Israeli tourists in Greece harassed by a group of people bearing Palestinian flags gave as good as they got, standing up and chanting “El, El Yisrael,” while the anti-Israel group tried to drown them out by countering with their own chant. The crowds devolved into screaming unintelligibly at each other as police tried to restrain them.

Antisemitic incidents in Greece have been particularly violent. Sunday’s protests at an organized “Day of Rage” across the country saw Jews and Israelis getting shoved and abused. Young tourists cowered in their hotel rooms as Muslims armed with rifles and axes invaded the hotel, hunting them down. Groups of men wearing black T-shirts emblazoned with the Palestinian flag roamed a Jewish neighborhood in Thessaloniki, harassing and intimidating Jews. In another incident, tourists were harassed in Cyprus after being heard speaking Hebrew, with one of the aggressors knocked unconscious by one of the Israelis.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry had issued a warning to Israelis and Jews to lie low ahead of the “Day of Rage” protests, which were scheduled to take place across the country during peak travel season, when Greece is a top tourist destination for Israelis on summer vacation.

Israelis have been subject to harassment all over the world, and Israeli tourists have become particularly vulnerable due to their language and even their accent. Last week, a mother and daughter traveling in Thailand were beaten so severely by a man who told them he doesn’t like what Israel is doing and doesn’t believe in violence that they required surgery for their injuries.

An Israeli tourist had ordered a meal at a Bangkok restaurant when she noticed a sign that said “No Israel [sic] tourist.” Canceling her order turned into a tense and frightening confrontation. A group of Israelis at a ski resort in Bansko, Bulgaria, was subjected to a violent antisemitic assault when a bystander heard one of them singing to himself a song in Hebrew with the words “Tel Aviv,” resulting in a violent confrontation that left one of the Israelis with a fractured skull and sinuses.

In another incident, a man filmed himself calling a group of Israelis vacationing in Montenegro “baby killers” and accusing them of genocide. Israeli tourists were attacked in Thailand after being overheard speaking Hebrew by French tourists in February. In June of last year, an Israeli tourist was violently attacked by a mob after he was heard speaking his native language. A family of Israeli tourists who were heard speaking Hebrew in Thessaloniki in July 2025 were attacked, with assailants following them to their car after they were told by staff to leave a restaurant.

The situation has worsened to the point that the Israeli National Security Council has been warning Israeli tourists not to speak Hebrew when traveling abroad. It has also advised removing all external signs of Jewishness, such as Stars of David, before going out in public, to keep mum about their military service, and to stay away from unsecured, unmonitored sites.

The whole brouhaha over the NYPD accompanying Rama Duwaji, New York City’s first lady, turned out to be much ado about nothing, as NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed that the NYPD would not be providing security for her trip and that the earlier statement by a City Hall official to the contrary was a misunderstanding.

The misunderstanding may have arisen from Duwaji’s request for the security detail.

The NYPD was quick to deny that it would send officers on Duwaji’s family trip to Syria and Lebanon, which are on the U.S. government’s “Do Not Travel” list, in September.

“The NYPD does not send officers to countries with level four travel advisories for discretionary reasons not linked to investigative work,” an NYPD spokesperson said. “This is not an investigative trip, and therefore, NYPD personnel will not be traveling there for it.”

Duwaji has come under fire for her antisemitic past, including posting online that Tel Aviv “shouldn’t exist in the first place” and extolling armed “freedom fighters of Palestine,” while praising a fighter from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Duwaji recently faced a furious backlash over her celebration of Oct. 7 and for an illustration included in a collection curated by Palestinian American author Susan Abulhawa. The Jew-hating writer said that Oct. 7 was “a spectacular moment that shocked the world” and on Wednesday posted that “Israelis and all zionists are parasitic filth.” Abulhawa was awarded a book deal from Simon & Schuster despite calling Jews demons, cockroaches, ghouls and sons of Satan.

Mamdani denounced Abulhawa’s words, saying they were “patently unacceptable,” but refused to call out his wife, saying she was a private person.

One of Israel’s veteran construction companies says the post-Oct. 7 overhaul of the country’s building workforce has produced an unexpected result: despite higher labor costs, productivity, quality and safety have all improved.

Zeev Salant, co-CEO of publicly traded Omer Construction and Engineering, told Globes that the company estimates output is now roughly 30% higher than before the war. Palestinian crews previously faced lengthy commutes and generally wrapped up work by late afternoon, he said. Foreign crews now begin around 6:30 a.m., continue into the evening and frequently work Fridays, allowing projects to move faster.

Baruch Hadad, Omer’s other co-CEO, said the transition has also improved construction quality and reduced the amount of managerial oversight needed on sites. Salant went further on safety, saying foreign workers have proven more disciplined and easier to manage under strict safety procedures. The executives argue that those gains can outweigh the higher wages associated with foreign labor.

The comments highlight how dramatically Israel’s construction industry has changed since Palestinian workers were largely barred from entering Israel following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre. The initial shock brought projects across the country to a near-standstill, forcing Israel to rapidly expand recruitment from countries including India, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan.

By the end of 2025, the increase in foreign and Israeli construction workers had replaced roughly 90% of the Palestinian workforce lost after the war began, according to the Bank of Israel. Foreign construction employment averaged about 75,200 workers, up roughly 44,500 from prewar levels, while Israeli employment in the sector also increased sharply.

The transition has not eliminated the industry’s labor problem. The Bank of Israel estimated that construction still faced a shortage of roughly 30,000 workers as activity accelerated, with about 20,000 vacancies late last year. It also found that replacing Palestinian labor with Israeli and foreign workers increased employment costs.

Those higher costs remain a major point of contention. A representative of the Israel Builders Association recently told the Knesset that foreign-worker expenses can add roughly NIS 130,000 to the cost of an average apartment in the government’s subsidized housing program.

For Omer Construction, however, the operational calculation appears increasingly favorable. The company, which has operated for roughly four decades and went public last year, is now valued at more than NIS 2 billion and is expanding beyond contracting into residential development and urban renewal.

The broader question is whether Omer’s experience becomes the industry standard. If foreign crews continue delivering longer working days, higher productivity and better safety, Israel’s forced wartime labor shift could develop into a permanent restructuring of one of the country’s most important industries.

LinkedIn is shutting down its Israeli research and development operation and laying off nearly its entire local workforce, abruptly ending a Tel Aviv expansion that began with the company’s first Israeli acquisition.

The center currently employs about 50 people, according to Calcalist. Nearly all are expected to be laid off, while a small number may remain temporarily to handle ongoing business operations. LinkedIn described the move as part of proposed organizational changes intended to concentrate resources on its highest-impact priorities.

The closure is particularly striking because LinkedIn entered Israel through an acquisition designed not merely to buy technology, but to establish a permanent development presence.

Israel, Tel Aviv financial business district skyline with shopping malls and high tech offices.

In 2022, the Microsoft-owned professional networking giant acquired Israeli marketing analytics startup Oribi, founded by entrepreneur Iris Shoor. LinkedIn never publicly disclosed the purchase price, although reports placed it at approximately $80 million to $90 million. At the time, LinkedIn explicitly said the transaction would establish a new Tel Aviv office and expand the company’s international footprint.

Oribi specialized in making sophisticated website and marketing analytics accessible without requiring extensive coding. Its technology was subsequently integrated into LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, while the Israeli team worked on measurement, attribution and analytics products designed to help advertisers determine whether their campaigns were actually generating results.

The Israeli center operated separately from Microsoft’s much larger R&D presence in the country, despite Microsoft owning LinkedIn. Its roughly four-year run now appears to be coming to an end.

The decision also comes during a much broader shake-up across Israeli high-tech. Recent months have brought major workforce reductions at companies including Monday.com, Moovit, Wix, WSC Sports and ServiceNow, while ZoomInfo announced plans to close its Israeli development center and eliminate roughly 300 positions. Some companies have explicitly tied their reorganizations to the rapid adoption of AI and efforts to build leaner operations.

For LinkedIn, however, the symbolism is difficult to miss: an acquisition that once marked the company’s entry into Israel and the launch of a new R&D foothold is ending just four years later, with most of the team that built that operation now set to leave.

Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen has made an extraordinary disclosure about the depth of Israel’s intelligence penetration inside Iran, saying Israeli personnel repeatedly “toured” the Fordow nuclear facility, one of Tehran’s most heavily protected underground enrichment sites.

“We toured the Fordow nuclear site many times in order to understand the site,” Cohen said while speaking at the Galilee Forum in Safed. He did not reveal when the visits occurred, how they were carried out or exactly who entered the facility. Israeli reports have interpreted his remarks as referring to Mossad or other Israeli intelligence operatives.

The revelation is particularly striking because Fordow was designed to be extraordinarily difficult to penetrate, both physically and through intelligence. Built deep inside a mountain near Qom, the facility became Iran’s primary location for enriching uranium to 60%, far beyond ordinary civilian-reactor levels and approaching the 90% enrichment associated with weapons-grade material.

Cohen said the eventual American bombing of Fordow was the realization of a goal he had pursued for years, describing the U.S. attack as the fulfillment of his dreams. The former Mossad chief also argued that having uranium enriched to 60% did not itself mean Iran already possessed a bomb, though nuclear experts have warned that material at that enrichment level could be rapidly enriched further.

Head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen at Trump Tower in NYC. (Facebook)

Fordow was ultimately hit during the U.S. military’s Operation Midnight Hammer, when B-2 Spirit stealth bombers penetrated Iranian airspace and employed the 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator for the first time in combat. The Pentagon said 14 of the enormous bunker-busting weapons were dropped against the Fordow and Natanz target areas, while Tomahawk missiles struck infrastructure at Isfahan. More than 125 American aircraft were involved in the operation.

The IAEA confirmed Fordow was directly hit, but initially said the extent of destruction inside the underground enrichment halls could not be determined because of the facility’s depth and the nature of the penetrating weapons. U.S. officials described the damage across the targeted nuclear sites as extremely severe, while the precise condition of some underground infrastructure remained difficult to independently verify.

Cohen’s disclosure also fits a much broader pattern of extraordinary Israeli intelligence operations inside Iran. In 2018, Mossad agents removed Iran’s secret nuclear archive from a Tehran warehouse, extracting tens of thousands of documents and files that Israel said exposed previously hidden elements of Tehran’s nuclear weapons work. Cohen has previously spoken publicly about that operation and hinted at Israeli involvement in other covert actions targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

According to Cohen, Israel had been studying Fordow for years. He previously revealed that Israeli intelligence became aware of developments there around 2010 and considered an extraordinarily ambitious operation against the facility involving large numbers of personnel. The proposal was ultimately shelved, with Israel increasingly focusing on developing a military option against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure instead.

The disclosure carries renewed significance as the nuclear confrontation shifts toward newer underground infrastructure. Israeli intelligence reportedly believes Iran moved thousands of centrifuges into the heavily fortified Pickaxe Mountain complex near Natanz after the destruction inflicted on its traditional nuclear sites. The IAEA has never inspected that underground complex, leaving its precise purpose and contents uncertain.

Cohen’s remarks offer a rare glimpse into how far Israel was prepared to go long before American bombers struck Fordow: not merely watching Iran’s nuclear program from satellites or intercepting communications, but, according to the former Mossad chief, repeatedly getting close enough to one of Tehran’s most sensitive facilities to study it from the inside.

The IDF and Shin Bet have acknowledged what many suspected to be true: They have established a special operation conducted by a unit called Nili to hunt down and eliminate every single terrorist who participated in the Oct. 7 attack, abused hostages, held hostages in captivity or participated in the hostage release ceremonies. Hamas leaders who orchestrated the attack were also included on the list.

Nili has achieved stunning successes so far, eliminating about 2,700 of the approximately 5,000 terrorists who participated in the attack, with 1,200 killed during the invasion. Nili operatives, who comprise Shin Bet officials and IDF soldiers and reservists, used footage from Hamas GoPro cameras, facial recognition software, online video and photographic evidence, artificial intelligence and traditional tools to collect information on the ground, members of the Nili unit told Channel 12 News in their first open acknowledgment of the special operation.

The IDF eliminated Hamas terrorist Muhammad Fuad Gasser Sayid, who held Avinatan Or in captivity. Or is pictured here with his captor. (Credit: IDF)

Finding and locating the terrorists meant sifting through thousands of documents and other pieces of evidence, “an endless pile of material,” as described by Adi Rotem, a former senior official with the Shin Bet.

The terrorists who kidnapped Yaffa Adar, 85; Yagil Yaakov, 12; Yarden Bibas; and Avinatan Or, as well as the terrorist who drove his tractor through the border fence, have all been eliminated.

“It could be the driver who drove a tractor [across the border], and it could be a Nukhba company commander who led the invasion,” said Lammed, a Nili operative who is also a lieutenant in the IDF’s Southern Command.

“You feel the tension [during a mission to eliminate terrorists],” she added. “You feel the quiet, the seconds before the missile hits; everyone is just waiting for the strike to hit the person.”

Lammed described the mission targeting a platoon commander who led the invasion of the Nahal Oz IDF base.

“We knew what time he went to the shop, we knew the path he took; this is the task of intelligence, to take every target of interest to us, and investigate him down to the smallest detail, to the level of when he goes to pray, and what he eats for breakfast,” she explained.

In a dramatic shift after Venezuela broke off ties with Israel following one of Israel’s wars in Gaza 17 years ago, both countries announced a resumption of consular relations, with Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, referencing the humanitarian assistance Israel provided after massive earthquakes tore through the country in June, killing thousands of people.

Chief Rabbi of the Israelite Association of Venezuela Isaac Cohen had written a letter to Rodríguez urging her to consider restoring diplomatic ties between the two countries.

“The Governments of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the State of Israel report that they have agreed to continue bilateral technical cooperation derived from the emergency and recovery efforts following the double earthquake, as well as to establish a coordination mechanism for the provision of consular services to their respective citizens residing in both countries,” said Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Félix Plasencia González in a statement on X.

Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry likewise issued a statement announcing the shift in relations.

“The Governments of the State of Israel and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela announce that, following the visit of the Israeli humanitarian delegation to Venezuela in the wake of the double earthquake that occurred on June 24, and further to talks held between senior officials from both sides, the two countries have agreed to continue their bilateral technical cooperation stemming from the emergency response and reconstruction efforts following the double earthquake,” the ministry stated.

“The two countries have also agreed to establish a coordination mechanism that will enable the provision of consular services, as needed, to their citizens residing in the other country,” it added.

“The two governments recognize the importance of the relationship between the State of Israel and the Jewish community residing in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which serves as an important bridge of historic friendship between the two countries,” it concluded.

For years, Venezuela had allied itself with Iran, which opposed the U.S. mission in Caracas that resulted in the capture of Nicolás Maduro. That alliance is now rupturing, as Venezuela pivots toward Israel.

Former hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen returned to Kibbutz Nir Oz for an extraordinary performance, unveiling nine songs he created while enduring 498 days in Hamas captivity.

Unable to write anything down or play an instrument, Dekel-Chen composed the music inside his head and repeatedly rehearsed each song to ensure it would survive with him. The melodies became both an emotional refuge and a way to remain connected to the family whose fate he did not know.

One song was written for his unborn daughter. When Hamas abducted him on October 7, 2023, his wife, Avital, was pregnant. Dekel-Chen spent his captivity imagining the birth of a child whose name and face he would not learn until his release in February 2025.

After returning home, he quickly recorded the melodies he had carried back from Gaza. Those fragments eventually became a complete musical production featuring several leading Israeli artists, including Idan Raichel, Marina Maximilian and members of Hatikva 6.

Approximately 3,000 people gathered in Nir Oz to witness the deeply emotional performance. Former hostages, bereaved families and survivors were among those in attendance.

Screenshot

The location carried enormous significance. The concert was held on the grounds of the same kibbutz where Hamas terrorists murdered dozens of residents, destroyed homes and kidnapped scores of people on October 7.

Dekel-Chen had rushed to help defend Nir Oz as the attack unfolded. His wife and two young daughters survived by hiding inside their safe room, while he was dragged into Gaza and cut off from them for more than 16 months.

During the performance, Dekel-Chen acknowledged that he was not a professional singer. But the evening was never simply about vocal ability.

It was the fulfillment of a promise he had made to himself in captivity: If he survived, the songs created in Gaza’s darkness would one day be heard.

Hamas took Sagui Dekel-Chen from his home and tried to silence him.

After 498 days, he returned to Nir Oz and transformed the music that helped keep him alive into an anthem of survival.

The wife of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Rama Duwaji, is set to travel next month to Syria and Lebanon, two countries on the United States government’s “Do Not Travel” list because of dangerous conditions for Americans there.

It is unclear whether Duwaji, whom the mayor has declared to be a private person, will be escorted by an NYPD security detail. She has previously traveled overseas to safer destinations without taxpayer-funded security.

The mayor’s office appeared to confirm that NYPD officers would be traveling with New York’s first lady.

“Upon the strong recommendation of the NYPD, the First Lady’s security detail will be joining her when she travels to visit family in Syria and Lebanon,” said mayoral spokesperson Dora Pekec. Duwaji is a Syrian American whose parents are from Damascus.

But the NYPD contradicted that statement Tuesday.

“The NYPD does not send officers to countries with level four travel advisories for discretionary reasons not linked to investigative work,” an NYPD spokesperson said.

“This is not an investigative trip, and therefore, NYPD personnel will not be traveling there for it,” the spokesperson added.

Dov Hikind, founder of Americans Against Antisemitism and a former Brooklyn assemblyman, insisted that Duwaji doesn’t need protection from Hamas and Hezbollah, whom she supports, and therefore NYPD officers should not have to face danger on her behalf.

“We’re putting the police officers in danger. They will be viewed as the bad guys. These are war zones,” he said.

“Duwaji doesn’t need security. She will get a hero’s welcome and be protected by Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. Duwaji will be fine,” he added.

Video footage shows Jews being abused and shoved as they passed a “Free Palestine” group during Athens’ planned “Day of Rage” protests over the war in Gaza Sunday.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry had issued a warning to Israelis and Jews to lie low ahead of the protests, which were scheduled to take place across the country during peak travel season, when Greece is a top tourist destination for Israelis on summer vacation.

“Given the expected scale of the protests and the possibility of large gatherings and disturbances, the Foreign Ministry recommends that Israeli citizens in Greece exercise increased vigilance, stay away from protest sites and large gatherings, and avoid any friction or confrontation with demonstrators,” the ministry said in a statement.

“It is recommended to keep Israeli and Jewish identifying symbols discreet and to avoid posting your location in real time on social media,” it added.

BDS Greece said in its announcement of the planned protests that it would “fill the entire country with Palestinian flags, keffiyehs, and slogans.”

“It’s been more than 1,000 days of genocide in Gaza, while in the West Bank, occupation, attacks, and the seizure of Palestinian land continue,” the group added, calling on Greece to impose an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel and end all military cooperation between the two countries.

The Combat Antisemitism Movement sent a reporter to the protests to interview people on the ground, some of whom said openly that they support Hamas.

“We support Hamas. Hamas is not a terrorist organization. Okay, Hamas is a resistance organization,” one participant said, as protesters chanted “Death, death to the IDF” in the background.

“People have the right to defend themselves against the occupation in any means necessary and possible, and that includes armed resistance,” she added.

“What happens in Gaza, it’s a kind of Holocaust,” another person said.

Someone who insisted that “we’re not antisemitic” added, “They have all the media, all the social platforms. They have controlled the world.”

In a case of real life imitating James Bond, President Donald Trump was whisked off Air Force One and flown on a secret flight to Britain from the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, last month after a credible Iranian assassination threat was detected, U.S. officials said Monday.

The president, who had flown to Turkey on Qatar’s gift of a new presidential jet, said he would fly back on an older Air Force One “for old time’s sake.” He boarded the plane on July 8 in full view of photographers. Then a catering container was raised to the other side of the airplane, and he slipped out through an exit on that side and was taken to a military jet, a C-32A. The journalists aboard Air Force One were not aware that he had been whisked away and were told to lower their window shades at the request of the Secret Service, inadvertently serving as decoys.

After Trump landed at an airbase in Britain, he switched back to Air Force One and disembarked in full view of reporters, as if he had been aboard all along. He then crossed the tarmac and boarded the plane gifted to him by Qatar, which flew him back to Washington.

While at the NATO summit, Trump had told reporters that he was Iran’s “number one target.”

A magnitude 7.4 earthquake rocked Colombia Monday morning, smashing buildings to the ground as people fled, screaming, from the quake zone. The death toll has risen to 169, with about 600 injured and approximately 2,700 reported missing. Columbia’s new president, Abelardo de la Espriella, declared a state of emergency and promised a comprehensive rescue effort, announcing Monday night that he had deployed “the entire military and police apparatus.” He had been sworn in as president just three days earlier.

Hours after the earthquake struck, Colombia’s Foreign Ministry released a statement recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

The city of Pereira suffered the most damage, with travelers at the airport fleeing as chunks of ceiling fell on their heads and the city plunging into darkness as the earthquake caused a citywide power outage.

Around 1,600 buildings throughout the country were damaged, while about 165 collapsed completely.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States is closely monitoring the situation and is ready to help.

“The Trump Administration is closely monitoring the large earthquake that struck Colombia and stands ready to support the people of Colombia and President Abelardo de la Espriella’s Administration,” he wrote on X. “American citizens in Colombia should enroll at http://STEP.State.gov and follow the U.S. Embassy at Bogota’s social media accounts for the latest information.”

Humanitarian organizations from Florida have mobilized to send aid to the quake-torn country.

“There’s a lot of damage, and we are waiting for information as to what the needs are. The first is rescue and recovery,” Fabio Andrade, a Weston city commissioner and a Colombian American, told a local CBS station.

President Donald Trump turned Iran’s demand for war reparations back on the Islamic regime, declaring that Tehran should instead compensate the United States and the families of those harmed by its actions over the past five decades.

“If there are damages to be paid, I think Iran should pay those damages,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

“They asked for reparations,” the president continued. “Well, we’re going to ask for money for the damage they’ve done over a 50-year period.”

Iran reportedly made compensation for wartime damage one of its conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, along with demands that Washington lift sanctions, release frozen Iranian assets and end military pressure on Tehran.

The strategically vital waterway carried approximately one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas before its closure amid the ongoing conflict. Efforts to negotiate its reopening have remained stalled as both Washington and Tehran impose competing conditions.

Trump responded by calling for Iran to compensate Americans killed or seriously wounded in attacks and conflicts he blamed on the regime and its terrorist proxies.

“All of the people that were so badly hurt, so badly wounded or killed, many thousands of people,” Trump said.

For decades, Iran has armed, trained and funded terrorist organizations across the Middle East, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis. Tehran has also been accused of supporting attacks that killed or wounded American troops throughout the region.

Trump expanded his demand to include compensation for the families of Iranians killed during the regime’s violent suppression of anti-government demonstrations.

“We think their families should get damages for killing their person, or their child, or mother, father that were protesting,” he said.

The president cited an estimated 52,000 protesters killed in recent months. That figure was presented as Trump’s estimate and has not been independently verified.

Trump said the demand for compensation should be raised during any future negotiations with Tehran, effectively turning the regime’s reparations ultimatum against it.

Iran demanded that America pay for the war. Trump’s response was unmistakable: After nearly 50 years of terrorism, bloodshed and brutal repression, Tehran should be the one paying.

An urgent search is underway in Vienna for an Israeli mother and daughter who disappeared after being seen in the Austrian capital last week.

Mali Yahalomi, 50, and her daughter Liel Yahalomi, 23, have not been heard from since Friday, when they were reportedly last seen near Vienna’s busy Naschmarkt. Israeli officials say contact with both women has since been lost, prompting the Israeli Embassy in Austria to issue an unusual public appeal for information.

The embassy circulated photographs of Mali and Liel and described the effort to locate them as an urgent family and official matter. Authorities are asking anyone who saw the women, encountered them around the Naschmarkt area or has information about their current location to immediately contact police or Israeli officials. The embassy said information provided will be kept confidential.

The Naschmarkt is one of Vienna’s best-known and busiest public markets, with roughly 130 stalls and numerous restaurants drawing locals and tourists throughout the day. The women’s reported last sighting there means investigators and search teams potentially have a large number of witnesses and businesses with surveillance cameras to work through.

According to Israeli reports, the Foreign Ministry and embassy are working with Austrian authorities as the search expands. The civilian organization Chaverim Mechaltzim has also circulated an emergency notice in English and German seeking witnesses who were in the Naschmarkt area when the pair disappeared.

No explanation has been given for their disappearance, and authorities have not publicly indicated that a specific crime is suspected.

Anyone with information can contact the Israeli Embassy in Vienna’s emergency line at +43 676 367 2304. A separate emergency WhatsApp number circulated by the search organization is +972 50 689 9026.

Israeli broadcaster KAN News reported that an official from a Middle Eastern country advised an official from another Middle Eastern country to pursue an agreement with Israel while secretly preparing for war and planning to violate the agreement. While this information was cleared for publication by the Israeli censor, the identities of the countries involved were not revealed.

Hamas documents from June similarly revealed that the terrorist group organized an effort to dupe Israel into believing it sought stability while preparing for an attack. Its multilevel strategy included feigning interest in economic opportunities offered by Israel and refraining from fighting during rounds of conflict, allowing Palestinian Islamic Jihad to play the bad cop to Hamas’ good cop. The ruse worked, lulling Israel into a sense of complacency that left it entirely unprepared for the Oct. 7 attack.

Masked Hamas gunmen. (Credit: Nidal Alwaheidi/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

“Anyone who thought we could entrust the security of our sons to agreements and guarantees from those around us received a painful slap in the face this morning,” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said, reacting to the news report from KAN.

“Behind all these agreements rooted in the failed conception lie lies and deception. These are agreements whose purpose is to lull us to sleep ahead of the next blow,” he added.

Meanwhile, Israel and Lebanon have engaged in multiple rounds of talks with the goals of disarming Hezbollah and helping the Lebanese government reclaim its sovereignty over Lebanon, with Israel agreeing to a phased withdrawal from any section that is freed from Hezbollah’s control.

Syria is also in talks with Israel to establish an agreement on security arrangements between the two countries, with Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa telling Al-Jazeera recently that he hopes to eventually achieve a comprehensive peace deal that excludes relinquishing Syria’s claim to the Golan Heights.

A judge temporarily blocked the rollout of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax, a tax on secondary New York residences worth more than $5 million, while a lawsuit is ongoing.

Judge Wayne Ozzi issued the ruling Monday in response to a lawsuit filed Friday by homeowners challenging the new law, led by former First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro. They specifically named in their complaint the publication of a list of 900,000 properties and 17,000 letters sent to homeowners who could be subject to the tax. The lawsuit also included a complaint from homeowners whose properties were flagged but who would now have to prove that they are exempt.

According to the lawsuit, the city “has arbitrarily and capriciously foisted onto New York City residents the burden of proving they are not subject to the Surcharge.”

Ozzi’s ruling orders the city to take the following three actions:

• Remove the published list of 900,000 homes.
• Take no further action based on the list or notices already mailed out.
• Refrain from enforcing a Sept. 18 deadline for those seeking exemptions.

Mastro has frequently and outspokenly opposed the mayor, filing a previous lawsuit against Mamdani’s rent freeze. Mamdani joked about Mastro’s efforts to block his agenda.

“There are a few things more certain in New York City than death, taxes and Randy Mastro filing a lawsuit against this administration,” the mayor said.

“We are confident in our position,” he added. “And that is a confidence coming from both the legality of the city’s actions as well as the importance of a surcharge on secondary homes worth more than $5 million, a surcharge that will help fund safer streets, that will help fund stronger schools, and it will help fund the city that New Yorkers deserve.”

Max Veifer, the social media personality who recorded two Australian nurses saying that they would kill Jewish patients, is flying to Australia this month to testify in court against Sarah Abu Lebdeh and Ahmad Rashad Nadir.

Veifer, whose real name is Max Ilinsky, posted a video thanking the Australian authorities for organizing his trip and paying for his hotel stay, meals and security. But Veifer still fears for his safety, saying that he has received credible death threats for his public work, and is reaching out to the public for help in coordinating greater security with the New South Wales Police.

“Over the past year, I’ve received many threats because of my public work. People know my face. People know my name. And after everything that has happened recently in Australia, and with antisemitism rising around the world and in Australia, I’m not taking any chances,” he explained.

“For any time not covered by the official security arrangements, I want extra licensed security with me, and that’s why today I’m asking for your help,” he said.

The activist said that all he wants is for the truth to be heard.

“At the end of this month, I’m getting on that plane. I’m going to Australia. I’m walking into that courtroom, and I’m going to do exactly what I’ve been asked to do: answer every question honestly. All I want is for the truth to be heard and for justice to be done. The court will decide the rest. Let’s go in peace and come home in peace,” he said, concluding his video statement with “Am Yisrael Chai.”

The Australian nurses suffered a major setback in their case recently after they were fired when a video went viral in which they said they would kill Israeli patients.

Lebdeh and Nadir pleaded not guilty to using a carriage service to menace and harass after making shocking statements to Veifer. A court ruled last month that the video was inadmissible as evidence because it was improperly obtained and infringed on privacy laws. But prosecutors appealed the ruling to the Court of Appeal, which reversed the lower court’s decision, allowing the video to be used as evidence.

One of Israel’s fastest-rising AI companies may already be heading toward a multibillion-dollar exit.

Israeli startup Decart is in advanced negotiations to be acquired for roughly $6 billion to $7 billion, according to a Calcalist report, less than three years after the company was founded. Drafts of a deal are reportedly already at an advanced stage, with an agreement potentially coming soon.

The identity of the buyer remains unclear. Nvidia had been negotiating directly to acquire Decart and was reportedly close to an agreement before another major technology company entered with a higher offer. Industry sources cited by Calcalist have pointed to Elon Musk’s SpaceX as a possible bidder, while Amazon and Israel-linked cloud company Nebius are also believed to have shown interest. Decart declined to comment.

The numbers are remarkable even by the standards of Israel’s booming AI sector. Decart raised $300 million only months ago at an estimated $4 billion valuation, bringing its total funding above $450 million. That round included Nvidia as an investor, while Amazon became a strategic customer. A sale at $6 billion to $7 billion would therefore mark another dramatic increase in the company’s value in a matter of months.

Founded by Unit 8200 veterans Dean Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev, Decart has built technology aimed at making advanced AI dramatically more efficient while also developing real-time “world models.” Its Decart Optimization Stack is designed to improve performance across major AI processors, including Nvidia GPUs, Amazon Trainium and Google TPUs, while products including Oasis and Lucy generate and transform interactive video in real time.

Decart first drew widespread attention with Oasis, an interactive AI-generated world capable of responding to users in real time. Musk publicly reacted to the technology after its release, and Calcalist reports that he and Leitersdorf have remained in contact.

A SpaceX acquisition would also fit into Musk’s rapidly expanding AI strategy. SpaceX absorbed xAI earlier this year and subsequently agreed to acquire Anysphere, the company behind the AI coding platform Cursor, in a $60 billion transaction. Decart could add another layer: technology aimed at squeezing substantially more AI performance from expensive computing infrastructure while enabling low-latency generative applications.

The implications for Israel could extend beyond the exit itself. Calcalist reports that if SpaceX ultimately wins the bidding, Decart could become the foundation for SpaceX’s first R&D center in Tel Aviv, bringing another of the world’s most valuable technology companies directly into Israel’s innovation ecosystem.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and Shivon Zilis, a venture capitalist, arrive to attend the wedding of Dan Scavino, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, and Erin Elmore, the Department of State Director of Art in Embassies, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, February 1, 2026. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images)

For now, however, no buyer has been confirmed and no final agreement has been announced. What is clear is that a startup launched by two Israeli intelligence veterans less than three years ago has suddenly become a multibillion-dollar prize in the global race for AI infrastructure.

A new analysis of Seattle Police Department data has revealed a striking disparity in hate crimes targeting the city’s Jewish community, with Jews facing a per-capita rate nearly eight times higher than Muslims and Arabs since 2023.

Seattle recorded 384 hate crimes during the period examined, including 35 targeting Jews and nine targeting Muslims or Arabs. Using Pew Research Center estimates that Jews account for roughly 1% of adults in the Seattle metro area while Muslims account for about 2%, a Jewish resident was approximately 7.8 times more likely per capita to be targeted in a reported hate crime. The calculation combines Seattle Police figures with metro-area population estimates, making it an indication of the scale of the disparity rather than a precise population-wide rate.

The gap became especially pronounced in 2025. Seattle police recorded 12 hate crimes targeting Jews that year compared with just one targeting Arabs or Muslims. When the department’s broader categories of hate-related activity are included, Jews were targeted in 50 incidents, compared with 22 involving Arabs or Muslims. In January alone, four hate crimes targeted Jews, compared with one targeting Arabs or Muslims.

Seattle distinguishes between hate crimes, crimes containing a secondary “bias element,” and non-criminal biased incidents such as protected hateful speech. Since 2023, Jews were also disproportionately represented in the latter category: police logged 58 biased incidents targeting Jews compared with 20 targeting Muslims and Arabs. Police officials cautioned that hate crimes across communities are traditionally underreported because victims may fear retaliation, distrust authorities or simply not know how to report them.

“The numbers are absolutely alarming, but alarm doesn’t help,” Randy Kessler, executive director of StandWithUs Northwest, told media, urging Jews to report incidents, file complaints and demand equal treatment from officials.

NEW YORK, UNITED STATES – NOVEMBER 19: Pro-Palestinians gather at ‘No Settlers on Stolen Land’ protest against a settler-recruitment event at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan, hosted by Nefesh B’nefesh, an organization that helps American Jews immigrate to Israel, on Wednesday night, November 19, 2025, New York City, United States. Pro-Palestinian protesters shouted phrases including ‘Intifada revolution’, ‘Death to the IDF,’, ‘No peace on stolen land’, ‘We don’t want no Zionists here,’ and “resistance is glorious,” as a smaller group of Jewish counter-protesters insulted, shone bright flashlights, blasted horns and whistles at the pro-Palestinians outside the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan, New York City. (Photo by Selçuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The Seattle figures mirror a broader national problem. FBI statistics for 2024 show that anti-Jewish bias accounted for 69% of all religion-based single-bias hate-crime offenses reported nationwide, compared with 9.3% motivated by anti-Muslim bias.

More recent ADL data show that although the overall number of antisemitic incidents nationwide fell in 2025, the 6,274 incidents recorded remained five times higher than a decade earlier. Physical assaults reached their highest level in the organization’s tracking history, and three people were killed in antisemitic attacks. Nearly half of all antisemitic incidents that year contained elements related to Israel or Zionism, though ADL explicitly distinguishes legitimate criticism of Israel and pro-Palestinian activism from antisemitism.

Residents in Herzliya are reporting a disturbing series of nighttime burglaries in which intruders allegedly entered homes while families were still sleeping inside, as police step up operations against Palestinians staying in Israel illegally who are suspected of property crimes.

Several residents described a level of brazenness that has left families shaken. One told Mako that since his home was broken into, he has struggled to sleep. Another resident said burglars entered his house even though they apparently knew family members were inside.

“They’re not afraid like they used to be. They’re extremely bold,” the resident said, according to Mako.

Police at the Glilot station have arrested dozens of Palestinians illegally inside Israel in recent operations on suspicion of property-related offenses, although authorities have not publicly established that every suspect is connected to the specific break-ins described by residents.

The alarm comes amid a string of separate incidents involving illegal entrants in Herzliya and the surrounding area.

Just a day earlier, Glilot police arrested a Palestinian staying in Israel illegally after receiving a report of a suspicious person moving between vehicles in Herzliya’s Neve Amal neighborhood. Police said the suspect was allegedly attempting to steal a vehicle and was carrying burglary tools and sophisticated equipment used in vehicle theft.  

In another recent operation, nine Palestinians without legal permits were arrested while allegedly living and working inside an apartment undergoing renovations in central Herzliya. Police said they were also seeking the apartment owners and employer as part of possible criminal and administrative proceedings.

Earlier this year, three illegal entrants — including a minor — were arrested in Herzliya with advanced burglary equipment after police and municipal inspectors suspected they were preparing to steal vehicles.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL – JULY 15: Police officers wait as Ethiopian community of Jerusalem gather to protest the killing of Solomon Tekah, a young man of Ethiopian origin, who was killed by an off-duty police officer, near Israeli Parliament in Tel Aviv, Israel on July 15, 2019. Solomon Teka,19, was buried on July 2, after he was shot dead in Kiryat Haim, a town near the northern port city of Haifa, late Sunday.
(Photo by Faiz Abu Rmeleh/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

The latest reports are now fueling renewed concern among Herzliya residents not simply over property loss, but over what can happen when burglars enter occupied homes in the middle of the night.

Police continue to investigate the individual burglary cases and the suspected links between illegal entry into Israel and organized property crime in the Sharon and greater Tel Aviv areas.

Mohommed Farhat, 22, caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage two years ago by vandalizing cars and property in New South Wales, Australia, spray painting them with “F— Israel” and “PKK coming,” but a judge ruled that this was not antisemitic and that he should not be put on a terror watch list.

The PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) is a Kurdish armed militant group that is designated by the United States, Turkey, the European Union and other nations as a terrorist organization.

Farhat pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year and eight months in prison.

In a ruling this week, Justice Desmond Fagan said that criticism of Israel should not be conflated with hatred of Jews and rejected the state’s bid to put Farhat on a terrorism watch list.

Prosecutor Patricia McDonald argued that evidence taken from his phone and his acts of vandalism pointed to a path of extremism for the Hezbollah-tattoo-sporting vandal. Fagan countered that discussions between young men expressing their hostility to Israel as a result of what he said were Israel’s actions impacting their families did not constitute not antisemitism. He pointed out that thousands of people in NSW express hostility to Israel, including Jews.

“You are treating all Jews as monolithic,” Fagan told the prosecutor.

“It’s quite wrong to treat all Jews as supporting Israel, because they don’t,” he added. “But you treat a statement of hostility to Israel as a statement of hostility to the Jewish people, which it is not.”

But as critics have pointed out, half of the world’s Jews live in Israel, and hate against Israelis is also unacceptable. It remains to be seen if the judge will eat his own words one day. An obvious radical like Farhat may one day go further than defacing cars.

Colombia’s Foreign Ministry announced Monday that it has recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, territory Israel had seized in the 1967 Six-Day War.

“In light of the persistent regional instability in the Middle East, and considering the strategic importance of the Golan Heights to Israel’s security, the Government of Colombia recognizes Israeli sovereignty over this territory, as well as the right of that state to protect itself against external threats,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry added that it recognized that Israel has encountered security challenges along its border that threaten its very existence. In light of those challenges and the horrific Oct. 7 attack, the ministry said that Israel must continue to control the Golan Heights in order to be able to defend and protect its citizens.

The commitment was the result of an agreement between the two nations Saturday, the ministry added.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar thanked Colombia on X, including the newly sworn-in president and the foreign minister in his thanks.

“Israel is a small country without strategic depth. Defensible borders are essential for it to ensure the existence of the Jewish people in its historic homeland,” he wrote.

Colombia’s new president, Abelardo de la Espriella, views Israel positively and promised better relations than those maintained under the previous anti-Israel president, Gustavo Petro, one of whose his last acts in office was to post “Heil Hitler” on his official social media account.

Rabbi Zalman Leib Teitelbaum, the grand rabbi of Satmar, condemned attacks by Jews on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on the day of Satmar Grand Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum’s yahrzeit Sunday.

In a press release, the grand rabbi warned Jews to remember their exilic status and not provoke more hostility through angry rhetoric.

“Recently, we have witnessed a terrible provocation against the nations by heimishe Yidden—through the incitement against the Mayor of New York City,” a Satmar Williamsburg press release quoted him as saying at the yahrzeit gathering.

“We must remember that we are in exile,” he said. “The Prophet Jeremiah instructed the Jewish people: ‘Seek the peace of the city to which I have exiled you, and pray to Hashem on its behalf.’ An observant Jew must follow the Torah’s path and accept the decree of exile.”

“To denounce the mayor and brand him an antisemite constitutes a true provocation against the nations,” he added. “As though the provocation against the nations taking place in Eretz Yisroel were not enough, they are now bringing it here to the United States as well.”

NEW YORK – JBN regrets to inform you of the untimely and tragic death of William “Will” Shakin, a young American IDF veteran who served as a Golani combat soldier during the Gaza war and died Sunday in New York following a devastating struggle with his mental health.

Will with his sister Ella after finishing his training, walking 50km and getting his brown beret.

Shakin, whose Hebrew name was Zev ben Eliyahu v’Rina, left the United States for Israel in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre. He volunteered for the IDF through the Mahal program and ultimately joined the 13th Battalion of the Golani Brigade, fighting inside Gaza as a hero to help rescue hostages and defeat Hamas. During the war, he experienced the loss of friends who fought alongside him.

Will (left) with a fellow Golani soldier

The battle did not end for Will when he came home.

Following his combat service, Shakin experienced severe psychological distress. Despite his struggle with what supporters described as PTSD, Israeli authorities had not formally recognized him as suffering from service-related PTSD because he was unable to fly to Israel to appear in-front recognition committees, a required of the Defense Ministry.

Will Shakin praying

While serving in Israel, Will lived at HaBayit shel Benji, a home for lone soldiers. Staff there became concerned about his well-being after his service and contacted his parents. He later returned to the United States to be close to his family. According to reporting on his case, the IDF and Defense Ministry support he had been receiving did not continue after he arrived in New York. 

Those trying to help Will say his experience exposed a serious gap facing former lone soldiers who return overseas. Chaim Meizlish, who works with lone soldiers experiencing mental-health difficulties in New York, said Will would have needed to return to Israel and appear before committees as part of the process of obtaining official recognition. Doing so would have taken him away from the family support system surrounding him in America. 

Will and his Dabbi from Chabad of Binghampton University Jn

Meizlish says the problem extends far beyond one veteran. Approximately 1,200 cases involving wounded IDF veterans and people dealing with combat-related trauma are registered in the United States, while only two Defense Ministry representatives are assigned to handle them. 

Will’s family is now seeking to bring him back to Israel and have him laid to rest at the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem. His lack of formal recognition as a combat-trauma victim has complicated that effort. Minister Ofir Sofer has said he will try to assist the family. 

Will was a warrior and a gift to Am Yisrael. He carried so much through his service and the realities of war. He will be dearly missed by his family, his friends, his fellow lone soldiers, and everyone who knew him.

If you knew Will, or know someone who did, please reach out. If anyone could use a call or support, please be in touch with Nevut, an organization that supports IDF lone soldier veterans and their families, providing community, mental-health resources and assistance as veterans transition

His death is a painful reminder that for some soldiers, the wounds of war continue long after the uniform comes off.

The Nevut Support Line is open 24/7:
🇺🇸 US: +1-844-566-3433
📱 WhatsApp: +1-347-770-4457

ברוך דיין האמת

Zev ben Eliyahu v’Rina

May Will’s memory be a blessing. 💔

Rabbi Elchanan Poupko, a Jewish advocate who is prolific on X, posted a photo of a billboard he passed in New York City Sunday.

The sign was in Arabic.

An Arabic-language billboard was spotted in New York City. (Credit: Rabbi Poupko)

Poupko argued that it’s “beautiful” to have billboards in Arabic, but asked why there aren’t billboards in Yiddish or Spanish.

“22.7% of New Yorkers speak Spanish, followed by Chinese at about 5.4%, Russian at 2.5%, Bengali at 2.1%, Yiddish at 1.1%, Hebrew at approximately 0.6%, Haitian at about 0.5%, Korean at 0.5% and Arabic at 0.4%,” he noted.

The sign is innocuous, merely saying that “Your health comes first, and your celebration is assured. And [the] festivals are at your service.” Smaller text at the bottom reads, ““We’re waiting for you at any of our celebrations/holidays.”

While anyone can pay for a billboard to say anything they want, it has not occurred to far larger minorities to post billboards in their native languages.

A Ukrainian drone attack struck deep inside Russia Monday, hitting the industrial city of Nizhnekamsk, 550 miles east of Moscow. The strike killed 13 people and injured 39 others in a sign of Ukraine’s escalation of the war deep inside Russian territory. The attack was the deadliest in Russia since the war began in February 2022, reflecting Ukraine’s ability to attack far beyond enemy lines.

Russian soldiers shoot down a Ukrainian drone.

Russian investigators said that a child was among those killed in the industrial city, which houses one of Russia’s largest oil refineries. The Uzbek consulate also counted among the dead seven Uzbek citizens. Thousands of Uzbeks work in Nizhnekamsk.

The Taneco oil refinery was also reportedly struck, igniting a fire at the facility.

Footage from the Ukrainian strike on an industrial city in Russia shows smoke rising from the point of impact.

Deaths among Russian civilians are still extremely low in comparison with Ukrainian civilian deaths, which number in the tens of thousands, as Russia has pounded civilian infrastructure in major Ukrainian cities and has targeted power plants that have left civilians without electricity and heating through difficult winters. Ukrainian strikes in Russia have triggered a fuel crisis, disrupted air travel, and caused internet shutdowns, with Ukraine hoping to pressure Russia into a ceasefire.

Ukraine remains vulnerable to airstrikes due to a worldwide shortage of Patriot missiles triggered by the war between Iran and the United States. Russia has taken advantage of this vulnerability to strike Kyiv and other major cities, killing hundreds of Ukrainian civilians over the summer.

Video footage shows flames and smoke from a Ukrainian drone strike in Russia.

A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia, with its epicenter near San José del Palmar in the Chocó region. The shaking was felt hundreds of miles away in Bogotá and across neighboring Ecuador and Venezuela.

Chocó Gov. Nubia Córdoba says there are injuries and significant damage to buildings in the regional capital of Quibdó, while emergency teams carry out damage assessments and brace for possible aftershocks.

Damage is also being reported across several major cities. In Cali, buildings suffered partial structural collapses and facade damage, while reports from Pereira, Armenia and Manizales indicate additional structural damage. No deaths have been confirmed so far.

Authorities are continuing to assess the full scale of the damage as the situation develops.

In a classic, textbook case of incitement, a man who styles himself “The Savior” told a Syrian man in London that people in Golders Green, a heavily Jewish neighborhood in London, threatened to beat him up because he said he supported Palestine. This infuriated the man, who said he would go to that neighborhood and “f— them up.”

The man appeared to have one standard answer to everything, which was to “f—” everyone and everything up.

For example, in answer to the question, “Do you think a one-state or a two-state [solution] would help Palestine?” he said, “Not separated. We f— them up.”

In response to the statement, “One state would be better,” he said, “We f— them up. Yeah, yeah, we f— them up.”

The Savior, whose real name is Josh Kent-Smith, is an online influencer who gained popularity among Jew haters for entering heavily Jewish spaces and harassing Jews, as well as promoting conspiracy theories. In this video, he is clearly engaging in conduct that could constitute incitement. The X user who posted the video noted that he had been reported to the authorities.

The Jewish Chronicle reported last week that Kent-Smith was imprisoned in 2019 after pleading guilty to robbery. When he got out of jail, he said that he began to see “the truth about what’s going on in this world.”

“I realized my enemy was not on my doorstep, but my enemy was the global Zionist elites that tax us into oblivion and start endless wars and commit genocides on the world stage,” he explained.

Gaining a following online under the name “The Savior,” Kent-Smith blamed Israel for the recent car-ramming attack in Berlin, accused Israelis of backing “Islamic extremist terror” and promoted conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein, pedophiles (the only people he said support Israel), the IDF killing its own people on Oct. 7 and many of the other usual crackpot theories that have become popular among Jew haters after Oct. 7.

He became popular for targeting heavily Jewish neighborhoods for his content creation, asking people on the street for their opinions on Israel, “Palestine” and Epstein and calling anti-Zionist Jews “good Jews.”

In an exclusive interview on Israeli broadcaster Channel 12, Nickolay Mladenov, high representative for Gaza and director-general of the U.S.-led Board of Peace, said unequivocally that Israel would not be expected to withdraw from Gaza until Hamas has disarmed.

Asked by journalist Amit Segal for his reaction to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement Sunday that he rejects the 15-point Board of Peace plan with Hamas, to which Israel is not a party, Mladenov explained that the plan is a roadmap to ensure that the tragedy of Oct. 7 never happens again. He explained that the plan rests on three major pillars: the disarmament of Hamas, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza taking over the daily affairs of Gazans, and the deployment of an international security force (ISF).

Segal pressed Mladenov on the disarmament of Hamas, asking if there would be any scenario in which Israel would be forced to pull out before disarmament is fully completed.

“Nobody is required to do anything, least of all Israel, before we actually have verified steps on the ground,” he said. “If there is verified decommissioning of weapons that they are taken away from the factions and stored and ultimately rendered unusable, Israel then withdraws from Gaza.”

He then explained that the withdrawal would occur in phases, with Israel withdrawing from small sections of Gaza, section by section, as each becomes demilitarized.

“None of the plan that we are preparing limits Israel’s options to react to a threat if it’s imminent and if it’s really endangering its troops,” he added.

Segal asked Mladenov what would happen if Israel recognized that Hamas was rearming and training again. Mladenov answered in no uncertain terms.

“If commitments are not being met, the process stops,” he said bluntly.

Allaying concerns about the storage of weapons within Gaza, the diplomat said that no weapon would enter storage without being rendered unusable. He also said it would take 10 years to destroy all the tunnels, so the Board of Peace is seeking contractors to speed up the work.

In what turned out to be the most posted, most talked-about appearance of the evening, an Iranian immigrant took the microphone at a meeting of the McKinney, Texas, City Council last week to warn the city about the danger of a proposed 5-acre Islamic center in the city.

Identifying himself as “Erisa, a Sharia law survivor from Iran,” he said that “I’m here to tell you this is a dangerous ideology you’re allowing in your country.”

“Every country that is Islamic now, it used to be a Christian country; and we were soft Christians, and we allowed these people to come in, bring their Sharia law into their countries, and slowly kill us off left and right,” he said.

Erisa built his argument by explaining that the first level is “taqiyya,” in which Muslims will lie and say they come in peace. The second level, he argued, is “what’s happening in the U.K. right now, where you have two-tier policing, where you have, like, the blasphemy laws, Islamophobia, racism, all this nonsense that they talk about.”

After slamming the United Kingdom for its political correctness, he concluded with a dire warning: “I’m telling you, this is a bad idea, and you’re going to regret not listening to people like us who lived under Sharia law,” he said.

Many of the approximately 100 speakers voiced similar concerns.

In the end, after hours of heated debate, the council voted 7-0 to approve the building, saying that the Islamic organization met all the zoning and development criteria and the council members were legally bound to approve it.

Activist Sean Naughton stood at Speakers’ Corner in the northeast corner of Hyde Park in London Sunday and declaimed about Jews.

“Our common enemy are the Jews,” he declared. “Now, what’s the evidence? What’s the empirical evidence for the most part of the Jew problem? We call it the Jewish question or the Jewish problem. I would say we all know as we look at the genocide in Gaza. The Jews seem to think that they have an exemption from what we call the universal moral order.”

“The Jewish question” or “the Jewish problem” is the language Nazis used to describe what they considered the problem of the Jews, leading to the Wannsee Conference, the 1942 gathering of high-ranking SS officials in a Berlin suburb called Wannsee to formulate “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”

Speakers’ Corner is a historic location traditionally used for public speeches, disputes and discussions. In the video footage, the crowd appears amenable to Naughton’s words.

London, like major cities across the globe, has seen a sharp spike in antisemitism, especially anti-Jewish violence, since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

A frightening wave of arson attacks struck London’s Jewish community this past year, including one in which four ambulances belonging to the Jewish volunteer ambulance group Hatzola were torched. The Finchley Reform Synagogue, the Kenton United Synagogue, and a previously Jewish-owned business were firebombed or otherwise vandalized within a two-week period.

Jerusalem’s skyline is set for a major transformation after planning authorities approved a 30-story mixed-use tower at one of the capital’s most prominent intersections, clearing the way for the demolition of the well-known Beit Amir building near Paris Square.

The Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee rejected objections to the project and approved the Agron Tower, planned for the corner of Agron and King George streets, beside Independence Park and along Jerusalem’s expanding light-rail network. The project will include 110 apartments, 114 hotel rooms, two floors of commercial space and an additional floor designated for public facilities.

The development will replace Beit Amir, also widely known as “Shufersal Agron,” a distinctive modernist building designed by celebrated Israel Prize-winning architect David Resnick. Built in the 1960s, the structure became a recognizable, if controversial, part of central Jerusalem’s architectural landscape. Its proposed demolition has generated years of debate between preservation advocates and supporters of substantially denser construction in the heart of the city.

There is also an unusual architectural connection between the old and new buildings. The tower is being designed by New York architect Ian Bader together with Anat Eilon and Baruch Resnick, the son of the architect who designed Beit Amir. Earlier planning discussions called for elements of the original building’s architectural language to be reflected in its replacement rather than simply erased.

The project reflects a much broader transformation underway across Jerusalem, where planners are increasingly concentrating high-density residential, hotel and commercial developments around major public transportation corridors. Officials said the Agron project’s combination of uses is intended to increase activity in the area and strengthen Jerusalem’s city center.

For a location already surrounded by some of Jerusalem’s most recognizable streets and landmarks, the change will be difficult to miss: a low-rise piece of the city’s 20th-century architectural history is set to give way to a 30-story tower overlooking one of the capital’s busiest central corridors.

Visa is acquiring Israeli-founded fraud prevention company BioCatch for $2.4 billion in cash, turning one of Israel’s most successful cybersecurity companies into a major piece of the payments giant’s global fight against digital fraud. The deal is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close during Visa’s fiscal second quarter of 2027.

BioCatch’s technology goes beyond examining whether a transaction looks suspicious. Its AI-powered behavioral biometrics analyze thousands of signals, including typing patterns, touchscreen gestures, device handling and network activity, to determine whether the person operating an account behaves like its legitimate owner. That allows banks to detect account takeovers, scams, fraudulent applications and money-mule activity before funds are transferred.

The scale is already enormous. BioCatch says its technology protects 760 million users across 1.8 billion devices and is used by more than 350 financial institutions in 21 countries, including more than 100 of the world’s largest banks. The company surpassed $185 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2025.

Visa is betting that this type of behavioral intelligence will become increasingly important as artificial intelligence makes scams cheaper, faster and easier to scale. The company estimates that account takeovers and scams now cost the global economy more than $1 trillion annually and says it has invested more than $13 billion in technology and infrastructure over the past five years to combat fraud.

“BioCatch will help our clients stop fraud before it reaches the point of payment,” Visa executive Andrew Torre said.

The transaction also represents a striking rise in value for BioCatch. Private equity giant Permira acquired majority control of the company at a valuation of roughly $1.3 billion in 2024, paying about $750 million for a 60% stake. Permira says BioCatch’s revenue and gross profit subsequently grew approximately threefold. Visa is now buying the company from Permira funds and other shareholders for nearly twice that earlier valuation.

Founded in Israel in 2011 by Avi Turgeman and the late Benny Rosenbaum, BioCatch emerged from the idea that every person interacts with computers and mobile devices in subtly distinctive ways. That insight evolved into a fraud-detection platform now operating across some of the world’s largest financial institutions.

CEO Gadi Mazor has indicated that the Visa acquisition is not expected to fundamentally alter BioCatch’s operations, and he is expected to remain at the helm. For Visa, however, the acquisition could significantly expand its reach beyond securing individual payments and deeper into the digital banking session itself, where many modern scams begin long before a victim clicks “send.”

After a 5-year-old child who was left in a hot car in Lod died Sunday, United Hatzalah issued a warning to parents, imploring them to “stop for one second.”

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

This is the 23rd such death in Israel since 2021. In that time span, an additional 53 children were harmed but survived, and 1,513 children were rescued in time and unharmed.

In the Lod case, what is known so far is that the child had fallen asleep on a drive home and was left in the car. After two hours, the father, realizing the boy was not in the house, checked the car, found the boy unconscious and called Magen David Adom. MDA medic Efi Rosenblum responded to the call and even before he reached the car, local residents carried the child toward him.

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

Additional members of the MDA unit arrived, but despite resuscitation efforts at the scene and continued efforts in the trauma room at Shamir Medical Center, the boy was pronounced dead.

“We began performing advanced resuscitation efforts that included chest compressions and ventilation, and evacuated him in a mobile intensive care unit to the hospital in critical condition while we fought for his life,” said two medics at the scene, Haim Shavit and Yosef Yitzhak Sagiv. They said the child had no pulse, was not breathing, and was showing signs of heatstroke.

The child was identified as Betzalel Dovid Giller, from a Chabad family. A resident of the community, singer Avi Menachem, said the scene was one of the most painful he had ever witnessed. Describing the situation, he stopped short of describing the conditions inside the car, saying it was too distressing to relate.

“Today I witnessed one of the most difficult and shocking sights I have experienced in my life,” Menachem said. “I was there and saw up close the attempts to resuscitate the young child who had been forgotten in the car.”

“It is difficult to describe in words what I saw,” he said, recalling “the rescue personnel who fought with all their strength for his life, and the pain and shock that were present at the scene.”

He also implored parents to heighten their vigilance, while at the same time urging people to withhold their judgment.

“Children are our lives,” he said. “We must do everything possible to prevent such a case, reminders on the phone, checking the car every time we get out, warning devices, and anything that can prevent the next tragedy.”

“There is no place here for judgment or accusations,” he added. “There is a family here that is going through, at this moment, the most terrible pain imaginable. My heart is with them.”

The Israel Rescue and Fire Authority sent out rescue teams Sunday to search for a 12-year-old boy from Modi’in Illit after his boat capsized in the Jordan River.

After he was pulled from the water, Magen David Adom delivered emergency aid but failed to resuscitate him and declared him dead at the scene.

Israel Police, other emergency services, a police helicopter and a United Hatzalah drone participated in the search, while the Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit was on hand to provide emotional first aid.

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

The boy has been identified as Elchanan Karni, a student at a Breslov Talmud Torah in Modi’in Illit.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced at a Cabinet meeting Sunday that he rejects President Donald Trump’s 15-point Gaza peace plan, vowing that Israel would not withdraw from the Gaza Strip until Hamas disarms and that Israel would continue to thwart threats and attacks from Hamas.

“I want to be precise. Israel rejects the 15-point document,” he said. “I heard people saying, ‘You didn’t say it.’ We said it, but here I am saying it again: Israel rejects the 15-point document,” he stated baldly, adding that Hamas must yield its “heavy weapons, the less heavy weapons, all the weapons,” and that he was seeking “real disarmament, not fictitious disarmament.”

The premier said that he is in discussions with the American administration, which is presenting various ideas, “some of them acceptable to us and some not acceptable to us.”

Israeli Energy and Infrastructure Minister Eli Cohen warned Saturday on Israeli broadcaster Channel 14 that “Hamas is planning a deception.”

It “will say that it intends to abide by the agreement, hand over some of its weapons, and obtain what we used to call, in the language of the past, a hudna. [But] the era of hudna is over,” he added.

Hudna means truce in Arabic, a ploy Hamas has used to regroup and rearm after war to prepare for the next attack.

Cohen further warned that Hamas is an untrustworthy terrorist organization whose promises are not worth the paper they are written on.

Also on Saturday, Doron Spielman, Netanyahu’s international spokesman, said that on Friday alone, Hamas violated the terms of the ceasefire 17 times with such actions as crossing over the Yellow Line and attempting to attack IDF soldiers.

He also explained that while Israel had accepted Trump’s 20-point plan, it rejected the newer 15-point Board of Peace plan reached with Hamas, to which it is not a signatory.

After Hamas said that Israel must withdraw as a condition for disarmament, a Hamas spokesman said Saturday that it accepts the 15-point plan.

“Hamas and other factions have confirmed to mediators their readiness to begin implementing the agreement and move to the second phase, provided it receives Israeli approval and that Israel begins implementing the agreement,” a Hamas official said.

“Hamas is urging the U.S. administration to exert pressure on Israel to compel it to abide by the agreement and move to the second phase,” he added.

Israel has successfully tested an upgraded version of its Arrow missile defense system, placing new capabilities against what officials describe as future threats as the country races to stay ahead of Iran’s evolving ballistic missile arsenal.

The test was conducted in central Israel by the Israel Missile Defense Organization together with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, the IDF and Israel Aerospace Industries. The Defense Ministry said the system successfully completed the planned trial as part of a long-term program to develop and upgrade Arrow. IAI said the test generated data that will help engineers develop the next generation of Israeli missile defenses.

But one aspect of the launch stood out: how quietly Israel handled it.

Arrow tests have traditionally been highly visible events, with launches from central Israel seen across large areas and followed by detailed announcements about new capabilities. This time, the test initially drew attention after residents reported activity in the skies, before the Defense Ministry formally confirmed what had occurred. The Jerusalem Post argues that the unusually restrained approach reflects a defense establishment increasingly reluctant to reveal information that could help Iran understand Israel’s evolving capabilities.

That caution comes as Israeli defense officials prepare for a continued technological race with Tehran. Iran is working to replenish and improve its ballistic missile forces after months of war, while Israel is simultaneously upgrading its defenses and expanding interceptor production. The Defense Ministry says Israel remains on an emergency footing and is dramatically accelerating both Arrow production and development.

SHADMOT MEHOLA, ISRAEL – APRIL 3: An Israeli woman with a child looks at the tail section of a ballistic missile launched from Iran, in the Jewish settlement of Shadmot Mehola in the northern Jordan Valley on April 03, 2026 in Shadmot Mehola, Israel. Iran has continued firing waves of drones and missiles at Israel after the United States and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran early on February 28th. (Photo by Erik Marmor/Getty Images)

Arrow forms the highest layer of Israel’s multi-tier missile defense network. Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 are designed to destroy long-range ballistic missiles at extremely high altitudes, including outside the atmosphere, before they can reach Israeli population centers or strategic sites. They operate alongside David’s Sling, Iron Dome and Israel’s newer Iron Beam laser defense system.

The system has already been repeatedly tested in combat against ballistic missiles fired from Iran and by the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen. Israel is now attempting to turn those battlefield lessons into new technology before Tehran can adapt its own weapons and tactics.

Israeli forces fire a rocket from their Iron Dome defence system in the southern city of Ashkelon to intercept rockets launched from the Gaza strip, on May 11, 2023, on the third day of the worst escalation of violence in months. Air strikes by the Israeli army since May 9 have killed fighters as well as civilians, including several children, said officials in the crowded coastal territory. (Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT / AFP) (Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)

The broader missile race is also putting enormous pressure on interceptor inventories across the region. The United States is accelerating weapons production after the Iran war sharply reduced stocks of several critical missile-defense systems, reinforcing the strategic importance of maintaining both technological superiority and enough interceptors for a prolonged conflict.

For Israel, the latest Arrow test is therefore about more than another successful launch. It is part of a race to ensure that the next Iranian missile is met by a defense system Tehran has not yet learned how to defeat.

Arianna Hamilton, the Burger King employee fired following a confrontation with Israeli customer Rami Feinstein, has now raised close to a quarter-million dollars through GoFundMe and become a celebrated figure in the pro-Palestinian movement.

According to Feinstein, Hamilton noticed his Star of David necklace, asked where he was from and, after learning he was Israeli, repeatedly shouted “Free Palestine” at him.

Hamilton tells a dramatically different story.

In her fundraiser, she claims she lost her job because she said “Free Palestine,” insisting she “wasn’t antagonizing anyone” and was “simply exercising my freedom of speech.” She says the money is being raised for herself and transferred directly to her personal bank account, while also saying she intends to donate some of it to Palestinian causes.

Her newfound celebrity has since expanded far beyond Burger King. Supporters have created songs celebrating Hamilton, while artwork and murals featuring her likeness have reportedly appeared from Gaza to Portland, Oregon. She has become a darling of what critics have dubbed the “Pallywood grift” movement.

From $10,000 To $250,000: Hamilton Says GoFundMe Did It

Hamilton’s fundraiser reportedly began with a $10,000 goal, before the displayed target climbed dramatically to $250,000.

In a second fundraising video, Hamilton addressed questions about the changing goal and claimed she never increased it herself, saying GoFundMe keeps raising it.

Screenshot

That claim raises questions. GoFundMe allows organizers to manually change their fundraising goals, and simply reaching a target does not ordinarily mean the platform automatically increases the organizer’s stated goal.

So if Hamilton says she isn’t changing it, why does the goal keep increasing?

With nearly a quarter-million dollars potentially on the line, donors deserve clarity about who is changing the target and why. At this rate, don’t be surprised if the goal eventually heads toward $1 million.

Did Hamilton Minimize What Really Happened?

There is also a major discrepancy between Hamilton’s fundraising narrative and Feinstein’s account.

Hamilton portrays the beginning of their interaction as ordinary customer banter. According to her version, she casually asked Feinstein whether he was from New York or New Jersey, and he answered New Jersey.

She claims that only afterward did Feinstein return, pull out or display his Star of David necklace and “aggressively” tell her he was from Israel.

That version removes Feinstein’s visible Jewish identity from the beginning of the encounter and portrays Israel as something he introduced into the conversation.

Feinstein says that simply isn’t what happened.

His account is that Hamilton noticed the Star of David he was already wearing, asked where he was from because of it and, after discovering he was Israeli, repeatedly shouted “Free Palestine” at him.

Austin Franco

If Feinstein’s version is accurate, Hamilton’s fundraising narrative seemingly does more than omit context. It substantially minimizes and rewrites the sequence of events that resulted in her firing.

Then there’s Burger King itself.

The company ultimately terminated Hamilton. Burger King has not publicly disclosed the evidence behind its decision, so it cannot be stated as fact that surveillance footage or coworker interviews disproved Hamilton’s account. Feinstein argues, however, that it strains credibility to believe a major corporation would fire an employee amid a viral customer dispute without first investigating what occurred.

That leaves a central question as Hamilton collects an extraordinary amount of money: was she fired merely for saying “Free Palestine,” as her fundraiser suggests, or for repeatedly directing the slogan at a Jewish and Israeli customer after noticing his Star of David?

Antisemitism Becomes A Fundraising Opportunity

Hamilton isn’t the only recent example of controversial conduct involving Jews turning into a fundraising opportunity.

Cornell student Austin Franco generated outrage after responding to a job opportunity involving Jewish co-founders with the message: “Not interested in working for a jew. Thanks.”

Austin Franco

Franco subsequently attracted tens of thousands of dollars through fundraising efforts following the controversy.

It points to a disturbing feature of the social-media economy: conduct condemned as antisemitic can generate outrage and publicity, followed by substantial financial support from ideological sympathizers.

GoFundMe Campaigns Can Be Reported

Anyone who believes a fundraiser contains false or materially misleading information, hate speech, bullying or other content violating GoFundMe’s rules can use the platform’s “Report Fundraiser” option. The process can take less than 30 seconds.

GoFundMe says reports are reviewed by its Trust & Safety team. If a campaign is placed under review, it can become inaccessible and unable to receive additional donations, while transfers may also be paused during an investigation.

Importantly, submitting a report does not automatically shut down a fundraiser or freeze its money. GoFundMe determines whether a campaign violates its policies and what action, if any, should follow.

Screenshot

Hamilton’s free-speech argument also has limits. The First Amendment protects people against government restrictions on speech. It does not guarantee that an employee of a private company can direct unsolicited political statements at customers without employment consequences.

What began as a confrontation at a Burger King counter has now become an international cause célèbre and a nearly quarter-million-dollar fundraising phenomenon.

And it raises a larger question: Are online fundraising platforms inadvertently turning inflammatory behavior into a lucrative business model?

The Pentagon is pushing America’s defense industry to dramatically accelerate weapons production as months of fighting with Iran eat into some of the U.S. military’s most important missile and interceptor stockpiles.

Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg gave defense industry leaders just 21 days to submit plans for significantly faster deliveries or increased production of critical weapons, according to a Pentagon memo obtained by The Washington Post. “Years-long development cycles are not acceptable,” Feinberg wrote, calling for an immediate expansion of production capacity.

051021-F-2828D-284
A U.S. Army AH-64D Longbow Apache, 1st Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, Fort Campbell Ky., provides ground forces with air support from Forward Operating Base Speicher Iraq, Oct. 21, 2005, during Operation Iraqi Freedom. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Andy Dunaway) (Released)

The 1st Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, the “Expect No Mercy” Battalion, is the premier attack helicopter battalion in the United States Army. Its lethal fleet of 24 Ah-64D Longbow Apaches is currently conducting combat operations in Northern Iraq, caring on a long tradition of excellence among Army Aviation.

1-101st first gained notoriety during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, when it fired the first shots of the Gulf War during Operation Normandy, destroying key Iraqi radar sites and creating a safe corridor for US aircraft to commence the air campaign. The battalion again proved itself during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003-2004, conducting several mobile strike deep attacks during major combat operations followed by eight months of quick reaction force (QRF), reconnaissance, and VIP security missions during stability and support operations (SASO). After a rigorous 19 months of training and maintenance back at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the “Expect No Mercy” battalion deployed to Iraq for its second OIF tour.

Since arriving in Iraq, the battalion has conducted an aggressive Relief-in-Place/Transfer-of-Authority (REP/TOA) with 8-229th Aviation Regiment from Fort Knox, Kentucky. The battalion is on track to fly over 1000 combat hours in October, and is already making an impact on operations in Iraq. Initial combat missions involved teams of two “No Mercy” aircraft along with one 8-229th aircraft conducting local area orientations (LAO) to familiarize aircrews with the environment, geography, and unity on the ground. By no means was an LAO an administrative mission though: while on orientations, aircrews participated in numerous reconnaissance

The order highlights the enormous strain the Iran war has placed on America’s arsenal, particularly its advanced missile-defense systems. An analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates the U.S. Patriot interceptor inventory has fallen from roughly 2,330 before the war to between 759 and 827 following the latest fighting, a decline of at least 65%. THAAD interceptor stocks are estimated to have fallen from 452 before the war to roughly 234-278.

Those systems are among Washington’s most important defenses against Iranian ballistic missiles and are difficult to replace quickly. CSIS has previously estimated that rebuilding Patriot and THAAD inventories to their prewar levels under existing production plans could take three years or more, raising concerns about U.S. readiness for another major conflict, particularly in the Indo-Pacific.

The first of two Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors is launched during a successful intercept test. The test, conducted by Missile Defense Agency (MDA), Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) Operational Test Agency, Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense, and U.S. Pacific Command, in conjunction with U.S. Army soldiers from the Alpha Battery, 2nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, U.S. Navy sailors aboard the guided missile destroyer USS Decatur (DDG-73), and U.S. Air Force airmen from the 613th Air and Operations Center resulted in the intercept of one medium-range ballistic missile target by THAAD, and one medium-range ballistic missile target by Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD). The test, designated Flight Test Operational-01 (FTO-01), stressed the ability of the Aegis BMD and THAAD weapon systems to function in a layered defense architecture and defeat a raid of two near-simultaneous ballistic missile targets

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell confirmed that Feinberg’s directive is real, saying the department is seeking to deliver weapons “at the pace the threat demands.” He argued, however, that the effort is part of a broader campaign to rebuild the American defense industrial base rather than evidence that the military is unable to fight.

The move comes amid increasingly public disagreement over the condition of America’s stockpiles. President Donald Trump has insisted the United States possesses “massive amounts” of munitions and says manufacturers are rapidly producing replacements. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also rejected reports suggesting some key interceptor inventories have been nearly exhausted.

WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 15: U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine listen as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a ceremony for the presentation of the Mexican Border Defense Medal in the Oval Office of the White House on December 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. During the ceremony, Trump recognized the first 13 service members to receive the recently established Mexican Border Defense Medal (MBDM), which recognizes service members supporting Customs and Border Protection on the U.S.-Mexico border. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

But the Pentagon’s demand for faster production underscores a broader lesson from the Iran war: even the world’s largest military can expend sophisticated weapons far faster than industry can replace them.

For Israel and American forces across the Middle East, the consequences are particularly important. Iran has repeatedly relied on large missile and drone barrages designed in part to pressure advanced air-defense networks. Replenishing those interceptor stocks could become critical if large-scale fighting resumes.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi terrorists say they launched a drone attack on Saudi Aramco’s massive Jazan refinery, marking the latest strike against critical Saudi energy infrastructure as the regional confrontation continues to widen.

Saudi Arabia’s Energy Ministry confirmed that a fire broke out at a facility connected to the refinery and was later extinguished by Aramco’s industrial security teams. No injuries were reported. Riyadh did not confirm what caused the blaze, while Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree claimed the group targeted the refinery with a drone.

Saree said the attack was retaliation for what the Houthis described as Saudi drone incursions over the Houthi-controlled Yemeni provinces of Saada and Hajjah. The Jazan refinery, located near Yemen along Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, can process roughly 400,000 barrels of crude oil per day and produces products including gasoline and ultra-low-sulfur diesel.

It is not the first time the strategically important facility has come under attack. Aramco shut the Jazan refinery in late July after a previous Houthi strike damaged its Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle complex and tank farm area. Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said recent attacks have caused some production interruptions, though he said they have not had a material operational or financial impact on the oil giant.

The latest attack comes amid Saudi warnings that Iran-backed forces could launch coordinated strikes against the kingdom from multiple directions. A senior Saudi official told Reuters that intelligence indicated the Houthis could attack from Yemen while Iran-backed militias strike from Iraq, potentially targeting energy facilities, airports and ports.

The growing threat has pushed Riyadh to strengthen its regional defenses. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan recently signed a mutual-defense pact stipulating that an armed attack against one country would be considered an attack against all three. The Houthi strike now places that new security architecture under an immediate spotlight as Tehran’s proxy network continues targeting Saudi territory and vital Red Sea infrastructure.

A Florida man accused of hurling a brick through the window of a Chabad synagogue told investigators that anti-Israel material on social media had fueled his anger, with police pointing to a video from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani among the content he had shared.

According to a Sarasota Police probable cause affidavit, 30-year-old Brayton Laschinger admitted deliberately targeting the Chabad House in Sarasota on July 29 because it was a Jewish house of worship.

Police say Laschinger described himself as anti-Israel and told detectives that social-media “propaganda” had been making him increasingly angry. Shortly before the alleged attack, his Instagram account had reposted a video in which Mamdani called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “war criminal” and accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

Surveillance footage allegedly shows a barefoot man approaching the synagogue around 6 a.m. with a towel covering his face before throwing a brick through a window and fleeing. Laschinger’s roommate later identified him to investigators, according to police.

New York mayor Zohran Mamdani looks on during a public safety-related announcement at the headquarters of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) in New York on January 6, 2026. (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP via Getty Images)

Laschinger has been charged with felony criminal mischief against a religious building as a hate crime. He posted $2,500 bond and is scheduled to be arraigned on August 28.

The case comes amid growing concern over antisemitism in the United States and renewed debate over whether increasingly inflammatory political rhetoric surrounding Israel can have dangerous real-world consequences.

Israel is preparing for the possibility of resuming military strikes against Iran independently, without U.S. approval or operational support, according to a report by Israel’s Channel 13.

The reported preparations underscore a widening strategic question between Jerusalem and Washington: what happens if Israel concludes that an Iranian threat demands immediate action while the Trump administration remains focused on diplomacy.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL – APRIL 06: A rocket intercepting an Iranian ballistic missile explodes near other smoke clouds that formed following interceptions on April 06, 2026 in Tel Aviv, Israel. This was the fourth salvo of missile fire today. Iran has continued firing waves of drones and missiles at Israel after the United States and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran early on February 28th. (Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

The possibility of an independent operation is not merely theoretical. Defense Minister Israel Katz previously revealed that he ordered the IDF to prepare what he called a “blue-and-white” operation against Iran, meaning an Israeli-led campaign. Katz said the military was on alert and already had targets prepared, while stressing that Israel would not interfere with President Donald Trump’s diplomatic efforts unless Israeli security demanded action.

More recently, Katz publicly acknowledged a concrete disagreement with Washington over Iranian energy infrastructure. He said Israel “very much” wanted to strike those targets, but that the United States was not approving such an attack because of fears Iran would retaliate against neighboring Gulf states and trigger a global oil crisis. Katz nevertheless warned that Israel was prepared to inflict far greater damage on the Islamic Republic.

The latest report comes as Washington continues trying to negotiate an arrangement with Tehran. Iran and Oman say they are close to an agreement concerning shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, but Tehran is demanding additional U.S. concessions before fully reopening the critical waterway. Those demands include compensation, sanctions relief and an end to what Iran calls U.S. threats and attacks. At the same time, the UAE accused Iran of launching another missile attack against a vessel transiting the strait, highlighting how fragile the diplomatic track remains.

There is no indication that Israel has made a final decision to launch another independent attack. But the message from Jerusalem is becoming increasingly clear: American diplomacy may affect Israel’s timing, but Israeli officials do not intend to surrender the country’s freedom to act against Iran if they determine the threat requires it.

A man was arrested after allegedly breaching the Israel Pavilion at Edmonton’s Heritage Festival and striking its kitchen tent with a knife, forcing Israeli dancers preparing to perform to rush into shelter. No injuries were reported.

Security subdued the suspect as anti-Zionist protesters demonstrated nearby, with chants including “All Zionists are racist” heard around the festival grounds. The protest reportedly continued for nearly three hours.

After authorities gave the all-clear, organizers offered the dancers a choice: perform a shortened routine in front of the hostile crowd or cancel altogether.

They chose to dance.

As the chants continued, the Israeli performers returned to the stage in what Jewish Federation of Edmonton CEO Stacey Leavitt-Wright described as a display of determination and pride.

Iran is dramatically raising the stakes in negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz, declaring that even an emerging agreement with Oman will not be enough to reopen one of the world’s most important energy corridors.

Tehran says it is now “very close” to an agreement with Oman over a new shipping route through the strait. But Iranian officials are making clear that the technical navigation deal is only one piece of a much larger confrontation with Washington.

Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a Revolutionary Guard commander, laid out a sweeping list of conditions the United States would have to meet before normal passage is restored.

TOPSHOT – A man poses for a photo next to a fallen rocket half-buried in the ground on the outskirts of Jericho on June 8, 2026, following Iranian and Iran-backed Houthi rebel attacks. Israel and Iran traded fire on June 8, seriously testing a fragile truce and threating hopes for a deal to end the Middle East war. (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP via Getty Images) /

The demands include an end to U.S. military threats against Iran, an end to military action against Tehran and its Iran-backed allies across Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen and Iraq, the lifting of the U.S. naval blockade and sanctions, the unconditional release of frozen Iranian assets and compensation for damage caused during the war. AP reported that Iran is also demanding the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the region.

That hardline position clashes sharply with recent optimism from Washington. A U.S. official had said an Iran-Oman agreement was expected soon and could allow normal oil traffic to resume, with Washington prepared to lift its blockade of Iranian ports once Tehran implemented its commitments. Iran now says that sequence is not enough.

HEBRON, WEST BANK – MARCH 06: Missiles launched from Iran in retaliation for Israeli attacks are seen in the night sky over the city of Hebron in the West Bank on March 06, 2026. (Photo by Wisam Hashlamoun/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the existing system separating inbound and outbound shipping lanes is no longer acceptable to Tehran. Iran and Oman are instead working on a temporary route while technical and legal questions surrounding a longer-term arrangement are negotiated. Oman described the discussions as taking place in a “positive and constructive” atmosphere while urging all sides to avoid actions that could derail the talks.

Sources familiar with the negotiations told Reuters that one proposed arrangement would give Tehran control over vessels entering the Gulf through Hormuz, while providing oversight of outbound traffic. Such a concession would significantly strengthen Iran’s influence over a waterway that carried roughly one-fifth of global oil and gas shipments before the war. U.S. officials have previously insisted they would not accept Iranian control over access to the route.

The danger remains immediate. The United Arab Emirates says Iran struck another vessel affiliated with state oil giant ADNOC with a missile while it was transiting the strait. No injuries were reported. ADNOC says more than a dozen of its vessels have been attacked by missiles or drones during the conflict, leaving one crew member dead and 20 wounded.

An F-16Cj From The 23Rd Efs, Spangdalem Air Base, Germany Patrols The Northern No Fly Zone Over Northern Iraq January 6, 1999. Earlier Four U.S. Air Force And Navy Jets Fired On And Missed Four Iraqi Migs Testing The No-Fly Zone Over Southern Iraq. It Was The First Such Air Confrontation In More Than Six Years. (Photo By Usaf/Getty Images)

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have meanwhile reinforced Tehran’s position: reopening Hormuz will depend on Washington accepting Iran’s conditions, not simply on reaching a navigation arrangement with Oman.

The result is a widening gap between an agreement on how ships might move through Hormuz and an agreement that actually restores unrestricted commercial traffic.

For Washington, the challenge is increasingly stark. A deal could ease pressure on energy markets and remove one of the most dangerous flashpoints in the war, but Tehran is attempting to turn control of Hormuz into leverage for sanctions relief, reparations and a broader reduction of the American military presence in the Middle East.

For now, the negotiations are moving forward. The strait itself remains the bargaining chip.

This footage dates back exactly ten years ago and shows Ahed Tamimi, trained by her activist father to provoke IDF soldiers for the cameras in Judea and Samaria.

a victim of the Bar bombing who lost her entire family revisit this scene shortly after (Picture by Eddie Hammer)

Ahed’s father is a cousin of Ahlam Tamimi, known for assisting in carrying out the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 2001.

She who later became a prominent “Palestinian” activist. In 2017, she was arrested after a separate confrontation in which she slapped and kicked Israeli soldiers, and in 2018 she was sentenced to eight months in prison. She was arrested again in 2023 and later released in a prisoner-hostage exchange with Oct. 7th hostages.

A man was found guilty of arson Tuesday for setting fire to the mezuzah of Berkeley Hillel near the University of California, Berkeley, last February.

David William Denton, 45, used a pocket torch to set the mezuzah alight. A mezuzah contains a scroll with passages from the Torah and is affixed to the doorpost. Students were inside the Hillel for a Shabbat gathering at the time.

Denton is scheduled for sentencing on Sept. 3 and faces up to three years in prison.

David William Denton has been convicted of arson after setting a mezuzah on fire at a college Hillel near UC, Berkeley.

“Targeting and burning a sacred religious symbol is an act that can cause harm far beyond the physical damage itself,” Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson stated. “People of every faith should be able to practice their religion and gather in their communities without fear of intimidation.”

StopAntisemitism called for a harsher sentence, warning that Denton’s past behavior presented a pattern that could turn deadly.

“How many chances should a violent racist get?” the group posted on X. “David William Denton, 44, was charged with hate crimes after torching a mezuzah on fire at a Berkeley Hillel while students were INSIDE celebrating Shabbat. In 2021, he was arrested for vandalizing the same Hillel, a Chabad rabbi’s home, AND a synagogue. Are prosecutors waiting for him to actually KILL someone before they lock him up for good?”

A UNICEF study on child malnutrition in Gaza confirmed what pro-Israel advocacy groups have been saying all along: The previous assessments on acute malnutrition in children during the war were a load of bunkum.

In order to declare a famine in August 2025, the IPC, the U.N.-backed group that produces the gold standard in identifying famines around the world, changed the requirements. Unable to obtain a weight-to-height z-score (standard score, aka WHZ), the IPC used instead a measurement of upper arm circumference (MUAC). To declare a famine, 30 percent of children must fail to meet the WHZ score.

The IPC declared that since MUAC finds half the number of malnutrition cases, then the MUAC number of 15 percent that it found really means 30 percent, and voilà! We have a famine in Gaza.

Trucks carrying humanitarian aid wait in front of the Rafah crossing to enter the Gaza Strip on Jan. 27, 2026. (Credit: Ali Moustafa/Getty Images)

The new UNICEF study turned this all on its head. Without getting into the weeds, suffice it to say that the study found that the rate of child malnutrition in Gaza was similar to that of developed countries during the war and significantly lower than that of its neighboring countries, Egypt and Jordan, in peacetime.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry touted the study on its X account.

“A new study commissioned by UNICEF shows that the nutritional situation in Gaza — contrary to all propaganda — is today better than in all neighboring Arab states and even better than in some European countries,” the ministry posted.

After explaining the numbers, the ministry concluded, “In other words: There is no famine in Gaza. Malnutrition is not only significantly below the critical values — it is exceptionally low in regional comparison. Anyone who is still open to arguments can look at the empirical data themselves.”

The findings of a nationwide study on campus antisemitism in Canada in 2025 are shocking and sobering. Nearly all Jewish college students, 96 percent, experienced antisemitism on campus in 2025, both from fellow students and from faculty members.

About experiencing antisemitism in general, the study presented the following statistics:

• 96 percent of students directly experienced or witnessed antisemitism.
• 84 percent said antisemitism is a serious problem on campus.
• 70 percent said the administration doesn’t take the problem seriously.
• 68 percent said their campus is not safe or inclusive for Jews.

An anti-Israel protester holds a placard referencing at a demonstration at the University of Toronto. (Credit: Shawn Goldberg/Sopa Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The study also noted that large percentages of students experienced violent acts and were changing their behavior accordingly.

• More than 20 percent experienced or witnessed anti-Jewish violence on campus.
• 54 percent reported experiencing intimidation or threats.
• 71 percent reported vandalism.
• 72 percent said they self-censure in class.
• 57 percent said they avoid wearing Jewish symbols.
• 25 percent made the decision to leave the university.
• 40 percent reported suffering academically as a result of antisemitism.

Students described the types of anti-Jewish behavior they encountered. Some said they were chased for wearing a kippah, were spat on for wearing a Star of David, were ostracized by classmates who found out they were Jewish, encountered swastikas and other anti-Jewish graffiti on campus, were called “Zionist” as a slur, were pressured to denounce Israel, or were excluded from Jewish groups and academic projects because of their Jewish identity.

Campus antisemitism reflects the general atmosphere in Canada more broadly. The 400,000-member Jewish community in Canada, while the fourth largest in the world, makes up only 1 percent of the population. Yet in 2024, 68 percent of hate crimes targeted Jewish people.

The Canadian Jewish community has been rocked by violent anti-Jewish incidents since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, such as a deadly shooting in Montreal in June.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan have signed a sweeping trilateral defense pact committing all three countries to treat an armed attack against one member as an attack against them all, creating a powerful new security bloc as the Middle East’s regional order rapidly shifts.

The “Mecca Joint Defence Agreement” was signed in Mecca by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The pact is intended to strengthen collective deterrence and expand defense cooperation among the three countries.

MOSCOW, RUSSIA – APRIL 24: Saudi Arabian Deputy Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud attends the 8th Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS)in Moscow, Russia on April 24, 2019. (Photo by Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

A Turkish official told Reuters that the agreement is defensive and not directed against any specific country. Precise obligations under the collective-defense clause have not been disclosed, but the pact could deepen cooperation in areas including military training, exercises, intelligence and defense technology. It is also open to other regional countries.

The combination is significant: Turkey possesses NATO’s second-largest military, Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state, and Saudi Arabia brings enormous financial resources and strategic influence in the Gulf. Pakistan has already deployed roughly 8,000 troops along with fighter jets, drones and an air-defense system to Saudi Arabia, Reuters previously reported.

(L-R) High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas, Undersecretary of State for Defense of the Republic of Italy Isabella Rauti, Minister of the Armed Forces and Veterans of France Catherine Vautrin, Minister of National Defence of Poland Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, Boris Pistorius Minister of Defence of Germany, Minister for Defence Procurement of United Kingdom Luke Pollard, and Deputy Secretary General of NATO Radmila Shekerinska attend the press conference after E5 countries Ministers of Defence summit in Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland on February 20, 2026. (Photo by Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The deal builds on the Saudi-Pakistani mutual defense agreement signed last year, which similarly declared aggression against either country an attack against both.

For Israel, Turkey’s formal entry into a broader Middle Eastern collective-defense framework will be closely watched amid severe tensions with Ankara. No Israeli response to the new agreement had been issued when Reuters published its report.

Iran’s opaque regime is facing another shock at the very top, with IranWire reporting that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is in extremely critical condition and may be close to death.

The report, citing two sources close to President Masoud Pezeshkian’s administration, says rumors of Khamenei’s possible imminent death are now circulating at the highest levels of the regime. One source close to the cabinet told IranWire: “We would not be surprised if we heard news of his martyrdom soon.”

Khamenei has not met with cabinet members since the U.S.-Israeli strike on the Supreme Leader’s compound that killed his father, Ali Khamenei, and other family members, according to the report. Since taking power, he has made no public appearances, delivered no public speeches, and has only issued written statements attributed to him by official Iranian media.

The mystery around him has been building for months. Reuters previously reported that Mojtaba Khamenei suffered severe facial and leg injuries in the strike that killed his father, while noting that his condition and ability to govern remained largely hidden from the public. Iran’s U.N. mission did not respond to Reuters questions about the extent of his injuries.

31 May 2019, Iran, Tehran: Mojtaba Khamenei (C), son of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is pictured during a protest marking the annual al-Quds Day (Jerusalem Day) on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Photo: Saeid Zareian/dpa (Photo by Saeid Zareian/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Even Pezeshkian has now publicly acknowledged the wall around Iran’s leader, saying in a televised interview that reaching Mojtaba Khamenei is “very difficult.” That admission, combined with the absence of any public proof of life, is feeding a dangerous question inside Tehran: who is actually running the Islamic Republic if its Supreme Leader is too weak to appear, speak, or meet his own government?

For Israel and the West, the significance is clear. The regime that funds Hamas, Hezbollah, PIJ, and other Iran-backed terrorist proxies may be facing a leadership crisis at the worst possible moment: wounded, secretive, internally divided, and increasingly dependent on the IRGC to hold the system together.

An Israeli woman and her daughter were severely beaten in Thailand by a French passport holder after he found out they were from Israel.

The 23-year-old was touring the country when her mother came for a two-week visit. The pair had driven motorbikes to a waterfall on Koh Phangan when a man with a French passport asked them where they were from. When they said they were from Israel, the 62-year-old mother said they were on vacation and wished to refrain from discussing politics.

The man left but then suddenly returned and viciously assaulted them. The daughter got hurt trying to protect her mother.

The younger woman ran out to the street to call for help, and when the man saw that they were not alone, he fled. He was arrested later in a separate violent confrontation with police, who discovered that he was also the attacker of the Israeli tourists.

Both women were taken to a hospital, where they underwent surgery for severe injuries. The daughter required surgery for her nose and the mother for her ear. She will likely need another surgery.

Speaking from her hospital bed, the mother described the incident to Ynet.

“A guy who was also on a motorcycle stopped behind us and started asking how we were,” the mother said. “We were busy buying a coconut. He asked my daughter where we were from, and she said Israel.”

“He said, ‘I don’t like what Israel is doing there,’ and I told him we were on vacation and did not want to discuss the issue or what they had done to us,” she recalled. “He said, ‘I’m against violence,’ and the conversation ended.”

After the man returned, “He started beating me viciously,” she said. “My daughter tried to protect me and was beaten too. We both fought him. I was hit in the head, and at some point I apparently lost consciousness.”

“He chased her, but she managed to call out to two French women who were there,” the mother said. “When he saw that there were other people on the road, he took his motorcycle and fled.”

“I remember lying on the road while people told me that police and an ambulance were coming,” she added. “They bandaged my head and took my daughter and me to a hospital on Koh Phangan.”

“It is truly terrible, and we never thought our trip would end this way. We only wanted to see a waterfall, and then a man came and attacked two women in the most brutal way possible,” she said.

“This happened in a place where we never dreamed it could happen,” she concluded. “We will learn not to say we are from Israel, because you can never know how someone will react.”

Israelis have been subject to harassment all over the world, and Israeli tourists have become particularly vulnerable due to their language and even their accent. In July, a group of Israeli tourists hid in their hotel rooms in Crete as a mob of Muslims armed with axes and rifles hunted them down. In another incident, tourists were harassed in Cyprus after being heard talking in Hebrew, with one of the aggressors knocked unconscious by one of the Israelis.

An Israeli tourist had ordered a meal at a Bangkok restaurant when she noticed a sign that said “No Israel [sic] tourist.” Canceling her order turned into a tense and frightening confrontation. A group of Israelis at a ski resort in Bansko, Bulgaria, was subjected to a violent antisemitic assault when a bystander heard one of them singing to himself a song in Hebrew with the words “Tel Aviv,” resulting in a violent confrontation that left one of the Israelis with a fractured skull and sinuses.

In another incident, a man filmed himself calling a group of Israelis vacationing in Montenegro “baby killers” and accusing them of genocide. Israeli tourists were attacked in Thailand after being overheard speaking Hebrew by French tourists in February. In June of last year, an Israeli tourist was violently attacked by a mob after he was heard speaking his native language. A family of Israeli tourists who were heard speaking Hebrew in Thessaloniki in July 2025 were attacked, with assailants following them to their car after they were told by staff to leave a restaurant.

The situation has worsened to the point that the Israeli National Security Council has been warning Israeli tourists not to speak Hebrew when traveling abroad. It has also advised removing all external signs of Jewishness, such as Stars of David, before going out in public, to keep mum about their military service, and to stay away from unsecured, unmonitored sites.

Greta Thunberg appears to have moved on from climate change and Palestine to her latest cause: protesting what she calls the “Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara” and the “oppression that the Sahrawi people have had to endure for decades.”

“I am ashamed and outraged that so far the world has been so silent on this topic,” Thunberg declared while sitting inside a Sahrawi tent.

Gone, at least for the moment, is the trademark keffiyeh. In its place: a red Sahrawi head covering to match the new cause.

At this point, one question remains: Where are her parents?

A network of suspected bot accounts systematically amplifying New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his allies on X has reportedly been traced to City Hall internet infrastructure, triggering calls for federal and municipal investigations.

The World Zionist Organization’s Department for Combating Antisemitism presented findings from cyber experts who examined IP information and patterns of activity across dozens of suspicious accounts. The experts say they are “100% sure” the IP addresses they examined could be traced to City Hall infrastructure. The underlying IP data and technical methodology, however, were not published, and the findings do not establish that Mamdani, his staff or other city officials created, directed or funded the accounts.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JANUARY 1: Zohran Mamdani is sworn in as New York City’s 112th mayor in the former City Hall subway station on January 1, 2026 in New York City. Mamdani’s term as mayor begins immediately in the new year, and a public inauguration will also take place in the afternoon at City Hall. (Photo by Amir Hamja-Pool/Getty Images)

Investigators identified what they described as highly unusual behavior across dozens of accounts, with the WZO estimating that the broader network could include hundreds. Some accounts reportedly produced more than 500 posts per day, while extreme cases surpassed 800 or 900. Several showed repeated-sharing rates approaching 100%, little or no original content and minimal personal activity.

Much of that activity centered on posts from Mamdani’s official account, municipal accounts and political allies. Researchers said the suspected network appeared to rapidly amplify posts immediately after publication, potentially helping trigger additional algorithmic exposure and engagement from real users.

The scrutiny comes amid escalating tensions between Mamdani and supporters of Israel. In a recent video, the mayor acknowledged that New York City does not have the legal authority to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under the International Criminal Court warrant, but continued to call Netanyahu a war criminal and urged federal authorities to act. Netanyahu subsequently accused Mamdani of “fomenting hate.”

The WZO is now seeking further scrutiny of the alleged amplification operation. Yifat Ovadia-Luski, who heads its Department for Combating Antisemitism, warned that “today’s antisemitism begins online and then moves into the streets,” and called for U.S. federal authorities to investigate.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – OCTOBER 31: New York City Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani visits a cultural center for the elderly, where he participated in both tai chi and other cultural dances on October 31, 2025, in New York City. Mamdani continues to hold a substantial lead in the polls against his two opponents, as his message about the cost of living in America’s largest city resonates with many New Yorkers. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Separately, the National Jewish Advocacy Center said it is referring the matter to New York City’s Department of Investigation and Conflicts of Interest Board and seeking access to City Hall server logs. City ethics rules explicitly prohibit public servants from using city time or resources, including computers, email accounts and phones, for political campaign purposes. Whether any such violation occurred here remains unproven and would depend on investigators establishing who operated the accounts and for what purpose.

Mossad Director Roman Gofman has removed two of the spy agency’s most senior officials from their posts as he moves to reshape Israel’s intelligence service following the war with Iran and the failure of an ambitious plan aimed at helping topple the Islamic Republic.

According to a Channel 12 report, the officials headed the Mossad’s intelligence directorate and its Iran division, placing both at the heart of the agency’s operations against Tehran. The two were reportedly among the architects of a written plan designed to exploit Iran’s ethnic minorities, fuel mass anti-regime demonstrations and ultimately bring down the government in Tehran.

The reported blueprint went far beyond airstrikes. One major component envisioned Israeli attacks on IRGC positions near Iran’s border with Iraq, clearing a route for thousands of Kurdish fighters to enter northwestern Iran. Israeli planners reportedly believed local Kurds could swell the force into a much larger movement, while unrest elsewhere in the country could draw millions into the streets and threaten the regime’s control.

Another extraordinary element, previously reported by The New York Times, involved former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Israel allegedly spent years developing contacts with the former hardliner as a possible figure in a post-regime political order, despite his long history of vicious anti-Israel rhetoric and Holocaust denial. Ahmadinejad’s office has denied the reported relationship.

Parts of the broader strategy were put into motion during the war, with Israeli and American forces heavily striking Iranian military, security and regime infrastructure. But the Kurdish component never fully materialized. Reports have pointed to U.S. hesitation, Turkish opposition, leaks surrounding the operation and reluctance among Kurdish factions as factors that ultimately stopped the plan.

The personnel changes do not necessarily mean the two officials are being expelled from the Mossad. Security sources told Channel 12 that their departures from their current posts were being carried out by mutual agreement as part of a broader organizational restructuring, and both are expected to remain in the agency in other positions. The same sources said Gofman had clashed with them from the beginning of his tenure.

Young Iranian women walk along a sidewalk in downtown Tehran, Iran, on January 15, 2026, as the U.S. President Donald Trump threatens Iran with war. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The move adds to a major reshuffling already underway under Gofman. Shortly after taking command of the Mossad, he ended the tenure of the agency’s deputy director and later appointed a new deputy and head of operations from within the organization. Gofman, a former IDF general and Netanyahu’s military secretary, entered the Mossad from outside the agency and has moved quickly to build his own leadership team.

Despite the failed effort to trigger the collapse of Iran’s government, regime change remains deeply intertwined with Israel’s long-term Iran strategy. Outgoing Mossad chief David Barnea publicly told Gofman upon leaving office that replacing the Iranian regime remained a mission Israel should ultimately complete.

The latest shake-up suggests that while Israel has not abandoned the objective, the Mossad under Gofman is reassessing how it intends to pursue one of the most ambitious and consequential intelligence challenges in the agency’s history.

Ben Gurion Airport is seeing its busiest day of the summer season, with around 101,000 passengers expected to pass through on arriving and departing international flights.

The figure marks a significant jump even from July’s peak travel days. The Israel Airports Authority had projected roughly 85,500 passengers on one major July travel day, followed by a then-season high of around 91,000 the following week. Today’s traffic pushes the summer rush firmly past the 100,000-passenger mark.

Tel Aviv,Israel -September,12, 2011: Airplane of United at front of the terminal building in the summer day at the Ben Gurion Airport Israel

The surge is already putting heavy pressure on airport parking. The Kerem and Pardes lots are full, with congestion expected to continue through the weekend. Passengers arriving by car are being directed to alternative nearby lots, while drivers picking up arrivals are advised to use the dedicated waiting lot, where the first hour is free.

The crowds also highlight how sharply Israeli aviation has rebounded. Ben Gurion handled about 18.5 million passengers in 2025, up 33% from the previous year, though still below the roughly 21.8 million passengers recorded in 2023. With summer traffic now breaking above 100,000 passengers in a single day, the recovery is becoming increasingly visible inside the terminals.

President Donald Trump confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at Camp David after learning that severe shortages of long-range missiles and air-defense interceptors were restricting America’s military options against Iran, according to The Washington Post.

Trump reportedly demanded to know why he had not been fully informed about the depleted stockpiles, telling Hegseth he believed the problem “had been fixed.” The shortages were reportedly one factor behind Trump’s recent decision to hold back another massive wave of strikes against Iran.

WASHINGTON DC, USA – MARCH 02: (—-EDITORIAL USE ONLY â” MANDATORY CREDIT – ‘THE WHITE HOUSE’S X ACCOUNT / HANDOUT’ – NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS – DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS—-) U.S. President Donald J. Trump sits at a table monitoring military operations during Operation Epic Fury against Iran, with U.S. flags visible behind him, in Washington, United States, on March 02, 2026. (Photo by The White House via X Account/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The most consequential impact is already being felt on the battlefield. U.S. commanders are reportedly rationing interceptor missiles by assessing where each incoming Iranian missile or attack drone is headed. Some projectiles believed unlikely to strike a protected military target or critical facility are being allowed to continue rather than consuming scarce Patriot or THAAD interceptors.

The scale of the depletion is significant. The Washington Post reported that U.S. forces fired more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles and over 1,000 Patriot and THAAD interceptors during the first month of fighting. More than 1,300 Army tactical ballistic missiles were also used during the opening weeks.

Reuters separately reported that the U.S. has used “virtually all” of its ATACMS and newer Precision Strike Missiles during the five-month war, along with slightly less than half of its global Tomahawk inventory. The shortage could force Washington to rely more heavily on piloted aircraft for future strikes, exposing crews to greater risk.

According to the Post, Hegseth blamed Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg for failing to properly communicate the stockpile situation. The White House denied that any confrontation occurred, while the Pentagon called reports of depleted inventories and internal disputes “fictional.” Trump also insisted that the U.S. possesses “massive amounts” of munitions and warned that officials leaking classified stockpile information would face consequences.

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The Pentagon is attempting to accelerate production. A new agreement exceeding $3 billion is intended to triple production capacity for Patriot components and quadruple it for THAAD, while another plan aims to raise annual Tomahawk production from approximately 60 missiles to as many as 1,000. Those increases, however, will take time and cannot immediately replace the weapons already expended.

The shortages now present Washington with a difficult calculation: how aggressively it can continue striking Iran while preserving enough missiles to defend American troops, Israel and regional allies—and retain sufficient reserves for a potential crisis involving Russia or China.

JERUSALEM – OCTOBER 13: US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee (L) speaks to US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (R) at the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, on October 13, 2025 in Jerusalem. President Trump is visiting the country hours after Hamas released the remaining Israeli hostages captured on Oct. 7, 2023, part of a US-brokered ceasefire deal to end the war in Gaza. (Photo by Saul Loeb – Pool/Getty Images)

Federal investigators are examining a serious breakdown in Washington’s tightly controlled airspace after Marine One, carrying President Donald Trump, flew closer than permitted to a passenger jet departing Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

The New York Times reported that the presidential helicopter came within 0.8 miles horizontally and 700 feet vertically of Envoy Air Flight 3742, an Embraer E170 bound for Pensacola, Florida. The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed a “momentary loss of separation,” but said the aircraft were moving away from each other and Trump was never in danger.

US President Donald Trump (R) greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) upon arrival at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, on December 29, 2025. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images)

Before departing the Ellipse near the White House, Marine One’s crew reportedly tried three times to alert Reagan National’s control tower that it was three minutes from takeoff. One transmission was described by the controller as “broken and unreadable.” Marine One lifted off shortly afterward, while the Envoy jet was cleared to depart just one minute later.

Only after the helicopter was airborne did the tower warn its crew about traffic taking off from Reagan’s main runway. Marine One reported having the aircraft in sight and briefly delayed its movement before continuing toward Joint Base Andrews. Both aircraft completed their flights safely.

The incident is especially alarming because commercial operations at Reagan National are supposed to be halted during conflicting presidential helicopter movements. Those restrictions were introduced after an American Airlines regional jet collided with an Army Black Hawk near the airport in 2025, killing all 67 people aboard the two aircraft.

UNITED STATES – FEBRUARY 3: Wreckage from American Airlines flight 5342 is pulled from the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan National Airport on Monday, February 3, 2025. The plane collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on Wednesday, January 29, killing 67 people. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Following that disaster, regulators barred mixed helicopter and commercial-aircraft traffic in portions of the airspace, restricted the use of visual separation and required military aircraft to continuously broadcast their locations. Despite those safeguards, the tower apparently failed to stop departures before Marine One entered the area.

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating, while the FAA is expected to convene a broader safety-review team. A second regional jet approaching Reagan National was also rerouted as a precaution during the incident.

The White House said Trump was never at risk. The Marine Corps similarly rejected descriptions of the episode as a close call, saying Marine One’s pilots followed the route authorized by air traffic control. The investigation will now focus on why the mandatory traffic shutdown failed and whether the garbled radio communications played a decisive role.

The Israeli Navy carried out a large-scale military exercise this week across both the Mediterranean and Red seas, involving hundreds of sailors from its warship, submarine and border security fleets.

The IDF says the drill incorporated lessons learned from nearly three years of fighting and tested the Navy’s readiness for a range of threats.

In the Mediterranean, forces practiced responding to maritime infiltrations, multi-front combat, aerial threats and other attack scenarios, while defending strategic sites including offshore gas rigs, Israeli ports and critical national infrastructure.

Additional exercises were held in the Red Sea, focusing on command, coordination and cooperation between different naval units.

President Donald Trump stopped a child from wandering off the stage during a Las Vegas event Wednesday to promote his economic agenda.

Sandra and Brad, a local couple who are, respectively, a waitress and a cop, were invited onstage at the Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa to address the audience. As a waitress, Sandra stands to benefit from Trump’s no-tax-on-tips policy. The couple appeared on stage with two children, one in Brad’s arms and the other a toddler with a pacifier who wandered around the stage.

As the child started to wander off, Trump moved quickly to intercept him, quipping, “I don’t want him to be Biden and fall off the stage,” a joke that prompted laughter from the audience. Sandra thanked him for the intervention before continuing with her remarks.

The joke referred to a famous moment when then-President Joe Biden tripped while handing out diplomas at a graduation ceremony in 2023 to students at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

At the end of Sandra’s speech, the toddler, with much prompting, thanked the president for his Trump Account, to which Trump responded with “Good job!”

Trump Accounts are savings accounts jumpstarted by the government. Children under the age of 18 are eligible for a Trump Account, which starts out with $1,000 deposited by the government. The money is invested so it increases over time. The children’s parents can add up to $5,000 a year to the account. When the children reach adulthood, they can use the money for college, to learn a trade, to buy a house or to start a business.

The program was signed into law in July 2025 and went into effect last month.

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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani attended a pro-police celebration in Staten Island Thursday evening, but he was booed so loudly he couldn’t manage to speak for more than one minute before he was hustled off the stage by security.

The NYPD’s National Night Out Against Crime event was well attended, with about 3,500 attendees. But the crowd erupted into boos and jeers when Mamdani took the stage, forcing him to cut his speech short, which he did, smiling throughout, though the smile appeared forced and pained.

“Happy Night Out Against Crime. It’s amazing to be here for the Staten Island community,” Mamdani managed to get out, finishing with “God bless everyone. Thank you.”

Staten Island artist and activist Scott LoBaido attended the event, saying he hoped to question the mayor after his remarks. The activist, who attended the Gracie Mansion Rally and spoke there, started making his way to the podium but was stopped by security personnel. He collapsed shortly thereafter from cardiac arrest.

First responders administered CPR and gave him oxygen before taking him to the hospital, where he later posted to Facebook, indicating that he is recovering.

The National Night Out Against Crime was held at about 70 locations across the city. The initiative is meant to foster good relations between the community and the police force with family-friendly events featuring food, games and activities.

Staten Island voted overwhelmingly against Mamdani, which explains the reaction of the crowd.

Jessica Tisch, the NYPD commissioner, attended the Staten Island event and thanked the officers for their work.

Two Israelis who accidentally entered Jenin were pelted with stones and bricks but managed to get away and meet up with IDF forces on the other side of the Gilboa crossing Thursday. They were unharmed.

The pair were rerouted into Jenin by Waze while stuck in heavy traffic. The IDF said that “troops were dispatched to detain wanted [Palestinians] in the Jenin area” following the incident.

Others who have gotten lost over the years were not so lucky. In a particularly horrific incident in October 2000, Israeli army reservists Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami took a wrong turn into Ramallah. They were detained by police and brought to a police station for their own protection, but a mob stormed the police station, brutally beat and stabbed them to death and dragged their bodies through the streets. A famous photograph depicts an Arab holding up his bloody hands outside a window to show the crowds that were cheering below. His name was Aziz Salha.

Those who were involved were arrested, but many, including Salha, were subsequently released as part of the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal. Salha was eventually killed by the IDF in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.

In 2018, a pair of soldiers accidentally drove into Jenin. The pair, a man and a woman from a non-combatant support unit, were surrounded as their vehicle was pelted with rocks and chairs. Palestinian Authority security forces protected the bloodied soldiers from further harm and managed to evacuate them from the area.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee slammed The Wall Street Journal for its Aug. 2 article, “Spitting Attacks Show Rise of Anti-Christian Hate in Israel.”

The article detailed the increase in anti-Christian attacks, particularly spitting on Christians. The article alleged that the attacks were carried mostly by right-wing religious youth. For example, on Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day, on May 14 the attacks particularly increased during the march through the Old City, when 12 spitting incidents were confirmed, with some teens referring to this behavior as a religious duty and “mitzvah.”

“When I came to Jerusalem in 2000, spitting was rare, but now there is hardly a day when I am not spat on,” Nikodemus Schnabel, abbot of the Dormition Abbey of the Virgin Mary on Mount Zion, told The Wall Street Journal.

All the youth involved in this incident have been apprehended.

The paper also interviewed Israeli scholar Yisca Harani, who claimed that anti-Christian incidents in the first half of this year increased by almost double the number of incidents in the same period in 2024. She also claimed that the authorities were not cracking down on this behavior, despite reporting that all six people involved in a recent spitting incident were arrested.

The article does not touch upon the plight of persecuted Christians anywhere else in the Middle East.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry was having none of it, pointing out that the paper did not interview a single Christian who might have challenged its narrative. The ministry also noted that Israel is the only country in the Middle East to boast a growing population of Christians.

“Over the past month, Christian Israelis have appeared on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ social media channels. They spoke in their own words about their lives, their freedom, their success, their integration and their pride in being Israeli,” the Foreign Ministry posted on X.

“Not one of those Christians was included,” it pointed out.

“Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population is consistently growing. … Christians participate at the highest levels of Israeli society,” the ministry added.

“What the WSJ published is a distortion of reality disguised as reporting. It is disingenuous, misleading and shameful,” the ministry railed.

Mike Huckabee also expressed his disdain for The Wall Street Journal’s reporting.

“The WSJ should have contacted me about Christians in Israel. I am one,” he declared.

“Israel is [the] ONLY country in [the] region where Christian population has grown from 34K to almost 200K,” he noted. “Israel MFA just appointed a full Ambassador to the Christian world, George Deek. No other nation has done that.”

“There are occasional but rare instances of thugs spitting at Christians in the Old City. It’s repulsive & condemned by the Israeli prime minister, Israeli president, and [Israel’s ambassador to the United States],” he added, noting that the police arrested all six perpetrators implicated in the latest spitting attack, not allowing them to get away with it.

Christians work, worship, & pray freely here. They serve in the IDF as high-ranking officers. I go to church here every week w/o a problem,” he added.

“I hope WSJ will do a bit more research in the future if they do a story about religious freedom in the Holy Land,” he concluded.

Despite generating seemingly endless controversy, Boy George’s musical tribute to the victims of the Nova Music Festival Massacre took the Jewish and Israeli world by storm, in a good way. The Solomon Brothers, a folk rock and bluegrass band, have created their own cover, changing the style from reggae to folk in their rendition.

The music group comprises three brothers (though only two are shown in the video): Nachman, lead singer and guitarist; Yosef, bass guitarist and singer; and Sruli, mandolin player and singer. The brothers grew up in Israel on the moshav of Mevo Modi’im and largely perform in Israel.

The Solomon Brothers’ rendition of Boy George’s “We Will Dance Again.”

The brothers bring to Boy George’s song, “We Will Dance Again,” their trademark heartfelt instrumentation and mellow vocal harmony.

Boy George unleashed a wave of anger and backlash when he released his song, “We Will Dance Again,” which laid out his sentiments in black and white. In the song, he told his anti-Israel listeners that what they call genocide is in fact a war, and he accused his fellow musicians of acting like sheep, following the herd.

“But if you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews,” he stated unequivocally in the song.

His manager, Tony Pontius, quit over the song, saying he wanted “nothing to do with it.” His manager, Paul Kemsley, pulled him from a two-week performance tour of the hit West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” in which he was supposed to play King Herod. Bandcamp removed his song and his page from its platform. Most recently, a huge mural of the pop icon painted by Israeli artist Benzi Brofman was defaced with a Hamas red triangle.

Boy George’s original song, “We Will Dance Again.”

Boy George wrote the song to honor the victims of the Nova Music Festival massacre and express his rock-solid support for the Jewish people.

Despite the backlash, he has doubled down on the sentiments shared in the song. Replying to someone who called him “Zionist scum” on X, the singer responded by saying, “Jew love is true love!”

Explaining why he refused to tone down his rhetoric, he wrote on X, “I’m afraid it’s not an option.”

“So many people are calling me and saying I should pipe down and let it blow over and while they mean well I’m afraid it’s not an option,” he wrote in his signature comma-less style.

“What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me but I am smart enough to realise that what you are cannot disguise who you are,” he continued. “No gay person speaks for an entire community and if you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f— a garage.’”

“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers not just the Jewish community. When will you wake up?” he demanded.

A recently published study on antisemitism is especially timely in light of an ongoing trial of two Australian nurses who said they would kill Israeli patients, reports that Jews have complained that medical staff found sneaky ways to torture them, and instances in which doctors and nurses have posted antisemitic posts on social media.

The study titled “Anatomy of Antisemitism in Health Professions Education and Practice: A Narrative Review” and published in the Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal by Hedy S. Wald, Ph.D., of Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School and Dr. Steven Roth of the University of Illinois College of Medicine shows that only 2 percent of medical institutions incorporate antisemitism training into their anti-discrimination and anti-bias training. There are 12 times more mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and 63 times more mentions of racism than of antisemitism in PubMed, the National Library of Medicine’s primary database for peer-reviewed medical research.

The study also makes recommendations for instituting training for antisemitism awareness across all healthcare institutions to ensure that unbiased care is administered to everyone.

“Antisemitism in health care has become a problem that can no longer be ignored,” said Wald and Roth. “We conducted this research to ensure that health care leaders and policymakers recognize the scale and scope of this problem and take necessary steps to address it. Understanding the breadth and depth of the issue is the first step; action must follow.”

The CEO of the American Jewish Medical Association (AJMA), Eveline Shekhman, weighed in.

“Wald’s and Roth’s new research is an addition to the body of evidence that AJMA and others have been presenting to policymakers, health care leaders and the public, and its publication in a peer-reviewed journal gives that evidence considerable weight,” she said. “AJMA will use this research as a tool to push for accountability until medical institutions treat antisemitism with the same seriousness as every other form of discrimination.”

The Israeli military voiced frustration over yet another incursion into Syria by Jewish activists who believe in settling the region beyond Israel’s northeastern border. The latest violation was committed by a group of about 15 civilians, most of them teenage girls. One woman in the group brought her baby with her.

The IDF warned that these incidents divert precious military resources from crucial combat operations to search for and return the activists. In Tuesday’s incident, one girl remained missing for four hours as soldiers conducted a search to find her and bring her back. One official said that often reservists who are on a family vacation are pulled in to stop these illegal incursions. Sometimes, a combat operation has to be abandoned altogether as troops are diverted to the search.

Officials also said that these activists are unaware of the danger they face once they leave protected territory. An abduction, for example, could throw the country into chaos and inflame tensions in the region, which are already high.

“This is getting out of hand,” a military official said. “It directly draws attention away from missions.”

“You prepare a force for a mission, for a night in an ambush or to carry out an arrest, all to defend the border and protect residents,” he said. “Then an incident like this develops, and you are drawn into it for hours. The mission is delayed or does not happen. This is a real blow to security.”

“It happened while we were dealing with the explosive device incident in which two soldiers were killed and four were seriously wounded, and while preparing the IDF’s response plans to Hezbollah violations,” another official said. “In the middle of all that, we had to deal with dozens of young men and women trying to cross the border and damaging the fence.”

Another official described the behavior as “madness,” explaining the danger of possibly stepping on a mine or facing abduction.

The military and police blamed each other for the deteriorating situation at the border, with the IDF saying that police release detainees without any consequences and police saying it’s the military’s job to secure the border and ensure that no one crosses over.

New footage from Alex Holder’s upcoming documentary Lindsey’s Game captures an unusually warm moment at Blair House: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads a “Happy Birthday” tribute for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham before personally handing him a slice of cake.

Graham, celebrating his 70th birthday alongside Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, immediately fires back: “You should have seen the cake the Saudis got me.” The joke nodded to his unusually close relationship with Saudi leaders and his yearslong push for normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Holder was granted extraordinary access to Graham, collecting hundreds of hours of private meetings, travel and conversations with Netanyahu, President Trump, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other world leaders. While other released clips reveal intense diplomacy over Iran and Hezbollah, this moment captures the personal bond behind one of Israel’s staunchest allies in Washington.

The IDF has cleared for publication the names of two reserve soldiers killed during combat operations in southern Lebanon on Wednesday.

The fallen soldiers have been identified as Chief Master Sgt. (Res.) Tamir Vaknin, 33, of Eilat, a combat soldier in the same battalion and Maj. (Res.) Harel Birenstock, 34, of Nordic, who served as a company commander in the 2855th Battalion of the 55th Brigade,

The incident also left four additional IDF reservists seriously wounded. All were evacuated by military medical teams to hospitals for treatment, and their families have been informed.

Major Harel Birenstock Z”L

According to the IDF’s preliminary investigation, the troops were operating around midday in the village of Majdal Zoun as part of a mission to locate and destroy Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure. As forces entered a building slated for demolition, a powerful explosion occurred inside, killing the two reservists and seriously injuring four others.

Following the deadly blast, the Israeli Air Force carried out strikes against Hezbollah targets in the surrounding area as the military continued its operations in southern Lebanon.

Major Tamir Vaknin Z”L

The circumstances surrounding the explosion remain under investigation.

The deaths of Birenstock and Vaknin bring renewed attention to the dangers faced by Israeli reserve forces operating against Hezbollah’s entrenched infrastructure along the northern border.

May their memories be a blessing.

An attempted robbery at a fast-food joint in Tucson, Ariz., was foiled when bystanders rushed in to thwart the attack.

The Tucson Police Department said that a 34-year-old suspect who has not yet been identified followed a 70-year-old man into a Carl’s Jr. and attempted to steal a backpack from his walker, knocking him down in the process. Two bystanders rushed over and fended off the attacker, then helped the old man up and gathered his scattered items.

The witnesses provided a description of the suspect, leading to his arrest.

Police credited their quick actions with preventing the theft and helping police track down and arrest the would-be thief. The old man suffered a minor injury to his arm and was treated at the scene.

It turns out that Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan primary winner for the Democratic Senate seat who has relentlessly denounced AIPAC, has accepted money from people and groups with ties to terrorist organizations, Fox News reported.

People who have worked for or held leadership roles at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have donated more than $115,000 to El-Sayed’s campaign. The United Arab Emirates, along with Texas and Florida, have designated CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization.

In addition, the U.S. Department of Justice designated CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism financing case of the Holy Land Foundation, at the time the largest Muslim charity in the United States, which funneled millions of dollars in donations to Hamas.

El-Sayed has made “getting money out of politics” a central theme of his campaign, yet Fox News found that he accepted donations from 41 people affiliated with CAIR. Some of these people held top positions. For example, national Board Chair Manal Fakhoury, national Board Treasurer Eyas Abdeen, national Vice Chair Emad Sabbah, and CAIR-Michigan board member Jukaku Tayeb, El-Sayed’s father-in-law, all donated to El-Sayed’s campaign.

El-Sayed’s father-in-law turns out to be quite a liability: He is one of the founders of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a group with ties to the funding of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, also named Nehad Hammad, described Oct. 7 as an event that made him “happy” and denied Israel’s right to defend itself, sparking a fierce national backlash. He was also found to be a donor to El-Sayed’s primary campaign.

El-Sayed has enjoyed support from members and leaders of CAIR not only in Michigan but across the country, from California, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio and others.

Fox News has also named other top-ranking CAIR officials as donors: CAIR-California Governance Board Treasurer Rubina Alvi; CAIR-California Governance Board Chair Asaad Traina; CAIR-Michigan board member Muzammil Ahmed, who contributed $11,600 to El-Sayed’s campaign; CAIR-California Governance Board member Atef Ibrahim; CAIR-California Governance Board member Dina Ezzeddine; and former CAIR National Board Chair Roula Allouch.

El-Sayed has had a connection of his own to CAIR, appearing as a speaker at a CAIR event in which he slammed Oklahoma’s ban on sharia law, comparing it to the Trail of Tears.

A group of elite Democrats expressed enormous disdain for their voters Wednesday, speaking candidly to each other in what they thought was a private moment.

An Abdul El-Sayed supporter, likely a member of the campaign, was caught on camera calling the voters who had just delivered a win to El-Sayed “stupid.”

El-Sayed, an anti-Israel progressive Democrat who was running for a Senate seat, won Michigan’s primary Tuesday.

“Thing is, people are stupid,” the supporter said, explaining that the voters will fall for catchy slogans without wondering what they actually mean. “This politics of no translation is going to be the way forward. … Medicare for all. No one has to decipher what the hell that means.”

In the room with him were Hasan Piker, an antisemitic progressive Democratic streamer, and El-Sayed, who both nodded along to his pronouncements.

Throughout his campaign, El-Sayed has slammed AIPAC, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and military aid to Israel. While claiming to love Jews, he said that Israelis were “bloodthirsty” and called Israel an apartheid state, an interesting way to show love to half the world’s Jews and most of the remaining half that supports Israel.

Piker is no stranger to controversy himself.

The Turkey-born influencer, known as HasanAbi on the streaming platform Twitch, has successfully faced down criticism for his antisemitic commentary and his support for Hamas after Oct. 7, as his popularity continued to grow.

After Oct. 7, he outright dismissed allegations of sexual violence by Hamas, calling them “rape fantasies” and “rape hallucinations.”

“It doesn’t matter if rapes happened on Oct. 7,” he said in a May 22, 2024, livestream. “It doesn’t change the dynamic for me.” He also said on Twitch that “in a totally just world, regardless of your background, any kind of f—— Zionist tendency should be treated in the same way as being a f—— rabid neo-Nazi … You shouldn’t even let someone be the f—— local dog catcher … if they have exhibited any sort of positive feelings about the state of Israel.”

He has called Orthodox Jews “inbred,” and in a grammatically challenged X post last May, wrote: “there’s no comparison between israel & hamas, one is a militant resistance comprised of orphaned soldiers born into a 77 year occupation, the other is a ethnoreligious supremacist apartheid state w nukes doing a genocide backed by the usa!”

Most recently, Piker came out in support of protesters in Queens on Jan. 8 who chanted “Say it loud, say it clear: We support Hamas here,” unlike far-left progressives like New York City Mayor Mamdani and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, who unequivocally condemned the protest.

In one post supporting the chant, he wrote, “Hamas is resisting against Israel because they’re ‘antisemitic’ is the funniest lie people tell themselves. If Israel was a Christian nation managing the apartheid and ethnic cleansing they’d still fight. You’re just mad people are fighting back at all.”

In another post, he said, “Can’t believe people are saying they support Hamas! Wait till you hear how you can openly support the IDF and Israel and still rub shoulders in polite society in spite of the livestreamed Holocaust we all witnessed.”

The giant London mural of Boy George, painted by international muralist Benzi Brofman to honor the 1980s pop icon for his musical tribute to the victims of the Nova Music Festival massacre, was defaced with a red triangle.

Hamas uses the symbol of the red triangle as a sign that whoever it has marked with the red triangle is its target, which means that this particular vandalism also carries with it a death threat.

Boy George unleashed a wave of anger and backlash when he released his song, “We Will Dance Again,” which laid out his sentiments in black and white. In the song, he told his anti-Israel listeners that what they call genocide is in fact a war, and he accused his fellow musicians of acting like sheep, following the herd.

“But if you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews,” he stated unequivocally in the song.

His manager, Tony Pontius, quit over the song, saying he wanted “nothing to do with it.” His manager, Paul Kemsley, pulled him from a two-week performance tour of the hit West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” in which he was supposed to play King Herod. Bandcamp removed his song and his page from its platform.

Boy George wrote the song to honor the victims of the Nova Music Festival massacre and express his rock-solid support for the Jewish people.

Despite the backlash, he has doubled down on the sentiments shared in the song. Replying to someone who called him “Zionist scum” on X, the singer responded by saying, “Jew love is true love!”

Explaining why he refused to tone down his rhetoric, he wrote on X, “I’m afraid it’s not an option.”

“So many people are calling me and saying I should pipe down and let it blow over and while they mean well I’m afraid it’s not an option,” he wrote in his signature comma-less style.

“What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me but I am smart enough to realise that what you are cannot disguise who you are,” he continued. “No gay person speaks for an entire community and if you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f— a garage.’”

“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers not just the Jewish community. When will you wake up?” he demanded.

💔 HEARTBREAKING: Major Harel Birenstock, 34, from Neve Daniel in Gush Etzion, was killed during combat operations in Lebanon today. 

Birenstock, the son of Shlomo and Yonat of Neve Daniel and grandson of Nehama Birenstock of Efrat, is being remembered by his community as a devoted soldier and family man.

Funeral details will be announced later.

May his memory be a blessing. 🕯️

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has harshly and repeatedly criticized Israel, for example accusing Israel of using intentional starvation against Gaza as a tactic of war.

Now his government is withholding food and water from Moroccan migrants in Ceuta, the Spanish border city that is politically but not physically part of Spain, to induce them to return to Morocco.

On July 30 and 31, about 72,000 Moroccans overwhelmed the border and flooded the streets of Ceuta, sparking criticism from other European Union countries such as Italy regarding Spain’s immigration policies as the city descended into chaos. About 70,000 have returned to Morocco, leaving about 2,000 starving and sleeping on the streets. Hundreds of young men have dug shallow pits on the beach for sleeping and have been refilling their water bottles at public showers. Many are suffering from exhaustion, shock, hypothermia and cuts. Many say they have been denied food, water and shelter, as residents of the city have allegedly been warned not to offer any help to the migrants in order to encourage them to leave.

Migrants sleep in the streets of Ceuta.

The humanitarian crisis is worsening as thousands of migrants are forced to use the great outdoors as both their restroom and sleeping quarters. Ceuta houses only one migrant facility, which is full, and its occupants have been prohibited from passing out food and water to their fellow migrants.

One young man with open wounds on his arms and legs said, “I’m very hungry. They say everything is finished. And no water; they say everything is finished. I’ll wait until everyone leaves.”

Nevertheless, some of the city’s residents are offering aid in defiance of government directives.

Humanitarian organizations have warned that the humanitarian situation is deteriorating and that efforts to offer humanitarian assistance must be stepped up. The Red Cross said it was overwhelmed, and Amnesty International said the authorities must “ensure that adequate health and social resources are deployed.”

The Red Cross distributes aid but is overwhelmed.

Critics are saying that Sánchez is doing what he falsely accused Israel of doing. Israel facilitated the entry of more than one ton of aid per person into Gaza since the war began in October 2023, the accusations of the Spanish premier notwithstanding. Meanwhile, Sánchez is purposely withholding aid to get migrants to leave.

Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, remarked on the display of egregious hypocrisy in a sarcastic statement on X, alongside a link to an article about Spain’s horrifying treatment of the migrants.

“Thank you for teaching the world about international law, humanitarianism, and that ‘Public responsibility also entails a moral obligation not to look the other way,'” he said, quoting the prime minister’s sanctimonious words right back at him.

Shortly before his Michigan primary win was announced, Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed appeared on “Morning Joe” Wednesday, doubling down on his criticism of Israel and calling Israelis “bloodthirsty.”

“I just think we need to treat Israel the way we would treat any other country who behaved the way that Israel is behaving,” he said. “I understand that Netanyahu is a big reason why they’ve gotten so aggressive and, frankly, so bloodthirsty under his reign.”

Critics of El-Sayed agree that Israel should be treated like any country. Even if you believe that Israel is behaving as badly as, say, Sudan, his critics say that we should let Israel receive the same amount of scrutiny and condemnation as Sudan. That would be a nice break for Israel.

He accused Israel of derailing the possibility of a two-state solution without ascribing any agency to the Palestinians.

“But I also understand that it’s impossible for us to say that we want a two-state solution while we’ve been aiding, arming and abetting the very people who have been trying to foreclose on the possibility of a Palestinian state,” he said.

The candidate repeatedly invoked the accusation of apartheid and accused Israel of genocide in his interview, saying his criticism of Israel goes beyond Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I think we’ve seen the worst of what the Israeli government has done, but don’t forget that we’ve been talking about an illegal apartheid regime for a very, very long time, and that supersedes Netanyahu himself,” he said.

Israel has “conducted a genocide, has at baseline done apartheid and has taken us into a war we have no business fighting. So why, of course, are we sending money to that country to fund their military?” he added.

On foreign aid, he said he was consistent: He doesn’t want our tax dollars to go to Israel, but he also doesn’t want to send aid to Egypt, where he himself is from.

Addressing the concerns of Jewish voters on antisemitism, he said that his “commitment to Jewish safety is the same as my commitment to the safety of my own kids. We have a responsibility to take on antisemitism in all of its forms wherever we see it. It’s the same responsibility we have to take on Islamophobia. … So the things that bring us together are so much bigger than the things that divide us.”

Fresh off his narrow victory in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, anti-Israel progressive Abdul El-Sayed directly addressed Jewish voters following months of controversy over his rhetoric and political associations.

“I want to speak specifically to an issue that has been focused on in this race,” El-Sayed said.

“To my Jewish American sisters and brothers… I want you to know that my commitment to your safety, my commitment to Jewish safety, is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters.”

El-Sayed has called Israel’s war against Hamas a “genocide,” demanded an end to unconditional U.S. military aid and campaigned alongside controversial streamer Hasan Piker. His defeated opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, accused him of blaming his political problems on Jewish Americans after he repeatedly attacked AIPAC’s involvement in the race. El-Sayed, who denies being antisemitic, will now face Republican Mike Rogers in one of America’s most closely watched Senate contests.

Abdul El-Sayed, who won Michigan’s primary election Tuesday as a Senate candidate, warned not to conflate Jews and Judaism with AIPAC and the Israeli government. He said that you can love the Jewish people and Judaism, as he claims to do, and not love AIPAC and the Israeli government.

Critics point out that AIPAC is run by Americans, not Israelis, and that focusing only on the American-run AIPAC to the exclusion of all other lobbying group, such as Chinese and Qatari lobbying groups, is at least suspect, if not downright nefarious. The same is true, they say, of hating the Israeli government and only the Israeli government out of all the governments in the world, when it’s the only Jewish one.

Jordan Domingue, a Marine combat veteran and former State Department security professional who served as the leader of El-Sayed’s security team, resigned in January, saying that El-Sayed holds extremist Islamist views and is unfit for office.

“AIPAC and Israel are not the same as Judaism and the Jewish people. I love Judaism and I love the Jewish people. I venerate Judaism and I venerate the Jewish people. I stand with Judaism and I stand with the Jewish people,” he declared to cheers and applause.

El-Sayed then presented a strawman argument that it’s dangerous to extend the definition of antisemitism to include AIPAC and the Israeli government, since no one has argued that the definition of antisemitism includes criticism of those two entities. What some critics have argued is that deriding opponents from taking money from AIPAC is a dog whistle.

“The single most dangerous thing that they’ve tried to tell us is that somehow they can extend the definition of antisemitism to include a foreign government and its leaders. I call bulls—. No, no. If you believe that antisemitism extends to include a foreign government and AIPAC, you are creating a dangerous circumstance,” he said.

The candidate went on to say that “we” love Judaism and the Jewish people as well as Palestinians because “we love people.” But he also added that “we love our tax dollars” and object to their being used to kill children, invoking’I LOVE THE JEWISH PEOPLE’ the genocide libel against Israel.

“And we love that our tax dollars get spent here on schools here and healthcare here because we love people. You cannot claim that human rights end at a border. You cannot claim that you want to invest in our kids when you send our money abroad to kill other people’s kids.”

The United States has removed counterterrorism sanctions from Fly Baghdad, an Iraqi airline previously accused of transporting weapons, fighters and funds for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force and its terrorist proxies across the region.

The Treasury Department also delisted two Boeing 737 aircraft operated by the airline. Three names appearing in the removal notice — Fly Baghdad, Fly Baghdad Airlines Company and Iraq Express — refer to the same carrier, not three separate airlines.

DEARBORN, MICHIGAN – JANUARY 13: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent participates in a tour for U.S. President Donald Trump at the Ford River Rouge Complex on January 13, 2026 in Dearborn, Michigan. Trump is visiting Michigan where he will participate in a tour of the Ford River Rouge complex and later give remarks to the Detroit Economic Club. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Fly Baghdad was originally sanctioned after Washington said it delivered weapons to Syria for the IRGC-QF, Hezbollah, Kata’ib Hezbollah and other Iran-backed forces. The airline’s CEO remains sanctioned, with Treasury now linking him directly to the IRGC-QF.

Treasury gave no explanation for the removal. It comes as Washington and Tehran close in on a possible agreement concerning the Strait of Hormuz, though no direct connection between the negotiations and the delisting has been confirmed.

At a conference during the annual youth leadership retreat of the Jewish Federations, attendees were advised to avoid the word “Zionism” as part of a lecture on how to create effective messaging, an anonymous source told an Israel-based outlet.

Matthew Berger, executive director of the Federation’s “Project Halo,” recommended avoiding the word “Zionism” Tuesday in a slide presentation that also showed an image of the Star of David. He also recommended focusing on diversity and the “common enemy.”

“My jaw kind of hit the floor for a second,” the anonymous attendee said.

“Where does it end if we’re not even using ‘Zionism’ in our conversations?” he asked. “Should we stop using the word ‘antisemitism?’ Should we stop using the word ‘Jewish?’

The Federation pushed back in a statement to the same outlet.

Robert Kraft, the founder of the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, sports a blue square on his lapel. (Credit: The Blue Square Alliance)

“Jewish Federations of North America are proudly Zionist, and unapologetically shout our Zionist views and the incredible work we do to support Israel from the rooftops every single day,” said Niv Elis, the Federation’s associate vice president for external communications.

“This slide was part of a discussion about what data shows to be effective messaging in today’s polarized political environment and should not be taken to imply anything else,” he added.

“Established in 1963, National Young Leadership Cabinet is Jewish Federations’ premier five-year leadership program for volunteer leaders aged 30-45,” the Jewish Federations website states. “It’s designed to empower the Jewish community’s emerging global leaders and philanthropists.”

According to the attendee, it costs $5,000 to attend the National Young Leadership Cabinet, which took place in Minneapolis this week.

Berger previously directed the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, and an online bio states that “he has been instrumental in the unveiling of the $25 million omnichannel #StandUpToJewishHate Campaign that has launched a movement to use the Blue Square as a unifying symbol of support for Jews in America.” Robert Kraft founded the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate in 2019 and is famous for his philanthropy in the Jewish community.

Reflecting on the advice to avoid the word “Zionism,” the anonymous attendee said it made him feel sad.

“It made me very sad,” he said. “The better way of approaching it would have been equipping us with facts and stories and how to handle people with aggression, as opposed to just being the empathetic people.”

“That’s constantly the narrative that we’re told,” he added. “We’re not able to stick up for ourselves and what we believe in, because we constantly need to be making sure everyone’s not getting angry at us.”

The IDF is preparing to deploy military polling stations inside Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, allowing combat soldiers stationed beyond Israel’s borders to vote in the upcoming national election.

The extraordinary wartime plan was included in a directive issued by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir following a meeting with senior General Staff officers. Army Radio reported that voting facilities could be positioned deep inside active operational zones, an arrangement not seen in decades.

TOPSHOT – Israeli members of parliament attend the Knesset Plenary Hall session ahead of the vote on the National Law which speaks of Israel as the historic homeland of the Jews and says they have a “unique” right to self-determination there, late on July 18, 2018. Israel’s parliament adopted a law defining the country as the nation state of the Jewish people, provoking fears it could lead to blatant discrimination against Arab citizens. (Photo by MARC ISRAEL SELLEM / AFP) / Israel OUT (Photo by MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/AFP via Getty Images)

Zamir defined the military’s central objective as “enabling the right to vote while keeping the IDF out of political discourse.” Alongside the logistical preparations, the army will impose tighter restrictions intended to prevent political campaigning from entering military units.

Outside lectures and tours with a political character will be prohibited. Commanders’ official letters, speeches and messages will also be reviewed for inappropriate political content, while a dedicated team will monitor public statements and social media activity by military personnel. Reservists deployed during the election period will remain subject to military rules restricting partisan activity.

The IDF has operated polling stations under combat conditions before. During the 2024 municipal elections, soldiers voted at military stations in Gaza and along the northern front, while mobile ballot teams traveled between outposts, air-defense batteries and other operational positions. The new plan, however, would extend voting infrastructure across three separate territories beyond Israel’s borders during a national election.

Israel’s October election will be the country’s first national vote since the Hamas-led October 7 massacre and the regional wars that followed. With Israeli forces still operating on multiple fronts, the plan is intended to ensure that soldiers are not forced to choose between their operational duties and their right to vote.

Exact polling locations and security arrangements have not been disclosed. Zamir instructed commanders to rely on established military procedures and avoid steps that could undermine public confidence in the IDF during an exceptionally sensitive election campaign.

Physical attacks against Jews in Britain surged to their highest six-month level ever recorded as antisemitism remained close to historic highs, according to a new report from the Community Security Trust.

CST documented 1,926 antisemitic incidents across the United Kingdom during the first half of the year, a 21% increase from the same period in 2025 and the second-highest January-to-June total on record. The figure exceeded the number recorded during the entire year before Hamas’ October 7 massacre and averaged 321 incidents per month, nearly double the rate before the attack.

Massive Attack play to tens of thousands of people at the low carbon music and art festival Act 1.5 set up by Massive Attack on the 25th of August 2024, Clifton Downs, Bristol, United Kingdom. ACT 1.5 is a festival conceived in response to the ongoing climate crisis designed to minimise fossil fuels emissions usually associated with large events in the music industry. The measures taken to reduce the carbon footprint of the festival are in accordance with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research’s live music road map and in close collaboration with Ecotricity and ZENOBE Energy. The show production is pioneering in all aspects of decarbonisation and will create a blueprint for the way live shows can be produced,” according to 3D, Robert del Naja of Massive Attack. Some of the measures taken to reduce carbon emissions are a ban on private cars near the site, local plant based only food traders, power supplied by giant batteries storing renewable energy generated from sun or wind power and compost loos. (photo by Kristian Buus/In Pictures via Getty Images)

The sharpest increase came in physical violence. CST recorded 135 antisemitic assaults, up 82% from 74 and the highest six-month total in the category’s history. Combined with the terrorist stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green, which was classified as “extreme violence,” Britain saw 136 physical attacks against Jews.

Jewish children and places of worship were increasingly targeted. School-related incidents jumped 59% to a record 178, including 21 physical assaults. Another 117 incidents affected synagogues, their staff and congregants traveling to or from prayers, a 31% increase and another six-month record.

Police stand outside the scene of an antisemitic arson attack in the Golders Green neighbourhood of north London, on March 24, 2026, a day after volunteer ambulances run by a Jewish organisation were set on fire. London’s police chief pledged on March 23 over 250 more officers and “highly visible” armed patrols to protect the Jewish community after an arson attack on four volunteer ambulances run by a Jewish organisation next to a synagogue. (Photo by Henry NICHOLLS / AFP via Getty Images)

The report also documented a spike following the outbreak of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran. British authorities say the Iran-linked Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right, also known as HAYI, claimed seven attacks on Jewish, Israeli and Persian-language targets, including the burning of four Hatzola ambulances in London. The British government assessed that members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force “almost certainly” directed the group’s attacks across Europe.

London accounted for 994 incidents, nearly half of them in Barnet, home to Britain’s largest Jewish community. The government has responded with a £251 million security package that includes hundreds of additional officers, increased counterterrorism resources and antisemitism training for police across England and Wales.

“This is a critical time for the future of British Jews,” CST chief executive Mark Gardner warned.

An Israeli startup founded by a computational neuroscientist and an inventor behind Apple’s Face ID is attempting to solve one of medicine’s most persistent problems: objectively measuring how the human brain is functioning.

Hemispheric has emerged from more than six years of stealth with $52 million in funding and Descartes, a six-billion-parameter artificial intelligence model designed to interpret electrical brain activity. The company says the technology could eventually help doctors diagnose and treat conditions including PTSD, depression, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s.

The model was trained on more than 250,000 hours of EEG and behavioral data collected from over 100,000 paid participants at research sites in Israel, Asia and Boston. Participants completed game-like exercises that activated different brain functions while their electrical activity was recorded.

A patient using the system wears a lightweight headset equipped with dry EEG sensors and interacts with an application for approximately 15 minutes. Descartes then analyzes the resulting signals and produces quantitative information that Hemispheric hopes clinicians will eventually use to support diagnoses, predict which treatments may work and monitor a patient’s progress.

The company was founded by CEO Dr. Hagai Lalazar and CTO Gidi Littwin, who co-founded the Israeli facial-recognition company RealFace before it was acquired by Apple. Littwin later worked on technologies behind Face ID and the Vision Pro. Hemispheric plans to use its new funding to pursue regulatory approvals, expand its brain-data network and build partnerships with healthcare providers, governments and pharmaceutical companies.

Its first planned clinical product will focus on PTSD, with the company seeking FDA approval before a possible public rollout. Hemispheric’s broader vision is to make brain testing as routine and accessible as a blood test, replacing at least part of the questionnaires, behavioral observations and trial-and-error treatment that still dominate psychiatric and neurological care.

That vision remains unproven. Independent experts caution that EEG signals vary considerably between people and even within the same patient, while conventional EEG technology has limitations in identifying precisely where activity originates inside the brain. Hemispheric must now demonstrate through clinical studies that its measurements are reliable and genuinely useful for diagnosis and treatment.

Still, the scale of its dataset and the experience of its founders have placed the Israeli company at the center of the growing race to combine artificial intelligence with noninvasive brain technology. Should the platform survive clinical and regulatory scrutiny, it could move doctors closer to something medicine has long lacked: an objective test for the health of the human brain.

President Trump took aim at socialist candidates such as Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, warning that history shows socialist movements consistently leave nations worse off.

“Well, I think it’s crazy because they’re going to ruin our country,” Trump said.

He argued that, regardless of the name or era, radical socialist ideologies have repeatedly ended in failure.

“No matter where you look, go back a thousand years with different names, anybody doing what they are doing and what they are espousing, everything turns out to ashes and junk and filth,” Trump said.

The president also claimed that cities governed by socialists and communists become neglected over time.

US Senate candidate for michigan Abdul El-Sayed meets voters at Michigan Technological University. October 22, 2025

“But you go to these cities that are taken over by the socialists and the communists and they’re always filthy, dirty. They’re disgusting!” he added.

A Russian FPV drone hunted down a 52-year-old Ukrainian vegetable seller Tuesday before finally striking the van he was sheltering behind and inflicting severe wounds.

The man, identified only as Yurii, suffered shrapnel wounds, a concussion and shock. Ukraine is accusing Russia of a war crime over the incident.

In an interview from his hospital bed, Yurii explained that he used the van as his vegetable stand. He said he didn’t have a phone; the only thing in his hands was garlic that he said he was cleaning, which he said he held up to show the drone that he wasn’t from the military. But it wouldn’t stop chasing him around the van.

Yurii had gone to Kherson that morning to sell vegetables.

“I only just put up the ​umbrella and started unloading the boxes,” he said. “My wife was there, too. Then we heard it buzzing but could not even see it. It came from somewhere behind the market, ‌from those ⁠bushes over there, and flew in very low.”

“It is open steppe. There is nowhere to go. It is terrifying, of course. Really terrifying,” he added, also saying that his wife had managed to get away and was unhurt.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a blistering statement on X regarding the alleged war crime.

“Today, many were shocked by yet another video of the drone ‘safari’ Russians are carrying out against civilians in Kherson. A Russian drone deliberately hunted down a man selling vegetables and detonated right next to him. The Russians even admitted to the crime, showing zero regret and openly boasting about tormenting people. The man was wounded in the blast. Every single day, ordinary people in Kherson face these Russian ‘safaris,'” Zelensky wrote.

“The world must see this. It must see every piece of evidence that Russia has gone mad and that its soldiers take pleasure in killing and abusing civilians,” he said.

“We must remain resolute in defending life,” he added.

Wesley Bell, the Democrat running for Congress in Missouri’s Tuesday primary, trounced his opponent Cori Bush, the former anti-Israel congresswoman, in a landslide, winning by more than 20 percentage points.

This is not the first time Bush has lost to Bell. He also defeated her in the August 2024 primary, running as the establishment-aligned Democrat against the progressive and more radical Bush.

AIPAC, which heavily supported Bell, featured prominently in Bush’s attack ads against the pro-Israel Democrat.

Bell reminded Bush that voters had concerns other than the Middle East. Criticizing Bush for focusing on Israel and talking “over and over … about an issue that is not impacting folks right here in St. Louis,” he said that “while we take those issues seriously, you know, the M in Missouri doesn’t stand for Middle East. It stands for Missouri.”

“There’s going to be times we disagree on issues but that never should stop us from doing the work of regular folks,” Bell told voters in his victory speech.

Abdul El-Sayed has won Michigan’s Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, defeating Rep. Haley Stevens in one of the most closely watched Democratic primaries of the 2026 election cycle. The victory is widely seen as a significant win for the party’s progressive wing over the Democratic establishment in a pivotal swing state.

El-Sayed, who has been backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will now face Republican Mike Rogers in November in a race that could play a major role in determining control of the U.S. Senate.

The former Michigan health official built his campaign around progressive priorities including Medicare for All, reducing corporate influence in politics, and significantly changing U.S. policy toward Israel. Throughout the campaign, he sharply criticized American military aid to Israel and positioned himself against the party’s more traditional pro-Israel wing, making the race a national proxy battle over the Democratic Party’s direction.

US Senate candidate for michigan Abdul El-Sayed meets voters at Michigan Technological University. October 22, 2025

El-Sayed has also faced criticism from political opponents and pro-Israel advocates over his rhetoric regarding Israel and the Middle East. Critics argue that he has been far more outspoken in condemning Israel than authoritarian regimes in the region, including Iran’s leadership.

During the campaign, opponents also revived scrutiny over El-Sayed’s use of the title “physician” While he holds a medical degree and is technically a doctor, critics argued that some public appearances and campaign messaging could lead voters to believe he practiced as a physician. El-Sayed has responded that he earned his M.D. and has never claimed to be a practicing clinician.

With Michigan expected to be one of the nation’s most competitive Senate battlegrounds this fall, the race between El-Sayed and Rogers is likely to draw national attention and millions of dollars in outside spending—as both parties fight for control of the chamber.

Controversial Pro-Hamas left-wing streamer Hasan Piker was spotted at Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s election night victory party following Tuesday’s primary.

Piker has drawn years of controversy over remarks including his 2019 statement that “America deserved 9/11,” comments he later said were imprecise and intended as criticism of U.S. foreign policy. He has also faced repeated criticism for statements about Israel and Hamas.

Piker has openly described himself as a socialist and has said that communism is the “final goal” of socialism, views that have made him one of the most polarizing political influencers on the American left.

In a video conference with other members of the Democratic Socialists of America, Mirah Wood said that Hamas terrorists act out of “deep love and tenderness.”

Wood, the co-chair of the Middle East and Africa subcommittee, praised the stirring heroism and bravery of the “resistance fighters” who shot a bullet right “into the heart of empire itself,” as her fellow DSA members nodded vigorously.

“You know, I can think of no images, like, more stirring and heroic than the resistance fighters. You know, and in their little slippers going up to tanks with just utter bravery, right, to fight,” she said.

A lot of people don’t find the image of burning babies in ovens and raping women while cutting off their body parts stirring and heroic, but hey, different strokes for different folks, right?

“And what a fundamental threat Oct. 7 and Al Aqsa Flood was to that entire system, right? It was a shot really into the heart of empire itself, and a shot for the dignity of man in resisting,” she said proudly.

“And you could see the resistance fighters. You know, when they’re not out there fighting against Israeli tanks, then they’re handing out flowers to children,” she added. “Like their fight comes from that deep love and tenderness that Lara was talking about.”

Well.

Arab Israeli activist Yoseph Haddad had words to say about that.

“I honestly thought this was a parody when I first heard it … then I realized this is an actual political activist in the DSA in America,” he fumed in a post on X.

“‘Hamas fighters, when they are not fighting against Israeli tanks, they are handing out flowers to children. Their fight comes from deep love and tenderness,'” he quoted from the video.

“Are you f***ing kidding me? Was it ‘love and tenderness’ when these monsters were raping women on October 7th at the Nova festival?” he railed. “Or when they were kidnapping and torturing grandmothers? Or when they threw grenades into bomb shelters packed with terrified civilians? Is that the ‘tenderness’ you were talking about?”

“These people are completely brainwashed delusional idiots,” he seethed. “What an embarrassment for anyone who associates with them, and I say this as an Arab myself from the Middle East!”

 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Federal Courts Subcommittee said Tuesday that they plan to boycott a hearing Wednesday examining networks of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.

Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) argued that the hearing’s purpose is to attack Muslims in general, which is dangerous and inflammatory given the current climate in which anti-Muslim violence has increased.

In a statement, the senators said, “Scapegoating Muslims may be a Texas Republican strategist’s idea of ‘solid gold’ to whip up their voters, but Democrats have no intention of indulging this political creepshow, particularly after the recent violence targeting places of faith. Our focus is the costs families face thanks to rampant, non-stop Trump corruption.” 

Republicans at both the state and federal levels have been agitating to take meaningful action against the group, including designating it as a terrorist organization. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) organized the hearing, which is called “Hidden in Plain Sight: Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood Network in America.”

Cruz implied that he wasn’t the least bit surprised that the Democrats on the committee are boycotting the hearing in an interview with Jewish Insider.

“Of course they are,” he said.

Several prominent witnesses are expected to take the stand: Lara Burns, a former FBI special agent and senior research fellow at The George Washington University’s Program on Extremism; Arielle Klepach, senior counsel at the National Jewish Advocacy Center; and Kyle Shideler, a senior analyst for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy.

A TikTok video is making the rounds in which Jewish youngsters are asked to name their favorite foods. As soon as they do so, a buzzer sounds to indicate that they’re wrong: The food they just named is not Jewish. Then the origin of the food flashes onto the screen.

For example, bagel appears three times in the video. Twice, its origin is given as New York, and once it’s given as Poland. This is as ignorant as it’s stupid. First, bagels did not originate in New York. Second, they originated in the 17th-century Jewish community in Poland. The person who made this video is confusing location with ethnicity.

Some of the examples are downright funny. Chicken matzo ball soup isn’t Jewish; it’s Lithuanian. Best yet, matzo isn’t Jewish; it’s Egyptian.

Hen Mazzig, the Jewish advocate and social media personality who posted this video, wrote that the video isn’t only false, but it’s also malicious.

“This might seem like harmless stupidity, but this video is working to strip Jews of their humanity,” he wrote.

“All people have foods, except Jews, of course,” he added. “It’s malicious and untrue. Just look at the first food, bagels. Invented by Jews in Poland who were legally forbidden from baking bread, so they had to boil it.”

“New York, the state, didn’t invent bagels. Jews did,” he explained.

But the video is so ridiculous, some people find it hard to believe it isn’t meant to be tongue-in-cheek, especially when you consider that the video declares Egypt to be the origin of matzo.

“egypt on matzah was hilarious idk if the person who made the video is being sarcastic now,” one social media user declared.

Israel has launched an ambitious national effort to develop a domestically based quantum computing platform while expanding its push into advanced artificial intelligence.

The Finance Ministry’s Accountant General and the Prime Minister’s Office National AI Directorate issued a tender for “Project Nexus,” which will establish and operate a national platform providing quantum computing services from within Israel. The government says the project is intended to strengthen Israeli technological sovereignty, reduce dependence on foreign infrastructure and give local researchers and technology companies access to advanced computing capabilities.

Unlike conventional computers, quantum systems use qubits to perform certain highly complex calculations that are beyond the practical reach of today’s most powerful machines. Potential applications include cryptography, drug development, materials science, financial modeling, logistics and national security.

The government has not yet disclosed Project Nexus’s budget or a timeline for when the platform could become operational. Erez Askal, head of the National AI Directorate, previously estimated that fully implementing Israel’s broader national AI strategy could require approximately NIS 5 billion annually, although that figure has not been approved as the project’s budget.

Project Nexus follows a separate NIS 100 million program launched by the Israel Innovation Authority to create quantum research infrastructure accessible to Israeli companies and universities. That facility will be required to support at least three different quantum-processing technologies, allowing users to compare systems, test algorithms and develop applications without independently purchasing prohibitively expensive equipment.

Israel is also advancing two additional AI initiatives. One would establish a national “physical AI” testing ground where robotics, drones and autonomous systems could be evaluated in environments such as hospitals, factories, highways and agricultural sites. The other will examine how Israel can strengthen its ability to develop foundation models, the large-scale systems powering advanced generative AI platforms.

Together, the projects signal a shift from research and policy discussions toward building national technological infrastructure. Israel may lack the financial scale of the United States or China, but officials are betting that its combination of defense expertise, academic research and a powerful startup ecosystem can secure leadership in carefully selected areas of quantum computing and physical AI.

President Donald Trump backed away from a planned new wave of strikes against Iran after Gulf allies warned that Tehran could retaliate against their energy infrastructure and overwhelm already strained regional air defenses, according to CNN.

The concerns reportedly came during Trump’s conversations with Middle Eastern leaders, who feared that another major American escalation could trigger Iranian missile and drone attacks against oil fields, refineries, export terminals and other critical facilities. Trump subsequently instructed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to stand down for now, although the proposed strikes have not been removed from consideration.

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA – MAY 25: (L-R) U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth U.S. Maj. Gen. Antoinette Gant, Commanding General of the Joint Task Force–National Capital Region and U.S. Army Military District of Washington, and U.S. President Donald Trump participate in a Memorial Day wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery on May 25, 2026 in Arlington, Virginia. Memorial Day honors those who died while serving in the U.S. armed forces. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The warnings were reportedly reinforced by increasingly severe shortages inside the U.S. military itself. CNN cited two sources familiar with a recent inventory assessment who said American forces have expended nearly 80% of the country’s THAAD missile interceptors and approximately half of its Patriot interceptors since the Iran war began.

051021-F-2828D-284
A U.S. Army AH-64D Longbow Apache, 1st Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, Fort Campbell Ky., provides ground forces with air support from Forward Operating Base Speicher Iraq, Oct. 21, 2005, during Operation Iraqi Freedom. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Andy Dunaway) (Released)

The 1st Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, the “Expect No Mercy” Battalion, is the premier attack helicopter battalion in the United States Army. Its lethal fleet of 24 Ah-64D Longbow Apaches is currently conducting combat operations in Northern Iraq, caring on a long tradition of excellence among Army Aviation.

1-101st first gained notoriety during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, when it fired the first shots of the Gulf War during Operation Normandy, destroying key Iraqi radar sites and creating a safe corridor for US aircraft to commence the air campaign. The battalion again proved itself during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003-2004, conducting several mobile strike deep attacks during major combat operations followed by eight months of quick reaction force (QRF), reconnaissance, and VIP security missions during stability and support operations (SASO). After a rigorous 19 months of training and maintenance back at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the “Expect No Mercy” battalion deployed to Iraq for its second OIF tour.

Since arriving in Iraq, the battalion has conducted an aggressive Relief-in-Place/Transfer-of-Authority (REP/TOA) with 8-229th Aviation Regiment from Fort Knox, Kentucky. The battalion is on track to fly over 1000 combat hours in October, and is already making an impact on operations in Iraq. Initial combat missions involved teams of two “No Mercy” aircraft along with one 8-229th aircraft conducting local area orientations (LAO) to familiarize aircrews with the environment, geography, and unity on the ground. By no means was an LAO an administrative mission though: while on orientations, aircrews participated in numerous reconnaissance

THAAD and Patriot batteries form a central part of the defenses protecting American bases and Gulf allies from Iranian ballistic missiles. Even countries with advanced defensive networks could struggle to protect military installations, population centers and sprawling energy facilities simultaneously during sustained Iranian salvos.

The Pentagon has not publicly confirmed CNN’s numbers. However, separate reporting points to a serious and rapidly growing shortage. Reuters reported that the U.S. has used virtually all of its available ATACMS and Precision Strike Missiles, while military officials have repeatedly warned that stocks of defensive interceptors are also falling. The Pentagon maintains that American forces still have the capabilities required to carry out any mission ordered by the president.

The first of two Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors is launched during a successful intercept test. The test, conducted by Missile Defense Agency (MDA), Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) Operational Test Agency, Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense, and U.S. Pacific Command, in conjunction with U.S. Army soldiers from the Alpha Battery, 2nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, U.S. Navy sailors aboard the guided missile destroyer USS Decatur (DDG-73), and U.S. Air Force airmen from the 613th Air and Operations Center resulted in the intercept of one medium-range ballistic missile target by THAAD, and one medium-range ballistic missile target by Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD). The test, designated Flight Test Operational-01 (FTO-01), stressed the ability of the Aegis BMD and THAAD weapon systems to function in a layered defense architecture and defeat a raid of two near-simultaneous ballistic missile targets

Independent estimates differ from CNN’s figures. The Center for Strategic and International Studies recently estimated that Patriot inventories had fallen below 1,000 interceptors and THAAD stocks to roughly 250. Reuters cited a CSIS assessment estimating that approximately 65% of Patriot interceptors had been expended and THAAD inventories had declined by at least 38%. The differences may reflect separate intelligence assessments, inventory definitions or more recent battlefield usage.

Trump has publicly acknowledged that appeals from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates weighed heavily in his decision to hold off. Gulf leaders warned that an expanding confrontation could bring devastating Iranian retaliation and further damage global energy markets.

WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 15: U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine listen as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a ceremony for the presentation of the Mexican Border Defense Medal in the Oval Office of the White House on December 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. During the ceremony, Trump recognized the first 13 service members to receive the recently established Mexican Border Defense Medal (MBDM), which recognizes service members supporting Customs and Border Protection on the U.S.-Mexico border. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The decision represents a tactical pause rather than a definitive end to the military option. Washington is allowing regional diplomacy more time, but the planned strikes could be revived if negotiations fail or Iran launches additional attacks.

Greek police have arrested an Afghan national in connection with the death of a Scottish aid worker.

Sharif Ahmadzai, 26, was arrested after the body of Elizabeth-Jane Ross, 38, was found stuffed in a suitcase in an abandoned building in Athens. A homeless man made the grisly discovery after investigating a foul odor emanating from the building.

Ross, known to friends as Lisa, had been volunteering at a refugee support group in Athens. She had arrived in Greece on June 26 and had been staying in an apartment in the Keratsini area of Piraeus until July 10. She was known to Ahmadzai, who had keys to her apartment, and his American wife.

CCTV footage shows the suspect wheeling a suitcase through a street in Athens near the location where the victim’s body was found.

The suspect had taken her cell phone and continued to send messages to family saying she needed time to herself and wished to be left alone in an apparent bid to buy time. Forensics experts were unable to immediately determine the cause of death due to the advanced decomposition of the body but are fast-tracking toxicology tests as well as tests on organ tissue to that end.

Ahmadzai admitted to transporting the body in a suitcase but claimed that he had found her dead in the bathroom of her apartment. Since her death, he had been using her bank card to withdraw money from her account. Police said he had given his wife €2,550 in cash and a new iPhone 17 Pro, which she handed over to police. Upon searching his home, police found a replica pistol and knife.

CCTV footage shows the suspect wheeling a suitcase down a street in Athens, carrying a blue bag. The suitcase and blue bag were found with the victim.

The suspect with his wife.

The Afghan national, who converted to Christianity in 2017, was arrested on Aug. 2 and charged with murder, robbery and violation of weapons laws the following day.

Ross’ pastor posted about the victim on Facebook.

“She had been to many places and served people. She was a very precious girl and it is a tragic loss,” he wrote.

“We have lost an angel, an angel full of innocence and goodness who only wanted to help people wherever she went,” a friend from her hometown in Edinburgh said.

Scottish police said they are coordinating with Greek police while providing support to the victim’s family in Scotland.

The United States has used “virtually all” of its Army Tactical Missile Systems and newer Precision Strike Missiles during the five-month war with Iran, according to a Reuters investigation citing officials familiar with classified stockpile data.

The precision-guided ATACMS and PrSM weapons, which cost more than $1 million each, allow American forces to strike targets deep inside Iran without sending pilots through heavily defended airspace. Officials did not disclose how many missiles remain, but warned that the shrinking inventory could limit Washington’s options if large-scale strikes resume.

One source also told Reuters that the U.S. has fired slightly less than half of its worldwide Tomahawk cruise-missile inventory since the war began, though Reuters could not independently verify that figure. Tomahawks are launched from U.S. warships and submarines against fortified or heavily defended targets.

The shortage extends beyond offensive weapons. An analysis cited by Reuters estimates that the war has consumed approximately 65% of America’s Patriot interceptors and reduced its THAAD interceptor stockpile by at least 38%, raising concerns about protecting U.S. forces and allies from further Iranian missile attacks.

A view of the remains of a warehouse structure at Shahid Rajaee port in Bandar Abbas, Iran, on April 28, 2025. The explosion, reportedly caused by hazardous chemicals, killed at least 70 people and injured more than 1,200, according to local sources. (Photo by Rahim / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP) (Photo by RAHIM/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

The Pentagon insists the military retains everything needed to defend American interests, while President Donald Trump said U.S. defense companies are producing munitions at record levels. Still, officials reportedly fear the drawdown could weaken American readiness for another major confrontation, particularly against China or Russia, as manufacturers race to rebuild inventories.

Nechama Tzivin, an attorney from Kfar Chabad in Israel, is petitioning a Chabad court of law called the Beis Din Rabbonei Chabad to intervene in soaring wig prices. Chabad requires women to cover their hair specifically with a wig, but most women can’t afford the going rate of about $10,000, with some higher-end wigs costing as much as $16,000.

It was the $16,000 price that prompted Tzivin to take action.

Tzivin is preparing similar petitions to be filed in batei din (courts of law) for other sectors of the Orthodox community, with the hope that rabbis will adopt a community-wide position that will be upheld in all sectors of the community.

The attorney hopes that the rabbis can apply halacha (Jewish law) to regulate the prices, using a principle that stipulates that a manufacturer may not charge more than one-sixth of the materials and labor cost for products that are considered basic necessities.

A wig, a traditional head covering for Orthodox Jewish women, for illustrative purposes.

“This is not only an issue of pricing for products considered ‘basic necessities,’ but also a serious prohibition of price gouging,” Tzivin said. “In such a case, a beis din can impose penalties and take action against those who violate this prohibition.”

“Sheitels absolutely fall under the category of ‘basic necessities’ in the community, due to the categorical instruction of the Rebbe regarding a married woman’s obligation to cover her hair specifically with a sheitel,” she added. She also said that the rabbis should consider prohibiting wig manufacturers from setting artificial price floors.

The lawsuit will ask the rabbis to consider the following injunctions:

• Setting a maximum price for wigs.
• Prohibiting manufacturers from coordinating prices.
• Setting a policy for large manufacturers to produce a basic wig at an affordable price for people of lesser means.

“The lawsuit represents the pain of tens of thousands of families in Israel collapsing under financial burdens,” Tzivin said. “Its goal is to restore halacha and economic fairness to the market.”

Following Boy George’s release of his controversial pro-Israel song “We Will Dance Again,” Bandcamp removed his song and his page from its platform. Bandcamp is an online music platform where independent artists sell their music directly to fans.

According to the platform, the ban was activated because the song violated its policy not to publish AI-generated, or partly AI-generated, material. Boy George has admitted that he composed the song with the assistance of AI.

The pop icon said that Bandcamp shut him down and took his money, and he hopes they will issue a refund.

“The drama continues. Sadly Bandcamp have removed my profile, so anyone trying to get a copy of We Will Dance Again will have to wait until I record it and find a way to put it out,” the singer said on social media.

In the meantime, anyone who has already downloaded the song should “make videos, play it on the internet… get it heard,” Boy George urged his fans. The singer also promised to release the song independently.

“My faith in humanity will not diminish and the truth will always win,” he wrote. “I come from a place of peace. I am a jew loving, trans hugging queer hippy and my mother would be proud of me.”

The singer has faced fierce backlash for his song. His manager, Tony Pontius, quit over the song, saying he wanted “nothing to do with it.” His manager, Paul Kemsley, pulled him from a two-week performance tour of the hit West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” in which he was supposed to play King Herod.

Boy George wrote the song to honor the victims of the Nova Music Festival massacre and express his rock-solid support for the Jewish people.

The singer, best known as the frontman of the group Culture Club, expressed views in the song that he has shared before as one of the most outspoken defenders of Israel in the entertainment industry, laying it out in black and white: “But if you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.”

Despite the backlash, he has doubled down on the sentiments shared in the song. Replying to someone who called him “Zionist scum” on X, the singer responded by saying, “Jew love is true love!”

Explaining why he refused to tone down his rhetoric, he wrote on X, “I’m afraid it’s not an option.”

“So many people are calling me and saying I should pipe down and let it blow over and while they mean well I’m afraid it’s not an option,” he wrote in his signature comma-less style.

“What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me but I am smart enough to realise that what you are cannot disguise who you are,” he continued. “No gay person speaks for an entire community and if you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f— a garage.’”

“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers not just the Jewish community. When will you wake up?” he demanded.

The Jewish community has responded warmly to the release of the song, with a famous Jewish artist honoring Boy George by painting a giant mural of the singer in London.

Thousands of Jewish worshippers entered Joseph’s Tomb in Shechem overnight during a coordinated visit secured by IDF forces. Dozens of armored buses carried visitors into the city in several waves, with a smaller group remaining at the compound for morning prayers. 

The delegation included Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, MK Tzvi Succot and Rabbi Yossi Elitzur, head of the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva. Senior IDF and Border Police commanders responsible for Judea & Samaria also attended. 

Participants called on the government to restore a permanent Jewish and military presence at the holy site. Dagan urged Israel to return the yeshiva, IDF troops and the Israeli flag to the compound, describing Joseph’s Tomb as the starting point for reversing the damage caused by the Oslo-era withdrawal. Succot said the abandoned site symbolizes years of weakness and must be fully reclaimed.

Defense Minister Israel Katz says he instructed the IDF to build as many military positions as necessary in southern Lebanon “as though we will remain there for 50 years,” signaling that Israel is preparing for a prolonged security presence rather than a rapid withdrawal. Katz has repeatedly declared that Israeli forces will remain until Hezbollah is disarmed and the threat to northern communities is removed. 

Katz also said Israel had completely razed 24 border villages where Hezbollah had embedded its operations, estimating that 15,000–20,000 homes were destroyed. He said Bint Jbeil, Hezbollah’s symbolic southern stronghold shown in the photo, was being destroyed as well while IDF troops continued eliminating tunnels, weapons sites and launch infrastructure. 

According to Katz, Israel now controls roughly 700 square kilometers stretching from the Mediterranean coast toward Beaufort and the Hermon foothills. The objective is to prevent terrorist raids, direct anti-tank attacks and any renewed Hezbollah buildup near the border. 

The declaration comes as U.S.-backed negotiations test limited Israeli withdrawals in exchange for verified Hezbollah disarmament. Progress has been slow, Hezbollah continues to reject disarmament and Israeli forces remain positioned near key strategic terrain.

An experimental Israeli study is reporting promising results from MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for soldiers battling post-traumatic stress disorder, with roughly 80% of participants experiencing a significant reduction in symptoms.

Most soldiers who completed the treatment at Clalit’s HaEmek Medical Center in Afula no longer met the clinical criteria for PTSD afterward. The participants had previously undergone conventional treatments and were admitted only after extensive medical and psychological screening.

The treatment is far more extensive than simply administering MDMA. Patients complete 13 intensive psychotherapy sessions, including three medically supervised MDMA sessions lasting up to eight hours. Two specially trained therapists remain with each patient throughout the process.

Researchers believe MDMA can temporarily reduce fear and defensiveness, helping patients confront traumatic memories and process emotions including guilt, shame and helplessness. Study leaders stressed that the drug is a therapeutic tool rather than the treatment itself.

The trial comes as Israel confronts a sharp rise in combat-related trauma following the October 7 massacre and the subsequent war. PTSD diagnoses have reportedly climbed approximately 70%, while researchers estimate that about 15% of soldiers exposed to severe battlefield trauma could develop chronic PTSD.

Doctors cautioned that the results remain preliminary. MDMA-assisted psychotherapy is still experimental and is not approved as a standard treatment in Israel or the United States. The hospital warned that unsupervised use can be dangerous and that MDMA remains illegal outside authorized research.

“It is not a miracle cure,” clinical psychologist Ronen Sidi said. But under strict supervision, the study suggests it could offer new hope to soldiers who have struggled for years to escape the invisible wounds of war.

Brad Laschinger, the 30-year-old man who threw a brick through the window of a Chabad synagogue in Sarasota, Fla., was apparently inspired by social media.

“Laschinger claims that the same morning he saw propaganda on social media and that was making him mad,” the Sarasota Police Department said in a statement. “He admitted to detectives that he threw the brick at the window of the synagogue because it was a Jewish place of worship.”

Laschinger committed the act of vandalism last Wednesday. Surveillance video captured him throwing the brick with his head wrapped in a blue towel.

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.

“Laschinger is facing a felony charge of criminal mischief of a religious building as a hate crime,” the police stated.

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt blamed the mayor of New York City, adding an important detail: The Jew hater had been watching Mamdani videos.

“Hey, NYC Mayor Mamdani — Law enforcement says the man they arrested for attacking a synagogue in Sarasota, FL, was motivated by social media propaganda. The man reportedly reposted your video demonizing the Jewish state,” Greenblatt wrote on X in a post directed at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

“Words have consequences,” the Jewish leader said in his rebuke to the mayor. “Your inflammatory rhetoric can lead to violence.”

“Jewish people and institutions are being attacked in NYC and across the country because of hateful and demonizing rhetoric,” he added. “The Jewish community deserves leaders who will confront antisemitism and protect Jewish New Yorkers, not fan the flames of hate.”