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As the United States and Iran move into negotiations over a permanent end to the war, a Jerusalem-based legal NGO is urging international bodies to keep criminal accountability on the agenda.

The Jerusalem Institute of Justice (JIJ) has published a report arguing that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ missile and drone campaign against Israel and other states in the region should be examined as a potential series of war crimes.

The JIJ called on the International Criminal Court, UN mechanisms, and European prosecutors to assess individual responsibility within the Iranian command structure.

The report covers the period from February 28 through early April. It alleges that Iran fired more than 2,300 missiles and 5,350 UAVs at Israel and neighboring states, including the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Qatar, Oman, Cyprus, and Turkey.

Those figures are the organization’s own compilation, drawn from what it describes as open-source reporting, official releases, and an internal database. The report also acknowledges that battlefield attribution, casualty reporting, and the distinction between direct impacts and interception debris remain incomplete in several of the countries it examined.

Regarding Israel, the JIJ said Iran had launched 650 missiles and at least 479 separate barrages, including cluster-capable weapons. The scale and design of the attacks – particularly high-volume salvos intended to strain air-defense systems – indicate an unlawful strategy of indiscriminate fire and the terrorization of civilians, rather than solely attacks on military targets, it said.

Prosecution through either ICC or universal-jurisdiction countries could be on the table

The campaign left at least 20 people dead and more than 7,000 wounded in Israel, while causing widespread disruption to schools, air travel, workplaces, and civilian infrastructure, the report said. It did not assess the legality of the US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran that preceded the Iranian campaign, which Tehran has described as unlawful.

The legal argument rests on two routes. First, JIJ argues that missile debris and alleged airspace violations in Jordan and Cyprus could allow the ICC to examine the broader campaign, because both are parties to the Rome Statute.

Second, it cites universal-jurisdiction laws in Germany, France, and Sweden as possible avenues for domestic investigations into war crimes.

Those are legal arguments, not existing proceedings. Any ICC examination would require the prosecutor and court to determine that the alleged conduct falls within the court’s jurisdiction and meets the evidentiary and legal thresholds for a case.

“We are not asking for another toothless UN condemnation, nor will we accept a diplomatic agreement that grants amnesty for war crimes,” JIJ CEO Flavia Sevald said.

The JIJ initially said it had sent its evidentiary record to European parliamentarians. Asked by The Jerusalem Post about its broader distribution, the JIJ said the report had also been sent to UN mandate holders and other relevant UN mechanisms in Geneva and New York, as well as diplomatic missions and officials in about 20 countries.

The JIJ said it hoped the material would support formal condemnation of Iran, demands for accountability, possible ICC arrest warrants, universal-jurisdiction proceedings, and efforts to prevent Iran from holding leadership or membership roles in UN bodies.

The push comes as Washington and Tehran pursue a 60-day process toward a final agreement, after signing an interim memorandum of understanding that addresses the end of hostilities, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, sanctions, frozen Iranian assets, and Iran’s nuclear program.

Israel is not a party to the US-Iran negotiations, which have also been tied to efforts to halt fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said that the country’s interactions with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would continue, Iranian state news agency IRNA reported on Monday.

“Iran’s interactions with the Agency will continue in accordance with Iran’s commitments under the safeguards agreements, according to existing procedures and in accordance with the approvals of the Islamic Consultative Assembly and the decisions of the Supreme National Security Council,” IRNA cited Baghaei as saying.

IRNA further reported that Iran made no additional commitments on nuclear issues during the talks in Switzerland on Sunday, with the issue not discussed at all during the day’s 18-hour negotiations.

Earlier on Monday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-affiliated Tasnim News Agency denied claims that IAEA inspectors would be allowed access to the country’s nuclear sites under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

“The issue of issuing a permit for the agency’s inspectors to enter Iran has not been confirmed by the Iranian negotiating team or other responsible officials in the government,” said Tasnim. “It is better that it is never confirmed!”

Later on Monday, US President Donald Trump said in a post on Truth Social that Iran will agree to have weapons inspections to ensure “nuclear honesty” long into the future, echoing comments made by Vice President JD Vance.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had said earlier on Monday in an X/Twitter post that Iran had agreed “to permit IAEA inspectors into their country.”

Tasnim: Bessent claims ‘very damaging’

The Iranian news agency called the claims “very damaging,” saying that the arrival of IAEA inspectors would violate the MoU. 

It added that Iran “should not assume higher duties” than those required under the MoU, and that Iranian officials in Switzerland prevented the IAEA Director-General, Rafael Grossi, from attending Sunday’s negotiations.

“One of the most important things that Iran currently has that prevents some of America’s follies is the policy of ‘nuclear ambiguity’ and the fact that the location of nuclear-enriched materials is not known to the Americans,” Tasnim wrote. “If the policy of nuclear ambiguity collapses with the arrival of IAEA inspectors in Iran and the Americans complete their information in this field, it will only benefit the enemy.”

“This is probably the reason why no Iranian official has confirmed such a claim so far,” added Tasnim. “We hope it will not be confirmed in the future.”

Tasnim: IAEA ‘America’s foot soldiers’

Tasnim further claimed that American physicist and nuclear weapons expert David Albright referred to IAEA inspectors as “America’s foot soldiers” during a Senate speech.

The request for IAEA access was “an additional mistake” following the IAEA’s failure to prevent the US bombing of Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear sites, Tasnim continued, describing the request as an “attempt to complete American spying information.”

“Any possible presence of inspectors shall be subject to final agreement,” Tasnim concluded. “An agreement that is unlikely to be reached, considering the experience from America.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

American allies of US President Donald Trump this week defended him to an Israeli public anxious about a US interim deal with Iran and White House criticism that together appeared to signal fissures in Israel’s decades-old alliance with Washington.

The US-Israeli relationship has been on a roller coaster, from the early confidence they shared after their joint attack on Iran to public disagreements between Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how to end the four-month-old war.

Netanyahu and many other Israelis see a risk that Trump’s Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Iran will empower a state they regard as their deadliest enemy and constrict their ability to respond to threats from Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

They sense the US alliance – long the bedrock of Israel’s strategic approach – is under strain as opinion polls show Americans increasingly unhappy with Israel and their strongest champion in Washington appears to be turning away.

“The United States and Israel have an unbreakable bond,” Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, said on Sunday after acknowledging there was an “enormous level of anxiety about the relationship.”

He spoke at a foreign policy conference in Jerusalem, where concerns about the state of the US-Israel alliance dominated many of the discussions.

Mark Levin, a conservative Fox News commentator and longtime Trump supporter who has broken with the president over the Iran deal, told the audience that while he did not like the agreement and believed that the “Iranian regime” had to be destroyed, he nevertheless praised Trump for what he said was the president’s support for liberty, religious freedom, Christianity, and Judaism.

Israelis worry over criticism from Republicans

Alongside their concerns about the wording of the Iran deal, Israelis worry about Trump’s insistence on Israel agreeing to a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon and his language responding to Netanyahu’s resistance to those agreements.

In recent weeks, Trump has called Netanyahu “f***ing crazy,” lectured Israel that “you don’t have to knock an apartment down every time you’re looking for somebody,” and publicly pondered asking Syria to replace Israeli troops in Lebanon.

US Vice President JD Vance also struck a more critical tone, saying “Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” adding later that not all criticism of Israel should be dismissed as antisemitism.

The fact that such sharp views are emanating from Trump’s Republican Party is especially worrying for many Israelis, with US Democrats far more vocally critical of Israel than in previous years.

Sid Rosenberg, a prominent conservative New York radio host, told Israelis that, despite their concerns about Trump, he was the best option for them. “You could have JD Vance. Good luck with that,” he said, after acknowledging that “a lot of people in Israel are very, very upset” with the president.

While large majorities of Republicans 50 and older view Israel positively, younger conservative Americans have grown more critical, a Reuters/Ipsos poll from late March showed. Some 57% of Republicans aged 18-49 have an unfavorable opinion of Israel, up from 50% a year previously.

Many Americans, including prominent Democratic politicians, were outraged by the scale of death and devastation in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza after the deadly Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, on Israeli communities and the taking of hostages.

Israel has also faced criticism over the joint decision to launch the war on Iran, a conflict that is deeply unpopular in the United States, including among Trump’s conservative base.

Victoria Coates, vice president at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank and Trump’s deputy national security adviser during his first term, suggested on Monday that the US-Israeli relationship was strained but expressed confidence that the leaders of both countries would bring it “back on track.”

A day earlier, speaking at the conference, she had said that recent days had been “challenging for all of us, to put it mildly,” but that there had been plenty of “great and good things” in Trump’s second term “for which we can and should be grateful.”

Officials: Netanyahu not concerned by Trump comments

Until recently, Trump had been seen in Israel as its strongest-ever White House ally after his decision in his first term to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights and his leading diplomatic role securing the release of hostages last year.

Two Israeli officials familiar with Netanyahu’s thinking said the prime minister was not concerned that comments by Trump and Vance indicated any meaningful US policy changes, such as slower arms deliveries.

Netanyahu believed the comments might be partly geared towards assuaging voters ahead of US midterm elections in November amid growing frustration over Israel and the war, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The anxiety in Israel has led some prominent figures to say it is time for the country to envisage a future without strong US support and to further build up its own military and technological capabilities.

Ohad Tal, chair of the US-Israel caucus in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, said Israelis needed to prepare for the day when there is a less supportive US president, “and this is why we have to be much more independent, and we have to forge new alliances.”

What happens when you promise the country that there will be no limits on the IDF’s actions repeatedly and then there repeatedly are limits?

This is the dilemma which Defense Minister Israel Katz has after many prior promises and another promise Monday night.

It happened in June 2025 when he publicly promised that Israel would strike Iran again on a massive scale after the Islamic Republic briefly and without much impact, violated the ceasefire then negotiated by US President Donald Trump.

Trump called back the aircraft that Katz sent to strike Iran, with a small insignificant symbolic strike being allowed.

Katz never explained the turnaround.

Will Israel retreat to satisfy Trump, who seems to wield immense power in its decisions?

Similar incidents happened when Katz promised Israel would keep striking Iran after the April 7 newer Trump ceasefire with Iran.

The defense minister also leaked to many sources that Trump and Tehran were too far apart, so they would never reach a framework agreement – until they did. More recently, Katz has said that the IDF can bomb and attack anything and everything in Lebanon, including in Beirut – except Trump has now said that it cannot, so it has stopped.

The defense minister has said that the IDF will not withdraw from any area that it has taken over in the near future.

And yet leaks pretty much confirm that this promise will also be proved wrong.

Late on Monday, Katz promised by direct video message to the public that the IDF will continue to act everywhere and anywhere it needs to.

But leaks are rampant that on both the northern and southern borders, officially or unofficially, commanders are on edge about when they can use force and when they cannot, and how long they will need to retreat from their current positions.

There is an interesting debate going on in Israel about when and where the country must listen to Trump imposing limits to maintain his support on other critical military, diplomatic, economic, and public relations issues.

When will Katz acknowledge the gap between the promises and the realities as well as the real debates and sacrifices the IDF is making now to preserve Washington’s support?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tends to be more careful and qualified in his statements than Katz, but he likely soon will also have to explain to Israelis the hard tradeoffs that are being made (and quite possibly need to be made even if they are bad politics) underneath the perfect sounding slogans.

There is no question about it: Roman Gofman has taken David Barnea’s Mossad by storm since taking over the spy agency on June 2.

In some ways this is more the rule than the exception.

Meir Dagan (2002-2011), Yossi Cohen (2016-2021), and Barnea (2021-June 2 of this year) all either fired top people in the clandestine agency or developed so many new programs that a bunch of top officials left in protest.

And yet all three Mossad chiefs are by and large seen as successes.

So this means that significant change when a new Mossad director enters office is a virtual certainty.

Gofman’s appointment is a stark symbol of change

Some of the change is style, with each new chief having their own idiosyncrasies about how they prefer to work and what they personally seek to focus on the most.

Other changes have to do with the speed at which the world changes and needing to account for technological and geopolitical developments which create a need to reorganize agency structures and resources.

So what is different about Gofman breaking some of the former chiefs structures and projects, and promoting some new people?

First of all, Gofman is the first outsider to take over the Mossad since Dagan. Meaning from 2011 until now, the last three chiefs, including Tamir Pardo (2011-1016), were all Mossad insiders and more specifically had served as deputy chiefs.

Not only is he an outsider, but there was an unusual High Court of Justice petition to block his appointment, which was supported by Barnea himself, by Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, and by vetting committee head and former chief justice Asher Grunis.

Gofman beat the petition and has the full powers now of the Mossad director, which are considerable.

But that entire process has presented him to the public as a sort of super outsider, and also one who not only owes nothing to his predecessor Barnea, but likely has plenty of motivation to bulldoze anyone in the Mossad who agreed with Barnea’s opposition to Gofman.

This is also how Gofman is presented in a Maariv report on Monday, where it revealed for the first time that he brought in five outsiders to take over and dominate existing internal Mossad officials.

It is possible that Gofman’s approach may be more aggressive in bringing in outsiders to help him alter aspects of the agency’s trajectory, but The Jerusalem Post understands that each of the above former Mossad chiefs also had their own team of outsiders who they consulted when they took charge.

Possibly, there is a difference in that some past chiefs may have advised with their outsiders outside of the physical office space of the Mossad, and Gofman has brought his advisers in. 

Maariv portrays this also as a potential security risk.

But these outside advisors are persons with strong security backgrounds and Gofman would likely say that his approach just shows that he is being transparent about the involvement of his outside advisers.

All of that though has to do with the personalities themselves.

When it comes down to fateful moves, such as how best to topple the regime running the Islamic Republic of Iran, does Gofman see the challenge differently than Barnea did?

Both Gofman and Barnea in their incoming and outgoing speeches over June 1-2 stated that this was their primary goal and that it was achievable.

What was Barnea’s plan?

On June 4, the Post reported that, stunningly, Israel was prepared to provide the Kurds not only with a no fly zone, but with a continuous aerial firepower envelope to help them advance against any Iranian force which would have tried to assemble to block their path forward.

Weapons which the Kurds received both from the US and the Mossad – many of which were “re-tasked” after the IDF captured the weapons from Hamas in Gaza or from Hezbollah in Lebanon, and training they received from Israelis, made them fully ready to go.

There is a debate as to whether US President Donald Trump was convinced to veto the operation more by some of his own top officials or by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Even within Israel there were officials who doubted that it would work, but Mossad officials close to Barnea said that most of the agencies’ operations require faith, and the knowledge that the spymasters have pulled off a long range of operations which have boggled the imagination.

Israeli sources have accused American officials within the White House, some of whom have called such allegations false, with leaking the plan to Erdogan to help the Turkish president get to Trump in time to stop the operation before it could be rolled out.

The Mossad also had prepared a social media campaign and had already undertaken many actions in conjunction with the IDF to weaken many aspects of the Islamic regime.

Maariv reported on Monday that Gofman views all of these Mossad efforts as having failed and is prepared to transform parts of the agency to take on some new strategies to accomplish the mission.

The Post understands that the Maariv report’s portrayal of Gofman as viewing all of Barnea’s prior work as a failure is oversimplified.

Rather, Gofman may bring new strategies to the table, but may also adopt many existing strategies to marry the mix of ideas together for a global approach to toppling the regime which he is still in the earliest stages of formulating.

To date, foreign reports have mentioned former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a possible candidate, but no Israeli sources have wanted to discuss the subject, and it is unclear after years out of power whether Ahmadinejad could have led armed regime forces onto the side of the protesters.

While some may want to simplify Gofman as an anti-Barnea because of their public duel before the High Court, the new Mossad chief has moved on from that dispute and would present himself as solely focused on the mission.

He will neither toss out Barnea’s projects where he views them as useful, yet neither will he hold on to any prior project out of any direct sense of loyalty or kinship with Barnea, given that there is none between the two men.  

The Maariv report also seeks to categorize some of the other alterations Gofman may be making in the Mossad’s mission set.

For example, the report stated that Gofman will place a greater emphasis on combating delegitimization.

However, multiple sources have noted that Cohen and Barnea both invested significant resources in combating delegitimization and that Gofman did not think he was reinventing the wheel here, though he may add his own imprint on the efforts.

Further, reports about Gofman canceling existing operations were viewed as exaggerations or building a mountain out of a molehill of a small number of minor issues.

Instead, Gofman’s view is that he is simply carrying out a standard organization-wide review upon entering office, which will eventually include larger changes, and has started with some smaller changes, but not that anything radical has taken place to date.

One sign of this ironically is Gofman’s deputy.

True, Gofman pushed out “A” who Barnea had appointed into the deputy chief role only a few months ago.

But he did not bring an outsider into that role, but rather a different “A” who has also been in the Mossad for around a decade and a half.

Some may object that he was promoted over some who have been around for 5-10 years longer than him, but in the past, Dagan did this with Cohen,

After all of the above, Gofman’s main current wish is to be left out of the media’s crosshairs for a period of months so that he can throw himself into a role which is complex enough on its own, especially as the Trump administration continues to alter the rules of the game.

Still, whether during friendly or less friendly US administrations, the Mossad has always found a way for over 25 years to, whether publicly or covertly, influence key events in Iran, whether it be on the nuclear threat or other issues. 

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar emphasized the importance of relations between Israel and Europe on Monday, ahead of a meeting with the European Union Commissioner for the Mediterranean, Dubravka Šuica, at the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Jerusalem.

“I believe in dialogue,” he stated. “We believe in the importance of comprehensive, honest, and open dialogue with the EU. But ‘dialogue’ cannot just be one side dictating its political positions to the other side. Certainly not when it comes to issues at the very heart of our existence.”

Last week, Sa’ar had announced that he was severing all ties with EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas, following remarks she made during a recent visit to Mexico, comparing Israel to the racist South African apartheid regime.

“I have no choice but to sever all contact with Ms. Kallas until she retracts the blood libel she directed at the world’s only Jewish state, which is also the only democracy in the Middle East,” his statement said.

Before the meeting with the EU Mediterranean Commissioner, Sa’ar also stated that Israel would like to see US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan advance, but said that Hamas was “delaying.”

“The condition for a different and better future for Gaza – and Israel’s security – remains the disarmament of Hamas and the other terror organizations there, and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip,” he said.

Palestinian Authority continues inciting violence, Sa’ar accuses

The Palestinian Authority was also not promoting the prospect of peace, Sa’ar stated.

“The Palestinian Authority speaks of reforms – but continues to pay salaries to terrorists. They continue to poison the minds of Palestinian society with endless incitement in its schools, textbooks, mosques, and media. There is, unfortunately, none of the change necessary to build a reliable and different relationship.”

The government, Sa’ar said, would not give up the Jewish people’s right to the land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria.

“No other people in the world has such a strong and documented right to its land as the Jewish people to the Land of Israel,” he explained. “Judea and Samaria is also the minimal strategic depth necessary for our security. No government in the past has accepted an approach that denies our basic right to live in our homeland and sees this as “illegal.” No future government will do so. And this government is no exception.”

Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.

Is there another round of musical chairs in the IDF General Staff on the way just over the horizon?

There have been three such major rounds since October 7, 2023.

One was less concentrated, but involved the slow but consistent removal of top IDF officials viewed as central to the failure to prevent Hamas’s infiltration and massacre on October 7.

Included in this round was Shlomi Binder, who was promoted from Brig.-Gen. to head the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, when his predecessor, Maj.-Gen. Aharon Haliva was pushed out of office, and Avi Bluth was promoted from Brig.-Gen. to become the IDF Central Command chief, along with a promotion to Maj.-Gen. 

A second round took place around March and summer 2025, some of whom completed the first round, but some of whom were about IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir putting his stamp on the military when he took over at that point.

Some roles are only taken in hopes of rising higher afterwards

This included Maj.-Gen. Yaniv Asor replacing Maj.-Gen. Yaron Finkelman, as head of the Southern Command and Maj.-Gen. Rafi Milo replacing Maj.-Gen. Ori Gordin as head of the Northern Command.

It also included bringing Maj.-Gen. Tamir Yadai out of recent retirement to return to become the deputy IDF chief after Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amir Baram stepped down from that post and moved to become the Defense Ministry Director-General.

There has also now been a third round of long-standing officials running the air force and the navy stepping down this Spring after the Iran war and after over four years or more with Maj.-Gen. Omer Tischler replacing Maj.-Gen. Tomer Bar as IAF chief and V.-Adm. Eyal Harel replacing V.-Adm. David Sa’ar Salama.

But it is the earlier two rounds of change that set the framework for the next round of races.

Most officials do not relish the position of deputy IDF chief as it involves little public exposure and even less involvement with developing battles on the front.

Essentially, the role is to work on force buildup coordination behind the scenes, in the shadow of the IDF chief.

Generals take on the role usually for around two years, and then hope that their fulfillment of that role will someday lead to them becoming the next IDF chief.

It is rumored that Yadai may seek to bow out of the role sooner than the two-year point.

If he does, or even if he makes it to the two-year point, there is a clock ticking down regarding who will replace him, a race that is viewed again as putting the winner into the running for IDF chief itself.

A shortlist for possible candidates is seemingly emerging

One of the clear frontrunners for deputy IDF chief is Gordin, who was already in the race against Zamir for the top spot, so fulfilling this role would make it even more likely he would later become chief.

Gordin was the head of the Northern Command during the fall 2024 war with Hezbollah, meaning he can take credit for the main thrust, which bludgeoned Hezbollah’s power, including eliminating its three-decade chief, Hassan Nasrallah.

Also, the Northern Command is generally viewed as the most challenging and important field command role, given that Hezbollah and Syria have been viewed as more threatening than Hamas in the South.

Baram was the northern command chief right before Gordin, and most of the recent IDF chiefs – Gabi Ashkenazi (2006-2011), Benny Gantz (2011-2015), Gadi Eisenkot (2015-2019), and Aviv Kohavi (2019-January 2023) – had also been northern command chiefs.

The other frontrunner for deputy chief would be Asor.

Traditionally, he would have had less of a chance, both because the Southern Command has been viewed as less important and especially because his prior role was as IDF Manpower Directorate head, often a dead-end role.

However, the last two IDF chiefs, Herzi Halevi and Zamir, both headed the Southern Command.

Also, Asor is better liked by Defense Minister Israel Katz as he was one of his first appointments and has used more force, asking fewer questions, while in command.

Gordin may be viewed by Katz as more associated with Halevi, whom Katz fought with regularly and helped push out of office.

Asor was also raised in Mivtahim, a village near the Gaza border which was attacked by Hamas, and he has made it clear that fighting Hamas is both a command and personal quest for him.

This means that if Yadai steps down before the October elections or while Katz is otherwise still the defense minister, Asor may have the upper hand.

However, if Yadai stays in office past October, let alone into 2027, Gordin may regain his standing as the lead candidate, depending on who might be the next defense minister. 

Baram is expected to be the lead candidate to replace Zamir in March 2026 or March 2027 because he has already been the deputy IDF chief and the top non-political official in the defense ministry.

But after Baram, Yadai will have a shot, and either Gordin or Asor, whoever replaces Yadai, will also have a strong shot.

The other key piece will be who replaces Binder and when the IDF intelligence chief will step down.

In late 2025, Zamir both defended Binder for his less central role in the October 7 failure, such that he could keep his job, but also criticized him to some extent, stating that he would leave the army after his current role, and not seek further promotion.

The assumption then was that this meant he would leave in August 2027, after three years.

If so, then Bluth may already start the race to replace Binder, though sources close to Bluth deny that he is focused on anything other than his current role.

Yet, it is also possible that Binder may be given a four-year term, as intelligence chiefs are given in normal time periods.

This could make the considerations and candidates for his replacement more complex, as by August 2028, candidates like Operations Directorate Chief Maj.-Gen. Itzik Cohen, who is close to Zamir, might also be eligible (he has only been a major-general since June 2025, so such a promotion might be too fast by August 2027, but could be viewed as viable a year later.)

Regardless of who wins these various races, the musical chairs game, which will make up many of the future key posts in the IDF, is on.

Clive Davis, a Jewish former corporate lawyer who became one of the most influential figures in American rock and pop music as he fostered the careers of Bob Dylan, Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen, and other stars, died on Monday at the age of 94, The New York Times reported, citing his family.

Davis, who was known as “the man with the golden ear” for his ability to identify potential hit songs, died at his home in Manhattan, the Daily reported, having recently been hospitalized with respiratory problems.

As an incomparable hitmaker, Davis was highly adaptable, spanning genres and generations, even as he hit his 80s. For every Janis Joplin he discovered in 1960s rock, there was a Sean “P. Diddy” Combs he mentored in hip-hop in the 1990s and a Kelly Clarkson he guided in pop in the 2000s.

Davis won four Grammys for producing works by Clarkson, Carlos Santana, and Jennifer Hudson, and a fifth for his contributions to music. He could even revive careers, as he did for Santana with an album that won 9 Grammys in 2000, and he fostered comebacks by Rod Stewart, Aretha Franklin, and Dionne Warwick.

Davis was born in the New York borough of Brooklyn on April 4, 1932. As a boy, he said he listened to the radio but had no overwhelming affinity for music and did not even collect records like his friends.

After graduating from New York University and Harvard Law School, Davis worked at private law firms before joining the legal department at Columbia Records, a CBS subsidiary, in the early 1960s. He made his first mark there by putting together a case that kept Dylan at the label when his handlers had tried to void his contract.

In 1966, Davis was named head of the record label, which until then had largely ignored the burgeoning rock-oriented market, with only a few acts such as Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Byrds aimed at the youth audience.

‘Talent attracts talent’

In his new position, Davis helped change the sound of American music. Record producer Lou Adler took Davis to the Monterey Pop Festival in California in 1967, which Davis would come to consider “the creative turning point in my life.” Mesmerized by Joplin’s performance at the festival, he signed her and her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company.

In the following years, he would build the Columbia roster by signing Chicago, Aerosmith, Pink Floyd, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Springsteen, Santana, Billy Joel, Sly and the Family Stone, and Boz Scaggs – all of whom became superstar acts.

Davis was a hands-on executive, taking a major role in marketing Columbia’s performers, working as a studio producer, and providing input on song selection. When he suggested that Springsteen’s “Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.” album needed a radio hit, Springsteen came up with “Spirit in the Night” and “Blinded by the Light,” which would become staples of his act.

“Talent comes to me because they believe I’ve established a creative haven in which they can flourish,” Davis said in an interview with Newsweek. “And talent attracts talent.”

Davis enjoyed the attention his success brought and conceded it inflated his ego. According to a running joke in the music world, Davis thought CDs were named after his initials.

By 1973, CBS’s record division was on the verge of scandal amid its success. According to the book Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business, there were reports of prostitutes at company meetings, payoffs to get records played on the radio, and a Davis underling who was linked to fraud with a heroin smuggler. Davis was under scrutiny for using corporate funds to pay for his son’s bar mitzvah.

CBS eventually fired Davis that year and filed a $94,000 expense-account-related suit that would be settled out of court. Davis later pleaded guilty to failure to pay taxes on job-related expenses and was fined $10,000.

Birth of Arista

Davis was not down for long. By 1974, he found backing for his own record label, which he named Arista. Among the first signees was Barry Manilow, who gave Davis a string of hits.

At Arista, Davis specialized in reviving acts such as Franklin, Warwick, Lou Reed, and the Kinks that had faded after initial success, returning them to stardom. The revived acts and new talent brought in great revenues, Grammys, and stacks of gold records for Arista.

Not all of his moves were profit-driven. He signed Patti Smith, known as the godmother of punk rock, even though her commercial appeal was limited.

“I really felt Clive, whatever his mainstream reputation… does love artists,” Smith, who inducted Davis into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, told the Associated Press.

Davis’ best move at Arista was discovering a teenage Whitney Houston in 1983 and guiding her career to record-breaking heights with a string of No. 1 hits. He took a hands-on producer role with Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” – from her movie with Kevin Costner, The Bodyguard. It set a record by holding the No. 1 spot on the charts for 14 weeks and becoming one of the biggest-selling commercial singles of all time.

‘It rips your heart out’

Davis and Houston grew close personally, and Houston thought of Davis as family. Her decline due to drug abuse and her overdose death in 2012 were crushing for him.

“It rips your heart out, is what it does,” Davis told CNN in a 2013 interview. “We knew there was no one like her, and it is very, very painful that this tragic, tragic talent so prematurely came to an early demise, really.”

Davis also signed saxophonist Kenny G, who became one of music’s best-selling instrumentalists at Arista, and branched out by starting a Nashville subsidiary that became home to country stars Alan Jackson, Brooks & Dunn, and Brad Paisley.

Also at Arista, Davis helped proteges LA Reid and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds set up a label that featured star R&B acts such as Usher, TLC, and Outkast, and brought in future music mogul Combs as a partner on a rap label.

Despite his roaring success, in 2000, Arista’s parent company, BMG Entertainment, ousted Davis, who was undeterred and started J Records. His biggest successes at J were with Alicia Keys, Luther Vandross, and the “American Songbook” series of 1930s and 1940s pop standards that revived Stewart’s career.

J Records ceased to exist after a series of corporate mergers, and in 2008, Davis was named chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment.

In his 2013 memoir, The Soundtrack of My Life, Davis, who was married and divorced twice and had four children, revealed that he was bisexual. He said he had a 13-year relationship with a male doctor and, at the time, was in a long-term relationship with another man.

The Tel Aviv-Jaffa District Court, sitting as an Administrative Affairs Court, on Monday deleted a petition seeking to force Ramat Hasharon to enforce its Shabbat business-closure bylaw at BIG Fashion Glilot, after the city and Mayor Yitzhak Rochberger said they would do so.

Judge Gilad Hess said the municipality had changed its position during the case. It initially argued that the 1967 bylaw no longer suited the city or the commercial complex, whereas it now accepts that the law remains in force and says it has adopted an enforcement policy.

That change is why the court deleted the current petition: because the city no longer claimed it could simply avoid enforcing the bylaw, Hess said the petition’s central aim had been met.

But the ruling does not mean BIG Glilot has been ordered to close on Shabbat, nor did Hess decide whether Ramat Hasharon’s new policy will actually lead to meaningful enforcement. Indeed, the petitioners may return to court if they believe it does not.

The petition was filed in May 2025 by Boris Cohen and the Hapoel Mizrachi organization against Rochberger, the municipality, BIG Shopping Centers, and businesses at the complex.

City initially said bylaw was outdated, then agreed to enforce it

It grew out of a dispute that had become a wider Shabbat flashpoint. The complex’s Saturday openings drew calls for a boycott from haredi groups, while supporters of Saturday commerce argued that residents of a largely secular area should be free to shop and spend time there on their weekend.

The conflict intensified after Ramat Hasharon’s legal adviser said that the existing bylaw did not permit businesses to operate on Shabbat and that the city was required to enforce it. Rochberger, meanwhile, argued that the decades-old law did not reflect the city’s present-day character or the reality around BIG Glilot.

The city began pursuing an amended bylaw that would allow broader Shabbat commerce in certain areas, but it has not received the required approval. Until that changes, the existing bylaw remains the law the municipality must enforce.

Cohen and Hapoel Mizrachi argued that the city had effectively chosen not to enforce that law, and asked the court to require action that would stop businesses from opening on Shabbat.

After the petition was filed, Ramat Hasharon said it would prepare an enforcement policy and begin acting under the existing bylaw. Its policy, published in March, provides for enforcement based on complaints and the availability of inspectors, while giving priority to urgent safety and public-order matters.

The petitioners argued that this was not real enforcement and would allow Saturday trading to continue much as before. Hess agreed with them on one basic point: a municipality cannot ignore a bylaw requiring businesses to close on days of rest.

Still, he said there was not yet enough evidence to determine whether Ramat Hasharon’s approach was effective or merely symbolic. The policy had been in place for only about three months, and the current petition had not directly challenged its final version.

Hess said the court therefore could not assess how the policy was being used in practice, and stressed that deleting the petition did not release the city from its duty to enforce the bylaw.

“On the contrary,” Hess wrote, the judgment gives force to the mayor’s commitment that the municipality will continue enforcing the law under its policy.

The judge ordered Ramat Hasharon to pay the petitioners NIS 5,000 in costs and ordered BIG Shopping Centers to pay a further NIS 5,000.

The petitioners said the ruling reflected the city’s reversal and Rochberger’s commitment in court to enforce the bylaw. Attorneys representing business owners at the complex said the deletion of the petition preserved the existing balance while protecting Ramat Hasharon’s pluralistic and liberal character.

Rochberger welcomed the decision, saying Ramat Hasharon would remain “pluralistic, with freedom of religion and freedom from religion,” and that the city would continue to follow its enforcement policy. The Interior Ministry also welcomed the ruling, saying the existing bylaw remains binding until any new arrangement is approved.

Two women, a mother and daughter, were acquitted by a jury in only 28 minutes after being filmed chanting a slogan referring to the killing of Jews at a protest in London, soon after October 7, 2023.

Fatiah Boumazouna, 55, and Hadjer Boumazouna, 28, had been arrested after the protest took place on October 28, where they had chanted “Khaybar Khaybar Ya Yahud Jaish Muhammad, sa yahud” (“Khaybar Khaybar, oh Jews, the armies of Muhammed are coming”), referring to a historical battle in which Jews were slaughtered by Muhammed’s forces in the early years of Islam.

The two handed themselves in to the police the day after the protest, stating that they were unaware that the chant was one of racial or religious hatred, and apologizing for the offense caused.

“It is very disappointing that this case did not result in a conviction, but we hope this outcome will not dissuade the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) from continuing to prosecute cases of people allegedly inciting antisemitic hatred wherever possible,” a spokesperson for Community Security Trust (CST) stated.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said that it was the second time that the attempted prosecution of people who had chanted the Khaybar chant had failed. “The chant is unmistakably threatening to Jewish people,” they stated, “But a jury apparently somehow disagreed. Nothing, it seems, can possibly be construed as being threatening to Jewish people if it means someone might be held to account. Another miscarriage of justice that will do nothing to reassure British Jews that the system is up to the job of protecting them and deterring haters.”

“Chants of ‘Khaybar, Khaybar, ya yahud’ are among the clearest examples of incitement against Jewish people heard at regular anti-Israel demonstrations,” a spokesperson for the Jewish Leadership Council stated. “This slogan cannot credibly be misconstrued as a legitimate political slogan against the State of Israel. Rather, it is a direct expression of racial and religious hatred towards Jews.

“Such chanting should be met with the full force of the law. The police and CPS must not allow a disappointing failed prosecution to deter them from taking robust action to protect British Jews.”

ADL explains problems behind Khaybar chant

 The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes the invoking of the Khaybar chant at an anti-Israel protest as something which “problematically shifts the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a religious battle between Islam and Judaism.

“Moreover,” it adds in its description of the chant, “in celebrating a past military defeat of Jews, this chant can be perceived as a threat of armed violence or forcible expulsion against Jews today.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel, Tuesday through Thursday, to the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain, on a trip that will give the Trump administration a chance to sell its preliminary Iran accord directly to Gulf Arab allies.

While in Bahrain, Rubio will also meet with the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, a grouping of six Sunni monarchies that also includes Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman, State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said on Monday.

While GCC leaders have broadly supported efforts to end the US-Israeli war with Iran, many are disconcerted by the specific terms of the memorandum of understanding that US President Donald Trump signed last week.

One point of particular concern among regional officials is the possibility of a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Tehran, which Gulf leaders assume the Islamic Republic will use to rebuild its military capacity, while funding regional proxy groups. The MoU’s failure to address Iran’s ballistic missile program is also worrying Washington’s Gulf allies, who have been buffeted by Iranian missile and drone attacks in recent months.

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar all host US military bases that, in turn, make up the backbone of America’s security architecture in the Middle East. Should any of those countries rethink their security relationship with the US, even in a subtle way, it could have a significant impact on US military strategy in the region.

60-day clock on US-Iran talks begins

The Rubio trip comes amid a broader flurry of Iran-related diplomacy. On Wednesday, Trump signed the Iran MoU, which starts a 60-day clock for Washington and Tehran to reach a more comprehensive agreement, while visiting French President Emmanuel Macron in Versailles.

Over the weekend, a team of US negotiators led by Vice President JD Vance attended talks mediated by Qatari and Pakistani officials in Switzerland. The first round of those talks concluded on Monday, and technical discussions are expected to continue through the week.

Details of Rubio’s trip, such as the precise timing of his visits to the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain, and the list of leaders and officials he is due to meet, were not immediately available.

In the statement, Pigott, the State Department spokesperson, said Rubio, who also serves as the White House national security advisor, would “discuss a range of regional priorities including the memorandum of understanding with Iran, efforts to secure full and free safe transit through the Strait of Hormuz, and the importance of peace and stability in the region.”

The majority of Israelis view the recently finalized US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) as a win for Tehran and a loss for Israel’s long-term security, according to a survey conducted by the Agam Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The survey, published on Saturday, asked 3,644 Israeli citizens aged 17 and over from a variety of religious, ethnic, and political backgrounds for their opinions on the deal.

The results of the survey show that the overwhelming majority, approximately 86%, of the Israeli public views the agreement negatively.

Over 90% of individuals surveyed believed that under the terms of the MoU, Iran has emerged victorious. 

Approximately 83% see the agreement as a long-term loss for Israel’s security, with nearly 3/4 of participants believing that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s claims of the IDF having removed an “existential threat” as inaccurate.

Strong opposition to the deal extended to right-wing and haredi voters as well, though a majority still support Netanyahu’s performance as prime minister.

However, overall support for Netanyahu fell by over 11 points between March and June, now at just over 29%, while Yashar’s Gadi Eisenkot gained support, the largest alternative selection in the survey was “other.”

Notable support for IDF action in Lebanon

Notably, nearly half of the respondents approve of future military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon regardless of its effect on relations with US President Donald Trump, with just over 1/5 in opposition to the use of force.

On Monday, a CNN report cited an Israeli source familiar with the matter as saying that the country is contemplating withdrawing IDF soldiers from certain minor areas north of the Yellow Line in southern Lebanon as a “symbolic” gesture for upcoming talks.

On Sunday, N12 News cited familiar sources who said security officials are contemplating allowing the Lebanese Arrmed Forces to take control of a Hezbollah tunnel compound in Tebnit, Lebanon.

The idea is set to be discussed further on Tuesday, according to the sources.

N12 added that the transfer could serve as a test of Lebanon’s willingness and ability to act against Hezbollah.

Goldie Katz, Shir Peretz, and Ariella Roitman contributed to this report.

Two men were handed life sentences in Pakistan on Saturday after being found guilty of the murder of an American teenager, over fears her “Western” lifestyle would dishonor the family, according to international reports. 

The 14 year-old victim, Hira Anwar, was killed by her father and uncle in January last year after being lured to Pakistan. Anwar, a New Yorker, was shot to death outside her family home in Quetta.

Anwar-ul-Haq, the girl’s father, told police that gunmen fired on her. However, police found that ul-Haq, a naturalized US citizen, has organized the killing with his brother-in-law and both were convicted.

“Our investigation so far has found that the family had an objection to her dressing, lifestyle, and social gathering,” police investigator Zohaib Mohsin told Reuters at the time.

A district court in Quetta confirmed that ul-Haw felt his daughter’s clothing, friendships and social media presence were a source of shame, particularly her communication with boys.

Judge sentenced the murderers to life in prison, instead of death penalty

A court heard that this shame motivated ul-Haq to convince his relatives to kill his daughter, who traveled to Pakistan believing only that they were enjoying a family vacation.

Ul-Haq left his daughter alone in the street, pretending he forgot his phone inside their home, which is when her uncle drove by on a motorcycle and shot her, the court heard.

Despite Judge Shahid Javed acknowledging the murder was premeditated, he reduced the sentence from the death penalty, arguing that there was no evidence of a proven motive, the New York Times reported. The men were also fined $715 each.

Naveed Qambrani, a lawyer for ul-Haq and Anwar’s uncle Muhammad Tayab, told the American newspaper that they would appeal the verdict, arguing the court’s decision was impacted by external pressures.

Over 1,000 women are killed each year in Pakistan at the hands of community or family members over perceived damage to “honor,” according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

Reuters contributed to this report.

The head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), David Zini, warned in closed discussions that “the next October 7 will be in Eilat,” according to a report in the newspaper Haaretz.

Zini instructed senior officials in the organization to prioritize a possible attack on the city and views Eilat as a security vulnerability mainly due to its isolated geographic location, the report said.

In discussions within and outside the Shin Bet, he warned of a ground invasion into the city from its land borders, particularly from the Jordanian border, and possibly also from its maritime borders. According to sources, Zini is directing the agency’s intelligence units toward a scenario involving an attack on the city, but security officials are expressing doubt about the importance Zini assigns to it and about the existence of intelligence indicating a planned attack.

As reported by Maariv in January, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a security discussion focused on the defense establishment’s preparedness for fighting on multiple fronts: Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, and Gaza. According to military sources, the IDF worked to build operational capabilities for each of the four arenas. Military Intelligence, the Mossad, and other branches built target banks in each arena, and at the time, no prioritization was established among them. At the beginning of the discussion, the prime minister and defense minister were briefed on the different arenas.

At the time, the security establishment identified in Yemen a learning process by the Houthis, and that despite internal issues and military tensions with Saudi Arabia, the Houthis were still seeking to challenge Israel through various means, from ballistic missile fire to sending ground forces toward Israel’s borders. The IDF at that time carried out a large-scale exercise in the 80th Regional Brigade sector, responsible for parts of southern Israel, with scenarios of enemy raids, including Houthi forces attempting to seize outposts and positions, and even infiltrate a tourist city, take hostages, and carry out killings.

Shin Bet concerns on Eilat line up with regional council warnings

“The statements by the head of the Shin Bet, as well as those of the Defense Ministry director general last week, are not surprising to us and are similar to what we have been warning about since October 7,” the head of the Hevel Eilot Regional Council, Hanan Ginat, responded.

“It is clear to us that the eastern border region is currently the most sensitive in the country. Even today, the border with Jordan in the southern Arava serves as a route for ongoing criminal smuggling of weapons, drugs, and illegal entrants. Our concern is that the criminal route will become a route through which terrorist cells will attempt to infiltrate Israel and harm our communities. We are in full and close cooperation with the regional units operating in our sector, and we thank the fighters protecting us. At the same time, we call on the State of Israel to divert resources to the eastern border in the southern Arava, strengthen community defense units, and understand the major security challenge ahead of us.”

The Shin Bet stated that “Several months ago, as part of the process of assuming his role and learning the various threats, the head of the Shin Bet conducted a tour of Eilat, part of which was carried out in coordination with the army and examined various preparedness measures. We emphasize that there is no concrete information or warning, but rather systematic operational planning and study of threats across all the service’s areas of responsibility.”

No immediate threat to Eilat, mayor confirms

Eilat Mayor Eli Lankri confirmed that there was no concrete information about a new or immediate threat to the city of Eilat, adding, “However, the city and all security forces protecting it are prepared and ready for any scenario. I believe and am certain that since October 7, painful and important lessons have been learned so that the worst disaster in Israel’s history will not be repeated anywhere in the country. Since the beginning of the war, I have been holding regular discussions with all security bodies, and I can say that Eilat is well protected, prepared, and alert thanks to a broad security envelope, and during the war, security measures were even reinforced in the sector, including along the eastern border.

“However, we must not rely on security alone,” Lankri continued. One of the key lessons of October 7 is that national resilience is built in advance, not after the fact. Eilat is Israel’s southern gateway, a city of clear strategic importance located at a tripoint and far from the country’s center. Therefore, the State of Israel must continue investing in strengthening the city in all areas: security, medical services, emergency infrastructure, and public services, because a strong, secure, and thriving Eilat is a top national interest. We are now in the midst of the summer season and the start of the school vacation period. We are ready to receive tens of thousands of visitors and tourists in the coming days, operating in full routine, with security and responsibility. We will, of course, continue to maintain ongoing contact with security officials and act in every way to ensure the safety of Eilat’s residents and visitors.”

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has opened an investigation into the antisemitism within the National Education Association (NEA) following a charge filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center.

The near 300-page charge alleges that the nation’s largest union of more than three million members subjected Jewish members to discriminatory practices in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It also asserts that the NEA has perpetuated “hostile environments” for Jewish members in the union, in the NEA’s state and local affiliates, and in the workplace, “resulting in the spread of antisemitism throughout K-12 public schools.”

“Members have been harmed by the NEA’s promotion of a hateful and biased environment; the proliferation of inaccurate, offensive, and antisemitic materials and attempts at ideological indoctrination; and the NEA’s causing and attempts to cause state and local affiliates and employers to discriminate against Jewish NEA members.”

The charge documents depict several incidents of antisemitic discrimination, harassment, and intimidation, including: the NEA’s handbook removal of Jews as the primary victims of the Holocaust; the union’s distribution of a map to all members that erased the State of Israel; the physical intimidation of members of the the Jewish Affairs Caucus by anti-Israel members, and an incident where Jewish delegates were physically surrounded and shouted at by anti-Israel advocates at the NEA’s 2025 Representative Assembly (RA).

Unions exist to ‘protect employee rights:’ former US assistant secretary of education

Despite repeated notice, the NEA reportedly failed to take action to address the harassment and discrimination against its Jewish members.

According to the EEOC, the charge against the NEA is currently under investigation by the agency’s Washington Field Office. Investigators have been actively gathering evidence and communicating with the Brandeis Center which has been providing documents, witness information, and other materials in support of the charge.

“Unions exist to advocate for fair wages, protect employee rights, and ensure equal treatment for all members,” said Hon. Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman and CEO of the Brandeis Center and the former US Assistant Secretary of Education who ran the Office for Civil Rights during two administrations. 

“No employee or union member should be excluded, intimidated, harassed, discriminated against, or denied opportunities because of their Jewish identity. That’s why our goal is not merely to end antisemitic discrimination and harassment at the NEA but also to ensure an equal playing field for members of all races, religions, and national origins.”

The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) has been ordered to pay costs after failing to bring a private prosecution against a dual British-Israeli citizen who served in a reserve IDF unit after 7 October 2023. Its antics were also called “egregious” and “inexcusable” by the presiding judge.

The ICJP describes itself as ‘an independent organization of lawyers, politicians and academics’ concerned with the situation in Palestine. The attempted summons against Soldier A was the ICJP’s first private prosecution attempt.

ICJP made the application for the summons of Soldier A on 6 November 2025, with the aim that he be charged under section 4 of the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870. However, UK Lawyers for Israel intervened and pointed out that the offense could only be committed by “a British subject” and that, by virtue of section 35 of the British Nationality Act 1981, a British and/or Israeli citizen is not a British subject. UKLFI also pointed out that successive UK Governments have also explicitly stated that the FEA does not apply to British dual nationals serving in the IDF.

Judge Paul Goldspring of Westminster Magistrates’ Court ultimately ruled on 8 April 2026 that ICJP’s application was “fundamentally misconceived in law” as the FEA does not apply to dual nationals.

“For a dual national, service in the armed forces of his other state of nationality is not ‘foreign enlistment’ in any meaningful sense,” wrote Judge Goldspring in his decision.

The case, which had no legal basis, still failed due to lack of admissible evidence

Judge Goldspring also said that Soldier A did not actually “enlist” on 8 October 2023, but merely reported for reserve duty pursuant to his existing liability under Israeli law.

He also dismissed the ICJP’s argument that Israel was at war with a state friendly to the UK (the FEA requires that a foreign state be at war with a friendly state).

Judge Goldspring then went on to say that even if the ICJP’s legal case were sound, “which it is not”, the application would still fail due to lack of admissible evidence.

“The [ICJP] relies solely on open-source material to establish British citizenship. While the possession of a British passport is direct evidence of British nationality, there is no proper evidential foundation for the assertion that the Proposed Defendant holds such a passport. The material before me consists of photographs and assertions, but no  admissible evidence capable of proof in a criminal court.”

He also said that the UK’s recognition of the state of Palestine cannot be applied with retrospective effect.

“If the [Soldier A] enlisted years before the recognition of Palestinian statehood, that recognition is irrelevant,” said Judge Goldspring.

“The conflict in Gaza and Lebanon is, in reality, with the UK-proscribed terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah. The UK cannot be regarded as being “at peace” with proscribed terrorist organizations (see Schedule 2 to the Terrorism Act 2000).

“It is also of note that the Royal Air Force participated in coalition efforts to defend Israel from aerial attack. In light of this fact, the Applicant’s suppositions fall embarrassingly short of any evidential threshold.”

The judge expressed harsh words to the ICJP for omitting key details

Judge Goldspring also expressed harsh words regarding the ICJP’s omission of the dual-nationality of Soldier A, and how this makes it permissible for him to serve in a foreign army.

“Despite this knowledge, the [ICJP] did not see fit to inform this Court of any of these statements in its application, its case summary, or its skeleton argument. This is a serious and inexcusable omission.”

He further condemned the presentation of the ICJP’s expert witness  Dr Mandy Turner, as “independent” when in fact she is active in social media activity and activism.

“The partisan and misleading nature of this expert evidence is more akin to propaganda than independent analysis. None of this was disclosed to the Court. The expert is, in my judgment, properly considered a campaigner and activist, not an independent expert,” he wrote.

Judge Goldspring did not take these omissions lightly. He said they constitute “withholding of material information, which is a critical factor in determining an abuse of process.”

He more broadly concluded that he believed that ICJP’s “dominant motive” was not the pursuit of justice for a specific criminal act, “but rather the advancement of a political and ideological agenda.”

“The courts must not be used as a vehicle for political debate or to “expose” individuals for alleged wrongdoing which falls outside the scope of criminal law in order or to cause embarrassment to individuals or highlight a particular cause in a public forum, such as a courtroom. I fear that is close to being the case here.”

“This application is legally flawed, evidentially defecient, and procedurally defective. It constitutes an abuse of the process of this court, driven by an improper motive and facilitated by serious breaches of the duty of candour. The application for a summons is refused.”

Ordered to pay costs 

Then, on June 19, Judge Goldspring ruled that the ICJP must pay legal costs to Soldier A, the exact amount which will be decided later.

In this ruling, the judge said the failures of the ICJP were “egregious.” He also said that honesty and full disclosure are “the foundation stone upon which such decisions are taken” and that, in this case, “foundation stone has crumbled.”

This is notably unusually strong language from a judge.

The court, however, rejected attempts to penalize the ICJP’s solicitors and barristers, saying they acted on instructions and were allowed to rely on what they were told, and that the evidence did not meet the very high legal threshold required to personally punish lawyers for misconduct.

A UKLFI spokesperson said, “The main judgment was a complete vindication of the position that British-Israeli dual nationals who serve in the IDF are not committing criminal offenses under the Foreign Enlistment Act.”

“The court rejected ICJP’s case on every point and delivered a devastating criticism of the way in which the application was presented.”

UKLFI said the court’s findings that ICJP failed to disclose material information and breached its duty of candour were “particularly concerning” and said the court’s decision to order costs against ICJP “reflects the seriousness of those failures.”

The Jerusalem Post reached out to the ICJP and Soldier A for comment.

The widely cited Gaza Mortality Survey, published in The Lancet Global Health, may be more unreliable than previously assumed, according to new correspondence recently published in the British medical journal.

Released by Professor Emeritus Sergio DellaPergola of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and independent researcher Mark Zlochin, the correspondence analyzed the survey’s publicly released data and found several discrepancies in its methodology and study sample.

According to the Gaza Mortality Survey, some 75,200 violent deaths have occured in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas War, which started on October 7, 2023.

However, DellaPergola and Zlochin argue that the population sample used by researchers in the survey was inaccurate.

They note that the results from two of the interviewer teams, Gaza9 and Gaza3, are extreme outliers that “diverge materially from those of the remaining teams.”

One-quarter of violent deaths claimed by only eight percent of sample

Gaza9, for example, reported on 100 out of 393 (roughly one-quarter) violent deaths, while surveying only eight percent of the total sample. Both Gaza9 and Gaza3 also exhibited different demographic structures from the remaining teams, including having lower populations of children and smaller mean household sizes.

“Population-level mortality estimates are only as reliable as the representativeness of the underlying sample,” DellaPergola said. “Our analysis raises important questions regarding whether the survey achieved the level of representativeness necessary to support its national mortality estimates.”

Other anomalies in the recorded data included survey teams covering only small portions of the areas allocated to them, discrepancies in the estimates of Gazan prisoners, and quality-control procedures not catching any of the aforementioned issues.

Medical journal’s history of anti-Israel publications

This is not the first time that The Lancet has come under fire for its publication of articles relating to Israel.

Earlier this month, The Lancet published a petition calling for the suspension of the Israel Medical Association (IMA) from the World Medical Association (WMA).

The petition was created by health organizations such as the People’s Health Movement (PHM), Artsen voor Gaza (Doctors for Gaza), and the Health Advisory Council of the Jewish Voice for Peace calling for the IMA to be suspended from the WMA over “its failure to speak out against the genocide of Palestinians, the destruction of health-care infrastructure, and the torture and killing of health-care workers in Gaza.”

In July 2024, the medical journal also published a piece authored by doctors Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee, and Salim Yusuf, which claimed that “it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.”

Despite the fact that it was designated as a “correspondence” or a letter to the editor rather than a peer-reviewed academic article, the article was disseminated en masse and shared by figures such as UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.

Mathilda Heller contributed to this report.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that the IDF retains freedom of action to act against threats in Lebanon.

“My directive and that of the Minister of Defense to the IDF is clear and has not changed,” said Netanyahu. “Our fighters in southern Lebanon have full freedom of action to thwart any direct or emerging threat to them or to the residents of the North.

“The IDF has no restrictions in this regard,” he said. “I stand behind them; the entire nation stands behind them.”

I stand firm that we will remain in the security zone in southern Lebanon as long as necessary to protect the residents of the North and all citizens of the country,” he added.

Israel reportedly contemplates ‘symbolic’ Lebanon withdrawal

Israel is contemplating announcing a “symbolic” withdrawal from certain territories in southern Lebanon as part of the upcoming round of talks, CNN reported earlier on Monday, citing an Israeli source familiar with the matter.

The withdrawals would include forces pulling back from minor areas along the Yellow Line.

The Islamic Republic’s decision to announce the closure of the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, along with the terms and conditions published by the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA), makes clear that Tehran intends to continue to use the vital waterway, an expert told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Though US Central Command asserted the waterway remained opened, shortly after Iran’s announcement that it closed the strait in response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon, data from analytics firm Kpler revealed that traffic plunged following the Iranian announcement.

CENTCOM claimed on Saturday that 55 merchant ships transited through Hormuz, moving more than 17 million barrels of oil to global markets, though the Israeli maritime company Windward AI published on Sunday that the day prior had seen only 32 ships transit and 65% of crude oil exports since June 8 have been destined for China.

Three of the vessels were sanctioned Very Large Crude Oil Carriers, including one Iranian-flagged vessel, operating in the open, windward noted.

“Throughout the conflict, sanctioned tonnage in this theater operated almost entirely dark. This posture shift — loading in the open — is consistent with a fleet that no longer judges concealment necessary following the US-Iran MoU signed 17 June,” the Israeli company suggested.

Iran’s tactics are illegal under international law, expert says

In addition to becoming bolder with sanctioned vessels in the maritime territory, the Islamic Republic’s PGSA has also continued to assert dominion over Hormuz, asserting that ships must still seek permission from Iran to cross and disclose information about the ship’s ownership, origins and cargo.

The Post was also able to confirm that the PGSA’s “Passage rules and regulations” asserts that the Iranian group “reserves the right to enforce penalties, revoke permissions or take further legal action” if ships fail to comply with PGSA orders and that the “PGSA reserves the right to introduce insurance fees in the future.”

Professor Michael Clarke, a prominent British defense analyst, academic, and former Director-General of the Royal United Services Institute, explained to The Post that such plans by Iran are illegal under international law.

The right to keep the Strait of Hormuz open is guaranteed by the doctrine of transit passage under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and customary international law, and asserts that transport across the waterway be unimpeded even during times of conflict.

The Islamic Republic has attempted to gain international authority of Hormuz, first demanding tolls for crossing and then fees for services rendered by allowing ships to cross the waterway safely, though it is the Islamic Republic’s firing at ships and placement of mines that threatened secure transit.

The United States has not confirmed the number of mines laid by Iran, though a Whitehouse official confirmed to CNBC earlier this month that more than 40 minelaying vessels had been destroyed.

Clarke suggested that Iran was trying to “normalize” the need for shipping companies to coordinate with PGSA as a matter of necessity before again pushing for the financial boost that control of Hormuz would provide.

According to the 16th annual Eye on the Market Energy Paper: Fighting Words, published by J.P. Morgan, Iran stands to gain between USD 70-90 billion in annual revenue from tolls alone. With a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies now disrupted for over three months, and US President Donald Trump claiming last week that global oil supplies will run out in four weeks if the strait is not opened, Clarke noted that Iran had the potential to gain more from the  already overwhelmingly favorable MoU.

The impact of global desperation has meant that Iran is able to hold Israel operations “hostage,” creating a pressure campaign, motivated by fear of oil scarcity, for Israel to absorb attacks from Hezbollah without responding to the terror group,” Clarke highlighted.

Israel, who was not a party to the US agreement and was indeed largely excluded from the processes, will now be blamed for every closure of Hormuz, he explained.

Trump suggested Sharaa’s forces fight Hezbollah, signaling loss of support for Jerusalem

Tensions between Washington and Jerusalem have already been made apparent, with Trump suggesting Syria may be better adept at handling the threat of Hezbollah and a heated exchange between the US leader and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Axios reported that Trump demanded Netanyahu back off on the strikes on Hezbollah, telling him he was “f***ing crazy,” Netanyahu would be in prison had Trump not intervened and that Israel is widely hated because of him.

Israeli reporter Barak Ravid told CNN that staff close to Trump told him there was an increasing feeling that Netanyahu has lost control, or that Trump has lost control of Netanyahu, as Jerusalem and Washington have differing interests in the coming actions.

As noted by Clarke, the war against Iran has been largely unpopular in the United States and with US federal elections approaching, Trump is interested in ending the war. With national security at risk, and three years of devastating wars against multiple Iranian proxy groups, Netanyahu wants to see the fall of the Islamic regime through renewed conflict.

“The Americans essentially lost the war on the 8th of April with the ceasefire and we are seeing a progressive surrender,” Clarke asserted, adding that Iran’s demands would only grow taller as Washington’s desperation becomes more apparent.

Having failed to remove the nuclear threat, Washington must now return to the old policy of managing that threat but under significantly worse conditions, he added, claiming that the war has only led to a strengthened IRGC-led regime and a weakened civil society because of its premature ending.

Citing the Foundation for Defense of Democracies estimate that the war cost Iran $144 billion, half of the country’s annual GDP, and the significant anger held by the Iranian public over the January massacres, Clarke conceded when asked that the opportunity for regime change had been missed and that the Iranian people’s trust had been lost by the “stupid” promises made by the US president to those taking to the streets at great personal cost.

“The whole thing is a strategic failure of the first order,” he concluded, adding that he predicted regime change would still eventually come but it would be a far more violent ordeal than had the relevant powers pursued the end of the Islamic regime now. 

According to others, the war was doomed from the beginning

Though Clarke felt that the ceasefire agreement was the true moment America lost the war against Iran, Dr. Daniel Sobelman, a fellow with the Middle East Initiative and an associate professor of international relations at Hebrew University, believed it was the opening move to initiate war with Iran that started the sequence of events that now leaves the fate of Hormuz in question.

The international community has long been aware of Iran’s threat to assert authority or close Hormuz, a move that Iran refrained from out of fear of war with the US, he argued. When the war started at the end of February, Tehran was left with no reason not to play its Trump card.

Certain that Trump’s goal was regime change in Iran, Sobelman said that Tehran was pushed to prove that its “new strategic reality is not going to go anywhere.”

The US is now faced with accepting the MoU or undertaking a risky operation to militarily open the strait, a risky operation that would potentially produce an outright military victory for the regime if it fails, he highlighted. Such a “gamble” would potentially affirm an Iranian world order.

“Either way, Iran’s strategic market value has gone up, because the United States, a superpower and a regional power, stormed Iran, tried to topple the regime, and Iran is still standing,” he outlined.

Though the MoU has been difficult to swallow for Jerusalem, and considered a catastrophe by a large number of experts cited in the Post, Sobelman suggested that restoring the equilibrium of power might be what’s necessary to move forward from the near-constant state of war.

Reflecting on the dramatic change in Israel’s mentality from before October 7, when the country was reluctant to combat any threat for fear of starting a war, to now where IDF forces are occupying territory in Lebanon to create a buffer zone against the Hezbollah threat, Sobelman argued the deal might be beneficial depending on what both sides make of it.

He exampled that after the Yom Kippur war success, Israel didn’t want to return Sinai, but it was Egyptian’s seizure of the Israeli side of the Suez Canal that led the countries to finally negotiate and reach a lasting, admittedly cold, peace.

“The Americans understood that if Israel reached a decisive victory against Egypt, then we’re back at square one, and Israel would never agree to engage in peace talks with the Egyptians,” he noted, suggesting it was a similar situation now. 

The US Treasury Department authorized the production, delivery, and sale of Iranian oil on Monday, a move promised under an agreement reached by Washington and Tehran last week.

The general license, announced as the two sides continue talks aimed at reaching a final peace deal, allows the production, delivery, and sale of crude oil and petrochemical and petroleum products of Iranian origin through August 21.

“In line with the ongoing productive talks in Switzerland, Iran has committed to free and open transit in the Strait of Hormuz and to permit International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors into their country,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a post on X/Twitter.

Under President @realDonaldTrump and @VP, we continue to make the world safer and more prosperous.

In line with the ongoing productive talks in Switzerland, Iran has committed to free and open transit in the Strait of Hormuz and to permit International Atomic Energy Agency…

— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) June 22, 2026

“As part of the framework, Treasury has issued a temporary 60-day general license authorizing the production, delivery, and sale of Iranian oil.”

Under the memorandum of understanding signed last week between Washington and Tehran, the United States agreed to issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products, and derivatives, as well as all associated services, including banking transactions, insurance, and transportation.

License includes crude oil, petrochemicals, petroleum products

Transactions authorized under Monday’s general license include the importation of Iranian-origin crude oil, petrochemicals, and petroleum products into the United States.

The license says Iranian oil can be imported into the United States under the waiver when necessary to complete its sale or delivery.

It does not authorize transactions involving North Korea or Cuba, both of which are heavily sanctioned by the United States.

Mr. President, I write this simply trying to understand what you want from us, your once biggest fans in the promised land.

An open letter to the president of the United States:

Dear President Trump,

There’s an endless noise going around Israel right now. We hear it on the radio, we hear it at the Shabbat table, and we hear it from our friends and family, and Americans are asking about it too.

What happened to you? Where is our history’s most pro-Israel president? For years you were the one who showed up for us as fair-weather fans ran away. Now, we turn on the news, and you sound like a different man, a different president, and honestly, we can’t work out what we did to deserve it.

You signed a deal with Iran, Israel’s eternal enemy, giving Tehran things we never thought an American president would ever put on the table. This deal tells us to pull back from the one border where our soldiers are still dying.

The safety of our children is non-negotiable

And you let Pakistan run the talks. This week, the Americans, the Iranians, and the Pakistanis sat down together to decide the future of southern Lebanon. That’s our North, our border, where our kids fight to protect us. That’s the line Hezbollah crosses to get to our kids.

I keep trying to make sense of it, and I can’t. How did Iran and Pakistan get a say over whether a family in the Galilee sleeps through the night, and we’re the ones being told to leave?

Maybe I understand part of it. You’re a man who runs on relationships. When one of them goes bad, everything around it goes cold with it. And if you’ve had it with Prime Minister Netanyahu, look, you wouldn’t be the first, and that’s between the two of you.

But please hear me on this one thing: What’s between our two countries is so much bigger than any one prime minister. It’s bigger than a phone call that went badly. There are 10 million of us living here who never signed that deal. We’re not your fight with Bibi. Don’t make all of us pay for one friendship that disappointed you.

And we’re not naive about it. You’ve got your reasons, and some of them have nothing to do with us. There’s an election coming. Gas got expensive, and now it isn’t. A long war is a hard thing to keep selling back home. We get it, we really do.

I’m not writing this to attack you, and I’m not going to sit here and pretend Israel is an easy country to defend right now. I’m just trying to tell you how it actually feels over here. Your briefings probably won’t.

Israel hasn’t forgotten the good you have done for its people

Your own vice president said the harshest truth anyone’s said to us in years. He called you the only leader in the whole world who still feels for Israel. It was hard to hear, and maybe we needed to hear it.

Still, it stung; hard truths usually do. Because if he’s right, and I think he is, then we’re alone in the desert, once again wandering, praying, and hoping for a miracle. That miracle, once again, is you. One man.

That’s why this scares us as much as it does. When you’ve got one friend left, and he starts pulling away, you stop caring what the policy is called. You just feel it.

And we haven’t forgotten what you did for us. We won’t, and if we did, history would remind us.

You brought our hostages home when most of us had quietly given up believing it could happen.

You moved the embassy to Jerusalem and said out loud what this city is, ours.

You made the Abraham Accords out of nothing and gave us neighbors where we’d only ever had enemies.

We are a people that has been let down by almost everyone, over and over, for a very long time. We have grown a thick skin and gotten used to being condemned, but not by you. You were the one who actually did things instead of just talking about them. That’s why this hurts the way it does. You don’t feel like this about a stranger.

So, please understand what this is: We are not a country bashing you. We are a country that’s confused, and honestly heartbroken, trying to read a friend who suddenly went quiet on us.

We’re not asking you to fight or fund our wars. We’re not asking for blank checks. We’re asking you to just tell us, in plain words, what you want from us, because we can’t find it anywhere in the statements, and we’re worn out from guessing.

Israel needs you. I’m not going to dress that up to save face. A lot of us feel forgotten right now. Some of us feel thrown under the bus by the one person we were sure never would.

We have wandered before. We’d rather not wander again, and we’d rather win – with you by our side.

In friendship and gratitude,

Zvika Klein

Jerusalem

Tel Aviv University has risen in the latest QS world rankings from 223 to 208, despite the growing boycott of Israeli academia since the war began in 2023.

Tel Aviv University is the highest-ranked Israeli university followed by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which rose from 240 to 218, and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, which rose from 350 to 334. The rankings include 1,500 universities worldwide.

While Tel Aviv University has improved its ranking in recent years, in years gone by it would regularly appear in the world’s top 200 universities.

Some Israeli universities fell in the rankings, while American and UK schools rank highest

Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba was ranked 533, Bar-Ilan University was ranked 711-720 and University of Haifa was ranked 801-850. All these universities were ranked lower than last year.

Reichman University, Ariel University and the University of Kiryat Shmona, all relatively new universities, were unranked.

The world’s top five universities this year are: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Imperial College London; Stanford University; University of Oxford; and Harvard University.

Following the resignation of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday, Labour MP Andy Burnham announced his intention to run to replace him.

Burnham has held the position of Mayor of Greater Manchester since May 2017, only leaving the role last week after winning the local by election in Makersfield. He is seen as the leading candidate for Labour Party leadership.

Significant attention is now on Burnham regarding his stances on Israel, Gaza, and antisemitism.

So what does the potential new prime minister of the UK have to say on these topics?

Jews and antisemitism

Burnham has a long history of calling out antisemitism, especially within his own party.

In 2018, he tweeted calling for his party to take a firmer stand against antisemitism. Then, in 2019, while the Labour Party was still under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, Burnham told the Board of Deputies at Manchester Town Hall that it is “inconceivable to me that a party which has prided itself on its record on racism could have become in embroiled in an antisemitism crisis.”

“Racism needs to be dealt with firmly, quickly and decisively. I’m afraid that this hasn’t been the response so far and I hope from this point forward this has been understood,” he said.

Burnham was Mayor of Manchester when two were killed and several wounded in an antisemitic terror attack outside a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur 2025.

Burnham was one of the first officials to speak publicly about the attack, telling BBC Radio Manchester at around 10:30 a.m., that a “serious incident” had taken place less.

He later took to X to condemn the “vile attack on our Jewish community on its holiest day.”

“We stand with GM’s Jewish community at this time and will work through the day to support them,” he said.

In a recent interview with Jewish News, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy described Burnham as a “great ally” in the fight against antisemitism and one who will stand with the Jewish community “always.”

“He believes in justice, so is acutely aware of the need for a safe homeland for Jewish people, and the particularly unique historical reasons why Israel came into existence,” she said.

Burnham has also been actively supportive of Holocaust remembrance and education.

Recently, in January 2026, Burnham attended a Holocaust Memorial Day service with the Jewish Representative Council of GM & Region (JewishMCR).

There, Burnham “reaffirmed his commitment to standing firmly against anti‑Jewish racism, invoking the words of the late Mancunian Holocaust Survivor Ike Alterman BEM, who taught us that hate is a disease,” according to the JRCMCR.

JRCMCR chair Mark Adlestone has praised Burnham’s longstanding partnership with local Jewish organizations and his solidarity in times of distress.

Adlestone did however recently tell Jewish News that it would be “disingenuous to suggest there have not been times when there have been disagreements.” He cited Burnham leading a call for a ceasefire post 7 October, whilst hostages remained in captivity, as an example of when there has been friction.

Oct. 7 and the Israel-Hamas War

Burnham was Manchester Mayor at the time of the October 7 Hamas attacks. On the 13 October 2023, about a week later, he released a statement condemning “without reservation the appalling attacks in Israel by Hamas.”

“Nothing justifies the taking of innocent lives in such a barbaric and indiscriminate manner,” he said.

He also acknowledged the heightened concerns of many members of Manchester’s Jewish community and said he had spoken to the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police who assured that there would continue to be an increased police presence in all areas of the city-region with Jewish community organizations.

Burnham also said that, while people must always be free to demonstrate peacefully and display flags if that is their wish, it is not acceptable to display “flags being used to provoke confrontation, displaying the flags of proscribed organisations or the making of inciteful, hateful and inflammatory statements.”

He then added that “Israel has the right to defend itself, and protect its citizens, in line with international law.”

However, just under two weeks later, on October 27, Burnham, along with the deputy mayor and local councillors, released a statement calling for a ceasefire, at a time when hostages were still being held by Hamas.

“We condemn unreservedly the appalling terror attacks on innocent civilians in Israel by Hamas on 7th October” the statement read, however adding “We also have profound concerns about the loss of thousands of innocent lives in Gaza, the displacement of many more and widespread suffering through the ongoing blockade of essential goods and services.”

“Given the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza, the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and the ten Leaders of Greater Manchester join the growing international calls for a ceasefire by all sides and for the hostages to be released unharmed.”

This was criticized by the Adlestone of the JRCMCR, who said that “although much of the content was well constructed and demonstrated an awareness of the situation’s complexity, I agreed with the majority in our community that the request gave insufficient weight to Israel’s right and obligation to defend her citizens.”

At the start of this month, Burnham notably declined to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, causing significant upset within the pro-Palestine space.

Burnham was reportedly asked about foreign policy during an interview with the Guardian and allegedly declined to say Israel has committed genocide, explaining: “I can’t judge things of that enormity from where I am as mayor of Greater Manchester.”

Pro-Palestinian activists and left-wing media sites have since been circulating a video clip from the 2015 Labour Leadership Election where Burnham said: “The first country I will visit if elected is Israel” and called the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement “spiteful.”

Burnham has however repeatedly affirmed his support for a two-state solution. In May 2015, he responded to a survey of candidates by Palestine Solidarity Campaign in which he said “I fully support two states living side by side in peace, and recognised by all of their neighbours.”

He said “Palestinian statehood is not a gift to be given but a right to be recognised” and noted that he urged the UK government in both 2011 and in 2012 to support the Palestinian bid for recognition at the UN.

He also called for “an end to occupation and illegal settlement building by the Israelis, and an end to the rocket and terror attacks by the terrorist group Hamas.”

“Labour recognises that the settlements and their continued expansion remain key obstacles to resolving the conflict, as Ed Miliband has said, they are both illegal and immoral. We are clear, however, that the threat of boycotts of Israel is the wrong response. Labour has taken and will maintain domestic action to introduce labelling transparency, and will seek a Europe-wide approach to settlement products,” he said.

Following the resignation of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday, Labour MP Andy Burnham announced his intention to run to replace him.

Burnham has held the position of Mayor of Greater Manchester since May 2017, only leaving the role last week after winning the local by election in Makersfield. He is seen as the leading candidate for Labour Party leadership.

Significant attention is now on Burnham regarding his stances on Israel, Gaza, and antisemitism.

So what does the potential new prime minister of the UK have to say on these topics?

Jews and antisemitism

Burnham has a long history of calling out antisemitism, especially within his own party.

In 2018, he tweeted calling for his party to take a firmer stand against antisemitism. Then, in 2019, while the Labour Party was still under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, Burnham told the Board of Deputies at Manchester Town Hall that it is “inconceivable to me that a party which has prided itself on its record on racism could have become in embroiled in an antisemitism crisis.”

“Racism needs to be dealt with firmly, quickly and decisively. I’m afraid that this hasn’t been the response so far and I hope from this point forward this has been understood,” he said.

Burnham was Mayor of Manchester when two were killed and several wounded in an antisemitic terror attack outside a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur 2025.

Burnham was one of the first officials to speak publicly about the attack, telling BBC Radio Manchester at around 10:30 a.m., that a “serious incident” had taken place less.

He later took to X to condemn the “vile attack on our Jewish community on its holiest day.”

“We stand with GM’s Jewish community at this time and will work through the day to support them,” he said.

In a recent interview with Jewish News, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy described Burnham as a “great ally” in the fight against antisemitism and one who will stand with the Jewish community “always.”

“He believes in justice, so is acutely aware of the need for a safe homeland for Jewish people, and the particularly unique historical reasons why Israel came into existence,” she said.

Burnham has also been actively supportive of Holocaust remembrance and education.

Recently, in January 2026, Burnham attended a Holocaust Memorial Day service with the Jewish Representative Council of GM & Region (JewishMCR).

There, Burnham “reaffirmed his commitment to standing firmly against anti‑Jewish racism, invoking the words of the late Mancunian Holocaust Survivor Ike Alterman BEM, who taught us that hate is a disease,” according to the JRCMCR.

JRCMCR chair Mark Adlestone has praised Burnham’s longstanding partnership with local Jewish organizations and his solidarity in times of distress.

Adlestone did however recently tell Jewish News that it would be “disingenuous to suggest there have not been times when there have been disagreements.” He cited Burnham leading a call for a ceasefire post 7 October, whilst hostages remained in captivity, as an example of when there has been friction.

Oct. 7 and the Israel-Hamas War

Burnham was Manchester Mayor at the time of the October 7 Hamas attacks. On the 13 October 2023, about a week later, he released a statement condemning “without reservation the appalling attacks in Israel by Hamas.”

“Nothing justifies the taking of innocent lives in such a barbaric and indiscriminate manner,” he said.

He also acknowledged the heightened concerns of many members of Manchester’s Jewish community and said he had spoken to the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police who assured that there would continue to be an increased police presence in all areas of the city-region with Jewish community organizations.

Burnham also said that, while people must always be free to demonstrate peacefully and display flags if that is their wish, it is not acceptable to display “flags being used to provoke confrontation, displaying the flags of proscribed organisations or the making of inciteful, hateful and inflammatory statements.”

He then added that “Israel has the right to defend itself, and protect its citizens, in line with international law.”

However, just under two weeks later, on October 27, Burnham, along with the deputy mayor and local councillors, released a statement calling for a ceasefire, at a time when hostages were still being held by Hamas.

“We condemn unreservedly the appalling terror attacks on innocent civilians in Israel by Hamas on 7th October” the statement read, however adding “We also have profound concerns about the loss of thousands of innocent lives in Gaza, the displacement of many more and widespread suffering through the ongoing blockade of essential goods and services.”

“Given the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza, the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and the ten Leaders of Greater Manchester join the growing international calls for a ceasefire by all sides and for the hostages to be released unharmed.”

This was criticized by the Adlestone of the JRCMCR, who said that “although much of the content was well constructed and demonstrated an awareness of the situation’s complexity, I agreed with the majority in our community that the request gave insufficient weight to Israel’s right and obligation to defend her citizens.”

At the start of this month, Burnham notably declined to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, causing significant upset within the pro-Palestine space.

Burnham was reportedly asked about foreign policy during an interview with the Guardian and allegedly declined to say Israel has committed genocide, explaining: “I can’t judge things of that enormity from where I am as mayor of Greater Manchester.”

Pro-Palestinian activists and left-wing media sites have since been circulating a video clip from the 2015 Labour Leadership Election where Burnham said: “The first country I will visit if elected is Israel” and called the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement “spiteful.”

Burnham has however repeatedly affirmed his support for a two-state solution. In May 2015, he responded to a survey of candidates by Palestine Solidarity Campaign in which he said “I fully support two states living side by side in peace, and recognised by all of their neighbours.”

He said “Palestinian statehood is not a gift to be given but a right to be recognised” and noted that he urged the UK government in both 2011 and in 2012 to support the Palestinian bid for recognition at the UN.

He also called for “an end to occupation and illegal settlement building by the Israelis, and an end to the rocket and terror attacks by the terrorist group Hamas.”

“Labour recognises that the settlements and their continued expansion remain key obstacles to resolving the conflict, as Ed Miliband has said, they are both illegal and immoral. We are clear, however, that the threat of boycotts of Israel is the wrong response. Labour has taken and will maintain domestic action to introduce labelling transparency, and will seek a Europe-wide approach to settlement products,” he said.

Alan Greenspan, hailed as the greatest Federal Reserve chairman when he retired in 2006 but derided for the severe financial crisis that followed just two years later, died on Monday at age 100, NBC News reported.

Greenspan, who exerted a powerful influence on the US economy during his tenure at the helm of the Fed from August 1987 to January 2006, died at his home from complications of Parkinson’s Disease, NBC reported, citing his wife Andrea Mitchell, who is the outlet’s chief Washington correspondent.

Greenspan oversaw the second-longest economic expansion in US history, an uninterrupted decade of growth from March 1991 to March 2001. His decision to let the economy run – despite pressure to raise interest rates amid an inflation threat that never materialized – helped foster years of US prosperity and earned him rock-star status as an economic “maestro.”

The era was marked by his prescient judgment that a productivity surge in the mid-1990s would keep inflation contained.

His intuition in that moment remains a touchstone for policymakers and has been cited by former Fed chair Jerome Powell as an example of how judgment can sometimes outperform economic models.

However, the one-time jazz musician’s monetary policy acumen later came into question as critics attacked his policies for fueling a series of asset price bubbles and laying the groundwork for the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

“I think the deification that came just before the financial crisis was never really deserved, and I think the lambasting that he took after he left was never fully deserved either,” said Stephen Oliner, a former senior Fed official.

Greenspan’s strong response to 1987 market crash

Greenspan, who fell in love with math through an obsession with baseball statistics, won quick plaudits for a strong response to the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987, just two months after he took office.

He also steered the US economy through the 1990-91 recession, the 1997-1998 Asian and Russian financial contagion, the collapse of the dot-com stocks bubble in 2000, and the turbulent economic aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Along the way, biographer Sebastian Mallaby detailed, he became a consummate Washington power player able to maneuver presidents and cabinet secretaries into making the decisions he felt were best, sometimes without them realizing who pulled the strings.

At the Fed’s vaunted Jackson Hole gathering in 2005, two leading economists billed him as perhaps the greatest central banker of all time.

But when the housing price bubble that had grown during his final four years in office finally burst, it savaged his once-stellar reputation – along with the global economy.

Whatever Greenspan’s merits in the moment, his successors steadily pushed the Fed in a new direction, rolling out financial crisis response tools to address problems Greenspan had never confronted, such as zero interest rates, and shifting from opaque communications to more frequent speeches, a set inflation target, and regular press conferences.

In addition to critiques of his monetary policy, critics slammed Greenspan, a powerful advocate for light regulation of financial markets, for a hands-off approach that allowed banks to make disastrous bets on the housing market.

Greenspan subsequently admitted to being “shocked” that he had been wrong in assuming that bankers’ self-interest would deter them from taking actions that imperiled the survival of their own institutions.

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2008.

But as apologies go in Washington, it fell far short of what his most ardent critics sought.

Some economists also felt the chairman, who never disguised that he was a Republican, dented his political independence by backing tax cuts in 2001 proposed by president George W. Bush, although he also worked closely with Democratic president Bill Clinton.

The second-longest-serving Fed chair behind William McChesney Martin, Greenspan was first tapped by president Ronald Reagan in 1987 and was later re-appointed by presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

He was 80 when he left the Fed in 2006, but moved smoothly into a new career as a consultant and adviser with his own firm, Greenspan Associates, offering insights on where he thought the economy was going for big fees.

At the Fed, Greenspan built on the successes of his predecessor, Paul Volcker, who stamped out the raging inflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Indeed, in his final few years at the central bank, Greenspan spent more time worrying about the risks of deflation taking hold than about high inflation re-emerging.

The ten-year expansion in the 1990s was fueled in part by a huge stock rally that, in 1996, Greenspan suggested might reflect an “irrational exuberance.” He later backed away from that comment, saying it was not his role to second-guess investors.

Greenspan was often referred to as the second most powerful person in the country, after the president, because of the central bank’s ability to influence the economy through changes in short-term interest rates.

Pensive, serious, and quiet, he laid out his views in elliptical testimonies and speeches that were parsed endlessly by pundits. He once warned an economists’ group that he spent a lot of his time worrying about being too clear.

“What I’ve learned at the Fed is a new language called ‘Fed speak.’ We learn to mumble with great incoherence,” he said.

He could speak in such a roundabout way that his wife, Andrea Mitchell, said she “just didn’t get it” the first few times he proposed marriage. The couple dated for 12 years before they married in April 1997. It was the second marriage for both of them.

Greenspan said he did his best thinking in the bathtub, indulging in baths that sometimes lasted two hours as he read reports and wrote speeches and public testimony.

Music came first

Born in New York City on March 6, 1926, Greenspan was the only child of Rose and Herbert Greenspan. His parents divorced when he was young, and he was raised in a small apartment in the Washington Heights section of New York with his mother and grandparents.

Greenspan’s first love was music, and he spent two years at New York’s Juilliard School studying the clarinet. He toured briefly with a swing band as a saxophone player before turning to the study of economics at New York University.

In his youth, Greenspan was a friend and associate of the novelist Ayn Rand, who espoused the supremacy of the free markets and the profit motive in books such as Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Before his Fed years, he chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under president Gerald Ford in the 1970s. He also ran an economics consulting firm called Townsend-Greenspan and Co. for years.

When Greenspan succeeded Volcker, some worried he might not live up to his tough-minded, cigar-chomping predecessor.

But Greenspan soon proved his mettle by pumping liquidity into financial markets to calm the October 1987 stock market crash. His quick action, which is now seen as a textbook example of how to handle such crises, was credited with staving off a recession.

Israeli businessman Aaron Frenkel is planning a Nasdaq IPO for missiles and suicide drones company UVision Air, which he fully controls. UVision will try to raise money at a company valuation of $3-3.5 billion.

UVision will publish an initial prospectus next month, “Globes” has learned, ahead of completion of the move based on its first quarter financial report. This is after the company examined in recent months the possibility of bringing in Israeli institutional investors before the offering, at a valuation similar to those it is targeting in the flotation. However, after the institutions demanded a much lower valuation, the company decided to promote the move without them.

For Frenkel, who it is believed sell some of his shares in the company as part of the offering, this is a significant increase in valuation over the original investment he made about 15 years ago. In 2011, Frenkel acquired the company for an estimated $110 million.

Order backlog of about $370 million

The company, which is based in Emek Hefer has more than 250 employees, it is estimated, and an order backlog of about $370 million. UVision’s products, which include various advanced suicide drones and missiles, under the name “Hero“, are sold to over 30 armies and countries around the world. The company has various models, the largest of which is the Hero 1250, which carries a 50-kilogram warhead, has a range of more than 200 kilometers, and an operation duration of up to 10 hours.

For the past 18 months, UVision’s CEO has been by Dr. Ran Gozali, who previously held a number of senior positions at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. The company’s chairman is Ilan Gifman, a close associate of Frenkel, who previously served as CEO of real estate company Aspen Group and retired about a decade ago. Gifman, an accountant by profession, has been close to Frenkel ever since, and assists him in managing his real estate in Europe. He serves on his behalf as a director of the investments he made in Israel (currently in Alony Hetz, and before that in Bayside).

In October 2025, UVision signed a huge deal with US company Mistral to supply suicide drones to the US Army for $982 million, in a multi-year contract starting in 2026. The contract includes the procurement of the equipment, its integration into the field forces of the US Army, training and exercises, as well as ongoing maintenance of the systems.

The Americans chose the UVision Hero 120 model, which has a maximum range of 60 kilometers and an operating time of about an hour. The Hero models have a system that allows the remote operator to see what the loitering weapon sees, through electro-optical and infrared cameras. The operator can make minor course corrections to the aircraft, or decide to cancel the mission if, for example, innocent bystanders appear. The loitering munitions can also be launched at targets and can carry out the mission from start to finish autonomously, or transfer operations to a field unit to increase the coordination and efficiency of the forces.

Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to the report

Nearly one million civilians in Gaza continue to live in tents as the summer begins in 2026, according to a new report by the Norwegian Refugee Council.

While the US and UN-backed peace plan for Gaza continues to make slow progress towards its goals, there are many challenges for civilians in the enclave. First of all, Hamas continues to control around half of Gaza.

All of the two million civilians in Gaza are forced to live under Hamas rule and have no alternative area they can move to with an alternative government. The US-backed plan envisions reconstruction and a new Palestinian technocratic government.

The Norwegian Refugee Council said in a report on June 18 that “as Gaza enters the sweltering summer months, Israel’s destruction of homes and restrictions on shelter materials have trapped displaced families in Gaza in dangerously hot tents and makeshift shelters, warns the Shelter Cluster in Palestine.”

The report says that there are 170,000 households living in tents. This is around one million people.

“Another 5,000 households sleep outdoors, while 52,000 households live in overcrowded shelters. This month, 850,000 people still lack emergency shelter items such as plastic sheeting, plywood, and rope. These figures point to a shelter crisis driven not by weather, but by destruction, displacement, and blocked relief,” the report added.

Threat of summer heat may prove to be deadly

The worst hardship for the civilians, who already suffered under 987 days of war, is that they also face another summer of extreme heat in tents.

“Summer heat will only sharpen the risks families face, with daytime temperatures reaching 34.5 °C in the warmest month and the number of hot days with temperature recording 35 °C or higher expected to increase,” the report added.

This high-level heat is potentially deadly.

“Simple measures such as shading, ventilation, and basic shelter improvements can significantly reduce risks and improve living conditions, but this is currently not available inside of Gaza and deliberately not being allowed to enter,” Jehan Salim, a Shelter Cluster Coordinator, told the NRC.

“It is an outrage that families in Gaza, after months of displacement and loss, now face summer heat in makeshift tents because Israel continues to restrict shelter materials,” added Jan Egeland, Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Secretary General, in the statement distributed by the NRC.

The challenge facing the civilians is that they require better tents and more materials.

The report says that this includes “shade nets, plastic sheeting, and basic repair supplies. These materials will not rebuild Gaza, but they can make the difference between a tent that traps heat, smoke, dust, and disease, and a shelter that gives a family shade, airflow, privacy, and a measure of protection.”

The Norwegian Refugee Council notes that it leads “the Shelter Cluster in Palestine, which coordinates humanitarian shelter actors responding to emergency shelter needs in Gaza and the West Bank.”

The report added that “according to the UN, around 1.7 million people lived across roughly 1,600 displacement sites by late May, with 88 percent in makeshift sites. According to the UN, 850,000 people needed emergency shelter items by early June.”

Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories noted on Sunday that “as part of Israel’s commitment to facilitating the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, COGAT works together with UN agencies to facilitate relief in different fields.”

The report noted that UNICEF “recently announced that they brought in clothing for over 30,000 Gazan children, alongside additional medical equipment. Moreover, UNDP published visuals documenting the agricultural crops grown in the Al-Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City.”

COGAT continues to strengthen humanitarian response in Gaza

COGAT, which deals with humanitarian aid entering Gaza, noted that it “continues to work in close coordination with its partners in the international community to strengthen the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip.”

COGAT also said on Friday that it “continues to support humanitarian efforts across Gaza. According to data from international organizations working in Gaza, more than 1.7 million meals are served daily, over 3.6 million pitas are baked daily, and 181 community kitchens are currently operating throughout the Gaza Strip. At the same time, market activity continues to expand, contributing to greater availability of food and essential goods while helping drive prices downward.”

Meanwhile, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote a new article at the Financial Times supporting the current US-backed plan for Gaza.

This is the 20-point plan that the Trump administration was able to initiate after talks with Arab and Muslim states and Israel in September 2025. The ceasefire began in October and US CENTCOM helped set up a coordination center. There is now also a logistics center, and the International Stabilization Force is taking its first steps.

“There is no alternative framework waiting in the wings…The 20-point plan is not the one many of us would have drafted, but it remains the only framework backed by sufficient leverage, political engagement, and potential resources to move the parties towards implementation,” Clinton noted.

The Board of Peace, which was established as part of the peace plan, posted the Clinton piece, noting it was a powerful op-ed that “echoes what we have been saying consistently & forcefully: Now is the time for the whole world to get behind the president’s plan for peace, prosperity & reconstruction in Gaza. Put your politics aside & support the Board of Peace for the good of the people of Gaza who have suffered too long.”

A new ceasefire in Lebanon and talk of Israel withdrawing from some areas have raised questions about the current Israeli warfighting doctrine. Israel has now been fighting a war for 989 days since October 7, 2023.

While the war was imposed on Israel by attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel has had a duty to change the situation and fight the war on Israel’s terms.

In the first months of the war, after October 7, the IDF had to respond and regroup. With 1,000 Israelis killed, 250 taken hostage, and the IDF scrambling to call up and train some 500,000 reservists, there were unprecedented strains on Israel.

However, by the time the IDF began to take the offensive against Hezbollah in September 2024, the situation had changed. Israel was now dictating the tempo on various fronts. Israel has been making its own decisions since then.

However, a recent ceasefire in Lebanon and pressure on Israel to halt its offensive operations have left many questions about what comes next. Hezbollah is still in Lebanon. It is not only present in the Beka’a and Dahiyeh, but it is also present near Israel’s border.

The Alma Research and Education Center recently put out a report about the IDF fighting Hezbollah at a key site in southern Lebanon.

“The IDF is currently conducting ground operations on the Ali al-Taher ridge against the Badr Unit’s primary underground infrastructure, located approximately 10 kilometers from the Israeli border near Metula. This facility serves as the main headquarters of the Badr Unit and, in all likelihood, can be used to launch weapons and conduct attacks into Israeli territory. The infrastructure includes several underground sub-complexes, the largest of which extends for more than one kilometer,” the report said.

Other reports have painted a concerning picture of this ridgeline. It also raises questions about why Israel waited some 900 days to take the Beaufort and then strike at this area. The IDF took the Beaufort within two days of launching operations in 1982.

Why did it take years this time?

The reason is because of a new IDF doctrine of tactics that emerged in Gaza in response to the Hamas attack. Rather than fighting the war of maneuver and combining firepower the way the Momentum plan the IDF had trained for, called for, the IDF has preferred very slow incremental advances. These advances move at a pace similar to that of a World War I battlefield, except without the high casualties.

Some may argue that it is this concern for casualties that guides the 988-day war. However, the evidence from Lebanon shows that even a slow pace carries risks.

Hezbollah will innovate, and the IDF is suffering casualties. There is no way to run a war in which there are no losses. As such, it’s not clear why it would be preferable to fight for 900 days, rather than six days, as in the Six-Day War, if in the end the casualties will be the same.

In terms of the country’s interests, short wars are generally better. Israeli leaders knew this in the early decades of the state. They preferred rapid advance. They also knew that a long war would be a race against time.

The international community and other factors mean that one can’t fight a war forever. Israeli officials have boasted that the IDF will remain in southern Lebanon and that 200,000 Lebanese forced to evacuate will not return. However, there is pressure on Israel to begin some type of withdrawal.

What to make of the current situation?

Israel’s prime minister told the JNS International Policy Summit on June 22 that “we decimated Hezbollah’s military machine. We prevented the Radwan force from invading the Galilee. We destroyed over 90% of the 150,000 rockets and missiles Hezbollah amassed against us.”

He claimed Israel has established security zones in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon. This is the new doctrine: carving out buffer zones, razing the homes in those zones, and then staying. This puts a long-term burden on the IDF to stay in static positions in these zones and patrol them.

While the war in Lebanon is presented as a success, it raises questions. Hezbollah is a terrorist group. It should never have become so strong as to possess 150,000 rockets and have a conventional force capable of invading Israel. In fact, in all of Israel’s history, there was never a force in Lebanon capable of invading Israel.

Not since 1948 has Israel been invaded. Israel’s great leaders of the past prided themselves on preventing Israel from being invaded, and they took the fight to the enemy in rapid wars such as 1956, 1967, and even 1973 and 1982.

Although 1973 was initially a setback, the IDF quickly took the fight to the enemy, crossing the Suez Canal in two weeks of fighting. Not 900 days, but two weeks. That was the doctrine of fighters such as Moshe Dayan, Ariel Sharon, Yizhak Rabin and others.

Even in 1982, although the war became a quagmire, the initial advance covered more ground in two days than the entire 988-day war in Lebanon at that time. In fact, the negative aspects of the war all began when Israel decided to stay for 18 years, which is the policy Israel has adopted again. Will the result be the same?

In 1978, the Litani offensive also covered more ground in Lebanon in a few days than the entire war at that time. One argument for why this takes so long is that Hezbollah is so strong. However, this goes back to the fact that Hezbollah was allowed to get so strong.

Why was it allowed to build a mountain base six miles from the border? And why is that Hezbollah bunker and tunnel system still there, with the IDF apparently being told it needs to cease fire?

The slow war in Lebanon, based on a doctrine from Gaza, has resulted in leaving Hezbollah in the field just miles from the border. This raises questions about why the IDF adopted a slow war concept from Gaza and tried to apply it to Lebanon.

One reason for the slow pace of the war is the creation of new buffer zones along the border. Israel now wants buffer zones. This means patrolling them. Of interest, this means a return to the Bar-Lev line concepts of an earlier era.

However, those static forts were seen as problematic in 1973.

The question is, why is Israel returning to concepts from the 1990s and before that appear to have failed? Israel’s technological superiority generally means it can choose the time and place to carry out precision attacks. With all this superiority, it’s unclear why the policy has led back to WWI-style methods.

Israeli technology is better suited to fast wars where the enemy is never allowed to regroup and the enemy is always kept off balance.

Now, Hezbollah apparently can regroup under the ceasefire. The fact that it is still so close to the border will mean that, as with Hamas, the terrorist group may remain, leading to more wars in the future.  

Content warning: The following content contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault and abuse that some readers may find disturbing.

Around 60% of women abducted during sectarian attacks last year in the western Hama countryside and Homs have not been returned, according to a report published last month by the Syrian Feminist Lobby.

The report, Abduction of Syrian Women: A War on Dignity, argues that violence against women from minority communities, particularly Druze and Alawite women, has been enabled by the collapse of state institutions, weakening the rule of law, and a growing culture of impunity.

In 2025, the Syrian Feminist Lobby documented 82 abduction cases across the Syrian coast, western Hama countryside, and Homs. Some 10% were girls, while 90% were women aged 15 to 40.

At publication, only 40% of abducted women had been released. The organization said many of those freed were subjected to extortion and violence during captivity.

Citing a March report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the lobby said authorities failed to respond effectively to complaints. Police reports were filed but not followed up on, and in some cases, officials discouraged families from pursuing legal action.

Ransom demands were made in a minority of cases but were rarely accompanied by proof of life or location details. In one case, a family paid a ransom, but the woman was not returned.

Families also reported receiving messages telling them to “forget” their missing daughters. Others said they received calls from local and international numbers warning that continued searching would result in the women being returned dead.

In more than one case, husbands were sent divorce papers believed to have been issued under coercion. At least one underage girl was forced into marriage.

Based only on verified cases, 190 women and girls disappeared after the July attacks on the Druze community in Sweida. Some were later located after communications were restored, while others remain missing.

The lobby said many abducted women were released through mediation or exchange deals. In some cases, deaths were confirmed during release processes, though circumstances remain unclear.

The report states that women were used as leverage against local communities for political purposes. “This targeting was preceded by waves of sectarian incitement and hate speech in the media and on social networks. The pattern reflects the intersection of gendered violence with sectarian targeting, in which women’s bodies are used to send collective messages beyond the individual victim to her community,” the lobby assessed.

During extrajudicial killings in Sweida, where men were subjected to religiously charged insults before being brutally murdered, the report also documents cases in which women were stripped before being killed, and in some instances their bodies were mutilated or burned. Photographs of bodies were later circulated online. The report also cites the rape of a young girl in front of her mother and the abduction of children as young as 11 months. It says the youngest hostage still in captivity is 15.

The impact of the violence continues to be felt by survivors, who now face severe psychological, social, and economic consequences, the report added. It warns that limited access to witness protection and justice deepens vulnerability. Many women in Homs described confining themselves to the home, fearing being taken in public, while others described withdrawing from education out of fear of further violence.

Drugged, held in the dark, fear used as a weapon

Women who escaped or were released described being drugged, held in dark rooms, and moved between locations. One survivor said masked armed men forced abducted women to wear black niqabs covering their entire bodies before leaving them at the abduction site and threatening them not to speak.

“This threat shows how violence extends beyond detention. Fear is used to enforce silence and maintain control over survivors and their families,” the lobby noted.

Some women reported witnessing money exchanged for transfers, which the lobby says indicates links to human trafficking. Others described hearing multiple dialects and foreign-accented Arabic.

One survivor said she was subjected to sexual violence and held in solitary confinement for a week. She said captors forced her to record a video claiming she had left voluntarily with a lover. A man referred to as “the sheikh” supervised the recording and pressured her into accepting divorce and marriage to her abductor in exchange for release.

“This pattern reflects the use of coercion to produce forced narratives that deny the violation and turn the survivor into an instrument for concealing the crime rather than documenting it,” the report states.

The case, which resembles one referenced in the UN report, also alleges police treated the survivor as a criminal and issued a religious ruling against her before release. The lobby claims her access to legal support was obstructed, and her abductor obtained security information about her, “indicating a link to official agencies.”

In Syria, adultery is a criminal offense, with penalties ranging from three months to two years, depending on jurisdiction. Islamist authorities have also previously executed women accused of extramarital relations.

The report describes strong religious framing in many cases. Abductors reportedly called themselves a “lifeline” while threatening the killing of “infidel Nusayris” (a derogatory term for Alawites). Victims were allegedly forced to convert, marry captors, and adopt religious practices, including the niqab and rituals.

Multiple survivors described being transported through checkpoints where security personnel appeared to interact with abductors familiarly.

Several women also reported seeing abductors in military-style clothing resembling General Security uniforms or armed groups with red headbands, which the report suggests indicates possible involvement of auxiliary forces or affiliated actors.

Lack of concern from officials

The report also cites concerning official responses, including families being told their daughters were “immoral,” had “left voluntarily,” or could not be controlled. The lobby said such statements undermine trust in justice institutions and limit access to remedies.

In one case, a survivor was held for more than five hours without medical or psychological care by General Security, while her father was detained for several hours before seeing her.

Other survivors were forced to give statements inside security facilities in the presence of individuals allegedly linked to their abductors, and threatened with solitary confinement if they refused. Some testimonies were later broadcast publicly.

“I lost trust in people. For many years, I was very enthusiastic. When we went down to demonstrations or gatherings, we felt a sense of belonging to Syrians and to Syria. Today I do not have that feeling. I also feel a loss of trust in the future. What future is waiting for us?” a survivor of the Sweida massacre told the lobby. “I have no trust in politics, and no trust in the world either. They all failed us. Politics looks for interests without thinking about people and what happens to them. The world is also not fair, and all the talk about human rights or global solidarity has no value.”

The report says survivors were coached to repeat phrases thanking security agencies and denying abduction, while being prevented from naming perpetrators or describing detention sites. It argues this violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and obstructs investigations.

It also documents incitement in official or semi-official media against investigators and women human rights defenders.

The lobby said authorities largely dismissed the reports. Syria’s Interior Ministry reportedly said 41 of 43 reported abductions of Alawite women were not genuine cases, further weakening trust in judicial institutions. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused prosecutors on Monday of misleading him and “setting a trap” during his cross-examination, as his attorney Amit Hadad began the final stage of questioning in Netanyahu’s long-running criminal trial.

The exchange, at the Tel Aviv District Court, centered on Case 2000 and quickly became a dispute over what Netanyahu had been shown during the prosecution’s questioning – and whether the defense could now place fuller excerpts before him.

“I am a trainee lawyer in this absurd process,” Netanyahu told the judges. “They present me with a false picture… They set a trap, and I fall into it.”

Netanyahu said prosecutors had caused him to give answers that could be portrayed as inconsistent, despite what he said was a clearer picture in the underlying testimony and records.

Monday marked the start of Hadad’s questioning after the prosecution completed cross-examination last week. The defense’s questioning is formally limited to matters raised during cross-examination that require clarification. 

Questioning in Case 2000

Case 2000, one of three cases in Netanyahu’s trial, centers on recorded conversations between Netanyahu and Arnon “Noni” Mozes, the publisher of Yediot Ahronot and Ynet.

According to the indictment, Netanyahu and Mozes discussed possible steps that could restrict Israel Hayom, then Yediot’s principal competitor. In return, Mozes allegedly offered more favorable coverage of Netanyahu and more negative coverage of his political rivals.

Netanyahu is charged in the case with fraud and breach of trust, while Mozes is charged with offering a bribe. Both deny wrongdoing.

Hadad first sought to revisit whether Netanyahu had met with Mozes while serving as finance minister in 2003.

During the prosecution’s cross-examination, Netanyahu said he did not remember such a meeting. Hadad argued that prosecutors had cited only part of Mozes’s police testimony, while leaving out passages in which Mozes himself said he could not remember and was unsure whether the meeting had taken place.

Judge Oded Shaham said Netanyahu had already answered that he did not remember, and that there was no need to reopen the issue.

Judge Moshe Bar-Am added that the relevant question was whether Netanyahu’s answer had resulted from a misleading presentation; Hadad insisted it had.

Netanyahu: Prosecutors asked misleading questions

The argument later moved to testimony by Nir Hefetz, Netanyahu’s former spokesman and a state witness. Hadad said the prosecution had suggested that Hefetz described a “cease-fire” between Netanyahu and Mozes during the 2009 election campaign.

According to Hadad, the fuller testimony placed that period of relative calm after the election, between May and September 2009. The distinction, he argued, mattered because Netanyahu had initially said such a cease-fire was “possible” before later rejecting the premise.

Netanyahu seized on the point, saying prosecutors had made it appear that he had changed his version.

“They mislead me here and make me give two answers in court,” he said. “Then they will say there are two versions, that perhaps I did not tell the truth.”

Prosecutor Alon Gildin objected that once Netanyahu said he did not remember the events, the answer was clear. Re-examination, Gildin said, was not meant to allow the defense to search for documents or details that could refresh the witness’s memory.

Netanyahu also faces charges in Case 1000, involving alleged gifts from wealthy businessmen, and Case 4000, concerning alleged regulatory benefits for Bezeq in exchange for favorable coverage on Walla. He denies all charges.

An expert committee at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unanimously recommended approving Moderna’s new flu vaccine, a move that could signal the start of a new era in preventing the seasonal illness. 

The vaccine, intended for people 50 and older, is based on mRNA technology and was found in an advanced trial to be more effective than a standard flu shot.

The FDA’s vaccine advisory committee voted unanimously on Thursday in favor of the new Moderna vaccine, called mFlusiva, after reviewing its safety and efficacy data. If it receives final approval, it will be the world’s first mRNA-based flu vaccine. 

The recommendation was made for two age groups: people 50 to 64 and people 65 and older. For the older group, in which flu complications are more common and more severe, the committee asked Moderna to carry out an additional study after the vaccine enters the market.

The main figure driving the discussion was the vaccine’s effectiveness compared with a standard flu shot. In a late-stage trial, Moderna’s vaccine was found to be about 27% more effective than the older shot in preventing influenza.

That is a significant gap in a field where vaccine effectiveness varies greatly from season to season, depending on how well the vaccine matches the virus strains actually circulating in the population.

Flu is often seen as a routine winter illness, but among older adults, people with chronic illnesses, pregnant women, and young children, it can cause severe complications. Every year, thousands are hospitalized in Israel because of flu and its complications, including pneumonia, worsening heart and lung disease, respiratory failure, and death. 

People 65 and older account for most severe hospitalizations, which is why the discussion over a more effective vaccine for older age groups has broad medical and public importance.

Traditional flu vaccines are produced using long-established methods, some of which are based on fertilized eggs or cell cultures.

Where does mRNA come in?

One of their main limitations is timing; manufacturers must choose months in advance which flu strains will be included in the seasonal vaccine. During the months before winter begins, the virus may change, and the match between the vaccine and the active strains can weaken.

This is where mRNA technology comes in. Instead of growing the virus or its parts through lengthy biological methods, the vaccine uses a short segment of genetic code that instructs the body’s cells to produce a protein similar to a component of the flu virus.

The immune system recognizes that protein, mounts an immune response against it, and is then expected to react more quickly if it is later exposed to the real virus. The genetic material in the vaccine breaks down in the body and does not remain there.

Moderna also has another possible advantage, speed of production. The company told the committee that it can move from selecting flu strains to distributing the vaccine within two to three months, compared with about six months in some traditional production methods.

In theory, that means the vaccine composition could be updated later in the year, closer to flu season, to better match the strains that are actually spreading.

The new vaccine was reported to have side effects similar to those known from other vaccines, including pain at the injection site, fatigue, muscle aches, and fever.

According to the data discussed by the committee, no unusual safety problems were identified that shifted the benefit-risk balance against the vaccine. Still, the call for additional research among people 65 and older reflects regulatory caution, mainly because the risk of severe flu is higher in that group and the standard for comparing vaccines is more complex.

Opens doors to new vaccines

If the vaccine is approved, it could open the door to a new generation of flu vaccines that can be updated more quickly. For health systems, that could be particularly important in seasons when flu strains change rapidly or when there is only a partial match between the seasonal vaccine and the active viruses.

The decision is also expected to affect the continued development of combination vaccines, including a one-shot vaccine against both flu and COVID-19. Moderna and other companies have been trying in recent years to develop combination vaccines that would make it easier for older adults and at-risk groups to receive broader protection in a single injection.

Approval of the new flu vaccine could strengthen confidence in that path, but it would also require continued monitoring of efficacy, safety, and public uptake.

Meeting the Lubavitcher Rebbe set the course of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks’s life, he used to say. In 1968, as an unknown Cambridge undergraduate, Sacks visited Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, New York, and carried away a line he repeated for the rest of his life: “A good leader creates followers, but a great leader creates leaders.”

This past week, we marked the Rebbe’s 32nd yahrzeit. He published around 70,000 pages, 39 volumes of talks that he edited himself, and over 12,000 letters, an output that makes him, in Yosef Bronstein’s words, one of the greatest generators of published Torah in Jewish history.

As the author of Engaging the Essence: The Torah Philosophy of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Bronstein seats the Rebbe beside Rav Kook and Rav Soloveitchik, the two thinkers our world already canonizes, arguing that Schneerson too, has earned his chair. Congress gave the Rebbe its gold medal, his face ran on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, and prime ministers closeted themselves with him for hours.

Bronstein did not grow up with hassidism and does not call himself a hassid. He heads the Machon Zimrat Ha’aretz Torah-learning institution in Efrat and teaches Jewish philosophy at Yeshiva University, and he learned in the Brisker method (highly analytical and reductionist approach to Talmud study) under Rabbi Michael Rosensweig.

But Bronstein also learned Torah with a Chabad spokesman as his learning partner, who clearly assisted him in understanding the basic idea that spread across every subject the Rebbe touched.

Bronstein names it “dira batahtonim,” God’s desire for a dwelling in the lowest world, the material one we live in.

The sages call this world a hallway before the palace of the World to Come, a corridor to be crossed and left behind. The Rebbe inverted the image. The hallway itself is to be made into the palace.

He pressed the claim furthest in his treatment of body and soul, locating the deepest divinity, the “Essence” itself, not in the soul’s heights but in the body and the physical world below. This is where he is most radical, and where a “Litvak” raised on the soul’s primacy feels the floor tilt.

To find the essence of God disclosed in matter more than in the soul is either the deepest reading of creation or the highest sanctification of the ordinary, and Bronstein makes the reader feel its force before one can decide which it is.

The Chabad emissary on a plane to a town that cannot yet make a minyan is that philosophy in motion.

Bronstein’s most ambitious claim is that the programs we credit to the Rebbe’s organizational genius are a single philosophy enacted.

The principle that sent the emissaries out, he argues, also governed how the Rebbe read the rise of women, the place of non-Jews in a redeemed world, and modern science, which he read as a discipline drifting toward the oneness of God, in its search for the unity beneath nature.

While the Rebbe did not write a system, he spoke to occasions for 40 years. Bronstein anchors the structure of the Rebbe’s talks in his first discourse of 1951.

Making messianism feel smaller than its reputation

NO CHAPTER feels more like the present than the one on the Land and the State of Israel. The Rebbe loved the land, its people, and its soldiers without theologizing the state as redemption’s first flowering, and for more than 25 years, he argued against ceding captured territory.

His grounds were not messianic but halachic and practical: the Shulhan Arukh’s ruling that a border town must be defended even on Shabbat; his insistence that all of Israel had become a border; his refusal to trade lives that are certain for a peace that is speculative; and a flat distrust of hostile neighbors’ promises and of United Nations guarantees.

On spreading the wellsprings, the Rebbe’s insistance that the deepest secrets of Kabbalah be opened to every Jew and not guarded for an elite, the philosophy becomes a program. On free choice, the same essence that anchors everything anchors the dignity of the Jew on the street.

These pages make the messianism, when it comes, feel smaller than its reputation. Bronstein gives it three late chapters and a restraint that is almost severe. He establishes that the Rebbe never explicitly declared himself Mashiach, and reads him as a man who likely thought himself a candidate awaiting a sign that, in his words, never came, so that he “died in an unredeemed world.”

The limits are real, and Bronstein names them before a critic can.

We know how to thank the Rebbe for what he built. This book asks the more demanding thing, that we read the thought he built it from. ■

ENGAGING THE ESSENCE: THE TORAH PHILOSOPHY OF THE LUBAVITCHER REBBE
By Yosef Bronstein
Maggid Books/Koren Publishers
710 pages; $35

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday he would resign, promising to ensure an orderly transfer of power to a new leader by September at the latest to try to avoid political instability as Britain prepares for its seventh leader in 10 years.

Less than two years after he won a landslide election victory that promised to end chaos in British politics, Starmer said he would support whoever replaced him.

“I was told time and time again that my party was finished, that we were consigned to history, that a majority at the general election, let alone a landslide majority, was impossible, but we proved those people wrong, because we changed our party, ripping out the poison of antisemitism, restoring trust on the economy, defence, and national security, and becoming a party that once again stood proudly with, not against, our national flag,” Starmer said in his speech.

The threat to Starmer, which had been building for months, increased sharply on Friday when Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, decisively won a parliamentary election to return to Westminster, beating a candidate from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, which has led national opinion polls for more than a year.

That victory gave hope to Labour lawmakers that Burnham, a career politician known for his communication skills, could transform the fortunes of a party that has lost support under Starmer, whose popularity ratings have sunk to the lowest for any British leader.

Burnham said on Monday he would put himself forward to enter the contest to replace Starmer, hours after the British prime minister announced he was resigning.

Next prime minister to become Britain’s seventh since Brexit

Whoever replaces Starmer will become Britain’s seventh prime minister since the Brexit vote to leave the European Union, which took place 10 years ago this week.

That level of turnover – the highest in Britain in nearly two centuries – underlines the struggle of maintaining the support of voters angry at successive failures to improve living standards, public services, and tackle illegal immigration.

The political advisory group Eurasia had said the best outcome could be for Starmer to say he will step down in September, enabling him to attend a UK-European Union reset summit in July and give Burnham time to prepare for government.

In recent weeks, there has been talk in Washington about Syria potentially intervening in Lebanon.

The reports have come as the Trump administration has expressed concern over Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah. In essence, it appears that US President Donald Trump came to believe that Israel was not able to defeat Hezbollah quickly, and the war had led to too much destruction.

Trump then considered whether Syria might help. The Trump administration has embraced Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Could Sharaa help solve Lebanon?

Syria and Lebanon have more in common than just a border. Hezbollah intervened in the Syrian civil war and backed the Assad regime. Iran moved weapons via Syria to Hezbollah. Hezbollah is widely seen by Syrian opponents of the Assad regime as having been complicit in Assad’s crimes.

As such, it is believed that the Syrian rebel groups that came to run Syria after the fall of Assad in December 2024 might welcome the opportunity to fight Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Sharaa government has been cautious. They have helped prevent smuggling to Hezbollah. However, they don’t want to plunge Syria into a new war. Syria intervened in Lebanon in the past. It sent forces to Lebanon in 1976 and maintained a presence there until 2005. Hezbollah was involved in the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri in 2005.

This led to the Lebanese demanding that Syria leave the country in 2005. Syria was seen as working with Hezbollah.

Syria thus knows the challenge of sending forces to Lebanon. Sharaa was quoted recently as saying, “Lebanon needs joint solutions, and Syria is ready to anchor a new security path…Our goal is to back the Lebanese state, strengthen its institutions.”

He has argued that this means conducting talks with Lebanon, including possibly Hezbollah. Syria prefers diplomacy, not war.

Arab News in Saudi Arabia noted that “Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa denied on Sunday that his country sought to intervene militarily in Lebanon where Israel and Hezbollah are at war, after US President Donald Trump repeatedly suggested Damascus could get involved.”

The report also noted that Sharaa said, “We are looking for economic channels between Lebanon and Syria, not military ones.” Shara’a said this in an interview on the television channel Al Mashhad.

Arab News noted that “on Sunday, Trump told Fox News he was ‘disappointed Israel can’t put Hezbollah away,’ adding in reference to the fight against the terror group: ‘I’m close to giving it over to Syria.’”

Trump’s apparent push for Syria to have a role could still manifest itself in other ways.

The Al-Nusra website had noted that “Trump has not given up on disbanding Hezbollah, despite the memorandum of understanding with Iran, and is working in other ways to put pressure on the organization and strengthen the US position in Lebanon and the region.”

The report adds that despite a push for a ceasefire and a new de-confliction concept in Lebanon, “it is estimated that Washington is using various tools simultaneously to try to disarm Hezbollah.”

The report goes on to say that even as the US is involved in Iran talks in Switzerland, “at the same time, the United States imposed sanctions on Hezbollah allies, including Suleiman Frangieh, head of the Marada movement, and pressured the Syrian authorities to intervene in Lebanon.”

The report goes on to say that “the sources note that the sanctions carry several messages: to Lebanon – to remain firm in the face of pressure; to Hezbollah – that the organization is still considered an organization that must be disarmed; and to the party’s allies – that there is no fundamental change in the domestic arena.”

US wants Hezbollah to disarm

A report at Lebanon’s Naharnet noted that “the US Treasury on Thursday imposed sanctions on Marada Movement chief Suleiman Franjieh, Hezbollah political council deputy head Mahmoud Qmati and other individuals for using their influence to ‘obstruct Lebanon’s peace process and delay the disarmament of Hezbollah.’”

The US wants Hezbollah to disarm. The US Department of the Treasury will continue to target Hezbollah’s financial networks.

Suleiman Frangieh, who was born in 1965, is a former member of the Lebanese parliament. He is a Christian and was also a former supporter of Bashar al-Assad.

He has been backed by Hezbollah in the past. He is the son of Tony Frangieh, who was assassinated in 1978 by rival Christian fighters from the Christian Kataeb Party.

He is the grandson of former Lebanese president Suleiman Frangieh, with whom he shares the same name. A former soldier, he also led the Marada Brigades militia, which was disbanded under the Taif Agreement that ended the Lebanese civil war. He was appointed to a seat in parliament in 1991. 

Three people were killed, and five were wounded in a school shooting in the central Philippines, Philippine police said on Monday.

Police said the two suspects have been arrested after the shooting at the San Jose National High School in the city of Tacloban in Leyte province.

The shooting occurred at approximately 9:00 a.m. inside the school in Barangay San Jose, the Tacloban City Police Office said, adding that an investigation is ongoing to determine the circumstances behind the incident.

Tacloban police chief Noelito Getigan told reporters that the suspects used a .38-caliber and 9mm firearm in the shooting.

One suspect, a minor and Grade 9 student, was arrested shortly after the incident, while the other later surrendered to authorities, Getigan said.

Wounded victims taken for treatment

Police said the victims have been transported to nearby medical facilities for treatment, while additional personnel have been deployed at the school to ensure the safety of students, staff, parents, and the surrounding community.

Authorities urged the public not to disseminate unverified information and to cooperate with investigators.

The incident is unusual in the Philippines, where school shootings happen only sporadically.

In July 2022, a gunman opened fire at an Ateneo de Manila University law school graduation ceremony in Quezon City, killing three people, including former Lamitan City mayor Rose Furigay.

Former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Ronen Bar was hastily evacuated from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) following a warning of a possible Iranian-directed attack on him.

Bar was in the UAE with his wife, Dafna Bar-Agassi, to attend a special security conference hosted by UAE Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan (AbZ).

The conference was attended by senior officials from the security, intelligence, and decision-making systems from various countries around the world.

During Bar’s stay in the UAE, an unusual security alert was received, raising concerns about his safety and a possible Iranian attack targeting him, according to Israeli journalist Michael Shemesh. Following the warning, it was decided to immediately evacuate Bar and his wife from the country and fly them back to Israel.

The details of the event and the evacuation were kept under a heavy veil of secrecy and have not been revealed until now.

Continued to engage with public after retirement from Shin Bet

Since his retirement as head of the Shin Bet, Bar has continued to engage in various public initiatives.

In February, Israeli public broadcaster KAN News reported that he was working to promote the establishment of a school for political leadership, a move that aroused criticism in the political system.