As part of its intensified campaign against cash transactions and the black-market economy, the Israeli government is advancing a proposal that would sharply limit the ability to exchange checks for cash, a move expected to significantly impact gemachs and other non-bank lending institutions.

During deliberations over the Arrangements Law, the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee is set to examine an amendment that would restrict the conversion or cashing of checks and promissory notes to a maximum of 6,000 shekels.

If approved, any amount above 6,000 shekels could not be paid out in cash, except for a small portion amounting to up to 10 percent of the value of the check.

According to the explanatory notes accompanying the proposal, “The practice of discounting promissory notes for cash constitutes a significant risk factor for tax evasion and money laundering through financial entities.”

In order to close what lawmakers describe as a regulatory loophole, the amendment would also revoke the full exemption that supervised financial institutions have enjoyed until now. Loans issued through check-discounting arrangements would be brought under the same strict cash limitations.

The proposed change is expected to create particular turbulence within the chareidi community, where gemachs serve as a primary financial backbone. The widely used model of providing cash in exchange for a postdated check to address urgent liquidity needs would become unlawful for sums exceeding the new threshold.

Despite the far-reaching nature of the proposal, the legal advisory team to the committee has expressed doubts about whether the broader Cash Law has achieved its original objective of curbing unreported capital.

The briefing paper also notes a lack of consistency in the framework, pointing out that while a business owner may still receive a cash loan from a regulated institution, that same individual would not be permitted to discount a check under similar conditions.

{Matzav.com}

WASHINGTON (VINnews) — Donald Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in December that he would support Israeli military strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile program if efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement fail, according to a report by CBS News.

The report, citing U.S. officials familiar with the discussions, said the conversation took place during a meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Officials said potential U.S. assistance could include logistical support if Israel decides to carry out military action.

The disclosure comes as indirect negotiations between Washington and Tehran continue over Iran’s nuclear program. U.S. officials have publicly maintained that diplomacy remains the preferred path but have also emphasized that all options remain on the table.

Neither Trump nor Netanyahu immediately commented publicly on the reported remarks.

The development underscores continued U.S.-Israeli coordination on Iran policy amid heightened regional tensions and uncertainty over whether ongoing negotiations will yield a new agreement.

Anti-government chants were reported across several Iranian cities on Saturday, following a call by exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi for a “Global Day of Action” in support of what he has described as Iran’s “Lion-and-Sun Revolution.”

Videos and eyewitness accounts shared by Iran International showed residents in Tehran and other major urban centers chanting from rooftops and windows late into the night. The reports came hours after large rallies by Iranians abroad voiced support for protesters inside the country.

According to the outlet, demonstrators were heard chanting “Death to the dictator” and “Death to Khamenei,” alongside monarchist slogans, reflecting public anger toward Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the country’s political leadership.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledged the scale of the demonstrations, describing them as “unimaginable,” according to Iran International. He urged officials to address underlying social and economic grievances rather than suppress dissent.

“We came to solve people’s problems, not to add to their burden,” Pezeshkian said, adding that “the mentality in our society is wounded.”

Digital restrictions remain a central element of Tehran’s response to dissent. A recent report by rights organization Article 19 said Iran’s online repression reflects more than a decade of technology transfer and policy influence from China.

The report alleged Beijing provided surveillance and filtering systems and promoted an authoritarian “cyber sovereignty” model that has become a cornerstone of Iran’s internet controls.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

A senior Hamas official has drawn widespread condemnation after claiming in a televised interview that Israel staged the October 7 Nova music festival massacre and that Israeli forces were responsible for the killings.

The remarks were made by Osama Hamdan, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, during an interview broadcast by Norway’s NRK television network. According to summaries circulated by blogger Yehuda Teitelbaum, Hamdan denied that Hamas murdered civilians during the October 7 attacks and advanced a series of conspiracy claims about the events of that day.

Hamdan asserted that the massacre at the Nova festival was carried out by Israeli forces, claiming the attack was conducted by Israeli troops who fired from helicopters under the pretext that they were targeting Hamas gunmen. He further alleged that individuals wearing Qassam Brigade symbols at the festival should be investigated.

Throughout the interview, Hamdan insisted that Hamas never deliberately targeted civilians, hospitals, schools, or mosques. He argued that all such accusations are false and maintained that responsibility for civilian deaths lies entirely with Israel.

He also claimed Hamas holds democratic legitimacy because it won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, while acknowledging that those were the last elections held and that a significant portion of Gaza’s current population was not yet born at the time.

Hamdan maintained that Palestinians in Gaza are free to criticize Hamas and denied the existence of fear or repression in the territory, contradicting numerous reports and testimonies from Gaza residents describing harsh internal crackdowns.

When asked what responsibility Hamas bears for the devastation in Gaza, Hamdan placed full blame on Israel and refused to acknowledge any role by Hamas in triggering the war.

He openly defended beatings, torture, and public executions of Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel, describing such actions as legal, moral, and consistent with Palestinian law, including executions carried out within 48 hours.

Hamdan categorically rejected the idea of disarmament, stating that Hamas would relinquish its weapons only after a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines, the implementation of a mass “right of return,” and international guarantees—conditions he described as non-negotiable.

Asked whether Hamas would attack Israel again despite the destruction in Gaza, Hamdan declined to rule it out, affirming that the “resistance will continue.”

In February 2025, he said Hamas would rebuild and expand its capabilities in Gaza so it could “attack Israel at any time we want.” He also stated that anyone seeking to replace Israel’s role would be treated as Israel, adding that issues related to weapons, leadership, and the resistance movement are not open for discussion.

His remarks mirror earlier statements he made in December 2023, one month after the massacre, when he told a Lebanese television channel that a “war of liberation is coming,” adding that it would not be “just another October 7” and that he did not believe it was far off. When asked whether he regretted the October 7 attacks, he responded, “Regret crushing an entire division of the occupation army?” He also claimed that all 1,200 people killed near the Gaza border “belonged to the occupation army” and said at the time, “We do not regret October 7.”

{Matzav.com}

The following is an ‘Ask The Mayor’ question submitted to TLS, and the Mayor’s response. Email your questions for the Mayor to [email protected].

Question:

Hi
I noticed that the left turning arrow from central on to rt 9 north and the arrow from Hurley on the route 9 south are synched up to be green for equal time. Perhaps they can shorten the Hurley green and start the green light for the traffic on central earlier because far more cars turn from central and this would lighten up the traffic on central waiting to go straight.

Response from Mayor Coles:

Thanks for suggesting this. It is a state/county road, but we will reach out to the engineer and ask them to investigate changing the timing.

Take Care,

Ray

Question:

I wanted to thank the Mayor for the Townships gargantuan job of snow removal. I was pleasantly surprised this past Friday, a week after the snow. Plows came down my street and finished clearing the road from curb to curb. The plow drivers were very careful to clear out any driveway that they pushed snow into.

Keep warm,
Marcia

Response from Mayor Coles:

Thank you for the kind words, Marica.

This was the most challenging storm that I have been involved with. It wasn’t the amount of snow so much, but rather the 2″ layer of ice on top of it and temps that never got close to freezing since the storm.

I am awed by the job that public works and our fleet of contractors did and continue to do. I know better than anyone that there is still a lot to do, as I look out my window now at the huge pile of snow and ice at the corner across from my office. While I hope that we do not see another storm like this for a very long time, I will ask now that folks listen to the warnings when bad weather is predicted. Many of the issues we had plowing were due to cars and garbage cans being left on the street. This causes the plows to veer into the street and prevents much of the snow from being removed. If possible, the next time a storm is predicted, remove as many cars as possible from the street & work with your neighbors to try & park the remaining cars on just one side of the street. If you have room in your driveway, offer a spot to a neighbor. If we work together, we can minimize the disruption of our daily lives.

Thanks,

Ray

—————–

Have a question for the Mayor? Send it to [email protected]

Have a question for the Chief? Send it to [email protected]

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — The FBI says a glove containing DNA was found about two miles from “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother and appears to match those worn by a masked person outside her front door in Tucson the night she vanished.

The glove, found in a field near the side of the road, was sent off for DNA testing. The FBI said in a statement Sunday that it received preliminary results Saturday and is awaiting official confirmation.

Nancy Guthrie, 84, was last seen at her Arizona home on Jan. 31 and was reported missing the following day. Authorities say her blood was found on the front porch. Purported ransom notes were sent to news outlets, but two deadlines for paying have passed.

Approximately 16 gloves were found in various spots near the house, most of which were searchers’ gloves that had been discarded, the FBI said.

The discovery was revealed days after investigators had released surveillance videos of the masked person outside Guthrie’s front door. A porch camera recorded video of a person with a backpack who was wearing a ski mask, long pants, jacket and gloves.

On Thursday, the FBI called the person a suspect. It described him as a man about 5 feet, 9 inches tall with a medium build. The agency said he was carrying a 25-liter “Ozark Trail Hiker Pack” backpack.

Authorities have expressed concern about Nancy Guthrie’s health because she needs vital daily medicine. She is said to have a pacemaker and have dealt with high blood pressure and heart issues, according to sheriff’s dispatcher audio on broadcastify.com.

(AP) – As hundreds of federal and local agents scoured the Arizona desert and chased down potential leads in the nearly two weeks since Nancy Guthrie disappeared from her affluent neighborhood, families of other missing people are reminded how elusive answers can be.

On the one hand, families who spoke to The Associated Press share in the deep pain that Nancy Guthrie’s children, including the well-known “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, have expressed publicly.

On the other, people like Tonya Miller — whose own mother disappeared under suspicious circumstances in Missouri in 2019 — say they feel frustrated as they watch seemingly endless resources flood into the search for Guthrie.

“Families like ours that have just your normal missing people, they have to fight to get any help,” Miller, 44, said.

In this undated image released by the Federal Bureau of Investigations shows missing Cynthia Acevedo. (FBI via AP)

Miller’s mother, Betty Miller, is one of the thousands of people who are listed as abducted each year, according to federal statistics. In most cases, families like Tonya Miller’s say it’s a full-time job advocating for a fair and thorough investigation.

Guthrie investigation flooded with resources
The country has been engrossed by the apparent kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, after authorities said they believe she was taken against her will. People in her neighborhood have tied yellow ribbons to tree to express their support.

Multiple news outlets have reported receiving ransom notes, and the Guthrie family has expressed a willingness to pay — although it’s not known whether ransom notes demanding money with deadlines that have already passed were authentic.

In the meantime, several hundred detectives and agents are now assigned to Nancy Guthrie’s investigation, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said.

FBI spokesperson Connor Hagan declined to say how many of those agents were federal law enforcement, and how many were already assigned in Arizona. He also didn’t clarify how the federal agency prioritizes different missing persons cases.

However, he said agents from the Critical Incident Response Group, technical experts and intelligence analysts are working to bring Guthrie home. There is also a 24-hour command post where dozens of agents parse through the 13,000 tips that have flooded in from the public, among other responsibilities, according to a post the agency made.

Abductions are rare
The vast majority of people who are reported missing are believed to be runaways — not kidnapped or abducted.

Wanted poster that Tonya Miller made in the desperate search for her mother, Betty Miller, who went missing in 2019. (Tonya Miller via the AP)

Throughout all of 2024, the latest year that National Crime Information Center published the data, over 530,000 missing person records were entered. By the end of the year, just over 90,000 cases remained unresolved on that list — some going back decades.

Roughly 95% of the hundreds of thousands of cases filed in 2024 were believed to be runaways and only 1% were listed as abducted.

Often, the abductor is a parent who doesn’t have legal guardianship over a child, the report said. It’s even more rare for someone to be abducted by a stranger.

Disproportionately Black and Indigenous people
The FBI names five kidnapped or missing people, including Nancy Guthrie, from Arizona on its online database of 125 missing or kidnapped people. All five from Arizona are listed as Native American or otherwise disappeared from tribal communities, except for Guthrie.

That racial trend holds true for the rest of the country, too.

A disproportionate number of Black and Indigenous people were among the abducted in 2024, according to the National Crime Information Center report. Roughly a third of the 533,936 missing people listed as abducted in 2024 were Black, even though the U.S. Census reports only 13% of the U.S. population as Black. Similarly, almost 3% of the missing people listed as abducted were Indigenous, compared to the 1.4% of people who are Indigenous in the U.S. writ large.

“Every person deserves to be safe, and when someone is missing, there should be an immediate, coordinated, and effective response,” Lucy Simpson, the chief executive officer for the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center said. “For many Native women, longstanding gaps in resources, coordination, and systemic support for Tribal Nations have made prevention and response more difficult.”

No answers for families
Experts have said that sometimes the attention on high-profile cases can be a major obstacle to law enforcement operations. But Savannah Guthrie’s celebrity status has also garnered extensive resources from the federal and local government — including a $100,000 FBI reward for accurate information about her whereabouts or that could lead to an arrest and conviction of whoever took her.

That’s in stark contrast, Miller said, to the dearth of help she’s received in Sullivan, Missouri, where she’s had to use her own time and money to search for her mom, who was last seen in her apartment in the roughly 7,000 person town. A box of Betty Miller’s prescribed fentanyl patches were missing from the apartment and her prescription eye glasses were left on an armchair, Tonya Miller said. There was a massive scratch on her mom’s front door that wasn’t there before.

The Sullivan Police Department didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment Friday.

Despite those suspicious circumstances, local police didn’t treat her mother’s apartment like a crime scene, Tonya Miller said. She had to beg them to take fingerprints and often had to prod them to follow up on tips filed by the public. In the weeks that followed, Tonya Miller organized search parties, printed out fliers and held fundraisers to scrape together a $20,000 reward for her mother.

Tonya Miller said it has become harder as the years go by to know how to help find her mom. She’s written letters to elected officials at all levels of government, including President Donald Trump.

“I feel so helpless,” Miller said, “because you just don’t know what to do anymore.”

The government on Sunday approved a landmark plan to begin formal land registration proceedings in Judea and Samaria for the first time since 1967, a move officials describe as a major shift in civilian administration in the area.

The proposal was advanced by Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister Yariv Levin, Finance Minister and Minister in the Defense Ministry Bezalel Smotrich, and Defense Minister Yisroel Katz. It calls for restarting official land registry operations, commonly referred to as the “Tabu,” canceling outdated Jordanian-era laws, and unsealing land records that have remained closed for decades.

The decision is being viewed as one of the most far-reaching changes to civilian governance in Judea and Samaria since the Six-Day War. According to the government, the objective is to bring clarity to land ownership, curb fraudulent claims, and strengthen Israel’s administrative control in the region.

Under the resolution, the Land Registration and Rights Authority within the Justice Ministry will be empowered to oversee the new regulatory process. The agency will receive a dedicated budget and additional personnel to implement the plan.

Among the practical implications of the move is the formal registration of extensive tracts of land in Judea and Samaria under the state’s name.

In an official statement, the government said the renewed procedures will enable a transparent and comprehensive review of property rights, help settle legal disputes, and facilitate organized infrastructure development and land marketing. The statement also noted that the decision comes in response to land regulation efforts advanced by the Palestinian Authority in Area C.

Katz emphasized, “The renewal of the land regulation in Judea and Samaria is a vital security and governance move aimed at ensuring Israel’s control, enforcement, and full operational freedom in the area. Land regulation prevents unilateral actions, reduces attempts at illegal land seizures, and disrupts terrorist infrastructure that undermines stability and security. This is a necessary step for creating operational and legal certainty, enabling the IDF and the security forces to act decisively to protect Israeli citizens and safeguard national interests. I thank Ministers Smotrich and Levin for their cooperation.”

Smotrich added, “We continue the settlement revolution and the holding of all territories of our land. For the first time since the Six-Day War, we are restoring order and governance to land management in Judea and Samaria. Regulated land arrangements prevent disputes, create legal certainty, prevent unilateral actions, and enable lawful and responsible development. The State of Israel is taking responsibility for its land and is acting according to the law, transparently and decisively.”

Levin concluded: “The proposal that was approved represents a true revolution in Judea and Samaria. The Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. The Israeli government is committed to deepening its hold over all its parts, and this decision reflects that commitment. I thank my friends, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defense Minister Israel Katz, for advancing this proposal, and the professional staff in their offices who helped bring it to fruition.”

JERUSALEM — Two senior ultra-Orthodox rabbis called on yeshiva students to avoid demonstrations following a mob attack earlier in the day on two female Israel Defense Forces servicewomen in Bnei Brak.

Rabbis Dov Lando and Moshe Hillel Hirsch, the leading spiritual authorities of the United Torah Judaism party’s Degel HaTorah faction, issued an open letter instructing students not to attend protests or confront police.

“It is strictly forbidden, under any circumstances, to participate in or be present among those who go to places where there are confrontations with the police,” the rabbis wrote. “One must remain in the yeshiva for studies and all scheduled sessions. Heaven forbid that anyone should be in those places… Aside from the physical danger, this constitutes a great desecration of God’s Name.”

The letter was released hours after a spokesman for Lando reissued a video in which the rabbi warned that those taking to the streets “are doing great harm.” The video was originally recorded following the death of a Haredi teenager during an anti-conscription protest in Jerusalem last month.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is moving behind the scenes to soften a controversial proposal that would impose the death penalty on terrorists, amid concerns that the legislation could damage Israel’s international standing, according to an Israeli media report.

Citing unnamed sources in the Prime Minister’s Office, Ynet reported that Netanyahu recently contacted National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, whose far-right Otzma Yehudit party is leading the push for the bill, to express opposition to its current wording.

According to the report, Netanyahu told Ben Gvir he would not allow the governing coalition to pass a capital punishment law that is more severe than that of the United States. The prime minister is said to be concerned that a rigid death penalty framework could trigger international backlash and legal scrutiny.

As the bill advances through the Knesset National Security Committee, Netanyahu has reportedly enlisted Eli Dallal, a lawmaker from his Likud party, to submit formal reservations on his behalf.

The legislation is being fast-tracked ahead of its second and third readings in the Knesset plenary, a process that has drawn criticism from opposition lawmakers and legal experts.

Dallal has filed one of roughly 1,000 reservations submitted against the bill, focusing on provisions he argues undermine judicial independence and due process.

At the center of the controversy is a clause that would require courts to impose the death penalty on Palestinian terrorists convicted of murder.

Legal experts have warned that such a provision would strip judges of discretion and force automatic capital sentences in certain cases, regardless of mitigating circumstances. Critics argue that mandatory sentencing could weaken Israel’s legal system and expose it to challenges in international courts.

Dallal’s reservation specifically opposes the mandatory nature of the punishment, saying it “hamstrings judicial discretion” and limits the courts’ ability to tailor sentences to individual cases.

The Likud lawmaker is also demanding changes to the bill’s appeals process.
Under the current draft, defendants would be allowed to appeal their convictions but not the sentences themselves. Dallal is seeking to add a provision granting death row inmates the right to appeal for a reduced sentence.

Supporters of the change argue that allowing sentence appeals would bring the legislation closer to international legal norms and provide additional safeguards against wrongful or disproportionate punishment.

Ben Gvir and his allies say the bill is a necessary deterrent against terrorism, arguing that existing penalties are insufficient.

Netanyahu, while publicly supportive of strong security policies, appears to be seeking a narrower version of the legislation that preserves Israel’s legal flexibility and global standing.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Authorities in Arizona are using advanced technology from the air as they continue searching for Nancy Guthrie, who vanished nearly two weeks ago. Investigators are flying over the Tucson desert with specialized equipment designed to detect a Bluetooth signal from her pacemaker, hoping it will help pinpoint her location.

A helicopter operated by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department has been moving slowly in a systematic grid pattern over the terrain near Nancy’s residence, attempting to pick up a signal from the implanted device, Fox News reported.

Residents previously noticed a helicopter flying in a comparable pattern close to her upscale home just days after she went missing. However, it remains uncertain whether that aircraft was equipped with the same Bluetooth-detecting technology at the time, according to Fox.

The effort to locate Savannah Guthrie’s mother has now stretched into its second week. Nancy Guthrie was reported missing on Feb. 1, after she was last seen at approximately 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 31. Authorities continue to focus their search in the area surrounding her Tucson home as the investigation remains active.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump said Sunday that members of his newly created Board of Peace have pledged $5 billion toward rebuilding war-ravaged Gaza and will commit thousands of personnel to international stabilization and police forces for the territory.

The pledges will be formally announced when board members gather in Washington on Thursday for their first meeting, he said.

“The Board of Peace will prove to be the most consequential International Body in History, and it is my honor to serve as its Chairman,” Trump said in a social media posting announcing the pledges.

He did not detail which member nations were making the pledges for reconstruction or would contribute personnel to the stabilization force. But Indonesia’s military said Sunday that up to 8,000 of its troops are expected to be ready by the end of June for a potential deployment to Gaza as part of a humanitarian and peace mission. It’s the first firm commitment that the Republican president has received.

Rebuilding the Palestinian territory will be a daunting endeavor. The United Nations, World Bank and European Union estimate that reconstruction of the territory will cost $70 billion. Few places in the Gaza Strip were left unscathed by more than two years of Israeli bombardment.

The ceasefire deal calls for an armed international stabilization force to keep security and ensure the disarming of the militant Hamas group, a key demand of Israel. Thus far, few countries have expressed interest in taking part in the proposed force.

The Oct. 10 U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal attempted to halt a more than 2-year war between Israel and Hamas. While the heaviest fighting has subsided, Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes and frequently fire on Palestinians near military-held zones.

It is not clear how many of the more than 20 members of the Board of Peace will attend the first meeting. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who held White House talks with Trump last week, is not expected to be there.

Trump’s new board was first seen as a mechanism focused on ending the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. But it has taken shape with his ambition for a far broader mandate of resolving global crises and appears to be the latest U.S. effort to sidestep the United Nations as Trump aims to reset the post-World War II international order.

Many of America’s top allies in Europe and elsewhere have declined to join what they suspect may be an attempt to rival the Security Council.

Trump also confirmed that Thursday’s meeting will take place at the U.S. Institute of Peace, which the State Department announced in December it was remaining the Donald J. Trump U.S. Institute of Peace.

The building is the subject of litigation brought by former employees and executives of the nonprofit think tank after the Republican administration seized the facility last year and fired almost all the institute’s staff.

Bulk collection season is set to begin in Jackson Township, with the first round of pickups scheduled to start in March.

The annual service is available to all residents and allows households to dispose of large items such as furniture, appliances, and other bulky waste. Collections will proceed according to the Township’s published zone schedule.

In a significant expansion of services, Mayor Jennifer Kuhn has authorized a second bulk pickup for 2026. For nearly a decade, residents have had only one annual bulk collection opportunity. Township officials say the addition of a second pickup marks a major improvement in services and community quality of life.

The move is expected to provide families with greater flexibility, help reduce illegal dumping, and promote cleaner neighborhoods — all at no additional cost to residents.

Details and scheduling instructions for the second collection will be announced closer to the date. Officials are asking residents to wait for the formal announcement before calling to schedule, as appointments for the second pickup are not yet available.

Residents are encouraged to review the Township’s collection schedule for zone-specific dates. For questions regarding the March 2026 bulk collection, residents may contact the Department of Public Works at 732-928-1311.

Sen. John Fetterman said during a weekend television appearance that elements within the Democratic Party have grown too comfortable aligning with anti-Israel activists, sharply criticizing certain colleagues and media figures while reaffirming his unwavering support for Israel.

Speaking on Fox News Channel’s “Saturday in America,” the Pennsylvania Democrat lamented what he described as a troubling trend inside his party. “There’s a rot in my party, standing with pro-Hamas” figures and antisemitic voices such as Hasan Piker, he said, singling out Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) as someone he believes has aligned herself with Piker.

Fetterman questioned why some Democrats appear quick to condemn Israel while remaining comparatively quiet about Iran’s human rights record. “Why is she so eager to criticize and find a way to criticize Israel? But I don’t really recall them saying anything as Iran was executing thousands and thousands of their protesters for that. Now, there was never any genocide in Gaza, absolutely. And there shouldn’t ever be any conditions for aid for Israel, because they were in an existential war. That’s part of the problem with the very anti-Israel part of my party. So, call that what it is. Why [can’t you] just stand — and why would you align yourself [with] raging [antisemites] and very pro-Hamas people like Hasan Piker?” he said.

The senator went on to argue that certain influential platforms have amplified voices he considers hostile to Israel. “There’s a rot in my party, standing with pro-Hamas people like that, whether it’s even in The New York Times, they’re [fascinated] with him. So, where we are — and call this is — and stand with Israel, that’s our special ally, and there was never a genocide. And when there is a genocide, where you’re executing tens of thousands of people in Iran, why not call that out too?” he added.

WATCH:

As the situation in Bnei Brak continues on Sunday night, with police clashing with Chareidim on streets around the city, the Gedolei Hador, Hagaon HaRav Dov Landau and Hagaon HaRav Moshe Hillel Hirsch, the Roshei Yeshiva of Slabodka, have released a handwritten, timely letter to all Yeshiva Bochrim calling on them to stay away from Hafganos:

To the yeshiva students, may they live and be well:

It is strictly forbidden under any circumstances to participate in or be present among those who are going to places where there is confrontation with the police.

One must remain in the yeshiva, dedicated to learning and maintaining all the established study schedules. Chalilah, chalilah, to be in those places where clashes with the police are taking place.

Aside from the danger involved, there is a grave chillul Hashem in this, rachmana litzlan.

Written with deep pain and great anxiety,

Dov Landau

And of course, I join all of the above — Moshe Hillel Hirsch

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

By Y.M. Lowy

BPJCC, in partnership with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, hosted today a Global Entry enrollment event at the BPJCC Community Center in 13th Avenue. 

All appointment slots for this event were pre-filled, but organizers say additional enrollment events are being planned for the future to meet demand.

At these enrollment events, approved applicants can complete the full Global Entry interview and processing locally instead of traveling to an airport. That allows families to come together and finish the required steps in one visit, conveniently local. 

Global Entry allows approved travelers to move through customs faster when returning to the United States and also includes TSA PreCheck, which provides quicker screening at participating airports. 

The enrollment process at this event includes issuance of a Real ID card that can be used for domestic travel.

JERUSALEM (VINnews)-The Israel Defense Forces carried out multiple airstrikes overnight and into Sunday morning in the Gaza Strip, targeting terror operatives in response to what the military described as a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire the previous day.

The strikes hit sites in northern Gaza, Gaza City and Khan Younis, the IDF said. Among those killed was Ahmad Bayouk, a Hamas terrorist who the military says infiltrated and raided the Re’im military base during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught on southern Israel.

The IDF reported that the strikes followed an incident late Saturday in which five Palestinian gunmen emerged from a tunnel and approached Israeli troops on the Israeli side of the ceasefire line. The targeted operatives “had recently been working to restore the capabilities of the terror organizations in the Strip and were advancing terror attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel,” the military stated.

Separately, the IDF announced that a strike Monday in southern Gaza’s Rafah — carried out in response to an earlier attack by gunmen on troops there — eliminated Azem Abu Huli, a commander in Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s elite forces in central Gaza.

Abu Huli was responsible for supplying weapons to other terror operatives and advancing attacks against Israeli forces, according to the IDF. He commanded Islamic Jihad terrorists who invaded Israel on Oct. 7 and, throughout the ongoing conflict, trained operatives “to practice scenarios involving the abduction of IDF soldiers,” the army added.

The strikes come amid a fragile U.S.-brokered ceasefire that took effect in October, aimed at halting more than two years of intense fighting following the Oct. 7 attacks. While large-scale hostilities have subsided, the ceasefire has been marked by periodic incidents and Israeli responses to perceived threats.

No immediate casualty figures from the latest strikes were provided by Palestinian sources, and there was no independent verification of the IDF’s claims regarding the identities and roles of those killed.

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

On Sunday afternoon, images emerged from Bnei Brak that sent shockwaves throughout the Torah world and beyond. Two female IDF soldiers—who, according to multiple reports, were not military police at all, but commanders from the Education and Youth Corps making a routine home visit to one of their soldiers—were surrounded by a mob of over a thousand people on Chagai Street. They were chased, screamed at, and called “Nazis.” Attempts were made to physically assault them. Police had to rush in to extract them from the crowd. During the ensuing mayhem, rioters overturned a police patrol car and set a police motorcycle ablaze. Tefillin and a siddur that had been inside the motorcycle were found charred in the wreckage.

Let us be clear and unequivocal: What happened in Bnei Brak was a horrifying chillul Hashem—a desecration of G-d’s Name of staggering proportions. It is a chillul Hashem that reverberates across multiple categories identified by the Rishonim and by Chazal, and it demands unqualified condemnation.

What the Torah and Chazal Tell Us

The Torah commands every Jew: “Lo sechalalu es shaim kodshi”—“You shall not desecrate My holy Name” (VaYikra 22:32). The Rambam (Yesodei Torah 5:4) explains that chillul Hashem is the very opposite of Kiddush Hashem. The SMAG (#2) and SMaK (#85) rule that when a Jew’s actions cause gentiles to say, “The Jews have no Torah”—this constitutes chillul Hashem. When the world watches footage of a Jewish mob chasing two young women down a street, overturning police vehicles, and setting motorcycles on fire—what do they say? What conclusions do they draw about the Torah and those who study it?

The Gemara in Yuma (86a) teaches that when a talmid chacham behaves in a manner that causes people to talk negatively—even if the behavior is not technically a sin—it is a chillul Hashem. How much more so when the behavior involves actual violence, destruction of property, and terrorizing young women? Rav Yochanan teaches us that in the realm of chillul Hashem, “perception is reality.” It does not matter what the rioters believed their cause to be. The world perceived Jews in religious garb attacking female soldiers and burning police property. That perception is now seared into the global consciousness.

Furthermore, anyone who sins and causes others to sin—choteh umachti es harabbim—is actively being mechalel shaim Hashem (Rashi, Yuma 86a). The rioters did not act in isolation. Their frenzy drew in others, amplified the desecration, and made the broader Chareidi community a target of vilification—precisely the opposite of what the Torah demands of us.

Gedolei Yisroel Have Spoken

HaGaon HaRav Yitzchak Yosef, the former Rishon L’Tzion, responded with extraordinary sharpness. He declared that the rioters are guilty of chillul Hashem and invoked the pasuk, “Deracheha darchei no’am v’chol nesivoseha shalom”—the Torah’s ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace. Rav Yosef ruled that the rioters “must be denounced and expelled from the camp.” Rabbis Dov Lando and Moshe Hillel Hirsch also both forbade Yeshiva students from protesting.

While the Satmar Rebbe zt”l, as well as numerous Gedolim in Eretz Yisroel, understood the idea of protest as Kiddush Hashem (VaYoel Moshe Shalosh Shavuos Siman 113-114), as did the Brisker Rav zt”l, there were two indisputable Gedolei HaDor who did not share this view: Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l and Rav Aharon Kotler zt”l. They were deeply attuned to the possible repercussion of Chillul Hashem.  But even the Satmar Rebbe would have been horrified by this.  This has been told to me by the biggest Chassidim of the Satmar Rebbe zt”l.

In the 5748 edition of HaPardes Volume III page 9, the views of Rav Aharon Kotler zt”l and Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l are cited regarding the idea of protests. The American Moetzes Gedolei Torah at the time felt that protests were highly counter-productive. Instead, they opted for the time-tested method of shtadlanus. This method has been used effectively for centuries.

In the 5753 edition of HaPardes (Vol. IV p. 25), Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l also came out strongly against the idea of protests regarding atrocities done to graves by archaeologists, and instructed the Agudas HaRabbonim to send a strongly worded telegram to then PM Yitzchok Rabin. He also stated that strong condemnations should be made from each shul.

In light of these tragedies—these unmistakable directional signals—perhaps it is time to heed the clear guidance of these towering Gedolim. Rav Moshe and Rav Aharon were universally acknowledged as the preeminent Poskim and leaders of their generation. Their view that shtadlanus is the proper path, rather than public protests that risk Chillul Hashem and endanger lives, deserves our most serious consideration.

Rav Eliezer Menachem Shach zt”l was also aware of some of the repercussions and extreme measures that protestors take. He spent time and effort clarifying to his followers that at all times protestors must act with the utmost derech eretz—like true Bnei Torah.

Shas chairman Aryeh Deri likewise condemned the violence unequivocally, stating that these acts “are completely contrary to the path of the Torah, harm the broader Chareidi tzibbur, cause a chillul Hashem, and inflict serious damage on the just struggle on behalf of the olam haTorah.” His message was pointed: “Leave our camp!”

These are not the words of secular politicians or anti-religious commentators. These are Torah leaders and representatives of the Chareidi world itself, recognizing the enormity of what occurred.

The IDF Has Not Been Blameless

In the interest of fairness, it must be acknowledged that the IDF’s treatment of Chareidi soldiers has, at times, been nothing short of disgraceful. This context does not justify what happened in Bnei Brak—nothing could—but it explains the depth of frustration simmering within the community.

Just recently, Channel 14 reported a deeply disturbing series of incidents involving Chareidi recruits serving in a designated religious track within the IDF. According to multiple testimonies from the soldiers themselves, their commanders subjected them to a pattern of deliberate humiliation designed to degrade their religious identity and personal dignity.

Following a seven-kilometer fitness run approximately two weeks prior to the report, the commanders accused the recruits of not having performed the run to standard. As punishment, they ordered the Chareidi soldiers to strip down to their underwear and lie on their backs on their beds inside the tent. For young men raised in a culture of tzni’us, where modesty is a deeply held Torah value, this was not merely a harsh military punishment—it was a calculated attack on their religious sensibilities. The recruits reported feeling profoundly degraded. Making matters worse, the commanders involved reportedly attempted to cover up the incident entirely.

In a separate incident, one of the commanders entered the shul on the base during Shacharis—during the morning prayers—and demanded that several soldiers stop davening and perform push-ups in the middle of tefillah. The sheer contempt embedded in this act is staggering. Entering a place of prayer and ordering soldiers to do physical exercises during their conversation with the Ribbono Shel Olam is not a matter of military discipline. It is an act of religious harassment, plain and simple.

Following these incidents, some of the recruits were summoned to a meeting with the base commander and a colonel, where they were informed that the command staff had been replaced and the offending commanders suspended. The IDF Spokesperson confirmed that the incident was immediately investigated and that the commander in question was disciplined by the head of the Personnel Directorate and removed from his position.

These abuses are real, they are painful, and they are unacceptable. The Chareidi community has every right to feel outraged by them. But—and this is the critical point—outrage must be channeled through Torah-appropriate means.

Peaceful Protest—Yes. Violence—Never.

There is nothing wrong with peaceful, dignified protest. The Torah world has a right—indeed, an obligation—to advocate for the protection of its young men in the military. Demonstrations that are orderly, respectful, and conducted with derech eretz can be a legitimate vehicle for making the community’s voice heard. Tefillah gatherings, public statements from Gedolim, political advocacy, and legal action are all appropriate responses to genuine grievances.

But the moment—the very moment—that a protest descends into violence, into the chasing and terrorizing of young women, into the destruction of property, into the burning of a motorcycle that contained tefillin and a siddur—at that moment, the protest has not merely crossed a line. It has become the problem. It has become a chillul Hashem that dwarfs whatever grievance it sought to address.

And when our own engage in such horrifyingly ugly behavior, any protests in the vicinity must stop immediately. To continue protesting while such acts are taking place is to become complicit in the chillul Hashem. Whenever it is possible to minimize a chillul Hashem, we are obligated to do so—this principle is found throughout the poskim (see, for example, Chasam Sofer, OC Vol. I #61). Continuing to demonstrate while fellow Jews are overturning police cars and setting fires does not minimize the chillul Hashem—it amplifies it beyond measure.

The Gemara (Kiddushin 40a) teaches: Ain makifin b’chillul Hashem—Hashem does not extend credit when it comes to chillul Hashem. The consequences are immediate. We cannot afford to let this continue.

A Call to the Torah Community

We live in an era when the eyes of the world are upon us. Every act of a visibly Jewish person is scrutinized, recorded, and broadcast globally within minutes. The Pri Megadim warns us that dishonesty can convert the very Torah a person has learned into an instrument of chillul Hashem. How much more does violence accomplish this terrible transformation?

The Chareidi community’s legitimate concerns about the draft, about the IDF’s treatment of religious soldiers, and about the preservation of the olam haTorah are deeply important. But they must be advanced through means that bring honor to Hashem’s Name, not shame. The path forward is the path described by Shlomo HaMelech: Deracheha darchei no’am v’chol nesivoseha shalom.

We must demand of ourselves a higher standard. We must hold our community accountable when that standard is violated. And we must ensure that the next time the world hears about the Jews of Bnei Brak, it is because of an act of extraordinary Kiddush Hashem—not because of images that make us weep with shame.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

(AP) – Two golfers in Washington, D.C., sued the federal government on Friday to try to prevent the Trump administration from overhauling a more than 100-year-old public golf course, accusing the administration of violating environmental laws and polluting a park that is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The suit is the latest in a series of legal battles challenging President Donald Trump’s extraordinary efforts to put his mark on public spaces in the nation’s capitol, including shuttering the Kennedy Center.

At the end of last year, a group of preservationists filed a similar lawsuit seeking to prevent the administration from demolishing the East Wing of the White House in order to build a ballroom — a project slated to cost $400 million.

Trump, who is an avid golfer himself, also plans on renovating a military golf course just outside of Washington that has been used by past presidents going back decades.

The complaint filed against the Department of the Interior on Friday says that the Trump administration’s reconstruction of East Potomac Park — which includes the East Potomac Golf Course — would violate the congressional act that created the park in 1897. The roughly 130-year-old act established the park for the “recreation and the pleasure of the people.”

The golf course, which has since been recognized on the National Register of Historic Places in part for its efforts to racially integrate in the 1940s. Municipal golf courses make up only 18% of courses in America.

“East Potomac Golf Links is a testament to what’s possible with public land and why public spaces matter,” said Washington resident and plaintiff Dave Roberts. “It deserves better than becoming a dumping ground for waste and yet another private playground for the privileged and powerful.”

The lawsuit came after the Trump administration in December ended a lease agreement the nonprofit National Links Trust held for East Potomac and two other golf courses in Washington. The Interior Department said it did so because the nonprofit hadn’t implemented required capital improvements and failed to meet the terms of the lease.

The Interior Department press office said in an email Friday that it doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

However, it said it would “ensure these courses are safe, beautiful, open, affordable, enjoyable and accessible for people visiting the greatest capital city in the world which is in line with President Trump’s agenda.”

The White House also didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment on Friday evening.

Construction on the East Potomac course has already begun, according to the lawsuit. In October, the National Parks Service began dumping debris from the demolition of the East Wing of the White House onto the golf course, the complaint said, raising concerns that the materials could contain contaminants that could pollute the air.

As a result, the plaintiffs argued, the administration of also violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to consider the harmful environmental impacts of the project.

The National Links Trust said in December they were “devastated” by the decision to terminate the lease and defended their management of the courses.

They said $8.5 million had gone toward capital improvements at the courses and that rounds played and revenue had more than doubled in their tenure managing the courses. They also added that the termination of the lease jeopardized hundreds of local jobs.

The nonprofit has agreed to keep managing the courses for the time being, but long-term renovations will stop.

The first 18 holes of the East Potomac Park Golf Course were built from 1918 to 1923.

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Barack Obama addressed long-running speculation about extraterrestrial life during a recent podcast appearance, joking about aliens while dismissing the idea of a government cover-up.

Speaking on Brian Tyler Cohen’s podcast, the 44th president was asked directly whether he believes aliens exist.

“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama answered.

He also rejected claims that extraterrestrials are being concealed at the Nevada military installation commonly known as Area 51.

“There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States,” Obama continued.

Cohen followed up by asking what question first came to Obama’s mind after he entered the Oval Office. Obama said even then, the topic of aliens came up — though in jest.

“Uh, where are the aliens?” he joked.

The interview marked another occasion in which Obama has publicly discussed the possibility of life beyond Earth.

In a 2021 appearance on “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” Obama recalled that shortly after becoming president, he inquired whether the government had secret information about extraterrestrials or was studying them in a hidden facility. According to Obama, he was informed that no such program existed.

At the same time, Obama acknowledged that U.S. officials have taken seriously reports of unusual aerial objects that defy easy explanation.

“There is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are,” he said. “We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. I think people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is.”

Following Obama’s remarks, Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy posed a question to President Joe Biden about unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP.

“What do you think that it is?”

Biden replied, “I would ask (Obama) again.”

Interest in UAPs has grown significantly in recent years, drawing increased scrutiny from lawmakers and federal agencies. In 2023, Congress approved the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act, and the Department of War established the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office to examine reports of unexplained sightings across air, land, sea, and space domains.

{Matzav.com}

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s top diplomat was traveling Sunday from Tehran to Geneva where the second round of nuclear negotiations with the U.S. will take place, Iranian state media reported.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and his delegation left for the Swiss city after the first round of indirect talks took place in Oman last week. Oman will mediate the talks in Geneva, the IRNA state-run news agency reported on its Telegram channel.

Similar talks last year broke down after Israel launched what became a 12-day war on Iran, that included the U.S. bombing Iranian nuclear sites.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to use force to compel Iran to agree to constrain its nuclear program. Iran has said it would respond with an attack of its own. Trump has also threatened Iran over its deadly crackdown on recent nationwide protests.

Gulf Arab countries have warned that any attack could spiral into another regional conflict.

The Trump administration has maintained that Iran can have no uranium enrichment under any detail, which Tehran says it will not agree to.

Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but officials however have increasingly threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. Before the war in June, Iran has been enriching uranium up to 60% purity, just a short technical step away from weapons-grade levels.

Araghchi is also expected to meet with his Swiss and Omani counterparts, as well as the director general of the U.N.’s atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Earlier on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington remains interested in a diplomatic solution to ending its differences with Tehran, and that President Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were currently traveling for the new round of talks.

Trump said Friday the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, was being sent from the Caribbean to the Mideast to join other military assets the U.S. has built up in the region. He also said a change in power in Iran “would be the best thing that could happen.”

Rubio said recent military deployments in the Middle East were a protective measure aimed at shoring up the defenses of U.S. facilities and interests. Iran has threatened to attack U.S. bases in the region if Washington decides to strike. Tehran in June attacked the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, though no American or Qatari personnel were harmed.

“No one’s been able to do a successful deal with Iran, but we’re gonna try,” said Rubio at a news conference after meeting with Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico in Bratislava. “We are focused on negotiations.” Trump in recent weeks has suggested that his priority is for Iran to scale back its nuclear program, while Iran has said it wants talks to solely focus on the nuclear program. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who earlier this week met Trump in Washington, has been pressing for a deal that would neutralize Iran’s ballistic missile program and end its funding for proxy groups such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

A fierce political firestorm erupted Sunday night following the chaos in Bnei Brak, as Shas chairman Aryeh Deri and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett launched blistering public attacks against each other in a highly charged exchange posted on X.

In the aftermath of violent unrest in the chareidi city, Bennett quickly traveled to Bnei Brak, where he filmed himself on the streets — a calculated effort to energize his reelection campaign while aligning himself with some of Israel’s most outspoken anti-chareidi voices.

Deri responded with an fiery demand.

“I call on the Police Commissioner to immediately issue a restraining order barring Naftali Bennett from the streets of Bnei Brak.

This inciter and agitator came to the city with the goal of inflaming tensions and exploiting a painful situation to scrape together votes for himself.”

Bennett did not hold back.

“I didn’t understand who’s even questioning him.

Look, the problem isn’t Deri, who’s gotten used to acting like he owns the country — it’s Netanyahu, who handed it to him.

When Deri calls on healthy chareidi young men not to dare enlist to help IDF soldiers, Netanyahu stays silent, backs him up, and advances a draft law that abandons our soldiers.

Every soldier — every woman and every man — should be able to walk freely anywhere in the State of Israel without fear.

Let the rioters be the ones who are afraid.

We are returning to run the country.”

Deri escalated further, blasting Bennett in personal terms and declaring:

“This despicable individual, who stops at nothing, is the last person who should be present in this arena.”

YWN NOTE: Bennett only became Prime Minister because of his coalition with Arab parties, effectively enabling and strengthening their influence in Israel. His partnership with leftist factions and Arab parties has undermined our community’s political strength and ideology. His partner was – and still conues to be – Yar Lapid. A self hating jew and a terrible Rasha.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

MUNICH (AP) — A top European Union official on Sunday rejected the notion that Europe faces “civilizational erasure,” pushing back at criticism of the continent by the Trump administration.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas addressed the Munich Security Conference a day after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a somewhat reassuring message to European allies. He struck a less aggressive tone than Vice President JD Vance did in lecturing them at the same gathering last year but maintained a firm tone on Washington’s intent to reshape the trans-Atlantic alliance and push its policy priorities.

Kallas alluded to criticism in the U.S. national security strategy released in December, which asserted that economic stagnation in Europe “is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.” It suggested that Europe is being enfeebled by its immigration policies, declining birth rates, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition” and a “loss of national identities and self-confidence.”

“Contrary to what some may say, woke, decadent Europe is not facing civilizational erasure,” Kallas told the conference. “In fact, people still want to join our club and not just fellow Europeans,” she added, saying she was told when visiting Canada last year that many people there have an interest in joining the EU.

Kallas rejected what she called “European-bashing.”

“We are, you know, pushing humanity forward, trying to defend human rights and all this, which is actually bringing also prosperity for people. So that’s why it’s very hard for me to believe these accusations.”

In his conference speech, Rubio said that an end to the trans-Atlantic era “is neither our goal nor our wish,” adding that “our home may be in the Western hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe.”

He made clear that the Trump administration is sticking to its guns on issues such as migration, trade and climate. And European officials who addressed the gathering made clear that they in turn will stand by their values, including their approach to free speech, climate change and free trade.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Saturday that Europe must defend “the vibrant, free and diverse societies that we represent, showing that people who look different to each other can live peacefully together, that this isn’t against the tenor of our times.”

“Rather, it is what makes us strong,” he said.

Kallas said Rubio’s speech sent an important message that America and Europe are and will remain intertwined.

“It is also clear that we don’t see eye to eye on all the issues and this will remain the case as well, but I think we can work from there,” she said.

TEHRAN (VINnews) — Iran is prepared to discuss compromises to reach a nuclear deal with the United States if Washington is willing to negotiate on sanctions, Iran’s deputy foreign minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi told the BBC. He said the ball is “in America’s court” to prove it wants a deal and highlighted Tehran’s offer to dilute its 60% enriched uranium as a sign of flexibility.

U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have said Iran is the primary obstacle to progress. Indirect talks resumed earlier this month in Oman, with a second round scheduled in Geneva. Takht-Ravanchi described the initial discussions as “more or less positive” but cautioned it was too early to judge.

The Iranian official also reiterated Tehran’s refusal to discuss its ballistic missile program, criticized U.S. messages supporting regime change, and warned that further American military buildup in the region could trigger a strong response, according to the BBC.

(JNS) – The Israeli government on Sunday approved the construction of an international airport in the Negev Desert, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.

The airport, which will be located at the Ziklag archaeological site, 17 miles northwest of Beersheva between the cities of Netivot and Rahat, will be a “tremendous engine” for the development of the Negev, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The move will boost “employment, accessibility and tourism alongside complementary infrastructure, such as roads and railways, as well as various ancillary industries and businesses that spring up around an airport,” the prime minister told reporters at Sunday’s Cabinet meeting.

The premier thanked Transportation Minister Miri Regev, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and “southern man” Almog Cohen, a former deputy minister in the PMO, who he said “never stops urging me to advance this tremendous engine for developing the Negev.”

“They all worked hand in hand to bring this important decision to a government vote today. I instructed that it be advanced as quickly as possible, and with God’s help, that’s what we’ll do,” said Netanyahu.

The government also gave the green light for advancing plans to build an airport in the north, in the Jezreel Valley near Ramat David Airbase.

“Only in this way will we be able to provide a real solution to the growing demand from tourists and the air traffic of many millions who arrive in Israel each year—and many more who will come—as well as Israeli citizens who fly abroad,” Netanyahu said in remarks to the press.

“These are two truly enormous growth engines for the State of Israel— in the north and in the south. Both will be established in parallel as quickly as possible,” the premier vowed.

The future airports are intended to alleviate congestion at the Jewish state’s main international gateway, Ben-Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, located some 55 miles and 70 miles away, respectively.

Israel’s main travel hub has an annual passenger capacity of 40 million. Some 24 million passengers traveled through the airport in the record-breaking year for tourism in 2019, including over 4.5 million tourists.

I’m a regular frum working man living here in Lakewood with my family. For many years, I’ve been davening at home — putting on tallis and tefillin in my living room and doing Mincha and Maariv wherever I happened to be.

Recently, I was inspired to start davening with a minyan.

Because of my very erratic schedule, there is really only one place in my area that works for me — a shul that has many minyanim throughout the day and later Shacharis times.

After a few days of davening there, I noticed a large sign that said:

“Anyone davening here must come with a hat and suit. If this is too hard for you, don’t daven here.”

I felt extremely uncomfortable. I spent the entire davening waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and ask me to leave.

I understand kavod for davening, and I truly respect that. I’m not writing this with bitterness. But since when did we start gatekeeping our minyanim?

Each time I came, I was dressed respectfully — dress pants, proper shoes, and either a dress shirt or a polo shirt. This is how I attend business meetings. I don’t own a hat. I haven’t owned one since my bar mitzvah more than twenty years ago. I generally don’t wear suits.

Outside of our specific community, a very large percentage of frum Jews do not wear a hat. Are we really limiting participation in a minyan only to those who look exactly like us?

What happens when someone comes to visit from out of town?

When I saw that sign, I felt a lot of my inspiration fade away. I am still going to try to continue davening with a minyan, but with that shul effectively off limits to me, I honestly don’t know how long that will be realistic.

I can’t claim to fully understand the ways of Shamayim, but I couldn’t help thinking what happens when the Rav of that shul comes up after 120. He may see “not doing tefillah b’tzibbur” on the scale.

“But I never missed a minyan in my life,” he might say.

“But you hung up that sign in your shul,” they may reply.

I hope this can start a thoughtful and honest conversation about how we welcome every Yid who is simply trying to be zocheh to Tefillah B’Tzibbur.

TLS welcomes your letters by submitting them to us via  Whatsapp  or via email  [email protected]

President Donald Trump is pointing to a decline in mortgage rates since his return to the White House, contrasting current figures with higher borrowing costs during Joe Biden’s administration and framing the change as a sign of economic improvement.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump shared a graphic claiming that mortgage rates now stand at 5%, compared with levels of 6%, 7%, and 8% under Biden. The source of the specific numbers cited in the post was not immediately identified.

When Biden entered office in January 2021, mortgage rates were hovering near record lows, with the average 30-year fixed loan at roughly 2.7%. Over the following two years, however, rates climbed steeply as inflation accelerated and the Federal Reserve responded with a series of sharp interest rate hikes. By 2023, mortgage rates had risen above 7%, reaching their highest point in more than 20 years.

Although rates moderated somewhat in 2024, they remained well above the historic lows seen earlier in the decade.

Since Trump took office again in January 2025, borrowing costs for home loans have edged down slightly, with average 30-year rates settling into the low-6% range in the opening weeks of 2026.

Financial analysts caution that while presidential administrations can shape broader economic policy, mortgage rates are influenced primarily by inflation expectations, movements in the bond market, and decisions made by the Federal Reserve. As a result, they are not determined by the actions of any one president alone.

“Joe Biden’s inflation crisis crushed the dream of homeownership for millions of Americans — but President Trump is bringing it back,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News.

“Thanks to the President’s successful economic policies, unnecessary red tape is being cut at a historic pace, borrowing costs are easing, and income growth is outpacing home price gains — finally making housing more affordable again.”

Leavitt added: “President Trump knows America is strongest when it’s a nation of owners, not renters, and he is determined to unlock that opportunity for as many American families as possible.”

NEW YORK (AP) — For years, it was a daily McDonald’s trip for a cup of coffee with 10 sugars and five creams. Later, it was Starbucks caramel macchiatos with almond milk and two pumps of syrup.

Coffee has been a morning ritual for Chandra Donelson since she was old enough to drink it. But, dismayed by rising prices, the 35-year-old from Washington, D.C., did the unthinkable: She gave it up.

“I did that daily for years. I loved it. That was just my routine,” she says. “And now it’s not.”

Years of steadily climbing coffee prices have some in this country of coffee lovers upending their habits by nixing café visits, switching to cheaper brews or foregoing it altogether.

Coffee prices in the U.S. were up 18.3% in January from a year ago, according to the latest Consumer Price Index released on Friday. Over five years, the government reported, coffee prices rose 47%.

That extraordinary rise has brought some to take extraordinary measures.

“Before, I thought, ‘There’s no way I could make it through my day without coffee,’” says Liz Sweeney, 50, of Boise, Idaho, a former “coffee addict” who has cut her consumption. “Now my car’s not on automatic pilot.”

Sweeney used to have three cups of coffee at home each day and stop at a café whenever she left the house. As prices climbed last year, though, she nixed coffee shop visits and cut her intake to a cup a day at home. To make up for the caffeine, she pops open a can of Diet Coke at home or rolls through McDonald’s for one.

Dan DeBaun, 34, of Minnetonka, Minnesota, has likewise trimmed back on coffee shop visits, conscious of the increasing expense as he and his wife save up for a house.

“What used to be a $2 coffee, it’s now $5, $6,” says DeBaun, who now buys ground coffee at Trader Joe’s and fills up a travel mug to bring to the office.

Data from Toast, a payment platform used by more than 150,000 restaurants, found the median price of a regular hot coffee in the U.S. had climbed to $3.61 in December, with wide variation by location. The median price of cold brews was $5.55.

Virtually all coffee consumed in the U.S. is imported. Though tariffs affected some imports of coffee in 2025, they ultimately were removed. Climate issues — drought in Vietnam, heavy rain in Indonesia, and hot, dry weather in Brazil — are blamed for reducing yields of coffee crops and driving up global prices.

Two-thirds of Americans drink coffee daily, according to the National Coffee Association. For many, it is such an indispensable part of their routine, the soaring price has led to nothing more than grumbling.

The coffee association says its surveys show coffee consumption is broadly holding steady despite price hikes. But, squeezed by the cost of everything from rent to beef, others are shaking up their habit.

Sharon Cooksey, 55, of Greensboro, North Carolina, was visiting her local Starbucks most weekday mornings for a caramel latte until scaling back last year. First, she switched to brewing Starbucks at home. Then, she discovered Lavazza coffee was about 40% cheaper and switched to it.

“I can buy a bag of coffee for $6?” she said to herself. “It was like I had just discovered another world. The multiverse opened up to me in the coffee aisle of Publix.”

She has noticed her home-brewed costs tick upward, too, but it’s nothing compared to her café habit. A bag of beans that lasts weeks costs her about the same as one latte.

Cooksey misses the social aspect of visiting the café, where baristas greeted her by name. But she’s been surprised to find she actually prefers the way her homemade coffees taste.

“I’ll be damned if it didn’t taste so good,” she says.

Growing up, Donelson watched enviously as her mother made a daily coffee jaunt (also to McDonald’s, also 10 sugars and five creams), and she duplicated the habit. She went from college to the Air Force to a government job as a data and artificial intelligence strategist, but through it all, coffee was there.

She noticed the growing expense of her routine, but kept it up until a government shutdown halted her paychecks last fall and she needed to trim her spending. Looking for a morning substitute, she landed on a Republic of Tea blend with a healthy squeeze of honey.

“Twenty cents a cup compared to $7 or $8 a cup,” she says. “The math just makes sense.”

YS GOLD 

With the Chasuna season this Adar and the ensuing Pesach season right around the corner, Ben Melech, Boro Park's premier shtreimel outlet, has announced an unprecedented sale beginning this Sunday morning and lasting only two weeks. 

During this sale, customers--who have already become accustomed to the supreme quality and beauty of a "Ben Melech Shtreimel" - will be able to acquire a beautiful shtreimel for under $1000! In addition, the popular "Majestic" is now steeply discounted at $1799!

This sale is not to be missed, and probably won't return for a while. 

Hurry into Ben Melech at 5019 New Utrecht Avenue between the hours of 2:00 and 7:00 in the afternoon, and walk into your wedding or Yom Tov like a true "Ben Melech."

A lapse in funding for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security took effect early on Shabbos morning, triggering a partial shutdown that directly affects airport security operations nationwide and raising concerns about potential travel disruptions.

The agency oversees the Transportation Security Administration, which is responsible for screening passengers and luggage at commercial airports across the country. With DHS funding now expired, TSA officers are required to report to work without pay while Congress remains at an impasse over the department’s annual budget.

Many travelers are uneasy, recalling the 43-day federal shutdown last year that caused significant flight cancellations and lengthy delays at airports nationwide.

Although TSA officers also remained on duty during the previous record-long shutdown that concluded Nov. 12, aviation analysts say this latest funding lapse could unfold differently.

Industry associations representing airlines and the broader travel sector cautioned that prolonged funding uncertainty could translate into longer security lines at airports, particularly as the spring travel season ramps up.

Homeland Security funding expired at midnight, but the remainder of the federal government continues to be funded through Sept. 30.

As a result, air traffic controllers employed by the Federal Aviation Administration will continue receiving pay, reducing the likelihood of widespread cancellations tied directly to air traffic staffing shortages.

Under DHS’ contingency plan, roughly 95% of TSA personnel are classified as essential employees and must continue working despite the funding lapse.

Democratic lawmakers in both the House and Senate have stated that they will withhold support for additional DHS funding unless new limits are imposed on federal immigration enforcement operations.

Historically, the effects of government shutdowns on air travel have intensified gradually rather than immediately.

For example, about a month into last year’s shutdown, TSA temporarily shut down two security checkpoints at Philadelphia International Airport.

On that same day, federal authorities directed commercial airlines to scale back their domestic flight schedules in an extraordinary move to manage disruptions.

John Clark, who arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after a business trip to Mississippi, said he experienced complications during the previous shutdown and remains concerned about the current situation.

“You might not be able to get home if you’re already out, or it might delay if you worked all week and you’re trying to get home,” said Clark, who frequently travels for his job balancing machines. “It’s really bad.”

John Rose, chief risk officer at global travel management firm Altour, warned that operational strains could surface more quickly this time, noting that TSA workers still remember the financial strain of the prior shutdown.

“It’s still fresh in their minds and potentially their pocketbooks,” Rose said.

Security bottlenecks could arise unpredictably, making it difficult to forecast when or where delays might occur.

At smaller airports with only one security checkpoint, even a small number of unexpected TSA absences could quickly result in longer lines.

For that reason, travel experts advise passengers to build extra time into their airport arrival plans.

“I tell people to do this even in good times,” Rose said.

Although air traffic controllers remain on the job, specialists say flight delays remain possible.

Airlines could opt to hold departures temporarily to allow additional time for passengers to clear security screening, said Rich Davis, senior security adviser at risk mitigation firm International SOS.

Staffing shortfalls among TSA officers may also slow the behind-the-scenes inspection of checked baggage.

Burnest R. Green, who traveled from Phoenix to Detroit to celebrate his sister’s 70th birthday, said he hopes lawmakers resolve the shutdown before his return flight next week.

“I just hope that things start to get better before they get any worse,” he said.

While most airports publish estimated security wait times on their websites, Rose cautioned travelers not to rely on last-minute checks.

“You may look online and it says two-and-a-half hours,” he said. “Now it’s two-and-a-half hours before your flight and you haven’t left for the airport yet.”

Passengers are also encouraged to be mindful when packing, as prohibited items can slow the screening process.

For carry-on luggage, travelers should avoid bringing full-size shampoo bottles, large quantities of liquids, oversized gels, aerosols, and items such as pocketknives.

TSA maintains a detailed list on its website outlining what items are permitted in both carry-on and checked baggage.

Once at the airport, Rose urged travelers to remain understanding toward security staff.

“Not only are they not getting paid,” he said of TSA agents, “they’re probably working with reduced staff and dealing with angry travelers.”

Negotiations between the White House and Democratic lawmakers continued through the week, but no agreement was reached before senators and House members were scheduled to leave Washington for a 10-day recess.

Lawmakers were advised, however, that they could be called back to the Capitol should a deal materialize.

Democrats have insisted that they will not approve additional DHS funding until new immigration enforcement restrictions are enacted following last month’s fatal shooting of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.

In a joint statement, U.S. Travel, Airlines for America and the American Hotel & Lodging Association cautioned that the shutdown could significantly disrupt air travel as spring break approaches.

“Travelers and the U.S. economy cannot afford to have essential TSA personnel working without pay, which increases the risk of unscheduled absences and call outs, and ultimately can lead to higher wait times and missed or delayed flights,” the statement said.

There is a conversation quietly unfolding in our community that cuts across lines of background and affiliation. It is heard in yeshivish homes and modern ones, among families who are comfortable and those who are struggling. It comes up at Shabbos tables, in carpools, and in school hallways.The question is simple, yet difficult to answer: Why are we sending eighteen-year-old girls to a foreign country for an entire year?

Ask thoughtful parents for a calm, principled explanation, and many find themselves at a loss. They know it’s what is expected and it’s what “everyone does.” But when pressed to articulate why, beyond habit and social momentum, an explanation is nowhere to be found.

It was not always this way. There was a time when a year in Israel was a genuine choice, not an automatic next step. It was suited for certain girls who needed the experience, who were particularly motivated, or who were seeking something specific. Most girls stayed home, and no one saw that as a failure or a compromise. Families did not assume enormous financial burdens, and remaining in one’s community was considered normal and respectable. Seminary was an option, not a standard.

Over time, in many circles, that option became an expectation. And once something is assumed, it develops its own gravity. Comparison enters, acceptance letters become symbols, costs rise, and conversations that should be about growth and readiness instead become about rankings and reputations. The focus moves from what is right for this particular girl to where she “got in.” Alongside this come painful moments: the girl who was rejected, the girl whose parents cannot afford it, the girl who stays home and feels set apart or left out. It is fair to ask whether this is what chinuch was meant to produce.

The financial reality cannot be ignored. A year of seminary often equals or exceeds several years of high school tuition. Parents borrow, deplete savings, and stretch themselves far beyond what is healthy. When a family says, “We can’t afford it,” that statement should carry no embarrassment. Mortgages, groceries, and tuition for multiple children are real obligations. Financial responsibility is not a reflection of diminished commitment.

There is also an emotional cost. At eighteen, identity is still forming. When acceptances become markers of worth, girls absorb the message that their value is tied to an institution’s decision. Rejection feels personal. Staying home feels like settling. These impressions can shape self-perception long after the year ends. That is a heavy burden to place on young people who are still discovering who they are.

None of this is meant to deny the real benefits of a year in Eretz Yisroel. Many girls grow from the experience. But it is not the only path to growth. A bas Yisroel can develop beautifully in Lakewood, Chicago, Los Angeles, Monsey, or any community where Torah is lived sincerely. In earlier decades, Israel offered an environment that was markedly different from American life: simpler material conditions, exposure to talmidei chachamim who were rarely encountered elsewhere, and an intensity in ruchniyus that felt unique. Today, many American communities have strong schools, vibrant kollelim, and serious learning. In some cases, the level of gashmiyus is more restrained than people assume, while parts of Yerushalayim now offer comforts that exceed what these girls leave behind.

Cultural patterns rarely change through protest. They shift when enough families quietly decide to act in line with their values. Imagine parents calmly saying, “We are grateful for what exists, but please stop presenting seminary in Israel as the only respectable path.” Imagine if teachers consistently reinforced that staying home can be honorable, that financial responsibility reflects maturity, and that one size does not fit all. The pressure would ease almost immediately.

The truth is that many people question the system, but few feel comfortable doing so publicly. Even fewer feel comfortable doing something about it. As a result, the illusion persists. Parents are not naïve. They want the best for their children. They worry about limiting opportunities and about social consequences. Those fears are human. But fear should not define communal norms. Conviction should.

If seminary in Israel is a thoughtful, intentional choice for a particular daughter, that can be beautiful. But if it is driven primarily by pressure or status, it deserves honest reconsideration.

If enough families reach that clarity, this conversation will no longer be discussed in kitchens and carpools. It will simply become part of a healthier, more honest communal understanding of what growth and responsibility truly mean.

Signed,

S. Shapiro

The views expressed in this letter are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of YWN. Have an opinion you would like to share? Send it to us for review.

(AP) – President Donald Trump’s administration cannot force states to hand over detailed information on people who have applied for or received aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a judge said in a tentative ruling Friday.

San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney last year blocked the U.S. Department of Agriculture from requiring states to provide the data, including on the immigration status of people who receive benefits and applicants, after 22 states sued over the policy.

The department kept pushing for it, telling states in December that it would stop paying state administrative costs for the program if they didn’t comply. It also issued new protocols for securing the data, which the states rejected.

The federal government said the previous ruling did not apply to its latest demands.

Chesney said during a hearing Friday that she intends to issue an order that says the federal government cannot act on its letters to the states from last year.

The Trump administration contends that the information is needed to stamp out fraud and waste, which it asserts is a major problem in the nation’s biggest food aid program.

The states argued that the Agriculture Department could share the data with immigration enforcement authorities, which they say would be illegal.

SNAP is a major part of the U.S. social safety net, helping about 42 million Americans, about 1 in 8, buy groceries. People in the country illegally are not eligible for benefits.

Most states, including one that sued — Nevada — have complied with the federal government’s request. Kansas has not complied, but also has not joined the lawsuit. All the states involved in the lawsuit, besides Nevada, have Democratic governors.

The administration has not released detailed information on the data submitted by states, but says it shows higher levels of fraud than previously believed.

The battle over SNAP records is one of several areas where the administration has sought to cut off some federal funding to states led by Democrats, often in the name of preventing fraud.

President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu reached an understanding during a White House meeting Wednesday that Washington will take steps aimed at cutting back Iran’s oil exports to China, according to a report by Axios citing two U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.

“We agreed that we will go full force with maximum pressure against Iran, for example, regarding Iranian oil sales to China,” Axios reports, quoting a senior U.S. official.

China purchases the vast majority of Iran’s crude oil—more than 80 percent of its total exports—making Beijing the primary source of Tehran’s oil revenue. Any significant disruption to that flow would sharply reduce the income Iran derives from its energy sector.

The renewed focus on oil sanctions comes as diplomatic contacts between Washington and Tehran quietly resumed.

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed an executive order temporarily extending a COVID-19-era state of emergency for 45 days, allowing certain health care professionals more time to comply with new supervision requirements.

The order extends the emergency originally declared under former Governor Phil Murphy’s similar order in 2020. The order had been set to expire at 5pm on February 16 but will now remain in effect until 5pm on April 2.

The extension is intended to give advanced practice nurses (APN) and physician assistants (PA) additional time to enter into required joint protocol or delegation agreements with supervising physicians as longstanding emergency provisions wind down.

“With today’s executive order, we are providing more time for advanced practice nurses and physician assistants to adjust to this new regulatory landscape,” Sherrill said in a statement. She added that many health care professionals are facing significant operational changes as pandemic-era flexibilities come to an end.

State officials said the sudden termination of the emergency could disrupt the delivery of health care services, including time-sensitive reproductive care, and potentially force clinics, surgery centers and independent practices to close. They warned that medically underserved communities and patients with serious conditions could be particularly affected.

For the duration of the extended emergency, certain statutory provisions limiting the scope of practice for advanced practice nurses and physician assistants will remain suspended. Provisions related to physicians’ supervisory responsibilities will also continue to be waived as they apply to both physicians and physician assistants.

By Y.M. Lowy

Monday will reach a high of 44 degrees with a low of 36. There is a chance of rain in the morning, followed by a mostly cloudy day.

Tuesday climbs to a high of 49 with a low of 34, with a mix of clouds and sunshine through the day.

Wednesday will have a high of 41 and a low of 35. Skies stay cloudy, with occasional rain and drizzle developing in the afternoon.

Thursday brings a high of 44 and a low of 33, with rain expected through much of the day.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s military said Sunday that up to 8,000 troops are expected to be ready by the end of June for a potential deployment to Gaza as part of a humanitarian and peace mission, the first firm commitment to a critical element of U.S. President Donald Trump’s postwar reconstruction plan.

The Indonesian National Armed Forces, known as TNI, has finalized its proposed troop structure and a timeline for their movement to Gaza, even as the government has yet to decide when the deployment will take place, army spokesperson Brig. Gen. Donny Pramono said.

“In principle, we are ready to be assigned anywhere,” Pramono told The Associated Press, “Our troops are fully prepared and can be dispatched at short notice once the government gives formal approval.”

Pramono said the military prepared a composite brigade of 8,000 personnel, based on decisions made during a Feb. 12 meeting for the mission.

Under the schedule, troops will undergo health checks and paperwork throughout February, followed by a force readiness review at the end of the month, Pramono said. He also revealed that about 1,000 personnel are expected to be ready to deploy as an advance team by April, followed with the rest by June.

Pramono said that being ready does not mean the troops will depart. The deployment still requires a political decision and depends on international mechanisms, he said.

Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry has repeatedly said any Indonesian role in Gaza will be strictly humanitarian. Indonesia’s contribution would focus on civilian protection, medical services, reconstruction, and its troops would not take part in any combat operations or actions that could lead to direct confrontation with armed groups.

Indonesia would be the first country to formally commit troops to the security mission created under Trump’s Board of Peace initiative for Gaza, where a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has held since Oct. 11 following two years of devastating war.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim majority nation, does not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel and has long been a strong supporter of a two-state solution. It has been deeply involved in providing humanitarian aid to Gaza, including funding a hospital.

Indonesian officials have justified joining the Board of Peace by saying it was necessary to defend Palestinian interests from within, since Israel is included on the board but there is no Palestinian representation.

The Southeast Asian country has experience in peacekeeping operations as one of the top 10 contributors to United Nations missions, including in Lebanon.

Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said Sunday that she has not yet examined a reported pardon request for Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, clarifying that any such request would be reviewed according to standard procedures.

Her statement comes amid heightened tensions following remarks by U.S. President Donald Trump, who publicly criticized Israeli President Isaac Herzog over the issue of a potential pardon for Netanyahu.

In a statement issued on her behalf, Baharav-Miara said: “I have not yet examined the prime minister’s pardon request, and it will be reviewed according to the accepted working procedures. Any other publication on the matter is incorrect.”

The attorney general reportedly felt compelled to release the clarification following media reports suggesting she was expected to submit a legal opinion on the matter in the coming weeks.

The controversy erupted after Trump, speaking to reporters outside the White House, was asked whether he believed Netanyahu would receive a pardon. Trump responded affirmatively. Over the weekend, he sharply criticized Herzog, saying, “President Herzog should be ashamed,” and called on him to grant Netanyahu a pardon.

According to reports, anger flared at the President’s Residence following Trump’s remarks. Sources close to Herzog said that “if Netanyahu’s hand is involved in this — that is crossing a red line. We expect clarifications from the prime minister.” Officials at the President’s Residence reportedly view the episode not only as a personal affront to Herzog but also as a serious breach of Israel’s sovereign standing.

In response, Netanyahu’s office said overnight that “President Trump’s statement the other day regarding the pardon was solely his own initiative.”

The Prime Minister’s Office added: “The prime minister heard about it through the media and had no prior knowledge of it, just as he had no prior knowledge of the president’s remarks on the matter in his speech to the Knesset.”

During a press conference at the White House, Trump said of Herzog: “I think the man should be ashamed of himself,” referring to the absence of a pardon for Netanyahu.

Trump also asserted that “the President of Israel, the main power he has is the power to grant pardons, and he doesn’t… he doesn’t want to do it now because he will probably lose his power.”

He continued: “Bibi was a good prime minister during wartime, and I think I was the best friend Israel ever had. People say beyond other presidents they ever had.”

{Matzav.com}

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett traveled to Bnei Brak on Sunday to film a video response following violent unrest in the Chareidi city involving female soldiers and police officers.

The visit came after clashes erupted earlier in the day on Chagai Street, where two female soldiers were surrounded and chased by a large crowd amid rumors that they were distributing draft orders. They were not.

In his remarks in Bnei Brak, Bennett said that the incident reflected growing anger over draft evasion and accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and allied Chareidi parties of failing to address the issue:

“A significant event occurred in Israel. Here, in the heart of the country in Bnei Brak — not in Ramallah — a violent mob chased after IDF female soldiers, humiliated them and tried to lynch them. Not in Shechem, not in Ramallah — here in Bnei Brak, against our soldiers.

This is what happens when people feel that draft evasion is winning. There is an address for this — it did not happen in a vacuum. Netanyahu and the chareidi parties — what did you think would happen? When you turned a blind eye to the cries of ‘We will die and not enlist’ — what did you think would happen?

What did you think would happen when you ignored the violence used against chareidi soldiers who do enlist?

Anyone involved in this incident must be thrown in jail as quickly as possible. And I say this as clearly as possible — under my leadership there will be no room for anarchy or violence. Everyone will serve, everyone will enlist, everyone will uphold the law — and that is how we will unite the State of Israel.”

Earlier, Bennett had also commented on social media, writing that “a bright red line was crossed” and that “we will restore governance to Israel.”

YWN NOTE: Bennett only became Prime Minister because of his coalition with Arab parties, effectively enabling and strengthening their influence in Israel. His partnership with leftist factions and Arab parties has undermined our community’s political strength and ideology. His partner was – and still conues to be – Yar Lapid. A self hating jew and a terrible Rasha.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Immigration and Absorption Minister Ofir Sofer of the Religious Zionism party was recorded criticizing the proposed draft law in a closed-door gathering, warning that advancing the legislation despite opposition from reservists could severely damage the political right.

The recordings were aired Sunday morning on Kan News’ program “Haboker Hazeh” on Reshet Bet. In the audio, Sofer is heard cautioning that pushing forward with the draft law against the will of reserve soldiers would carry heavy political consequences.

“If the law is advanced, against the will and despite the anger of the reservists, the right will be crushed,” Sofer said in the recording. “It will pay an electoral price for it. Certainly in the overall count, and even if you look at more specific frameworks.”

Sofer also addressed the charedi leadership, criticizing the absence of a clear public call from leading rabbis stating that those who are not engaged in full-time Torah study should enlist.

“Why can’t we expect a letter from 25 important rabbis, maybe five, maybe ten leading rabbis, saying that we call on everyone who is learning Torah to continue learning, that no one should get up from the shtender, but whoever is not learning Torah — should enlist? You can’t hear such a thing,” the minister said.

Responding to the recordings, Avigdor Lieberman, chairman of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, said he sees no contradiction between Torah study and military service.

“For me there is no compromise — there is no contradiction between Torah study and military service. All the great leaders of Israel served in the army. There is no contradiction between Torah study and service in the army — Religious Zionism has proven that there is no contradiction. There will not be chief rabbis calling to throw draft orders into the toilet, only rabbis who served,” Lieberman said.

{Matzav.com}

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

Every so often, big companies realize that things are not working so well and they need to retool. With all of the current anti-semitism perhaps it is time to retool our davening a bit – that is to emphasize something that has always been there – but to focus more on it.  The concepts below are based on what this author feels is the most important Siddur that has been published in over one hundred years – since the Otzer HaTefilos siddur was published in 1914 – Siddur Ruach Nachon by Rabbi Shmuel Dov Eisenblatt.

The main idea is that before standing in prayer before HaKadosh Baruch Hu, a person must first resolve to truly fulfill what Hashem commanded us in His Torah (Vayikra 19:18): “Love your fellow as yourself.”

R’ Chaim Vital makes this point emphatically in Sefer HaKavanos (Derushei Kodem HaTefillah, Derush 1). Before arranging one’s Tefillah  — one must first accept upon himself the mitzvah of loving fellow Jews. Only through this will his prayer ascend as an inclusive prayer encompassing all of Israel. Only then can it rise upward. Only then can it bear fruit.

Furthermore, those who study Torah together must see themselves as one body. Each person must view himself as a single limb among his companions. If any one of them is in distress — whether from illness or any other cause — all must share in that distress. They must pray for him. In all of one’s prayers, one must include one’s fellow. All matters of love between companions must be attended to.

The Scope of the Mitzvah

This mitzvah is not a standalone obligation. It encompasses the entire fabric of interpersonal mitzvos: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart.” “You shall love the convert.” “You shall not take revenge.” “You shall not bear a grudge.” “With righteousness shall you judge.” “You shall not stand idly by the blood of your fellow.” “You shall not curse the deaf.” “Before the blind do not place a stumbling block” (Vayikra 19; Oraysa, chapter 2).

When a person awakens himself to love his fellow, he simultaneously arouses himself to fulfill every one of these obligations. This means loving every Jew — regardless of background or affiliation — as he loves himself.

This love, when sincere, transforms one’s entire davening.

A] Feeling the Pain — and the Joy — of Others

Praying Over Their Suffering

This love moves a person to feel the pain of the klal and pray over their suffering.

We find this with Moshe Rabbeinu at the very beginning of his life. The Torah tells us (Shemos 2:11) that “he went out to his brothers and saw their burdens.” Rashi and Sforno explain: he directed his eyes and heart to feel their distress. He chose to look. He chose to feel.

The Gemara (Shabbos 67a) teaches that even a tree that fails to produce fruit is marked with red dye (sikra) so that passersby who see it will daven for it. A metzora , embarrassing though his situation is, must announce his condition so that others will pray for him. The Mishnah in Middos (2:2) records that people would pray for mourners to be comforted and for those who were excommunicated to merit to correct their ways (see also Magen Avraham 215:16; Aruch HaShulchan 215:61). Bearing the burden of one’s fellow is one of the 48 qualities through which Torah is acquired (Avos 6:6).

Rejoicing in Their Good Fortune

This love also moves a person to genuinely rejoice in the good fortune of others. As Dovid HaMelech declared: “The humble shall hear and be glad” (Tehillim 34:3). “Those who fear You shall see me and be glad” (119:74; see Rashi, Bechoros). This includes reciting the appropriate brachos when encountering another’s good fortune. These are lessons rooted in love.

Transforming One’s Kavvanah

When a person does this, something remarkable happens. Most of our tefillos are phrased on behalf of others. Virtually every prayer formula is expressed in the plural. When you genuinely care about the people you are praying for, your kavvanah becomes real and heartfelt.

It is proper to pray over the distress of the Shechinah itself, which is in exile from among the people. One should not merely go through the motions. Rather, one should distribute among them thanksgiving and blessings. One should be among those who give thanks and who bless.

In every section of the Amidah — the granting of understanding, the healing of the sick, every blessing — and especially at its conclusion, one should direct his heart to the welfare of all of Israel. Not merely his own needs. Everything we pray for — the abundance of the years, the gladness of the heart, every source of joy — should be directed toward all of Israel. Even when reciting the name of Hashem, one should sense the distress felt on behalf of others. This is the concept of Rofei Choleh — the Healer of the sick — with comfort. The words are no longer just words. They become a genuine plea for people you actually care about.

The Sin of Failing to Pray for Others

This love also saves a person from a grave sin. The Gemara in Brachos (12b) actually teaches this explicitly: “Whoever is able to ask for mercy on behalf of his fellow and does not do so is called a sinner.” If he is a Torah scholar, the obligation is even greater. He must exert himself to pray on their behalf.

One should pray even regarding troubles that befall others. This is itself the concept of praying for the return of the Shechinah. One should be among those who, as it were, wear sackcloth over the troubles of Israel. Praying specifically over their troubles. On their behalf.

Here is a remarkable principle: one who prays for others while experiencing similar distress himself is answered first.  But make sure that that is not the reason to do it.

As the navi declares (Yeshayahu 63:9): “In all their afflictions, He was afflicted.” The Shechinah itself shares in Israel’s pain. She never ceases to seek mercy and compassion on their behalf. The result? The spirit of rest and comfort descends upon the one who prays for others (Yerushalmi; see also Rav Yaakov Skvira on “A-Kelokim, Tefillah“; Radvaz, Parashas Vayeira, chapter 34).

B] Shattering the Self-Centered Perspective

This love shatters a person’s narrow view of himself. Instead of seeing himself as the center of his own little world, he begins to grasp how small one individual truly is within the vast tapestry of creation. The prayers he offers on behalf of the community take on far greater meaning and urgency.

The Baal HaTanya (Perek 32) makes a striking point:. A person whose prayer goes unanswered may find that the very reason is this: his fellow’s welfare was not on his mind. His heart and intellect were not elevated to include his fellow.

Think about it. If your Tefillah goes unanswered, consider: perhaps it is precisely because you were consumed by your own distress. Perhaps you failed to think about whether another person was also suffering. Perhaps you should have prayed for him. The Torah commands (Vayikra 19:18): “You shall love your fellow as yourself.”

The tzaddik is different. He is not merely preoccupied with his own distress. All of his prayers and supplications are established on behalf of many, in abundance.

The Torah promises (Devarim 13:18): “And He will give you mercy and be compassionate to you.” Those who show compassion to others are shown compassion from Heaven.

And even if a matter does not constitute personal distress for an individual — yet he feels for others — the Gemara still teaches (Berachos 12b) that a person is warned regarding his obligation to pray on behalf of others. How much more so when it costs him nothing!

C] Merging with the Prayers of All Israel

This love enables a person to merge his personal tefillos with the prayers of all of Klal Yisrael. Together, they are elevated as something truly pleasing before Hashem. Together, they can actually bear fruit.

A person should not be like one who lives comfortably and honorably among others yet fails to concern himself with their needs. Their clothing. Their food. Their water. Their sustenance. All the necessities of the community and its welfare. Every individual who lacks resources.

Such a person worries only about himself in his prayers. He does not recognize that he is a member of the greater community. It is not sufficient to think only about the general needs of the community and about peace (Tomer Devorah 3:19). One should reflect even more deeply about the virtue of communal prayer. He must see himself as included in the tzibbur — as a limb within the body (Yerushalmi, Nedarim 9, daf 4).

D] Bonding with Klal Yisrael and Drawing Close to Hashem

The Requirement of Unity

This love draws a person into a deep bond with the totality of the Jewish people. It brings him closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu Himself.

The Sefer HaKavanos explains this (Derush Birchos HaShachar). The Yerushalmi teaches (Pesachim, chapter 4) that the mitzvos require Kohanim, Levi’im, and Yisrael together in a quorum. This is the essential point of inclusive unity in prayer (see also Kitzur Kavanos L’Ramchal, p. 65).

Love of Fellow Jews Opens the Channel to Hashem’s Love

The Ba’al Shem Tov taught a profound insight (Nesiv HaKedushah, in the name of Otzar HaChaim). The verse “Love your fellow as yourself — I am Hashem” should be read as a single, continuous statement.

Love one another — and in that same measure, the love of HaKadosh Baruch Hu will be revealed to you. Your manner of conduct in loving each other is the very channel through which Hashem’s love flows back to you.

One Entity, One Root

All of Israel are one entity. They are rooted in the Shechinah, which is the source of all Jewish souls. She is called “Kneses Yisrael” — the Congregation of Israel — because she gathers all of Israel before HaKadosh Baruch Hu (Zohar, Tikkunei Zohar 21a; Ramchal, chapter 9).

Israel is like a tree with many branches but one single life-force flowing through all of them. Sometimes they are unified. Sometimes they are separate. But the root is one.

Without this connection to the Shechinah, it is impossible to enter before the King. The one who prays and includes all of Israel associates himself with the Shechinah — the very root. Through this, he finds himself standing close before the King (Kavanos 18, pp. 1–4; Derush HaMelech, chapter 4, Sifsei HaTefillah).

Yaakov Avinu and the Twelve Tribes

The Sefer Charadim writes that Yaakov Avinu blessed all twelve tribes only after removing jealousy and hatred from their hearts. He brought them to teshuvah. He unified them as one person with one soul.

Without this, it is impossible to receive the blessing of unity. HaKadosh Baruch Hu does not rest His Shechinah where there is discord (Reishis Chochmah; Zohar HaKadosh, section Alef).

The Deeper Meaning of Shema Yisrael

This, say the Mekubalim, is the deeper meaning of Shema Yisrael. The word “Shema” means to gather — as in “And Shaul gathered the people” (Shmuel I 15:4).

When we recite Shema, we should envision ourselves gathering together with all of the congregation of Israel. We declare in love and with one heart, without jealousy or hatred: “Hear, O Israel!” All of us now accept upon ourselves the yoke of Hashem. “Hashem is our God, Hashem is One.”

Based on the verse (Yeshayahu 45:3, 21): “All of them are called by one name.” Each person’s intention should be that every individual arrive at his proper place in the complete harmony of a wondrous integration. In this way, he completes the rectification of the individual through the rectification of the world. Each person must reach the state of completion.

The 613 Mitzvos — Only Through Unity

As the Sefer Chaim Shmuel explains (chapter 19): “Love your fellow as yourself” — because your fellow is at your side. He is like you. In your wholeness, you are one. There is no one else but you yourself. Like a single entity whose parts complement each other.

This mitzvah encompasses all 613 mitzvos. No single individual can fulfill them all alone. It is only the collective of Israel, united, that embodies the complete Torah. That is the very essence of life.

Blessing Flows Only Where There Is Peace

Finally, the Sefer Charadim writes further that the matter of brachos contains a hidden teaching regarding peace.

The attribute of strict justice (middas ha’din) governs the boundary between kindness and judgment. The essence of blessing is an abundance that overflows beyond that boundary toward goodness.

When the attribute of peace is present — the attribute of chesed — an abundance of blessing flows that surpasses the boundary of nature. But where there is enmity, the flow is blocked.

This is why a shaliach tzibbur who has enemies — or anyone toward whom others bear enmity — should not lead the prayers. Such a person lacks the power to arouse the blessing. The blessing can only flow where there is peace and unity.

As we stand today in the shadow of rising hatred from without, let us ensure that we are not undermined by indifference from within. The Siddur Ruach Nachon reminds us of what the great Mekubalim and Poskim have always known: Tefillah without ahavas Yisrael is like a neshamah without a guf — it has no vessel through which to rise.

Before we utter a single word of the Amidah, before we cry out to Hashem for protection, for parnassah, for refuah — we must first open our hearts to one another. Feel another’s pain. Rejoice in another’s simchah. See ourselves not as isolated individuals whispering private requests, but as living limbs of one body standing before the Ribbono Shel Olam.

If we truly want our tefillos to pierce the heavens, we must first ensure that our hearts are not walled off from our fellow Jews on earth. The channel is clear: love one another — and in that same measure, Hashem’s love flows back to us. In these difficult times, this is not merely a lofty ideal. It is the most urgent and practical retooling we can do.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

As addiction professionals, we’re starting to feel like it’s Purim all year. The only difference? On Purim, we celebrate it. 

Drinking too much? “It’s a mitzvah.” 

Edibles, vapes, or pills? “Come on, it’s Purim.” 

Waking up sick, ashamed, or triggered? “It happens to everyone.” 

But it doesn’t happen to everyone. And for many families, it’s not funny—it’s frightening. For some, it’s not a wild night—it’s a relapse. A blow-up. A child watching adults spiral and quietly learning that this is what simcha looks like. 

This year, Ohel is hosting a different kind of Purim conversation. No finger-wagging. No scare tactics. Just real people, real stories, and a search for something more honest. 

Join us for a one-of-a-kind webinar with Hillel and Shifra Friedman, a couple sharing their journey through addiction, healing, and what Purim now means to them. They’ll talk about pressure, fun, faith, and what it takes to reclaim joy. 

Moderated by David Mandel, CEO, with opening remarks from Dr. Shalom Augenbaum and medical reflections from Dr. Jacob Gohari. 

Wednesday, February 18 at 8:30 PM on Zoom. 

Maybe it’s time to admit that “ad d’lo yada” isn’t for everyone. For some, real simcha is knowing exactly where you stand.

Join the virtual presentation

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said her agency has sweeping authority related to election security, asserting that the Department of Homeland Security can detect “vulnerabilities” in the voting system and take “mitigation measures” to ensure that state and local elections are “run correctly.”

Speaking at a press conference in Arizona while advocating for a nationwide voter identification requirement, Noem contended that election systems fall under DHS’s responsibility to safeguard “critical infrastructure.”

“I would say that many people believe that it may be one of the most important things that we need to make sure we trust, is reliable, and that when it gets to Election Day, that we’ve been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country through the days that we have, knowing that people can trust it,” she said.

Video of her remarks circulated widely on social media Saturday, prompting immediate backlash from Democratic officials and political analysts.

“This is Trump’s idea of democracy: leaders get to select their voters instead of the other way around,” Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote on the social platform X.

The debate comes as the House approved the SAVE America Act on Wednesday, legislation that would require voters in federal elections to present photo identification and provide proof of U.S. citizenship when registering. The bill would also require states to purge non-citizens from their voter rolls if it becomes law.

The measure now heads to the Senate, where similar proposals have previously failed amid Democratic resistance. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has already signaled opposition, casting uncertainty over its chances.

With the bill’s fate unclear, President Trump indicated Friday that he may act unilaterally if Congress does not move forward.

“There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Opponents argue the proposal threatens access to the ballot box and caution that it could strip voting rights from millions of lawful voters, including married women whose current legal names differ from those listed on older documents such as birth certificates or passports.

Noem rejected those concerns during remarks on Friday.

“Each of the arguments laid out to criticize this bill are baseless speculation from the radical left because they want illegal aliens to vote in our elections,” she said.

In recent weeks, Noem has also faced criticism over her comments tied to immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota, particularly after she quickly labeled the actions of two U.S. citizens who were fatally shot by federal agents as “domestic terrorism.”

President Trump has continued to stand by Noem despite bipartisan calls for her resignation or dismissal. David Axelrod, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, suggested on X that her stance on election oversight may help explain that support.

“THIS is why @KristiNoem will remain in place, despite her flagrant, corrupt mismanagement of the @DHS, at least through the midterm elections,” he wrote. “@POTUS wants a loyal apparatchik in place who will do whatever is necessary to ensure ‘the right leaders’ win.”

TEL AVIV, Israel — Tel Aviv police district commander Chaim Saragrof criticized the Israel Defense Forces for failing to coordinate with law enforcement. “The army must coordinate entry into the city,” Saragrof said. “When they enter without coordinating with us, we can only respond.”

Two female soldiers, evacuated from the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak after clashes with residents, told police they had requested not to enter but were ordered to do so by their commanders. “We hid inside trash bins,” one said. “I was unarmed, which was lucky because I couldn’t have used a weapon against them anyway.” She added that she had worn a skirt to avoid confrontation and was warned by a local woman that they were not allowed in the building.

Authorities said the unrest escalated rapidly, including the torching of a police motorcycle. Police are reviewing surveillance footage to identify suspects and emphasized a zero-tolerance policy for disorder.

Saragrof said police would have escorted and supported the soldiers had they been informed in advance, preventing them from entering the city’s most sensitive areas alone.

A book of psalms and a prayer book that were burned in the police motorcycle set on fire by the rioters.

Ironic and terrible. pic.twitter.com/0y52oLK2Lv

— Amit Segal (@AmitSegal) February 15, 2026

NEW YORK (VINnews) — According to a confidential document leaked to the British-based newspaper The Telegraph, activists within the British Green Party are calling to classify Zionism as antisemitism and to support the establishment of a single Palestinian state instead of Israel as a Jewish state. Jewish self-determination, they argue, constitutes a “racist ideology.”

Green Party activists in the UK claim Zionism should be treated as a form of racism, based on an internal party document obtained by the newspaper. Grassroots members of the party are urging that belief in the Jewish right to self-determination be defined as a “racist ideology” in a proposal submitted for party debate.

The document suggests that Israel should not exist, stating that the “only possible solution” is a single Palestinian state. It also argues that the term “antisemitism” should no longer be used, claiming it discriminates against Arabs. Party members hope the proposals will become official policy at the party’s spring conference. While some of the motions may not be discussed due to time constraints, politicians across the political spectrum reportedly rushed to condemn them as “dangerous,” accusing elements within the party of promoting “antisemitic tropes.”

The Green Party has seen a rise in polling since Zack Polanski, who is Jewish but unabashedly anti-Zionist, became leader last September. The party is currently averaging 14.2 percent in polls, less than five points behind Labour and the Conservatives.

One proposal included in the leaked documents, backed by 300 supporters, calls for Zionism to be regarded like “any other form of racism.” The text claims that Zionism “enforces a system of apartheid and Jewish supremacy” over the local population and “deliberately exploits Judaism to justify displacement, rights violations, and systemic violence against Palestinians.”

The author of the proposal argues that those who define Zionism as belief in Israel’s right to exist are using rhetoric similar to that of Afrikaner nationalists in apartheid-era South Africa. “They said the same about apartheid; they too wrapped a system of racial domination and oppression in anti-colonial language. Zionism, like apartheid, denies the local population the right to self-determination through state violence, ethnic cleansing, and the denial of basic rights,” the proposal states.

The leaked document also highlights internal struggles within the Green Party over rejecting the two-state solution and reflects the belief among some members that Israel should not exist at all. In the party’s 2024 general election manifesto, there was no explicit commitment to a two-state solution. A party spokesperson said the Greens’ longstanding position is that “the people of the region should decide for themselves.”

However, the proposal states that “in light of the repeated failures of past negotiations, which have only led to continued oppression, displacement, apartheid, genocide, and crimes against Palestinians, the only viable solution is the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian state.”

Despite the Greens voting in 2024 to support the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement at the party’s Manchester conference, the document claims the party continues to use products and services linked to companies targeted by BDS. The movement calls for economic and cultural boycotts of Israeli goods and services, as well as companies perceived by activists as supporting Israel. The list currently includes Microsoft, Disney, and Coca-Cola.

The proposal, due to be voted on next month, asserts that adopting pro-BDS positions alone is insufficient. “The Green Party must implement BDS internally as well,” the document states. It further calls on the party to produce a report at its annual conference detailing which companies were boycotted and to provide “full disclosure” of alternatives used.

More than 6,000 people were killed in over three days when a Sudanese paramilitary group unleashed “a wave of intense violence … shocking in its scale and brutality” in Sudan’s Darfur region in late October, according to the United Nations.

The Rapid Support Forces’ offensive to capture the city of el-Fasher included widespread atrocities that amount to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, the U.N. Human Rights Office said in a report released on Friday.

“The wanton violations that were perpetrated by the RSF and allied Arab militia in the final offensive on el-Fasher underscore that persistent impunity fuels continued cycles of violence,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.

The RSF and their allied Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, overran el-Fasher, the Sudanese army’s only remaining stronghold in Darfur, on Oct. 26 and rampaged through the city and its surroundings after more than 18 months of siege.

The 29-page U.N. report detailed a set of atrocities that ranged from mass killings and summary executions, sexual violence, abductions for ransom, torture and ill-treatment to detention and disappearances. In many cases, the attacks were ethnicity-motivated, it said.

The paramilitaries’ Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo has previously acknowledged abuses by his fighters, but disputed the scale of atrocities.

‘Like a scene out of a horror movie’

The alleged atrocities in el-Fasher, the provincial capital of North Darfur, mirror a pattern of RSF conduct in its war against the Sudanese miliary. The war began in April 2023 when a power struggle between the two sides exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum and elsewhere across the country.

The conflict created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis with parts of the country pushed into famine. It has also been marked by heinous atrocities which the International Criminal Court said it was investigating as war crimes and crimes against humanity. The RSF was also accused by the Biden administration of carrying out genocide in the ongoing war.

The U.N. Human Rights Office said it documented the killing of at least 4,400 people inside el-Fasher between Oct. 25 and Oct. 27, while more than 1,600 others were killed as they were trying to flee the RSF rampage. The report said it drew its toll from interviews with 140 victims and witnesses which were “are consistent with independent analysis of contemporaneous satellite imagery and video footage.”

In one case, RSF fighters opened fire from heavy weapons on a crowd of 1,000 people sheltering in the Rashid dormitory in el-Fasher university on Oct. 26, killing around 500 people, the report said. One witness was quoted as saying that he saw bodies thrown into the air, “like a scene out of a horror movie,” according to the report.

In another case, around 600 people, including 50 children, were executed on Oct. 26 while taking shelter in the university facilities, the report said.

The report, however, warned that the actual scale of the death toll of the week-long offensive in el-Fasher was “undoubtedly significantly higher.”

The toll does not include at least 460 people who were killed by the RSF on Oct. 28 when they stormed the Saudi Maternity hospital, according to the World Health Organization.

Around 300 people were also killed in RSF shelling and drone attacks between Oct. 23 and Oct. 24 in the Abu Shouk camp for displaced people, 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) northwest of el-Fasher, the U.N. Human Rights Office’ report said.

Woman and girls sexually assaulted

Sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, was apparently widespread during el-Fasher offensive, with RSF fighters and their allied militias targeting women and girls from the African Zaghawa non-Arab tribes over allegations of having links or supporting the miliary, the report said.

Türk, who visited Sudan last month, said survivors of sexual violence recounted testimonies that showed how the practice “was systematically used as a weapon of war.”

The paramilitaries also abducted many people while attempting to flee the city, before releasing them after paying ramson. Thousands have been held in at least 10 detention centers — including the city’s Children Hospital which was turned into a detention facility — run by the RSF in el-Fasher, the report said.

The U.N. Human Rights Office also said it documented 10 detention facilities used by the paramilitaries in el-Fasher, including the Children’s Hospital which was turned into a detention center. Several thousands of people remain missing and unaccounted for, the report said.

The pattern of the RSF offensive on el-Fasher was a mirror of other attacks by the paramilitaries and their allies on the Zamzam camp for displaced people, 15 kilometers (9 miles) south of the city, and on West Darfur’s city of Geneina and the nearby town of Ardamata in 2023, the U.N. Human Rights Office said.

Türk said there were “reasonable grounds” that RSF and their allied Arab militias committed war crimes, and that their acts also amount to crimes against humanity.

He called for holding those responsible — including commanders — accountable, warning that “persistent impunity fuels continued cycles of violence.”

(AP)

Nearly 95 percent of Palestinian illegal entrants apprehended by Israeli security forces along the West Bank seam line during the war have been released without indictment, according to newly published figures.

Military correspondent Doron Kadosh reported on Army Radio that a series of systemic failures within the security establishment has allowed large numbers of illegal entrants to continue crossing the security barrier. Even among those who are caught, only a small fraction ultimately face prosecution.

Official IDF data show that the rate of indictments is extremely low, even compared to the relatively limited number of suspects apprehended by security forces.

In 2025, a total of 6,807 illegal entrants were captured by the IDF and Border Police along the seam line. Of those, indictments were filed against only 405 individuals—approximately 6 percent.

In 2024, security forces detained 10,825 illegal entrants in the same area. Just 334 were prosecuted, representing only 4 percent.

Overall, during the war, about 95 percent of those apprehended were released without trial or formal charges.

Security officials cited several factors contributing to the situation:

First, authorities face significant difficulty in building sufficient evidence against detainees. Even when suspects are caught on the Palestinian side near the barrier, investigators must prove conclusively that they intended to cross into Israeli territory.

Second, there is a severe shortage of investigators in the relevant police and Border Police units tasked with handling these cases.

Third, the Israel Prison Service is facing an acute shortage of detention space. Holding facilities in the West Bank are operating at full capacity, with no available spots. As a result, even when suspects are apprehended, they are often released shortly thereafter due to the lack of space to hold them.

Fourth, coordination problems between various security bodies—particularly with the Defense Ministry—have compounded the issue. According to senior officials familiar with the matter, security personnel from the Defense Ministry’s crossings authority have at times allowed drivers transporting illegal entrants to continue on their way without detaining them and transferring them to police custody. “We are catching only the mosquitoes without draining the swamp,” a senior IDF official charged, criticizing Defense Ministry personnel.

In response, the IDF said it is working in coordination with all security agencies to combat the phenomenon of Palestinian infiltration into Israel and is investing substantial resources in the effort.

The Defense Ministry stated that in every incident in which an infiltrator is caught, the case is reported to law enforcement authorities and both the infiltrator and the driver are detained pending further instructions from enforcement officials.

{Matzav.com}

BENI BRAK, Israel (VINnews) — Aryeh Deri, head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, criticized a mob attack on two female soldiers in Bnei Brak, calling the violence “completely against the teachings of the Torah” and harmful to the Haredi community.

Deri said the actions by a small group of extremists damage the community’s efforts to protect yeshiva students from mandatory military service and tarnish the reputation of the ultra-Orthodox public.

He urged the community to reject such behavior, saying those responsible should be expelled. The statement echoed comments from former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, a spiritual authority for Shas, who also called for condemnation of the attackers.

The attack comes amid ongoing debates in Israel over military conscription and the exemptions granted to yeshiva students.

Now in Bnei Brak: Israeli police arrest an Ultra orthodox woman after clashes broke out against enlistment to the Israeli army pic.twitter.com/EpOAD1k8rv

— Oren Ziv (@OrenZiv_) February 15, 2026

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — The pilot program to integrate women into the armored corps is expected to launch with the upcoming November draft, and tensions are running high.

After a series of rabbis, including the heads of hesder yeshivas, announced they would instruct their students not to enlist in the armored corps if the pilot is not canceled, pre-IDF enlistment candidates have now begun voicing their position. In a letter sent this evening to the IDF Chief of Staff and the Defense Minister, signed by approximately 1,000 candidates for military service from pre-military academies, hesder yeshivas, and advanced yeshivas, the signatories wrote:

“We, pre-enlistment candidates from advanced yeshivas, hesder tracks, and academies across the country, call on you not to yield to external pressures from outside the military, coming from radical feminist organizations that undermine the values of comradeship, professionalism, and the pursuit of victory.”

The candidates added: “Pilot programs in Unit 669, Sayeret Matkal, the Mobility Unit, and others ended in complete failure. The Artillery Corps excluded yeshiva students, and its operational effectiveness has weakened, as has the reserve system. As an armored corps officer yourself, you know that without the pressure of these organizations and High Court rulings, there is no genuine feasibility for integrating women into maneuvering combat forces. It is also clear that these organizations harm females through an immoral experiment that damages their health and dignity.”

In conclusion, the candidates wrote to the Chief of Staff: “If this dangerous move proceeds, we, as observant soldiers, will not be able to serve in this formation and will seek assignment in other units. You have the ability to prevent this dangerous step.”

At least one person was killed in an accident early this morning, sources told TLS.

As first reported on TLS Communities, the accident happened shortly after midnight on Hyson Road, and left the occupants of the vehicle trapped.

Upon arrival, emergency personnel found at least one person deceased.

A utility pole was knocked down in the accident as well, knocking out power in the area.

An investigation is underway.

Two female IDF soldiers were pulled to safety Sunday afternoon after a hostile crowd in Bnei Brak surrounded and attacked them while they were carrying out duties in the city. The confrontation triggered strong condemnations from across the political spectrum, as well as from senior military and law enforcement officials.

According to reports, the soldiers, who serve in the Military Police, had arrived in Bnei Brak to place draft notices in mailboxes. They were met by an enraged group that shouted insults, including branding them “Nazis,” and made attempts to assault them.

Witnesses said a gathering of chareidi bystanders quickly formed, chanting “Nazis” and pressing toward the soldiers. There were also reported efforts to physically harm them. During the unrest, a police motorcycle was set ablaze, and rioters overturned a police van.

Police units rushed to the area and succeeded in extracting the soldiers without injury.

In an official update, police said the two female soldiers had come to the city as part of welfare-related activities connected to their IDF service. Officers evacuated them from the scene as several agitators confronted police and hurled garbage bins into the path of the responding vehicle.

Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz commented: “This is a moral low that has nothing to do with Judaism. The police must enforce the full weight of the law against the perpetrators, and members of the coalition-especially leaders of the haredi community-must strongly condemn this outrageous incident before a disaster happens here.”

Chairman of the Yisrael Beytenu party, MK Avigdor Liberman, said: “What is happening in Bnei Brak is a national disgrace. Anyone who raises a hand against IDF soldiers, male or female, must know that the law will be enforced to the fullest. The excuses are over. Governance must be restored immediately.”

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stated that, “female IDF soldiers being attacked in broad daylight in Bnei Brak is. A bright red line has been crossed here. We will not allow anyone to harm our soldiers.”

The IDF reported that Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, strongly condemns the attack on IDF female soldiers who were carrying out a military mission earlier today in Bnei Brak. Any harm to IDF soldiers by Israeli civilians is a serious crossing of a red line, and action must be taken against the attackers with a firm hand. Lt.Gen. Zamir expects the law to be fully enforced against the perpetrators.”

Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu “strongly condemned” the attack.

“I strongly condemn the violent riots in Bnei Brak against IDF female soldiers and Israeli police officers,” he says in a statement. “This is an extreme minority that does not represent the entire chareidi community.”

He called the attack “a serious matter and completely unacceptable.”

“We will not allow anarchy,” he promised, adding that “we will not tolerate any harm to IDF personnel and security forces who carry out their work with dedication and determination.”

Defense Minister Israel Katz also “strongly condemned” the attack.

“I strongly condemn the violent attack against IDF female soldiers in Bnei Brak by a handful of rioters,” Katz said in a statement.

“Anyone who raises a hand against the security forces, against the soldiers of the IDF, and against Israel Police officers, crosses a red line. Violence against those serving in uniform is a criminal act in every respect, not protest,” he said.

Katz said he calls on chareidi community leaders “to denounce the [attack],” and for law enforcement to “act decisively and bring to justice everyone who took part in the severe attack.”

“The State of Israel will not allow harm to the security forces and will not turn a blind eye to violence of any kind,” he adds.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declared that members of the mob involved in the assault “will pay a heavy price,” while stressing they do not reflect the “vast majority of the Haredi public.” He noted that one police officer was injured during the clashes.

There have been no reports of any arrests.

“I strongly condemn the small group of violent anarchists who attacked female soldiers, injured police officers, and set fire to a police motorcycle in Bnei Brak. These are grave, criminal, and unforgivable acts. Anyone who raises a hand against IDF soldiers or Israel Police officers will pay a heavy price,” says Ben Gvir in a statement.

“At the same time, it is important for me to clarify: This does not represent the chareidi community as a whole. The vast majority of the chareidi public is law-abiding, respects the security forces, and took no part in this violence. We must not allow an extremist fringe to stain an entire community,” he asserts, sending his best wishes to the soldiers and the police officer who was wounded defending them.

Authorities have not released further information regarding the condition of the injured officer.

{Matzav.com}

BNEI BRAK, Israel — Police escorted several female military personnel to safety Sunday after a confrontation with a crowd in the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, officials said.

The soldiers were in the city as part of routine service-related activity when tensions escalated and a group of bystanders began shouting at them and moving toward them in a threatening manner, according to authorities. Officers were called to the scene and removed the soldiers without reported injuries.

During the disturbance, a police motorcycle was set ablaze and a police vehicle was overturned, police said. Some individuals allegedly threw objects and trash bins into the roadway as security forces worked to disperse the crowd. An investigation is ongoing.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the incident, calling it unacceptable and saying those responsible would be held accountable.

Police Commissioner Danny Levy said authorities would pursue suspects involved in what he described as serious disorder and damage to police property.

Political leaders across the spectrum also denounced the unrest, including Benny Gantz and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who called for firm enforcement of the law.

More images from the developing situation in the Haredi neighbourhood of Bnai Brak. pic.twitter.com/BG0CwAZqtU

— Amit Segal (@AmitSegal) February 15, 2026

The military said its chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, strongly condemned the attack and expects legal action against those involved.

Former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef also sharply criticized those who participated in the disturbance, calling for them to be expelled from the Haredi community.

In a statement, Yosef said the rioters had desecrated the name of Heaven and that their conduct did not reflect Torah values. “The ways of the Torah of Israel are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace; there is no place for such behavior among us,” he said, urging that those involved be denounced and cast out from the community.

Yosef, the son of the late Shas spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef, remains an influential figure within the party and the broader ultra-Orthodox community.

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Israel’s historic shipping company, ZIM Integrated Shipping Services, will be sold in a deal valued at more than $3.5 billion and delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, marking a major change for a firm founded before the creation of the state.

According to a report by Israel Hayom, The deal, finalized overnight between Saturday and Sunday, divides ZIM’s operations. Germany-based Hapag-Lloyd, the world’s fifth-largest container shipping company, will acquire international routes that do not call at Israeli ports. Israel’s FIMI Opportunity Funds will take control of shipping lines serving Israel.

The transaction is under immediate review by Israeli authorities. Transportation Minister Miri Regev ordered a review after officials said they were caught off guard by the deal. Ministry Director-General Moshe Ben-Zaken has been tasked with assessing whether the state can intervene using ZIM’s “golden share,” which grants veto power over strategic matters.

The review reflects concerns over ZIM’s strategic importance to Israel, including reported ties between Hapag-Lloyd investors and Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which have drawn political attention in Jerusalem. Officials from the Shipping and Ports Authority and the Transportation Ministry said they were surprised by the scope and structure of the sale.

Hapag-Lloyd reportedly anticipated potential regulatory pushback and structured the deal to make it more difficult for Israel to block the transaction. Concerns also extend beyond Israel, with the European Commission expected to scrutinize the acquisition for antitrust issues, given Hapag-Lloyd’s status as a major global shipping company.

ZIM was founded in 1945 by the Jewish Agency for Israel as ZIM Palestine Navigation Company, before the establishment of Israel. Prominent leaders such as David Ben-Gurion and David Remez helped push for its creation. Partial privatization occurred in 1970, with full privatization under then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the late 1990s.

The company went public on Wall Street in 2021 at a valuation of $1.5 billion and recently had a market capitalization of around $2.5 billion.

The sale, which will lead to ZIM being delisted from the NYSE, is part of a broader trend of separating global commercial operations from assets considered strategically vital to Israel.

A quick-moving winter system is poised to deliver another round of snow to New York City late Sunday night, setting up potentially slick conditions for commuters early Monday along one of the nation’s busiest travel corridors.

Forecasters at Fox Weather say a brief burst of snow is expected to develop overnight and continue into the early morning hours along the I-95 corridor, affecting the city, Long Island and parts of northeast New Jersey.

Most areas are projected to receive between 1 and 2 inches of snow, though some neighborhoods could see only a light coating. New York City is expected to pick up around an inch, with similar totals forecast for eastern Long Island.

Temperatures are expected to dip into the upper 20s and lower 30s overnight — just cold enough for snow to stick to untreated roads, sidewalks and grassy surfaces. Meteorologists warn that snow and slush could create hazardous travel conditions late Sunday night and during the Monday morning commute, which coincides with Presidents Day.

The system is expected to weaken and move out early Monday as a coastal low deepens offshore. Sunshine should return by the afternoon, limiting the storm’s long-term impact.

Any accumulation is unlikely to linger.

High temperatures are forecast to rebound into the 40s by Monday afternoon and remain mild through midweek, accelerating the melting of leftover snow and ice. By Tuesday, highs are expected to reach the upper 40s with partial sunshine.

Looking ahead, forecasters say milder conditions in the 40s should dominate much of the week, though rain chances are expected to return Wednesday and again on Friday.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Jackson Fire District #2 is urging residents to come out and vote on February 21 in a critical fire budget referendum that would secure a four-firefighter staffing standard on its career-operated fire apparatus.

District officials say the move is aimed at enhancing both resident and firefighter safety by ensuring that a fire truck arrives on scene with four firefighters — the nationally recognized safety standard required to begin an interior fire attack under federal “Two-In, Two-Out” regulations.

Currently, the District operates with a three-member career response model, supplemented by volunteers. However, officials say that guaranteeing four firefighters on arrival allows crews to immediately initiate search-and-rescue and fire suppression operations safely and efficiently.

National studies have shown that four-person crews complete essential fireground tasks significantly faster than smaller teams, improving outcomes during critical emergencies.

As previously reported by TLS, the Whitesville Volunteer Fire Company — which served one of the areas within Jackson — closed down, further highlighting the importance of maintaining strong and reliable fire coverage throughout the township.

In addition to emergency response, the District’s Fire Bureau has conducted more than 4,000 inspections and safety programs, identifying hazards before they become emergencies and gathering critical pre-plan information to assist suppression crews.

Residents can vote in person on Saturday, February 21, from 2:00 PM to 10:00 PM at Jackson Fire Station #56, 785 Miller Road. Mail-in ballots must be requested by February 14 and postmarked by February 21.

Fire District officials are encouraging all residents to make their voices heard on what they describe as a vital public safety measure.

JERUSALEM (VINnews)-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday declared the Israeli government’s approval for constructing a supplementary international airport to Ben Gurion Airport in Ziklag, located in the northern Negev, describing it as a major driver for regional development, job creation and tourism.

In remarks opening the weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said the project would include complementary infrastructure such as roads, railways and secondary industries, mirroring successful airport-driven growth seen worldwide and in Israel.

“This is part of our vision — a true vision for the development and settlement of the Negev and for overcoming the challenges of peripheral areas,” Netanyahu said. “Public infrastructure and private initiative — this is precisely the classic link in this enormous initiative.”

The prime minister credited Transportation Minister Miri Regev, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Deputy Minister Almog Cohen for their efforts in advancing the Negev project, noting they worked together to bring the decision forward. He ordered rapid implementation, expressing hope it would proceed swiftly.

Netanyahu also highlighted plans for a separate airport in the north at Ramat David, emphasizing the need to address growing demand for air travel from tourists and Israeli citizens alike.

“Since the North is currently ahead, we must move Ziklag forward quickly,” he said, referring to the southern project. He stressed parallel development of both sites as “tremendous engines of growth” for Israel, aiming to close the gap between them while supporting related initiatives like “IDF South” and broader infrastructure.

The Ziklag site, situated between Rahat and Netivot near Beersheba and in the area of the biblical Ziklag archaeological site, was selected after years of debate over locations for a second major airport to ease congestion at Ben Gurion. Previous announcements in early February indicated government backing for the plan, with an estimated cost of NIS 7 billion, though critics have raised concerns about infrastructure challenges, airspace overlaps with military operations and proximity to Gaza.

The government views the airport as essential to accommodate rising passenger numbers and boost the southern periphery economy through thousands of jobs and enhanced accessibility.

Working in strict secrecy, a government scientist in Norway built a machine capable of emitting powerful pulses of microwave energy and, in an effort to prove such devices are harmless to humans, in 2024 tested it on himself. He suffered neurological symptoms similar to those of “Havana syndrome,” the unexplained malady that has struck hundreds of U.S. spies and diplomats around the world.

The bizarre story, described by four people familiar with the events, is the latest wrinkle in the decade-long quest to find the causes of Havana syndrome, whose sufferers experience long-lasting effects including cognitive challenges, dizziness and nausea. The U.S. government calls the events Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs).

The secret test in Norway has not been previously reported. The Norwegian government told the CIA about the results, two of the people said, prompting at least two visits in 2024 to Norway by Pentagon and White House officials.

Those aware of the test say it does not prove AHIs are the work of a foreign adversary wielding a secret weapon similar to the prototype tested in Norway. One of them noted that the effects suffered by the Norwegian researcher, whose identity was not disclosed by the people familiar, were not the same as in a “classic” AHI case. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity.

But the events bolstered the case of those who argue that “pulsed-energy devices” – machines that deliver powerful beams of electromagnetic energy such as microwaves in short bursts – can affect human biology and are probably being developed by U.S. adversaries.

“I think there’s compelling evidence that we should be concerned about the ability to build a directed-energy weapon that can cause a variety of risk to humans,” said Paul Friedrichs, a retired military surgeon and Air Force general who oversaw biological threats on the White House National Security Council under President Joe Biden. Friedrichs declined to comment on the Norway experiment.

The Trump administration took office promising to pursue the AHI issue aggressively. But there has been little apparent movement. A review ordered by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is expected to focus mostly on the Biden administration’s handling of the issue, and its release has been delayed, people familiar with the issue said.

In a separate development that has become public in recent weeks, the U.S. government covertly purchased at the end of the Biden administration a different foreign-made device that produces pulsed radio waves and which some experts suspect could be linked to AHI incidents, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The device is being tested by the Defense Department. It has some Russian-origin components, but the U.S. government still has not determined conclusively who built it, said one of the people.

The U.S. acquisition of the device was first reported last month by independent journalist Sasha Ingber and CNN, which said it had been purchased for millions of dollars by Homeland Security Investigations, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

The device that the scientist constructed in Norway was not identical to the one that the U.S. government covertly acquired, one of the people familiar with the events said. The Norwegian device was built based on “classified information,” suggesting it was derived from blueprints or other materials stolen from a foreign government, this person said.

At about the same time the U.S. became aware of the two pulsed-energy machines, two spy agencies altered their previous judgment and concluded that some of the incidents involving AHIs could be the work of a foreign adversary, delivering that verdict in an updated U.S. intelligence assessment issued in January 2025 during the Biden administration’s final weeks.

“New reporting,” the assessment said, led the two agencies “to shift their assessments about whether a foreign actor has a capability that could cause biological effects consistent with some of the symptoms reported as possible AHIs.”

One was the National Security Agency, which intercepts and decodes foreign electronic communications, several people familiar with the issue said. The other, said two of those people, was the National Ground Intelligence Center, a U.S. Army intelligence agency in Charlottesville that produces intelligence on foreign adversaries’ scientific, technical and military capabilities.

The majority of U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and four others, said they continued to judge it “very unlikely” that the attacks were the result of a foreign adversary or that a foreign actor had developed a novel weapon. In conversations intercepted by U.S. spy agencies, American adversaries were heard expressing their own surprise at the AHI incidents and denying involvement, U.S. officials have said.

The CIA declined to comment on the Norwegian test or how it impacted the agency’s analysis. Norway’s embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Some former officials and AHI victims have pointed to Russia as the prime suspect in the AHI incidents because of its decades of work in directed-energy devices. So far, no conclusive proof has publicly emerged, and Moscow has denied involvement.

Taken together, the two known directed-energy devices along with other research appear to have prompted a reconsideration by some of the causes of Havana syndrome, so named because of the mysterious 2016 outbreak of symptoms reported by personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Havana.

In subsequent years, U.S. personnel reported hundreds of cases globally, in China, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. A top aide to then-CIA Director William J. Burns reported symptoms while traveling in India in 2021.

At a conference in Philadelphia earlier this month, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Chris Schlagheck, at times his voice breaking, said he was hit five times in 2020 in his home in Northern Virginia, where a Russian family lived across the street. It was not until last year that a doctor told him his symptoms were the same as those reported from Havana a decade earlier.

Much about the Norway test remains obscured by its highly classified nature. People familiar with the events declined to identify the scientist or the Norwegian government agency he worked for.

The results were all the more shocking because the Norwegian researcher had earned a reputation as a leading opponent of the theory that directed-energy weapons can cause the type of symptoms associated with AHIs, those familiar with the events said. Trying to dramatically prove his point, with himself as a human guinea pig, he achieved the opposite.

“I don’t know what possessed him to go and do this,” one of the people said. “He was a bit of an eccentric.”

A delegation of Pentagon officials traveled to Norway in 2024 to examine the device. In December of that year, a group of intelligence and White House officials also went to Norway to discuss the issue, those familiar with the events said.

In January 2022, the CIA produced an interim assessment that concluded a foreign country was probably not behind Havana syndrome. It emerged weeks before a major panel of government and nongovernment experts produced a report commissioned by the director of national intelligence and deputy CIA director that came to a markedly different conclusion.

That panel concluded in February 2022 that pulsed electromagnetic energy, particularly in the radio-frequency range, ‘‘plausibly explains the core characteristics of reported AHIs,” although it acknowledged many unknowns. “Information gaps exist,” it reported.

The conclusion marked the first time a report issued publicly by the U.S. government acknowledged that the symptoms could be caused by man-made, external events.

The IC Experts Panel, as it was known, interviewed several people who had suffered accidental exposure to electromagnetic energy, said David Relman, a Stanford University microbiologist who chaired the panel.

But the CIA interim assessment overshadowed the expert panel’s report. Then, in March 2023, the full intelligence community issued an assessment that unanimously concluded that it was unlikely that a foreign adversary was behind the incidents. “There is no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or (intelligence) collection device that is causing AHIs,” the unclassified version of their report said, citing secret intelligence data and open-source information about foreign weapons and research programs.

U.S. intelligence agencies “essentially ignored” the experts panel’s work, Relman told the conference in Philadelphia. The agencies, particularly the CIA, “had developed a very firm set of conclusions, world view that caused them I think to become dug in,” he said.

By late 2024, senior White House officials in the Biden administration had come to question the absolutist position taken by U.S. intelligence agencies in their 2023 assessment.

There were some officials, including within the intelligence community, who insisted that “there was nothing here” – that every reported case could be explained by some environmental or medical factor, said one person familiar with the administration’s views.

The more “responsible” view, the person said, was to admit “we don’t know the answers” and that it was “plausible that pulsed electromagnetic energy could account for some subset of cases.”

After the November 2024 election, White House officials who were working on an AHI brief for the incoming Trump administration invited several victims to a meeting to offer their input. The officials also wanted to reassure the victims that they realized the intelligence community assessment called into question the very real health issues they experienced and what caused them.

At one point, an official turned to the victims who were gathered in the Situation Room and said, “We believe you.” The White House wasn’t yet certain it was a foreign actor but believed it was plausible that the symptoms had been caused by external factors, said the person familiar with the administration’s views.

Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer and AHI victim who attended the unclassified meeting, said, “It was clear to the victims, but also unsaid, that new information had come into the NSC that had caused them to make such a statement.”

(c) 2026, The Washington Post

PASSAIC, N.J. (VINnews) — In a troubling sign for New Jersey’s Democratic Party, the state’s congressional delegation has largely caved to pressure and endorsed far-left activist Analilia Mejia, with the notable and commendable exception of centrist Rep. Josh Gottheimer, who is wisely prioritizing the needs of everyday Jersey families over ideological extremism.

The latest wave of endorsements from holdouts like Reps. Donald Norcross, Frank Pallone, and Nellie Pou came in a joint statement this week, throwing their support behind Mejia for the upcoming April special general election and June regular Democratic primary in the 11th Congressional District. This follows similar nods from both U.S. senators and other House members, highlighting a concerning shift toward the party’s radical wing.

Mejia, a self-styled progressive with deep ties to socialist figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders, stunned observers with her upset win in last week’s special Democratic primary, edging out more reasonable candidates like former Rep. Tom Malinowski. Her campaign, fueled by divisive rhetoric on issues like open borders and extreme economic policies, now pits her against Republican Joe Hathaway in April for the seat vacated by Gov. Mikie Sherrill—a district that deserves pragmatic leadership, not radical activism.

While the delegation’s rush to back Mejia raises questions about party unity at the expense of moderation, Gottheimer stands out as a beacon of sensibility. In a statement to the New Jersey Globe, the congressman emphasized dialogue over blind allegiance.

“Analilia and I have been in touch and I congratulated her on her win,” Gottheimer said. “I’m looking forward to sitting down with her and discussing issues important to Jersey and the families I represent.”

Gottheimer’s measured approach underscores his reputation as a pro-Israel, pro-business Democrat who fights for working families, law enforcement, and fiscal responsibility—qualities sorely needed in Washington amid rising progressive influence. His reluctance to endorse Mejia signals a much-needed check on the party’s leftward lurch, which could alienate moderate voters in a state like New Jersey.

Mejia’s platform, heavy on advocacy for unchecked immigration and so-called “economic justice” that often translates to higher taxes and bigger government, has drawn support from labor unions and left-wing groups, but critics argue it risks pushing the district—and the party—further from the mainstream. If elected, Mejia would finish Sherrill’s term in April and seek a full term in June, potentially entrenching radical policies in a seat that has historically favored balanced representation.

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — An Israeli private investigator was arrested about three months ago in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on suspicion of involvement in the double murder of Russian crypto entrepreneur Roman Novak and his wife Anna. The couple’s dismembered bodies were found in a desert area of the United Arab Emirates in November 2025.

Israeli sources confirmed the arrest of Michael Greenberg, founder of Mike Green Private Investigation in Thailand, a Bangkok-based firm that has operated in the private investigations field for more than two decades.

According to a report, Greenberg was detained during a violent raid by United Arab Emirates special forces. Contact with him was severed for an extended period following the arrest, raising concerns among his relatives for his safety. After several weeks, Israeli sources received confirmation that he was being held, but authorities have refused to officially disclose the reasons for his arrest or the status of legal proceedings against him.

Novak, who was convicted in Russia in 2020 for defrauding investors in a cryptocurrency-related scheme, had been living in the United Arab Emirates since his release from prison. During his time there, he was reportedly involved in raising $500 million for Fintopio, a cryptocurrency venture.

Prior to their murder, Novak and his wife were allegedly abducted, apparently in an attempt to force them to surrender access codes to their cryptocurrency wallets. Russian investigators from the SKR (Investigative Committee of Russia) later arrested three suspects, two Russian nationals and one Kazakh citizen.

According to the report, Greenberg is not suspected of committing the murders themselves, but of having connections to the perpetrators. Data uncovered when Russian investigators examined the suspects’ phones reportedly led to Greenberg’s arrest and the extension of his detention by Dubai police. In addition to Greenberg, others involved in private investigation activities in Dubai were detained under similar circumstances.

This is not Greenberg’s first legal entanglement. Nearly five years ago, he was suspected in Thailand of involvement in planning the kidnapping of a Taiwanese businessman amid a business dispute. Two Americans, including a former U.S. Marine and a Thai national were arrested at the time. According to reports then, one of the Americans had hired Greenberg, who allegedly helped plan the abduction. NBC reported at the time that Greenberg was not arrested by Thai police because he could not be located.

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has tapped Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar to attend next Thursday’s inaugural Board of Peace gathering in Washington, DC, instead of going himself, according to a diplomatic source who spoke with The Times of Israel.

Netanyahu traveled to Washington last week for talks with President Donald Trump during a period of heightened strain between the United States and Iran. He has chosen not to make another trip for AIPAC’s annual conference or for the Board of Peace session, where the Trump administration is seeking to secure financial commitments for the new international framework.

Sa’ar is expected to take part in the February 19 meeting alongside senior representatives from Argentina, Cambodia, Hungary, Indonesia, Pakistan and Vietnam. Bahrain’s King Hamad Al Khalifa is also expected to be present, an Arab diplomat said. While all 28 member states on the panel plan to send delegates, each government is determining the rank of the official it will dispatch, the diplomat added.

The Board of Peace has been established to supervise Gaza’s move toward a postwar administration that excludes Hamas, in line with Washington’s 20-point blueprint for the territory.

Still, Saudi Arabia has signaled it is not yet ready to pledge reconstruction funds. Speaking Saturday, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud said Riyadh needs greater certainty about Israel’s eventual military pullout from Gaza and about Hamas laying down its arms before committing financial support. He suggested the upcoming meeting could provide further clarification.

When asked at the Munich Security Conference whether Saudi Arabia would finance rebuilding efforts in Gaza and under what conditions, Prince Faisal said his country is “fully supportive” of the Board of Peace and Trump’s 20-point plan. However, he stressed that, “We need to see a real end to the conflict.”

“That means we need to have clarity on when Israel is going to withdraw, when Hamas is going to disarm, when everyone is going to comply with all 20 points of the 20-point plan,” Prince Faisal said.

“The US is working on that. There’s a meeting on the 19th that will give us a lot more clarity,” he noted, referring to the Board of Peace fundraising meeting.

According to a US official and two Arab diplomats who spoke earlier this week with The Times of Israel, Washington hopes to unveil $1.25 billion in contributions from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait. The New York Times has reported that the United States intends to match that figure with its own pledge.

Prince Faisal said Saudi Arabia would be better positioned after the meeting to assess “where we can best contribute toward — not just reconstruction, but also that the people of Gaza and Palestine can have a better future.”

The American proposal for Gaza was first presented in September and was conceived as the intended outcome of the ceasefire and hostage-release agreement Washington brokered between Israel and Hamas, following two years of fighting that began with the Hamas-led assault on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Although the US-mediated truce moved into its second stage last month, clashes have persisted in Gaza, with Israel and Hamas each accusing the other of violations.

Under the terms of the second phase, Israeli troops are to withdraw in stages from the Strip while Hamas dismantles its armed capabilities. An international stabilization force would then be deployed to maintain order.

Hamas, however, has consistently declared that disarmament is a red line, even as it has hinted it might consider transferring its weapons to a future Palestinian governing authority.

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Arbel Yehoud, an Israeli woman who was  held hostage in Gaza for 482 days after being abducted on October 7, revealed that she was sexually abused “almost every day” in captivity” and attempted to take her own life three times during her ordeal.

Speaking in an interview with Israeli Channel 12’s Ulpan Shishi news program, Yehoud, 30, described prolonged physical, psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of her captors in Gaza. She said she was held alone in extended isolation, starved and subjected to repeated mistreatment. During her captivity, she added, two of her ribs were broken.

“I tried to take my life several times. I felt that I couldn’t go on,” Yehoud said. The abuse, she stressed, was not a one-time incident but an almost daily reality throughout her 482 days in captivity.

Yehoud said she attempted suicide on three separate occasions. “There were moments when I thought that was the only way out,” she said. Yehoud said that on one occasion she saw clips from a demonstration in Israel to free captives, and seeing herself and her boyfriend Ariel Cunio in the placards gave her renewed will to live to see her freedom.

She credited Ariel, who was abducted alongside her on October 7 but later separated from her, with giving her the strength to survive. “Every time I remembered Ariel, it gave me the strength to keep breathing,” she said.

In the first months of their captivity, the couple managed to smuggle short love notes to each other through intermediaries, she recounted. That communication was eventually stopped when their captors threatened that if Cunio mentioned her name again, she would be harmed. For more than a year, the two lived in complete uncertainty about each other’s fate.

Yehoud was released on January 30 2025, walking alone through a crowd surrounded by armed terrorists. “My mind was trying to understand — am I free? But still surrounded by them?” she recalled. Even at the moment of her release, she said, she feared being abducted again.

After 738 days in captivity, Cunio was also freed. The couple are now trying to rebuild their lives. Yehoud said they are coping with sleepless nights, flashbacks and trauma, but emphasized that their belief they would see each other again is what kept them alive throughout the long months of captivity.

The usually quiet Chagai Street in Bnei Brak turned into a mob scene on Sunday after two female military police officers arrived in the area and rumors spread that they were distributing draft orders.

An angry crowd of over a thousand people quickly grew as the two soldiers were surrounded and chased from the area. Police arrived and rescued them as the crowd grew.

A police vehicle was overturned on HaRav Shach Street, and a police motorbike was set on fire. The police later discovered a burned siddur and tefillin in the storage compartment of the motorbike, which belonged to a frum officer.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

The IDF later clarified that the soldiers were not connected to the military police and were visiting a soldier at his home as part of their role in the Education and Youth Corps.

Police say that over 12 protesters involved in the confrontation and rioting have been arrested. “The police view the events in Bnei Brak with great severity. We are acting firmly against those who disturb the peace, utilizing appropriate measures and carrying out arrests.”

One of those arrested was a Chareidi woman.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Former Chief Rabbi HaRav Yosef Yitzchak responded by saying, “One must strongly condemn the handful of rioters who make a Chillul Hashem. The Torah teaches that its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace דרכי נועם וכל נתיבותיה שלום. There is no place for their behavior among us. They must be denounced and expelled from the camp.”

Your browser does not support the video tag.

UTJ chairman Yitzchak Goldknopf said that he was “shocked by the footage and condemns the violence against security forces, which is against the Torah—דרכיה דרכי נעם.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu released the following statement: “I strongly condemn the violent disturbances in Bnei Brak directed at IDF female soldiers and Israel Police officers. This is an extremist minority that does not represent the broader Chareidi community. This is a grave and unacceptable act. We will not allow anarchy, and we will not tolerate any harm to IDF servicemembers or security forces who carry out their duties with dedication and determination.”

Shas chairman Aryeh Deri stated, “The Shas movement strongly condemns the acts of violence, vandalism, and rioting carried out by a small group of extremists in Bnei Brak. These actions are completely contrary to the path of the Torah, harm the broader Chareidi ציבור, cause a Chilul Hashem, and inflict serious damage on the just struggle on behalf of the עולם התורה.”

“Leave our camp!”

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Lieberman said, “We can’t expect the ‘draft dodger’ government to condemn or act against this violence. In the next government, we’ll treat these rioters like terrorists!”

Naftali Bennett also slammed the protestors, writing, “A bright red line was crossed here…. we will restore governance to Israel.”

The IDF released the following statement condemning the mob attack: “The Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, views with utmost severity and strongly condemns the assault on IDF female soldiers who were carrying out a military mission earlier today in Bnei Brak. Any attack on IDF soldiers carried out by Israeli civilians constitutes a serious red line being crossed and must be dealt with firmly. The Chief of Staff expects that the attackers will be brought to justice.”

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

The Charedi community remains on edge as military police continue arresting Charedim for refusing to respond to IDF draft notices.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

President Isaac Herzog wrote, “I am following with deep concern the serious events in Bnei Brak. Violence against security forces is a direct blow to the security of the state. There is no—and will be no—legitimacy for attacking IDF soldiers.”

“The IDF is the people’s army. Our soldiers, women and men alike, are the sons and daughters of us all, from every part of Israeli society. The assault on IDF female soldiers carried out by a fringe group of extremists is a grave and unacceptable act, and I strongly condemn it.”

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

The usually quiet Chagai Street in Bnei Brak turned into a mob scene on Sunday after two female military police officers arrived in the area and rumors spread that they were distributing draft orders.

An angry crowd of over a thousand people quickly grew as the two soldiers were surrounded and chased from the area. Police arrived and rescued them as the crowd grew.

A police vehicle was overturned on HaRav Shach Street, and a police motorbike was set on fire. The police later discovered a burned siddur and tefillin in the storage compartment of the motorbike, which belonged to a frum officer.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

The IDF later clarified that the soldiers were not connected to the military police and were visiting a soldier at his home as part of their role in the Education and Youth Corps.

Police say that over 12 protesters involved in the confrontation and rioting have been arrested. “The police view the events in Bnei Brak with great severity. We are acting firmly against those who disturb the peace, utilizing appropriate measures and carrying out arrests.”

One of those arrested was a Chareidi woman.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Former Chief Rabbi HaRav Yosef Yitzchak responded by saying, “One must strongly condemn the handful of rioters who make a Chillul Hashem. The Torah teaches that its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace דרכי נועם וכל נתיבותיה שלום. There is no place for their behavior among us. They must be denounced and expelled from the camp.”

Your browser does not support the video tag.

UTJ chairman Yitzchak Goldknopf said that he was “shocked by the footage and condemns the violence against security forces, which is against the Torah—דרכיה דרכי נעם.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu released the following statement: “I strongly condemn the violent disturbances in Bnei Brak directed at IDF female soldiers and Israel Police officers. This is an extremist minority that does not represent the broader Chareidi community. This is a grave and unacceptable act. We will not allow anarchy, and we will not tolerate any harm to IDF servicemembers or security forces who carry out their duties with dedication and determination.”

Shas chairman Aryeh Deri stated, “The Shas movement strongly condemns the acts of violence, vandalism, and rioting carried out by a small group of extremists in Bnei Brak. These actions are completely contrary to the path of the Torah, harm the broader Chareidi ציבור, cause a Chilul Hashem, and inflict serious damage on the just struggle on behalf of the עולם התורה.”

“Leave our camp!”

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Lieberman said, “We can’t expect the ‘draft dodger’ government to condemn or act against this violence. In the next government, we’ll treat these rioters like terrorists!”

Naftali Bennett also slammed the protestors, writing, “A bright red line was crossed here…. we will restore governance to Israel.”

The IDF released the following statement condemning the mob attack: “The Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, views with utmost severity and strongly condemns the assault on IDF female soldiers who were carrying out a military mission earlier today in Bnei Brak. Any attack on IDF soldiers carried out by Israeli civilians constitutes a serious red line being crossed and must be dealt with firmly. The Chief of Staff expects that the attackers will be brought to justice.”

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

The Charedi community remains on edge as military police continue arresting Charedim for refusing to respond to IDF draft notices.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

President Isaac Herzog wrote, “I am following with deep concern the serious events in Bnei Brak. Violence against security forces is a direct blow to the security of the state. There is no—and will be no—legitimacy for attacking IDF soldiers.”

“The IDF is the people’s army. Our soldiers, women and men alike, are the sons and daughters of us all, from every part of Israeli society. The assault on IDF female soldiers carried out by a fringe group of extremists is a grave and unacceptable act, and I strongly condemn it.”

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

The usually quiet Chagai Street in Bnei Brak turned into a mob scene on Sunday after two female military police officers arrived in the area and rumors spread that they were distributing draft orders.

An angry crowd of over a thousand people quickly grew as the two soldiers were surrounded and chased from the area. Police arrived and rescued them as the crowd grew.

A police vehicle was overturned on HaRav Shach Street, and a police motorbike was set on fire. The police later discovered a burned siddur and tefillin in the storage compartment of the motorbike, which belonged to a frum officer.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

The IDF later clarified that the soldiers were not connected to the military police and were visiting a soldier at his home as part of their role in the Education and Youth Corps.

Police say that over 12 protesters involved in the confrontation and rioting have been arrested. “The police view the events in Bnei Brak with great severity. We are acting firmly against those who disturb the peace, utilizing appropriate measures and carrying out arrests.”

One of those arrested was a Chareidi woman.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Former Chief Rabbi HaRav Yosef Yitzchak responded by saying, “One must strongly condemn the handful of rioters who make a Chillul Hashem. The Torah teaches that its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace דרכי נועם וכל נתיבותיה שלום. There is no place for their behavior among us. They must be denounced and expelled from the camp.”

Your browser does not support the video tag.

UTJ chairman Yitzchak Goldknopf said that he was “shocked by the footage and condemns the violence against security forces, which is against the Torah—דרכיה דרכי נעם.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu released the following statement: “I strongly condemn the violent disturbances in Bnei Brak directed at IDF female soldiers and Israel Police officers. This is an extremist minority that does not represent the broader Chareidi community. This is a grave and unacceptable act. We will not allow anarchy, and we will not tolerate any harm to IDF servicemembers or security forces who carry out their duties with dedication and determination.”

Shas chairman Aryeh Deri stated, “The Shas movement strongly condemns the acts of violence, vandalism, and rioting carried out by a small group of extremists in Bnei Brak. These actions are completely contrary to the path of the Torah, harm the broader Chareidi ציבור, cause a Chilul Hashem, and inflict serious damage on the just struggle on behalf of the עולם התורה.”

“Leave our camp!”

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Lieberman said, “We can’t expect the ‘draft dodger’ government to condemn or act against this violence. In the next government, we’ll treat these rioters like terrorists!”

Naftali Bennett also slammed the protestors, writing, “A bright red line was crossed here…. we will restore governance to Israel.”

The IDF released the following statement condemning the mob attack: “The Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, views with utmost severity and strongly condemns the assault on IDF female soldiers who were carrying out a military mission earlier today in Bnei Brak. Any attack on IDF soldiers carried out by Israeli civilians constitutes a serious red line being crossed and must be dealt with firmly. The Chief of Staff expects that the attackers will be brought to justice.”

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

The Charedi community remains on edge as military police continue arresting Charedim for refusing to respond to IDF draft notices.

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President Isaac Herzog wrote, “I am following with deep concern the serious events in Bnei Brak. Violence against security forces is a direct blow to the security of the state. There is no—and will be no—legitimacy for attacking IDF soldiers.”

“The IDF is the people’s army. Our soldiers, women and men alike, are the sons and daughters of us all, from every part of Israeli society. The assault on IDF female soldiers carried out by a fringe group of extremists is a grave and unacceptable act, and I strongly condemn it.”

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(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

The usually quiet Chagai Street in Bnei Brak turned into a mob scene on Sunday after two female military police officers arrived in the area and rumors spread that they were distributing draft orders.

An angry crowd of over a thousand people quickly grew as the two soldiers were surrounded and chased from the area. Police arrived and rescued them as the crowd grew.

A police vehicle was overturned on HaRav Shach Street, and a police motorbike was set on fire. The police later discovered a burned siddur and tefillin in the storage compartment of the motorbike, which belonged to a frum officer.

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The IDF later clarified that the soldiers were not connected to the military police and were visiting a soldier at his home as part of their role in the Education and Youth Corps.

Police say that over 12 protesters involved in the confrontation and rioting have been arrested. “The police view the events in Bnei Brak with great severity. We are acting firmly against those who disturb the peace, utilizing appropriate measures and carrying out arrests.”

One of those arrested was a Chareidi woman.

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Former Chief Rabbi HaRav Yosef Yitzchak responded by saying, “One must strongly condemn the handful of rioters who make a Chillul Hashem. The Torah teaches that its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace דרכי נועם וכל נתיבותיה שלום. There is no place for their behavior among us. They must be denounced and expelled from the camp.”

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UTJ chairman Yitzchak Goldknopf said that he was “shocked by the footage and condemns the violence against security forces, which is against the Torah—דרכיה דרכי נעם.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu released the following statement: “I strongly condemn the violent disturbances in Bnei Brak directed at IDF female soldiers and Israel Police officers. This is an extremist minority that does not represent the broader Chareidi community. This is a grave and unacceptable act. We will not allow anarchy, and we will not tolerate any harm to IDF servicemembers or security forces who carry out their duties with dedication and determination.”

Shas chairman Aryeh Deri stated, “The Shas movement strongly condemns the acts of violence, vandalism, and rioting carried out by a small group of extremists in Bnei Brak. These actions are completely contrary to the path of the Torah, harm the broader Chareidi ציבור, cause a Chilul Hashem, and inflict serious damage on the just struggle on behalf of the עולם התורה.”

“Leave our camp!”

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Lieberman said, “We can’t expect the ‘draft dodger’ government to condemn or act against this violence. In the next government, we’ll treat these rioters like terrorists!”

Naftali Bennett also slammed the protestors, writing, “A bright red line was crossed here…. we will restore governance to Israel.”

The IDF released the following statement condemning the mob attack: “The Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, views with utmost severity and strongly condemns the assault on IDF female soldiers who were carrying out a military mission earlier today in Bnei Brak. Any attack on IDF soldiers carried out by Israeli civilians constitutes a serious red line being crossed and must be dealt with firmly. The Chief of Staff expects that the attackers will be brought to justice.”

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The Charedi community remains on edge as military police continue arresting Charedim for refusing to respond to IDF draft notices.

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President Isaac Herzog wrote, “I am following with deep concern the serious events in Bnei Brak. Violence against security forces is a direct blow to the security of the state. There is no—and will be no—legitimacy for attacking IDF soldiers.”

“The IDF is the people’s army. Our soldiers, women and men alike, are the sons and daughters of us all, from every part of Israeli society. The assault on IDF female soldiers carried out by a fringe group of extremists is a grave and unacceptable act, and I strongly condemn it.”

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(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

New York’s sole publicly financed law school is under fire after a campus organization announced it will host a program depicting Hamas’s sprawling tunnel system in Gaza as an example of “decolonial land use.”

The program, titled “The Underground in Gaza,” is set for March 4 in a community space at the City University of New York School of Law in Manhattan. It is being arranged by the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, part of a nationwide network that has been highly visible in anti-Israel demonstrations since the Gaza war erupted in October 2023.

Flyers promoting the event state that Columbia University anthropologist Hadeel Assali will present a lecture exploring “the history and usage of tunnels in Gaza, focusing on land use and social organization in resistance to colonization.” The materials characterize the subterranean system constructed by Hamas as a model of “decolonial” activity.

To critics, that framing amounts to an attempt to recast a terror apparatus in academic language. They argue that describing the tunnel network in such terms obscures its function in facilitating deadly attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers.

Hamas, designated by the United States as a terrorist organization, spent more than a decade building an intricate maze of passageways beneath heavily populated sections of Gaza. Israeli officials have repeatedly said the effort consumed massive financial resources and construction supplies that could have gone toward civilian infrastructure. Rather than investing in schools, hospitals, or protective shelters for residents, they contend, Hamas directed materials into underground routes used to transport operatives, conceal weaponry, and coordinate assaults.

The tunnel system played a pivotal role in Hamas’s October 2023 assault on Israel, when terrorists killed approximately 1,200 people and kidnapped hundreds. Captives were taken into Gaza and confined below ground. Israeli officials and former hostages have recounted brutal conditions in the tunnels, including starvation, torture, and sexual abuse. Some abductees were killed while held underground.

Opponents of the upcoming event say labeling the network as “resistance” disregards the suffering it enabled and overlooks Hamas’s choice to position military infrastructure within civilian areas. Entrances and command hubs were located beneath residential buildings, mosques, and schools, intensifying combat in Gaza as Israeli forces worked to dismantle the system while seeking to limit harm to noncombatants. Gaza’s civilians were not allowed to use the tunnels as bomb shelters.

Assali, a faculty member at Columbia’s Center for Science and Society who teaches a course titled “Science Underground,” has addressed the tunnel network in scholarly and public discussions. In 2024, she referred to the system as “a space that evades colonial capture,” and described tunnels as “an essential form of resistance in Palestine,” though she did not specifically mention Hamas in those remarks.

Her scholarship draws on the “settler-colonial” framework, an approach that has gained traction in certain academic circles. Supporters employ it to portray Israel as an imposed foreign entity. Detractors counter that the model dismisses the Jewish people’s ancient ties to the land and fails to account for the many Jewish Israelis whose families fled oppression in Europe and across the Middle East.

The dispute has renewed scrutiny of the broader atmosphere at CUNY Law, which in recent years has faced criticism over provocative commencement speeches and legal activism linked to strongly anti-Zionist causes. Many of the school’s graduates go on to serve in public-sector legal positions throughout New York City, including as public defenders and attorneys for nonprofit organizations.

A spokesperson for the law school said it is “committed to open dialogue, academic freedom, and free speech,” adding that events organized by student groups do not represent the official positions of the school or the wider CUNY system.

Israel’s consul general in New York, Ofir Akunis, has urged administrators to call off the program, stating that portraying Hamas’s tunnel network as legitimate resistance “constitutes the normalization of terror and crosses a moral red line.”

For numerous Jewish students and advocates for Israel, the controversy reflects a deeper worry that, in some academic settings, the rhetoric of decolonization is being deployed to soften or rationalize violence against the Jewish state. They maintain that serious debate over Israeli government policy is both valid and necessary, but argue that rebranding a terrorist organization’s underground combat infrastructure as creative land use shifts from criticism into a distortion of moral reality.

WATCH:

Attorney-General Gali Baharav Miara clarified on Sunday morning that she has not yet examined Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s request for a pardon from President Isaac Herzog.

Baharav-Miara issued a statement saying, “I have not yet examined the prime minister’s pardon request. It will be examined in accordance with standard procedures. Any other report on the matter is incorrect.”

Her statement was issued following a Channel 13 report on Friday claiming that Baharav-Miara has completed her legal opinion on the pardon request and is expected to submit it in the near future. The report added that Baharav-Miara plans on declaring it illegal to grant a pardon to Netanyahu due to a Supreme Court precedent that a pardon issued before a conviction is contingent on the applicant admitting guilt to the crimes detailed in the conviction.

In court hearings, the charges against Netanyahu have been falling apart one by one, and the prime minister has stated many times that he will not admit guilt for crimes he has not committed. In addition, a long series of serious crimes committed by law enforcement and judicial officials overseeing the cases have been revealed during the hearing.

Baharav-Miara’s clarification also came on the heels of the drama after US President Donald Trump slammed Herzog for failing to pardon Netanyahu, causing Herzog to accuse Netanyahu of spurring Trump to criticize him on his behalf.

However, Netanyahu’s office clarified that Trump had acted independently, saying in a response issued on Motzei Shabbos, “President Trump’s remarks regarding the pardon were solely his own initiative. The prime minister heard about them through the media and was not aware of them in advance, just as he was not aware in advance of Trump’s remarks on this matter during his speech to the Knesset.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

LISTEN:

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Rep. Nancy Pelosi cautioned that Democrats must remain alert ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, warning of potential “surveillance by the intelligence operation” and advising her party not to “put anything past” President Donald Trump.

Appearing Saturday on MS NOW’s The Weekend while attending the annual Munich Security Conference in Germany, Pelosi said she has been reassuring European officials that she is confident Democrats will regain control of the House of Representatives. She described having “absolute certainty” about a Democratic victory, even as she acknowledged deep worries about how the elections will unfold.

Pelosi pointed specifically to what she described as troubling involvement by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in an FBI raid on a polling station in Fulton County, Georgia, where authorities sought to retrieve ballots from the 2020 election. The California lawmaker said the situation has heightened fears both domestically and abroad about election integrity.

“I hear that all over the United States, not just in Europe, that there is concern about the election. Let me just say that surveillance by the intelligence operation of our country, surveillance in our own country is something that is absolutely not to be allowed. And now, if there’s some particular reason, there’s one thing, but for the for them, for Tulsi to be looking into elections is really not right. It’s not lawful. It’s not right. But that doesn’t seem to ever bother the president. But you know what? We don’t agonize, we organize, and we have litigation. We have lawyering in terms in addition to in the courts, but at polling places and the rest, we have legislation.”

Pelosi also made clear that Democrats intend to oppose voter identification requirements that Trump has pledged will be implemented for the midterms. The House recently approved the SAVE Act, which would mandate identification to cast a ballot, with one Democrat siding with Republicans. The measure now faces significant obstacles in the Senate.

Although Pelosi expressed strong confidence in her party’s electoral prospects, she also warned that Trump could potentially involve federal forces in ways she believes might affect the election process.

“We’re dealing with it. And the president — people are concerned they’re going to send in ICE and the National Guard or this or that,” she argued. “Don’t put anything past him. As we saw on January 6th when the president of the United States personally incited an insurrection in our country, he’s capable of any bad thing.”

WATCH:

Chareidi recruits serving in a designated track experienced a series of humiliations at the hands of their commanders, Channel 14 reported.

According to testimonies, the recruits were forced to undress as punishment and remain in their underwear only. The commanders involved later tried to hush up the incident.

The serious incidents occurred about two weeks ago after the recruits completed a seven-kilometer fitness run. The recruits said that the commanders claimed that they hadn’t performed the run properly and ordered them to undress and lie on their backs on their beds in the tent.

The Chareidi recruits said they felt deeply degraded.

The recruits said that another disturbing incident took place when one of the commanders entered the shul during Shacharis and demanded that some of the soldiers perform push-ups in the middle of davening.

Following the incidents, some of the recruits were summoned last week to a meeting with the base commander and an officer holding the rank of colonel, where they were told the command staff had been replaced and the commanders involved were suspended.

The IDF spokesperson said in response that the incident was immediately investigated and that the commander was disciplined by the head of the Personnel Directorate and suspended from his position.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

About 95% of Palestinian infiltrators caught by security forces along the separation barrier in Yehudah and Shomron during the war were released without trial or prosecution, Army Radio reported on Sunday.

Official IDF data obtained by Army Radio shows that illegal infiltrators crossed the security fence in large numbers in 2024 and 2025, and even the few who were caught were not prosecuted.

In 2025, the IDF and Border Police caught 6,807 infiltrators along the seam line, but indictments were filed against only 405 of them—around 6%. In 2024, 10,825 infiltrators were caught, and only 334 faced trial—just 4%.

According to security officials, several failures in the security system are responsible for the situation.

1. Difficulty establishing evidence proving that those caught near the fence on the Palestinian side actually intended to cross it.

2. A severe shortage of investigators in the relevant police and Border Police investigative units.

3. A severe shortage of prison spaces—detention and incarceration facilities in Yehuda and Shomron are at 100% capacity, with no vacancies. Even when infiltrators are caught, they are often released shortly later because there is nowhere to hold them in custody.

4. Poor coordination among security bodies, particularly with the Defense Ministry. According to senior sources familiar with the matter, the Defense Ministry’s Crossing Authority security personnel simply allow drivers transporting illegal entrants to continue on their way without detaining them or handing them over to police.

“We’re only catching mosquitoes instead of draining the swamp,” a senior IDF official said in fierce criticism of Defense Ministry personnel.

Security officials describe a grim reality of poor coordination among the security agencies, with each one throwing the responsibility on the other. The Shin Bet shirks involvement in the issue because infiltration is not defined as a security offense, the police have manpower shortages, the Prison Service lacks prison spaces, and the IDF lacks enough troops to supervise the fence.

This is what a multi-system failure looks like.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

On January 13, 2026, Alfred Blumstein passed away at the age of 95. Most people have never heard his name. But his fingerprints are on virtually every aspect of how America understands crime, punishment, and justice. He is the man who turned criminology from a field of guesswork and gut feelings into a science—and the ideas he pioneered over more than five decades of work affect every courtroom, every prison, and every police department in this country.

Blumstein was an engineer by training—a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and Cornell University who specialized in operations research, the mathematical science of making complex systems work better. He never formally studied crime.

In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson’s Crime Commission asked him to lead a task force on science and technology, and to analyze and develop tactics to reduce crime. He figured the assignment would be a one-year detour.  That detour lasted the rest of his life—and changed the field forever.

Inventing the Criminal Justice “System”

Before Blumstein, nobody thought of criminal justice as a system. Police worried about policing. Judges worried about sentencing. Wardens worried about overcrowding. Each part of the process operated in its own silo, and no one was looking at how the pieces fit together. When Blumstein dove into the field, he was shocked by what he found. Criminology, he said, was stuck in a “low-tech, quill-pen era.”

So he did what an engineer would do. He assembled a team of analysts and created the first-ever flow diagram of the criminal justice process—a map tracing exactly what happens from the moment a crime occurs through arrest, prosecution, trial, sentencing, prison, parole, and release. Every decision point, every branching path, every possible outcome was laid out clearly for the first time.

This work for the President’s Commission, published in 1967, led directly to the creation of some of America’s most important criminal justice institutions. The Commission’s recommendations produced the National Institute of Justice (the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice), the Bureau of Justice Statistics (the country’s primary source of criminal justice data), and—remarkably—the establishment of 911 as the single national emergency phone number.

At Carnegie Mellon University in 1969, Blumstein built on his systems thinking and created a groundbreaking computer simulation called JUSSIM (JUStice SIMulation). The program modeled the entire criminal justice system and could predict what would happen throughout the pipeline when you changed just one variable.

What happens if police were to suddenly double their arrests? Common sense says that’s a good thing—more criminals off the streets. But JUSSIM showed the devastating ripple effects. More arrests overwhelm the courts. Overwhelmed courts push for more plea bargains. More plea bargains mean shorter sentences. Shorter sentences mean prisons release people faster. People released sooner may reoffend sooner. A policy that looks tough on crime can actually make things worse if you don’t account for the whole system.

Or the reverse: What happens if a state reduces enforcement of marijuana laws? JUSSIM could calculate how that frees up police, reduces court caseloads, opens prison beds for more serious offenders, and shifts costs across every agency in the system. No one had ever been able to model these cascading effects before.

Remarkably, Chazal thought  along these lines two thousand years ago. The Mishnah in Makkos (1:10) records the debate about how often a Sanhedrin should impose the death penalty—with Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah arguing that a court that executes once in seventy years is called destructive, and Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon declaring that had they sat on the Sanhedrin, no one would ever have been executed. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel pushed back, warning that such an approach would multiply murderers in Israel. This is  recognition that every punishment decision sends ripples through the entire system, and that both excessive severity and excessive leniency carry real consequences.

A later version of his simulation, JUSSIM II, added recidivism—the tendency of released prisoners to commit new crimes and re-enter the system. This required distinguishing first-time offenders from repeat offenders, and Blumstein’s team discovered that for every first-time offender entering the system, there were roughly 5 to 10 repeat offenders cycling through it. That finding alone had enormous implications for how resources should be allocated.

The Revolutionary Idea: Criminals Have Careers

Perhaps Blumstein’s most famous and influential idea was deceptively simple: criminals have careers, just like doctors, teachers, or plumbers.

A criminal career has a beginning—the first crime a person commits. It has a middle—the active years of offending. And it has an end—the point at which the person stops committing crimes. Blumstein argued that if you could measure these career patterns, you could make far smarter decisions about who to send to prison and for how long.

He zeroed in on two key measurements. The first was offending frequency—how many crimes a person committed per year, which researchers designated with the Greek letter λ (lambda). The second was career length—the number of years between a criminal’s first and last offense.

The mathematical implications were enormous. If someone commits twenty crimes a year and has ten years left in their criminal career, locking them up prevents two hundred future crimes. But if someone commits two crimes a year and their career is winding down, a long prison sentence wastes enormous resources for minimal public safety benefit. Blumstein gave judges and policymakers tools to tell the difference.

His research established that careers in property crimes like burglary and theft averaged about five years, while careers in violent crimes lasted roughly ten years. He also studied the sequences of offenses—whether criminals escalated to more serious crimes over time, developed specialties, or committed crimes more or less at random. This led to the development of “crime-switch matrices” that mapped the patterns of how offenders moved between different crime types.

Central to this research was the age-crime curve—the well-established finding that criminal behavior peaks in the late teens and early twenties and then steadily declines. People age out of crime. It is a pattern so consistent that it appears across every culture and era for which data exists.

In 1983, Blumstein chaired a major National Academy of Sciences panel on criminal careers. The resulting two-volume report, Criminal Careers and “Career Criminals,” drew a crucial distinction: studying the criminal careers of ordinary offenders is one thing; identifying the “career criminals”—those with the longest remaining careers, the highest offending rates, and the most serious offenses—is something else entirely. The report gave law enforcement and the courts a framework for focusing their limited resources where they would do the most good.

Measuring Whether Prison Actually Works

Prison is supposed to reduce crime in two ways: through deterrence (scaring people into not committing crimes by showing them what happens if they do) and through incapacitation (physically preventing criminals from committing crimes by keeping them locked up). But how well do these mechanisms actually work? Before Blumstein, nobody had rigorously measured either one.

In 1978, Blumstein chaired the first-ever National Academy of Sciences panel on criminal justice, which produced a landmark report called Deterrence and Incapacitation. The panel didn’t argue for more or less prison—it sought to find honest, scientific ways to measure whether incarceration was achieving its goals.

The findings revealed deep complexities reflecting Brisker chilukim of siman and siba. Measuring deterrence is extremely difficult because crime rates and punishment rates influence each other simultaneously—places with more crime tend to impose harsher punishments, which makes it hard to tell whether harsh punishments are causing less crime or just responding to more of it. Measuring incapacitation is also tricky: it depends on accurately estimating how often an individual would have offended if they had been free, and how long their criminal career would have continued.

Blumstein also identified a critical flaw in the logic of incapacitating drug dealers. Because drug markets are driven by demand, imprisoning one dealer simply creates a job opening that another person fills. As long as customers are willing to buy, the supply side replenishes itself. This insight had profound implications for drug policy—and helped explain why the massive war on drugs was failing to reduce drug-related crime.

The Mystery of America’s Prison Explosion

In 1973, Blumstein made a startling observation. For roughly fifty years—from the 1920s through the early 1970s—the rate at which Americans were imprisoned had barely changed. It held steady at about 110 prisoners per 100,000 people, with a standard deviation of only 8%. There was a small bump during the Great Depression and a dip during World War II (when the military had better uses for young men than leaving them in cells), but the overall pattern was remarkably flat.

He called this the “stability of punishment” and proposed an elegant theory to explain it. The system naturally self-corrected: when prisons filled up, the parole system released people earlier; when there was spare capacity, the system cracked down on more marginal crimes. It functioned like a thermostat.

Then, almost the moment he published this finding, the thermostat broke. The incarceration rate began climbing relentlessly—from 110 per 100,000 to a peak of over 500 per 100,000 in 2007 and 2008. It was nearly a quintupling of the previously stable rate, catapulting the United States far beyond the norms of every other developed nation, which typically ranged from 75 to 150 per 100,000.

Blumstein sounded the alarm, describing American prisons as being “in a time of crisis” and the system as “out of control.” Working with Allen Beck, he conducted a meticulous analysis of what was driving the explosion from 1980 to 1996. Their findings were surprising and important.

Rising crime rates were not a significant factor. Police were not arresting significantly more people per crime. The real drivers were all downstream: prosecutors were sending more people to prison per arrest, and judges were imposing longer sentences. In the early years of the growth, the increase came mainly from more prison commitments. After about 1993, it shifted to longer time served. Mandatory-minimum sentencing laws—especially for drug offenses—were filling America’s prisons with people who would never have been incarcerated a decade earlier.

The Crack Epidemic: Tracing a Chain of Catastrophe

Some of Blumstein’s most important and heartbreaking research traced the devastating chain of events set off by the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. His analysis revealed how well-intentioned drug policies produced catastrophic unintended consequences.

In the early 1980s, the government launched an aggressive crackdown on crack markets. Police arrested and imprisoned large numbers of adult drug dealers. But imprisoning a dealer doesn’t destroy the market—as long as demand exists, someone else steps in to sell. The replacements were teenagers, younger and more reckless than their predecessors.

Because drug dealing is dangerous, these young sellers armed themselves with guns. But teenagers don’t exercise the restraint of older, more experienced dealers. The guns spread through their social networks like wildfire. As Blumstein explained: “Young people are tightly networked, and so their buddies started carrying guns, and their buddies started carrying guns. And we saw a massive growth in homicides in the ‘80s, attributable to young people with guns.”

The data confirmed it. Starting around 1985, there was a dramatic spike in both homicide arrests and homicide victimizations among young African Americans—particularly juveniles and young adults aged 19 to 24. This spike peaked in the early 1990s and then fell as the crack market collapsed and a strong economy absorbed former dealers into legitimate work. Crucially, there was no corresponding change among older adults, which confirmed that the violence was tied specifically to the youth-driven crack trade, not to some broader social trend.

Blumstein was among the loudest critics of the notorious 100:1 crack-to-powder cocaine sentencing disparity. Under the Federal Anti-Drug Abuse Law of 1986, possessing just 5 grams of crack triggered the same five-year mandatory sentence as possessing 500 grams of powder cocaine. Because crack was used disproportionately in Black communities, this policy drove an enormous increase in the imprisonment of African Americans. Blumstein spent years building the empirical case for reform. The concern about these irrational policies was a central theme of his 1992 presidential address to the American Society of Criminology, titled “Making Rationality Relevant.”

Untangling Race and the Prison System

Throughout his career, Blumstein grappled with one of the most painful realities in American justice: the staggering racial gap in imprisonment. At its worst, Black Americans were imprisoned at eight times the rate of white Americans. Blumstein believed the issue demanded careful, data-driven analysis rather than assumptions of racism.

In a landmark 1982 study, he developed a model that compared incarceration rates by race to arrest rates by race, broken down by specific crime types. The question he was asking was precise: How much of the racial disparity in prison is explained by racial differences in arrest, and how much is left over—potentially reflecting bias in the courts?

His findings were nuanced and important. About 70–75% of the racial gap in imprisonment could be explained by differences in arrest rates. But 25–30% could not—and this unexplained portion varied dramatically by crime type. For murder and sex offenses, arrest differences explained over 90% of the prison disparity. For drug offenses, they explained only about 50%, suggesting that the courts and sentencing laws were imposing a heavy, racially skewed burden.

To address the concern that arrests themselves might be racially biased, Blumstein and Allen Beck compared arrest data to the National Crime Victimization Survey, in which victims of violent crimes independently reported the race of their attackers. The two data sources ma ched with striking consistency—supporting the use of arrest data as a reasonable indicator of actual involvement in crime, at least for violent offenses.

Blumstein’s approach was characteristically precise. He didn’t claim the system was fair. He didn’t claim it was entirely biased. He gave researchers and policymakers a method to measure exactly where and how racial disparity was operating.

Bringing Science to Sentencing

The 1970s through the 1990s saw enormous upheaval in how America sentenced criminals. Mandatory-minimum laws proliferated. Some states eliminated flexible sentencing ranges and imposed fixed terms. Others created sentencing commissions to develop guidelines. Risk-assessment tools began emerging to predict which offenders were most likely to reoffend.

Blumstein chaired a National Academy of Sciences panel on sentencing research that produced guidance on all of these developments. The panel’s work was particularly important in that it provided frameworks for creating sentencing guidelines that were consistent with actual prison capacity—forcing legislatures to confront the real-world costs of their sentencing decisions rather than just passing feel-good laws.

Solving the Mystery of the 1990s Crime Drop

In the early 1990s, something remarkable happened: crime rates in America plummeted. Murder and robbery both dropped by about 45% between their early-1990s peak and 2000. Everyone wanted to know why. Politicians claimed credit. Police chiefs pointed to new strategies. Economists highlighted the booming economy.

Blumstein co-edited a major book, The Crime Drop in America, with Joel Wallman that brought together leading researchers to rigorously examine every possible explanation: guns, prison growth, drug markets, policing changes, economic shifts, and demographics. No single factor explained the entire drop. But the research suggested that about 25% was attributable to increased incarceration. The rest reflected the collapse of the crack market, a strong economy that absorbed former dealers into legitimate jobs, improved policing strategies, and demographic shifts.

Blumstein’s own contribution traced the arc back to the early 1980s. The aggressive assault on crack markets had set off the youth violence epidemic. When demand for crack collapsed in the early 1990s, the young sellers were displaced from the drug business—and a robust economy provided them with alternatives. The violence they had brought with them receded. It was a complete narrative, backed by data, that connected drug policy, gun violence, economics, and demographics into a single coherent story.

Defining What “Recidivism” Actually Means

A contribution that may sound technical but had enormous real-world consequences was Blumstein’s work on recidivism—the rate at which released offenders commit new crimes. During the President’s Crime Commission, Blumstein noticed that different experts were giving wildly different estimates of recidivism, with some saying 50% and others 75%.

He discovered the reason: they were measuring different things. Police defined recidivism as being rearrested. Corrections officials defined it as returning to prison. Obviously, many people who are rearrested never go back to prison—so the two numbers would always be very different. Blumstein insisted that any discussion of recidivism had to specify exactly how it was being measured. This sounds obvious, but before him, nobody was doing it consistently, and policies were being built on numbers that meant completely different things to different people.

Redemption: The Science of Second Chances

In the final decades of his career, Blumstein turned to a problem affecting tens of millions of Americans: the lifelong burden of a criminal record.

A fact that stunned even Blumstein when he first encountered it: roughly half of all American men can expect to be arrested for a non-traffic offense at some point in their lives. And that estimate, based on pre-1966 data, didn’t include the explosion of drug arrests, domestic-violence arrests, and DUI enforcement that followed. The real number today may be substantially higher.

With the rise of computerized background checks, a single arrest from decades ago can follow someone forever—destroying their ability to find work, rent housing, or rebuild a life. And employers’ sense of how common criminal records are is not much better than Blumstein’s initial intuition: they drastically underestimate how many people have one.

Working with his doctoral student Kiminori Nakamura, Blumstein asked a precise question: At what point does an old criminal record stop being a meaningful predictor of future crime? Using a dataset of approximately 80,000 first-time arrestees from New York State, they tracked how long it took for a former offender’s risk of rearrest to drop to the same level as someone of the same age who had never been arrested.

They called this the “redemption time.” Depending on the offense type and the person’s age, it typically ranged from 5 to 15 years. After that period, the former offender was statistically no more dangerous than anyone else. Continuing to punish them served no public safety purpose—it was simply cruelty.

Blumstein and Nakamura validated their results across multiple states—testing them in Florida and Illinois as well as New York—and found consistent patterns. They also studied first-time prison releasees and found that while their short-term recidivism was higher than that of arrestees, those who stayed clean for 10 to 15 years converged to a similar low-risk level.

In a New York Times op-ed, Blumstein argued that anyone who has remained arrest-free for more than twenty years after their last offense should be free from the stigma of their criminal past. His research became the scientific foundation for the growing “Ban the Box” movement, which seeks to remove criminal-history questions from job applications, giving millions of reformed individuals a fair shot at rebuilding their lives.

Connecting Demographics to Crime

In 1980, Blumstein published a study examining the impact of the postwar Baby Boom generation on rising crime rates in the 1960s and 1970s. The logic was straightforward but powerful: the well-established age-crime curve shows that crime peaks in the late teens and early twenties. When the massive Baby Boom generation (those born 1946–1964) hit those ages, crime would naturally rise—and when they aged out, it would fall.

He then applied the same demographic analysis to project future prison populations in Pennsylvania—predicting a rise from about 5,400 to 5,800 prisoners. That projection, based on 1970s patterns, proved conservative when the national incarceration explosion pushed the actual number to approximately 50,000. But the methodology itself was groundbreaking: it gave policymakers a way to anticipate the future demands on the criminal justice system based on demographic trends, rather than simply reacting to crises after they arrived.

A Legacy Measured in Lives Changed

Alfred Blumstein won the Stockholm Prize in Criminology in 2007, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1998, received an honorary degree from John Jay College, and was elected president of every major professional organization he belonged to—including the American Society of Criminology, ORSA, TIMS, and INFORMS.

Yet he remained characteristically humble. In 2018, he remarked, “I feel that I’ve become a leader in the field of criminal analysis and criminal justice, not because I knew anything, but simply because I had brought technical perspectives and analytic skills to dealing with issues that no one had thought to examine that way.”

He walked into criminology as an outsider who knew nothing about crime. He left it as the man who taught the world to see crime as a system—and showed us, with data and rigor, how to make that system a bit more just.  He is survived by his wife of over sixty years, Dolores; their three daughters, Lisa, Ellen, and Diane; and four grandchildren.

QUEENS, N.Y. — Despite Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s objections, Jabez Chakraborty, 22, who was shot by police during a mental health crisis in Queens, has been charged with attempted assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

Chakraborty’s family had called 911 for help, seeking medical assistance as he acted erratically. Body-camera footage released by the NYPD shows him advancing toward officers with a large kitchen knife.

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz filed the charges Feb. 13. Chakraborty pleaded not guilty from his hospital bed and remains in custody on bail.

Mamdani has argued that Chakraborty, who has a history of schizophrenia, needs mental health treatment rather than criminal prosecution. He highlighted that the family originally called for an ambulance, not police, and said the case underscores the need for a city system that dispatches trained health professionals instead of officers in psychiatric emergencies. Mamdani said no family should have to endure what Chakraborty’s family went through, emphasizing prevention, compassion, and crisis care as the appropriate response.

LOS ANGELES (VINnews)-Portland Trail Blazers forward Deni Avdija, the first Israeli ever selected to the NBA All-Star Game, thanked supporters in Israel who plan to wake up in the middle of the night to watch his performance on Sunday.

In comments during All-Star Weekend media availability on Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026, Avdija addressed fans back home directly.

“First of all, thank you for waking up and sacrificing your sleeping hours,” Avdija said. “I know it isn’t easy — as someone who loves to sleep.”

He continued: “But I have to say ‘thank you’ to them, because so many of them voted for me and continue to follow (support) me, and I also get to play with the people of Israel on the court.”

Avdija, 25, was named a Western Conference reserve for the Feb. 15 game in Inglewood, California, following a breakout season with the Trail Blazers. He is averaging around 25 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists per game.

The Beit Zera native called his selection a “dream come true” and highlighted the pride of representing his country on the league’s biggest stage. He has worn a jersey featuring the Israeli flag during All-Star events.

Avdija was drafted ninth overall by the Washington Wizards in 2020 and traded to Portland ahead of the 2024-25 season. His All-Star nod marks a milestone for Israeli basketball, drawing widespread attention and support in Israel despite the time difference for the Sunday broadcast.

The 2026 NBA All-Star Game tips off at 5 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock, featuring a revamped format with international elements. Avdija is expected to compete as part of Team World in the exhibition.

Former President Barack Obama sharply criticized the current political climate in the United States, describing it as a “clown show” during an interview released today. In his remarks, Obama suggested that many Americans are disturbed by the tone and rhetoric emerging from the White House during President Trump’s second term.

Obama made the comments while discussing a controversial video that appeared earlier this month on President Trump’s Truth Social account. The video briefly portrayed Obama and his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, as apes, drawing widespread criticism.

Despite bipartisan condemnation, Trump has not issued an apology for the post. The White House instead attributed the upload to a staff member who had “erroneously” shared it, and the video was later removed.

“I think it’s important to recognize that the majority of the American people find this behavior deeply troubling,” Obama told host Brian Tyler Cohen on his “No Lie” podcast.

Cohen had asked Obama how the country could recover from what he characterized as the “de-evolution of discourse,” referencing both the video and the administration’s description of two U.S. citizens killed during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis as “domestic terrorists.”

In response, Obama argued that while inflammatory rhetoric may attract attention and serve as a “distraction,” most Americans “still believe in decency, courtesy, [and] kindness.”

“There’s this sort of clown show that’s happening on social media and on television,” he said.

“And what is true is that there doesn’t seem to be any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office, right? So that’s been lost,” he continued.

Obama also rejected the idea that Republicans are simply seizing whatever power they desire, asserting instead that the GOP “haven’t actually codified or institutionalized anything” beyond what he referred to as the One Big, Beautiful Bill since taking back control of Congress.

“They have poured a huge amount of money into ICE and their immigration agenda, and they’ve cut taxes for really wealthy people, and now they’re trying to unravel a bunch of rules and norms and laws that are already in place; that’s an easier job,” he said. “I say that because we should accept the responsibility and the challenge that our job is going to be a little bit harder.”

While acknowledging that Democrats have at times hesitated to dismantle institutional barriers that slow legislative progress, Obama warned his party against adopting tactics similar to those of their political opponents.

“I don’t want us to simply duplicate the behavior on the other side. I don’t want us to have a slash and burn strategy where we don’t care about rule of law, we don’t care about some of the guardrails around our democracy. We start lying and having no regard for the truth, the way the other side seems to be comfortable with right now, because if that’s how we fight, then we lose what we’re fighting for,” Obama said.

Addressing frustration among some voters who believe Democrats are not forceful enough in pushing back against Trump, Obama suggested that criticism of his party can sometimes be excessive.

“Sometimes I think we’re tough on Democrats,” he said, before contrasting his own approach in office with that of the current administration.

“When I was President of the United States, I suppose I could have simply unilaterally ordered the military to go into some red state and harass and intimidate a governor there or cut off funding for states that didn’t vote for me, I could have exercised that prerogative, but that is contrary to how I think our democracy is supposed to work, and I think we shouldn’t get discouraged by the fact that we have a tougher job,” he said.

{Matzav.com}

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

Every so often, big companies realize that things are not working so well and they need to retool. With all of the current anti-semitism perhaps it is time to retool our davening a bit – that is to emphasize something that has always been there – but to focus more on it.  The concepts below are based on what this author feels is the most important Siddur that has been published in over one hundred years – since the Otzer HaTefilos siddur was published in 1914 – Siddur Ruach Nachon by Rabbi Shmuel Dov Eisenblatt.

The main idea is that before standing in prayer before HaKadosh Baruch Hu, a person must first resolve to truly fulfill what Hashem commanded us in His Torah (Vayikra 19:18): “Love your fellow as yourself.”

R’ Chaim Vital makes this point emphatically in Sefer HaKavanos (Derushei Kodem HaTefillah, Derush 1). Before arranging one’s Tefillah  — one must first accept upon himself the mitzvah of loving fellow Jews. Only through this will his prayer ascend as an inclusive prayer encompassing all of Israel. Only then can it rise upward. Only then can it bear fruit.

Furthermore, those who study Torah together must see themselves as one body. Each person must view himself as a single limb among his companions. If any one of them is in distress — whether from illness or any other cause — all must share in that distress. They must pray for him. In all of one’s prayers, one must include one’s fellow. All matters of love between companions must be attended to.

The Scope of the Mitzvah

This mitzvah is not a standalone obligation. It encompasses the entire fabric of interpersonal mitzvos: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart.” “You shall love the convert.” “You shall not take revenge.” “You shall not bear a grudge.” “With righteousness shall you judge.” “You shall not stand idly by the blood of your fellow.” “You shall not curse the deaf.” “Before the blind do not place a stumbling block” (Vayikra 19; Oraysa, chapter 2).

When a person awakens himself to love his fellow, he simultaneously arouses himself to fulfill every one of these obligations. This means loving every Jew — regardless of background or affiliation — as he loves himself.

This love, when sincere, transforms one’s entire davening.

A] Feeling the Pain — and the Joy — of Others

Praying Over Their Suffering

This love moves a person to feel the pain of the klal and pray over their suffering.

We find this with Moshe Rabbeinu at the very beginning of his life. The Torah tells us (Shemos 2:11) that “he went out to his brothers and saw their burdens.” Rashi and Sforno explain: he directed his eyes and heart to feel their distress. He chose to look. He chose to feel.

The Gemara (Shabbos 67a) teaches that even a tree that fails to produce fruit is marked with red dye (sikra) so that passersby who see it will daven for it. A metzora , embarrassing though his situation is, must announce his condition so that others will pray for him. The Mishnah in Middos (2:2) records that people would pray for mourners to be comforted and for those who were excommunicated to merit to correct their ways (see also Magen Avraham 215:16; Aruch HaShulchan 215:61). Bearing the burden of one’s fellow is one of the 48 qualities through which Torah is acquired (Avos 6:6).

Rejoicing in Their Good Fortune

This love also moves a person to genuinely rejoice in the good fortune of others. As Dovid HaMelech declared: “The humble shall hear and be glad” (Tehillim 34:3). “Those who fear You shall see me and be glad” (119:74; see Rashi, Bechoros). This includes reciting the appropriate brachos when encountering another’s good fortune. These are lessons rooted in love.

Transforming One’s Kavvanah

When a person does this, something remarkable happens. Most of our tefillos are phrased on behalf of others. Virtually every prayer formula is expressed in the plural. When you genuinely care about the people you are praying for, your kavvanah becomes real and heartfelt.

It is proper to pray over the distress of the Shechinah itself, which is in exile from among the people. One should not merely go through the motions. Rather, one should distribute among them thanksgiving and blessings. One should be among those who give thanks and who bless.

In every section of the Amidah — the granting of understanding, the healing of the sick, every blessing — and especially at its conclusion, one should direct his heart to the welfare of all of Israel. Not merely his own needs. Everything we pray for — the abundance of the years, the gladness of the heart, every source of joy — should be directed toward all of Israel. Even when reciting the name of Hashem, one should sense the distress felt on behalf of others. This is the concept of Rofei Choleh — the Healer of the sick — with comfort. The words are no longer just words. They become a genuine plea for people you actually care about.

The Sin of Failing to Pray for Others

This love also saves a person from a grave sin. The Gemara in Brachos (12b) actually teaches this explicitly: “Whoever is able to ask for mercy on behalf of his fellow and does not do so is called a sinner.” If he is a Torah scholar, the obligation is even greater. He must exert himself to pray on their behalf.

One should pray even regarding troubles that befall others. This is itself the concept of praying for the return of the Shechinah. One should be among those who, as it were, wear sackcloth over the troubles of Israel. Praying specifically over their troubles. On their behalf.

Here is a remarkable principle: one who prays for others while experiencing similar distress himself is answered first.  But make sure that that is not the reason to do it.

As the navi declares (Yeshayahu 63:9): “In all their afflictions, He was afflicted.” The Shechinah itself shares in Israel’s pain. She never ceases to seek mercy and compassion on their behalf. The result? The spirit of rest and comfort descends upon the one who prays for others (Yerushalmi; see also Rav Yaakov Skvira on “A-Kelokim, Tefillah“; Radvaz, Parashas Vayeira, chapter 34).

B] Shattering the Self-Centered Perspective

This love shatters a person’s narrow view of himself. Instead of seeing himself as the center of his own little world, he begins to grasp how small one individual truly is within the vast tapestry of creation. The prayers he offers on behalf of the community take on far greater meaning and urgency.

The Baal HaTanya (Perek 32) makes a striking point:. A person whose prayer goes unanswered may find that the very reason is this: his fellow’s welfare was not on his mind. His heart and intellect were not elevated to include his fellow.

Think about it. If your Tefillah goes unanswered, consider: perhaps it is precisely because you were consumed by your own distress. Perhaps you failed to think about whether another person was also suffering. Perhaps you should have prayed for him. The Torah commands (Vayikra 19:18): “You shall love your fellow as yourself.”

The tzaddik is different. He is not merely preoccupied with his own distress. All of his prayers and supplications are established on behalf of many, in abundance.

The Torah promises (Devarim 13:18): “And He will give you mercy and be compassionate to you.” Those who show compassion to others are shown compassion from Heaven.

And even if a matter does not constitute personal distress for an individual — yet he feels for others — the Gemara still teaches (Berachos 12b) that a person is warned regarding his obligation to pray on behalf of others. How much more so when it costs him nothing!

C] Merging with the Prayers of All Israel

This love enables a person to merge his personal tefillos with the prayers of all of Klal Yisrael. Together, they are elevated as something truly pleasing before Hashem. Together, they can actually bear fruit.

A person should not be like one who lives comfortably and honorably among others yet fails to concern himself with their needs. Their clothing. Their food. Their water. Their sustenance. All the necessities of the community and its welfare. Every individual who lacks resources.

Such a person worries only about himself in his prayers. He does not recognize that he is a member of the greater community. It is not sufficient to think only about the general needs of the community and about peace (Tomer Devorah 3:19). One should reflect even more deeply about the virtue of communal prayer. He must see himself as included in the tzibbur — as a limb within the body (Yerushalmi, Nedarim 9, daf 4).

D] Bonding with Klal Yisrael and Drawing Close to Hashem

The Requirement of Unity

This love draws a person into a deep bond with the totality of the Jewish people. It brings him closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu Himself.

The Sefer HaKavanos explains this (Derush Birchos HaShachar). The Yerushalmi teaches (Pesachim, chapter 4) that the mitzvos require Kohanim, Levi’im, and Yisrael together in a quorum. This is the essential point of inclusive unity in prayer (see also Kitzur Kavanos L’Ramchal, p. 65).

Love of Fellow Jews Opens the Channel to Hashem’s Love

The Ba’al Shem Tov taught a profound insight (Nesiv HaKedushah, in the name of Otzar HaChaim). The verse “Love your fellow as yourself — I am Hashem” should be read as a single, continuous statement.

Love one another — and in that same measure, the love of HaKadosh Baruch Hu will be revealed to you. Your manner of conduct in loving each other is the very channel through which Hashem’s love flows back to you.

One Entity, One Root

All of Israel are one entity. They are rooted in the Shechinah, which is the source of all Jewish souls. She is called “Kneses Yisrael” — the Congregation of Israel — because she gathers all of Israel before HaKadosh Baruch Hu (Zohar, Tikkunei Zohar 21a; Ramchal, chapter 9).

Israel is like a tree with many branches but one single life-force flowing through all of them. Sometimes they are unified. Sometimes they are separate. But the root is one.

Without this connection to the Shechinah, it is impossible to enter before the King. The one who prays and includes all of Israel associates himself with the Shechinah — the very root. Through this, he finds himself standing close before the King (Kavanos 18, pp. 1–4; Derush HaMelech, chapter 4, Sifsei HaTefillah).

Yaakov Avinu and the Twelve Tribes

The Sefer Charadim writes that Yaakov Avinu blessed all twelve tribes only after removing jealousy and hatred from their hearts. He brought them to teshuvah. He unified them as one person with one soul.

Without this, it is impossible to receive the blessing of unity. HaKadosh Baruch Hu does not rest His Shechinah where there is discord (Reishis Chochmah; Zohar HaKadosh, section Alef).

The Deeper Meaning of Shema Yisrael

This, say the Mekubalim, is the deeper meaning of Shema Yisrael. The word “Shema” means to gather — as in “And Shaul gathered the people” (Shmuel I 15:4).

When we recite Shema, we should envision ourselves gathering together with all of the congregation of Israel. We declare in love and with one heart, without jealousy or hatred: “Hear, O Israel!” All of us now accept upon ourselves the yoke of Hashem. “Hashem is our God, Hashem is One.”

Based on the verse (Yeshayahu 45:3, 21): “All of them are called by one name.” Each person’s intention should be that every individual arrive at his proper place in the complete harmony of a wondrous integration. In this way, he completes the rectification of the individual through the rectification of the world. Each person must reach the state of completion.

The 613 Mitzvos — Only Through Unity

As the Sefer Chaim Shmuel explains (chapter 19): “Love your fellow as yourself” — because your fellow is at your side. He is like you. In your wholeness, you are one. There is no one else but you yourself. Like a single entity whose parts complement each other.

This mitzvah encompasses all 613 mitzvos. No single individual can fulfill them all alone. It is only the collective of Israel, united, that embodies the complete Torah. That is the very essence of life.

Blessing Flows Only Where There Is Peace

Finally, the Sefer Charadim writes further that the matter of brachos contains a hidden teaching regarding peace.

The attribute of strict justice (middas ha’din) governs the boundary between kindness and judgment. The essence of blessing is an abundance that overflows beyond that boundary toward goodness.

When the attribute of peace is present — the attribute of chesed — an abundance of blessing flows that surpasses the boundary of nature. But where there is enmity, the flow is blocked.

This is why a shaliach tzibbur who has enemies — or anyone toward whom others bear enmity — should not lead the prayers. Such a person lacks the power to arouse the blessing. The blessing can only flow where there is peace and unity.

As we stand today in the shadow of rising hatred from without, let us ensure that we are not undermined by indifference from within. The Siddur Ruach Nachon reminds us of what the great Mekubalim and Poskim have always known: Tefillah without ahavas Yisrael is like a neshamah without a guf — it has no vessel through which to rise.

Before we utter a single word of the Amidah, before we cry out to Hashem for protection, for parnassah, for refuah — we must first open our hearts to one another. Feel another’s pain. Rejoice in another’s simchah. See ourselves not as isolated individuals whispering private requests, but as living limbs of one body standing before the Ribbono Shel Olam.

If we truly want our tefillos to pierce the heavens, we must first ensure that our hearts are not walled off from our fellow Jews on earth. The channel is clear: love one another — and in that same measure, Hashem’s love flows back to us. In these difficult times, this is not merely a lofty ideal. It is the most urgent and practical retooling we can do.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

Police are investigating a reported stabbing in Lakewood this evening, TLS has learned.

The incident happened around 10:00 PM in the south end of town.

According to preliminary information available, it appears the victim was involved in a fight and stabbed with a bottle. He reportedly also suffered a broken nose. The victim is being treated by EMS.

Police are searching for the suspect.

A new IDF General Staff order designed to regulate the integration of chareidi soldiers has been presented to the broader public as a dramatic breakthrough. Supporters claimed the detailed provisions would ensure that a chareidi recruit entering the army would remain chareidi upon discharge, potentially encouraging large numbers of young men from the chareidi community to enlist. However, beneath the celebratory headlines, serious concerns are emerging that the reality on the ground may be far more complicated. In a report published in the newspaper Besheva, several experts outlined what they describe as a significant gap between the promises and the practical implications of the order.

Legal scholar Professor Talia Einhorn reviewed the multi-section directive and identified what she says are loopholes embedded within the language that could allow violations of the seemingly strict conditions outlined in the document. In a position paper published in cooperation with the Torat Lechima organization, Professor Einhorn first points to what she considers the most problematic clause.

Section 3 of the order states: “This order supplements the provisions of the Joint Service Order regarding the service of members of the chareidi public in the IDF. Commanders shall implement the provisions of this order and the instructions issued pursuant to it, while preserving their dignity and in a manner that enables the observance of the faith of all those serving.”

The Joint Service Order, to which the new directive is effectively subordinate, was originally enacted to address the needs of religious soldiers, particularly concerning separation between men and women. However, under that framework, numerous testimonies have accumulated over the years from soldiers in the religious Zionist community who reported being required to serve alongside female soldiers in field operations, guard duty, and other settings—situations they say directly conflicted with halachic standards.

The next clause details the process for acceptance and placement into designated tracks for chareidi recruits: “A candidate for service or a soldier may request to serve in one of the designated service tracks.”

Here, too, Einhorn identifies what she views as a significant vulnerability. According to her, the phrase “may request to serve” leaves ultimate discretion in the hands of the army, allowing it to assign a chareidi recruit to a non-designated framework if it chooses. “The expression ‘may request to serve’ leaves the army with the authority to send him to a non-designated service track. In my view, it should state: A candidate or soldier is entitled to serve in one of the designated service tracks if he meets the criteria,” she argues.

Rabbi Aviad Gadot, chairman of the Torat Lechima organization, also addressed the issue in the Besheva report, describing the order as a profound failure. In his view, the only factor that could draw chareidim into the army is trust—and that trust, he says, is currently at a low point.

“The trust of the chareidim in the IDF is in very poor condition. All the promises that were made to rabbis and chareidi leadership in the past were violated. The order does not restore trust, because it is effectively the Joint Service Order. It becomes clear from it that the IDF leadership is not prepared to give up the progressive culture in favor of Jewish culture. They do not want to give up radical feminism, and when there is a clash – that value prevails, as the order states. Therefore the order does not contribute to chareidi enlistment; perhaps it does the opposite.”

Rabbi Gadot described the development as “a waste and a historic missed opportunity.” He expressed hope that the chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, who is overseeing discussions on the draft law’s wording, will introduce necessary amendments to both the order and the legislation itself. According to Gadot, Knesset member Boaz Bismuth understands the central place of Torah within the Jewish people and recognizes what he calls the manipulations being carried out around the draft law.

“First of all, he must demand that the General Staff order for chareidim not be subordinate to the Joint Service Order. Because that is like saying that the order regarding kashrut would be subordinate to the order regarding non-kosher food, and so on. The gender agenda is the original sin. The Chief of Staff is introducing into the IDF agendas of far-left NGOs; to this day the IDF has not freed itself from the agenda led by the Gender Affairs Advisor.”

According to Rabbi Gadot, the current version of the order is the product of lobbying efforts by various organizations during deliberations in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, where demands were raised that women be allowed access to all areas of the military.

“Radical feminists said this in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee,” Gadot said, “and Eyal Zamir comes from those same circles and is now continuing what he did as Deputy Chief of Staff.”

Although the directive asserts that these policies will not affect chareidi soldiers, Gadot argues that the influence of the feminist provisions will ultimately reach even those serving in protected tracks. “According to this order, there could be a chareidi officer who completed a track in the Hasmonean framework, went through an officers’ course in a designated program, but once he finishes he can be assigned as a commander in a mixed battalion. Within the chareidi frameworks there will not be progressive public displays, but in the larger army the chareidi soldier will encounter it in various contexts.”

{Matzav.com}

JERUSALEM (VINnews)-Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar will represent the country at the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington on Thursday, according to Israeli officials.

The arrangement follows a request from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will not attend the session.

Netanyahu recently met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House to discuss the Iran situation, advancing his planned Washington visit by a week.

The Board of Peace, chaired by Trump, was established following his Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict, a 20-point framework that led to a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in October 2025.

A U.N. Security Council resolution adopted Nov. 17, 2025, welcomed the board’s creation and authorized it, along with cooperating countries, to establish an international stabilization force in Gaza to support the ceasefire and postwar efforts.

The board is tasked with supervising Gaza’s temporary governance, reconstruction and demilitarization in its initial focus, though Trump has since expanded its mandate to address global conflicts.

The Thursday meeting in Washington is expected to address Gaza reconstruction funding and details of the stabilization force, amid pledges already secured from the United States and the United Arab Emirates exceeding $1 billion each for Gaza projects.

Sa’ar’s participation comes as Israel engages with the U.S.-led initiative, which includes members from various countries but has drawn mixed reactions internationally over its structure and scope.

CAIRO (AP) — The Iranian security agents came at 2 a.m., pulling up in a half-dozen cars outside the home of the Nakhii family. They woke up the sleeping sisters, Nyusha and Mona, and forced them to give the passwords for their phones. Then they took the two away.

The women were accused of participating in the nationwide protests that shook Iran a week earlier, a friend of the pair told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity for her security as she described the Jan. 16 arrests.

Such arrests have been happening for weeks following the government crackdown last month that crushed the protests calling for the end of the country’s theocratic rule. Reports of raids on homes and workplaces have come from major cities and rural towns alike, revealing a dragnet that has touched large swaths of Iranian society. University students, doctors, lawyers, teachers, actors, business owners, athletes and filmmakers have been swept up, as well as reformist figures close to President Masoud Pezeshkian.

They are often held incommunicado for days or weeks and prevented from contacting family members or lawyers, according to activists monitoring the arrests. That has left desperate relatives searching for their loved ones.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has put the number of arrests at more than 50,000. The AP has been unable to verify the figure. Tracking the detainees has been difficult since Iranian authorities imposed an internet blackout, and reports leak out only with difficulty.

Other activist groups outside Iran have also been working to document the sweeps.

“Authorities continue to identify people and detain them,” said Shiva Nazarahari, an organizer with one of those groups, the Committee for Monitoring the Status of Detained Protesters.

So far, the committee has verified the names of more than 2,200 people who were arrested, using direct reports from families and a network of contacts on the ground. The arrestees include 107 university students, 82 children as young as 13, as well as 19 lawyers and 106 doctors.

Nazarahari said authorities have been reviewing municipal street cameras, store surveillance cameras and drone footage to track people who participated in the protests to their homes or places of work, where they are arrested.

Held for weeks with no contact
The protests began in late December, triggered by anger over spiraling prices, and quickly spread across the country. They peaked on Jan. 8 and 9, when hundreds of thousands of people in more than 190 cities and towns across the country took to the streets.

Security forces responded by unleashing unprecedented violence. The Human Rights Activists News Agency has so far counted more than 7,000 dead and says the true number is far higher. Iran’s government offered its only death toll on Jan. 21, saying 3,117 people were killed. The theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from past unrest.

Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi, a hard-line cleric who heads Iran’s judiciary, became the face of the crackdown, labeling protesters “terrorists” and calling for fast-tracked punishments.

Since then, “detentions have been very widespread because it’s like a whole suffocation of society,” said one protester, reached by the AP in Gohardasht, a middle-class area outside the Iranian capital. He said two of his relatives and three of his brother’s friends were killed in the first days of the crackdown, as well as several neighbors. The protester spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by authorities.

The Nakhii sisters, 25-year-old Nyusha and 37-year-old Mona, were first taken to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, where they were allowed to contact their parents, their friend said. Later, she said, they were moved to Qarchak, a women’s prison on the outskirts of Tehran where rights groups reported conditions that included overcrowding and lack of hygiene even before the crackdown.

Other people whose arrests were documented by the detainees committee have disappeared into the prisons. The family of Abolfazl Jazbi has not heard from him since his Jan. 15 arrest at a factory in the southern city of Isfahan. Jazbi suffers from a severe blood disorder that requires medication, according to the committee.

Atila Sultanpour, 45, has not been heard from since he was taken from his home in Tehran on Jan. 29 by security agents who beat him severely, according to Dadban, a group of Iranian lawyers based abroad who are also documenting detentions.

Authorities have also moved to suspend bank accounts, block SIM cards and confiscate the property of protesters’ relatives or people who publicly express support for them, said Musa Barzin, an attorney with Dadban, citing reports from families.

In past crackdowns on protests, authorities sometimes adhered to a veneer of due process and rule of law, but not this time, Barzin said. Authorities are increasingly denying detainees access to legal counsel and often holding them for days or weeks before allowing any phone calls to family. Lawyers representing arrested protesters also have faced court summons and detention, according to Dadban.

“The following of the law is in the worst situation it has ever been,” Barzin said.

Signs of defiance continue
Despite the crackdown, many civic groups continue to issue defiant statements.

The Writers’ Association of Iran, an independent group with a long tradition of dissent, issued a statement describing the protests as an uprising against “47 years of systemic corruption and discrimination.”

It also announced that two of its members had been detained, including a member of its secretariat.

A national council representing schoolteachers urged families to speak out about detained children and students. “Do not fear the threats of security forces. Refer to independent counsel. Make your children’s names public,” it said in a statement.

A spokesman for the council said Sunday that it has documented the deaths of at least 200 minors who were killed in the crackdown. That figure is up several dozen from the count just days before.

“Every day we tell ourselves this is the last list,” Mohammad Habibi wrote on X. “But the next morning, new names arrive again.”

Bar associations and medical groups have also spoken out, including Iran’s state-sanctioned doctors council, which called on authorities to stop harassing medical staff.

Anger over the bloodshed now adds to the bitterness over the economy, which has been hollowed out by decades of sanctions, corruption and mismanagement. The value of the currency has plunged, and inflation has climbed to record levels.

The Iranian government has announced gestures such as launching a new coupon program for essential goods. Labor and trade groups, including a national retirees syndicate, have issued statements condemning the economic and political crisis.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has moved an aircraft carrier and other military assets to the Persian Gulf and suggested the U.S. could attack Iran over the killing of peaceful demonstrators or if Tehran launches mass executions over the protests. A second American aircraft carrier is on its way to the Mideast.

Iran’s theocracy has faced down protests and U.S. threats in the past, and the crackdown showed the iron grip it holds over the country. This week, authorities organized pro-government rallies with hundreds of thousands of people to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Still, Barzin said, he sees the ferocity of the crackdown as a sign that Iran’s leadership “for the first time is afraid of being overthrown.”

[COMMUNICATED]

Day Two of the 8th Annual CHEMED Medical Ethics Conference continued with tremendous energy and depth, offering a full slate of dynamic lectures and top-tier speakers in both the medical and halachic fields.

Participants engaged in thought-provoking sessions, cutting-edge discussions, and practical learning across a wide range of topics. With many new faces joining returning attendees, the atmosphere remained vibrant, collaborative, and inspiring.

The conference continues to showcase CHEMED’s leadership at the forefront of medicine and halacha, delivering an unparalleled experience rich in knowledge, professionalism, and purpose.

More highlights to come.

President Donald Trump has been cautioned by his closest advisers that securing a nuclear agreement with Iran may prove historically unattainable, according to a senior U.S. official cited by Israeli journalist Barak Ravid of Channel 12.

The warning reportedly came after Trump asked special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner to assess the likelihood of successfully negotiating a deal with Tehran. In response, the two advisers pointed to past efforts, telling the president that Western governments have never managed to conclude a favorable agreement with the leadership of the Islamic Republic. Despite that track record, they indicated they would continue approaching the negotiations firmly.

“If they agree to what we are asking for, we will give you the option and you decide,” the two diplomats reportedly told Trump.

The United States has been engaged in efforts to reach an understanding with Iran aimed at curbing its nuclear program and preventing a broader military confrontation. However, an initial round of discussions held this week in Oman ended without a breakthrough.

A follow-up meeting is scheduled for Tuesday in Geneva, where Witkoff and Kushner are expected to take part in the next phase of talks.

Trump has repeatedly made clear that military action remains an option if Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, refuses to finalize an agreement. On Thursday, he warned that Iran could face a “very traumatic” moment if negotiations collapse.

A collective sense of relief spread throughout the Torah community after several tense days during which the country followed the developments surrounding the arrest of Reb Avraham Ben Dayan. He returned home on Erev Shabbos, as previously reported here on Matzav.com, concluding a period marked by protests and gatherings across the country.

For his first Shabbos after being freed, Reb Ben Dayan chose to spend the day at his father-in-law’s home in the moshav of Tifrach, away from the public spotlight and the commotion of the city.

The most moving moment came on Motzei Shabbos, when Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Maor HaTalmud, arrived unexpectedly at the home where the avreich was staying, seeking to honor his steadfast resolve.

As soon as the Rosh Yeshiva entered the house, he immediately began a spirited and extended dance with Reb Ben Dayan. “We witnessed here a true joy of a mitzvah,” one of those present recounted. “This was not merely a dance celebrating his release, but a declaration by the entire Torah world that we will not be intimidated.”

After the dancing concluded, the Rosh Yeshiva sat down with the avreich for an extended conversation filled with strength and encouragement. He praised Reb Ben Dayan’s courage and said that his steadfastness in the face of this test served as inspiration for yeshiva students and avreichim during this complex period.

Before departing, the Rosh Yeshiva added warm words of brocha, noting that the merit that sustained him during the days of his arrest would continue to accompany him and his family, strengthening them in their Torah learning and continued growth in serving Hashem.

The United States carried out a sweeping series of airstrikes across Syria targeting ISIS positions, capturing or killing at least 50 operatives, in what officials described as an ongoing response to the deadly ambush that claimed the lives of American personnel late last year.

According to US military authorities, the strikes hit no fewer than 35 sites, with 20 American aircraft deploying more than 90 precision-guided weapons under Operation Hawkeye. The campaign follows the Dec. 13, 2025 ambush attributed to ISIS that left three Americans dead, including two US soldiers.

US Central Command stated that between Feb. 3 and Feb. 12, forces executed 10 separate strike missions aimed at 30 ISIS-linked targets. Those operations destroyed weapons depots and additional logistical infrastructure used by the terror organization.

Video footage released publicly showed powerful explosions ripping through multiple sites in Syria, with rockets detonating and sending clouds of smoke, dirt, and debris high into the air.

CBS reported that the operation involved a range of aircraft, including F-15Es, A-10s, AC-130Js, MQ-9 drones, and Jordanian F-16 fighter jets.

This latest campaign represents the third wave of US retaliatory action following the December ambush. On Dec. 19, just days after the killings, American forces struck more than 70 ISIS targets in Syria. A subsequent round of attacks was carried out on Jan. 10, when 35 additional targets were hit with precision-guided munitions, according to US CENTCOM.

“The strikes today targeted ISIS throughout Syria as part of our ongoing commitment to root out Islamic terrorism against our warfighters, prevent future attacks, and protect American and partner forces in the region,” US Central Command warned in a post on X last month.

“Our message remains strong: if you harm our warfighters, we will find you and kill you anywhere in the world, no matter how hard you try to evade justice,” CentCom concluded.

Military officials said Operation Hawkeye, which began on Dec. 19, 2025, resulted in the capture or elimination of at least 50 ISIS fighters.

The broader campaign reflects President Trump’s pledge to “retaliate” against ISIS in response to the ambush attack.

The victims of that assault were identified as Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, both members of the Iowa National Guard, along with US civilian interpreter Ayad Mansoor Sakat, who were shot by an ISIS gunman.

“We will never forget, and never relent,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in an X post following military operations on Jan. 10.

Meanwhile, NBC reported Thursday that Syria’s Defense Ministry announced its forces had taken control of a strategic base in the eastern part of the country that had been operated by the US military for years.

(Ty: Trucker Jo)

WASHINGTON — Sen. John Fetterman on Saturday criticized what he described as an anti-Israel faction within the Democratic Party, pushing back on calls from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to consider placing conditions on U.S. aid to Israel.

In an interview, the Pennsylvania Democrat rejected assertions that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza amounts to genocide and argued that U.S. assistance should not be restricted, saying Israel is fighting for its survival.

Fetterman also criticized progressive activists he characterized as sympathetic to Hamas, referencing political commentator Hasan Piker. He questioned why some Democrats have been more vocal in condemning Israel than Iran, citing reported deaths during Tehran’s crackdown on anti-government protests.

Ocasio-Cortez made her remarks while attending the Munich Security Conference, where she and other progressives have advocated reassessing U.S. support for Israel in light of the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

The exchange highlights continuing divisions within the Democratic Party over U.S. policy toward Israel, as some lawmakers call for stricter oversight of aid while others, including Fetterman, defend continued support.

Tensions surfaced between Israel and Washington after U.S. President Donald Trump publicly questioned why Israeli President Isaac Herzog has not issued a pardon to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, prompting sharp reactions from officials in the President’s Residence.

Sources within the Israeli President’s office said they were taken aback and angered by Trump’s comments. According to those officials, Trump stated that Herzog possesses the authority to pardon the prime minister but has opted not to exercise it, characterizing that decision as both embarrassing and lacking justification.

Individuals in the president’s circle further raised the possibility that Netanyahu himself may have encouraged Trump to weigh in, echoing suggestions that surfaced when Trump initially raised the matter. Senior aides told Channel 12 News that throughout the weekend the president and his advisers sought to clarify who may have spurred Trump to address Israel’s head of state in this way. They signaled that if Netanyahu had any involvement in prompting such public pressure, it would cross well-established lines, and they would demand clarification from the prime minister.

According to those aides, the statements were interpreted not merely as a personal slight against President Herzog, but as a challenge to Israel’s independence and its status as a sovereign nation.

In a formal statement, the President’s office underscored that any appeal for a pardon must, under standard protocol, first be reviewed by the Ministry of Justice, which provides a legal assessment. Only after that step is completed does the president consider the issue, weighing the law, the good of the country, and his own judgment, free from outside or domestic coercion.

The statement added that President Herzog maintains deep respect for President Trump, particularly regarding his record of support for Israel and its security. At the same time, it stressed that Israel functions as an independent state guided by the rule of law. The office made clear that, notwithstanding the impression created by Trump’s remarks, Herzog has not reached any determination on the matter.

Netanyahu’s staff responded: “President Trump’s statement on Sunday was made on his own initiative. Prime Minister Netanyahu heard about it in the media and did not know about it in advance, just as he did not know in advance about President Trump’s statement on this issue in his speech to the Knesset.”

The Pinsk-Karlin community is in mourning following the petirah of the venerable chassid, Rav Yehuda Rosenfeld zt”l, one of the elder and most respected members of the Pinsk-Karlin kehilla and the uncle of the current Rebbe. He passed away on Shabbos Kodesh at the age of 91.

The levayah took place this evening at the Beis Medrash of Pinsk-Karlin in the Beis Yisrael neighborhood of Yerushalayim with kevurah on Har HaZeisim.

Rav Rosenfeld was born on the 26th of Teves, 5695 (1935), to his father, Rav Yitzchak Menashe Rosenfeld, who served for many years as a shochet, and to his mother, Mrs. Hadassah. She was a daughter of the gaon Rav Yehoshua Heshel Heltovski, one of the senior leaders of the Karliner chassidim and a descendant of Rav Aharon HaGadol of Karlin.

In his youth, he studied in Karlin, where he attached himself closely to the Rebbes of the Karlin dynasty. Upon reaching marriageable age, he married the daughter of Rav Yitzchak Rachtshper.

In Yerushalayim, Rav Rosenfeld became a well-known and respected shochet. He was renowned for his diligence in limud haTorah, using every spare moment to immerse himself in learning.

His brother was the Orchos Aharon of Pinsk-Karlin, and his nephew is the current Pinsk-Karliner Rebbe.

He is survived by six children and many grandchildren.

Yehi zichro boruch.

Day Two of the 8th Annual CHEMED Medical Ethics Conference continued with tremendous energy and depth, offering a full slate of dynamic lectures and top-tier speakers in both the medical and halachic fields.

Participants engaged in thought-provoking sessions, cutting-edge discussions, and practical learning across a wide range of topics. With many new faces joining returning attendees, the atmosphere remained vibrant, collaborative, and inspiring.

The conference continues to showcase CHEMED’s leadership at the forefront of medicine and halacha, delivering an unparalleled experience rich in knowledge, professionalism, and purpose.

More highlights to come.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military on Saturday reported a series of strikes against Islamic State group targets in Syria in retaliation for the December ambush that killed two U.S. soldiers and one American civilian interpreter.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement that American aircraft had conducted 10 strikes against more than 30 IS targets between Feb. 3 and Thursday, hitting weapons storage facilities and other infrastructure.

At least 50 members of IS have been killed or captured, while more than 100 IS targets have been struck since the United States began its strikes after the Dec. 13 ambush, according to Central Command. That attack killed Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, and Ayad Mansoor Sakat, the civilian interpreter.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Defense Ministry said Thursday that government forces took control of a base in the east of the country that was run for years by U.S. troops as part of the fight against IS. The Al-Tanf base played a major role after IS declared a caliphate in large parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

The U.S. military on Friday completed the transfer of thousands of IS detainees from Syria to Iraq, where they are expected to stand trial. The prisoners were sent to Iraq at the request of Baghdad, in a move welcomed by the U.S.-led coalition that had for years fought against IS.

It is with great sadness that Matzav.com reports the passing of Rav Ben Zion Bobchik zt”l, longtime rov of the Gerer kehillah in Kiryat Gat and rov of the Beis HaChassidim Baal Shem Tov in Bnei Brak. Rav Bobchik, author of the sefer Batzar BaMidbar, passed away over Shabbos at the age of 72.

Rav Bobchik had been battling a serious disease over the past year.

The levayah was held tonight at his home at 14 Ben Yaakov Street in Bnei Brak, proceeding to the Vizhnitzer bais hachaim.

Born on the fourth of Adar 5714 (1954) to Rav Yosef Bobchik and Mrs. Sheindel Bobchik, he was raised in the institutions of the Gur chassidus and developed close ties with its rebbes from a young age.

Upon reaching marriageable age, he wed the daughter of Rav Nosson Zilberberg. Over the years, he was appointed rav of the Gur Beis HaChassidim on Baal Shem Tov Street in Bnei Brak, and in recent years served as the rov of the Gur community in Kiryat Gat.

Rav Bobchik was regarded as one of the prominent and respected figures in the Bnei Brak chassidic community. He was among the founders of the Baal Shem Tov shtiebel, which later relocated to Yonah HaNavi Street. Throughout his life, he served as a rav and halachic authority, with difficult and complex halachic questions brought before him regularly.

In the past decade, after assuming the rabbinic leadership of Gur chassidim in Kiryat Gat, he frequently traveled to the city to respond to halachic inquiries and guide community members in matters of halacha.

He enjoyed a close relationship with the Gerrer Rebbe, who is said to have consulted with him often on halachic matters. At family simchos of his son, Reb Motty Bobchik, the two would engage in extended discussions in Torah and halachah.

Rav Bobchik was widely known as an outstanding talmid chacham who immersed himself in Torah learning constantly.

He davened daily at the Belz chassidic shtiebel on Ben Yaakov Street in Bnei Brak, near his home.

Even during his illness, he continued to devote himself to Torah learning.

He is survived by a distinguished family. Among his sons are Rav Yisrael Bobchik, a rav and posek in Petach Tikva; Rabbi Mordechai Shimon (“Motty”) Bobchik, chief of staff to MK Yitzchak Goldknopf and a leading figure in the Gur chassidus; and his son-in-law Rabbi Moshe Reuven Goldknopf, son of MK Yitzchak Goldknopf.

Yehi zichro boruch.

President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to intensify their joint “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, including targeting Tehran’s oil exports to China, according to a report by Israel’s Channel 12.

The understanding was reached during the leaders’ meeting at the White House earlier this week, where they discussed ways to tighten economic and diplomatic pressure on Tehran amid renewed uncertainty over its nuclear ambitions.

“We agreed to go full force with the maximum pressure policy against Iran, such as everything concerning the sale of Iranian oil to China,” a U.S. official told Channel 12.

The official added that the administration remains skeptical about Tehran’s intentions in ongoing talks.

“We are open-eyed and realistic about the Iranians. The ball is in their court. If there is no real deal, we won’t agree,” the official said.

At the center of the latest discussions was Iran’s ability to continue exporting oil — particularly to China — despite Western sanctions. U.S. and Israeli officials have long argued that enforcement gaps have allowed Tehran to sustain critical revenue streams. Clamping down on those exports, officials believe, could significantly increase leverage ahead of any potential diplomatic breakthrough.

According to Channel 12, Trump and Netanyahu also discussed the prospects of reaching a new nuclear agreement. Netanyahu reportedly expressed deep skepticism that any deal could restrain Iran’s nuclear activities.

“It’s impossible to do a deal with Iran. Even if you sign a deal with Iran, they won’t respect it,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying.

Trump, while cautious, signaled greater openness to exploring negotiations.

“I think there is a chance to reach a deal. We’ll look into it and give it a chance,” he reportedly replied.

The report also cites input from Trump confidants Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who have been involved in recent diplomatic efforts. According to Channel 12, the two advisers told Trump that Iranian negotiators are “saying all the right things” in talks, but emphasized the need to maintain a hardline posture.

“They will continue with the negotiations and take a tough line,” they reportedly told the president. “If they agree to what we’re asking, we’ll give you the option, and you’ll decide.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill announced an update this weekend on the Gateway Tunnel funding, saying the first $30 million has now been released — but stressing that the state is still owed $200 million that has yet to arrive.

Sherrill noted that work on the crucial infrastructure project was stopped last week, a decision that drew sharp criticism. At the time, lawmakers and local leaders said halting the funds would delay construction and leave workers without jobs.

In her statement, the Governor reiterated that New Jersey has been fighting in court to secure the full funding and will continue to push until every worker is back on the job and all funds owed are delivered.

The Gateway Tunnel project, a key rail link between New Jersey and New York, is viewed as essential to the region’s transportation network — and its funding has become a point of contention amid disputes with the federal government.

Governor Sherrill also renewed her call for the federal government to release the remaining $200 million, saying the state won’t relent until the full amount is secured.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told European leaders in Munich that Washington wants to strengthen, not weaken, its historic partnership with Europe, while sharply criticizing the United Nations for playing “virtually no role” in resolving major global conflicts, including the war in Gaza.

Addressing the annual security gathering in Munich, Rubio aimed to calm strained relations between the United States and Europe that have been unsettled in recent months by President Donald Trump’s remarks about American allies and his pledge to take control of Greenland. In contrast to the tensions that have simmered, Rubio adopted a conciliatory and measured tone.

“We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history,” Rubio said, calling for “a reinvigorated alliance.”

He emphasized that Washington’s objective is a confident and capable Europe, stating, “We want Europe to be strong,” and adding that the continent and the US “belong together.”

Repeating a central theme of the Trump administration, Rubio argued that large-scale immigration is destabilizing Western societies. He described “mass migration” as “a crisis which is transforming and destabilizing societies all across the West.”

He said that Europe and the United States are “heirs to the same great and noble civilization” and that he hoped Europe, together with us are willing and able to defend it.”

Rubio contended that the West’s triumph in the Cold War produced what he called misplaced optimism. The “euphoria,” he said, led to a “dangerous delusion that we had entered ‘the end of history,’ that every nation would now be a liberal democracy, that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood … and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world.”

“We made these mistakes together and now together we owe it to our people to face those facts and to move forward to rebuild,” Rubio said.

Explaining Washington’s tone in dealings with European capitals, he added, “This is why we Americans may sometimes come off as a little direct and urgent in our counsel.” He continued: “This is why President Trump demands seriousness and reciprocity from our friends here in Europe.”

Turning to international institutions, Rubio delivered pointed criticism of the United Nations, arguing that it has had “virtually no role” in settling today’s most urgent conflicts and calling for reforms to global bodies.

“The United Nations still has tremendous potential to be a tool for good in the world,” he told the Munich conference.

“But we cannot ignore that, today, on the most pressing matters before us, it has no answers and has played virtually no role,” he said.

Referring specifically to the conflict in Gaza, he said, “It could not solve the war in Gaza,” noting that Trump’s newly created Board of Peace received a UN mandate to oversee the devastated Palestinian territory for two years. The initiative has prompted unease in several countries that fear the board could sideline the UN and position itself as the primary venue for addressing global disputes.

Beyond immigration and criticism of the UN, Rubio largely steered clear of the domestic political and cultural issues that have fueled friction across the Atlantic. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Friday that such disputes had widened a “rift” between the United States and Europe.

Rubio stressed that ending the transatlantic relationship “is neither our goal nor our wish,” adding that “our home may be in the Western hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe.”

Highlighting the shared sacrifices of the alliance, he said “we have bled and died side-by-side on battlefields from Kapyong to Kandahar,” drawing a contrast with earlier criticism by Trump of NATO allies’ military contributions in Afghanistan that had sparked backlash. “And I’m here today to make it clear that America is charting the path for a new century of prosperity. and that once again, we want to do it together with you, our cherished allies and our oldest friends.”

Rubio’s address stood in marked contrast to remarks delivered from the same stage a year earlier by Vice President JD Vance, who criticized European policies on issues such as free speech, surprising many leaders in attendance.

The Trump administration has also argued that Europe is experiencing a “civilizational decline” and has reached out to far-right political movements across the continent. Relations deteriorated further last month after Trump renewed threats to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO member, prompting firm opposition from European governments.

At the Munich Security Conference, European officials pledged to assume a larger share of NATO’s collective defense responsibilities, saying it was vital for countering an increasingly aggressive Russia.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told participants that “Europe needs to step up and has to take on its responsibility” for its own security, including strengthening cooperation with Britain a decade after Brexit.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer echoed that message, declaring, “We must build our hard power, because that is the currency of the age,” and urging the creation of “a shared industrial base across Europe which can turbocharge our defense production.”

Also addressing the conference was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as Ukraine prepares to mark five years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.

Zelensky lamented that diplomatic initiatives have failed to halt the fighting. “Weapons evolve faster than political decisions meant to stop them,” he said, urging faster deliveries of Western-supplied air defense systems.

He added that “there is not a single power plant in Ukraine that is not damaged by Russian strikes” following an intensified Russian campaign against infrastructure during one of the harshest winters since the war began in February 2022.

Warning of broader dangers, Zelensky said, “No one in Ukraine believes (Russian President Vladimir Putin) will ever let our people go, but he will not let other European nations go either, because he cannot let go of the very idea of war,”

At the White House on Friday, Trump pressed Kyiv to accelerate efforts to end the conflict, telling reporters to “get moving” and saying, “Russia wants to make a deal… He has to move,”

Rubio, however, struck a more cautious note, saying, “We don’t know if the Russians are serious about ending the war.”

LONDON (AP) — Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned by the Kremlin with a rare and lethal toxin found in the skin of poison dart frogs, five European countries said Saturday.

The foreign ministries of the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said analysis in European labs of samples taken from Navalny’s body “conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine.” The neurotoxin secreted by dart frogs in South America is not found naturally in Russia, they said.

A joint statement said: “Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison.”

The five countries said they were reporting Russia to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention. There was no immediate comment from the organization.

Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died in an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16, 2024, while serving a 19-year sentence that he believed to be politically motivated.

“Russia saw Navalny as a threat,” British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said. “By using this form of poison the Russian state demonstrated the despicable tools it has at its disposal and the overwhelming fear it has of political opposition.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrote on X that the poisoning of Navalny shows “that Vladimir Putin is prepared to use biological weapons against his own people in order to remain in power.”

The European nations’ assessment came as Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, attended the Munich Security Conference in Germany, and just before the second anniversary of Navalny’s death.

She said last year that two independent labs had found that her husband was poisoned shortly before he died. She has repeatedly blamed Putin for her husband’s death. Russian officials have vehemently denied the accusation.

Navalnaya said Saturday that she had been “certain from the first day” that her husband had been poisoned, “but now there is proof.”

“Putin killed Alexei with chemical weapon,” she wrote on She said Putin was “a murderer” who “must be held accountable.”

Russian authorities said that the politician became ill after a walk and died from natural causes.

Epibatidine is found naturally in dart frogs in the wild, and can also be manufactured in a lab, which European scientists suspect was the case with the substance used on Navalny. It works on the body in a similar way to nerve agents, causing shortness of breath, convulsions, seizures, a slowed heart rate and ultimately death.

European officials said they had a high degree of confidence in the assessment that Navalny died from epibatidine poisoning. Asked why the results had taken so long, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said that it had been “a complicated process.”

Wadephul said “no one but Putin’s henchmen will be able to say in detail what happened on Feb. 16, 2024, in the Russian penal colony. But it is clear that Russian authorities had the possibility, the motive and the means to administer the poison to Navalny.”

Navalny was the target of an earlier poisoning in 2020, with a nerve agent in an attack he blamed on the Kremlin, which always denied involvement. His family and allies fought to have him flown to Germany for treatment and recovery. Five months later, he returned to Russia, where he was immediately arrested and imprisoned for the last three years of his life.

The U.K. has accused Russia of repeatedly flouting international bans on chemical and biological weapons. It accuses the Kremlin of carrying out a 2018 attack in the English city of Salisbury that targeted a former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, with the nerve agent Novichok. Skripal and his daughter became seriously ill, and a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after she came across a discarded bottle with traces of the nerve agent.

A British inquiry concluded that the attack “must have been authorized at the highest level, by President Putin.”

The Kremlin has denied involvement. Russia also denied poisoning Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent turned Kremlin critic who died in London in 2006, after ingesting the radioactive isotope polonium-210. A British inquiry concluded that two Russian agents killed Litvinenko, and Putin had “probably approved” the operation.

(JNS) – Regime change in Iran “would be the best thing that could happen,” U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday, a day after the Pentagon sent a second aircraft carrier group to the Middle East from Venezuela.

Trump told reporters following an event at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, “For 47 years, they’ve [the Islamic Republic] been talking and talking and talking. In the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives while they talk. Legs blown off, arms blown off, faces blown off. This has been going on for a long time so let’s see what happens.

“In the meantime, tremendous power has arrived. An additional power, as you know, an additional carrier is going out.

#BREAKING: President Trump today said regime change in #Iran “would be the best thing that could happen. For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking. In the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives while they talk. Legs blown off, arms blown off, faces blown off. We’ve… pic.twitter.com/SVtF3MDaU8

— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) February 13, 2026

Also on Friday, Reuters cited two U.S. officials as saying that the American military is preparing for the possibility of sustained, weeks-long operations against the Islamic Republic if Trump gives the order to attack.

The additional carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, will join the USS Abraham Lincoln already stationed in the Gulf region, boosting American forces with additional fighter aircraft, guided-missile destroyers and other firepower, the report continued.

The military planning underway is more complex than that for the U.S. strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities in June, the unnamed officials said.

A campaign this time around would involve state and security facilities, they added.

The U.S. maintains bases throughout the Middle East, including in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. A prolonged campaign against the Iranians would probably involve back-and-forth strikes by the belligerent sides, the report stated.

Speaking to U.S. soldiers in North Carolina on Friday, Trump relayed that it had been “difficult” to forge a nuclear agreement with Tehran.

“Sometimes you have to have fear. That’s the only thing that really will get the situation taken care of,” Reuters quoted the president as saying.

On Feb. 17, U.S.-Iran negotiations are expected to continue in Geneva in the attempt to prevent war, Axios reported on Saturday, citing a U.S. official and three sources with knowledge of the matter.

The sources said that U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will be present in the talks, while the Iranian delegation will be led by the country’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

The report cited Trump as telling reporters on Friday that while the Iranians have expressed willingness to negotiate, they have not given any indications that they are willing to take action with regard to their nuclear project.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke to Bloomberg News on Saturday, vowing that Iran will never be allowed to have nuclear weapons. The military buildup in the Middle East is to “ensure that they don’t make a mistake and come after us and trigger something larger,” he continued.

“Beyond that, the president has said that his preference is to reach a deal with Iran. That’s very hard to do, but he’s going to try. And that’s what we’re trying to do right now, and Steve Witkoff and Jared have some meetings lined up fairly soon. We’ll see if we can make any progress,” Rubio stated.

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last shah of Iran, called on Thursday for Iranians abroad to take to the streets on Feb. 14 in support “for Iran’s Lion and Sun Revolution,” referencing the emblem on the Iranian flag before the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

He addressed Iranians directly, praising their steadfast resolve to reclaim their country despite the Islamic regime’s “brutality and murder.” He urged them to “raise your voices and chant from your homes and rooftops” at 8 p.m. on Feb. 14 and 15 in a show of unity ahead of “our final victory.”

The Islamist regime has continued its crackdown on Iranians, the Associated Press reported on Saturday.

“Reports of raids on homes and workplaces have come from major cities and rural towns alike,” with arrests of university students, doctors, lawyers, teachers, actors, business owners, athletes and filmmakers, as well as reformist figures close to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, AP reported.

Those detained have been prevented from contacting relatives and lawyers.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana) has put the number of arrests at more than 50,000.

Estimates of the magnitude of the killings that took place last month in the wake of nationwide protests are varied, with rights groups reporting several thousands to tens of thousands. Tehran has admitted that more than 3,000 people have been killed.

According to the Human Right Activists News Agency, as of Friday, the number of confirmed fatalities has reached 7,008, including 6,509 recorded under the category of “protesters.” Another 11,730 cases remain under review. The number of injured civilians has reached 25,845.