeing the legality of campaign financing.

This is not a technical glitch or a minor problem. Intraparty competition, too, must be conducted according to clear and equal ground rules. The law, for example, limits the amount a candidate may raise in donations, sets an overall spending cap for each candidate’s campaign, and imposes detailed reporting obligations.

The purpose of this framework is clear: to reduce the influence of money on politics, ensure equal opportunity among candidates, and strengthen public confidence in the democratic process.

The effect on party primaries

The state comptroller also has broad authority to audit candidates’ reports. For years, after every round of party primaries, the comptroller published detailed reports documenting irregularities, deficiencies, and violations of the law.

In many cases, substantial fines were imposed on candidates who exceeded spending caps, accepted prohibited donations, or failed to meet their reporting obligations. The very knowledge that their financial activity would be closely scrutinized served as an important deterrent and encouraged compliance with the rules.

This year, for the first time since the issue was regulated by law, that oversight mechanism is paralyzed.

In effect, the Knesset itself, which designated the state comptroller as the body responsible for overseeing primary campaign financing, is hollowing out the very provisions it enacted. The rules of the game remain in place, but the referee has disappeared from the field.

A candidate who scrupulously follows the law may therefore find themselves competing against a rival who chooses to flout the rules, assuming that the chances of being audited or penalized are lower than ever. That possibility alone is enough to undermine both public trust and the candidates’ own confidence in the fairness of the process.

Beyond implications for the elections, there are other matters of state that are not being carried out in the absence of a state comptroller. No new state comptroller reports can be published, even those that have already been completed, and no examinations can be launched into new matters that were not planned in advance.

In addition, the state comptroller also serves by law as the ombudsman. Without a state comptroller, protective orders for whistleblowers cannot be issued. Public servants who seek to expose corruption are therefore left without legal protection and vulnerable to dismissal or retaliation.

Correcting this situation requires no legislation, public committees, or new oversight mechanisms. All that is required is to comply with the law and respect the High Court’s ruling by completing the election of a state comptroller without delay and allowing the institution to resume carrying out its duties.

Particularly at a time when debate over the state of Israeli democracy is intensifying, the Israeli public ought to be deeply concerned by a situation in which one of the state’s central oversight mechanisms has been rendered inoperative in the midst of party primaries and a general election campaign.

In a democracy, elected officials have a responsibility to obey court rulings, complete appointments required by law, and ensure institutions responsible for oversight and enforcement of the rules can do their job.

Prof. Ofer Kenig is a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute’s Political Reform Program and a senior lecturer at Ashkelon Academic College.

Dr. Assaf Shapira is the head of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Political Reform Program.

This post was originally published on here. 

Russia and China could feel emboldened to begin a hot conflict with America due to the US’s rapidly depleting weapons supply, senior officials and defense experts told the New York Times on Saturday.

The US has burned through its offensive and defensive weapons in its war against Iran. Sources told the NYT that the shortage could last beyond the Trump administration’s tenure in office, leaving future presidencies vulnerable to Russian and Chinese attacks.

Tom Karako, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the depleted munitions stockpile was a “generational annihilation of the means of conventional deterrence.”

“It’s impossible for that not to have a significant effect on the decision calculus of Russia and China,” said Karako. “They may do something quite deliberate and at the time of their choosing, because keep in mind, we’re going to take years to reconstitute.”

Reuters recently reported that the US has used “virtually all” of its highly accurate long-range missiles. Notably, each long-range munition costs about a million dollars to produce.

As such, the Pentagon has been forced to move ships, aircraft, and air defense units from Asia and Europe to the Middle East. US officials who spoke to the NYT said that this has had “cascading consequences” for troop morale and equipment maintenance.

Low munitions stockpile could cause issues for presidents after Trump

The low stockpile has been a recent source of tension between the president and the Pentagon.

US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine reportedly has been seeking “off-ramps” for the conflict.

The NYT reported that Caine informed US President Donald Trump about the munitions shortages before the war with Iran began, but the president chose to go ahead with the conflict.

The Washington Post found that in the first month of the conflict with Iran, the US had fired more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles and over 1,000 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles, and used at least 1,300 tactical ballistic missiles. The NYT reported that the US used at least 1,500 Patriot interceptors.

According to sources speaking on the condition of anonymity, the NYT reported that the US’s stockpile of Patriot interceptor missiles is at a low of 1,700 munitions.

The Trump administration has pushed US defense contractors to ramp up production for munitions.

“Our defense companies are, at this moment, making more munitions than they have ever made before, in addition to expanding their plants and equipment at record levels,” Trump said in July.

The subsequently low stockpile levels have been a driving factor in Trump’s latest decisions in his campaign against Iran. The president reportedly chose not to go through with a major bombing campaign he threatened last month due to the low level of munitions.

The Washington Post reported last week that Trump confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the shortage, which he assumed “had been fixed.”

Trump has also reportedly grown deeply upset at the leaked stories about the low stores of munitions, and has begun hunting down employees who have leaked stories. He told advisers to downplay the issue or blame his predecessors in an effort to avoid showing weakness to adversaries like Russia or China. 

“Our defense companies are making more munitions than ever before, while rapidly expanding their plants and equipment at record levels,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, according to the NYT.

“Anyone entrusted with access to classified military information who leaks it to the media is betraying that trust and breaking federal law, and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Trump has gone so far as to say that the US had “far more munitions than anyone in the world” and “far more than we need.”

How do low US stockpiles affect Taiwan, Ukraine?

Because the US has deterred weapons from Ukraine, Kyiv has been unable to shield itself from Russian attacks. 
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that interceptors for Ukraine “could have saved the lives” of at least dozens of people killed in a Russian attack last week.

He added that “it is this shortage of ballistic missile interceptors that only encourages Russia to launch such attacks that take human lives.”

Notably, Trump recently walked back his public agreement to give Zelensky the license to produce Patriot interceptors, though the Ukrainian president appears to be continuing negotiations with US defense contractors.

In Russia, pro-Kremlin bloggers have been noting the depleted US stockpiles as a win for Moscow.

“The situation is shaping up very favorably,” Aleksandr Kots, a pro-Russia war blogger, recently wrote.

“The less precision-guided weaponry the US has, the less will reach Ukraine.”

Kots added that even if the administration that succeeds Trump tries to advance aid to Ukraine, “doing so will be impossible with empty arsenals.”

The loss of interceptor missiles could be felt particularly acutely in Asia, as the US braces for a potential Chinese takeover of Taiwan.

The US military diverted several shipments of Tomahawk missiles and other long-range missiles from the US’s Indo-Pacific Command during the Iran war.

In a separate instance, air-defense systems were diverted from South Korea to the Middle East, leaving US troops in the country vulnerable to potential attacks from North Korea, sources told the NYT.

Reportedly, Russia and China have long understood that the US’s weapons stockpile is gradually depleting.

This has wide-ranging effects in Asia and Europe. Officials in Asia told the NYT that they worry that South Korea and Japan will begin to build nuclear weapons to establish their own forms of deterrence. In Europe, US allies have begun to purchase more weapons from other countries because of America’s weapons backlog.

Analysts told the NYT that a long conflict in Iran would therefore benefit Beijing and Moscow, and could cause Russia to consider an incursion into NATO territory if it believes it would at least outlast the US.

This comes as the Department of Defense told US defense industry leaders to prepare plans to escalate production and delivery of weapons as reports of munitions shortages escalate, The Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing a Defense Department memo. 

Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg wrote that the leaders had no more than 21 days to present plans to “drive significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities,” on Wednesday, according to the memo.

“Years-long development cycles are not acceptable. We must dramatically accelerate our program schedules and expand our production capacity now.”

Danya Saperstein, Esther Davis, and Reuters contributed to this report. 

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Syria and Russia reached a memorandum of understanding to settle the future of Russian bases at Tartous and Hmeimim following 18 months of intensive negotiations, the Syrian foreign ministry said on Sunday, according to the Syrian state news agency.

The ministry said the Syrian state would take over management of civilian facilities, including Hmeimim airport and the commercial berth at Tartous port, allowing them to be gradually integrated into the country’s civilian administration.

It said military facilities would be repurposed as joint training and qualification centers under new arrangements preserving the interests of both sides, with the transition to be completed within three months.

Moscow’s Middle East military foothold

Russia’s naval facility at Tartous and Hmeimim air base have long been Moscow’s principal military footholds in the Mediterranean and Middle East.

Their future has been the subject of negotiations with Syria’s new leadership since former President Bashar al-Assad was ousted in December 2024.

In a separate statement, Syria’s General Authority for Ports and Customs said Syria would take over the commercial sites previously operated by Russia at Tartous port, including Pier No. 4 and its associated warehouses and facilities.

Reuters reported last month that Russia was seeking to establish a commercial logistics hub at Tartous port using Pier No. 4, a restricted zone outside the naval base.

The two sides said at the time the hub would remain under Syrian control, with all operations subject to approval by Syria’s General Authority for Ports and Customs.

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The Toronto Police Service announced the arrests of two additional individuals in connection with a hate propaganda investigation stemming from a pro-Palestinian protest earlier this year.

Both suspects face charges of willful promotion of hatred and public incitement of hatred. The latest enforcement action brings the total number of people charged in the ongoing investigation to eight.

According to police, the investigation traces back to a weekly protest on March 15, when pro-Palestinian protesters and pro-Israel counter-protesters gathered at the intersection of Bathurst Street and Sheppard Avenue West.

Investigators allege that earlier that morning, the accused individuals visited a storage locker to retrieve antisemitic signs.

Later that afternoon, they allegedly joined other protesters at the intersection, displaying the signs in full view of the public and a group of pro-Israel protesters situated across the street. Police stated that the individuals marched toward the Israel supporters while shouting derogatory slurs.

Members of the Hate Crime Unit executed a search warrant in Toronto, locating and arresting two suspects on Friday. Daniela Bonamico, 40, of Toronto, and Shahram Nayeb-Yazdi, 63, of Toronto, were each charged with wilful promotion of hatred and public incitement of hatred.

The arrests follow a series of charges previously announced by authorities. In April, Muhammad Anas Sial, 33, of Toronto, was charged with public incitement of hatred and wilful promotion of hatred. Subsequently, in June, Hosaam Hemdan, 19, Omer Turcan, 43, Yasaf Skaikh, 46, Hasan Aydin, 47, all of Toronto, and Syed Hussaini, 43, of Whitby, were arrested and faced identical charges, with Hemdan, Turcan, and Hussaini also receiving additional counts of disguise with intent.

Police noted that the suspects were scheduled to appear in court at the Toronto Regional Bail Centre on Saturday.

Jewish groups demand enforcement of Canadian hate propaganda laws 

Following the March rally, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), B’nai Brith Canada, and UJA Federation of Greater Toronto condemned the rhetoric and sent a joint letter to Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw demanding immediate enforcement of Canada’s hate propaganda laws.

CIJA released a statement on social media today, saying, “Following a March 15 hateful protest targeting Toronto’s Jewish community – with propaganda and signs evoking the Nazi era – we joined @UJAFederation, @BnaiBrithCanada and thousands of Canadians in demanding that authorities take a tougher stand.”

The advocacy group welcomed the update, stating: “We welcome the Toronto Police’s announcement that two more extremists have been arrested and charged with wilful promotion of hatred and public incitement of hatred, bringing the total number charged to eight.”

CIJA stressed that “There must be consequences for promoting hatred – whether at home or abroad. We call on Foreign Minister @AnitaAnandMP and Global Affairs Canada (@CanadaFP) to explain what steps are being taken to ensure that extremists, including hate-criminals, do not export their vitriol beyond Canada’s borders.”

CIJA urged government leaders and authorities to “hold criminals accountable. And our political leaders must ensure their words and actions do not embolden extremists who demonize Israel and contribute to an increasingly hostile environment for Jewish Canadians.”

Surge of recent incidents target Jewish, Israeli institutions across Canada

The latest police arrests come amid heightened tensions surrounding recurring protests at the Bathurst Street and Sheppard Avenue West intersection, coinciding with a surge of incidents targeting Jewish and Israeli institutions across Canada over the past month.

These include suspected antisemitic arson and shooting attacks targeting Jewish-owned Kiva’s Bagel Bar locations in Toronto, the destruction of the kosher restaurant Noam in Montreal, and an incident involving an attempted knife attack at the Israel Pavilion kitchen tent during the Heritage Festival in Edmonton last Monday.

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A visitor at the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial was condemned by other visitors for wearing a white T-shirt featuring a “Free Palestine” slogan and an illustration allegedly depicting Fatah militant Dalal Mughrabi.

Mughrabi helped orchestrate the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in Israel, an attack that resulted in the deaths of 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children.

Footage circulating on social media captured the group walking up a staircase and through the memorial grounds. As the camera tracked a young man walking up the steps, the back of his white t-shirt allegedly displayed a graphic of Mughrabi in front of a Palestinian flag, with text reading “Free Palestine” on the front of the t-shirt.

The video then shifted to show an exchange between visitors and members of the youth group. An individual recording the interaction confronted the tour leader, asking, “Are you the leader of the group here?” When the group leader confirmed, the person recording asked, “Can we explain why ‘Free Palestine’ shirts are allowed to be shown at a concentration camp?”

The group leader responded that she had to work with the group, leading the questioner to press further, “You have to help us understand why it’s… so we’re respecting the dead and what happened here by also having political shirts?”

As the interaction continued, a member of the group held up her hand to block the camera, with one participant stating, “I’m asking you now not to film; he’s under 18, it’s not allowed.”

‘This is a genocide!’ the visitor recording said to the visitor wearing the t-shirt 

The person recording countered, “This is the education that you’re giving them? This is how you honor Holocaust victims? That’s how you think it’s ok to educate people?”

As the confrontation continued, the person recording walked alongside the group and challenged another participant wearing a white t-shirt and black shorts. The person recording stated, “You are saying with your shirt that you are okay with the murder of Jews. You are”. The participant in the white shirt responded: “No, it’s not saying…”

The person recording pressed further and asked, “So what is he saying?” The participant replied, “He is saying it’s not okay to murder Palestinian people.”

The person recording responded, “That’s what he’s saying here? Really? You come here, and you call that a genocide while you’re at a concentration camp? You call a war a genocide? You call fighting for the safety of your people to try to not have a genocide… you call that a genocide while you’re in a concentration camp?”

As the group continued walking down the path toward the memorial exit, another participant wearing a blue floral top and black skirt turned around and engaged, while the person recording repeated, “You come here, and you call that a genocide while you’re at a concentration camp? Do better! Your teachers have to do better! This is a f**king genocide here what you’re learning about. Don’t f***ing call other things a genocide. This is a genocide! Shame on you!”

Official statement from museum administration

In an official statement released regarding the controversy, the Mauthausen Memorial addressed the incident. “An incident occurred during a visit by around 600 participants from an international anti-fascist youth camp. One participant was wearing a t-shirt with the slogan “Free Palestine.”

Our staff had not initially noticed this whilst supervising the large group. Nor was it initially possible to make sense of the vociferous reaction from one female visitor.”

The museum administration further explained how staff intervened once the situation became clear, noting, “Once it became clear what the issue was, our staff reacted immediately. They tried to de-escalate the situation and, at the same time, called the police for assistance. However, the situation had already been brought under control by the time the police arrived.”

The memorial also outlined its guiding principles for handling political expressions and provocations on site, stating that while it is a place of remembrance and historical-political education that welcomes all visitors with openness, staff prioritize de-escalation, open dialogue over hasty judgments, and safeguarding the dignity of the victims and the solemnity of the memorial grounds.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Sunday that Israel rejects the 15-point Gaza framework formulated by the Board of Peace. But could it be that, despite Israel’s public statements, the reality on the ground is somewhat different?

If one looks at Israel’s actions rather than its public rhetoric, the picture is more complicated. In practice, Israel is currently implementing the 15-point agreement.

For several days now, it has refrained from carrying out targeted killings and has maintained the ceasefire in Gaza. The directive was issued to the military on Monday evening by the IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, following an instruction from the political leadership. Since then, no targeted killings have been carried out.

At the same time, in terms of Israel’s military deployment on the ground, the IDF is effectively positioned along the original Yellow Line, which encompasses approximately 53% of the Gaza Strip, with no current positions or forces deployed beyond.

So, yes. Publicly, Israeli officials are sending strong verbal messages rejecting the 15-point framework. But when it comes to what is actually happening on the ground, the Israeli government is, in practice, adhering to the framework.

Issue of Gaza’s reconstruction

The issue of Gaza’s reconstruction is more complicated. Israeli statements on this issue have been unequivocal and dramatic: There will be no reconstruction of Gaza before Hamas is fully disarmed.

But there is an important distinction that needs to be made.

The position of the Board of Peace is that what is currently being built in the Rafah area – inside the portion of Gaza under Israeli control – is not permanent reconstruction. Rather, these are temporary structures. However, their deployment requires certain initial infrastructure work.

In other words, while Israel continues to publicly insist that there will be no reconstruction before genuine demilitarization, the activities currently taking place in the Rafah area appear to be consistent with the framework’s distinction between temporary infrastructure and permanent reconstruction.

All of this creates a notable gap between Israel’s public messaging and the practical implementation of the framework on the ground.

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Nissim Louk, the father of the late Shani Louk, who was murdered in the October 7 massacre after being abducted from the Nova music festival, woke up early that morning after hearing the rockets toward Tel Aviv, he described to 103FM on Sunday morning.

“At around 10:00, one of Shani’s friends sent me this picture and told me it could be Shani,” he added. “I recognized the small tattoos she had on her leg, and her vehicle had indeed entered Gaza and disappeared.”

He also described what led to the painful but important determination that Shani was no longer alive, bringing a measure of closure to the family.

“Two ZAKA members who happened to stop to pray Mincha pulled over at the side of the road, and then suddenly they saw some hair, dreadlocks like that, and a little blood. They carried out a DNA test, and Shani was found. It was really fortunate that they stopped there, found it and sent it to the Institute of Forensic Medicine.”

He continued, speaking of his and the nation’s pain, saying, “We lost 3,000 children from October 7, and the hardest thing for me is that on Friday night I make Kiddush with the family and suddenly there is an empty chair. There are 3,000 families here making Kiddush, and a child is missing from the table, sometimes two, sometimes three, entire families. Three thousand families make Kiddush on Friday night, and a child is missing from the table. Last week two soldiers fell, and I was on air on Channel 11, and I was thinking about what would happen two hours later, when their fathers make Kiddush and their children are not around the table.”

Miri Regev accused of causing October 7

Louk also addressed the controversy that erupted following his encounter with Transportation Minister Miri Regev and the harsh criticism he directed at her.

“Just as I came up from the parking lot at Mahane Yehuda, I parked the car and so on. I hadn’t seen anything beforehand. When I came upstairs, I saw some friends, I saw Miri Regev‘s caravan, I saw them taking pictures, outfits and so on.

“I was probably already angry beforehand, and suddenly the Mizrahi in me came out. It’s very easy to make a Mizrahi angry. Then I told them, ‘They caused October 7, you caused the murder of my daughter.’ Miri Regev was a little surprised and then immediately went into her caravan. She disappeared completely,” Louk said, describing the minister’s reaction.

“Then all kinds of people from her entourage came up to me, pretty pro-Bibi people. Not that I have anything against Bibi supporters, but then they came and told me, ‘You caused October 7.'”

“Miri Regev’s daughter was evacuated from Nova at 4:30 in the morning,” he said, adding, “They evacuated her before this whole event. I don’t want to ask all those questions. If that’s true, then there are things here that we don’t understand at all.”

Gaza hostage’s father criticizes Likud Party

He went on to sharply criticize the ruling Likud Party.

“I was very angry at Likud for becoming the Left. This Left is destroying the country. The money and the bribery, bribery blinds us, it is destroying the people of Israel from within.”

In closing, he said, “My daughter’s name is Shani. Shani is a very strange name. It speaks about change, something new that is supposed to happen. What is Shani? Shani is, left against right, and therefore we are obligated to lower the flames. We owe a blood debt to 3,000 children. That blood is connected to the entire people of Israel. The soldiers who run into battle know that they have a debt to the blood, and that debt will not disappear until we make a change.

“There must be change among the people of Israel. We need to restore integrity, restore the values we grew up with, restore love, restore justice, and also religion. Nothing happened. We need to take back the land for ourselves, touch it and understand that it is ours. It cannot be that Netanyahu is giving away the land.”

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United Hatzalah warned on Sunday against the dangers of leaving children inside hot cars, with the latest victim being a 5-year-old boy who died the same day after he was allegedly left inside his family’s car in Lod for about two hours.

“It can happen to loving, responsible parents,” the organization warned. “Before you leave your car, stop for one second and look in the back seat.”

The Lod boy was found unconscious inside the vehicle and showing signs of heatstroke. Magen David Adom teams performed advanced resuscitation efforts before evacuating him in critical condition to Shamir Medical Center, Assaf Harofeh, where doctors pronounced him dead.

According to preliminary details under investigation, the family returned home after a drive during which the boy had fallen asleep. Family members are suspected of leaving the vehicle while the child remained inside.

About two hours later, the father realized that his son was not in the house. He returned to the vehicle, found the boy unconscious, and called MDA.

Officers from the Lod police station in the Shfela district arrived at the scene and opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the boy’s death. Police began collecting evidence and investigating how the child came to be left inside the vehicle.

MDA medic Efi Rosenblum, who lives nearby, received the call through the organization’s first responders app and was the first medic to arrive at the scene. Rosenblum said that as he approached, people signaled for him to stop and brought the boy to him after removing him from the vehicle.

“They took a child out of a private vehicle who, according to them, had been locked inside for a prolonged period,” Rosenblum said. “He was very hot to the touch, and I immediately began resuscitation efforts.”

Child pronounced dead at hospital despite resuscitation efforts

Additional MDA teams and a mobile intensive care unit arrived shortly afterward, and resuscitation efforts continued as the boy was taken to the hospital.

Senior MDA medic Haim Shavit and MDA medic Yosef Yitzhak Sagiv said the boy was unconscious, had no pulse, was not breathing, and was showing signs of heatstroke.

“We began performing advanced resuscitation efforts that included chest compressions and ventilation, and evacuated him in a mobile intensive care unit to the hospital in critical condition while we fought for his life,” the medics said.

The boy was taken to the trauma room in the pediatric emergency department at Shamir Medical Center, Assaf Harofeh, where he was pronounced dead.

Latest of 23 such incidents between 2021 and 2025, 53 additional non-fatal cases

The Lod incident is the latest in a series of cases involving children who were forgotten or became trapped inside vehicles.

According to data from Beterem, Safe Kids Israel, 23 children died in such incidents between 2021 and 2025. Another 53 children were injured and survived, while children were rescued in time and unharmed in an additional 1,513 cases.

The circumstances surrounding Sunday’s incident remain under investigation.

Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.

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Rescue teams from the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority searched for a boy after his boat capsized on the Jordan River near the Hula Valley on Sunday, the authority confirmed.

Magen David Adom paramedics attempted to provide emergency medical care after he was located, but were forced to declare him dead after failing to resuscitate him, MDA confirmed.

Israel Police officers and other emergency services assisted in the search efforts.

A United Hatzalah drone unit also participated in the search, with members of the Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit also providing emotional first aid at the scene, the emergency service confirmed.

“A 12-year-old boy was located and pulled from the water by the Golan Rescue Unit and brought to the banks of the Jordan River without signs of life. Unfortunately, he was pronounced dead at the scene. United Hatzalah assisted in the search efforts with our drone unit, and our Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit provided emotional first aid at the scene due to the nature of the incident,” United Hatzalah EMTs said.

Numerous police officers, including an air unit helicopter and rescue unit volunteers, were dispatched to the scene and conducted extensive searches in an attempt to locate the boy, Israel Police added.

This is a developing story.

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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei around the start of the president’s third year in office in late July, state media said on Sunday, and a paramilitary leader promised footage of Khamenei in the future.

Pezeshkian has given differing accounts in recent weeks about his access to Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since he succeeded his father in the role in March.

On July 21, the president said interactions with the supreme leader were “increasing day by day”, but in early August he said communicating with Khamenei was “very difficult.”

The late July meeting covered military affairs and the economy, including securing resources, managing foreign exchange and energy use, as well as economic ties with foreign partners, according to state media.

In May, state media also reported that Pezeshkian had met Khamenei for several hours, in what was then the first publicly reported meeting between the two since Khamenei became supreme leader.

Khamenei was reportedly seriously injured in the February 28 strike that killed his father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the US-Israeli war with Iran. He had also generally kept a low public profile before becoming supreme leader.

Basij deputy promises realease of documentation of Khamenei

Basij paramilitary group deputy Ghasem Ghoraishi said on Sunday that footage and other documentation showing Khamenei among the public and out in the streets, as well as in meetings with armed forces commanders, would be released in the future.

Ghoraishi said the footage would “once again bring disgrace upon the enemies and detractors of the Iranian people.” The comments appeared aimed at countering speculation about Khamenei’s health and lack of public appearances.

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US President Donald Trump has been weighing the possibility of declaring victory against Iran without achieving a nuclear deal, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing US officials.

According to the officials, Trump privately floated the idea to his senior aides. 

If the US can keep Iran’s nuclear program in check and traffic resumes in the Strait of Hormuz, then Trump would be more likely to extend the ceasefire “indefinitely,” the officials told WSJ.

The officials also expect the president will lift the US’s naval blockade on the Islamic Republic’s ports if Tehran fully reopens the strait.

Trump is “patient and expected to ride out the latest diplomatic snarl, especially so long as gas prices remain where they are,” WSJ cited officials as saying.

The US has “completed all of its military objectives against Iran,” and the president’s focus is “securing the flow of the world’s energy through the Strait of Hormuz and will keep military options on the table should Iran further target ships,” a White House official told WSJ.

This is a developing story.

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Defense Minister Israel Katz on Sunday morning called for an IDF investigation into allegations levied on Saturday against Arab hospital employees accused of mistreating four soldiers at the Rambam Health Care Campus.

In a Saturday post on Instagram, David Chesterman, the brother of one of four soldiers wounded in Lebanon last week, alleged that the four soldiers’ families were not allowed to see their wounded loved ones, and that the soldiers were waiting for ages to receive food and water. 

The Israeli hospital stated that, following the conclusion of an internal investigation, it rejected all claims of wrongdoing towards the wounded soldiers by their staff.

“I view with the utmost seriousness the testimonies that have been published regarding the treatment of wounded IDF soldiers at the hospital,” Katz said.

“The heroic IDF soldiers who were wounded while defending the State of Israel deserve the most dedicated and best possible care, as well as respectful treatment for themselves and their families. I instructed the IDF to immediately and thoroughly investigate all the allegations raised with the hospital and the relevant authorities,” he added. 

“If it is found that any staff member treated the wounded soldiers in an improper or egregious manner, it will not be allowed to pass without action. We will not allow anyone to treat IDF soldiers who were wounded defending the country in this manner. We will demand answers, draw conclusions, and act to ensure that such an incident does not happen again.”

Hadash condemns call for investigation into alleged Arab abuse of IDF soldiers

In response to Katz’s demand, the Arab Israeli Hadash party strongly condemned the defense minister, calling his statement on the allegations “a dangerous exploitation of the authority of the state and the military establishment for the purpose of political and racist persecution.”

“These instructions come in the wake of a racist incitement campaign led by elements on the far right, without any evidence or factual basis, and with the clear goal of intimidating the Arab doctors, nurses, and employees at the hospital, who provide professional and dedicated care to the entire public every day,” Hadash stated.

Hadash called on human rights organizations and trade unions, both Arab and Jewish, to oppose Katz’s “dangerous decision.”

Jafar Farah, director of the Mossawa Center and the second-place candidate on Hadash’s Knesset list, also reacted to Katz’s statements, as well as those made by Ben-Gvir.

According to Farah, the two ministers “are trying to make political capital on the backs of the Arab medical teams who work 24 hours to treat the severely wounded without distinction.”

בתגובה למתקפה נגד הצוותים הרפואיים ברמב”ם: כץ ובן גביר מנסים לעשות הון פוליטי על גבם של הצוותים הרפואיים הערבים שעובדים 24 שעות כדי לטפל בפצועים קשה בלי הבדל. הצוותים הרפואיים הערבים והיהודים הם דוגמה למאבק למען החיים. שרי הממשלה הם הסיבה שאין מספיק תקנים במערכת הבריאות”. pic.twitter.com/xzovOx3IYU

— Jafar Farah (@Jafarfarah1) August 9, 2026

Farah added that “The government ministers are the reason there aren’t enough positions in the healthcare system.”

Ben-Gvir calls for probe into possible nationalistic sentiments of nurses

In turn, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir also called for the Health Ministry to investigate whether the Rambam nurses were motivated by nationalistic sentiments. 

“If the serious testimonies emerging from Rambam Hospital are accurate, this is a grave scandal that should concern every citizen in Israel. It is unthinkable that hospital employees would harass, humiliate, or abuse wounded soldiers and the families of soldiers who risk their lives for the security of Israel’s citizens,” Ben-Gvir wrote in a statement. 

“These testimonies require an immediate, thorough investigation without any whitewashing, including an examination of whether, in some cases, the harassment was nationalistically motivated. Anyone who harms our soldiers and their families should know that there will be consequences,” he added. 

“I expect Rambam’s management and the Health Ministry to investigate the matter thoroughly and take severe action if the allegations are found to be true.”

Brother of wounded soldier alleges mistreatment by staff

In the Instagram post sent out on Saturday evening, Chesterman claimed that “my brother was seriously wounded in Lebanon, and what happened afterward is simply inconceivable. Three days ago, he was hospitalized together with three other fellow soldiers. He was sedated and ventilated and only woke up yesterday afternoon, suffering from burns all over his body, pain, fever, and hallucinations,” he wrote.

“At night, a new shift arrived on the ward, all of them Arabic speakers. They removed all the families from the wards and locked the doors. Four seriously wounded soldiers find themselves alone for an entire night, surrounded by an Arabic-speaking staff behind locked doors. It’s completely insane.”

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The recent announcement by the Board of Peace of a new deal for Gaza including Hamas disarmament, Israeli withdrawal, and the empowerment of the civilian technocratic committee to govern gives new hope after months of stagnation. The basic causes of the stagnation, however, have not changed. Hamas demands that Israel withdraw before it disarms, and Israel demands that Hamas disarm before it withdraws.

It is possible that a staggered disarmament, timed with a staggered withdrawal, can work – but only if US President Donald Trump applies maximum pressure on Israel to agree. Even then, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will likely agree but find a way to sabotage implementation as in the past. Netanyahu is still looking for his absolute victory through military force alone. 

The way to defeat Hamas and increase Israel’s security is not by a massive military strike that causes untold suffering to the Palestinian civilian population, increases Israel’s international isolation, and leaves Hamas with an even stronger grip on Gaza. Israel is not the first country to confront irregular armed forces embedded within a civilian population.

The counterinsurgency strategy to defeat Hamas in Gaza

To defeat Hamas, Israel should have employed the counterinsurgency strategy developed over the past 80 years since World War II. Originally known as the Clear-Hold-Build strategy, and now referred to as the Shape-Clear-Hold-Build-Transition doctrine, it has been employed with varying degrees of success in the Malayan Peninsula, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Under Gen. David Petraeus during the 2007-2008 Iraq Surge, a civilian-protection-focused counterinsurgency strategy significantly reduced violence and helped restore stability.

The Shape-Clear-Hold-Build-Transition strategy, as described in more detail in a recent Arava Institute publication, is a phased approach to stabilizing areas affected by insurgency or sectarian conflict.

It begins by shaping the operational environment through intelligence gathering, partnership building, and preparation of the population and security forces. Security forces then clear insurgent or hostile elements, hold the area by maintaining a persistent security presence to prevent their return, and build effective governance, essential services, economic opportunities, and community resilience to address the underlying drivers of instability.

Finally, responsibility is transitioned to capable local authorities and institutions, enabling them to sustain security, governance, and development independently over the long term.

ISRAEL CHOSE to rely primarily on military action to defeat Hamas. Had it adopted the Shape-Clear-Hold-Build-Transition doctrine, the outcome might have been very different. Instead, almost the entire Gazan population has been displaced into overcrowded shelters lacking adequate sanitation, electricity, food, water, healthcare, education, and other essential services.

Nearly three years of war, following Hamas’s barbaric attacks and massacre of Israeli civilians near the Gaza border, have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian noncombatants, the destruction of more than 80% of Gaza’s housing, the collapse of major water, sanitation, and energy infrastructure, and Israel’s occupation of approximately 60% of the Gaza Strip, forcing almost the entire population into the remaining area.

Rather than separating Hamas from the civilian population, the campaign has left Hamas embedded within it, enabling the organization to continue using civilians as shields while maintaining its financial and recruitment networks. It has also contributed to Israel’s growing international isolation.

The most critical strategic principle of the Shape-Clear-Hold-Build-Transition doctrine is protecting the civilian population rather than focusing exclusively on eliminating militants. Civilian security is central to establishing legitimacy for subsequent military and political actions.

Israel abandoned this principle early in the war when it discontinued its long-standing practice of warning civilians before airstrikes on buildings housing both militants and civilians.

Abandoning this policy contributed to thousands of civilian deaths, fueled international condemnation, and likely strengthened Hamas’s hold over the population. Rather than separating Palestinian civilians from Hamas’s authoritarian control, Israel’s strategy has reinforced their dependence on the organization.

However, it is not too late to make civilian safety and security the central objective. A shift from hunting Hamas to protecting civilians would understandably be met with skepticism by Palestinians in Gaza and by the broader international community. Rebuilding trust would require time and close coordination among military, civilian, and international actors.

The current stalemate in implementing phase two of the Trump peace plan stems largely from the absence of an agreed sequence of implementation. The new 15-point plan is an attempt to restart the stalled process, which envisions Hamas disarming, Israel withdrawing, the International Stabilization Force (ISF) providing security, and the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) assuming civilian governance.

None of these steps has begun because each party insists the others move first, while doubts remain about Israel’s willingness to withdraw and Hamas’s willingness to disarm. It remains to be seen if the new agreement breaks the stalemate.

WHAT IS needed is a testing ground for a different reality – one in which civilians are protected from both the IDF and Hamas, security is provided by the ISF, and governance is exercised by the NCAG. This reflects the “ink-blot” strategy, a military maneuver, whereby secure zones gradually expand as security, governance, and reconstruction spread outward.

Over the past two-and-a-half years, through the joint Israeli-Palestinian environmental humanitarian initiative of Damour for Community Development and the Arava Institute, Jumpstarting Hope in Gaza, limited resources have created self-managed refuges for displaced people, providing shelter, safety, food, water, and essential community services without interference from armed groups.

These communities, together with similar initiatives established by other organizations, could become the nucleus of expanding secure areas under the protection of counterinsurgency forces.

To establish such islands of safety within Hamas-controlled areas, Hamas need not immediately disarm; it would be sufficient for the organization to withdraw from and cede control of a limited area to the ISF and NCAG. A similar logic underpins aspects of the recent Israel-Lebanon agreement. Israel could encourage such an arrangement by simultaneously withdrawing from a comparable area under its own control.

Building trust and legitimacy is essential to moving Gaza – and the region as a whole – beyond recurring cycles of violence toward lasting stability. The legitimacy of the Trump peace plan ultimately depends on the ability of the ISF and NCAG to provide both security and effective governance.

The “Trump Peace Plan: From Stagnation to Action” conference, held on July 13 in Tel Aviv and organized by Mitvim – The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, emphasized that empowering the NCAG is central to the plan’s success.

How can Hamas be defeated? Israel must prioritize civilian protection by eliminating collateral damage, ensuring reliable access to shelter, food, water, energy, sanitation, health care, education, and livelihoods. Negotiations should initially focus on separating Hamas from the civilian population rather than immediate disarmament.

Simultaneous Israeli and Hamas withdrawals from designated areas, supervised by the United States and the ISF, would enable the ISF and NCAG to establish secure islands of safety that can gradually expand across Gaza as Hamas reduces its footprint, disarms, and ultimately transitions into the political process.

Ultimately, success will depend on a coalition of Israeli, Palestinian, and international actors working in tandem to move away from violence and toward real peace.

The writer is the director of the Center for Applied Environmental Diplomacy at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies.

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Pro-Iranian-regime singer and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Basij paramilitary force member, Hamidreza Rajabzadeh, was abducted and killed, according to Iranian state media, last week.

Two weeks after he went missing, Rajabzadeh’s family reportedly received a video showing him being tortured and killed, which was subsequently circulated on anti-regime channels, according to the IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency. His body has not yet been returned, according to the reports.

Iran’s police and the IRGC have given differing accounts of the motive behind the killing. Fars reported that the group “Ashtara Zero Day” had begun paying individuals affiliated with the Mojahedin-e Khalq, a dissident group also known as the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, and supporters of the Pahlavi monarchy to abduct and kill IRGC officials.

However, Deputy Interior Minister Aliakbar Pourjamshidian said this morning that the investigation was ongoing, while police said they were still determining whether the Basij member’s death had a “terrorist” motive.

The Jerusalem Post was able to locate the channel said to be affiliated with the group. In one video, Rajabzadeh appears to be unconscious, with someone spitting on him. Text overlaid on the video warned that the group had the names and addresses of Basij members and informants.

An earlier video showed a man allegedly identified as Rajabzadeh being carved with a knife. The caption read: “Hamid Reza Rajabzadeh is a Basij and a suppressor who both raped and killed our people in January.”

“Basij bastard, that’s all you guys are; soon I will post more videos from the Ashtara Zero Day group who are monitoring many people in different cities.

“A special gift was deposited to these friends via digital currency and Bitcoin to fight better and stronger.”

Earlier videos show a man tied up and blindfolded, as well as several buildings and sites affiliated with the regime being set alight.

Four suspects arrested over killing

Four people have been arrested in connection with the killing, with one reportedly confessing to carrying out the act after being paid by a foreign “terrorist” group.

In response to the murder, semi-official outlets such as Tabnak have demanded that the judiciary speed up the prosecution of those who demonstrated in January, claiming that doing so would prevent those opposed to the regime from having “the opportunity to rebuild, establish contacts, and launch new operations.”

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Former senior officials and figures from Israel’s security establishment have approached Ra’am chairman Mansour Abbas amid talks over former Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovitz potentially joining the party, Channel 12’s Muhammad Majadle said in an interview with 103FM on Sunday.

Segalovitz officially announced that he would leave Yesh Atid on Thursday, reportedly ahead of a possible move to Ra’am. Speaking with Gideon Oko and Amichai Attali on 103FM, Majadle, a Channel 12 journalist and Radio al-Nas host, provided an update on the progress of talks surrounding the surprising political partnership and did not rule out the possibility that other Jewish figures associated with the security establishment could join Segalovitz.

“Recently, several people approached Ra’am following the negotiations with Yoav Segalovitz. A group was formed specifically of former senior officials and others, people who held positions in the past, people who fought in the latest war and saw this move as important. They approached Mansour, Ra’am heard their approaches, and they sat down and spoke with them,” Majadle revealed.

“Mansour did not rule anything out. He sat with them and listened. It was very important to them to reach out and say that they support this move and that they could even join. From Mansour and Ra’am’s perspective, they said they welcome the move, but they do not want to create a situation in which it undermines the move instead of making it more acceptable.”

Regarding sentiment within the Arab sector over the planned move, Majadle said that “The direction in Arab society is very positive. Yoav Segalovitz is a very well-regarded figure in Arab society because of what he did to combat crime in the previous government and because of the good relations he has with local authority heads. Even Hadash-Ta’al and Balad are not attacking the move because everyone knows that he is someone who is difficult to attack in Arab society because of the support he enjoys. So, in that sense, Ra’am wants to understand how much this move helps them with their base, and they are trying to understand how much it expands the pie and brings in new audiences.”

Segalovitz’s move to Ra’am faces technical obstacles

Despite the mutual desire to run together in the election, Majadle explained that ideological and technical obstacles remain that could derail the move.

“Mansour and Yoav very much want this move and very much believe in it, but it does not depend only on them. That is, Yoav Segalovitz has made his decision, he has decided and he wants this. He wants to see several things happen within Ra’am as well.

“He wants to receive a commitment, or an official declaration, regarding a national service framework for all Arab citizens that Ra’am would have to present. There is also this whole issue of accepting the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and recognizing Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, which, from Yoav’s perspective, has already happened.”

On Ra’am’s side, Majadle said Abbas faces an August 22 deadline to pass the changes he wants ahead of the party’s primaries.

“On Ra’am’s side, Mansour has until August 22 to pass all the changes he wants in Ra’am’s primaries, the separation from the Shura Council and the Islamic Movement, and also to obtain two reserved slots and have them approved by the general assembly. He will bring in both a Jewish candidate and a Christian candidate, and we will see a change in the entire issue of women’s representation. There are people who think that despite all of Mansour’s power, it will be difficult for him to get this through.”

Majadle stressed that the tight political timetable could still prevent the plan from going ahead.

“There are things that could fall apart at the last minute. Ultimately, there is a very tight political timetable here. There are less than two months to pass all these things, and this entire revolution, and things do not always work out. Ultimately, there are so many things that he wants to pass. Ra’am is the United Arab List, and they are bringing a Jewish candidate into it, so they even have to think about the name.”

Abbas determined to take Ra’am in new direction

Majadle said Abbas’s determination to pursue the partnership stems from lessons he drew following the collapse of the previous government.

“After the previous government fell apart, Mansour Abbas came away with many insights about this move. One of the things he understood was that he needed to take Ra’am in a new direction so that the party could move somewhere else.

“He understood that the idea of a political party in Israel being subordinate to a body such as the Shura Council is not accepted by the Israeli public, as we saw during the previous government, when the entire State of Israel sat and waited to understand what the Shura Council would decide on issues of crucial importance to the country. He did not want that. He understood that it severely harmed the government. He planned this and waited for the right moment.”

Majadle added that Abbas also concluded that an Arab party seeking influence beyond Arab society would need to create a fundamentally different form of political partnership.

“The second thing he understood was that for an Arab party to be able to influence not only Arab society but Jewish society as well, he has to bring genuine political innovation and a genuine Arab-Jewish political partnership, not what we see now and not what currently exists in the Arab parties. I think he wants to take this step not only in order to be accepted into a future change bloc, but because he genuinely thinks that Ra’am needs to change and take a new path. In my opinion, Mansour Abbas is going for broke. This is his last term. Either he leaves his mark and carries out the change he wants all the way, or he simply leaves.”

This post was originally published on here. 

The UK Charity Commission is investigating prominent Muslim registered charity Al-Khair Foundation following reports of alleged Hamas connections, the ombudsman announced Friday.

Al-Khair was set up to advance religion, promote education, support social welfare, build religious harmony and offer relief to victims of disasters.

However, last month, the Commission said it received a complaint alleging the charity and its partners had connections to Hamas, and had also funded Hamas. The regulator immediately started examining the serious concerns raised and gathered more information to inform its assessment. The Commission has now escalated its engagement to a statutory inquiry.

This follows the arrest of Mohammad Yousef Hasna, an individual employed by Al-Khair Foundation, in the UK last week.

Hasna was extradited to the US and charged with conspiring to provide material support to Hamas. The Commission said it is considering all relevant information as part of its investigation, which will include verifying his connection to the charity and wider allegations made about the charity.

Charity’s gross income nearly doubled following Oct. 7 massacre

In the announcement, the US Department of Justice said Hasna provided financing and commodities to Hamas through what was identified as a Sham Charity. However, the Telegraph obtained the indictment and found that “the Sham Charity” is named throughout as Al-Khair.

Additionally, in the FBI indictment, Al-Khair’s gross income “nearly doubled following the October 7 Hamas Massacres”, rising from £31.28m to £74.79m.

The charity recorded an income of over £74 million pounds in the financial year ending 31 July 2025. Due to the concerns of possible serious risk to charitable funds, the UK Charity Commission has issued a legal order restricting certain financial transactions by the charity without the Commission’s prior consent.

The investigation will seek to establish the nature and extent of the charity’s links to Hasna, whether trustees have carried out appropriate checks and due diligence on international partners, and whether trustees are effectively monitoring the end use of funds internationally and have appropriate policies and procedures in place to protect funds from risk of misuse.

As charity regulator, the Commission cannot investigate criminal matters. If evidence of criminal activity is found, this will be referred to the police, which has the power to investigate.

London counter-terror police confirm charity probe

Separately, Counter Terror Policing London (CTP) confirmed investigations into the charity, with two search warrants on addresses in Croydon, South London. 

Al-Khair Foundation said Friday that it is cooperating fully with the statutory inquiry and is taking the matter seriously.

“Everywhere we work, we are firmly committed to ensuring that the funds entrusted to us by our generous donors are used for their intended purpose: meeting the humanitarian needs of poor and marginalized people in the communities we serve,” it said.

“In Gaza and around the world, we work hard to maintain robust governance, compliance and oversight processes designed to help ensure that aid reaches its intended beneficiaries.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Israel rejected the 15-point plan for the Gaza Strip proposed by the Board of Peace, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared while speaking in a Sunday afternoon cabinet meeting.

“Israel rejects the 15-point Gaza document proposed by the Board of Peace,” Netanyahu said. “The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed.”

Netanyahu also reiterated his opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state. 

“As for the Gaza Strip, first of all, I want to make the main point clear: as long as I am prime minister, there will be no Palestinian state, not in Gaza and not in Judea and Samaria. Neither ‘Fatahstan’ nor ‘Hamastan,'” he said. 

Netanyahu added that Israel was currently in talks with the US about the disarmament of Hamas, but emphasized that it would need to be “genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament.”

“When I say Hamas is disarmed, that means the heavy weapons, the less heavy weapons, all the weapons,” he said. 

Israel would stand its ground on which US proposals it finds unacceptable, Netanyahu added. 

Netanyahu also addressed rumors regarding Israel’s activity in Lebanon. 

“In recent days Israel has acted forcefully in Lebanon, eliminating terrorists, including in the Ali Taher Ridge,” Netanyahu said, although he added that he could not elaborate on the matter, just saying Israel was conducting “very important activity.”

Senior Hamas official says Hamas remains committed to plan

Senior Hamas official Basem Naim told Reuters that the terror group expects mediators and the US to “press Netanyahu and his government to adhere to the roadmap.”

Naim said that Hamas remains committed to the roadmap agreed with in Cairo. 

Netanyahu says he values ‘historic partnership’ with US, Trump

Speaking on Iran, Netanyahu said that Iran was keeping from striking Israel as it “knows what a powerful blow we [Israel] will deal it if it does.”

Netanyahu also expressed his appreciation for US President Donald Trump and the alliance between Israel and the US regarding keeping Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. 

Earlier on Sunday,  Army Radio reported that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz quietly approved new development and reconstruction in the Gaza Strip two weeks ago.

According to Army Radio, the location marked for new construction is east of Rafah, within the Yellow Line, with the plan being to build new living spaces for Palestinians outside of Hamas’ control.

Security sources said that the workers involved in the construction would be Gazan Palestinians, who are currently having their background checked by the Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency).

Smotrich welcomes Netanyahu’s rejection of the plan

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich commended Netanyahu’s statements, saying he “welcomed the prime minister’s unequivocal clarification.”

“We went to war with one central objective: the destruction of Hamas militarily, civilly, and as a governing authority. That means there can be no Hamas in Gaza the day after, and Gaza must not pose a threat to Israeli citizens and residents of the South for many years to come. This roadmap runs 180 degrees contrary to that objective,” Smotrich said. 

Smotrich also stated that all reconstruction in Gaza would first require complete Hamas disarmament. 

“The objective of the war to which we are committed is clear: a situation in which there is no Hamas in Gaza…we will not give up even a fraction of that objective,” he said. 

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Iran said on Sunday that a deal with Oman defining new shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz was in its final stages but reiterated that the strait would only reopen once the United States met other conditions.

A US official told Reuters on Friday that an agreement between Iran and Oman was close and could soon reopen the waterway, which carried a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments before Iran blocked it in response to US and Israeli attacks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that an agreement on the strait between the two countries was in the “final stages” but reiterated comments made on Saturday that it would not reopen it unless other conditions were met.

The agreement would set out the new shipping lanes to be used once the US fulfills those conditions and the strait is reopened, Iran’s Mehr news agency quoted him as saying. 

Iran and the US are not engaged in talks, and Tehran will not start them as long as Washington breaches an interim deal signed in June, Araghchi said, adding that messages are being exchanged via intermediaries.

 Iran seeks US compensation and end to sanctions

The United States began air strikes on Iran in late February, saying it aimed to ensure the Islamic republic could not acquire nuclear weapons or threaten the region with missiles or proxies.

It agreed a ceasefire with Iran in June, but reimposed a blockade on Iranian shipping in the Gulf in July, which Tehran said was a violation of the truce that had already broken down.

“Once the deal is announced to restore commercial shipping without impediments, the United States will lift the blockade of Iranian ports,” the US official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

US actions would be tied to Iran’s implementation of its commitments, the official said.

The US comments indicated delicate sequencing towards a deal that sources had told Reuters appeared to be set to give Tehran control over ships entering the Gulf through the strait, something shippers said was not easily workable.

The latest status of the agreement was not clear, and Iran’s response suggested other factors would also come into play.

Araghchi said reopening the strait would depend on conditions including US compensation to Iran for its widespread attacks.

The secretary of Iran’s top national security body, Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, also listed ending US threats against Iran, stopping aggression against Iran and its Lebanese, Palestinian, Yemeni and Iraqi allies, lifting a blockade and sanctions on Iran and freeing Iranian assets.

The United Arab Emirates said on Saturday that Iran had attacked a ship affiliated to its state oil company. There was no immediate comment from Iran.

Houthis attack Saudi refinery

Iranian strikes on Strait of Hormuz shipping have been coupled with increased attacks by its Yemen-based allies, the Houthis, who have targeted ships at another oil chokepoint on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

The Houthis also declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea last month in response to what they said was a Saudi siege on them in Yemen, an allegation denied by Riyadh, which backs Yemen’s internationally recognised government.

The Houthis said they had attacked Saudi Aramco’s Jazan refinery on Sunday, two days after the kingdom signed a defense pact with Sunni Muslim allies Turkey and Pakistan in response to growing regional instability from the US-Israeli war on Shi’ite Iran.

The Saudi energy ministry said a fire had broken out at the refinery but was later extinguished with no injuries, and authorities were dealing with the incident, without giving a cause.

The Houthis used a drone to target the refinery, military spokesperson Yahya Saree posted on X. They had struck Aramco sites before in Jazan, which processes 400,000 barrels of crude oil per day in southwestern Saudi Arabia, and Yanbu on the Red Sea. They also carried out strikes on the Yemeni Red Sea port of Mocha, according to three sources in the Aden-based government.

It was not clear whether or how either Pakistan or Turkey would join in any Saudi response to the latest attacks.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the new alliance was not directed against Iran or any other country, but rather served as a general pledge to support security. The allies would decide through consultations what degree, form, and format of support they would ask for in the event of an attack, he said.

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Pro-Palestinian activist networks in Greece launched a coordinated nationwide “Day of Action” today, organizing dozens of demonstrations, protests, and rallies across the country’s islands, mountain ranges, and major cities, according to a report issued by the Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry.

The actions aim to target Israeli tourism, military cooperation, and economic ties between Athens and Jerusalem.

The ministry’s national situation room warned in the report that activist groups are utilizing a decentralized strategy, encouraging supporters to stage protests wherever they are vacationing or working.

The campaign, organized under the banner “National Day of Action in the Islands, Mountains, and Cities Against the Ongoing Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine,” is being coordinated through a central page named “9A,” which features an interactive map of planned protest hubs according to the ministry.

Organizers are calling for a comprehensive boycott of Israel, demanding that the Greek government end military and diplomatic cooperation, implement an arms embargo, and impose sanctions, the ministry report stated.

According to the document, key demands also include the revocation of visa-free entry for Israeli citizens, the implementation of background screenings for Israeli reservists, and the denial of “safe haven” for those the activists allege are responsible for war crimes.

Large-scale protests and public disturbances expected across Greece

Security officials have expressed particular concern regarding the safety of Israeli tourists during the protests, based on the ministry’s assessments.

One high-risk location identified in the ministry’s report is the city of Agios Nikolaos, where the Israeli cruise ship Crown Iris is scheduled to dock today. The ministry warned that the ship’s arrival could increase the likelihood of harassment directed at Israeli passengers.

Furthermore, intelligence analysts cited in the report anticipate that the demonstration in Athens, scheduled for 7:00 p.m. at Monastiraki Square with a march toward Syntagma Square, will be the most prominent.

Based on previous similar actions in Greece outlined by the ministry, the Athens protest is expected to draw the largest number of demonstrators and poses a heightened risk to Israeli tourists in the area.

Campaign spearheaded by group of anti-Israel organizations

The campaign is being driven by a coalition of organizations including March to Gaza Greece, BDS Greece, and the Palestinian Community in Greece, according to the ministry’s findings.

These groups have utilized joint social media campaigns, using hashtags such as #NotInOurName and #NotInOurLand, and a dedicated Telegram coordination network that has grown to nearly 800 members, the report stated.

The report detailed that the current protests mirror a similar national campaign led by March to Gaza Greece in August 2025, which saw the number of protest locations balloon from 70 to over 100 within a few days.

The Diaspora Affairs Ministry said in its alert that it is continuing to monitor the situation, noting that new protest sites are being declared daily through activist channels.

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The Finance Ministry and Defense Ministry are set to submit a resolution for the transfer of an additional NIS 1 billion to the Defense Ministry for government approval on Sunday, N12 reported. 

The resolution calls for the procedure “in light of the state of emergency in which the State of Israel finds itself; given the urgent and immediate need to provide an operational response and for the need for classified procurement.”

The Ministerial Committee for Defense Procurement approved the transfer on Friday. 

The majority of the amount, NIS 850 million, will be taken from a budget designated for investments in the technology sector in 2026 as part of the Ministry of Economy and Industry‘s budget for promoting investments and encouraging employment, according to the report. 

The rest, NIS 150 million, will come from budgets reserved in previous government decisions but not yet allocated this year. 

Legal opinion calls for urgent approval 

According to the legal opinion attached to the proposal, without approval of the budget source, it will not be possible to implement the transfer.

While the irregularity of the move being brought forward in an election period is acknowledged in the opinion, it adds that due to the urgency and security imperative, there is no legal impediment to approving it.

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Twenty-four years after Nefesh B’Nefesh was founded, the organization marked a major milestone on Sunday with the arrival of its 100,000th immigrant from North America.

Six-year-old Amelia Douglas, who will begin first grade in the coming school year, immigrated to Israel with her family: her parents, Jeffrey and Atara; her brother, Netanel, 10; and her sister, Hallie, 9.

To mark the occasion, President Isaac Herzog hosted the Douglas family at the President’s Residence after they immigrated from New York to Jerusalem earlier this month. The event was attended by Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer and Nefesh B’Nefesh founders Rabbi Yehoshua Fass and Tony Gelbart.

Herzog welcomed the family at the event and praised the organization’s work.

“I am pleased to welcome the Douglas family to Israel, and especially six-year-old Amelia, who is the 100,000th immigrant to make aliyah to Israel through Nefesh B’Nefesh,” Herzog said. “One hundred thousand immigrants are one hundred thousand stories of people who chose Israel, chose to build their home and their future here, and became part of the Israeli story.”

The president added that the Douglas family is “a living example of the deep connection between Diaspora Jewry and the State of Israel,” and thanked the organization’s founders and the aliyah and integration minister for decades of dedicated Zionist work.

The Douglas family had been planning the move for years. The turning point came last summer, when they visited Israel for a friend’s wedding and realized they wanted their children to grow up and be educated in the country.

A few months later, they made the final decision to immigrate to Israel.

All three of the family’s children are named after fallen IDF soldiers and victims of terrorism, reflecting the family’s strong emotional connection to the Jewish people and the Land of Israel.

Atara and Jeffrey Douglas shared their feelings about the move.

“Someone once told us, ‘We are leading, not leaving.’ That sentence became our motto. We do not feel that we are leaving behind the life we knew, but rather choosing to fulfill a dream and build our future and the future of our children in Israel.”

Social, economic engine for growth

Sofer noted the significance of the milestone.

“The 100,000th immigrant since the establishment of Nefesh B’Nefesh is an exciting and significant milestone for aliyah and for the State of Israel,” he said. “This summer, we are privileged to see many families arriving in Israel with their children and choosing to build their home and their future here. We will continue working to encourage aliyah and provide immigrants with the support they need for the best possible integration.”

Gelbart and Fass also reflected on the milestone.

“The 100,000th immigrant is much more than a number,” the two said. “It symbolizes the tens of thousands of families who chose to tie their future to the future of the State of Israel. The children who immigrated with us in the early years have already established families here, serve in the IDF, and work in the healthcare, education, and economic sectors.”

“That is exactly what we hoped for when we conceived the organization’s vision.”

Nefesh B’Nefesh’s impact over 24 years

NIS 15 billion: The estimated monetary contribution of immigration from North America to Israel’s economy.

More than 65%: The proportion of immigrants who arrived with advanced academic degrees.

Approximately 6,000 doctors and professionals: Integrated into Israel’s healthcare system.

Approximately 14,000 immigrants: Chose to live in the Negev and Galilee as part of the “Go North” program in cooperation with KKL JNF.

More than 22,000 lone soldiers: Received guidance and support through the joint program with FIDF.

The retention rate of immigrants who have remained in Israel over the years: 90%.

This post was originally published on here. 

There is a persistent idea in certain circles that if Israel improved living conditions for Palestinians – more jobs, better infrastructure, freer movement, greater economic opportunity – the violence would fade. 

Treat them kindly, the argument goes, and they will eventually come around to peace. A heavy hand, by contrast, only breeds resentment and fuels more attacks. This sounds compassionate on the surface, but it is also deeply flawed, and the evidence against it has piled up for generations.

It ignores a full century of Palestinian rejectionism. From the early 1920s onward, Arab leaders in the region rejected every serious proposal that would have created an independent state alongside a Jewish one. The British Peel Commission in 1937 offered partition, and the Arab side turned it down flat.

The United Nations Partition Plan of 1947 offered a two-state solution with clear borders, and the Arab states and Palestinian leadership rejected it and launched a war instead. After Israel’s victory in 1967, the Khartoum summit produced the famous “three no’s” – no peace, no recognition, no negotiations.

Camp David in 2000, the Clinton Parameters, and later offers under Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert met the same fate. Each time the answer was no – not because the details were insufficient, but because the very existence of a Jewish state was treated as illegitimate.

Improving daily life does not erase an ideology that sees Israel itself as the core problem rather than a neighbor to live beside.

It also ignores the consistent record of Palestinian violence in both good times and bad. After the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, when Israel transferred significant territory and governing authority to the newly created Palestinian Authority and economic cooperation increased, suicide bombings and other attacks surged rather than declined. 

The Second Intifada that began in 2000 killed more than a thousand Israelis and wounded thousands more. Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005 removed every settlement and every soldier. What followed was the rapid rise of Hamas, the systematic diversion of resources into tunnels and rockets, and repeated rounds of war. 

Periods of relative calm, increased work permits, and international aid flowing into the territories have not produced lasting quiet. Attacks have continued whether checkpoints were eased or tightened and whether economic indicators rose or fell.

The violence is not a simple reaction to hardship or restrictions. It has its own momentum and its own justification in the eyes of those who carry it out.

Finally, the argument overlooks the many terrorist organizations around the world that have nothing to do with Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Groups such as ISIS, Boko Haram, and various al-Qaeda affiliates operate across Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and beyond.

Their grievances center on establishing caliphates, imposing their interpretation of religious rule, toppling local governments they deem insufficiently pure, or fighting perceived Western influence in general. They do not issue demands about checkpoints in the West Bank or living standards in Gaza.

Their existence demonstrates that radical Islamist violence has deeper ideological roots than any single conflict with Israel. Palestinian groups that share similar language, methods, and martyrdom culture are part of this broader phenomenon, not an isolated response to occupation policies or economic frustration.

Comfortable conditions will not bring peace

Vivian Silver was a Canadian-Israeli peace activist who lived on Kibbutz Be’eri near the Gaza border. She devoted her life to coexistence. She co-founded Women Wage Peace, a movement that brought Israeli and Palestinian women together to push for a diplomatic resolution. 

She volunteered with The Road to Recovery, personally driving sick Gazans, children with cancer, and adults needing surgery to Israeli hospitals for treatment. She built projects aimed at shared economic opportunity and mutual understanding. On October 4, 2023, she helped organize a large joint Israeli-Palestinian rally for peace. 

Three days later, Hamas terrorists and others who crossed the border overran her kibbutz. They murdered her in her home and set the house on fire. For weeks, her family believed she had been taken hostage. Only later did DNA confirm she had been killed that morning.

Silver embodied the very approach the argument champions by improving lives, extending hands across the border, rejecting force in favor of dialogue. Her murder did not come from resentment over harsh Israeli treatment. It came from an ideology that viewed her as an enemy simply because she was Israeli and lived on the wrong side of a border that the attackers refused to accept.

The notion that better material conditions will magically produce peaceful neighbors has been tested for generations, and it has failed. Palestinians have received substantial international aid over decades, periods of limited autonomy, work opportunities inside Israel, and repeated diplomatic openings. 

What has not changed is the refusal, among significant portions of leadership and public opinion, to accept Israel’s permanent existence as a Jewish state. Polls continue to show high levels of support for “resistance.”

Official media and educational materials still glorify those who attack civilians. Terror groups still recruit on the promise of destroying the Jewish presence rather than building a functioning, prosperous society next to it.

This is not a call for cruelty or collective punishment. Israel has both a moral and practical responsibility to defend its citizens and to treat non-combatants humanely within the harsh constraints of war. It also has every right and every obligation to insist that security comes first. 

Improving Palestinian lives is worthwhile when it does not endanger Israelis and when it is paired with a genuine, public rejection of terrorism and of the goal of eliminating the Jewish state. 

But treating improved conditions as a substitute for confronting rejectionism and violence is wishful thinking dressed up as wisdom. History shows that the desire to erase Israel has survived both relative prosperity and genuine hardship.

Real progress requires Palestinians, and especially their leaders, to abandon the dream of Israel’s disappearance.

Until that fundamental shift occurs, focusing primarily on making life more comfortable will not deliver peace. It will simply repeat the same cycle we have already lived through too many times: offers extended, rejected, and followed by more bloodshed and more funerals on both sides.

The evidence of a hundred years is clear enough for anyone willing to look at it without sentimentality. Ignoring that record makes one blind to reality, and the cost of that blindness continues to be paid in lives.

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

This post was originally published on here. 

August 1990: A memory that must not grow old

Asharq al-Awsat, UK, August 2

At dawn on August 2, 1990, our generation witnessed a calamity: Kuwaitis awoke to a treacherous invasion. Thirty-six years have passed, yet those who lived through that period still remember frightening details that may never appear in books, while the generation born afterward knows the story through families who experienced it. 

I return to it today because the region remains filled with expansionist ambitions, military adventurism, and the threat of war. The desire to dominate beyond one’s borders still poses an existential challenge to the Gulf states. 

Before the invasion, a measure of optimism had spread through the region. The brutal Iran-Iraq War had ended after eight years, leaving deep wounds across the Gulf and inflicting direct economic and political harm on Kuwait more than once. We hoped the storm would be followed by calm, yet many were already asking how the two combatant states, with their armies, weapons, and ambitions intact, would handle their expansionist impulses.

Years earlier, Kuwait had been among the states pressing for greater Gulf unity, and in Abu Dhabi in 1981 the Gulf Cooperation Council was born. The six states welcomed the idea, and their leaders made a historic decision. Few could have imagined that less than a decade later the council would face a test like that of August 1990. 

Iraq’s leadership was carried by arrogance into calculations that quickly proved catastrophic. As later memoirs revealed, no one in government was able to challenge Saddam Hussein’s decisions; such is the nature of dictatorship. He invaded a peaceful neighboring country whose people had never failed to support Arab causes, believing the occupation could gradually become an accepted political fact. 

It was accompanied by a vicious and unjust media war against Kuwait and the Gulf states. The seven months of occupation were black in every sense, but they also revealed the strength of Kuwaiti national cohesion. The Gulf states treated the aggression as an attack on themselves. They received Kuwaitis forced from their homes and mobilized to end the occupation, with Riyadh at the forefront alongside every Gulf capital. The central truth is that the Gulf regarded the invasion as a matter of collective security. 

Amid these events, Kuwait’s leadership managed domestic and foreign affairs under extraordinary conditions. On September 27, 1990, the late Emir Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York. I still remember the scene: after his speech, the assembly rose and applauded for several minutes. He said he had come carrying the message of a people who loved peace, worked for it, extended help to those who deserved it, sought reconciliation among the disputing, and then saw their security and stability violated. 

What mattered most to me was that he spoke of the future, declaring that the invaders would inevitably leave and that Kuwaitis would return to their country as they had known it, a home of safety and security. And we did return. Yet before retreating, the occupier committed an act that remains impossible to forget: Iraqi forces set Kuwait’s oil wells ablaze.

I returned soon after liberation with an international team, and the image of that homecoming remains with me. As the plane approached Kuwait at midday, I looked through the window and saw daylight transformed almost into night. Smoke covered the sky, and the smell of fire announced the scale of the destruction the invaders had left behind. The aggressor fled, and Kuwait remained. 

That outcome was achieved only through sacrifice: a people who rejected occupation, a leadership that upheld the state’s legitimacy, Gulf solidarity, and Arab and international support from those who understood that permitting one independent state to swallow another would have catastrophic consequences. 

Thirty-six years later, the purpose is not to revive hatred but to remember the lesson: sovereignty and Gulf solidarity must be strengthened through sustained effort because the dangers have changed in appearance but not in essence. 

The region has not become safer. The faces have changed, yet the impulse to expand remains. What we see around us confirms that the nation-state is still threatened whenever one party believes force gives it the right to determine the fate of others. 

Today the Houthis send drones toward Saudi Arabia and threaten to close Bab al-Mandab, while other forces of evil launch their own attacks. We live in a perilous neighborhood where sectarian arrogance still thrives.

My final thought is this: 36 years later, I still see Kuwait from that airplane window, daylight buried beneath the smoke of burning wells – and some still seek to bring back the darkness. – Mohammed al-Rumaihi 

Ankara: A new gateway for Lebanon

Nida Al-Watan, Lebanon, August 1

At a moment when the balance of power in the Middle East is being recast, President Joseph Aoun’s visit to Ankara went beyond the framework of conventional bilateral relations and affirmed Lebanon’s effort to broaden its network of regional and international partners in order to restore sovereignty, strengthen security, and revive the economy. 

His meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan carried political, security, and economic messages extending far beyond the two countries and laid the foundations for a new phase in Lebanese-Turkish relations amid accelerating regional change. 

The visit’s importance begins with its timing. Lebanon is entering a delicate period as international efforts continue to stabilize the south, implement security understandings, and consider arrangements following the eventual end of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon’s mission. 

Erdogan announced Turkey’s readiness to participate in any new international security framework intended to support Lebanon’s security and protect its sovereignty, alongside continued Turkish assistance to the Lebanese Army. This reflects Ankara’s desire to play a larger role in stabilizing the Eastern Mediterranean and gives Lebanon greater room to diversify its security partnerships beyond the logic of rival blocs. 

Politically, the visit allowed Aoun to seek Turkish support for Lebanon’s position demanding the completion of Israel’s withdrawal, the restoration of state authority over all Lebanese territory, and the strengthening of the army as the only legitimate institution entrusted with protecting the borders and maintaining security.

It also enabled closer coordination with a country that maintains influential ties with regional powers, including Syria, potentially opening the door to a Turkish contribution on border issues, displaced populations, and wider regional cooperation. 

The economic dimension is no less important. Turkey is one of the region’s largest economies and possesses substantial expertise in infrastructure, energy, ports, transport, industry, and tourism. Revitalized economic relations could attract new Turkish investment, expand trade, and encourage private companies to participate in reconstruction, creating jobs and stimulating a Lebanese economy in urgent need of long-term partners. Cooperation in ports and logistics could also improve Lebanon’s position within the Eastern Mediterranean trade network. 

Diplomatically, the visit confirms the approach Aoun has followed since his election: diversifying Lebanon’s foreign partnerships rather than confining them to a single axis. After opening to the United States, Arab states, and France, while maintaining contact with other international actors, Ankara adds another dimension to Lebanese foreign policy and strengthens Beirut’s ability to rally support for its core priorities: stability, renewed confidence in the economy, and stronger state institutions. 

Strategically, the visit reflects Lebanon’s understanding of the region’s geopolitical transformation. Turkey has become a central actor in security, energy, transportation, and reconstruction, and maintains extensive relations with Europe, NATO, and the Middle East. A stronger relationship therefore gives Lebanon another channel to regional and international decision-making centers and enhances its chances of benefiting from major economic projects expected in the years ahead. 

The joint press conference revealed a clear desire by both leaderships to elevate relations toward a more ambitious partnership based on trust and practical cooperation, including continued support for the army, assistance with economic recovery, and broader sectoral ties. Aoun stressed that the next phase requires effective partnerships capable of helping Lebanon regain its natural regional role, consistent with his vision of a strong state with full sovereignty and functioning institutions. 

In the end, the Ankara visit was not merely ceremonial but a calculated step within a wider diplomatic strategy to reposition Lebanon in the region, expand its international support network, and secure political, security, and economic backing for the reconstruction of the state.

Should the understandings reached be translated into practical programs and binding agreements, the visit may become one of the most important moments in Lebanese foreign policy in 2026, confirming that the country’s recovery begins with active diplomacy, balanced partnerships, protection of sovereignty, support for the army, and a serious commitment to stability and development. – Joe Rahal 

The war has become regional

Al-Masry Al-Youm, Egypt, August 2

The Middle East war has become regional in character, encompassing every issue and mixing all the region’s conflicts into a single vessel. It will take time to count the dead, wounded, and displaced and to document the homes and institutions destroyed. The image is the same everywhere: roofs collapsing at once, breaking apart as they fall, or dissolving under extreme heat. 

The latest phase has carried the war in different forms to the southwestern Arabian Peninsula, where the Houthis have launched missiles toward Saudi targets in retaliation for the bombing of Sanaa airport, intended to prevent the arrival of an Iranian delegation carrying weapons, ammunition, and trainers. 

This is not entirely new. The Houthis have previously struck Aramco facilities and attacked the Emirati port of Fujairah overlooking the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean.

What is new is the position and capability of Yemen’s internationally recognized government, which responded to the attacks and thereby reflected the Arab coalition’s entry into the war that began on Oct. 7, 2023, and continues to spread its poison nearly three years later. 

More significant still, the legitimate government and the coalition have, at least as of this writing, prevented the Houthis from closing Bab al-Mandab, through the efforts of a determined naval force. Iran has failed to realize its dream of controlling two straits simultaneously: Hormuz, through which about 20% of oil exports pass, and Bab al-Mandab, which handles around 15% of global trade. 

Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces added further drone and missile attacks against Saudi Arabia while presenting Iraq with the false choice between refusing to surrender their weapons and descending into civil war. The disarmament of other factions has not ended the brinkmanship favored by militias. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza likewise threaten civil conflict and, along the way, intimidate the governments under which they operate. 

Armed groups have thus pulled the region into a wider war by attacking established authorities and warning them either to permit militia freedom of action or submit to the madness of war among their own citizens. Civil wars drag violence to the bottom of the regional order while destroying every element of national identity necessary for an independent state. 

No militia escapes this disease. Hamas, which ignited the regional war, began its armed history by separating Gaza from the West Bank, leaving the dream of an independent Palestinian state free of Israeli occupation prey to the nightmares of genocide and ethnic cleansing. 

The war became regional when it drew together the region’s geographic and historical characteristics within one battlefield. Oil has now entered a conflict that began under the slogan of ending the Israeli occupation, while the so-called support fronts help ignite a global crisis of inflation, higher prices, and disruption to development plans across Arab states. 

– Abdel Moneim Saeed 

When Israelis speak of settler terrorism

Al-Bayan, UAE, August 2

What does it mean when 600 senior former Israeli security and diplomatic officials sign a petition urging US President Donald Trump to pressure the Israeli government to stop settler violence and terrorism in the West Bank?

They are not acting out of sympathy for Palestinians or concern for their welfare, but because they believe settler violence threatens Israel’s security and American interests. 

The signatories belong to an organization called Commanders for Israel’s Security, which includes about 600 retired officials, among them former senior figures from the army, Mossad, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), police, diplomatic corps, and political establishment. They have begun sounding the alarm, particularly after the events in the village of Tell two Fridays ago. 

Palestinians regard the territory as their homeland of thousands of years, while settlers consider the entire West Bank – or Judea and Samaria, in biblical terminology – the heart of Israel. The United Nations, international law, and most governments regard it as occupied territory, part of a future Palestinian state, and view settlement activity as illegal. 

When 600 of Israel’s most experienced security officials conclude that settler behavior endangers both Israel and the United States, we should expect a major catastrophe, because it means Israeli extremism has reached a degree almost beyond imagination. Officials with deep knowledge of the conflict and the region fear what settler radicalism may do to their own country. Their organization therefore called on Trump to prevent what it described as a disaster by sending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a firm message to stop these practices. 

What is unfolding is not merely an attempt by the Right to win the October 27 election, but the implementation of biblical visions at the expense of Palestinian land and blood.

Rather than describing the situation through Palestinian or Arab eyes, or even citing international law and United Nations resolutions, let us consider how senior former Israeli officials themselves characterize settler violence. 

One of the most prominent is Moshe Ya’alon, a former IDF chief of staff and defense minister, who calls what settlers are doing “Jewish terrorism.” He argues that these are not isolated incidents but an expanding phenomenon, and that “settler gangs,” as he describes them, operate under the protection of right-wing ministers who provide official and political cover. 

Ya’alon’s words matter because he is not a figure of the Israeli Left. He historically belongs to the security Right and has held the country’s highest offices. He now warns that extremist messianic elements are leading the government and describes Netanyahu’s conduct in Gaza as taking Israel toward occupation, annexation, and ethnic cleansing. 

It is difficult to portray what is happening in the West Bank as the excesses of a handful of settlers, because settlement has stood at the heart of Israeli strategy since 1948. Even under Labor governments regarded as left-wing and moderate, Yigal Allon argued that Israel’s security border must lie in the Jordan Valley, while former prime minister Levi Eshkol spoke of the need for defensible borders. When prime minister Menachem Begin’s first Likud government came to power in 1977, settlement became a national and religious mission, not merely a security policy. 

The Oslo Accords of 1993 did not stop it. After the Second Intifada in 2000, Israel promoted the idea of retaining major settlement blocs and constructed the separation wall, insisting that the largest settlements must remain under Israeli control in any future peace agreement. Under Netanyahu, the slogan evolved from “we will not evacuate any settlement” to “the West Bank is the heart of Israel,” and ultimately to demands for Israeli sovereignty over it. 

Semiofficial estimates now count 141 recognized settlements in the West Bank, rising to 163 when those in east Jerusalem are included, alongside roughly 360 outposts, including agricultural and pastoral sites, with a settler population of about 790,000. 

Netanyahu’s government, especially ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, is now pursuing the displacement of Palestinians and the implementation of Smotrich’s long-standing “decisive plan.” It offers Palestinians three choices: live in disconnected enclaves within Greater Israel without political rights, leave the country, or be killed if they reject the first two.

This is the reality on the ground, and the worst nightmares have not yet been realized. 

– Emad El-Din Hussein 

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

This post was originally published on here. 

While Israeli children enjoy their summer vacation before the school year starts up again, nearly 60 puppies wait at the Sderot animal shelter in southern Israel to be adopted.

The puppies are all rescues, born over the past few months to stray dogs in the fields and open areas belonging to several Western Negev regional councils. Some of the puppies were found suffering from dehydration, hunger, and extreme heat, and would likely not have survived if the Western Negev Veterinary Service had not intervened.

Both the puppies and their mothers were rescued and treated by veterinarians from the Western Negev Veterinary Service.

While the shelter provides the dogs with food, medical treatment, vaccinations, and human interaction, staff emphasize that nothing can replace a proper home for them to live.

“Our teams work throughout the year to rescue animals in distress, but during the whelping season the workload increases dramatically,” said Western Negev Cluster CEO Bella Alexandrov. “Every puppy here has a rescue story behind it. Our mission now is to find each one a family. Every adoption gives a puppy a new life and allows us to rescue the next one waiting for help.”

Western Negev Veterinary Service Director Dr. Evgeny Komlev explained that the dogs’ whelping season brings a large number of stray puppies and that without the service’s intervention, “many of them would not survive the harsh conditions in the field.”

“We do everything we can to rescue them, care for them and look after their mothers as well, but the best place for every puppy is a loving home,” Komlev said. “Alongside the adoption efforts, we continue our spay and neuter programs for stray dogs in order to reduce the phenomenon and prevent unnecessary suffering in the future.”

Western Negev vet services overwhelmed since Oct. 7

Since the October 7 massacre, the Western Negev Cluster’s veterinary services have been taking care of animals left behind after the Gaza border communities were evacuated, stray dogs that crossed into Israel from Gaza, and assisting residents returning to their homes to their regular responsibilities.

Nearly three years later, the workload remains exceptionally high.

During the whelping season, the workload grows even more, with teams heading out every day to rescue puppies and stray female dogs, provide emergency treatment, and work around the clock to save animals while protecting public health.

The Sderot shelter invites the Israeli public to meet and adopt the puppies. All puppies have undergone a veterinary examination.

This post was originally published on here. 

A Rehovot resident suspected of operating shell companies to distribute and deduct fictitious invoices was arrested in a Hadera hotel over the weekend after allegedly evading investigators for an extended period, the Israel Tax Authority said.

Investigators from the Beersheba Customs and VAT Investigations Unit, together with the Tax Authority’s Intelligence Unit and with assistance from Hadera police officers, arrested Dudu Ohana, a resident of Rehovot.

Ohana is suspected of managing shell companies through which he distributed and deducted fictitious invoices, thereby committing serious tax offenses. His arrest came after he allegedly attempted to evade an investigation against him for an extended period.

According to the investigation’s findings, Ohana rented a suite at a hotel in Hadera, far from his home in central Israel. From there, he allegedly continued managing the shell companies he had established, as well as the straw men who operated on his behalf.

Tax Authority investigative teams located him using advanced technological means. After conducting surveillance on him for several days, investigators raided his hotel room and arrested him.

During a search of the room, investigators seized computers, mobile phones, additional evidence, and lawyers’ stamps suspected of being used to sign forged documents.

Suspect’s son burned documents, stamps

The investigation also found that the suspect allegedly used his son in an attempt to obstruct the investigation.

During a search conducted at the suspect’s home several weeks earlier, investigators discovered that his son had burned all the documents and stamps in his father’s possession on a barbecue grill. The son also allegedly used a garden hose in an attempt to destroy additional evidence.

The son was arrested following the incident and was later released under restrictive conditions.

The Beersheba Magistrate’s Court extended Ohana’s detention until Thursday, August 13, 2026. The investigation is ongoing.

This post was originally published on here. 

A haredi (ultra-Orthodox) man was detained in Ahisamach under suspicion of causing disruptively loud noise, following which the police discovered that he was a draft dodger, N12 reported on Sunday.

The suspect was released approximately half an hour later, before the Military Police could arrive, an organization that aids haredi draft dodgers stated.

N12 also reported that, after the man was arrested, word spread among the haredi community, and a large group arrived at the area to pressure police to release the suspect.

לוד: המשטרה עיכבה הבוקר עריק חרדי ושחררה אותו כעבור זמן קצר, עשרות מפגינים חרדים שהוזעקו למקום – חגגו pic.twitter.com/mF0JsdOGXm

— מרדכי הלפרין (@MHlpryn) August 9, 2026

Netanyahu says draft evaders will ‘enlist or go to prison’

Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told officials that if re-elected, he would not advance the contentious law that seeks to freeze the arrests of haredi draft evaders, which his coalition recently passed last month.

Netanyahu said the legislation was unsuccessful and that it would be discontinued in the next government, according to a KAN report.

The report further added that Netanyahu had said draft evaders who do not study Torah will either “enlist or go to prison.”

Keshet Neev, James Genn, and Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Four minors and two young women were indicted on Friday for the murder of 19-year-old Benayahu Razi, who was stabbed to death in a Jerusalem Airbnb last month after a dispute involving his former partner escalated into an armed confrontation.

Seven people were indicted in total, but prosecutors accuse them of different roles in the killing.

Agam Tzarfati, 19, of Jerusalem, Shilat Huta, 20, of Beersheba, and four minors aged approximately 15 to 17 were charged with murder and aggravated assault. Prosecutors allege that the six decided together to attack Razi and his friend, while the four minors carried out the physical assault that killed him.

The seventh defendant, Linor Sasson, 46, of Jerusalem, was charged with assisting after the fact and obstruction of justice for allegedly helping members of the group flee after the attack.

According to the indictments, Tzarfati remained in a car outside the apartment during the attack. Huta went upstairs with the four minors and was present as the confrontation developed, including making a video call to Tzarfati while it was taking place. Prosecutors nevertheless charge both women with Razi’s murder, alleging that they had joined the four minors in deciding beforehand to attack him and his friend.

The four minors were also charged with unlawful possession of knives and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors have asked the Jerusalem District Court to keep all seven defendants in custody until the end of proceedings against them.

According to the indictments, Tzarfati and Razi had been in a relationship.

Women spent weekend with Razi before his death

On July 9, Tzarfati and Huta rented an Airbnb apartment on Shirizli Street in Jerusalem for three days and invited Razi and his friend to spend the weekend there with them.

A dispute broke out between the four the following day. Prosecutors said they do not know precisely what happened during that altercation.

The next afternoon, Tzarfati and Huta left the apartment while Razi and his friend were sleeping.

They later told Huta’s sister and others that Razi had been violent toward them and that they were afraid to return to the apartment.

The two women went to Sasson’s home in Jerusalem’s Neve Yaakov neighborhood. The four minors later arrived there and heard Tzarfati and Huta’s account of what had happened.

It was at Sasson’s home, prosecutors allege, that Tzarfati, Huta and the four minors decided together to attack Razi and his friend, saying that they intended to “finish him.”

The four minors then allegedly armed themselves with two knives, a folding metal baton, a spike, razor blades and a metal meat tenderizer.

Later that afternoon, Huta exchanged messages with Razi’s friend and warned that he and Razi should leave the apartment. Tzarfati also sent Razi threatening messages as the group headed back toward the area, according to the indictment.

At around 6:30 p.m., Sasson allegedly drove Tzarfati, Huta and the four minors toward the apartment. During the drive, prosecutors said, the minors continued talking about their intention to “finish” Razi. The indictment states that Sasson warned them not to do anything.

When they arrived, Tzarfati and Sasson remained in the car while Huta and the four minors walked toward the apartment.

They found Razi and his friend sitting in a car nearby. One of the minors, who knew Razi, approached and asked to speak with him. The group then convinced the two men to go back up to the apartment with them, saying they wanted to talk.

Inside, the four minors confronted Razi over the claim that he had hit Tzarfati. According to the indictment, Razi denied hitting her.

Huta, standing at the entrance to the room, then made a video call to Tzarfati, allowing Tzarfati and Sasson to see what was happening inside.

After a brief exchange, one of the minors allegedly pulled out the metal baton and struck Razi in the face and shoulder.

The four minors then drew the weapons they had brought and attacked him, prosecutors alleged.

Prosecutors allege that two of the minors then stabbed Razi in the arm and chest, although they have not determined which of the three carried out the stabbings.

Razi’s friend tried to reach him and was attacked as well. Prosecutors allege that he was kicked, struck in the arm with the metal meat tenderizer, and stabbed in the hand.

The stab wound to Razi’s lower left chest penetrated his chest cavity and struck his heart, causing severe blood loss that led to his death.

Group flees after attack

The group fled immediately after the attack.

According to the indictment, one of the minors wiped two knives as they escaped, while another discarded a knife he had taken from the apartment.

Sasson later picked up the four minors in her car. Prosecutors allege that once inside, they said Razi was dead and discussed leaving Jerusalem.

One of the minors later separated from the others and remained in hiding for more than two weeks before police arrested him.

Police had taken the unusual step of publicly releasing the 17-year-old suspect’s name and photograph while he was still at large in an effort to locate him. He was arrested on July 28 following a two-week manhunt.

The killing followed a troubled history between Razi and Tzarfati. Ynet reported that Razi filed a police complaint in September 2025 alleging that Tzarfati was harassing him and threatening his life, and that several men had come to his home and threatened to kill him. Several other reports note that complaints had been made by both sides during their relationship. Those earlier allegations are separate from what prosecutors say occurred during the weekend of Razi’s death.

In its request to keep all seven defendants in custody, the prosecution said the evidence includes security-camera footage documenting parts of the incident and the group’s escape, statements by Tzarfati and Huta about the minors arming themselves ahead of the attack, partial admissions by the minors, the surviving friend’s account, phone evidence and DNA findings.

Attorneys say they did not receive investigation material at time of indictment

Attorneys Idan Gamlielli and Ofer Ehrlich of the Public Defender’s Office, who represent one of the minors, said they had not yet received the investigation material when the indictment was filed.

“Even from an initial review of the indictment, a picture emerges of an unplanned and unfolding event that ended tragically,” they said.

The minor denies directly causing Razi’s death, they added, saying they would present their arguments in court after receiving and reviewing the evidence.

This post was originally published on here. 

Prosecutors filed a declaration of intent to indict a Ramat Gan man on Sunday over his suspected involvement in five incidents of property damage and extortion by threats targeting several Israeli media outlets and the Justice Ministry, police said.

The man, in his 40s, was arrested on July 30 following a weeks-long investigation. Police said investigators collected evidence linking him to attacks on buildings housing Channel 12, Haaretz, Israel Hayom, and the Justice Ministry during July.

According to police, bricks were thrown at entrance doors in the attacks, which investigators suspect were intended to intimidate media organizations and influence the way they covered the news.

The most recent publicly reported incident took place in the early hours of July 28, when a masked individual threw two bricks at the glass entrance to Channel 12’s Tel Aviv offices, shattering the doors. A threatening letter was left nearby demanding that the network apologize for its coverage of the Sde Teiman affair and warning that further violence would follow if it did not.

“Until you apologize over the Sde Teiman affair, I am not stopping,” the letter said, warning that the next brick would be directed at the head of a Channel 12 employee and that “someone will end up dead.”

Police said Sunday that the suspect is believed to have left the letter at the entrance to the building.

Attacks on Israeli media outlets continue, linked to Justice Ministry

The July 28 attack was the second time Channel 12’s entrance had been smashed that month. On July 5, security footage showed a masked individual approaching the building shortly after 3 a.m. and throwing two bricks at the entrance, the second of which shattered the glass door. Police opened an investigation at the time.

Three days later, on July 8, the entrance to Haaretz’s Tel Aviv offices was also targeted. Security footage showed a masked individual throwing two bricks through the entrance gate, with one smashing a hole in the newspaper’s glass door. Haaretz filed a police complaint and said it had increased security at the building following the attack.

Sunday’s police statement also linked the investigation to damage at buildings housing Israel Hayom and the Justice Ministry, though no further details were provided about the damage. 

Suspect arrested on July 30

Investigators said they identified the suspect through technological means and undercover investigative work before arresting him on July 30. During a search of his home, police seized clothing and other evidence that they said linked him to the offenses under investigation.

His detention has since been extended several times.

The prosecutor’s declaration filed Sunday is a procedural step indicating that prosecutors intend to file an indictment. Police said an indictment is expected in the coming days.

Police said they viewed attempts to intimidate journalists and media organizations particularly seriously, adding that they would act against the use of violence or threats intended to interfere with journalists’ work.

This post was originally published on here. 

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The Pentagon told US defense industry leaders to prepare plans to escalate production and delivery of weapons as reports of munitions shortages escalate, The Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing a Defense Department memo. 

Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg wrote that the leaders had no more than 21 days to present plans to “drive significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities,” on Wednesday, according to the memo. 

“Years-long development cycles are not acceptable. We must dramatically accelerate our program schedules and expand our production capacity now.”

US stockpiles reportedly dwindling

Reports have emerged in recent weeks that the US had used up much of its stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles.

The missiles are principally the Army’s surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). The US has used “virtually all” of these weapons, according to two sources familiar with the data. 

Additional reports emerged of a clash between US President Donald Trump and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the alleged shortage, with Trump unaware of the extent of the diminished stockpile. 

Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger told Reuters on Friday that replenishing the diminished US military arsenals would take some time. 

“That won’t happen in two years. It will take much longer,” Papperger said. 

Rheinmetall signed a memorandum of understanding with Lockheed last month to jointly produce Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, at Rheinmetall’s Unterluess plant in northern Germany. Production facilities are due to be set up next year.

White House disputes conflict between Hegseth, Trump, downplays shortages

The White House strongly disputed reports of both shortages and the conflict. 

“The US has massive amounts of ‘munitions'” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Thursday. 

White House officials said Trump had not directed his anger at Hegseth. In a separate Truth Social post on Thursday, the president said he was “extremely happy with the job that Pete Hegseth is doing.”

“He has never blamed Pete. This is all about the leakers,” one official told CNN.

CNN also previously reported that Trump was well aware of any potential shortages but was frustrated that the information became public while the US wants to be able to negotiate from a place of strength. 

White House asks defense industry to lobby for defense spending

The memo comes after the White House has attempted to enlist the defense industry to unlock military funding through extensive lobbying, The Washington Post wrote. 

Defense contractors were summoned to the White House to meet with Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, and White House Legislative Affairs Director James Braid in July, and were encouraged to use direct lobbying to increase defense spending, The Washington Post cited people familiar with the event as saying. 

The Defense Department has announced several framework agreements with defense contractors and emerging startups to increase its supply of low-cost munitions, sophisticated air defense weapons, and patriot missiles. However, the arrangements are nonbinding contracts that rely on congressional funding to become final, The Washington Post wrote. 

“They are agreements to agree, and so they’re not contracts. Almost nothing has been contracted, and that’s the problem.” Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the think-tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) told The Washington Post. 

Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell confirmed the veracity of the Feinberg memo, saying it “will inform the fiscal year 2028 budget submitted to Congress for funding, and it is entirely consistent with our ongoing push to rebuild the defense industrial base.”

“Working directly with industry leaders to accelerate production is not new. It has been the clear intent of the President and this Secretary from the start,” Parnell said in a statement.

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The new defense pact signed by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey, though far from ideal for Israel, “doesn’t shut the door completely on normalization” between Riyadh and Jerusalem, Dr. Yoel Guzansky, head of the Gulf Research Field at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

The three Sunni-majority countries signed the defense agreement on Friday, after months of attacks from Iran and its proxies on Gulf states. Though unclear how the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement’s actions will materialize, the member states said in a joint statement that it would strengthen collective deterrence against any act of aggression and stipulates that an armed attack against any of the three would be regarded as an attack on all.

Saudi Arabia, the hardest-hit of all three countries, likely joined the pact so it would have more leverage and options as trust in Washington is waning in the region, Guzansky said.

“Countries need stability. Saudis need stability. It’s also a sign of, let’s say, question marks over the US’s readiness and ability to assist the Gulf states,” he explained. “The Saudis feel that they cannot count on the US, not because the US doesn’t want to, but because this administration, like almost every administration, has political, economic and military constraints and limitations. So they need more. This is hedging.”

Though there were theories that Iran’s attacks would push Gulf states to embrace Israel more closely for its defensive and technological capabilities, Guzansky said Jerusalem’s growing reputation as a “hegemon” made such an embrace difficult, particularly given the perception that Israel is engaged in “endless wars,” which is not a sign of the much-desired stability Riyadh seeks.

With Jerusalem not being viewed as a viable partner for Riyadh, Guzansky was blunt about his concerns over what it would mean for Saudi Arabia to embrace countries so openly hostile to Israel.

Israel ‘threat to entire Muslim world’

“I’m worried because the Turks and Pakistanis have a really, really anti-Israel stance that might affect Saudi Arabia. I’m hoping that Saudi Arabia will affect them, but it would perhaps be too naive to think so,” he said. “It will not officially be aimed at Israel per se, but these are countries that are worried about Israel. Most of them are anti-Israel.”

Notably, only a day after the pact was announced, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif told Pakistan media that there should be “a united military front” against Israel, which he described as a “threat to the entire Muslim world.”

“Their attitude towards the Palestinians and their anti-Islamic mindset will not disappear. They continue to incite Muslim countries against each other,” he said, seemingly pointing blame at Israel for the attacks from Iran on Muslim states. “And as long as the Palestinian issue is not permanently resolved, the Islamic world must stand against them as one.”

Turkey views itself as a regional power

From Ankara’s side, Guzansky said, “The Turks see themselves as a regional power. They are very sensitive to Israel and what Israel is doing. [Turkish President Tayyip] Erdogan is very, very negative, to say the least, towards Israel. He’s anti-Israel. He’s an antisemite.”

With rumors of other countries looking to join the pact, namely Qatar and Egypt, Guzansky warned that the outlook “doesn’t look good” for Israel, especially given Doha’s propaganda capabilities with Al Jazeera.

Guzansky theorized that the pact would be little more than diplomatic, with the possibility of sending some defensive equipment, stating that he doubted Turkey’s willingness to go to war against Iran.

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David Chesterman, the brother of one of four soldiers wounded in Lebanon last week, alleged on Saturday that they were severely mistreated by Rambam Health Care Campus’s staff during their overnight stay at the Haifa hospital.

In a post on Instagram, Chesterman alleged that the four soldiers‘ families were not allowed to see their wounded loved ones, and that the soldiers were waiting for ages to receive food and water. 

“My brother was seriously wounded in Lebanon, and what happened afterward is simply inconceivable. Three days ago, he was hospitalized together with three other fellow soldiers. He was sedated and ventilated and only woke up yesterday afternoon, suffering from burns all over his body, pain, fever, and hallucinations,” he wrote.

According to Chesterman, the shift on the ward changed during the night, and the families were asked to leave.

“At night, a new shift arrived on the ward, all of them Arabic speakers. They removed all the families from the wards and locked the doors. Four seriously wounded soldiers find themselves alone for an entire night, surrounded by an Arabic-speaking staff behind locked doors. It’s completely insane.”

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Chesterman claimed that family members tried to enter the ward to check on his brother’s condition, but their requests were denied.

“We asked to go in for just a second, to see that he was okay. They refused us again and again. I broke through the door and went in to see that my brother was okay. He wasn’t.”

Brother of wounded soldier says he was ‘slammed into bed’ by Rambam nurses

Upon entering the room, Chesterman stated he found his brother “begging for water, and no one was around.”

He whispered to me that they had turned him over in the bed brutally, ‘like a sardine,’ his head was slammed into the bed, and no one cared,” he said, and demanded to know who would take responsibility

Rambam addressed the issue by stating they take allegations of inappropriate treatment seriously, but would “not accept statements that disqualify or cast aspersions on the medical center’s staff on the basis of their community or ethnicity.”

“Rambam has a multicultural staff comprising employees from all sectors, communities, and religions, who have devotedly treated the many wounded soldiers who have arrived at the medical center throughout the war,” the hospital stated.

Ben-Gvir calls on Health Ministry to probe, Katz calls on IDF to probe

In response, Defense Minister Israel Katz called for the IDF to investigate the incident. 

“I view with the utmost seriousness the testimonies that have been published regarding the treatment of wounded IDF soldiers at the hospital,” he said.

“The heroic IDF soldiers who were wounded while defending the State of Israel deserve the most dedicated and best possible care, as well as respectful treatment for themselves and their families. I instructed the IDF to immediately and thoroughly investigate all the allegations raised with the hospital and the relevant authorities,” he said. 

“If it is found that any staff member treated the wounded soldiers in an improper or egregious manner, it will not be allowed to pass without action. We will not allow anyone to treat IDF soldiers who were wounded defending the country in this manner. We will demand answers, draw conclusions, and act to ensure that such an incident does not happen again.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir also called for the Health Ministry to investigate whether the Rambam nurses were motivated by nationalistic sentiments. 

“If the serious testimonies emerging from Rambam Hospital are accurate, this is a grave scandal that should concern every citizen in Israel. It is unthinkable that hospital employees would harass, humiliate, or abuse wounded soldiers and the families of soldiers who risk their lives for the security of Israel’s citizens,” Ben-Gvir wrote in a statement. 

“These testimonies require an immediate, thorough investigation without any whitewashing, including an examination of whether, in some cases, the harassment was nationalistically motivated. Anyone who harms our soldiers and their families should know that there will be consequences,” he added. 

“I expect Rambam’s management and the Health Ministry to investigate the matter thoroughly and take severe action if the allegations are found to be true.”

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Spain checked around 200 travelers arriving from Italy at the country’s six largest airports on the first day of border controls reintroduced following a dispute with Italy over irregular migration.

Spain’s Interior Ministry carried out checks on a total of 199 people on 12 flights from Italy to airports in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Bilbao, Alicante and Valencia, it said late on Saturday.

Spain said on Friday border controls for flights and ships from Italy would remain in force until September 7 after Rome applied its own measures, which it said were motivated by the mass migration rush by 72,000 people to Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta on July 30.

Italy suspends EU border-free arrangements with Spain

Italy has suspended the European Union‘s border-free Schengen arrangements with Spain since August 1 and said it would maintain border controls until at least August 15.

Rome said the measure would not affect Spanish or other EU citizens traveling to Italy and would instead involve targeted checks on non-EU nationals arriving from Spain by air or sea.

“We hope to be able to lift the suspension soon, as soon as there is no longer any risk,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Sunday.

The Schengen Area allows passport-free travel across 29 European countries, although member states can temporarily reintroduce border controls on security or public-order grounds.

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A former flight attendant pleaded guilty to defrauding three major US airlines after posing as a pilot for nearly five years, using a fake identification badge to obtain hundreds of free flights.

Dallas Pokornik, 33, pleaded guilty in federal court to wire fraud after exploiting a system that offers discounted or free flights to airline employees, benefits known in the industry as “Non Rev.” The tickets are offered to airline employees, and sometimes employees of other companies in the aviation industry, at heavily discounted rates or free of charge, depending on seat availability.

Pokornik now faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. His sentencing is scheduled for December 8, 2026.

As part of the plea agreement, Pokornik also agreed to compensate the three airlines that were victims of the fraud. The exact amount of restitution will be determined at his sentencing hearing.

According to court documents, Pokornik worked as a flight attendant for a Toronto-based airline until 2019. During his employment, he was legally entitled to flight benefits. After leaving the airline, however, he used his knowledge of the system to continue flying for free, this time by posing as a pilot, in a scheme reminiscent of the pilot impersonation featured in the film “Catch Me If You Can.”

Defrauded airlines not named in court documents

According to the indictment, Pokornik presented himself as a pilot and asked to be given a seat on a flight. When no seats were available in the passenger cabin, he also asked to use a “jumpseat” in the cockpit, a seat generally reserved for pilots and other authorized crew members.

The three airlines Pokornik defrauded were not named in prosecution documents, but the locations of their headquarters were disclosed. The first was based in Honolulu, where Hawaiian Airlines is headquartered, the second in Chicago, home to United Airlines’ headquarters, and the third in Fort Worth, Texas, where American Airlines is headquartered.

Scheme uncovered in 2024

The scheme was uncovered in 2024 after Pokornik showed the fake pilot badge to an employee of one of the airlines. The employee suspected the badge was fraudulent, photographed it, and reported the incident.

An investigation found that Pokornik was not a pilot for the airline he claimed to represent. Authorities began searching for him, and he was eventually located in Panama. After an arrest warrant was issued, he was extradited to the United States.

Prosecutors said Pokornik had managed to obtain “hundreds of free flights.” It remains unclear exactly when the fraud began, but as part of his plea agreement, he admitted that it continued from January 2020 through October 2024, a period of nearly five years.

After Pokornik pleaded guilty, federal prosecutor Ken Sorenson said, “Aviation security protocols help keep citizens and visitors safe, and those who violate them should expect to be prosecuted.”

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Two years after a Hezbollah terrorist attack killed 12 children in the Druze community of Majdal Shams, the Birthright Israel Foundation announced the construction of eight therapeutic gardens in the area.

The gardens will be built in four local educational institutions, with approximately 1,000 volunteers from the Birthright Israel Volunteer Program expected to take part.

“On October 8, 2023, we accepted the Jews and Israelis as our home. Now, the Jews finally accepted us,” Dolan Abu Saleh, Head of the Majdal Shams Municipality, told volunteers arriving in mid-July to work on the first of the gardens.

“Every volunteer we send strengthens the bond between world Jewry and Israel,” Elias Saratovsky, President and CEO of Birthright Israel Foundation, stated. 

“Majdal Shams shows what that looks like on the ground, and we are grateful to the The David and Meredith Kaplan Foundation for making this project possible. We want to bring tens of thousands more volunteers over the next few years.”

Majdal Shams hosts memorial ceremony for victims of Lebanon rocket

In late July, a memorial ceremony was held in Majdal Shams to commemorate the 12 victims of the rocket fired at the village from Lebanon on July 27, 2024.

In addition to the 12 boys and girls aged 10 to 16, who were killed, 34 others were wounded as a result of the strike.

Yoav Etiel contributed to this report.

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There is little chance of Iran ever giving up their control over the Strait of Hormuz, Dr. Raz Zimmt, head of the Iran program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), told 103FM on Sunday morning.

“The Iranians see Hormuz as their most significant strategic achievement,” he added. “American recognition of Iranian control over the strait, in one form or another, would mean not only that the Iranians determine the arrangements, but that at some point they would also be able to charge something.

That ‘something,’ Zimmt said, could be defined in several ways, such as “Service fees, environmental fees, or various other ideas. But it is completely clear that the Americans will apparently be prepared to recognize a change in the status quo in the strait.”

Iran unwilling to compromise, expert says

Zimmt rejected the argument that Iran would be willing to compromise.

“There is no doubt that the Iranians are reading, just like everyone else, the reports being published both here and in the US about the shortage of interceptors and the reluctance of the US military leadership to return to war, and it is clear that they will take advantage of that,” he explained.

“In recent weeks, the Iranians have been conducting negotiations not with the Americans, but with the Omanis, over arrangements that would allow the Strait of Hormuz to reopen. That, of course, does not mean that the Iranians are withdrawing any of the demands that formed the basis of the memorandum of understanding.

“The memorandum of understanding stipulated that, alongside the Iranians reopening the strait, the Americans themselves would take measures such as releasing some of the frozen Iranian assets, easing sanctions on oil exports, and lifting the naval blockade. The Iranians demanded this from the outset. From their perspective, the Americans violated the memorandum of understanding, and now they are demanding additional concessions.”

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Pakistan has introduced new rules expanding state oversight of foreign media, including imposing a requirement for government clearance before journalists and contributors working for international outlets can undertake reporting assignments outside the country’s three largest cities. The move has been strongly criticized by journalist organizations. 

The directives issued by Pakistan’s Information and Broadcasting Ministry, and described as the Foreign Media Facilitation Guidelines 2026, state that foreign-media personnel must obtain a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the ministry’s External Publicity Wing before undertaking official reporting assignments outside Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. 

The guidelines also state that press accreditation or registration may be suspended or withdrawn for misuse, involvement in a cognizable offense, submission of false or forged documents, failure to report organizational changes within seven days, or actions deemed contrary to Pakistan’s ideology, sovereignty, security or public order. 

The Media Line has reviewed a copy of the guidelines, which state that they “shall be applicable to all foreign or international print, electronic and digital media including social media and web-based platforms.” 

Pakistani journalists working for foreign media organizations are also covered by the new guidelines. Under the rules, any Pakistani journalists, freelancers, and other contributors, including fixers, translators, and technical personnel, working with foreign outlets may require an NOC to conduct official reporting outside the three designated cities. 

These guidelines do not appear to specify a general deadline for authorities to issue an NOC for reporting assignments. Critics argue that the requirement could hinder breaking news coverage, when journalists may need to travel within hours of a major event. 

Move comes amid criticism in Islamabad

The Pakistani government says the guidelines are not intended to impose restrictions on the media, but to establish “an administrative mechanism” for verifying media personnel, facilitating their access and providing necessary assistance. The government also maintains that the measures do not amount to a blanket restriction on individuals’ movement. 

These new directives come amid sharp public criticism from Islamabad, which has accused foreign outlets, including Al Jazeera and the BBC, of biased coverage of the ongoing elections and unrest in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. 

As phased legislative assembly voting continues through August 10, the Pakistani Information Ministry has ordered foreign journalists to leave the region immediately and obtain a formal NOC before returning. 

Authorities said several foreign correspondents had entered the region without the required clearance, marking an early enforcement of the government’s new regulatory framework. 

Tightening control of Pakistan’s domestic media

Pakistan has already tightened controls over domestic media through expanded cybercrime laws. 

The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), along with its 2025 amendments, extended the government’s powers to regulate online expression. The amendments criminalized the intentional dissemination of information deemed false or likely to cause fear, panic, or unrest, carrying penalties of up to three years in prison and fines of up to Rs. 2 million. They also established a Social Media Protection and Regulatory Authority, giving the state broader powers to regulate digital platforms and online content. 

According to a disclosure by the Pakistan Interior Ministry to the National Assembly, 187 cases have been registered under Section 26A of PECA for online misinformation, as of April 2026. Together with the new foreign media rules, the expanded PECA framework has raised concerns about increased government oversight of the media and online expression. 

The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) has strongly condemned the federal government’s notification requiring foreign-media personnel to obtain permission before reporting outside the three designated cities. PFUJ is a representative body for journalists, advocating for press freedom, journalists’ rights and professional independence. 

In a joint statement on Wednesday, PFUJ President Afzal Butt and Secretary-General Arshad Ansari called for the immediate withdrawal of the restrictions, warning that they could jeopardize the jobs of Pakistani journalists working for international media outlets. 

PFUJ leaders said the move would only bring disrepute to Pakistan and further damage its international image, noting that the country already ranks among the lowest globally in terms of press freedom. They warned that the government’s actions could further worsen that record. 

Both leaders warned that if their demand is not met, the union will launch protests and demonstrations across the country. 

Iqbal Khattak, Pakistan’s country representative for Reporters Without Borders and executive director of Freedom Network, described the situation as “grave and alarming” for journalists working with foreign media. 

Khattak told The Media Line that the restrictions had become so broad that even journalists’ sources could face scrutiny or consequences. 

He said the guidelines appeared to give authorities greater ability to monitor what foreign journalists report and where they travel, calling the measures “highly dangerous” for press freedom. 

Khattak said that while the measures are described as regulations, they effectively restrict journalists’ movement and ability to work freely. 

He also warned that requiring Pakistani journalists working for foreign media to register with authorities could expose them to pressure if their reporting is later deemed negative or propagandistic. 

He further criticized provisions allowing accreditation to be suspended or withdrawn on grounds including national security, public order or state ideology, saying such broadly defined grounds could create fear among journalists and discourage independent reporting. 

Zain Zaman Junjua, an Islamabad-based senior journalist who has worked for several foreign media organizations, including AFP, told The Media Line that the regulations follow restrictions already imposed on domestic media through strict laws. 

He said that international media had become one of the few remaining spaces for critical scrutiny of the government, but the guidelines appeared to be shrinking that space as well. 

From his perspective, the rules were vague and offered little clarity about how they would be interpreted or enforced, leaving journalists and media organizations uncertain about how to comply. He questioned how reporters could obtain an NOC quickly enough to cover breaking news, given what he described as slow bureaucratic procedures.  

Junjua also said the government appeared to be imposing restrictions on media organizations with global reach, even though they can bring Pakistani stories to international audiences far more quickly and widely than state-funded outlets can.  

“The regulations could hinder Pakistani journalists working for global media, especially those in remote and restive areas, restricting reporting and risking jobs,” he asserted. 

Sajjad Azhar, a Rawalpindi-based veteran historian, writer and observer, told The Media Line that “Pakistan has now entered a highly controlled era, with laws enacted by Parliament rather than imposed by a dictator or military regime, through which media freedoms are being curtailed.” 

He acknowledged that Pakistan’s security situation is precarious and that foreign media could face threats from terrorist groups. Such restrictions might be understandable if introduced on security grounds, he said. 

However, he noted that they followed an Al Jazeera report during the Kashmir elections, raising concerns that the measures are aimed less at protecting journalists than at restricting independent reporting and freedom of expression. 

Azhar said foreign news organizations provide an important channel through which Pakistan is viewed and understood by global audiences. 

He warned that restricting their ability to travel freely and report independently could create the perception that Islamabad is seeking greater control over how events in the country are portrayed. 

At a time when Pakistan is seeking to strengthen its international standing and expand its global outreach, Azhar said, curbing the work of international media organizations could prove counterproductive. 

Syed Jowdat Nadeem, a senior member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told The Media Line that the new restrictions “will hit journalists working for foreign media and international broadcasters particularly hard.” 

Nadeem said news is often time-sensitive, and that requiring prior government permission to travel could delay or prevent coverage of major incidents. 

He said independent journalism cannot function effectively when access to the field depends on administrative approval. 

Nadeem warned that the policies could damage Pakistan’s international reputation by creating the impression that the country is becoming less open to independent scrutiny. 

He said journalists already face intimidation, censorship, legal action and violence, while those covering conflict-hit or politically sensitive areas often face mistrust from both state institutions and local communities, making objective reporting increasingly difficult. 

Nadeem noted that Pakistan’s media environment has been shrinking for years and said much of the censorship has become internalized. 

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Armed Bedouin clans in the Gaza Strip have fought Hamas‘s military wing at the height of their activity and inflicted significant casualties, security officials said on Sunday. 

Since the ceasefire was declared, they have helped secure the Yellow Line and the area west of it, while also assisting in locating weapons and terrorist infrastructure above and below ground. 

A security official described the clans’ operations as deliberately discreet. 

“The activity of the anti-Hamas clans is intimate, kept in the shadows, and that is a good thing,” the official said, adding that “it is very effective and is proceeding according to plan.”

Some security officials worry about supporting the clans for the future

However, opinions within the security establishment on the future of the Bedouin clans’ operations are divided. 

Other figures within the security establishment have warned of the risks involved in supporting the clans ahead of “the day after.” Some of the clans’ commanders were previously involved in criminal activity that both Hamas and the IDF sought to combat.

Walla learned that senior officials on the Peace Council, with US backing and support, want the Bedouin clans, which are based in more than three locations across the Gaza Strip, to be disarmed “the day after.”

Meanwhile, the Israeli security establishment is planning to keep some of the clans inside the Yellow Line under the IDF’s operational responsibility in order to protect them from harm. Peace Council officials, by contrast, believe the clans should be returned to Palestinian territory as part of a future IDF withdrawal to the regular border line.

Security officials have described the issue as a “minefield” that the political echelon is in no hurry to address, instead keeping it as leverage against both the Hamas leadership and the Peace Council.

One official warned that once the clans are stripped of their weapons, they will return to their previous activity: smuggling.

At this stage, despite close daily cooperation between the IDF, other Israeli security bodies, American officials, and the Bedouin clans, the possibility of transferring the clans into Israeli territory has not been raised.

Bedouin clans exerted control during IDF ground maneuver in Gaza

In September 2025, it was reported that as the IDF carried out its ground maneuver in the Gaza Strip and fighting with Hamas intensified, armed clans across Gaza demonstrated control over the areas in which they lived, according to sources in the Southern Command.

According to one military source, the clans stationed hundreds of operatives at the entrances to various territories in an effort to repel Hamas security forces seeking to strengthen their control on the ground.

Among those forces is the “Arrow Unit,” a forceful and violent Hamas unit involved in arrests, assaults, and the killing of people accused of collaborating with Israel.

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An associate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Likud lawmakers and ministers on Sunday, claiming that half of them will only see the Knesset on television.

“They will go home. Out of 45, including those under the Norwegian Law, 18 will remain, plus eight reserved slots. According to the polls, Likud will win 25 seats. Where will everyone be?” he said.

The associate went on to argue that because they had been afraid to speak out openly, many would fail to secure places on the party’s next list.

“They had the organizing committee handed to them on a silver platter, and they were afraid to speak out openly. Now, in practice, about half of the Knesset members will be left off the list.”

“Because of Haim Katz and Bitan, many Knesset members will be sitting at home. They dragged Likud into a serious mess, and Netanyahu will bring new people onto the list.”

“They fought over the top spots, and many Knesset members, as well as ministers, will find themselves watching Channel 99,” he said mockingly, referencing the Knesset television channel. 

Associate criticizes MKs, ministers over controversial clause

At the end of last month, the prime minister’s associate also criticized Knesset members and ministers following an especially close battle over the most controversial clause, which would allow serving Knesset members, ministers, and deputy ministers to also run for regional and reserved slots.

“Although Haim Katz narrowly won the clause allowing Knesset members to run in the districts, it is not certain that Eti Atiah, for whom the rule was passed, will be a Knesset member,” Netanyahu’s associate complained.

The prime minister’s associate, himself a powerful figure within Likud, also lashed out at some ministers and Knesset members who are considering running in the districts against new candidates.

“Many Knesset members who intended to run in the districts will lose to new candidates. It is true that the decision passed and opened the door for ministers and Knesset members to run in the districts, but the party grassroots proved that they are very strong.”

“There are Knesset members and ministers who are considering running in the districts, and it is not certain that the golden parachute they received from Haim Katz will help them. It is also not certain that MK Eti Atia, because of whom the clause was created in the vote, will enter the Knesset,” he concluded.

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The IDF has achieved significant gains in the Gaza Strip, particularly over the past year, during which it created a well-oiled machine for locating, mapping, and destroying terrorist infrastructure above and below ground.

As a result, the IDF currently controls between 65% and roughly 70% of the Gaza Strip, depending on whom you ask.

At the same time, Southern Command chief Maj.-Gen. Yaniv Asor, who will soon compete for the position of deputy IDF chief of staff, advanced a very clear policy of thwarting terrorism through airstrikes. The strikes are directed at anyone who took part in October 7, with an emphasis on operatives who crossed the border into Israeli territory, as well as those currently advancing terrorist activity against Israel and rebuilding the capabilities of Hamas’s military wing.

This involves a combination of precise intelligence from the Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency), which does not receive proper credit for its achievements, intelligence from the IDF Intelligence Directorate, and aerial firepower capabilities. A senior officer told Walla that “this is high-quality intelligence and the exploitation of operational opportunities.”

However, in recent weeks, amid pressure from new Hamas leader Khalil al Hayya, as well as Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates on the US, there has been a significant shift in the approach toward Israeli activity in the Gaza Strip.

Israel approves task force entry into Gaza before Hamas disarmament

First, the Israeli government gave in to US pressure and approved the entry of approximately 200 members of a multinational force into the Gaza Strip before Hamas had disarmed and transferred responsibility to the technocratic government.

Shortly after criticism emerged from within the defense establishment over the pragmatism the government showed toward US President Donald Trump’s peace plan, while ignoring Hamas’s ability to rebuild and reestablish itself in the Gaza Strip, particularly its military wing, a decision was made to completely halt targeted killings in the Gaza Strip, without presenting alternatives.

On this issue, criticism can be directed at the Israeli government, which insisted on preventing the Palestinian Authority from becoming involved in the Strip, and, on the other hand, at the policies of Trump, envoy Nikolay Mladenov, and the technocratic government, which are rushing to rehabilitate the southern Gaza Strip.

They have done so without presenting a strong framework capable of preventing Hamas from returning to rule the entire strip, including the area that is supposed to be “terror-free” in the Rafah area. In practice, what is happening is that the US and Israeli policy are allowing actors hostile to Israel, such as Qatar and Turkey, to expand their influence in the Gaza Strip and over Israel.

New Rafah construction by US makes no sense, experts say

The US approach to the establishment of the new city in Rafah is also raising questions among professionals. According to them, the quality of the buildings and infrastructure, and the speed at which the Americans want contractors to complete them, make no sense and are inconsistent with the idea of establishing a municipal system capable of absorbing 50,000 Palestinians who are not involved in terrorism.

As if that were not enough, it was learned that a Nukhba operative who was directly involved in October 7 was arrested near the Kerem Shalom Crossing by the Shin Bet and the IDF after receiving authorization to work as a driver transporting humanitarian aid.

An analysis of the developments surrounding the Gaza Strip suggests that the government’s policy in Gaza is beginning to become dangerous and could lead to further negative developments.

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Some Taylor Swift songs have been removed from social media videos posted by US President Donald Trump‘s campaign and the White House, which have used two of the American superstar’s songs over the past week.

The White House and a representative for Swift did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Swift has not spoken recently about Trump, although she endorsed his Democratic rival, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, in 2024.

During the 2020 campaign, Swift posted on social media that Trump was “WELL AWARE we do not want him as our president.”

Trump has repeatedly criticized Swift. After she endorsed Harris, the Republican said on social media, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” Last year he wrote: “Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer “HOT?”

Dozens of artists, including Sabrina Carpenter and Ariana Grande, have called on the Trump administration not to use their songs.

Trump campaign uses Swift songs on TikTok page

The Trump campaign used two Swift songs over the last week on its TikTok page. One, playing on her lyrics, featured the caption: “Red (Donald Trump’s Version). Red (Taylor Swift Wrote A Whole Album About Republicans). Donald Trump. Everything Has Changed (At Our Southern Border). Donald Trump. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (The Biden Harris Administration). Donald Trump. The Last Time (An Autopen Runs The Country).” It referenced famous songs by the pop star.

In June, Trump’s campaign posted a video on the short-video platform with Swift’s new “Toy Story 5” song “I Knew It, I Knew You.” The short video was captioned “Nobody loves our country & the American People more than @President Donald J Trump.” It showed him interacting with children at the White House, dancing at a UFC match and appearing at a rally.

It was the third time the Trump administration or his campaign had used one of the Grammy Award-winning pop star’s songs in recent months.

In April, the White House shared a video showing the Artemis II crew meeting with Trump at the White House the day before. The video used Swift’s “High Infidelity” and lyrics from the song: “Do you really want to know where I was April 29th?”

The White House shared another TikTok video in November featuring “The Fate of Ophelia” from Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” album, which had been released the month before. That video featured images of the US flag, monuments and various photos of Trump, including his 2023 arrest mugshot.

That post garnered widespread social media reaction and led to a White House spokesperson telling multiple news outlets the video was created because the Trump administration knew news outlets “would breathlessly amplify them.”

The communications team for Trump, who is prolific on social media, has posted an array of hit songs with images including Trump’s immigration crackdown, US military operations against Iran and the arrest of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. 

This post was originally published on here. 

A Jetstar A320 and a Qatar Airways Boeing 777 narrowly avoided colliding on the tarmac at Sydney airport on Sunday, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau was told, it said, as it began an investigation into the incident.

The Jetstar plane was taxiing for take-off to Queensland state’s Gold Coast when its flight crew saw the Qatar Airways plane, which was being towed by an aircraft tug, very close on a crossing taxiway, the regulator said.

“Both aircraft were stopped abruptly,” the transport safety bureau said in a statement.

A cabin crew member on the Jetstar plane was injured, and the connection between the Qatar Airways plane’s nose gear and the aircraft tug was damaged, the regulator said.

Jetstar opens investigation

Jetstar, the budget arm of Australia’s national carrier Qantas, said it was investigating the incident, too.

“Our aircraft was following instructions by Air Traffic Control when the pilots were forced to brake firmly after another aircraft came in close proximity,” a Jetstar spokesperson said in a statement.

Qatar Airways did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The incident comes a day after Sydney Airport was hit by widespread delays sparked by government agency Airservices Australia enacting “departure spacing” due to roster problems with air traffic controllers.

Airservices Australia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This post was originally published on here. 

For a sports betting company, not every major tournament produces an easy quarter.

Sometimes the matches go exactly the way bettors hope. Popular outcomes land, goals arrive in abundance and sportsbook margins come under pressure. Add two major casino wins totaling more than $1.2 million, and the quarter becomes a real test of the business underneath the betting slips.

That is what makes Meridian Holdings’ second-quarter 2026 results more interesting than a conventional earnings announcement.

Despite a World Cup period that was unusually favorable to bettors, Meridian Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: MRDN) reported revenue of $50.2 million, up 16% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA increased 43% to $5.9 million, and the company recorded its second consecutive quarter of GAAP profitability, with net income attributable to MRDN of $2.2 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.17. A year earlier, it had reported a net loss of $3.6 million.

The significance is not simply that Meridian grew. It is that the company grew when the sporting calendar did not give it an easy ride.

That distinction matters in gaming. A sportsbook can enjoy a strong quarter because results break in its favor. A more durable company must be able to keep acquiring customers, generating cash and reducing debt even when short-term outcomes work against it.

Meridian’s numbers suggest that its underlying engine continued to operate.

Meridianbet, the group’s core business, increased revenue by approximately 23% to $35.8 million. New registrations rose 37%, first-time depositors increased 24% and total deposit volume also grew 24%. Betting gross gaming revenue increased 37% on record wagering activity.

“The underlying growth in our customer base and handle is the clearest measure of the momentum in this business,” said Zoran Milosevic, CEO of Meridia Holdings.

That may be the most important sentence in the entire results package.

A single quarter’s sportsbook margin can be influenced by a handful of matches. A growing customer base, rising deposit volumes and record activity say more about whether the platform itself is becoming stronger.

The same logic applies to Meridian Holdings’ broader structure.

The company is no longer dependent on one sportsbook, one country or one type of gaming customer. Meridianbet remains the largest operation, accounting for 71% of total revenue, but it sits inside a portfolio that also includes proprietary game development, B2B aggregation, online casino, prize competitions and subscription-based digital membership businesses.

That diversification is beginning to show its value.

Expanse Studios, Meridian’s proprietary game-development business, increased revenue by 138% year over year and gross gaming revenue by 90%. Its content is now distributed across 1,881 operator sites, with 95 proprietary titles. During the quarter, it added new partnerships, expanded certifications in regulated markets and introduced player-engagement products including jackpots, tournaments and the Achievo gamification system.

This is where the Meridian story becomes more compelling than the label “sports betting company” suggests.

A consumer operator must spend to attract players in each market. A proprietary content studio can distribute the same intellectual property through a growing network of operators. A B2B platform can scale without relying solely on the company’s own consumer brands. Prize competitions in Britain, digital memberships in Australia and an online casino in Mexico create additional revenue streams that respond differently to economic cycles and sporting results.

In other words, Meridian is trying to build a business in which no single football match, market or product determines the whole story.

The balance sheet reinforces that argument.

Operating cash flow reached $7.8 million, compared with $2.4 million a year earlier. Net debt fell 65% to $9.4 million, while net debt leverage declined to 0.39 times annualized Adjusted EBITDA. It was the sixth consecutive quarter of deleveraging, and interest expense fell by approximately 80%.

For investors, that shift may be as important as revenue growth. Expansion financed by constant dilution or rising leverage is one story. Growth accompanied by stronger cash generation, falling debt and an essentially stable share count is another.

Then there is the brand question.

The Meridian x UFC partnership in Belgrade should be understood in that context. It is not a substitute for financial performance. It is a way of giving the performance a more recognizable global identity.

Meridian began in Serbia. UFC’s arrival in Belgrade connects the company’s local roots with one of the world’s most visible sports platforms. The partnership places Meridian alongside a brand built on discipline, competition and international reach, the same qualities the company is trying to communicate to investors as it evolves into a broader gaming technology group.

The best quarterly results tell a story beyond the spreadsheet.

Meridian’s second quarter tells a story of a company that faced bettor-friendly conditions, absorbed large payouts and still expanded revenue, profitability and cash flow. It reduced financial risk while growing its customer base. It used proprietary technology and multiple operating businesses to make the group less dependent on one outcome.

That is the real meaning of the quarter.

For Meridian Holdings and Nasdaq: MRDN, the question is no longer simply whether the company can grow when conditions are favorable. Q2 2026 offered evidence that it can continue moving forward even when the bettors have a very good night.

Written in collaboration with Meridian Holdings 

This post was originally published on here. 

A total of 140 new immigrants from France landed in Israel on Monday aboard a special “Families Flight,” organized by the Aliyah and Integration Ministry and The Jewish Agency for Israel, in partnership with the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ).

The group of olim, which includes 80 infants, children, and teenagers, was accompanied by Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer and Jewish Agency Chairman Maj. Gen. (Res.) Doron Almog.

Among the passengers were three sets of twins: four-month-old Mia and Ethel, five-month-old Noam and Nerly, and 11-year-old Noa and Avidan. The oldest passenger aboard the flight was an 85-year-old woman named Annie, whose children already live in Israel.

The new olim were welcomed with Israeli flags, music, and dancing at Ben-Gurion Airport by ICEJ, Aliyah and Integration Ministry representatives, and members of youth movements.

“It’s so moving to see young families choosing to make Aliyah to Israel, especially now. They are choosing to raise their children here, in the State of Israel, the home of the Jewish people,” said Sofer. “Over the past few years, we have led a series of reforms designed to make the Aliyah and integration process smoother, including programs for students, the streamlining of professional licensing, housing solutions, and more.”

“All of these are meant to help newcomers integrate quickly into Israeli society and the workforce. But above and beyond all the reforms and changes stands the great Israeli spirit, and that depends on all of us, on each and every one of us. Welcome to Israel.”

Reminder of Zionism’s power

Almog echoed the sentiment, adding that “Aliyah is the growth engine of the State of Israel.”

“Seeing children excited to board the plane in France and stepping off it as Israeli citizens, alongside parents who choose to start a new life here despite all the challenges, is a reminder of the power of Zionism,” he said. “Every family that arrives strengthens the State of Israel, and our mission is to accompany them from the very first moment and ensure they feel that this is their home.”

“The increase in Aliyah from France at this time is deeply moving for Israel and especially encouraging given the country’s ongoing security challenges,” said ICEJ president Dr. Jürgen Bühler, adding that his organization is honored to be supporting the new olim. 

Some 80,000 Jews open aliyah files with The Jewish Agency

Since October 7, the number of olim from France has risen sharply: In 2023, Israel welcomed 1,097 new French immigrants. In 2024, the number doubled to 2,234, and grew to 3,357 in 2025.

According to the Aliyah and Integration Ministry and The Jewish Agency, approximately 2,400 French olim have arrived in Israel through July 2026, an over 30% increase compared to the same period last year.

Some 80,000 Jews have opened aliyah files through the The Jewish Agency’s Global Aliyah Center since October 7. Of those, approximately 20,000 have been from France.

This post was originally published on here. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz quietly approved new development and reconstruction in the Gaza Strip two weeks ago, Army Radio reported on Sunday morning.

According to Army Radio, the location marked for new construction is east of Rafah, within the Yellow Line, with the plan being to build new living spaces for Palestinians outside of Hamas‘ control.

Security sources said that the workers involved in the construction would be Gazan Palestinians, who are currently having their background checked by the Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency).

PMO denies Army Radio report of Gaza labor in reconstruction

The Prime Minister’s Office responded to Army Radio’s report, saying that it “distorts the facts and recycles old information.”

According to the PMO, the project is a pre-existing UAE pilot that has been ongoing for several months.

The PMO also denied that critical infrastructure such as electricity, water, and sewage would be worked on by Gazan workers.

Transportation Minister Miri Regev also responded to Army Radio, saying that “We want Gaza to recover – the process can begin in any demilitarized zone.”

The Israel Envelope Forum and Tzav 9 condemned the report that Netanyahu and Katz had approved new construction, stating that “There is no demilitarized zone that is not held by our fighters.

“As soon as the IDF withdraws from there, Hamas will return to a rehabilitated zone with weapons to be turned against us,” the protest groups stated. “This is not a reconstruction plan – it is a resuscitation plan for terrorism. Dismantling Hamas terrorists and complete demilitarization are a critical obligation before talks about reconstruction begin.”

This post was originally published on here. 

The Women Demand Life movement protested in Tel Aviv on Sunday morning, demanding a commission of inquiry into the October 7 massacre.

The protest took place in recognition of the six hostages murdered by Hamas in August 2024: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov, and Ori Danino.

Photos from the protest show the demonstrators holding cutouts of the hostages’ faces, as well as a large banner reading “We won’t forget, they could have returned alive.”

Forum blames deaths on hostage deal sabotage

At the time that the bodies of the hostages were found, in 2024, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum stated, “With deep sorrow, we once again announce the murder of six hostages. These six individuals were taken alive, endured the horrors of captivity, and were then coldly murdered.”

“A deal for the return of the hostages has been on the table for over two months. Were it not for the delays, sabotage, and excuses, those whose deaths we learned about this morning would likely still be alive. It’s time to bring our hostages home – the living for rehabilitation, and the fallen and murdered for burial in their homelands,” the statement added.

The forum further called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bear responsibility in front of the nation after the IDF’s recovery of the six bodies.

Yonah Jeremy Bob, Sam Halpern, and Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here. 

Hezbollah launched an explosive drone near IDF soldiers north of the Beaufort Castle area on Friday, but the IDF did not report the incident, according to Israeli media outlets.

There were no casualties, and the drone caused no damage, media reports said. 

Following media inquiries, the military released a statement saying: “The IDF releases information to the public based on factual considerations and situational assessments. The IDF spokesperson will not publish information that, based on a situation assessment, could harm our forces operating in combat zones.”

Despite not reporting the incident through its usual public channels, the IDF reportedly confirmed the details to Ynet when asked. The decision not to publicize the drone incident was made by IDF Northern Command chief Maj.-Gen. Rafi Milo, Ynet claimed.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit regularly publishes updates on activity across Israel’s warfronts, including both Israeli military operations and enemy attacks.

Two IDF reservists killed after booby-trapped house explodes in southern Lebanon

These reports came as the IDF launched a probe into the explosion in southern Lebanon which killed two IDF soldiers – Maj. (res.) Harel Birenstock and M.-Sgt. (res.) Tamir Vaknin – and wounded four more.  

The explosion occured during a combat mission in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, the military announced on Thursday morning.

Birenstock, 34, from Efrat, was a company commander in Battalion 2855 of the 55th Reserve Paratroopers Brigade, while Vaknin, 33, from Eilat, served as a combat soldier in the same battalion.

Rambam Medical Center said on Thursday morning that the conditions of the four injured soldiers were serious, adding in the afternoon that one of them regained consciousness.

The IDF called the explosion a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire, and struck weapon storage sites and command centers in southern Lebanon, while also issuing evacuation warnings to the town of Mansouri. The Lebanese health ministry said on Wednesday one person was killed and 12 others were wounded in an Israeli strike on the southern town of Tibnin, about 25 kilometers from Mansouri.

This post was originally published on here. 

Some 20 dogs competed in the 10th annual World Dog Surfing Championships at Linda Mar Beach in California last Saturday.

The sport was first conceived in 2006 by K. Reed, author of “The Dog’s Guide to Surfing.”

In the years since, the sport evolved into what it is today, and has inspired similar events across the world, including many in California, Florida, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

This year’s overall winner was five-year-old Labrador retriever Rippin Rosie, followed closely by Iza, a French bulldog from Pleasanton, and Bradley “Shortboard” Cooper, a mixed-breed from Long Beach.

Additionally, Rosie – alongside her owner, Steve Drottar – took first place in the stand-up paddleboarding category. 

Hundreds of spectators cheered for the dogs as they made a splash

The winners were announced by Rep. Sam Liccardo, former San Jose mayor, to a crowd of hundreds, who cheered for the pups all day from the shore.

The oldest contestant was 11-year-old Charlie, a yellow Lab from the San Diego area, whose surfing journey actually began by accident when owner Jedd Niebor placed the dog onto a surfboard for a quick photo, which turned into an impromptu surf lesson.

Spectators are encouraged to sponsor contestants each year, with a portion of all proceeds going to a number of local charities.

This post was originally published on here. 

Three incidents in which bullets, knives, and backpacks were placed at the entrance to bank branches and restaurants in the Gush Dan area were reported by Israel Police.

Red X-marks were also sprayed onto the doors of the locations, which were identified as two Mizrahi Bank branches, one in Bat Yam and the other in Tel Aviv, and one Rami Levy branch in Holon.

According to Walla, a bullet was found attached to the front door handle at the Bat Yam bank and at Rami Levy, while knives were stuck in the front door of the Tel Aviv branch of Mizrahi Bank.

Individual identified, arrested, questioned

Tel Aviv District police officers arrived at the scenes and opened an investigation to identify, locate, and arrest the suspect who placed the threatening objects at the scenes.

A 54-year-old man from Holon was identified and arrested on suspicion of threatening the branches and causing property damage, according to Ynet.

The suspect has been transferred for questioning at the Holon police station.

This post was originally published on here. 

Police arrested a lawyer from Beit Shemesh on Tuesday on suspicion of attempting to smuggle a substance suspected to be drugs to an inmate during a prison visit.

According to the allegations, the lawyer arrived for a meeting with a prisoner she represents and attempted to hand over the suspected drugs during the meeting.

According to Ynet, the lawyer attempted to smuggle 30 pills to the inmate, who was recently arrested in connection with a high-profile fraud case. 

When meeting with him, she gave him a hug and allegedly slipped the bag containing drugs into his hand. The moment was captured on the prison’s security cameras.

Lawyer interrogated, arrested on scene

The Israel Prison Service seized the substance, and officers from the Sadot station in the Central District promptly arrested the lawyer following her interrogation.

The items seized during the operation were handed over for further processing by the police.

This post was originally published on here. 

I’m 70 years old, and I am about to perform in my first dance recital, in a retirement home in Jerusalem.

A dance recital was definitely not on my bucket list. In fact, I don’t have a bucket list.

So why would I dance?

One reason is because of my doctor. He told me that I had to do things that would make me happy.

My son Koby was murdered 25 years ago on May 8, 2001, in Israel by Palestinian terrorists. Of course, our lives were shattered. Of course, I wanted to die. Of course, after that, happiness was a foreign country whose language I had no hope or desire to speak.

Life heals all wounds

But life seeps in. We needed to parent our other children. I wrote a book, The Blessing of a Broken Heart, which served as my personal process of bibliotherapy. We founded the Koby Mandell Foundation and through the years have worked with thousands of bereaved families.

And when, after many years, I landed in the hospital for an operation on my colon, my doctor said, “No more grief. You need to do things that are fun.”

I started to take a Broadway Jazz dance class once a week with a bunch of amateurs between the ages of 50 and 75. We were supposed to be a performance troupe that would perform in nursing homes.

I didn’t want to perform. For me, the goal of dancing was happiness, to enjoy movement. We danced to classics like “Fly Me to the Moon,” “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” and “Steam Heat”– music that made me happy. Dancing made me happy. That was enough for me.

Year one through three with the class, I didn’t perform. But this year, when the other students and my teacher, Michelle Gordon, asked me, I relented. Mainly because I was 70. And with age it’s good to try new things.

That’s the advice, isn’t it?

Don’t get stuck. Keep going. Keep moving.

Still, I was uncertain about performing. Why would I want to perform at an old age home?

I’d seen my mother-in-law’s nursing home in Massachusetts. Although it looked like a ski lodge, when my mother-in-law was forced to move from independent living to a real nursing home where she was with the real old and the sick – people drooling in their wheelchairs, staring vacantly, slumped over – I was shocked by the fate of old people like my mother-in-law. To live a whole vibrant life and then reduce it to a square of sickness was painful.

My moment to dance

But this was my moment to dance. If not now, when? I decided to chance it and give it go. But I didn’t know why old people would want to watch amateurs dance.

As we drove to the nursing home, I asked my fellow dancer Linda, who is in her fifties, “I don’t understand. Why do you like to perform?”

She said, “I like giving people pleasure.”

I laughed. It seemed a little, shall we say, titillating. I wasn’t convinced. I still didn’t know why I had agreed to dance at an old age home.

We arrived. The nursing home looked a bit like a hotel, a huge lobby with a big beautiful fish tank. People in the lobby smiled at us.

When we finally got on stage, I decided to enjoy it all, to give the audience pleasure. As I danced, I smiled and looked out at the small crowd, some in wheelchairs, some with walkers parked next to them, some with aides at their side. I didn’t worry about screwing up. What difference would it make? This wasn’t Lincoln Center. Besides, the audience probably had poor vision – at least some of them – and wouldn’t be able to tell.

The audience smiled at us. They clapped. They laughed. And I did see pleasure.

And then, at the end of our dance, the music kept playing. The audience was invited to join us dancing on the improvised stage. Some got up or tottered up or rolled up and joined us.

Some were dancing with one hand on their walkers, some were swaying in their wheelchairs, and some were singing along.

The differences between us faded. We were all there to dance.

The writer co-founded the Koby Mandell Foundation. Her latest book is The Kabbalah of Writing.

This post was originally published on here. 

An IDF investigation into the recent death of two reservists in an explosion in southern Lebanon will be expanding its scope after it was found that the force of the blast that killed them was unusually strong compared to a standard explosive device, Walla learned on Saturday.

Maj. (res.) Harel Birenstock, a company commander, and M.-Sgt. (res.) Tamir Vaknin, both of Battalion 2855 of the 55th Reserve Paratroopers Brigade, were killed, while four others were severely wounded during a combat mission in the village of Majdal Zoun. 

The incident was also examined by Air Force officials, who discovered that several months earlier, a bomb was dropped on a structure more than a hundred meters away from the building where the explosion occurred. However, a professional authority determined that even if an unexploded ordnance were in the area, hitting the building that collapsed was unlikely.

Therefore, the possibility that it was unexploded ordnance was essentially ruled out at first.

Several leads were examined in the investigation. Brig.-Gen. Yuval Gaz, commander of the Galilee Division, conducted an in-depth investigation into how the building was cleared of explosive devices.

IDF entered building before circling back, device explodes

The preliminary investigation revealed that the force entered the building after it had been scanned, left it, continued its mission, and when it passed by the building a second time, a powerful explosive device was detonated. The prevailing assessment in the IDF is that it was an old explosive device.

At the same time, Northern Command confirms that Hezbollah is active in the area and is attempting to challenge the IDF, so it cannot be ruled out that a Hezbollah force tampered with the explosive device to target IDF forces operating in the sector.

Therefore, the investigation remains ongoing and has not yet been finalized by the Head of Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo, in order to further examine the findings being gathered in the field by various entities.

This post was originally published on here. 

Germany faces daily hybrid warfare attacks from abroad, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt was quoted as saying on Sunday, following a suspected attack attempt involving an explosive-laden drone at Leipzig/Halle Airport.

Dobrindt told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag that foreign powers wanted to subdue Germany politically and socially by stirring up fear there.

“We’re not at war, but we are the daily target of hybrid warfare,” Dobrindt said. “Espionage, sabotage, cyberattacks, or covert operations by foreign powers aimed at destabilizing Germany or inflicting direct harm are a constant reality.”

The newspaper’s advance release of the interview did not say whether he identified any countries in particular.

After the drone loaded with explosives was discovered at the airport in eastern Germany on Tuesday, some German lawmakers pointed the finger at Russia, which has been at war with Ukraine since its military invasion of the country in 2022.

Russia calls Leipzig claims a ‘fabricated provocation’

The Russian embassy in Berlin on Friday dismissed the Leipzig event as a “fabricated provocation,” saying it was another example of accusations against Russia without evidence.

Dobrindt, a member of the conservative Christian Social Union, had called the Leipzig incident a “hybrid attack scenario,” and left open possible involvement by foreign powers.

Germany’s armed forces on Saturday said two drones were spotted late on Thursday over a German military base site in Mechernich, in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Dobrindt highlighted the expansion of drone research in Germany as part of the response to the new threats.

This post was originally published on here. 

Roy K. Altman, a graduate of Columbia University, served as a federal prosecutor for the US Court of Appeals before being appointed a US District Judge for the Southern District of Florida – at the time, the youngest district judge ever so appointed.

In his new book, Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law, he takes the six accusations most widely levied against Israel and subjects them to what he calls “the legal methodology judges, juries and lawyers have used for centuries.”

He sets out the evidence for and against each of the crimes Israel is charged with and scrutinizes them forensically, using the time-honored rules of evidence that he applies consistently in his own courtroom.

The six allegations that he subjected to this scrupulous analysis are first that Jews are colonists in the Land of Israel; that the founding of the State of Israel was illegitimate; that Israel has prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state; that Israel was occupying Gaza on October 7, 2023, and had turned it into an “open-air prison;” that Israel is an apartheid state; that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.

Using factual, historical, archeological, and even the latest genealogical evidence, he demonstrates the shaky, unreliable, often illogical nature of the charges that have become routine among those who reject Israel’s right to exist.

The ordinary Jew is faced daily with irrational antisemitic hatred

Why is Altman’s book so important, indeed vital? After all, his conclusions, solidly based though they are, will certainly not convince committed anti-Zionists, while pro-Israel advocates will already be familiar with them.

The ordinary Jew faced daily with irrational antisemitic hatred – the person in the workplace, shopping center or social setting, the young person in the classroom or campus will surely welcome Israel on Trial. 

In these pages, Altman provides a convincing fact-based rebuttal to the anti-Israel tropes that are so casually tossed around these days.

There are also vast numbers of largely uncommitted people across the globe who are subject to a constant flood of false narratives about Israel, Zionism, and the Jewish people. If only some could be enticed to open the pages of Israel on Trial, they would discover that there is an antidote for the poison they are perpetually fed.

To the charge that Jews are colonists, he began with the accepted definition of “colonist” – “an outsider with no historical, linguistic, cultural, or religious connection to the land he is conquering.”

Then he demonstrated that “the Jews were living in (and often governing) the Land of Israel thousands of years before Islam existed, hundreds of years before the Roman emperor Hadrian invented the word Palaestina… and long before Arab Muslims first invaded the land in AD 636.” 

As for Israel’s legitimacy, Altman rebutted the assertion that the “biblical promise is Israel’s only claim to legitimacy.” He asserted that the criteria set out in the 1933 Montevideo treaty are universally accepted as international law on the subject of legitimate statehood.

A nascent state has to fulfill four requirements: have a permanent population, have a defined territory, be governed by a single effective government, and have the capacity to conduct foreign relations. 

Altman pointed out that when Israel declared independence in May 1948, it met all four criteria. 

As to the claim that Israel has prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state, Altman cited the six occasions that Israel (or the international community with Israeli acquiescence) “has offered the Arabs a Palestinian state – and, each time, the Arabs have rejected that offer.”

Each of those attempts, said Altman, was thwarted “by the Palestinians’ own demand for an Arab state that stretches ‘from the river to the sea.’”

To the charge that Israel was occupying Gaza on October 7, 2023, and had turned it into an “open-air prison” or a concentration camp, Altman set out the irrefutable historic facts, linked to the commonly understood meaning of both “prison” and “concentration camp,” which prove the reverse.

Chapter five is concerned with the widely voiced charge that Israel is an apartheid state. In addition to setting out the irrefutable facts concerning the equal status and rights of the 20% of Israel’s Arab citizens, Altman laid bare an inherent illogicality in the extreme anti-Israel position.

“True,” he wrote, “the Palestinians who live in Gaza and in parts of Judea and Samaria enjoy none of these rights in Israel. But that’s because they don’t live in Israel, don’t want to live in Israel, and thus aren’t Israeli citizens at all.” 

Over 140 countries around the world, he noted, as well as many of the organizations and individuals asserting the apartheid claim, recognize the state of Palestine. 

“Israel cannot be practicing apartheid by refusing to afford citizenship rights to the citizens of another country,” Altman wrote, “but that’s exactly what Amnesty International, for instance, is suggesting when, on the one hand, it recognizes the existence of a ‘state of Palestine,’ while on the other, it claims that Israel is an apartheid state for refusing to afford full citizenship rights to the citizens of that Palestinian state.”

And so Altman reached the assertion repeated ad nauseam – that Israel committed, and continues to commit, genocide against the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza. 

It is an accusation, as Altman demonstrated, that relies on re-interpreting the meaning of the word “genocide.” It is used by many as a measure of their antipathy to the loss of civilian life during Israel’s fight against Hamas. But the term genocide has a very specific meaning.

Altman made it abundantly clear that he regarded the loss of a single civilian life in war as a tragedy. However, “the question in a genocide case isn’t whether innocent civilians have died in Gaza. They unquestionably have – just as they have in every war that’s ever been fought.”

The essence of the crime of genocide is the specific “intent to destroy” the victim group’s existence. To be guilty of genocide, the State of Israel must have intended to wipe out the population of Gaza. Altman demonstrated, with irrefutable facts and figures, that Israel did not have, and never has had, any such intention. 

In Israel on Trial, Altman provides all who love Israel with sound, evidence-based arguments to counter the disinformation that clogs the social media platforms and so often the official news media as well. It is a book entirely in tune with the times and is highly recommended.

ISRAEL ON TRIAL: EXAMINING THE HISTORY, THE EVIDENCE, AND THE LAW
By Roy K. Altman
304 pages; $32
Advantage Books

This post was originally published on here. 

We have a more-than-fair idea how the world in general sees us, well, at least the media-funneled viewpoint. If you happen to catch some random news report on the BBC, CNN, or – if you speak the lingo – any of the leading non-English-speaking outlets such as France’s TF1 or Italy’s Rai 1 TV channels, the chances are there will be some negative coverage of our governmental or military conduct.

Leaving aside whether that is justified, the plain fact of the matter is that anyone, anywhere on the globe, following the news coming out of this end of the Mediterranean, will surely quickly arrive at the conclusion that there is only one side doing the bad deeds here.

Those who tend to take media-provided information as is, without even considering the possibility of politically oriented agendas seasoning the factual mix, will probably not take too kindly to Russian-born, London-based photographer Sasha Gusov’s latest offering, Report: Israel.

It is a weighty coffee-table-sized tome jam-packed with over 250 pages of crisply shot, dramatic pictures that run a studied rule over a broad sweep of events and populace sectors in this country.

The prints are definitively striking and eminently compelling, and there is an almost tangible narrative pulsating just beneath the pictorial surfaces. It is as if Gusov came over here and thought to himself: What can I do to show the world the positive side of this beleaguered country?

Vignettes snapped across a 15-month period shortly after Oct. 7

Presumably, if that is indeed the case, he was looking to drum up some empathy for our psychological and security considerations to offset some of the worldwide national profile damage.

The spread certainly ticks all the requisite boxes across all the thematic sections that run the full emotional and existential gamut. Chapter headings such as: “Destruction,” “Aftermath,” “Mourning,” “Tel Aviv,” “Training,” “Protest & Debate,” “Offence,” and “Jerusalem” cover an abundance of local everyday life bases, with post-Oct. 7 fallout infusing much of the pictorial roll out like a ubiquitous pall.

As he explains in a brief textual intro, Gusov snapped his vignettes across a 15-month period, starting shortly after that fateful day in 2023. He writes: “These are moments I witnessed and, whether by chance or by choice, I become (sic) a part of.” That the photographer was deeply engaged with his subjects is patently obvious. The man clearly knows a thing or two about the psyche of the people and the vibe of the scenarios he sees through his viewfinder.

One senses that this was not about staying strictly within the rigid parameters of a cool, calculating objective stance, and just weighing up the aesthetics and dynamics in as dispassionate and professionally detached a manner as possible. Gusov appears to have been driven.

He sets the tantalizing mood from the off, opening his hefty tome account with a classic, almost biblical, grand landscape scene. The shot ambiance is dominated by a lone tree. There it is, front and center, a solitary arboreal outcrop looking spindly and weather-beaten yet defiantly sprightly, oxymoronically complemented by a desolate, hazy, barren landscape shimmering in the relentless summer heat. Could that be a metaphor for the way the photographer perceives Israel?

Gusov pulls nary a single punch as he unfurls streams of powerful images that appear to cascade out of a veritable cornucopia of gorgeous, lush monochrome prints. The arresting curtain raiser is followed by frames clearly designed to present the viewer with headliner apogees of local goings on. There is a densely structured, suitably forbidding security fence seen through a windshield – it is unclear whether the vehicle is military or civilian.

That serves to set the factious regional political-security scene which Gusov deftly dovetails with a charming shot of a settler dad and kids enjoying a day out in the sun with an expansive out-of-focus landscape behind providing a salient geographic-political milieu. The emotive political pendulum is immediately sent careening in the opposite direction on the very next two-page spread with an image of seeming bucolic tranquility as a kaffiyeh-clad shepherd guides his flock through tufted terrain.

Orchestrated rhythm in comically absurd morsels of life

As you leaf your way through the book, you get some sense of orchestrated rhythm as the pictures document Gusov’s meandering sojourn here, shifting seamlessly from comical-absurd morsels of life in Tel Aviv to unexpected military or ethnic juxtapositions.

The introductory section closes with four endearing portraits of young soldiers quizzically offset by what looks like a marketing-oriented shot of famed illusionist-magician Uri Geller getting up to some trick or other.

The shock waves of the calamitous events of Oct. 7 are well and truly spelled out for us as Gusov visits kibbutzim near Gaza, and travels up to the far North, even documenting Hezbollah rocket fire as he makes his way through the Golan Heights in the company of a high-ranking reserve IDF officer.

Behind-the-scenes volunteer activity, in support of the war effort, is also well documented, with one caption talking of the multi-national interfaith spread of civilian helpers, who “rally behind a noble cause.”

Stunning military action shots are counterbalanced by slices of eclectic urban life, running the gamut of haredi street scenes in Bnei Brak and Mea She’arim to a Tel Aviv café packed with laptop-toting youngsters and a man taking a selfie together with his trusty pooch. The flip side continuum also digs deeply into political machinations here, with a benignly defiant bunch of haredim sporting no-nonsense placards against military service followed by a demo in Tel Aviv calling for a ceasefire and a hostage deal.

Gusov clearly did his homework and doesn’t miss a political, emotive, or aesthetic trick in his lovingly crafted Report: Israel.

Report: Israel
By Sasha Gusov
Gefen Publishing House 
270 pages; $60

This post was originally published on here. 

Although the Israeli public has shifted to the right following the war, the coalition parties representing the Right are losing ground, leaving an estimated 15 to 25 mandates of right-wing voters searching for a political home as the election campaign gets underway, according to assessments examined by the parties ahead of Saturday.

The election campaign is only beginning, but the picture emerging at the headquarters of all the parties is the same: While the public moved to the right after the war, the coalition bloc, which represents the right-wing parties, is weakening. This dissonance is keeping Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the other leaders of the right-wing parties awake at night, while providing fertile ground for hope among everyone else.

The picture points to a clear reality in which between 15 and 25 mandates’ worth of right-wing voters, of various kinds, are currently unwilling to vote for any of the three existing right-wing parties: Likud, the Religious Zionist Party, and Otzma Yehudit.

The prevailing assessment is that if the situation remains static and only the existing parties make it to the finish line, those votes will be divided. It is still unclear how. Some will return to their original parties in the right-wing bloc. Others will migrate to parties on the other side that have disguised themselves as right-wing.

This reality means that, at present, there is almost no value to the polls being published in the media. Too many people have too many doubts. The result is not a stable picture, but rather chaos and disinformation.

Israel shifts right in security, tradition, and territory

The Israeli public’s shift to the right following the massacre and the war is reflected primarily in three areas: tradition and Judaism; a hard-line security outlook and zero tolerance for the Arab enemy; and support for settlement in Judea and Samaria, together with opposition to relinquishing territory in exchange for agreements.

If 68 mandates in the current Knesset believed in these values even before October 7, then according to estimates, there should now be more than 70, and perhaps even 75, mandates on this side. In the polls, however, the trend is the opposite. In the most favorable poll, conducted by Momo Filber for Channel 14, these parties receive 62 mandates. Other polls give them considerably fewer.

In recent weeks, parties from across the political spectrum have sent their polling advisers to analyze the gap. Who are these veteran and newly right-wing voters who currently refuse to support the parties in the present government? What is deterring them, and how can they be won over?

The findings are not particularly surprising, but they are unequivocal: the composition of the Likud list and the alliance with the haredi parties. Other, less prominent factors include anger at the government because the October 7 disaster occurred on its watch, its failure to address the cost of living, disappointment over the failure of the judicial reform, and more.

There is a direct and clear connection between these findings, which the parties see every week in their in-depth polling, and the campaigns and principal messages they have adopted in recent weeks.

The opposition has adopted a tough, combative line, seeking to outflank the government from the right while demanding victory and a decisive outcome. It has also attacked the government’s ties with the haredi parties and promised mass recruitment of haredim into the IDF.

In doing so, the parties of Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Liberman, and Benny Gantz are attempting to provide an answer to at least two of the three values that matter to right-wing voters.

On the third value, however- Jewish tradition, which also incorporates the desire to change the judicial system so that it, too, takes on a more Jewish and traditional character- these parties have little or no real answer.

From time to time, Liberman mentions that his wife is religious and that his party has a religious-Zionist campaign headquarters, while Eisenkot has sought to emphasize his Moroccan background. At least for now, however, these are weak and not particularly convincing answers. Their hope is that the other two issues will resonate strongly enough to bridge the gap among right-wing voters who may be attracted to them despite this conspicuous deficiency.

But what works for a campaign does not necessarily reflect reality. Despite a supportive media environment and attempts to conceal and blur the evidence, Eisenkot, Bennett, Yair Lapid, and Liberman have each fallen into hard-line leftism when it mattered.

Despite the new image he is trying to promote, Eisenkot was and remains a man of concessions and agreements. He is a committed supporter of the two-state solution and was among the architects of the concept of reducing the size of the IDF, avoiding friction, and rejecting efforts to seek contact with the enemy, both during his years as a senior military officer and afterward.

Eisenkot now demands that the IDF remain in the Gaza Strip until Hamas’s disarmament has been verified. But when it mattered, and afterward, during the period when he did not believe the Right would become a target constituency for him, he took pride in being the first to press for a withdrawal, an end to the war, and leaving Hamas in power in Gaza.

He even left the government after Netanyahu refused to implement the hostage agreement that included a complete withdrawal to the line of the Israeli communities, effectively returning to the situation before October 7. At the time, half of Gaza, including Rafah and the Philadelphi Corridor, had not yet been captured, and Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Deif still ruled the Strip with an iron fist.

Liberman, who is regarded as the most right-wing of the group, also promoted for years, including while serving in right-wing governments, his plan to relinquish territory for the establishment of an Arab state on parts of the Land of Israel. His well-known plan called not only for large parts of Judea and Samaria to be transferred to the Arabs, but even Umm el-Fahm and communities in the Triangle.

Bennett initially tried to present himself as a man of the Right, and he has several achievements to show for it. But his partnership with Lapid destroyed any possibility of attracting a right-wing constituency. In doing so, he effectively did the work for everyone else, who no longer had to convince anyone that he was not right-wing and could devote their resources to dealing with others.

It is not only their past statements that stand in the way of this group of political masqueraders, but also their plans for the future, particularly their expected partnership with Yair Golan’s Democrats and Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am.

Liberman, for example, expressed his considerable frustration in an interview this week, saying the bloc could win, but only if Yair Golan kept quiet. He did not attack the Democrats chairman or make clear that he would never sit with him because of his policies. Instead, he merely pleaded with him to stop interfering with Liberman and his partners as they complete their disguise, to stop tearing it off their faces and allow them to continue the deception uninterrupted.

Will Winter save the day?

Yoav Segalovich’s planned move to Ra’am has also brought back to the forefront the already familiar possibility of the radical Islamist party joining a left-wing government.

For the day after the election, it is a brilliant move. What could better legitimize Abbas and the Shura Council than a Jewish, Zionist former senior police officer serving as a minister on the party’s behalf?

But during an election campaign, it is no less than destructive. After all the denials of any intention to rely on an Arab party in the next government, this constitutes a practical step preparing the ground that cannot be interpreted as anything other than a clear intention to break that promise yet again.

In recent days, the right-wing parties in the coalition have been targeting exactly the same constituency, but their own response is far from perfect.

On tradition, the Land of Israel, and security, they have something to offer. But they will find it very difficult to sever their bond with the haredi parties.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, incidentally, does not have this problem. His party actually enjoys haredi support, and most of his supporters are pro-haredi voters to whom the military recruitment campaign does not appeal. Likud and the Religious Zionist Party, however, face a serious problem on this issue.

It is no coincidence that Netanyahu is working to dispel the impression that the haredi factions will be an inseparable part of the next coalition under his leadership.

Among other things, he sent a forceful message this week that in the next government, anyone who does not study in a yeshiva will be arrested under the law he intends to advance.

It is unclear how many right-wing opponents of the haredi parties will buy this message. It is reasonable to assume that few will be convinced Netanyahu can recruit haredim when his government depends on Shas and United Torah Judaism.

Amid all this, a third possibility has emerged: The solution to the dilemma may not lie with any of the existing parties, but with a new party.

Such a party would necessarily have to be made up of right-wing figures, provide an answer to undecided right-wing voters across the range of issues, including haredi military recruitment, and consist of people who were outside the political system on October 7.

Netanyahu would like such a party, but he fears the high electoral threshold. On the one hand, it has significant potential to capture the lost votes on the Right. On the other, it could cause several mandates to be wasted, exactly as happened to Meretz in the last election and to Bennett in the first round of the 2019 elections.

Beyond crossing the electoral threshold, Netanyahu also cares about such a potential party’s commitment to the bloc. He wants its members to see a right-wing government under his leadership as a value in itself, rather than stubbornly pursue a hopeless run or refuse to unite even at the cost of wasting votes.

Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein, for example, are not there at all.

During the campaign, they would likely refuse to hold any discussions with Netanyahu and his people about withdrawing, merging, or any other step concluded to be in the right-wing bloc’s interest.

Even after the election, if they cross the electoral threshold, the two could make it difficult to form a government, demand that other parties from the left-wing bloc be brought in, insist that the haredi parties be removed, and perhaps demand even more.

They are indeed right-wing figures, but their motivations are personal. They are against Netanyahu. Otherwise, they would have run in Likud.

Ofer Winter is an exception.

He is unequivocally right-wing, a security man and a man of the Land of Israel. He is committed to tradition to the point that he was branded and labeled an enemy of the people when he dared to include words of prayer in his battle orders to Givati soldiers during Operation Protective Edge.

Winter did not demand a withdrawal from Gaza in exchange for a hostage deal, as Eisenkot, Bennett, and Liberman did. On top of all that, he is an enthusiastic supporter of recruiting haredim into the IDF.

Unlike the opposition’s political masqueraders, who attack the government while protecting one another, Winter has no problem doing both.

This week, he launched a full-throttle attack on the defense minister over remarks made on The Patriots, where the minister announced live on air that Maj.-Gen. Avi Bluth, head of the IDF Central Command, would be replaced by Dado Bar Kalifa.

Winter did not accept what he viewed as the false campaign claiming Bluth had been dismissed live on air, but in his view, even announcing his replacement in such a manner was inappropriate.

The incident brought back memories for Winter. Only a few years ago, he found himself in exactly the same situation when then-IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi fiercely opposed his appointment as the prime minister’s military secretary.

For a year, Netanyahu tried to overcome the chief of staff’s opposition, but eventually had to give up and appoint Roman Gofman instead.

Less than a week after Halevi, together with Yoav Gallant, succeeded in thwarting the appointment, Winter learned from a newspaper headline that he would be retiring from the IDF.

Winter attacked not only the defense minister this week, but also Netanyahu over the emerging arrangement in Gaza.

But there should be no misunderstanding about Winter. He has nothing whatsoever in common with the opposition figures, neither Eisenkot nor Bennett and Liberman, for whom he served as military secretary when they were defense ministers.

Winter does not want them with their hands on the wheel of government and does not trust a word they say.

This week, he sharply attacked Eisenkot and called him a man of the Left. Of Liberman, he said: “He is a man of the Right, but he has proven that he will be willing to do anything to prevent a right-wing government, including sitting with Ra’am and the Shura Council, just to remove Netanyahu and the right-wing government from power.

“Yisrael Beytenu’s campaign talks about a decisive outcome, but it is not clear how, with Yair Golan, who opposes the pioneers on the farms and believes security comes through the two-state plan? Liberman needs to explain how he intends to defeat Hamas and the Arab enemy, ensure settlement in Judea and Samaria, and fulfill everything he promises when he gives the diplomatic Left more than one hand on the steering wheel of government.”

He wants it, and he will get it

Between diplomatic and security consultations and dozens of fateful decisions placed before him over the past week, including two security cabinet meetings and constant discussions with the Americans and the Gaza Board of Peace, Netanyahu has increasingly immersed himself in developments inside Likud, which has begun to bubble and churn as the picture ahead of the party primaries becomes clearer.

Netanyahu understands that beyond the military recruitment issue and his alliance with the haredim, the composition of the Likud list also carries enormous significance.

Unlike what the article characterizes as the Democrats’ extreme group, which includes a lawyer who represents terrorists and raises money for Arabs in the hostile Palestinian town of Huwara, Netanyahu knows he will not receive even a single day of grace after the list is unveiled, and that the media will do everything it can to make the list unpalatable and highlight its shortcomings.

He therefore demanded, and received, eight reserved slots. It is an enormous and unprecedented number that will give him room to maneuver and make corrections if necessary.

That is why, after returning from the US, Netanyahu threw himself fully into questions of procedure, petitions, and the district provision that passed by a narrow majority. He will not relent until he gets everything he wants.

So far, he has received the two provisions he sought: reserved slots and the rules governing the primaries. But those were not his only achievements.

During negotiations to bring those provisions before the party convention for approval, Netanyahu succeeded in breaking up what could have been the strongest deal in Likud ahead of the coming internal elections, between David Bitan and Haim Katz.

After negotiating jointly with both men, Netanyahu chose to work only with Katz and leave Bitan out of the picture.

Bitan was furious, but ultimately lost. On the district provision, the margin was only five votes, but on the two provisions that truly mattered to Netanyahu, the prime minister defeated him by an overwhelming majority.

The vote and the appeal over the provision allowing MKs to run in the districts intensified the rivalry within Likud, with Bitan forced to identify not only Netanyahu as a rival but Katz as well.

The divide-and-rule strategy succeeded beyond expectations.

Amid all this, Netanyahu managed to recruit all the party’s senior figures to support his proposals at the convention. Even Tally Gotliv backed his two most important proposals, while opposing the district proposal that was actually important to Haim Katz.

The defense minister, the Knesset speaker, Yariv Levin, and other senior ministers released videos supporting Netanyahu’s proposals, making clear to Likud members that there is one man in charge of the party.

For Israel Katz, at least, it has already paid off.

Several Netanyahu associates pressed the prime minister to attack the defense minister over what was perceived as the live dismissal of Maj.-Gen. Bluth.

In the past, Netanyahu would not have missed an opportunity to flex his muscles against Katz, particularly when it involved defending an IDF general who has been carrying out the government’s settlement policy in Judea and Samaria with distinction. This time, however, Netanyahu refused.

For many years, the winning axis inside Likud was in the hands of the two Katzes, Haim and Israel. In the last election, however, the two went their separate ways, contributing to Israel Katz’s decline as he fell out of the top 10.

Recent events have brought the two closer again, and indications are that in the coming primaries they will work to restore their former alliance.

The partnership with Netanyahu, including the decision to send party legal adviser Ilan Bombach to fight for the district provision in the district court, has strengthened Haim Katz’s position. Israel Katz’s senior ministerial position, meanwhile, is serving his political standing well.

A renewed alliance between the two would reestablish the powerful Likud axis, at least until the next confrontation with Netanyahu, which could once again bring the divide-and-rule strategy to the forefront.

This post was originally published on here. 

Last week, I joined roughly two dozen faith leaders, writers, activists, and policy advocates inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for a White House Faith Office briefing.

As someone who has spent years writing about antisemitism, Israel, and the role faith plays in public life, I expected discussions about religious liberty, faith-based initiatives, and public policy.

Instead, I left reflecting on something much deeper: whether a constitutional republic can endure when the moral culture that sustains it begins to erode.

Throughout the day, Jennifer Korn, Deputy Assistant to the President and Faith Director of the White House Faith Office, Pastor Paula White-Cain, Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office, Border Czar Tom Homan, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Assistant to the President and White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf, Special Assistant to the President for Jewish Outreach Martin Marks, Deputy Assistant to the President Kailee Buller, and other senior administration officials addressed the room.

Their responsibilities ranged from national security and immigration to Jewish outreach, religious liberty, and combating human trafficking. Yet despite their different portfolios, they repeatedly returned to the same conviction: America’s future depends not only on sound policies but on the moral and spiritual character of its people.

What struck me most was not simply that God was mentioned, but how naturally He was spoken about.

For nearly six and a half hours, references to God, prayer, faith, and moral responsibility arose repeatedly and without hesitation. They did not feel scripted or politically calculated. Several speakers became visibly emotional as they spoke about prayer and the role faith had played in their own lives and public service.

There was no hesitation in invoking God. There was no sense that faith needed to be hidden behind carefully crafted political language. It was spoken of with sincerity, conviction, and genuine belief.

Throughout the day, speaker after speaker described restoring faith to American civic life as one of the defining missions of the White House Faith Office. Whether discussing religious liberty, border security, combating human trafficking, strengthening families, or confronting antisemitism, they consistently returned to the same idea: government can protect liberty, but it cannot manufacture virtue.

Whether one agrees with this administration or not, the White House Faith Office reflects a conviction that was expressed repeatedly throughout the briefing: America’s deepest challenges are not merely political but moral. That is more than a policy position. It is a philosophy of government.

The underlying premise is that laws can punish crime, budgets can fund programs, and executive orders can shape policy, but none of them can create character. If that premise is correct, then the long-term health of the republic ultimately depends upon the moral formation of its citizens.

Listening to those presentations, I found myself thinking less about the administration and more about the Founding Fathers.

US Constitution a great historical achievement

The Constitution is rightly celebrated as one of history’s greatest political achievements. Yet the Framers never imagined that liberty could survive on constitutional mechanics alone. They designed a system of checks and balances because they understood the dangers of concentrated power. But they also believed that self-government required citizens capable of governing themselves.

John Adams famously wrote that the Constitution was made “only for a moral and religious people” and was “wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Whether one agrees entirely with that assessment or not, it reflects a conviction shared by many of the Founders: free institutions ultimately depend upon virtuous citizens.

That observation feels remarkably relevant today.

Americans spend enormous amounts of time debating inflation, immigration, education, crime, foreign policy, and the expanding role of government. Those debates matter. But perhaps they are downstream from a more fundamental question.

What happens when a society no longer shares a common moral foundation?

Every civilization is shaped by values. The question is never whether values will influence public life but which values will prevail. History suggests that societies rarely abandon their moral foundations all at once. One generation treats a principle as optional. The next forgets it ever existed.

In my view, many progressive political and cultural movements have sought to reshape American institutions through lawful political, educational, and cultural change. Their supporters regard these efforts as expanding equality and opportunity.

I see something different: a gradual replacement of the moral assumptions that undergirded the American experiment with a framework in which identity politics, expressive individualism, and an ever-expanding role for the state increasingly displace the institutions that have traditionally formed character: families, faith communities, local associations, and civic life.

For American Jews, this discussion is no longer theoretical. Antisemitic assaults, harassment, intimidation, and the normalization of anti-Jewish hatred have become alarmingly common. Every act of antisemitism is the responsibility of the individual who commits it.

But we should also ask what kind of civic culture allows hatred to become normalized and what moral vocabulary remains available to condemn it consistently, regardless of who the victim happens to be.

Alexis de Tocqueville warned that democracies rarely lose their freedoms through dramatic revolutions. More often, they drift toward greater centralization as citizens gradually transfer responsibilities once carried by families, religious communities, and local institutions to the state.

Friedrich Hayek similarly cautioned that liberty is often surrendered incrementally, each expansion of authority justified by the crisis of the moment until the destination becomes visible only in hindsight. Their warnings were not about one political party or one election. They were about human nature.

One need not agree with every policy advanced by President Donald Trump to recognize the significance of the question his administration is asking. The White House Faith Office reflects a belief expressed repeatedly throughout the briefing: that political freedom cannot endure indefinitely if the moral culture that sustains self-government continues to erode.

The Constitution is not weakened only when it is openly violated. It can also be hollowed out gradually when each generation accepts just enough civic and moral decline that the next mistakes the exception for the norm.

As I left the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, I realized that the most important conversation I had heard that day was not about a single policy initiative. It was about whether America still believes that virtue, faith, and moral responsibility are indispensable to the survival of a constitutional republic.

America’s future will not be determined solely by the laws we pass or the elections we win. It will also be determined by the moral convictions we preserve, the truths we are willing to defend, and the values we pass on to our children.

That was the deeper lesson I took away from my day inside the White House Faith Office. The speakers came from different backgrounds and carried different responsibilities, yet they shared a common conviction: that no constitutional republic can long endure if it loses the moral foundation upon which its freedoms rest. Whether Americans ultimately embrace or reject that premise may prove to be one of the defining questions of our time.

Because in the end, a Constitution can preserve a nation’s freedom. Only its people can preserve the moral character that allows that freedom to endure.

The writer is an author and strategist whose work explores Jewish life, culture, and public affairs. She is the founder of 250Shabbat, a grassroots initiative strengthening Jewish identity through the shared experience of Shabbat, and host of The Silent Revolution podcast.

This post was originally published on here. 

For those who don’t want to be accused of outright hatred of Jews, the more clever and subtle way to attack them is by going after those who lobby on their behalf.

That is why a coordinated effort is being made by haters of the Jewish state. The massive campaign is designed to destroy only one specific lobby – the one advocating for Israel.

By their reckoning, successfully putting an end to it will kill several birds with one stone. It will close the financial spigot, prevent further military defense assistance, put the brakes on legislation that helps Israel, and freely allow for an unending stream of anti-Jewish criticism, especially coming from the UN.

The pro-Israel lobby is composed of many groups, the most popular being the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Others include the UK’s Conservative Friends of Israel, Christians United for Israel, the Republican Jewish Coalition, and the Zionist Organization of America.

Although having been in existence throughout the tenure of decades of US presidents, these Israel lobbying groups have never been more reviled and scrutinized than in the last three years, as blatant antisemitism began to make a comeback with a deep fervor.

Consequently, Israel’s detractors figured out that the best way to injure the Jewish state is to bludgeon these supportive organizations, accounting for their latest crusade, aimed at annihilating any groups who do the bidding for the only democracy in the Middle East.

Predictably, their first course of action has been the highly effective “name smear.” By slapping the “Zionist” label on these lobbying groups, they can make the causal link between a term now synonymous with bigotry, strengthening the bogus and defamatory claim that Israel is an oppressor state.

Libel is always the best starting point, since it serves to advance an unsavory view of the people they are attempting to hang in the town square. And that is exactly what is happening. Make no mistake about it! Israel supporters, in the political arena (aka the Israel lobby), are being readied for their public execution.

The passage of 80 years has greatly altered the way Jews are perceived, especially in light of a new generation, which has decided to designate the chosen people as the harsh persecutors of the Middle East’s victim class. And, as long as they are doling out blame, why not throw a few more accusations on those evil Zionists?

In this case, the charge is that the influence of the Israel lobby is disproportionate to that of all others. The belief that Trump has been the puppet of a sustained campaign by Israel, and other prominent Jews in the media or other high places, has been constantly touted.

Humiliating caricatures and insulting memes of prominent Jews pulling the strings attached to Trump are legion, depicting the well-known antisemitic trope that Jews control politics, banks, media, and just about everything else of consequence.

How to save the friendship

For the anti-Israel mob, history may forgive Harry Truman for making the mistake of being “personally and deeply moved by the suffering of Jewish survivors of the Nazi ‘Final Solution,’ culminating in the recognition of a Jewish state in Palestine,” according to a damning Guardian article.

Titled “The pro-Israel lobby has swayed US presidents since Truman. It must end with Trump” and co-authored by Ian Lustick, a Jewish writer known for his antagonism toward Israel, the article claims that “most American presidents have caved to the demands of Israel and its advocates.

“Driven by the fear of domestic political defeats, presidents have regularly rejected or abandoned foreign policies that both they and their most senior advisers believed were in the best interests of the US and at the expense of making meaningful progress in bringing a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” 

Rather than subscribe to the conviction that a safe and flourishing Israel bodes well for the US superpower, the viewpoint is inverted to espouse that these Israel lobbyists “explicitly favor the interests of Israel,” as their requests are “encouraged and guided – by Israeli governments, resulting in the exploitation of most voters.”

That is why Lustick invokes what he refers to as a warning given by the first American president, George Washington, who, in his Farewell Address, said that “The American system of government could all too easily be exploited by a group with a ‘passionate attachment’ to a foreign country.”

There are only a few problems with the application of those words as they relate to this issue. Modern-day Israel did not exist during the time of Washington, and Israel is not just any foreign country.

Connected to the biblically guided principles, America shares the roots of the Judeo-Christian faith, which bestows a blessing upon all those who love Israel and extend their friendship to them. By supporting the land, which God bequeathed to the Jewish people, a nation ensures its own well-being and divine approval. Regrettably, the opposite is also true for those who don’t.

But none of this seems to be factored into Lustick’s thinking, who, on the one hand, believes that each person “has the right to express their opinions and work to shape public policy,” except for Trump, whom he characterizes as “incompetent and gullible, yielding to Israeli pressure and dragging the US into the latest war.”

That’s what it comes down to – the assertion that were it not for Israel, the US would be unencumbered by the Jewish state that has foisted its burdens upon America.

Sadly, it is that twisted, myopic thinking that has been used as a convenient pretext for America’s need to extricate itself from the millstone around its neck.

While Israel is on the front lines, fighting an existential war that threatens all of humanity, the world, an ocean away, is lulled into believing that they won’t be affected by a radical religious ideology that seeks to dominate and place every living being into subservience.

A public execution must precede the abandonment of Israel to convince Americans that this will serve their best interest, and that is exactly what is being promoted as the call for the dissolution of this friendship is resounded.

The writer, a former principal of Jerusalem elementary and middle schools, was a member of Kibbutz Re’im from 1994 to 1999. She is the author of Mistake-Proof Parenting, based on the time-tested wisdom found in the Book of Proverbs, available on Amazon.

This post was originally published on here. 

As an Iranian journalist in close contact with people across Iran, I have witnessed a reality often overlooked by outside observers.

Through conversations with Iranians from different regions and backgrounds, people who do not know one another, I have repeatedly encountered a growing trust in Israel. This sentiment is shaped not by external campaigns, but by years of experience with the Islamic Republic’s repression, regional aggression, and the consequences of its policies.

Many Iranians view Israel as the only actor with the determination and strategic clarity to confront the core of the regime’s power, targeting not only military capabilities and nuclear ambitions but also the leadership and networks behind them.

They see Israel’s approach as fundamentally different from powers that can leave the region: a strategy focused on confronting threats at their source.

This deep trust is a strategic asset for the Jewish state that must be continuously protected, defended, and nurtured against deliberate campaigns of subversion.

Today, this priceless capital of mutual trust faces a sophisticated threat – not just from the overt propaganda machines in Tehran, but from reckless media narratives that inadvertently serve the Islamic Republic’s strategic goals.

A recent, highly controversial narrative advanced by reports in The New York Times and Haaretz claims that Israeli intelligence once contemplated or actively maneuvered to bring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power as an alternative to the current setup of the Islamic Republic. This dangerous scenario is fundamentally flawed. 

More importantly, it acts as a devastating psychological operation that directly targets the trust ordinary Iranians place in the State of Israel.

To suggest that Jerusalem would favor elevating one of Iran’s most brutal oppressors as a viable alternative is an insult to the Iranian people. It is a narrative that risks fracturing a strategic friendship that has survived decades of clerical dictatorship.

To understand why this narrative is so damaging, one must look at who Mahmoud Ahmadinejad truly is to the Iranian nation. He is not a standard political figure; he is a symbol of domestic terror and democratic betrayal.

In 2009, Ahmadinejad “won” re-election through a blatantly rigged and fraudulent vote. This political farce was orchestrated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) mafia with the absolute backing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

When millions of ordinary Iranians poured into the streets during the Green Movement, demanding “Where is my vote?” the regime responded with savage, bloody suppression. Thousands of peaceful protesters were beaten, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. Ahmadinejad was the smiling face of that murderous crackdown. 

He is a deeply despised figure among the vast majority of Iranians, who view his tenure as the dark era when the IRGC completely hijacked the state’s economy, politics, and social fabric. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad’s global infamy rests heavily on his grotesque denial of the Holocaust. 

By hosting international conferences of Holocaust deniers and spewing vile antisemitic rhetoric, he sought to isolate Iran and position the country as the vanguard of global antisemitism. This behavior added immense fuel to the rage of the Iranian people.

The citizens of Iran, who view themselves as proud inheritors of a culture defined by tolerance, were deeply ashamed of this state-sponsored bigotry. Iranians are friends of the Jewish people. They saw Ahmadinejad’s antics for what they were: a desperate attempt by an illegitimate regime to legitimize itself by weaponizing hatred.

Therefore, when reports surface suggesting Israel wanted to bring this tyrant to power as an alternative, the Iranian public is left asking a painful question: How could Israel, the nation built as a sanctuary for Holocaust survivors, ever wish to empower a Holocaust denier? 

How could Jerusalem wish to elevate a man under whose watch the IRGC solidified its total iron grip over Iran?

The answer is simple: Israel would not. The narrative is a toxic distortion. However, the mere existence of these media reports plays directly into the hands of the Islamic Republic’s hard core.

The ruling clerics in Tehran are terrified of the profound affection and trust that exists between the Iranians and Israel. They recognize that this grassroots friendship represents a massive existential threat to their ideological legitimacy. If the Iranian people view Israel not as an enemy, but as a historic ally, the regime’s foundational pillar of “Death to Israel” completely crumbles.

Consequently, the Islamic Republic’s overt and covert agents are working overtime to damage this trust by manufacturing elaborate conspiracy theories.

Keeping the trust between ordinary Iranians and Israel

In recent regional conflicts, the regime’s propaganda machine aggressively weaponized a highly sensitive historical trauma. They spread systematic rumors claiming that Israel planned to use Kurdish separatist forces from outside the borders to invade western Iran.

This line of propaganda is a calculated psychological trap designed to trigger memories of the painful period immediately following the 1979 revolution, when armed separatist Kurdish factions occupied and besieged cities in Western Iran, pushing the nation to the brink of balkanization.

Crucially, this psychological warfare causes the greatest outrage among Iran’s patriotic Kurdish majority. These patriotic Kurds fought against the separatists after 1979, sacrificing their lives to keep Iran whole. 

Historically, Iran’s Kurdish population has been a bedrock of Iranian national identity and cultural heritage, consistently rejecting the regime’s attempts to question their loyalty to Iran’s territorial integrity.

By manufacturing accusations of territorial division, spreading rumors about a Kurdish-led invasion, and validating absurd theories about Israel trying to bring Ahmadinejad back to power as an alternative, the regime is directing a multi-part psychological script.

These are not separate events; they are coordinated scenes of a singular narrative born entirely out of the Islamic Republic’s absolute terror of the deep trust between ordinary Iranians and Israel.

This systemic irresponsibility is precisely why Haaretz has completely lost its credibility among the Iranian public. The paper has built a dangerous track record of publishing politically motivated theories that actively harm the Iranian opposition while providing propaganda victories to the regime in Tehran.

A glaring example occurred when Haaretz ran a so-called “investigation” claiming that the massive online support for Iran’s Crown Prince, Reza Pahlavi, was merely an artificial network of Israeli-funded bots. The reality on the ground shattered this media narrative.

On January 8 and 9, 2026, following a direct call to action by Pahlavi, millions of brave Iranians defied the regime and flooded the streets across Iran. The historic scale of those protests proved that the Iranian people’s desire for a secular, democratic future is a powerful, organic grassroots reality, not a digital illusion created by computers.

By dismissing millions of real, living freedom fighters as mere “bots,” Haaretz did not just exhibit terrible journalism; it actively endangered dissidents. The Islamic Republic eagerly seized on the Haaretz report, broadcasting it on state television and using it as a pretext to arrest, torture, and extract forced confessions from pro-democracy activists on charges of foreign espionage.

This is the very same Haaretz whose reckless reporting during domestic political disputes, such as its sensationalized and irrepressible coverage of Israeli military pilots refusing to serve in March 2023, sent dangerous signals of weakness to Jerusalem’s adversaries.

Given the extensive gleeful coverage of Haaretz reports on regime media, many Iranians believe these irresponsible actions directly emboldened the Islamic Republic and its proxies, leading them to believe that Israel was fractured from within, which ultimately helped incite the horrors of the October 7 attacks.

When media outlets play domestic politics with national security and international alliances, the consequences are measured in human lives.

The path to a peaceful Middle East relies entirely on the inevitable collapse of the Islamic Republic and the rebirth of a free, democratic Iran. Israeli media and strategic analysts must remain fiercely vigilant against narratives that alienate their greatest geopolitical asset. 

They must write and analyze with a clear, unwavering understanding: the Iranian nation and the Israeli nation have no better, truer friends in the region than each other.

The friendship between our peoples is biblical, tracing its roots back to Cyrus the Great. It is a timeless alliance that no modern media distortion can erase. 

Free Iranians and Israelis must stand together, ensuring that the cornerstone of tomorrow’s peace is never sacrificed for sensationalist headlines.

The writer is communications director to Prince Reza Pahlavi, and an Iranian journalist who previously served as editor-in-chief of news at Manoto TV, a UK-based Persian-language television network.

This post was originally published on here. 

Iran Human Rights (IHR) recently reported that they believe that the Iranian regime is ramping up executions in the wake of the US strikes on the Islamic Republic of Iran. According to a CNN report, the Iranian regime has executed at least 47 political prisoners so far this year, a massive increase from 16 around the same time last year.

Each of these victims sitting on death row in Iran has a family that is suffering as they await the unjustified execution of their loved one. CNN recently interviewed Niki Nikbakht, who has two brothers, Hadi and Fazlollah, who are sitting on death row in Iran for politically related crimes. 

According to information obtained by IHR, political prisoners Hadi and Fazlollah Nikbakht were sentenced to death on charges of efsad-fil-arz (corruption on earth) by the Golpayegan Revolutionary Court. The two brothers were arrested at their homes in Golpayegan on October 24, 2025, after they attempted to stop authorities from seizing their farmland.

According to the report, the defendants were accused of mobilizing youth to protest against the authorities.

Hadi has two sons and a five-month-old daughter, who never met her father because he was imprisoned by the Iranian regime when her mother was still pregnant.

According to CNN, Hadi, 45, and Fazlollah, 50, are just two out of dozens of Iranians sitting on death row in the Islamic Republic right now for politically related crimes that would never land one in prison, much less receive the death penalty, in any Western country.

Ahwaz dissident Hamid Mutashar, who heads the Ahwaz Liberal Party, stressed in a recent interview: “The Iranian regime’s accelerated execution spree in the aftermath of the recent US strikes is a desperate, criminal response, a clear admission of its fear and impending collapse. This is not just a crackdown. It is a violent attempt by a failing regime to silence the voices of liberty through terror.”

He continued: “The recent surge in executions carried out by the Iranian regime – particularly against our youth in Ahwaz, Kurdistan, and Azerbaijan – is not merely an act of domestic repression; it is a desperate, sociopathic reaction by a collapsing Nazi-style regime.

“By labeling innocent activists and freedom fighters as ‘agents of Israel,’ the regime attempts to mask its deep-seated paranoia and its fear of the growing unity among the non-Persian nations. These youth are not criminals; they are the conscience of our nations, executed simply because they dare to dream of a future free from Tehran’s tyranny.”

According to Mutashar, “The regime’s attempt to link our struggle for self-determination to external actors is a tired tactic to justify state-sanctioned murder. We call upon the international community – and specifically the human rights organizations in Israel and across the globe – to treat this for what it is: a crime against humanity. 

“We demand immediate, tangible intervention to save the lives of those currently on death row. Silence is complicity. We urge the world to stand on the side of justice and to recognize that the collapse of this regime is not only a necessity for our survival but a prerequisite for regional and global peace.”

Iranian dissident Shabnam Assadollahi added, “The regime is once again using fear as a weapon to preserve its grip on power, sending a chilling message to every Iranian who dares to dream of freedom. [US] President [Donald] Trump and Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu must finish the job. 

“If the Islamic Republic survives, it will continue what it has done for more than four decades: crushing its own people through terror while exporting violence, extremism, and instability beyond Iran’s borders. A regime that has built its power on repression and intimidation cannot be allowed to continue spreading the same ideology that has brought suffering to millions.”

Assadollahi claimed that she has received information from various sources inside Iran who claim that “the scale of the killings during the January 8-9 crackdown was far greater than publicly acknowledged. These sources allege that the number of those killed reached as high as 100,000 people. 

“They further report that the bodies of many victims were transported to undisclosed facilities – what Persians refer to as human crematoriums – while countless families were denied the ability to recover or even identify the remains of their loved ones. These accounts require urgent international attention and a credible investigation. 

“Since the 12-day conflict that began in February, the regime has intensified its machinery of repression, with hundreds reportedly executed by hanging. Every day of silence gives this regime more time to imprison, torture, and execute those who refuse to surrender their hope for freedom.”

Assadollahi stressed that she has sympathy for every Iranian imprisoned in the Islamic Republic because she has gone through what they went through: “I was only 16 years old when I was imprisoned in Evin and Ghezel Hesar prisons in the early 1980s. Terror had no timetable. It came in the middle of the night, in the early morning hours, and even in the middle of the day. 

“Every opening of a prison door carried the question every prisoner feared: Who would not return? I learned to associate the amplified call to prayer echoing through the prison loudspeakers with fear and death. Instead of being a sound of comfort, it became a reminder of what was happening behind those walls. It was the sound that accompanied the execution of political prisoners and the destruction of families. 

“As a teenager, I lived with the knowledge that I could be next. I was one of those young prisoners. I was 16 years old. More than four decades later, that memory has not faded. The same regime that imprisoned us, executed us, and tried to silence an entire generation continues its repression today.”

The Iranian people are still waiting

South Azerbaijani dissident journalist Ahmad Obali added, “When President Trump asked the protesters to go out and take over the government, and said that help was on the way, people really believed what he had to say and that the US would really come to help them. 

“When Trump told the regime to stop the executions, or they would intervene, people really believed that the US would follow through. And now some people in Iran think that they have been deceived and left without all the help that the president promised. Therefore, Trump has a responsibility to actually help the people this time around to save his credibility.”

He added: “By now, the world must have realized that this regime in Iran is not capable of being reformed. The Iranian regime will continue on a killing spree of the prisoners to scare others from protesting. This regime will continue to train, fund, and arm its proxies from Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen and beyond to terrorize the region and to continue attacking shipping lanes in the Red Sea. 

“This regime will continue attacking tankers in the Gulf and Sea of Oman to put pressure on oil prices and hijack the world economy. They think they have found a great tool to survive and put pressure on the US to back down by mining the Strait of Hormuz. It is time for the world and the US to wake up and realize that the only path to sustainable peace in the region is for this regime to go.”

Obali concluded: “As an Azerbaijani, I feel for the families of those executed and those who are going to be executed, many of whom are ethnic Azerbaijanis. When I was 17 years old, I was arrested and put in a detention center with 24 other detainees in one room. There was not enough room for people to lie down and sleep on the bare concrete floor. 

“So we had to take turns to get some rest, and even then they would turn verses from the Quran on loudspeakers to deprive us of sleep. They would not let us go to the bathroom for over a day, so some detainees had to pee in plastic bags in order to prevent damage to their bladder. This does not include the physical or psychological torture I went through. 

“I did not know if I would be executed the next day until I escaped from the prison. So I feel for the prisoners regardless of whether they are to be executed or not. It seems like this regime is going back to the 1980s-style of torture and executions.” 

The Iranian regime also attacks dissidents who flee abroad, as Obali was physically assaulted outside Iran by agents of the regime.

Assadollahi concluded: “Every day this regime survives is another day it has to imprison, execute, and silence the Iranian people –and another day it has to strengthen the networks of terror it exports beyond Iran’s borders. This regime is not seeking peace. It is seeking time. Time to rebuild, time to deceive the world, and time to wait for international resolve to weaken. 

“The Iranian people cannot afford another delay. Their lives cannot be placed on the calendar of elections or political calculations. Trump and Netanyahu, finish the job before it is too late. Do not allow this regime to buy another opportunity to continue its reign of terror. 

“History will judge not only the brutality of the Islamic Republic, but also the choices made by those who had the power to stop it. The people of Iran have been waiting for freedom for over four decades. They are still waiting.”

The writer is the CEO of the Dona Gracia Center for Diplomacy and an Israel-based journalist. She is the author of Women and Jihad: Debating Palestinian Female Suicide Bombings in the American, Israeli and Arab Media.

This post was originally published on here. 

 A 50-year-old sports instructor accused of committing indecent acts against several female minors with cognitive disabilities appeared before the Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court on Thursday, where police requested an extension of his detention.

Police allege that security camera footage from a residential facility for children with disabilities shows Gilboa Dahan, 50, of Netanya, touching intimate areas of several female residents while working as a sports instructor at the facility.

Police said the alleged victims have cognitive disabilities that prevent them from filing complaints or recounting what allegedly happened to them. Dahan denies the allegations.

Investigators from the Kfar Saba Police Station had been monitoring activity inside the facility for an extended period.

The investigation was not prompted by testimony from one of the residents, but by footage collected during a covert investigation.

During Thursday’s hearing, police representative Sgt.-Maj. Ariel Amsalem presented the court with what police described as troubling evidence and requested additional time to continue the investigation.

According to Amsalem, the footage shows the suspect touching intimate areas of several residents. She emphasized that the girls have cognitive disabilities that prevent them from filing complaints or recounting what happened to them.

Investigation continues as suspect denies sexual offense allegations

Police also said Dahan had worked as a sports instructor at other facilities. Investigators are continuing to examine whether there may have been additional cases.

Dahan denies the allegations. During questioning, he said he had not committed any sexual offenses and maintained that any physical contact he had with the residents occurred while he was assisting them.

The court granted the police request and extended Dahan’s detention by four days, until Sunday, to allow investigators to complete additional investigative steps.

Attorneys Amir Kimhi and Yehudit Ella Shaked, who represent Dahan, said in response: “Our client denies the aforementioned allegations. The investigation is ongoing, and its conclusion should be awaited.”

This post was originally published on here. 

A well-known singer was arrested on Saturday afternoon on suspicion of domestic violence after his partner filed a complaint against him.

The singer, who has become a prominent public figure in recent years, was taken to the Rishon Lezion police station for questioning under caution and is expected to give his account of the allegations.

According to police suspicions, the incident occurred in the context of the couple’s relationship. In her complaint, the singer’s partner alleged that he had been violent toward her, threatened her, and broken windows.

A source familiar with the details told Walla that the investigation is currently focused on suspected domestic violence. “His partner said that he was violent toward her, threatened her and broke the windows,” the source said.

“After he gives his version of the incident, they will examine whether to release him already at the station or whether he will be brought to court tomorrow for an extension of his detention,” the source added.

The singer was questioned under caution. Based on the account he provides and any developments in the investigation, police will decide whether to release him under conditions following the questioning or ask the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court on Sunday to extend his detention.

Rapper tied to Ben-Gvir suspended from rapid response unit

The arrest follows another singer-related legal incident on August 2, when Israel Police Commissioner Inspector-General Danny Levy suspended right-wing activist and musician Yoav Eliasi from his position as commander of a Tel Aviv District rapid response squad.

Eliasi, known as “The Shadow,” is considered an associate and ally of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

He is suspected of exploiting his law enforcement connections to avoid the closure of an entertainment venue he is involved in, which was ordered closed by police following a violent incident.

This post was originally published on here. 

An IDF soldier was filmed hitting a Palestinian in the West Bank village of Idna in the Hebron Hills on Saturday, according to Army Radio.

Two Israeli civilians are seen joining the soldier in the footage, which followed a violent incident between Israelis and Palestinians in the area, with the IDF having arrived to separate the parties.

An IDF spokesperson said that the incident is under investigation.

This is a developing story.

This post was originally published on here. 

International Cat Day, celebrated every year on August 8, was created by The International Fund for Animal Welfare in 2002 to help boost adoption globally, share tips and tricks for caring for cats, and overall to celebrate our adorable little friends.

As cat owners and enthusiasts around the world celebrate International Cat Day, The Jerusalem Post would like to spotlight the fabulous felines that are an integral part of our family.

Aaron Reich: Medici and Judy

Aaron Reich and his partner are the loving parents of Medici – full name HaRav Medici di Cuddlebutt Reich – and Judy, short for Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi.

“Working from home with them is always fun. Medici is very cuddly and can spend hours curled up on someone’s lap, or climbing on them to snuggle their face. Or he can just sit on the desk or couch, sometimes cuddling up to my computer,” Reich said.

“Judy, however, is more content to hide behind my computer, flop in the sunlight on the floor, or climb up and down my chair and sit behind my head.”

Sam Halpern: Syl

Syl, who was originally named Fievel before the vet learned that he was a she, is just a few months old, with a personality ten times the size of her tiny body.

The little tabby can often be found chewing on cables, attempting to steal her dad’s popcorn, and generally being a menace to society.

“This a****** likes to headbutt me,” Halpern said fondly, joking that he would “make Gaza look like suburban Massachusetts compared to what I would do to the person who hurt her.”

Audrey Leinoff: Cookie and Coco

Though the two may look similar, Audrey Leinoff told the Post she believed she may have opened her home to an Iranian and Mossad spy, given how the two are constantly butting heads.

Cookie, Leinoff explained, appears to have “Persian blood flowing through her veins, and is remarkably calm when faced with threats of missile fire.”

Coco, by contrast, adores basking in the sun at 40 degrees heat. 

The result, Leinhoff said, is “a household full of peace, joy, and menace that keeps all dwellers on their claws – or toes.”

Maya Zanger-Shamir: Penelope and Tasha

Maya Zanger-Shamir has often described Penelope as the cat she wanted, while Tasha was the cat she needed.

“After I made aliyah, I felt a distinct, pet-shaped gap in my life,” she said.

“ I was immediately drawn to Penelope when I found her on Facebook because she has a missing paw and I grew up with a wonderful three-legged dog. Tasha ended up tagging along, and she’s become my little shadow.”

The cats stayed by Zanger-Shamir’s side through several careers and multiple partners, and have found their loving father in Omer, Maya’s husband.

“The emotional support I get from them has been critical to the success of my aliyah. I love them both so much, and they show – and tell – me every day how much they love me too.”

Chava Greymen-Kennard: Charlie

Charlie was one of the Post’s beloved cats, until she unfortunately passed away earlier this year, after being loved and doted on for several years by Chava Greymen-Kennard. 

“There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about Charlie. She was with me through the darkest times. She curled up beside me in shelters, stayed by my side when I was sick, and gave me comfort when I needed it most,” Greymen-Kennard shared.

“When life became difficult, I stayed in Israel because she couldn’t travel. She is the reason I’m an Israeli, and I owe more to her than I could ever put into words. Anyone who believes cats are cold or unloving could never have known my Charlie. She was the warmest, most intelligent and compassionate creature I’ve ever known.”

In addition to being Charlie’s loving mom, Greymen-Kennard also works closely with the Rosh Ha’Ayin Animal Lobby, where several Post members – including this author – got their beloved furry friends.

Rosh Ha’Ayin Animal Lobby is an association of local residents who volunteer in a range of activities on behalf of the city’s animals, with an emphasis on wildlife and the community.

While the shelter does rely on the municipal veterinary service, medical treatment and financial support from the authority are almost nonexistent, and the volunteers invest both in fundraising and in staffing operational shifts to look after the cats there.

Shir Perets: Bear

Of course, the best must be saved for last.

This author’s very own cat, Bear, is a long-haired-something-probably-Maine Coon who will be turning two in just a few weeks.

The light of my life, my Bear was adopted just a few weeks after signing on my first apartment, and has been my loyal companion through reserve duty, several Iran wars, overnight shifts, and more.

For the past year and a half, Bear has greeted me when I get home with a purr and a cuddle, putting anyone who thinks cats can’t show affection to shame.

Bear is exceptionally bright. He comforts me when I’m sad, bringing me toys in an attempt to brighten my day, and has learned a few basic commands, such as ‘sit,’ ‘leave it,’ or ‘scratch my back.’

For all of us here at the Post, our cats make our lives that much better, providing love and meaning in a way nobody else can.

This post was originally published on here. 

A fire broke out Saturday in an underground parking garage at the construction site of the future BIG shopping complex in Petah Tikva, sending thick smoke across the surrounding area, with Walla reporting later on Saturday that firefighting efforts are expected to continue into the night.

Heavy smoke rose near the intersection of Jabotinsky and Moshe Dayan streets and spread across a wide area, including toward residential towers in the nearby Neve Gan neighborhood. As of Saturday evening, it is still not under control, according to an update by the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority, which ordered Jabotinsky and Moshe Dayan streets to be closed to traffic.

Fire and rescue crews from the Petah Tikva station were dispatched to the scene following reports of the blaze and large amounts of smoke. Police officers also arrived at the scene. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined, with N12 News noting that investigators have not ruled out arson.

The Israel Fire and Rescue Authority said the fire originated in the underground parking garage at the construction site of the future BIG complex. Plastic materials and pipes were stored in the area where the fire broke out, producing large amounts of smoke that spread from the construction site into the surrounding area.

Firefighters are working to extinguish the flames while also locating the source of the blaze and ventilating the underground parking garage. Nearby residents were asked to keep their windows closed, N12 reported.

The thick smoke could be seen from a considerable distance and covered a large area earlier on Saturday, with some of it drifting toward nearby residential towers in Neveh Gan.

The Israel Fire and Rescue Authority said operations at the scene were continuing and that further updates would be provided as the situation develops.

Highway 7 reopens to traffic following bus fire

Also on Saturday, a bus caught fire on Highway 7 near the Beit Raban Interchange, closing the road to eastbound traffic.

The highway was later reopened after firefighters gained control of the blaze following extensive efforts, according to the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority’s Southern District.

This post was originally published on here. 

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is criticizing Mayor Zohran Mamdani for creating what officials describe as a security nightmare ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s visit to New York in September, according to a report by The New York Post.

Netanyahu is expected to arrive in the city next month for the United Nations General Assembly and is scheduled to address the assembly on September 26. 

NYPD sources told the NYP that Netanyahu’s visit will require substantial, presidential-level security. They specifically pointed to Mamdani’s recent public statements against the prime minister, which include calls for his arrest and encouragement for the public to protest Netanyahu’s presence as sources of their security concerns.

“Basically, he’s turning what would be considered a Category 1 hurricane that we deal with every year into a Category 5 because of his words,” a NYPD source told the NYP.

“We have to protect hotels; we have to protect wherever dignitaries go out to eat; we have to protect everything,” the source added. “Having the mayor say, ‘Go ahead and protest, and he should be arrested’ is unfair to your own officers.” 

Netanyahu’s complete schedule for his visit to New York is not yet known, so the final number of police officers required for his security detail is still uncertain.

However, up to 60 or more officers could end up being a part of his security detail, including both direct and peripheral personnel, according to another NYPD source.

Police express concern over Netanyahu’s safety

“What’s going to stop one of the protesters from becoming a vigilante and trying to hurt or, God forbid, kill him?” the source questioned.

Officers are also reportedly worried that protesters who believe they are acting on the mayor’s behalf “could cause an officer to get hurt or even killed,” the source stated to the NYP.

Another NYPD source reminded the NYP about the bomb that was discovered outside Gracie Mansion in March. Two men from Pennsylvania, reportedly inspired by ISIS, allegedly attempted to detonate bombs in a crowd during the “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City” protest.

The source expressed concern about the possibility of a similar attempted terrorist attack during Netanyahu’s visit. “His rhetoric is reckless,” the official stated. “It emboldens radical and unstable agitators who could endanger both New Yorkers and law enforcement officers.”

A New York City government source also shared concerns about the recent increase in antisemitism with the NYP, linking it to Mamdani’s stance on Israel.

“It’s very concerning,” said the insider. “I mean, [Mamdani’s] rhetoric has clearly caused this uptick in antisemitism all across our city, and now telling people to go out and protest is going to create a powder keg situation.”

“It’s not the mayor’s job to tell people to protest and to urge them to do so,” the city government source concluded. “It’s likely to be very violent. And I mean, what on Earth is this accomplishing?”

Mamdani’s history of anti-Netanyahu rhetoric

Mamdani’s anti-Netanyahu rhetoric has been a consistent theme throughout both his campaign and his tenure in political office. During his 2025 New York City mayoral campaign, the Mayor pledged to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and stated that he would seek to enforce International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants if elected.

He reiterated this pledge in a recent interview with The New York Times in July.

“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague. Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do, but we won’t be writing our own laws to that end,” Mamdani said.

However, later that week, Mamdani was compelled to admit that his administration lacks the authority to execute the ICC’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu, as stated in a video released by the mayor’s office.

Despite this, he continued to accuse Netanyahu of being responsible for an alleged “genocide against the Palestinian people” and for blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza, adding that Netanyahu “is not welcome in New York City.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Several haredi (ultra-Orthodox) protesters blocked a road in the area of Meron on Saturday due to buses operating prior to the end of Shabbat, N12 News reported.

Footage published by N12 showed multiple nearby civilians dragging the protesters out of the way and attempting to escort a bus through the demonstration.

Walla noted that the incident marks the sixth consecutive week in which haredi demonstrators blocked traffic to protest public transportation operating on Shabbat.

The Israel Police attempted to disperse the protest, added Walla, with secular counterprotesters arriving on scene as well.

Anti-government protests planned for Saturday night across northern Israel

Further protests in northern Israel are scheduled for Saturday night, Maariv reported, though these are intended as demonstrations against the government.

According to Maariv, the areas expected to face protesters include Guma Junction, Kibbutz Eilon, Afula, Kabri, Nahariya, Tzemach, Rosh Pina, and Karmiel.

Additional anti-government protests are expected throughout the country. 

This post was originally published on here. 

Iran executed at least 71 people in July, including six protesters, according to Iran Human Rights (IHR), a Norway-based monitoring group, which said it documented at least 444 executions from January 1 through July 31, while only 67 of those cases were announced by Iranian authorities. 

This information emerges as international attention has focused on Iran’s military confrontation with the United States and Israel, leaving arrests, death sentences and alleged abuses inside the country less visible, rights advocates say. The organization said another 377 cases were independently verified through two sources, while reports of more than 400 additional executions have not been included because they could not yet be verified. 

The figures present a parallel picture of Iran at a moment when international attention has overwhelmingly centered on military operations, the confrontation with the United States and Israel, the Strait of Hormuz, and the economic consequences of the conflict. 

Inside the country, however, the machinery of capital punishment has continued. 

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of Iran Human Rights, said executions have returned to an almost daily pace. “So, it seems that we are going back to the way it used to be, that we have daily executions. Most of them are for charges such as drug trafficking or murder. But the execution of protesters also continues,” he told The Media Line. 

“Last month, we had six protesters who were executed. We know that there are many more on death row now. In one of the prisons in Isfahan, we have identified at least 70 people who are going to be executed,” he added.  

Iran executions span murder, drugs, and security-related offenses

Of the 71 executions recorded in July, the organization said 36 concerned murder charges, 26 drug-related offenses, eight security-related charges and one rape charge. During the first seven months of 2026, IHR documented the executions of 28 protesters—26 connected to the January 2026 protests and two to the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. It also recorded the executions of 13 political prisoners affiliated with banned opposition groups, and 12 people accused of espionage. 

In total, 63 of the executions documented during the period involved national-security charges. 

Iranian authorities describe such executions as lawful punishment for security-related crimes and have said swift enforcement of sentences is necessary to deter unrest. 

The death penalty extends far beyond political cases. According to IHR, 227 people were executed after receiving qisas, or retribution-in-kind, sentences for murder, while 143 were executed for drug-related offenses. Twelve women, 17 foreign nationals, and at least 80 members of ethnic minorities were among those executed. 

Only two of the 444 documented executions were carried out publicly. 

For an anonymous source currently inside Iran, the continuation of executions itself is not regarded as something new. The deeper frustration, the source said, comes from the perception that what is happening inside the country is widely known but increasingly absent from the international conversation. 

“Unjust executions without a fair trial have always been happening here. That’s not the shocking part to us. What we hate the most is that now almost everybody knows what’s going on in Iran—the crimes committed by the Islamic Republic. Every politician and news outlet is well aware [of] this, but they pretend it doesn’t exist because it doesn’t align with their interests. We don’t expect much from these people—the least is transparency,” the source told The Media Line.  

“The silence of the media is nothing new to us, but it’s definitely heartbreaking,” the source added. 

That loss of attention is also central to Amiry-Moghaddam’s assessment of the current moment. “So, of course the media, they go for the hottest news, and right now it’s war. This is one of the reasons why the Islamic Republic actually prefers the current situation, because everything else comes under the shadow of the war,” he noted. 

He argues that international priorities have moved toward containing the conflict and preserving regional economic stability. “They prefer to have at least some level of tension with the United States because that takes all the attention. For Western countries, the highest priority is not the human rights situation of Iranian people. Right now, it is that the Strait of Hormuz is open, that the oil prices and gas prices are not increased anymore, that there is stability,” he said. 

The effect of the war inside Iran is more complicated than a simple weakening of the state. 

According to Amiry-Moghaddam, the authorities have been able to mobilize supporters during the conflict, while the structural problems that have repeatedly fueled discontent—inflation, shortages and economic mismanagement—remain unresolved. 

“I would say that compared to the time before the war, probably the regime is in a better shape. However, they are not capable of solving people’s daily problems. There is still mismanagement in the whole country,” he said, highlighting electricity and water shortages alongside inflation. “Sooner or later, there will be new protests.” 

At the same time, the conflict appears to have changed the immediate priorities of some Iranians. “Maybe seven months ago, they had much more hope of regime change. Now, it seems that because of the war, they are much more preoccupied with their life situation not getting any worse. But it is getting worse, unfortunately,” Amiry-Moghaddam said. 

The anonymous source inside Iran described the continuing uncertainty in more restrained terms. “The weight of the ongoing uncertainty over the conflict, well it’s the same as before. Nothing has changed,” he said. 

But executions are only one component of the domestic picture. 

Widespread arrests accompany Iran’s expanding security crackdown

Amiry-Moghaddam also described widespread arrests since the beginning of the conflict and warned that national-security legislation has expanded the authorities’ ability to impose severe sentences over alleged cooperation with organizations or media outside Iran. 

“There are always arrests, but there is a new law that was passed last year during the fall, after the 12-day war last summer. It gives the authorities much more opportunity to give harsh sentences to people. For example, if someone has a video or messages sending to Farsi media outside the country, they can even be sentenced to death,” he said. 

According to Amiry-Moghaddam, the scale extends well beyond individual cases. “Inside the prisons there are thousands who have been arrested since the war began. And as I mentioned, we think hundreds are sentenced to death. Many of them are subjected to torture.” 

“What I’m concerned about is that as these military operations continue, the regime will use it even more to justify more arrests, more harsh sentences, more executions under the pretext of national security,” he said. 

Those estimates of arrests, death sentences and alleged torture come from Amiry-Moghaddam’s own account and are distinct from IHR’s independently documented execution statistics. 

For him, the significance of capital punishment also goes beyond the individual prisoners who ultimately face execution. He argues that repeated executions create a broader climate of intimidation capable of affecting political activity and freedom of expression even among people who have never been detained. “I think we should not underestimate the importance of the executions for the regime. … Just seven months ago, people used to post on their social media channels; they were not so afraid,” he said. 

“Now, I think, especially because of all these executions that they hear about every single day, we see the impact of the death penalty on the freedom of speech, on basically everything people do,” he asserted. 

Iran executions receive less global attention than 2022 protests

The contrast with previous waves of international attention is particularly significant. 

The death of Mahsa Amini in custody in 2022 and the subsequent “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests generated demonstrations and widespread solidarity internationally. Amiry-Moghaddam says that level of public attention has not been replicated during the current period. “When we compare a situation with the time after the Women. Life. Freedom. Movement, we see that also the public opinion and the solidarity that the Iranian people used to have during that movement is not there anymore.” 

He does not attribute the shift exclusively to Western governments or media. Part of the problem, he argues, stems from within the Iranian opposition, which is increasingly divided over the war and how foreign military intervention should be viewed. “And you probably have seen Iranians going out with the American flag, Israeli flag, and I don’t think it has a positive impact on the public opinion in Europe,” he said. 

Amiry-Moghaddam was also explicit in separating opposition to the Islamic Republic from support for bombing Iran. “I don’t think it is morally right either. Although I understand it’s because of desperation, we cannot express happiness because Iran is being bombed. These past few months have been very strange.” 

That distinction sits at the center of the human rights dilemma created by the current conflict. Military pressure on Tehran has not stopped executions or arrests. According to Amiry-Moghaddam, it may instead give authorities another justification for repression while shifting international scrutiny toward military and economic priorities. 

His argument is therefore that human rights must return to the diplomatic agenda independently of how the military confrontation develops. He sees Europe’s potential role not as determining Iran’s political future but as increasing the external consequences of domestic repression. 

“The change in the system, that must come from inside by the Iranian people, but what Europe can do is to raise the political cost of the repression, the executions, and that’s what we are hoping. The rest, I think, Iranian people will do,” he noted. 

For now, however, the contrast is growing sharper. 

Iran’s military confrontation has become an international security story. Inside the country, according to IHR and the accounts provided for this article, executions and arrests have continued alongside it—while receiving considerably less attention than the conflict surrounding them. 

For Amiry-Moghaddam, that also explains why war should not automatically be interpreted as a pathway to change inside Iran. “We really should hope that the war ends, because this is an asymmetric war, and this is the expertise of the Iranian regime. That’s what they are good at. They do whatever it takes to hold on to power,” he said. 

“The regime must answer to people why their daily issues are not solved, why do they have a shortage of everything, basically. I haven’t given up the hope for a change, but I think that the war is not helping it,” he concluded. 

This post was originally published on here.