Member of Knesset Limor Son Har-Melech praised the IDF killing of Farah Ahmad Hamed Wednesday, saying that the incident represented “another closing of the circle.”

Har-Melech was the wife of Shalom Har-Melech, whom Hamed killed in 2003 in a drive-by shooting. Hamed, who was sentenced to three life terms, was freed in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal in 2011 that also saw the release of Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Limor was seven months pregnant and was injured, but her baby was safely delivered via C-section.

“Another circle closed!” she posted on X.

Pictured here is the young Har-Melech family before a terrorist tore it apart. (Credit: Screenshot/X)

“Farah Hamed, one of the senior figures in Hamas’s military wing and a member of the Silwad cell that murdered my man Shuli Har-Melech, may God avenge his blood, was thankfully eliminated today in the Gaza Strip,” she wrote.

In her post, Har-Melech pushed for the death penalty for terrorists that she had advocated for in her tenure as an MK.

“His release, along with the release of the other murderers, is the proof of the existential need for the death penalty law for terrorists that we were privileged to pass about half a year ago,” she said. “Let every terrorist who murders Jews know: even if he is released, even if he flees, and even if many years pass, the long arm of the people of Israel will reach him.”

She concluded by thanking the IDF for bringing her closure.

“Thank you to the IDF fighters and the security forces who closed an important and painful circle today. May the memory of Shuli and all the Silwad murder victims be blessed,” she said.

Yaniv Sardal, a 53-year-old resident of Ariel, was found alive and safe Thursday following an extensive search after he was reported missing. Sardal had been missing since 6 p.m. Wednesday, when he entered an Arab village of his own accord.

Israeli broadcaster Channel 14 identified Sardal as the brother of Eliya Aviv, a former senior police officer who served as the commander of the Zevulun and Hadera stations.

This is an image of Sardal when he was found.

While the authorities said this was not a terror incident, they did not fully rule out a security incident and launched a full-scale, hours-long search that involved interagency intelligence efforts, special forces including the Israel Prison Service’s Masada unit, and a police helicopter, with the ultimate goal of finding the missing man “while ensuring his safety and security,” according to a joint statement by the agencies involved in the search.

This is another image of Sardal when he was found.

A joint interagency command center was set up that included the Israel Police, Shin Bet, Israel Prison Service (including the Israel Prison Service’s elite Metzada Unit), and IDF. Along with manual searches on the ground, the interagency effort also employed technological capabilities and intelligence-gathering, as well as the deployment of a helicopter from the Israel Police Aerial Division.

After hours of extensive searches, the IDF and Israel Security Agency said in a joint statement on Thursday that Samaria resident had been found alive and well.

Defense Minister Israel Katz sent Rosh Hashanah greetings to Iran, with messages specifically tailored to different Iranian communities, including a stark warning to the Iranian regime.

Addressing the Jewish community, Katz said, “As we approach Rosh Hashanah, I want to send a Shana Tova blessing to the Jewish community in Iran and wish them a good and safe year. You are part of a glorious Jewish history, and you will always be in our hearts.”

To the people of Iran, Katz said, “I wish that the coming year will bring a free Iran liberated from tyranny and oppression.”

Katz then said economic pressure on Iran may prompt the regime to attack Israel and warned the Islamic Republic that an Israeli response will be devastating.

Speaking directly to the government of Iran, Katz said, “Any attack on Israel, for any reason and from anywhere, will be met with a powerful response that will inflict severe damage on Iran unlike anything it has suffered before, including to its key energy facilities, which provide resources and capabilities for Iran’s war and terror apparatus and its attacks on Israeli civilians.”

“In accordance with the directives of the prime minister and myself, the IDF is on high alert and prepared to carry out the mission. Such a strike would set Iran back decades and further destabilize the ayatollah regime, which the Iranian people deeply despise and long to see fall,” he added.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pushed back on a report by the left-wing Israeli media outlet Haaretz that he nixed an offer by Hamas to release all the hostages in exchange for nothing on Oct. 7, 2023, the day they were kidnapped by Hamas and brought into Gaza.

“For the record, this is false. Complete fiction,” he posted tersely on X.

In an article published Tuesday, Haaretz claimed that Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani called Blinken the very same day that Hamas abducted the hostages and told him about the deal.

“There are hundreds of hostages in Gaza, and among them, in my estimation, dozens of civilians. They need to be released now. I offered the Israelis to mediate a quick deal for their release, but they are not interested,” Al Thani said, according to Haaretz.

Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani. (Credit: Karim Jaafar/AFP via Getty Images)

The article claims that Blinken then responded, “Let’s wait. I will speak with Netanyahu personally.” According to the article, he added, “Right now, the situation is complex. Israel is still under attack, and there’s no one to talk to. We will wait three days.”

The article was reportedly based on a soon-to-be-released book titled “Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment” that is said to contain bombshell revelations about the Israeli government, such as a claim that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was warned about Oct. 7 by the leader of the United Arab Emirates.

The Haaretz article cites anonymous and vague sourcing, with direct quotes attributed to Al Thani, Blinken, and other high-ranking officials without reporting who heard those discussions.

Netanyahu also pushed back against the claim of forewarnings from the UAE and threatened to sue Haaretz.

The Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement on the matter, saying, “The press reports are false. No warning was given to the Prime Minister from the United Arab Emirates before October 7th. If there was any relevant information , it was passed through intelligence channels between the two countries.”

A secretive defense startup with deep Israeli roots has emerged with more than $250 million in funding and an ambitious plan: build long-range cruise missiles by the thousands, at a fraction of the cost of established Western weapons. Covenant’s latest financing round reportedly valued the company at more than $1 billion.

Behind the Washington-headquartered company are Israeli-American entrepreneur Michael Kaufman and co-founder Ofir Dayan, a former system chief engineer for Rafael’s Iron Dome, the Financial Times reported. Their venture brings experience from one of Israel’s most consequential defense programs into a different mission: expanding the West’s long-range strike capacity.

Kaufman previously worked in Peter Thiel’s investment network and moved to Israel to develop Covenant’s activities, according to CTech. The company operates a roughly 32,000-square-foot research, development and manufacturing facility in northern Israel, alongside larger factories in Texas and Germany. It is recruiting across all three countries. Israel is part of the company’s industrial foundation, not merely a connection in its founder’s biography.

Israeli venture capital firm Aleph was also involved early. In a public post, Aleph co-founder Michael Eisenberg said he met Kaufman while Covenant was still an idea, months before October 7, and participated in the seed round alongside Peter Thiel and Lux Capital’s Josh Wolfe. Subsequent funding brought in Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed and 8VC. That places Israeli engineering, entrepreneurship and investment inside a venture now pursuing major Western military customers.

Covenant’s flagship weapon, Anthem, is designed for long-range precision strikes with a heavy payload. Its commercial proposition is that Western militaries need more than sophisticated weapons: they need affordable inventories that can survive the demands of a prolonged conflict. The launch comes as wars in Iran and Ukraine have intensified concerns about depleted precision-missile stockpiles and slow replacement rates.

The company says it has designed Anthem around readily available commercial components, long-term supply agreements and production across allied countries. It is also developing the supporting equipment and software needed to transport, launch and operate the system, rather than selling a missile that requires customers to assemble the rest themselves.

“If our stockpiles run thin, so does our deterrence,” Kaufman said.

The project has moved beyond drawings. Covenant says Anthem has completed more than 200 test flights. A publicly documented demonstration near Tan-Tan, Morocco, involved U.S. military personnel, Morocco’s Royal Armed Forces and Covenant engineers. That was a development test, not a combat deployment, but it offered an early view of the Israeli-linked company working within an international military partnership.

Covenant says it has booked approximately $150 million in orders covering research, qualification and production work. Its disclosed U.S. programs include accelerated testing with the Army and a Navy project to develop a maritime version of Anthem. The naval work is valued at roughly $70 million and includes a cost-sharing component. These figures describe contracted work, not an equivalent value of missiles already delivered.

The newly opened Dallas facility is scheduled to begin serial production in the first quarter of 2027, eventually ramping toward 5,000 weapons annually. The northern Israel facility supports engineering and manufacturing, while the German operation adds another production base serving allied demand.

The next hurdle is turning successful tests and signed contracts into reliable, high-volume deliveries. For Israel, the significance is already tangible: an Israeli-American founder, an Iron Dome engineering veteran and an Israeli industrial footprint are helping shape a new supplier for the United States and its allies. Whether Covenant fulfills its promise will now depend on what its factories deliver.

An India-based, Israeli co-founded startup called Dognosis is on the cusp of a major breakthrough in cancer screening tests: using dogs to detect seven major cancers instead of invasive testing, with up to a 90 percent success rate.

The research uses AI, as the dogs are fitted with 3D-printed helmets and harnesses packed with sensors, which send data about the dogs’ brain activity, respiration, and body language for the AI to analyze.

“In an hour, they can do thousands of sniffs,” co-founder Akash Kulgod, 26, told AFP. “Each sniff can evaluate a sample.”

Early detection can substantially improve cancer survival rates, but most patients are tested only after they start experiencing symptoms. This method would be fast and affordable, providing mass screenings to find potential cases for further testing. The research shows that illness changes the body’s chemistry, releasing odors that can be picked up by dogs, which have about 30 million scent receptors compared with humans’ 5 million.

During the test, the patients do not need to interact with the dogs. Instead, they breathe into a cotton mask for 10 minutes, which is then sealed and sent to a lab for a trained dog to sniff.

The Journal of Clinical Oncology published a recent Dognosis study of 1,500 participants across six hospitals in Karnataka state, which achieved a 90 percent success rate for seven major types of cancer.

“The study is promising, as an early signal,” said Santhosh Kumar Devadas, head of oncology at Ramaiah Memorial Hospital, who was not involved in the study. “But they need to do the study with a much larger group before we make any definitive conclusions.”

Itamar Bitan, 28, who worked for four years in an Israeli special forces canine unit, said the dogs are trained to detect specific odors using “positive reinforcement.”

“Some of the dogs run directly to the feeder expecting rewards, some dogs freeze, some dogs will scratch the sample with excitement,” Bitan said.

“But as long as the machine that learns how the dogs react to the sample is very consistent … we don’t really mind.”

The company hopes to launch next year, which will make it the third such company in the world.

Israel is heading into Rosh Hashanah with an estimated 10.305 million residents, as a strong birthrate keeps the country growing despite a negative migration balance. The Central Bureau of Statistics’ annual snapshot presents a nation expanding in numbers while facing pressure over emigration and the cost of living.

Approximately 182,000 babies were born since the previous Rosh Hashanah, while about 50,000 people died. That produces a natural increase of roughly 132,000 people, enough to offset a net migration loss of 8,000. Overall, the Israeli population grew by approximately 124,000, or 1.2%, over the reporting period.

Israel’s fertility rate stands at 2.88 children per woman, more than twice the OECD average of 1.41 cited in the report. The figures underscore how strongly births continue to shape Israel’s demographic future.

Baby Fogel HY”D

The bureau’s separate calendar-year figures recorded 183,678 births in 2025. That total covers a different period from the approximately 182,000 births reported since the previous Jewish New Year. Israel also had more than three million private households, averaging 3.17 people each.

The latest population breakdown includes approximately 7.828 million people in the bureau’s “Jews and others” category and 2.173 million Arabs. Another 304,000 foreign residents are included in the national total. The first category is not a Jewish-only count: it also includes non-Arab Christians, members of other religions and people without a registered religious classification.

Approximately 24,000 new immigrants arrived during the reporting period, alongside 4,000 people entering through family reunification. Another 21,000 Israelis returned after living abroad. Those arrivals did not fully offset the approximately 57,000 Israelis classified as having emigrated, leaving the overall migration balance negative.

The separate calendar-year comparison offers an important qualification: emigration declined from approximately 82,800 in 2024 to 69,500 in 2025. New immigration also fell, from about 31,100 to 20,900, while fewer Israelis returned. A negative migration balance does not, by itself, mean departures are accelerating.

27 January 2022, Israel, Jerusalem: An Ultra-orthodox Jewish man prays at the Western Wall, known in Islam as the Buraq Wall, in the old city of Jerusalem after a snowstorm. Photo: Ilia Yefimovich/dpa (Photo by Ilia Yefimovich/picture alliance via Getty Images)

The CBS cautions that population figures are provisional and reflect revised methods for calculating Israelis living abroad, alongside the inclusion of the foreign population.

The broader report puts life expectancy at 81.4 years for men and 85.9 for women. The figures accompany a substantial family population: more than 2.36 million nuclear families were recorded in the annual household data.

Housing remains a strain. The report shows the housing price index falling 1%, while average rent rose 4.3% to NIS 4,919 a month. The average home price stood at approximately NIS 2.33 million.

MA’ALE ADUMIM, WEST BANK – OCTOBER 16: New houses are seen under construction October 16, 2003 in the Jewish settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, West Bank. The first phase of the road map requires Israel to stop confiscating Palestinian land and to freeze all settlement activity. Ma’ale Adumim has grown from 23 families and a few tents and mobile homes in 1975 to nearly 30,000 residents, most of whom commute to work in nearby Jerusalem. (Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images)

Israel is expected to take retaliatory steps against France and other countries backing trade restrictions on Israeli settlements, according to a KAN report cited by The Jerusalem Post. The potential move would widen a confrontation that has already put Britain’s diplomatic presence in Jerusalem and its role in Gaza coordination in jeopardy.

Britain has been given 30 days to close its Jerusalem consulate, Reuters reported, citing Israeli officials and other sources familiar with the decision. Comparable measures against France and Canada have not yet been publicly announced.

The beautiful cloudy sunset in Jerusalem, Israel, over the Bloomfield garden, and French Consulate.

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s response to London includes removing British representatives from the Civil-Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat, ending British training of Palestinian Authority security forces and imposing entry bans on selected British nationals. Sa’ar said the response was coordinated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and accused Britain of “blatant interference in the affairs of a sovereign state and its electoral process.”

The confrontation follows a coordinated declaration by 12 countries supporting, planning or actively considering national or European restrictions on goods from settlements in Judea and Samaria. Britain, France and Canada specifically committed to national measures banning settlement trade. That does not mean all 12 countries have already implemented identical sanctions.

Britain’s package reaches beyond goods on supermarket shelves. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said it would target companies and individuals providing financing, construction, infrastructure and real-estate services for settlement expansion, alongside a ban on advertising settlements in Britain. He said the broader legislation would be in place within six to nine months, while additional sanctions against extremist settlers were announced immediately.

BIRMINGHAM, UNITED KINGDOM – NOVEMBER 06: Pro-Palestinian protesters gather outside the stadium before the UEFA Europa League football match day 4, between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel-Aviv at Villa Park in Birmingham on November 06, 2025. Protesters demand Israel’s disqualification from the UEFA competitions. (Photo by Yunus Kaymaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)

France has announced a process to end trade with settlements, but its implementation timetable and final rules remain unclear. Paris moved toward national restrictions after efforts to secure an EU-wide decision failed to attract sufficient support, with Germany among the countries opposing that route.

The participating governments argue that settlement expansion, violence against Palestinians and the E1 development project threaten a two-state solution. Their joint statement also recognizes Israel’s legitimate security interests and condemns Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist massacre. Miliband said the restrictions target settlements rather than Israel as a whole and explicitly opposed the broader boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.

The fallout is already extending beyond commerce. A British official told KAN that London sent personnel to the Gaza coordination center at Washington’s request, including a senior officer serving as deputy commander. The official argued that removing them would not help advance the American initiative for Gaza.

There could also be consequences for Palestinian livelihoods. A date farmer at Kibbutz Almog told Reuters that losing access to European markets could force his business to close, threatening the jobs of Palestinian workers he employs.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Foreign Minister Ed Miliband, who is Jewish, defended on Wednesday the government’s decision Tuesday to ban goods produced in Judea and Samaria, signaling its disapproval of Israel’s building project in Section E1 and the way it is handling settler violence.

“Britain has to stand for fairness against injustice where people are being bullied out of their homes,” Burnham said. “We will always stand with the underdog and take what action we can to support them,” he said.

“That is leadership on the world stage, Britain being true to what it has always been about,” he told Parliament Wednesday. “Leadership is about taking action where there is injustice, where we need to correct unfairness, people being driven out of their homes.”

“In this difficult and dangerous world, Britain has to stand for something,” he added.

Miliband said in an interview with a British outlet that he was “proud” of the decision because “it was the right thing to do.”

Israel retaliated by giving the British government 30 days to close its consulate in Israel, ordering British officials at the U.S.-led International Gaza Support Center in Kiryat Gat to cease operations, and canceling the British Support Team that trains Palestinian Authority police in Ramallah.

Arab leaders praised the joint decision by 11 European countries plus Canada to sanction Judea and Samaria. The foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia welcomed the decision in a joint statement. They said they “welcome the decision of the Government of the United Kingdom to ban the import of goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and to introduce restrictions on services linked to such settlements, and express the hope that this decision will help mobilize the international community to take similar actions in line with international law and hold accountable settlement organizations and individuals engaged in illegal settlement activities” in an online post alongside a lengthier statement.

Palestinian officials also signaled their approval of the ban, telling an Israel-based outlet that it was “a significant political achievement,” with one Palestinian Authority official calling it “an excellent and outstanding step” and “a victory for those working for peace and for the two-state solution.”

The backlash from Israel and its allies has been fierce.

“Once again, if the U.K. was actually trying to influence Israeli policy rather than virtue signal to the far left, it would draw a very clear distinction between the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, which virtually no Israeli would cede in any conceivable piece agreement and which even Palestinian negotiators conceited [conceded] would go to Israel in exchange for land swaps, and isolated settlements that cause friction with Palestinians, potentially disrupt a negotiated element, and drain israeli [sic] security resources,” wrote prominent Jewish activist David Bernstein on X.

“So the UK is not trying to change Israeli policy,” he concluded.

British Foreign Minister Ed Miliband.

“QED,” he said, which is an abbreviation of a Latin phrase denoting that his proof is now complete.

The Israel Foreign Ministry posted a Hamas flyer with the headline: “Naim: British sanctions on the settlements are ‘an important step, but insufficient,'” and added that if Hamas supports your actions, you ought to give it a second look.

“Hamas calling the U.K. Labour government’s measures against Israel ‘important steps in the right direction’ — and immediately demanding more — should be a glaring warning,” the ministry posted on X.

“When a terrorist organization is cheering your foreign policy, something has gone fundamentally wrong. Siding against Israel doesn’t deter jihadists; it emboldens them,” it added.

Iván Emiro Cañas Gutiérrez, an activist lawyer based in Scotland, wrote, “Not in my name.”

“Britain has just decided that the gravest threat to peace in the Levant is … a crate of dates from a West Bank greenhouse. Meanwhile Hamas still exists, the Palestinian Authority still pays terrorists, and half the region still openly wants Israel gone,” he added.

Amberly Thay, a non-Jewish student at Exeter University in Exeter, England, has nevertheless suffered antisemitic abuse for her work as a regional ambassador for the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET), a British charity.

As a high school student, Thay visited Auschwitz in Poland, which inspired her to join HET as an ambassador in her first year at Exeter University. As part of her work, she was invited to the Israeli ambassador’s residence in London to hear a speech by a Holocaust survivor on Holocaust Remembrance Day, but a post on Instagram about the experience prompted harassment.

“People just started making all these offhand anti-Semitic comments to me all the time,” she said.

“I’ve been called a mouthpiece for Israel and an agent for Mossad because I work in Holocaust education.”

A stranger in a club approached her one night when she was meant to be having fun and asked her, “Why would you post something like that? You know what they do.”

“I was just sitting there thinking, ‘Why am I being harassed on a night out over my volunteering work?'” Thay said.

Her first experience happened when she was dancing at a nightclub and a friend went to the bathroom. When the friend returned, she told Thay, “‘I can’t believe you. Some girl in the toilets told me that you support the killing of children. She told me not to be friends with you.’ I just stood there shocked.”

She said she did not report the incidents to the university, following the advice of Jewish students, who told her that nothing would be done about it. She is planning to give a talk next week to Jewish community leaders and politicians at the HET appeal dinner in London about her experiences with HET.

“I don’t think that there is enough Holocaust education in British schools,” she said. “I’ve heard people say that it wasn’t actually six million [Jews who were killed in the Holocaust], it was only like 250,000 or whatever, because they’ve seen that online. And they don’t actually understand that what they’re saying is harmful and wrong.”

The university said it was not aware of the situation, which Thay said she had not reported.

“We are unaware of this incident, and we encourage both students and staff to report any matters of this nature to us. We are committed to eradicating any instances of discrimination, including antisemitism, and we investigate all incidents reported to us,” a university spokesperson said.

“We have been working actively with our Jewish staff and student collectives to ensure that there is awareness of our support and report pathways,” the spokesperson added.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Syrian border Wednesday, accompanied by high-ranking officials such as Defense Minister Israel Katz and Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Tamir Yadai, where they were briefed on military operations by Northern Command Chief Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo and 210th Division Commander Brig. Gen. Yair Peli.

Standing atop Mount Hermon, Netanyahu vowed to defeat Iran and prevent terror armies from being established near Israel’s borders.

“We will not allow any terror army to establish itself on our border … We are committed to defeating the terror regime in Iran, and we will do it,” the prime minister said.

Credit: Prime Minister’s Office

“On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, we are at the summit of the Hermon, the crown of the Hermon. Damascus is here, Lebanon is there, the Syrian Golan Heights is over there, and we control the entire area from the crown of the Hermon to the Yarmouk, and from here to the Mediterranean Sea, absolute control the likes of which have never been seen before,” he added.

“We will not allow any terror army to establish itself on our border, and this is one of the monumental achievements we have secured in the War of Revival,” he declared.

“From these peaks, there is still work to be done. The primary job is to defeat the terror regime in Iran. We are very close to it. We know that the entire axis will ultimately collapse,” he said.

Credit: Prime Minister’s Office

“Happy New Year to the citizens of Israel and to our heroic soldiers who are doing the work here,” he added.

The comments follow a series of recent threats:

• Military assessments that Iran is preparing a unified Oct. 7-style attack that will include Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran-backed militias in Iraq
• An Israeli strike on an unused military airport in Syria that Israel said Turkey was preparing to use to deploy troops
• The elimination of a terrorist in the region who the IDF said was planning to carry out imminent attacks

Ahead of Rosh Hashanah, Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited the soldiers of the IDF’s Oketz canine unit, thanking the male, female, and canine combatants and wishing them a Shana Tova.

“Ahead of Rosh Hashanah, we visited the female combatants, male combatants, and dogs of the Oketz Unit. We were moved to hear about the meaningful service experience and to see the unit’s unique capabilities,” the president posted on X alongside a video.

“Dear female and male combatants — you contribute immensely to the country’s security and represent Israel’s golden generation,” he added. “We thank you from the bottom of our hearts and wish you and the four-legged combatants a good year!” he added.

The core missions of the IDF’s Oketz Unit, a highly trained special forces unit, include counterterrorism; hostage rescue; detection of hidden explosives, booby traps, weapons, and ammunition caches; search and rescue; and tracking and reconnaissance.

The dogs are trained to sniff out hidden explosives and other such material, people trapped under rubble, and military targets such as terrorists, among other tasks. The handlers and their dogs work as integrated independent teams, often attached to other elite IDF commando units, such as Shayetet 13 or Sayeret Matkal, to direct operations during frontline missions.

Each dog undergoes one year of training for a specialized task and is then paired with one handler, with whom it remains throughout its service.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar arrived in Slovenia Wednesday, where he was greeted by his counterpart, Tone Kajzer, for meetings and for the inauguration of the Israeli Embassy in Ljubljana, marking the first visit to the country by an Israeli foreign minister since 2010.

Sa’ar was accompanied by a delegation for an Israeli-Slovenian economic forum, and the two countries will sign a cultural cooperation agreement.

In statements posted to X, the Slovenian Foreign Ministry said it was high time to open a resident Israeli Embassy.

“Welcome to Slovenia, Israeli Foreign Minister, Gideon Sa’ar!” the ministry said. “This visit — the first at this level in 16 years — carries significant political and symbolic weight. After a prolonged period of less intensive political contacts, it is time to shift Slovenian and Israeli cooperation into a higher gear. An important step in this direction is also Israel’s decision to open a resident embassy in Ljubljana.”

The ministry described the agenda for the visit, a large part of which will be devoted to discussing economic cooperation.

“Minister Tone Kajzer will host Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar in Slovenia, accompanied by an economic delegation. The visit will focus on bilateral relations, situation in the Middle East, peace efforts, and strengthening economic cooperation. A significant part of the visit is devoted to meetings with business leaders and a business forum organized by @GZSnovice, @MZEZ_RS, @MGDS_gov and SPIRIT Slovenia, aimed at strengthening trade and economic cooperation between the two countries.”

Gideon Sa’ar thanked the Slovenian foreign minister for his warm welcome and expressed his optimism about the outcome of his visit.

“Thank you, my friend, Tone Kajzer, Foreign Minister of Slovenia, for the warm reception at the start of this historic day in the relations between our countries. In just a few hours, I will inaugurate for the first time the Israeli embassy in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. This expresses our commitment to strengthening the relations between the countries and our shared future. Together we will succeed for our peoples!”

Prime Minister Janez Janša has shifted Slovenia from its hostile stance toward Israel to a far friendlier one, blocking a European Union resolution against Israel over the E1 settlement, rejecting the accusation of genocide against Israel, and opening an Israeli embassy in Ljubljana.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir visited soldiers at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer who had been wounded in missions in Gaza and Lebanon. He met with commanders, soldiers, and medical personnel Tuesday, ahead of Rosh Hashanah this weekend.

Zamir toured the facility’s various departments, speaking to the troops about their injuries, recovery, and rehabilitation, as well as their healing journey. He thanked them for their courage and determination and for their service to the country. He also thanked the medical personnel at the hospital for their work in helping the soldiers on their road to recovery.

The IDF chief said he was moved by the sight of soldiers who had faced enemies in battle and now face procedures to recover from injuries sustained in those battles.

Credit: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit

“I came to see you ahead of the new year, and I am moved by what I have seen here. There are troops here who stood on the front lines, led, and risked their lives in combat against the enemy. This is bravery in battle. Now, you are facing an operation that requires further bravery as you recover from your injuries,” Zamir said.

Zamir also expressed his appreciation and support on behalf of the IDF for the troops’ service and sacrifice and concluded with blessings for the new year.

“The entire IDF and I deeply appreciate your sacrifice and contribution. It is our duty to stand by you and accompany you throughout your rehabilitation journey. We are with you every step of the way,” he said.

“I salute you. May this be a better year: a year of security and hope, a year of unity and victory. A year in which you continue to stand strong and serve as a source of pride for the entire nation,” he added.

A brave 19-year-old Israeli is recovering after fighting off a terrorist in a violent, close-range stabbing attack at Maoz Yehuda Farm in Samaria.

Speaking from his hospital bed at Beilinson Hospital, Netanel Jacobs said he punched and pushed the terrorist during a fierce struggle that continued even after the attacker’s knife broke.

“I fought him, punched him and pushed him,” Jacobs recalled. “We were both lying on the ground. I tried to pick up a rock to throw at his head, but I couldn’t reach it.”

Jacobs said the terrorist continued trying to stab him using the broken blade. The teen hero managed to choke the attacker, who then fled toward his vehicle.

Still unaware of the extent of his injuries, Jacobs chased after him with a rock before looking down and realizing he was covered in blood, with stab wounds to his head, neck, and hand.

His parents said their son is now in good and stable condition. They called his survival a miracle and said his extraordinary courage prevented what could have been a far more tragic outcome.

Israeli forces later tracked down the terrorist. When he tried to stab soldiers, troops opened fire and eliminated him.

A group of 16 Michigan rabbis and other Jewish clergy have banded together and signed an open letter that was published Tuesday, which, without naming U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, states that Democratic candidates who wish to obtain Jewish votes must abide by five “nonnegotiable” principles.

Other Jewish Democrats are taking a different tack: banding together to support El-Sayed’s opponent, the Republican candidate Mike Rogers.

The five principles laid out in the letter are:

• “Jewish safety — including for Zionist Jews — in Michigan and across America”;
• “Our right to define our own Jewish identities”;
• “Jewish sovereignty in Israel”;
• “Welcoming our full participation in American political life”; and
• “An affirmative vision for a better future in the Middle East.”

Zioness Action Fund, affiliated with the Zioness advocacy group, a progressive Zionist organization, backed the initiative. Zioness says that it’s “Unabashedly progressive. Unapologetically Zionist,” and has worked to make progressive spaces more inclusive of Zionism since the left’s turn against Zionism after the Oct. 7 attack in 2023.

One of the signatories of the letter, Rabbi Josh Whinston, leader of the Reform Temple Beth Emeth in Ann Arbor, who had met with El-Sayed, said he believes the candidate has great potential but is concerned about his anti-Israel stance.

“I think he has the potential to be an amazing, visionary leader in the state of Michigan and in this country,” he said Monday, ahead of the letter’s publication. “But his vision needs to be more inclusive.”

New York is stepping up state police protection around synagogues and Jewish institutions ahead of the High Holidays, alongside a record $70 million in security grants. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the measures as Jewish communities prepare to gather for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur amid a rise in antisemitic hate crimes.

Troopers will conduct high-visibility patrols in Jewish neighborhoods and around religious institutions. Police have already begun contacting religious leaders and are coordinating with local and federal authorities, the Anti-Defamation League, Community Security Initiative and Secure Community Network.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – DECEMBER 14: An NYPD vehicle is seen outside of the Congregation Temple Emanu-El, a Jewish synagogue, on December 14, 2025 in New York City. New York’s Jewish community is reacting to the Bondi Beach terror attack that reportedly left 16 people fatally shot people in Sydney, Australia. The shooting occurred as hundreds gathered to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah. (Photo by Ryan Murphy/Getty Images)

The numbers underscore the urgency. The NYPD recorded 229 confirmed anti-Jewish hate crimes during the first eight months of the year, an 8% increase over the same period last year. Those incidents accounted for 53.9% of all confirmed hate crimes in the city, despite Jewish residents making up about 10% of its population, according to the department.

That increase contrasts with the city’s broader crime trend as major crime fell 6.2% over the same period. Confirmed anti-Jewish hate crimes did decline in August alone, but that monthly improvement did not erase the year-to-date increase. The NYPD cautions that its figures remain preliminary.

The $70 million will support 290 nonprofit organizations through New York’s Securing Communities Against Hate Crimes program. The funding is not exclusively for synagogues: it covers vulnerable institutions across different faiths and communities, including houses of worship, community centers, museums and other nonprofits at risk because of their beliefs or mission.

Individual grants can reach $250,000 and fund alarms, panic buttons, access controls, shatter-resistant glass, security training and cybersecurity upgrades. New York City organizations will receive the largest share, nearly $35.8 million, followed by approximately $24.2 million in the mid-Hudson region and $6 million on Long Island.

Award notifications are scheduled to begin this week. The state is withholding recipients’ names for security reasons. Successful applicants had to submit vulnerability assessments explaining the threats they face and how their proposed improvements would protect their facilities and the people using them.

Hochul pointed to a Brooklyn case as evidence that the grants can make a difference. After swastikas were found at Magen David Yeshivah last November, she said, cameras paid for through the program helped authorities catch the perpetrator.

But the governor also acknowledged the troubling reality behind the investment: Jewish institutions are having to fortify places intended for prayer, education and community life.

“We should never have to be thinking that these places of worship and places children go to school have to be fortified against hate,” Hochul said.

American singer Jane Remover gave the organizers of the M3F Festival in Phoenix, Ariz., an ultimatum: Drop the Israeli alt-rock band Temper City from the lineup or she’s out.

“Take this IDF band off the lineup, or I’m not performing,” she was reported as saying.

The festival organizers released the official 2027 lineup poster Sunday, and Jane Remover was dropped from the lineup. The artist Flying Lotus replaced her, while the Israeli band remained in the lineup. It’s unclear if the organizers dropped her or if she made good on her threat.

One social media user quipped that “Jane Remover has been removed.”

Hasan Piker, the anti-Israel, antisemitic streamer who has campaigned with prominent Democrats like Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in Michigan, reacted to the incident by expressing admiration for Jane Remover.

“Yeah, Jane Remover left the festival lineup because of, ‘get the IDF band off the lineup or I’m not playing,'” he said.

“Beast mode,” he added, saying that “it’s me in a different life.”

Regavim, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that documents Palestinian attacks against Israelis in Judea and Samaria and illegal Palestinian construction in the territories, released a 206-page report Tuesday called “Real Estate Under Occupation.”

The tongue-in-cheek introduction explains that the Arabs living under Israeli oppression nevertheless soldiered on, with photos of Arab properties in Judea and Samaria that the report claims were taken in just one day.

Because every word in the introduction is a jewel, it is reproduced below:

Regavim posted this ad on X to promote its new study, “Real Estate Under Occupation.” (Credit: Regavim)

“From the soaring cathedrals of Europe to the tents of Native American tribes, architecture and design express current realities, communal values and shared experience. The iron, cement and mortar of Occupied Palestine are no different: Despite oppression and the threat of erasure, Palestinians across the West Bank have found a way to express their unique peoplehood, history and connection to their ancestral homeland while making a clear statement about the unbearable burden of occupation — through the architecture of their living space.

Credit: Regavim

“We have attempted to highlight the architectural elements that express the national aspirations of the oppressed people of Palestine, the design elements that reflect the harsh realities they contend with on a daily basis, and the structural elements that express the determination of a people whose wealth has been plundered and whose land has been stolen by the occupation. In the pages that follow, we offer a glimpse into the reality experienced by Palestinians of the Occupied West Bank as reflected in their homes across the old-new territory. Every brick tells the story of their oppression; every stairway speaks of their striving to rise above the cruelty of life under occupation, every courtyard echoes the aspiration to live free and to prosper.

Credit: Regavim

“The images presented in these pages were all photographed in a single day, and are only a taste of what any visitor to the West Bank will find. They speak volumes about near-impossible living conditions, the extreme want, the paucity of resources and of hardship endured with humility. Every image is a cry against cruelty, dispossession, poverty and the yoke of occupation that is evident everywhere in the West Bank.

Credit: Regavim

“The crafting of living conditions under the shadow of repressive occupation is no small feat, but despite the unspeakable hardships of occupation, the ever-accelerating rate of displacement and the severe hardships they face, the Palestinians of the West Bank are practicing Sumud — steadfastness — in ways that have never before been seen.”

In an interview with Israel-based outlet JNS Tuesday, Israeli Ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed warned that Canadian sanctions on Judea and Samaria could trigger attacks against Canadian Jews, putting their lives in danger.

Moed spoke to the outlet shortly after the leaders of Canada, France, and the United Kingdom released a joint statement affirming their support for the two-state solution, noting that they had already recognized a Palestinian state a year prior. They stated that honoring their commitment meant sanctioning the Israeli population in Judea and Samaria for building settlements that they claimed are illegal under international law.

“Systematic settlement expansion in the West Bank, including the Government of Israel’s latest decision to progress the E1 settlement, as well as the dramatic increase in settler violence, pose a direct and urgent threat to that vision for peace,” the statement read.

E1 is between Maale Adumim, pictured here, and East Jerusalem. (Credit: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)

“Settlements are illegal under international law. Canada, France, and the UK will therefore take steps to ban the importation of goods from settlements and enforce targeted measures against settlements and those who facilitate them or profit from them,” the leaders declared.

Moed, who has been serving as ambassador for the past three years, told JNS that he’s “concerned about the safety of the Jewish community, not just Israelis but the entire Jewish community in Canada.”

He said that anti-Israel groups are already celebrating this as a victory.

“When they are celebrating, normally they would go and intimidate more,” he said. “They feel more emboldened to intimidate the Jewish community. This is what antisemitism looks like.”

He said that it’s “very concerning” when leaders don’t see the connection between their anti-Israel actions and the antisemitic attacks that follow.

“We have seen over the past three years how quickly people take criticism against Israel to attack and intimidate the Jewish community of Canada,” he said. “Such decisions by the government definitely give more room for those to act, and I don’t hear anything from the government trying to create proportion or to balance things out internally.”

He said that while the Inuit have 20 words for snow (arriving at the actual number is complicated), the Israelis have a lot of words for security.

“It’s hard to get people to understand what we are talking about,” he told JNS. “When something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, we say that’s a very dangerous duck. You have to be ready to take action.”

The diplomat also warned that the measures against Judea and Samaria will do nothing to advance the two-state solution.

A German factory facing the end of car production could gain a new future manufacturing components for Israel’s Iron Dome. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israeli investment firm Aurelius Capital and the state of Lower Saxony have signed a declaration of intent to transform Volkswagen’s Osnabrück site into a defense production center serving Germany and Europe.

Under preliminary sale terms announced by Volkswagen, Aurelius would become the majority owner alongside Lower Saxony. Rafael would supply air-defense expertise, while the plant’s skilled workforce would help establish manufacturing operations. The proposed transaction remains subject to final agreements, corporate approvals and regulatory reviews.

Ground crew member checks the Rafael Python air-to-air missile attached to the F-16I Sufa fighter jet.

The production distinction matters: Osnabrück would manufacture launchers, military vehicles, generators and other supporting equipment, not Iron Dome’s Tamir interceptor missiles. The project would bring part of the Israeli system’s industrial infrastructure to Germany rather than turn the factory into an interceptor assembly line.

For workers, the proposal offers an alternative to the approaching end of vehicle production, scheduled for summer 2027. Volkswagen’s works council chair, Daniela Cavallo, said the agreement creates employment prospects for more than 1,200 people, while efforts continue to secure a future for the remaining workforce.

The ownership arrangement also follows a political obstacle. Israeli business newspaper Globes reported that Qatar, a major Volkswagen shareholder, opposed an earlier plan for direct cooperation between the automaker and Rafael. The proposed sale offers a route around that resistance, placing the defense venture under new ownership rather than keeping it inside Volkswagen.

The broader industrial logic is increasingly clear: Germany’s struggling automotive sector has factories and manufacturing expertise, while Europe’s rearmament is creating demand for defense production. Reuters reported that Volkswagen sees the Osnabrück arrangement as a potential model for other sites facing weak demand, high costs and growing Chinese competition.

For Rafael, the ambition extends beyond rescuing a single factory. CEO Yoav Tourgeman described a long-term manufacturing relationship intended “to protect Germany and Europe.” Lower Saxony’s government said the partnership would combine Israeli defense technology with German engineering, production capacity and quality standards.

Iron Dome is designed to protect communities, military forces and critical infrastructure against rockets, mortars, drones and other aerial threats. Its selective interception approach distinguishes threats heading toward defended areas from those expected to land harmlessly elsewhere.

Germany has already committed billions to another Israeli air-defense system, Arrow 3. Manufacturer Israel Aerospace Industries announced a $3.1 billion expansion of that agreement earlier this year, bringing its overall value to more than $6.5 billion.

The Osnabrück announcement is not itself a German purchase of Iron Dome, and no firm defense-production start date has been announced. But completing the project would give Israeli technology a larger manufacturing foothold in Europe, with German industrial jobs tied directly to strengthening the continent’s defenses.

About 1,370 Israeli doctors spent at least a year abroad between 2023 and 2025, according to a new Tel Aviv University study, raising fresh concerns about the country’s ability to retain its medical expertise. The figure is nearly double the 705 departures recorded during the comparable three-year period a decade earlier.

Researchers said the departures exceed the number of physicians employed at major hospitals such as Soroka or Shaare Zedek. But the comparison comes with an important qualification: spending a year overseas does not necessarily mean permanent emigration. Doctors also leave for fellowships, research and advanced training, and the study’s figures for 2025 remain preliminary.

Even after returning Israeli doctors are counted, however, the gap has widened sharply. Departures exceeded returns by 509 physicians across 2023–24, equivalent to about 255 annually, compared with an annual average of 54 between 2010 and 2019. That is a nearly fivefold increase in the departure-return imbalance, not a measurement of the change in Israel’s entire medical workforce.

The research, conducted by professors Itai Ater and Nittai Bergman and doctoral researcher Doron Zamir, cross-referenced population, education and medical licensing records through the Central Bureau of Statistics. Although the increase began during the political turmoil surrounding the government’s judicial overhaul, the findings reported by The Times of Israel do not establish political circumstances as the cause of the departures.

One of the most consequential findings concerns who is going. Some 281 departing doctors were 45 or older, accounting for roughly one in five of those who left. A decade earlier, that age group represented about one in seven departures. The shift raises concerns that the phenomenon extends beyond younger physicians temporarily advancing their training overseas.

The departures were particularly pronounced in several specialist fields. Among working doctors younger than 60, 9.4% of the combined ophthalmology, dermatology and ear, nose and throat group left, alongside 8.8% of surgeons and 6.4% of pediatricians. Those figures cover the three-year period, not a single year.

Losing an experienced specialist can mean more than an unfilled position. As Calcalist’s analysis noted, senior doctors may provide rare treatments, handle especially difficult cases and train younger physicians. Their departure can therefore affect both immediate care and the development of the next generation of specialists.

gynecologist doctor working with endometrial ultrasound scanning in the operation room in the hospital

The warning concerns a healthcare system that delivers strong outcomes with comparatively limited staffing. The OECD’s 2025 country assessment recorded 3.5 practicing doctors per 1,000 residents in Israel, below its 3.9 average. Yet Israeli life expectancy was 83.8 years, exceeding the OECD average by 2.7 years.

There is also a significant incoming stream of medical talent. In a separate report in January, the Aliyah and Integration Ministry said more than 1,000 immigrant physicians had joined Israel’s healthcare system over the preceding two years, including 541 arrivals in 2025. Many came through the International Medical Aliyah Program, led by Nefesh B’Nefesh in partnership with government ministries and the Jewish Agency.

Those arrivals provide important context, but the figures cannot simply be subtracted from the study’s departures. The reporting periods differ, and neither headline total establishes whether incoming doctors fill the same specialties and locations as those leaving. The practical challenge is not just recruiting more physicians, but retaining the experienced specialists whose clinical and teaching roles are hardest to replace.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is rejecting a report that the United Arab Emirates’ president personally warned him Hamas was preparing a major operation roughly 10 days before the Oct. 7 massacre. The allegation has renewed scrutiny of what reached Israel’s political leadership before the attack and how those warnings were handled.

Netanyahu’s office initially denied that he had spoken with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan during the period described. It later reiterated that no Emirati warning had reached the prime minister, adding that any relevant information would have passed through intelligence channels between the countries. His office is disputing the alleged conversation itself, not merely the interpretation of its contents.

The UAE has neither confirmed nor denied the call. Its Foreign Ministry said it does not comment on private conversations between government leaders, while emphasizing that Israeli and Emirati authorities maintain direct communications and share relevant intelligence when necessary. That statement does not, by itself, substantiate either the reported warning or Netanyahu’s denial.

WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 15: (L-R) Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump, Foreign Affairs Minister of Bahrain Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, and Foreign Affairs Minister of the United Arab Emirates Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords on the South Lawn of the White House September 15, 2020 in Washington, DC. Witnessed by President Trump, Prime Minister Netanyahu signed a peace deal with the UAE and a declaration of intent to make peace with Bahrain. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The Haaretz investigation draws on a new book, “Kidnapped: 843 Days of Abandonment,” by journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval. Its account cites three senior foreign officials briefed on a purported 45-minute conversation, alongside a Palestinian adviser to bin Zayed with direct knowledge. The Times of Israel separately reported confirmation from an Emirati source familiar with the conversation.

According to the investigation, the warning originated with threats Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar relayed through a Palestinian intermediary as prewar negotiations stalled. Bin Zayed allegedly warned that a major operation could cause bloodshed, destabilize the region and damage the Abraham Accords. Netanyahu reportedly responded that Hamas was more likely to act in Judea & Samaria and that Israel was prepared.

Then-Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and then-IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi told Haaretz they had not been informed of the Emirati leader’s warning. Unnamed security officials argued that learning of such a high-level alert could have changed their assessment. Those statements describe what officials believe might have happened, not proof that a different response would necessarily have prevented the massacre.

JERUSALEM – NOVEMBER 21: IDF soldiers grieve during the funeral for 20-year-old Staff Sergeant Dvir Barzani at Har Herzel on November 21, 2023 in Jerusalem. Since the October 7th Hamas attack on the Gaza Envelope communities, Abramson has spent most of his time singing for soldiers, leading funerals, or other religious ceremonies, as well as performing at the occasional wedding or joyous occasion when possible. His day started with a funeral, then a wedding, followed by singing and praying with injured soldiers and their families. Abramson, has served as the Chief Cantor since 2008. (Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

The same investigation also describes a separate warning that reached the Shin Bet in mid-September, before the alleged leaders’ call. According to The Jerusalem Post’s account, Bar briefed Netanyahu on Sinwar’s threat, and senior security officials subsequently discussed it without reaching concrete decisions. The allegation is therefore not that the security establishment had no warning, but that an additional, potentially significant alert from a foreign leader was not shared.

The military’s own failures remain part of the accountability picture. During the IDF’s inquiry process, Halevi publicly accepted responsibility as the commander on Oct. 7 and acknowledged failures within the military. Hamas-led terrorists killed approximately 1,200 people and abducted 251 during the attack.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said he knew the report was true but did not disclose the basis for that assertion. Former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot renewed his demand for a state commission of inquiry. Their accusations are political responses to the reporting, not findings from an investigation into this alleged call.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL – JUNE 29: Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet gives a statement to the press he will not take part in the coming general elections on June 29, 2022 in Jerusalem, Israel. The dissolution of Israel’s parliament, prompted by the collapse of its eight-party governing coalition, will force the fifth election in the last four years. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)

The United States has struck multiple Iranian oil tankers linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps following another attempted attack on a U.S. Navy warship, according to U.S. officials. Explosions were reported near Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil-export hub, as Washington again targeted vessels connected to the regime’s financial lifeline.

Iranian state television reported two tankers struck near the southern port of Jask and another near Kharg Island, with crews evacuating. Tasnim reported no casualties in the Kharg incident. The vessels’ identities and the full extent of damage were not immediately clear.

Tehran responded by threatening oil tankers in Kuwaiti and Bahraini ports, with the IRGC’s navy warning crews to leave their vessels. The threat extends the confrontation beyond Iranian waters to commercial shipping near two countries hosting American forces.

Thanks to the precision and professionalism of American service members, the M/T Kylo sank in the Gulf of Oman today and joined Iran’s navy at the bottom of the sea. pic.twitter.com/OwSDMl8SSQ

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) September 6, 2026

The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran’s latest missile attack followed earlier attempts to strike an American aircraft carrier and a guided-missile destroyer. U.S. officials said none of the American vessels were hit. The renewed tanker strikes were described as retaliation for the additional attack.

In the previous round of attacks, CENTCOM said it permanently disabled the Iranian tankers Downy and Stark 1 and destroyed the empty tanker Kylo after directing its crew to abandon ship. The command described the three vessels as part of a multibillion-dollar shadow network financing the IRGC and its regional proxies.

“If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost — taking out three of yours,” CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper warned after those strikes.

Kharg handled approximately 90% of Iran’s crude exports before the war, making the surrounding tanker traffic a critical part of the country’s export system. But strikes on nearby vessels should not be confused with confirmed attacks on the island’s oil terminals: the latest reporting does not establish that its onshore oil infrastructure was hit.

Washington is simultaneously tightening its economic campaign. The Treasury Department announced sanctions against 36 targets supporting Iran’s aviation sector under Operation Economic Outcast, saying the regime uses the industry to transport weapons, personnel and illicit cargo. The measures also target overseas intermediaries and aircraft-procurement networks.

Iran has meanwhile announced plans for a restricted maritime zone extending beyond the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf. Its latest evacuation warnings add a direct threat against ships in neighboring ports to that effort to dictate regional shipping movements.

The escalation comes as Iran-backed Houthis have also attacked Saudi energy facilities, widening the danger to regional oil infrastructure. The immediate question is whether Tehran follows through on its threats against Gulf shipping, turning another failed attack on American warships into a broader confrontation over the region’s energy trade.

OpenAI says a team of AI agents has produced a solution to the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem, tackling a question that has resisted mathematicians for roughly 90 years. The system behind it was not GPT-6 Astra, but an internal model the company describes as “significantly more capable.” If independently accepted, the result would rank among the most consequential demonstrations of AI-driven discovery yet.

The scale is extraordinary: roughly 10,000 agents working concurrently, reaching their proposed solution about 88 hours after the effort began. OpenAI says formalizing and verifying the proof in Lean took another 17 hours using GPT-6 Astra. The Navier–Stokes effort alone involved 2.7 million messages exchanged by agents.

This is not an obscure puzzle with an impressive name. The Clay Mathematics Institute selected seven Millennium Prize Problems to recognize challenges of historic mathematical importance, assigning $1 million to each. Its website currently lists only the Poincaré conjecture as solved.

The question concerns the mathematics of fluid motion. Start with a smooth, three-dimensional flow: will the equations continue describing it smoothly, or can the solution develop a singularity in finite time? Viscosity tends to smooth motion, but proving whether that protection is always enough has been a formidable challenge.

OpenAI’s paper describes a fluid initially at rest, set in motion by a carefully constructed, smooth external force. A shrinking vortex develops increasingly extreme speeds, eventually becoming mathematically unbounded while total kinetic energy remains bounded. This is a breakdown of the mathematical description, not a claim that real water can physically travel infinitely fast.

The external force is an important distinction. The official prize formulation explicitly allows smooth forcing in its breakdown alternatives, labeled C and D, which OpenAI’s paper claims to establish. But the result does not establish the same breakdown without external forcing, nor does it provide a universal solution to turbulence. Its significance depends on precisely what was proved, not a broader claim that every fluid-dynamics mystery has disappeared.

An examination measures performance on questions designed to have answers. A discovery of this caliber would establish something mathematicians did not previously know how to prove. That is the potentially historic shift: AI contributing at the research frontier, rather than merely demonstrating mastery of existing material.

It was also not one chatbot answering one prompt. Researchers directed the effort, redistributed computing resources and consolidated promising intermediate results. Agents worked in communicating groups with access to code execution and cached internet material. The achievement, as described, combines advanced models, enormous parallel effort and human research judgment.

The release includes something more substantial than a confident announcement: a mathematical paper and public Lean formalizations. Lean checks logical proofs, rather than judging whether an explanation sounds convincing. However, reviewers still need to establish that the formal statements and assumptions faithfully capture the intended mathematical problem. Machine verification is powerful evidence, not permission to skip scrutiny.

Clay’s website still lists Navier–Stokes as unsolved. Prize consideration requires publication in a qualifying outlet, at least two years afterward and general acceptance by the global mathematics community. OpenAI says it does not intend to claim the prize.

There is also a dispute over research credit. Mathematician Tristan Buckmaster, who worked with Levent Alpöge on related problems, has questioned whether their unpublished work influenced OpenAI’s effort. OpenAI denies accessing their work before publication, while acknowledging it cannot entirely exclude an indirect contribution through de-identified training data. That disagreement remains unresolved.

None of this makes the underlying possibility less astonishing. If the proof withstands independent examination, human-directed AI will have helped resolve one of mathematics’ most celebrated challenges through a concentrated effort measured in days. That would not, by itself, establish artificial general intelligence. It would offer something more concrete: a remarkable example of machines helping expand the boundaries of human knowledge.

Israel announced Tuesday that it will close Britain’s consulate in East Jerusalem, escalating a diplomatic confrontation after London unveiled restrictions targeting Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Israel would also exclude Britain from the U.S.-led Gaza coordination mission operating in Israel, end British training of Palestinian Authority security forces and bar selected British officials and other nationals from entering the country. The response was coordinated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The British consulate serves as London’s diplomatic representation to the Palestinian Authority. Its proposed closure extends the dispute beyond trade, directly affecting Britain’s regional diplomatic role.

Britain’s measures include banning imports from Israeli settlements and prohibiting companies from providing related services, including financing, construction, infrastructure, real estate and advertising. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said the policy was intended to preserve the possibility of a Palestinian state.

Ed Miliband

Miliband also accused Israeli settlers of carrying out ethnic cleansing with government backing. Sa’ar rejected those allegations as “outrageous lies” and accused Britain of interfering in Israel’s sovereign affairs and electoral process.

The British trade restrictions are expected to require six to nine months to implement. France and Canada also announced plans to block settlement imports, widening the diplomatic pressure on Israel.

The foreign ministers of 11 European countries and Canada issued a joint statement published Tuesday by the United Kingdom and France announcing sanctions on Judea and Samaria.

The statement stated or called for the following:

• Israel’s planned settlement building in Section E1 undermines the possibility of a two-state solution.
• Settlement expansion must immediately cease, civilian administrative powers must be withheld, and settlers who engage in violence against Arabs must be held to account.
• The unprecedented levels of settler violence and settlement expansion are contributing to a rapidly deteriorating situation in Judea and Samaria.
• The countries will sanction goods from settlements considered illegal under international law.

The countries are Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

“Together, we are convinced that the two-state solution must be protected, and we are determined to act in favor of a just and lasting peace, based on the principles set out in the New York Declaration adopted one year ago. We strongly oppose any action that results in the annexation of Palestinian land and the forced displacement of Palestinian populations,” the statement read.

“The Israeli government must immediately put an end to the expansion of settlements and civilian administrative powers, ensure that settlers responsible for violence are held accountable for their actions, and investigate allegations involving Israeli forces,” it added.

The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, posted a statement Tuesday on X explaining France’s participation in the joint statement.

“France will end trade with Israeli settlements located in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, alongside eleven other countries that have made similar commitments,” he wrote, explaining that “the West Bank is on the brink of explosion: unchecked expansion of colonization in violation of international law, surge in violence perpetrated by extremist settlers against Palestinians, acts of terror denounced by the Israeli authorities themselves.”

He added that this “deleterious situation” undermines the dignity of the Palestinian people, harms Israel’s security interests, and makes a two-state solution impossible.

While acknowledging that the Oct. 7 attack “is an immense, indelible wound that must not be minimized or relativized,” he called on Israel to “imperatively put an end to illegal colonization and the intolerable violence that accompanies it.”

Israel’s and Britain’s foreign ministers have been squabbling about this issue in recent weeks, with Israel threatening retaliation if the U.K. imposes measures against Judea and Samaria.

Israel’s ambassador-designate to Japan, Emmanuel Navon, pushed back against demands for his expulsion ahead of planned protests set to take place at the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo Tuesday night amid accusations against Israel of genocide.

“Tonight, a demonstration demanding my expulsion will take place in front of the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo,” he wrote on X alongside a video statement. “To the lie of ‘genocide’ against Israel, I respond like this.”

“Even if you put an X mark on my photo, you cannot erase the history or future of my people,” he said.

“The louder you raise your voices, the higher I will raise my country’s flag,” he added.

“Am Yisrael Chai. The people of Israel live,” he concluded.

In his video statement, Navon hit back against the genocide accusation, noting that even before Israel began its ground offensive, just one day after the Oct. 7 attack, a “sign at a New York rally already declared Zionism is genocide.” He also pointed out that despite Israel’s overwhelming air power, it put its own soldiers at risk, putting boots on the ground to minimize civilian harm.

He also noted the following points that give the lie to the genocide accusation:

• The IDF sent out evacuation notices ahead of airstrikes.
• The military canceled strikes when it found out civilians were in the area.
• Israel paused military operations to facilitate the vaccination of Gaza’s child population against polio.

“So stop talking nonsense,” he said.

“Then comes the perverse inversion: the people who survived the Holocaust and whose enemies still promise their destruction are branded as the new Nazis,” he added. “Hamas’s massacre is excused as resistance. Israel’s fight against Hamas is branded genocide. Nazi propaganda portrayed Jews as a danger whose elimination would redeem the world. Those who promise a better world through Israel’s destruction repeat that poisonous logic.”

Ahead of Rosh Hashanah, Navon called on the genocide accusers to repent and turn away from hate.

“Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, approaches. It opens the 10 days of repentance, a time to examine our actions, acknowledge wrongdoing, and change course. To those spreading this libel, that means abandoning falsehood and turning away from hatred. Remember the warning of the Bible: Whoever blesses Israel shall be blessed, and whoever curses Israel shall be cursed,” he said.

Navon expressed gratitude for the honor of serving his country and representing Israel to Japan, said that crossing out his photo will not erase Israel, and called down judgment on those who spread lies against Israel.

“I am proud to be Jewish and proud to be Israeli,” he said. “You can cross [out] my photograph, but you cannot erase my people’s history or our future. The louder you shout, the higher I will raise our flag. I carry it with love, with pride, and with unshakable determination … May the new year bring judgment to those who spread lies and hatred against Israel. Shanah Tovah.”

In an interview with an Israel-based outlet, Navon said that the protests were organized by a “a small group of extremists,” but that in general “the Japanese police is fantastic, and we have many supporters in Japan.”

“And our supporters expect from us to show courage and determination,” he added.

Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša issued a statement Monday in which he criticized the former Slovenian government for antisemitism.

Until this month, Slovenia was one of only two countries in Central Europe not to host a resident Israeli embassy (the other is the tiny country of Liechtenstein), but the country is now set to open a physical embassy. Defending his decision to appoint a resident ambassador to Israel, Janša said that his current government “is merely normalizing Slovenian foreign policy and repairing the damage caused by left-wing extremism. The economic damage alone due to the antisemitic policy of [former Slovenia PM] Golob’s coalition is enormous.”

Before Janša assumed the premiership in May, Slovenia was considered one Europe’s most hostile countries to Israel.

Janša also said last month in a rebuke to Slovenian President Nataša Pirc Musar, who criticized him for his stance on Israel, that “swearing allegiance to international law while at the same time speaking of genocide in Gaza or in Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank), which no competent institution has determined under international law — is a political choice of a special kind.”

At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed gratitude to Janša for his moral clarity.

“Thank you PM Janša for your courage and clarity amidst EU hypocrisy,” the prime minister posted on X. “The EU remains silent when Turkey, a NATO member, illegally occupies half of Cyprus — an EU member! Yet when the Jewish people want to exercise their historic right to build and live in their ancestral homeland, the EU is outraged.”

“You reminded everyone that Slovenia is a sovereign state and an equal member of the EU. That is not a provocation. It is a right that some wish to deny,” he added. “Thank you, Janez, for your conviction and leadership.”

Slovenia also blocked a joint statement by the European Union condemning the Israeli proposal to build more than 1,000 housing units in a section called E1 in Judea, which is in Area C and thus under Israeli jurisdiction.

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon told Piers Morgan on his show “Uncensored” Monday that the violence in Judea and Samaria is criminal in nature, not terroristic, and that it’s “more dangerous to be a Jew living in Judea and Samaria than a Palestinian.”

Morgan pressed Danon on U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee’s statement that the Jewish people in Judea and Samaria who engage in violence are terrorists, asking him if the U.S. official, whom Danon called “a great friend of Israel,” was wrong to characterize them that way.

Danon said that is indeed a mischaracterization, explaining that “when you speak about terrorist activities, you have to look for the pattern. You have to look for the budget and the ideology behind it. Here you have a case of few dozens criminals. Nobody is behind them. Nobody is organizing them. We have to put them behind bars, and we are doing that. But if you compare it to the Hamas terrorism, for example, when you have a radical jihadi ideology with an organization, with structure, funding, that’s terrorism.”

Danon also reminded Morgan that Huckabee had warned against applying the label of settler violence to the whole settler community.

“Ambassador Huckabee is a great friend of Israel, and if you pay attention to what he said, he actually spoke about few dozens who commit those horrible crimes,” Danon said. “And he actually said that you should not label the entire community in Judea and Samaria, more than half a million people, committing those crimes. It’s like you taking the entire city of Liverpool and you label the entire community as being criminals. We condemn those criminal acts. Period. The president, the prime minister, we take actions, we arrest them, we indict them, and we are doing more.”

When Morgan challenged Danon on what he called actual “acts of terrorism,” including arson and murder, Danon fired back that the terrorism is in fact the other way around.

“It is more dangerous to be a Jew living in Judea and Samaria than a Palestinian,” he said. “But in your show and in any other shows, nobody speaks about the violence against the Jewish communities; the focus is only on the criminal act of the of the Jewish communities of those dozens of criminals [that] we condemn. And I’m telling you that you will not find anyone in Israel with an official who supports those criminal acts. We are against it, and it’s not part of our society, and that is the difference.”

Danon also said that the international community needs a “reality check”: The Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are there to stay, and calling them violent settlers will not change that fact.

“By labeling the Jewish communities as terrorists, you know it’s not going to move them anywhere. And I hear the voices coming from the U.K. threatening us: it is about time to have a reality check. The Jewish communities will not go anywhere. They will stay in Judea and Samaria forever,” he declared.

A powerful essay published by The New York Times is drawing attention for presenting a truth that much of the Western media and pro-Palestinian movement have spent years avoiding: Hamas has devastated Gaza, betrayed its residents and must be permanently removed from power.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who was born and raised in Gaza, describes how the terrorist organization systematically destroyed the foundations of a potentially prosperous Palestinian society.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

According to Alkhatib, Hamas behaved like a violent criminal organization from its earliest days, brutalizing Palestinian women, torturing suspected opponents and deliberately murdering Israeli civilians in suicide bombings.

The terror group’s October 7, 2023 massacre then plunged Gaza into an unprecedented catastrophe. Hamas invaded southern Israel, murdered civilians, abducted hostages and knowingly triggered a devastating war that would be fought inside Gaza’s densely populated neighborhoods.

GAZA – 2015/08/11: Masked Palestinian gunmen from Ezzedine al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of Hamas movement, hold weapons during a military march, to mark the first anniversary of the Israeli large-scale war waged on the Gaza Strip. (Photo by Nidal Alwaheidi/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Alkhatib lost numerous members of his own family during the conflict. Yet instead of excusing Hamas or shifting all responsibility onto Israel, he places blame where much of the Western activist class refuses to place it: on the terrorists who launched the war and embedded themselves among Gaza’s civilian population.

His conclusion is unequivocal. Hamas must have no political, military or administrative role in Gaza’s future.

The essay also confronts Western activists who portray Hamas terrorists as heroic “resistance fighters.” Alkhatib argues that glorifying the organization does nothing to help Palestinians. Instead, it prolongs Gaza’s misery and shields Hamas from the accountability it deserves.

He points to activists connected to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani who celebrated “resistance” and “Intifada,” as well as influential streamer Hasan Piker, who has been accused of helping normalize Hamas while campaigning for Mamdani, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and other Democratic figures.

Recent polling has highlighted the consequences of this propaganda. While most Americans continue to support Israel over Hamas, disturbingly large numbers of younger voters now say they side with the terrorist organization.

That is not compassion for Palestinians. Supporting the group that hijacked Gaza, crushed its political opposition, murdered Israelis and sacrificed generations of Palestinians is the opposite of caring about Palestinian lives.

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP – NOVEMBER 4: Search operations for the bodies of Israeli hostages continue as part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas at the Shujaiyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza on November 4, 2025. Egyptian heavy machinery, accompanied by teams from the International Committee of the Red Cross and Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, continued their third day of work around Baghdad Street to recover the bodies of Israeli captives killed during the conflict. (Photo by Khames Alrefi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Alkhatib believes Gaza could still become a peaceful and prosperous society, but only if it rejects Hamas, jihadism and the destructive ideology that has repeatedly turned the territory into a launching pad for terrorism.

The question is whether Western activists will finally listen to a Gazan telling them the truth, or continue cheering for the very terrorists responsible for Gaza’s destruction.

For once, The New York Times gave its readers an honest account of Hamas. Hopefully, it will not be the last. (New York Post⁠)

The Israel Foreign Ministry posted a video clip from Palestinian Media Watch, a watchdog group that monitors Arabic media, in which a spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority discusses how it got around Israel’s attempts to end its “pay for slay” program, which the PA calls the Martyrs’ Fund, despite acknowledging the hurdles and difficulties involved.

“Palestinian spokesman just admitted the truth: the Palestinian Authority’s “Pay-for-Slay” program never stopped. They just hid the paper trail,” the Foreign Ministry posted alongside the video.

“Despite international pressure to end it, the PA is still paying monthly financial rewards to convicted terrorists and their families, using circuitous banking routes, and indirect networks designed to evade foreign oversight,” it added. “Different route. Same reward for terror.”

“What the U.S. is asking for regarding the stopping of payments to prisoners and martyrs [what Palestinians call terrorists] and changing the Palestinian [school] curricula is something that unfortunately, we, as Palestinians, do not accept,” the spokesperson said in the video clip.

“But regarding the salaries of the martyrs and prisoners, has the payment of salaries to many of them been stopped?” the interviewer asked.

“No, the tax money was stolen by Israel so the payments would not reach the families of the martyrs and our prisoners and wounded,” he answered. “The PA does not even have a budget to pay the salaries of our public employees. Therefore, when Israel and the U.S. realized there was a revolving door for paying the salaries of the martyrs and prisoners, we did not stop the payment of salaries.”

The IDF announced Monday that it had eliminated Yusuf Aqila, a company commander in Hamas’ elite Nukhba unit, in a vehicle strike in the Gaza City area. The military said in a statement that the terrorist had directed attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians and had worked “to restore Hamas’ terrorist capabilities, in systematic violation of the ceasefire.”

“The strike was conducted to remove the immediate threat he posed,” the IDF added, saying that the strike was conducted using precise munitions and aerial surveillance to minimize harm to civilians. It also said that its troops remain deployed in the area under the Southern Command and vowed to act to remove threats to the security of Israelis.

In this photo, Aqila is seen walking alongside Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. (Credit: X)

Users on X expressed glee over the killing.

“Yusuf Aqila, Abu Al-Walid, a commander in Hamas’ military wing, was killed in an attack on a vehicle in western Gaza City. His limbs were severed. Because nothing says ‘high-value leadership’ quite like becoming a same-day assembly kit. Western Gaza delivery has never been this thorough,” one social media user said.

Abu Al-Walid is an alias for Aqila. Initial reports seem to suggest that his daughter was also killed in the strike and six others were wounded.

The Nukhba unit of Hamas is an elite special operations force within the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. The unit is composed of highly trained special operations combatants who carry out infiltrations, raids, and ambushes. Israel has said that this unit led the Oct. 7 attack against Israel in 2023.

Not long after disembarking from an airplane at Ben-Gurion International Airport on Sept. 2, Artem Kirpichenok, a dual Russian-Israeli citizen, was hustled away by Shin Bet officials and taken into custody.

According to reports in Russian media, two days later, the historian was indicted on several counts of espionage. The Russian newspaper Izvestia reported that he is being held in the maximum-security wing of Ayalon Prison. The paper also reported that he had visited Iran several times, including a two-week stay in the fall of 2018. He is charged, among other things, with contact with foreign intelligence operatives.

Credit: Nika Dubrovsky

Kirpichenok’s lawyer said in an update about his client last week that the indictment was scheduled to be read in court on Friday and that he will remain in prison after a request to transfer him to house arrest was denied.

The alleged spy’s lawyer slammed his client’s treatment, despite previously saying in the same statement that “Artem’s condition is satisfactory.”

“They lead him bent almost double, with shackles on his wrists and ankles and a heavy weight attached to the chains. Looking at Artem, I kept remembering Dostoevsky’s novels and everything nineteenth-century Russian literature wrote about prisoners sent to penal colonies,” the lawyer said.

“I was deeply upset, and I will not hide that from you. In ten years of legal practice and working in the courts, I have never seen anyone escorted like this. Even people accused of murder are not treated this way,” he added. “This is unprecedented. I have never seen anything like it.”

Nika Dubrovsky, his co-author on a history book, slammed the arrest on X, saying that Kirpichenok “might just as well be accused of being in contact with aliens.”

“Arrests like this resemble human sacrifice: their only purpose is to unite society around a common danger and hatred of an ‘enemy,'” she added.

At the Canfield Fair in Ohio Sunday, police arrested a man after he shoved his way in a threatening manner toward the Democratic Ohio gubernatorial candidate, Amy Acton, who is Jewish. Police found two handguns and a set of brass knuckles in his possession, although he didn’t brandish any weapons during the attack.

The Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office announced Sunday evening the arrest of 38-year-old Patrick Havas, who had pushed his way into a Democratic Party tent where Acton was delivering remarks. According to the sheriff’s office, Havas at first began recording the speech on his cell phone, but when he began shoving his way forward, Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers confronted him and arrested him. Two people were knocked down during the confrontation, and Havas was taken into custody by Canfield Fair police.

Detectives said the case remains under investigation and charges would be filed following a consultation with the Mahoning County Prosecutor.

Addie Bullock, communications director for the Acton campaign, issued a statement following the incident.

“While attending the Canfield Fair, an armed individual lunged at Dr. Acton, injuring multiple people,” she said.

“This kind of violence has no place in Ohio,” she added. “Dr. Acton will always stand up to the chaos, hate and vitriol that pits us against one another.”

Acton’s Republican opponent, Vivek Ramaswamy, condemned the attack in a statement, and his spokesperson said that “candidates should be able to meet with voters without having to worry about threats or violence. What happened today is completely unacceptable and has no place in politics, and we hope that no one was hurt.”

If elected, Acton will be the first Jewish governor and the second woman to govern the state that became the 17th one to join the United States on March 1, 1803.

Miriam, one of Israel’s greatest supporters and a member of the Dallas Mavericks’ majority ownership family, was seen dancing joyfully to a Mordechai Ben David song as she celebrated her son’s wedding.

Matan is a businessman and the majority owner of Israel’s Hapoel Jerusalem basketball club, but on this beautiful night, business and basketball took a back seat to family, tradition and pure Jewish joy, he is marrying Yahav Haliva

.

But behind this beautiful simcha is an extraordinary blessing that began 35 years ago.

In the summer of 1991, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson visited the Lubavitcher Rebbe to receive a blessing before their wedding.

The Rebbe handed them charity dollars and blessed Sheldon “for your entire family.”

Miriam, already in her 40s, then asked the Rebbe for a blessing that she would have a child.

“Why in the singular?” the Rebbe responded. “A child must be followed by at least another.”

The Rebbe then handed them additional dollars for the children yet to be born, blessing them with “good tidings and much success.”

Thirty-five years later, that second son, Matan Adelson, stood beneath the chuppah and married Yahav Haliva in Israel.

The Rebbe gives Sheldon Adelson a blessing "for your entire family," followed by two additional dollar bills to each to be given to charity on the day of their wedding. pic.twitter.com/XfXbnEvJau

— JEM – The Lubavitcher Rebbe (@JEMediaOrg) January 12, 2021

A blessing given decades ago. A mother’s prayer fulfilled. And now, another beautiful Jewish family begins its story.

Mazel tov to Matan and Yahav! May they build a bayit ne’eman b’Yisrael, filled with love, happiness and endless blessing.

For most Israelis, the fear of another October 7 is not confined to Gaza. A new poll finds that 77% worry Palestinian Authority security forces could carry out a similar large-scale terrorist attack from Judea & Samaria. Among Jewish respondents, that figure rises to 86%.

The survey, released by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA), also found substantial opposition to Palestinian statehood: 67% of Israelis overall, including 75% of Jewish Israelis, oppose establishing a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines. Conducted with Lazar Research, the poll surveyed a representative sample of 703 respondents.

The findings come as Defense Minister Israel Katz issued an explicit warning about the consequences of PA security forces turning their weapons against Israel.

KFAR AZA, ISRAEL – JANUARY 04: A view of a house left in ruins after an attack by Hamas militants during the October 7th massacre on January 04, 2024 in Kfar Aza, Israel. Around 1,200 people were killed, with several hundred taken hostage, during Hamas’s surprise cross-border attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Many of those towns and kibbutzim remain completely evacuated, with their residents having relocated to other parts of Israel. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)

Katz said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have instructed the IDF to prepare for an “all-out war” if PA security institutions or affiliated groups launch an October 7-style attack against Israeli troops and Jewish communities, or Israel knows with certainty that such an assault is about to begin. The threatened campaign would target senior PA officials, its security apparatuses and terrorist infrastructure throughout Judea & Samaria.

He also described targeted killings of senior figures, evacuating residents from towns and villages used for terrorist activity, and maintaining an Israeli military presence in those areas. These were conditional preparations, not an announcement that such a campaign had begun.

The distinction matters because PA security forces have historically cooperated with Israel against Hamas and other armed groups. A coordinated assault by those institutions would represent a far broader security breakdown than an attack by an individual terrorist.

NUSEIRAT, GAZA – MARCH 20: Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, distributed sweets to children while celebrating Eid al-Fitr with them on the first day of the holiday at the Nuseirat Camp in the Gaza Strip on March 20, 2026. (Photo by Moiz Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

An earlier JCFA study by retired IDF Lt. Col. Maurice Hirsch argued that the PA’s security establishment has expanded far beyond the force envisioned under the Oslo Accords.

Hirsch estimated approximately 70,000 personnel overall, compared with the agreement’s 30,000-person ceiling, including more than 50,000 in Judea & Samaria. His report also alleged that the forces possess armored vehicles and heavier weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades and shoulder-fired missiles. Those are the think tank’s assessments, not independently confirmed IDF figures.

The study’s central concern is proximity: it outlines four hypothetical approaches to Israeli population centers, roughly 22 kilometers long, arguing that a coordinated assault could put large civilian populations at risk within a short distance.

Neither the poll nor Katz’s statement establishes that the PA has ordered such an attack. What they show is widespread public alarm alongside an explicit Israeli red line: a PA-led assault, or certain knowledge that one is imminent, would bring a campaign against the institutions behind it.

Kamran Hekmati, the Jewish Iranian-American imprisoned over a trip to Israel for his son’s bar mitzvah, has reportedly been released from Tehran’s Evin Prison. But he still cannot return to the United States: Iranian authorities continue to bar him from leaving the country.

Radio Farda reported his release, citing sources familiar with the case. CBS News’ Margaret Brennan separately said she had confirmed that Hekmati was out of Evin but remained unable to depart Iran. Iranian authorities have not publicly confirmed the release or disclosed its conditions.

A family celebration becomes a prison case

Hekmati, a New York jeweler and longtime resident of Great Neck, traveled to Iran in 2025 to help with a family matter. According to his family’s campaign, authorities confiscated his passport when he tried to leave in May. He repeatedly sought its return before being arrested in July.

His family says investigators found dated photographs on his phone from the Israel trip 13 years earlier. The law used against him covered visits within the preceding decade, they say, meaning his son’s bar mitzvah celebration fell outside that window. Nevertheless, the court convicted him after proceedings that his family says lasted about 10 minutes, without a lawyer or witnesses.

Radio Farda reports that his initial four-year prison sentence was later reduced to two years. His imprisonment turned a longstanding family connection to Iran into a prolonged fight to get him home.

Cancer concerns add urgency

Hekmati’s family has repeatedly raised concerns about bladder cancer and inadequate access to specialized treatment in detention. In a recorded account from inside Evin, fellow American prisoner Reza Valizadeh said Hekmati had been returned to prison after temporary medical leave, before he could begin chemotherapy.

The United States formally designated Hekmati as wrongfully detained earlier this year. His case drew bipartisan congressional advocacy, including efforts led by New York Reps. Tom Suozzi and Claudia Tenney to secure his freedom.

Valizadeh, a former Radio Farda journalist, remains imprisoned at Evin. He is serving a 10-year sentence after being convicted of cooperating with the United States, and has appealed for medical assistance for himself and other detained Americans.

For Hekmati, the unresolved question is whether Iran will lift the travel ban. No timetable has been announced. His reported departure from Evin is a significant development, but it is not yet the homecoming his family has been fighting for.

Yaakov, an Orthodox Jewish soldier serving in the Ukrainian army, strengthens the hands and spirits of his comrades as they prepare for battle. Before moving forward, he pauses among the trees to recite a chapter of Psalms, turning to the same ancient words that have sustained the Jewish people through generations of war, persecution and uncertainty.

The moment carries profound personal meaning. These are the very same forests where my grandfather once fought the Nazis as a partisan, risking his life to resist those determined to destroy the Jewish people.

Decades later, another Jewish fighter stands beneath those trees, openly wearing his faith and offering prayers for protection, courage and victory.

The uniforms and enemies may have changed, but the Jewish spirit remains unbroken. From one generation of warriors to the next, the courage to stand against evil continues.

May God protect Yaakov and all those fighting beside him and bring them home safely.

GnasherJew, a Jewish group that uses open-source intelligence to expose extremism, Holocaust denial, and antisemitism, has revealed that the London Humanitarian Bank for Gaza was established by someone with ties to terrorists.

The London Humanitarian Bank for Gaza was founded by Yusuf Husam Al-Dremali and organized by Roja Kerr, a London-based activist who calls herself “Watermelon Woman” on her Instagram account, and Anika Zahir, a pro-Hamas activist.

Online video footage shows Kerr wearing a watermelon costume and dancing to Arabic music.

One of Al-Dremali’s relatives, Saber Faraj Al-Dremali, participated in the Oct. 7 attack and died of wounds sustained during the fighting, and another, Ahmed Ziyad Youssef Al-Dremali, is a commander in Hamas’ Arrow Unit, a plainclothes police unit that uses torture to suppress dissent against Hamas. According to GnasherJew, the London Humanitarian Bank for Gaza “is actively promoting and collecting funds for his fundraising efforts.”

“A review of the London Humanitarian Bank for Gaza, a small non-registered group, along with Roja Kerr’s online activity, shows that they actively promote Yusuf’s personal donation campaign and collect funds on his behalf. Additionally, this allegedly ‘humanitarian’ group follows an Iran-based antisemitic account on Instagram, as well as another account that features Hitler … as its profile picture,” GnasherJew reported.

The group called on the Metropolitan Police to investigate the London Humanitarian Bank for Gaza.

“As previously stated, we believe that many terror-linked individuals in Gaza, such as the Al-Dremali family in this case, exploit crowdfunding services to collect funds for illicit and harmful purposes. The apparent lack of due diligence practices on online platforms like GoFundMe and Chuffed calls for a thorough investigation into the potential misuse of their services. We also urge the Metropolitan Police to investigate Roja Kerr and Anika Zhir for alleged terror offenses,” the group stated on its website.

The shoe company Adidas apologized for causing “offense” to Jew haters for an ad promoting its Single Shoe service that featured an IDF soldier with an amputated leg. The ad, although produced by its local team in Israel for Israelis, sparked worldwide calls for a boycott against Adidas, a company founded by two German Nazi brothers.

Shalev Biton was not injured in the current war with Gaza, nor was he injured while serving in Gaza. An anti-tank missile launched at Israel from Gaza hit his military vehicle within the Israeli border, injuring him and killing his comrade in May 2021 during a previous conflict with Gaza called Operation Guardian of the Walls.

“We recognize that an image used in a recent local activation by the local team has raised concerns and strong reactions. It was never our intent to cause offense and we apologize for anyone affected,” the company said in a statement.

Screenshot from the ad.

“We acknowledge the concerns that have been raised and are taking the feedback seriously,” it continued.

“Across the Middle East, Adidas has a long-standing commitment to the communities we serve, working alongside athletes, teams and sporting communities throughout the region as well as supporting people and communities in need through product donations,” the statement said.

“We will continue to listen, learn and work to ensure that our actions reflect the inclusive values we stand for,” it added.

Biton was falsely accused of fighting in Gaza in the current war and participating in the so-called “genocide.”

Jewish activists reacted with dismay to Adidas’ apology, noting the company’s Nazi origins and its Kanye West controversy.

“Adidas, a company started by Nazis, caved to anti-Israel social media hate and apologized for ‘offending’ people by having the gaul [sic] to feature an Israeli in its Middle East Single Shoe campaign for amputees. Pathetic,” wrote Jonah Platt on X.

“Adidas—the brand that stuck by Kanye long after his antisemitism was clear and whose founders Adi and Rudi Dassler were members of the Nazi party—has apologized for partnering with a disabled Jewish man. How completely on brand,” Hen Mazzig posted on the same platform.

Also on X, Israel War Room stated: It took Adidas longer to apologize for standing by Kanye West after his repeated blatant antisemitic comments in 2022 than it did for Adidas to apologize for featuring a wounded IDF veteran in its Israel-only ad. Despicable.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, speaking at “The Diplomacy Factory,” a festival organized by his ministry at the Sorbonne in Paris, said that France “has done more for the Palestinian cause than any other country since Oct. 7,” pushing back on students who complained to him that Spain did more.

“What did Spain do? You can’t name anything. It’s France. This is where the first humanitarian conference on Gaza happened, France was the origin of sanctions against settlers, France rallied the international community,” Barrot fired back.

Rabbi Mendel Samama of the Hemdat Shlomo congregation in Strasbourg slammed Barrot for his remarks.

“What a disgrace this minister is,” he seethed on X. “The wording of his sentence says far more than all the speeches…And the worst part is that it’s not even enough to win over the haters.”

Rabbi Mendel Samama of the Hemdat Shlomo congregation in Strasbourg. (Credit: Mendel Samama)

A social media user,who goes by the handle Sarah Abv and who claims to be a “journalist for Israel’s French-speaking community” posted “One knows” alongside an AI-generated image of Barrot prostrating before representations of Hamas, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

Israel’s Minister of Diaspora and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli also weighed in, expressing his astonishment that after the horrific attack of Oct. 7, this is what the foreign minister finds himself busy with.

Credit: Sarah Abv

“Children massacred before their parents’ eyes. Entire families abducted. Women raped. Innocents slaughtered, tortured, beheaded with shovels. And the executioners proudly filming their crimes with their GoPro cameras,” Chikli wrote on X.

“In the face of this barbarity, Barrot’s France will thus have found nothing more urgent than to double down on efforts for the ’cause’ claimed by the assassins, the rapists, and their supporters,” he said.

The antisemitism minister sneered at Barrot as the face of Western moral depravity.

Israel’s Minister of Diaspora and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli. (Credit: Amichai Chikli)

“If one had to give a face to the moral bankruptcy of Western elites, that of Jean Noël Barrot would do perfectly: smugness without courage, posturing without conscience, indignity elevated to diplomacy,” he said, adding that Barrot and his superiors will disappear from history.

“Fortunately, Barrot will soon be nothing more than a former minister. And the winded president who serves as his boss will not be long in joining him in the dustbin of History,” Chikli wrote, referring to Emmanuel Macron.

Provided to JBN by the Western Wall Foundation

Ahead of Rosh Hashanah, in keeping with tradition: Prayer notes placed between the stones of the Western Wall over the past six months have been removed and transferred for ritual burial.

From 140 countries around the world: Tens of thousands of prayer notes were sent over the past year to be placed between the stones of the Western Wall • Among them: moving prayers for peace among nations sent from countries hostile to Israel, alongside notes placed by world leaders, IDF soldiers, Israeli citizens and tourists.

As it does every year ahead of the Tishrei holidays, the Western Wall Heritage Foundation carried out the traditional removal of prayer notes placed between the stones of the Western Wall over the past six months. The notes will subsequently be transferred for dedicated genizah, in accordance with Jewish law.

The Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, accompanied the removal and offered a prayer for the unity of the Jewish people and for the acceptance of the prayers contained in the thousands of notes.

The notes were removed in accordance with Jewish law, using gloves and disposable wooden implements, in order to preserve the sanctity of the site and the personal contents of the notes. The notes were collected in specially designated sacks and will be buried together with worn-out sacred texts as part of the genizah.

The Western Wall Heritage Foundation notes that hundreds of prayer notes are sent every day through the Foundation’s website, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of notes personally placed by worshippers and visitors throughout the year.

What has been particularly striking recently are notes sent through the Foundation’s website by citizens of countries hostile to Israel — including Iran, Yemen, Iraq, Qatar, Lebanon, Pakistan, Sudan, Jordan, Egypt, Kazakhstan and others — containing moving requests and, above all, prayers for peace, reconciliation and the building of ties between peoples and nations.

Over the past year, prayer notes from more than 140 countries and territories around the world were sent through the Western Wall Heritage Foundation’s website and transferred to be placed between the stones of the Western Wall. Alongside the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Ukraine and Canada, notes were also received from distant and unexpected places, including India, South Africa, Indonesia, Taiwan, Jamaica, Kenya and Nigeria — a testament to the global, cross-border connection to the Western Wall.

Photo credit: Western Wall Heritage Foundation

Doron Spielman, the spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office, took the media to task in a Newsmax interview Sunday over the media’s coverage of settler violence in Judea and Samaria, accusing it of “dehumanizing the whole community.”

In the interview, Spielman referred to an HonestReporting study that showed that from January to July 2026, 77 outlets published 984 articles about settler violence compared with nine articles about Palestinian violence, a disparity of 109 to one, despite Arab violence resulting in the deaths of 25 Jews and injuries to 180 others. The publication of stories about settler violence peaked in June, although violent incidents had been falling since March by 25 percent, showing that the coverage does not reflect the reality.

Calling the HonestReporting statistic “unbelievable,” Spielman said that “the media bias is just so great. They’re lying to the public. They’re manipulating away the story.”

The spokesperson called for greater journalistic integrity.

“It’s journalistic, really, integrity that needs to move this back in the center court,” he said, pushing back on the narrative that Israel is doing nothing about the violence.

“Israel has been so clear to condemning these acts of violence and to working on it. We’ve heard it from everybody in the Judean Samaritan region. We heard it from the president. The prime minister speaks about this openly, and we’re dealing with this problem. That’s what you do if you’re in a major city and you have crime.”

He added that the difference between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is that the PA actively teaches and encourages violence.

“You deal with it, but you don’t train your kids to go out and kill people, and that is the policy of the Palestinian Authority, and they’re not only training; they’re paying for it with U.S. tax dollars by rewarding terrorists.”

Spielman concluded by urging the international community to apply pressure to the Palestinian Authority to stop its incitement to violence.

“We need the world to pressure the Palestinian Authority. Go deal with your problems and stop teaching your kids to hate and to murder,” he declared.

An Israeli man was seriously wounded Monday morning when a Palestinian terrorist infiltrated the Maoz Yehuda Farm in central Samaria and repeatedly stabbed him before fleeing the scene.

Terrorist’s knife breaks off after repeated stabbings into victim

Hatzalah Judea and Samaria said the victim suffered multiple stab wounds to his upper body and hand. The brutal assault reportedly continued until the terrorist’s knife broke.

Emergency personnel treated the victim at the scene before evacuating him to Rabin Medical Center in Petach Tikvah.

IDF forces quickly established roadblocks throughout the area and launched an intensive search for the attacker. Approximately one hour later, soldiers located him near his vehicle outside the Arab town of Qabalan.

According to the IDF, the terrorist attempted to stab the troops when they confronted him. An Israeli commander opened fire and eliminated him.

Eliminated terrorist

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the soldiers for swiftly tracking down the attacker.

“No terrorist has anywhere to hide,” Netanyahu said, while wishing the wounded Israeli a complete and speedy recovery.

Netanyahu vowed that Israel would continue eliminating terrorists, pursuing those responsible for sending them and destroying terrorist infrastructure throughout Judea and Samaria.

Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel’s policy remains focused on aggressively confronting Palestinian terrorism, strengthening Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and preserving security throughout the region.

Katz noted that terrorism in Judea and Samaria is currently at its lowest level in decades but warned that Israel would take every necessary measure to prevent another prolonged wave of attacks.

He also revealed that he and Netanyahu had instructed the IDF to prepare for a broad campaign against Palestinian Authority forces and terrorist networks if PA weapons are turned against Israel.

Such an operation, Katz said, could include targeted strikes against senior figures, evacuating residents from areas being used as terrorist strongholds and maintaining a permanent IDF presence in those locations, similar to operations conducted in Gaza, Lebanon, Jenin and northern Samaria.

“We will not allow a return to the reality of Oct. 7,” Katz said, pledging to protect Israeli residents and communities across the country.

Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan expressed support for the IDF soldiers and commanders involved in the operation and prayed for the victim’s recovery.

Dagan also called for an extensive military campaign in the area to confiscate illegal weapons and dismantle the networks supporting terrorism.

He vowed that terrorism would not force the Jewish people from Samaria and that Israeli communities in the region would continue to grow.

Adidas is defending its single-shoe service after anti-Israel activists launched boycott calls over a campaign featuring Shalev Biton, an Israeli veteran who lost his left leg. The company has rejected claims that the accessibility initiative was created specifically for Israeli soldiers, emphasizing that it serves customers internationally.

Biton appeared alongside 10 other disabled athletes in promotional posters displayed in Adidas stores in Israel, not internationally. The service they highlighted addresses a straightforward problem: customers who need only one shoe can purchase it for half the price of a pair, rather than paying for footwear they cannot use.

Biton’s story began long before the current controversy. In May 2021, he was serving in the Nahal Brigade’s 931st Battalion, protecting Netiv Ha’asara against possible terrorist infiltration, when a Hamas anti-tank missile struck his military vehicle on the Israeli side of the Gaza border. The attack killed his friend, Staff Sgt. Omer Tabib, and left Biton critically wounded.

His left leg was amputated. Following rehabilitation, he returned to running with a prosthetic limb. When announcing his Adidas collaboration, he described repeatedly having to buy two running shoes despite using only one. For him, the service represented a practical change: businesses adapting to people with disabilities, rather than expecting them to bear every inconvenience themselves.

That message has been overtaken by a campaign amplified by Spanish actor Javier Bardem and prominent pro-Palestinian accounts. Activists have circulated images contrasting Biton with Palestinian children who lost limbs in Gaza, accusing Adidas of overlooking Palestinian suffering. Others have encouraged consumers to discard the company’s products.

But some viral claims misrepresent Biton’s history. His injury occurred in 2021, more than two years before the war triggered by Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack. He was not wounded fighting inside Gaza, as some posts suggest. His promotional video did not mention his military service or explain how he lost his leg.

Adidas’ own launch announcement documents the initiative’s wider origins. The service began in 23 European countries and was developed in consultation with disability communities and organizations, including ParalympicsGB. The European offering covers in-stock footwear at Adidas-owned stores, including outlets, rather than a special collection reserved for veterans.

Responding to the controversy, Adidas said interpretations circulating online had misrepresented the service’s purpose. The company emphasized its international scope and said it had subsequently expanded into additional Asian and Middle Eastern markets.

For Biton, the fallout has been personal. He described tens of thousands of hostile posts, videos and messages, and appealed to supporters to share his page and stand alongside him. “I want to feel that you’re here with me,” he wrote.

Ariel has reclaimed first place among Jewish boys, while Avigail remains the favorite for girls, in Israel’s latest baby-name rankings. Released ahead of Rosh Hashanah, the figures accompany a milestone for the outgoing Hebrew year: 179,398 babies registered in the Population Registry.

Across Israel’s entire population, Mohammed ranked first among boys, followed by Ariel, Yosef, Adam and David. Avigail led the girls’ rankings both nationwide and among Jewish families, with Miriam, Lia, Libi and Tamar completing the national top five.

Among Jewish boys, Ariel was followed by David, Rafael and Lavi. Uri, Michael, Eliya, Eitan, Yehuda and Ari completed the top 10. The order marks a reshuffle from the previous Hebrew year, when Lavi finished first, ahead of Ariel and David.

Two Israeli sisters holding the Israeli flag. Concept photo Israel, Israeli, citizen, patriotism, family, childhood, fertility rate..

For Jewish girls, Libi took second place behind Avigail, followed by Tamar, Yael, Lia, Ella, Ayala, Sarah, Noa and Naya.

The longer-term shifts are revealing. Makor Rishon’s comparison of the annual rankings shows Avigail holding first place for a fifth consecutive year. Libi climbed from third to second among Jewish girls, while Lia advanced from eighth to fifth. Naya entered both girls’ top 10 lists, replacing Esther in the Jewish rankings and Noa in the nationwide rankings.

Michael also gained ground among Jewish boys, rising from 10th to sixth, while Yehuda slipped from sixth to ninth. These are changes in ranking, however, not necessarily increases or decreases in the number of children receiving each name.

The accompanying birth figures put Jerusalem far ahead of every other city, with 23,336 registered births, more than Bnei Brak and Tel Aviv-Jaffa combined. Bnei Brak recorded 8,225, followed by Tel Aviv-Jaffa with 7,405, Beit Shemesh with 6,974 and Ashdod with 4,031.

Haifa recorded 3,421 births, followed by Rishon LeZion with 3,413, Netanya with 3,343, Petah Tikva with 3,338 and Modi’in Illit with 3,113.

The figures are a snapshot of the outgoing Hebrew year, compiled before Rosh Hashanah, rather than a completed calendar-year total. The Population and Immigration Authority published the name rankings without individual counts, leaving the margins between the favorites unknown.

David Ben Lulu, a 23-year-old Jerusalem resident, was killed in a motorcycle crash in Vietnam, prompting an international effort to return his body to Israel for burial. ZAKA announced his death and said its teams were working with authorities in Israel, France and Vietnam to complete the arrangements.

N12 reported, citing preliminary information, that Ben Lulu had been riding alone and was killed in a single-vehicle accident. Those initial details have not been accompanied by a definitive account of what caused the crash.

Ben Lulu held both Israeli and French citizenship, making coordination with French authorities part of the effort to bring him home. Following an appeal to France’s Foreign Ministry, the French consulate in Hanoi opened specially on a day it was scheduled to remain closed, allowing officials to advance the paperwork needed for his return.

Serge Ben Chaim, commander of ZAKA France, said he personally went to the French Foreign Ministry, where instructions were issued to the team in Hanoi. He said his organization was also maintaining direct contact with the French consulate and Ben Lulu’s family.

The logistical challenge extends beyond the consular documents. Ben Lulu’s body was hundreds of kilometers from Hanoi, and arrangements were still needed to transfer him to the capital before a flight to Israel. ZAKA’s international unit was working with the family and local authorities to complete those procedures.

The Jerusalem outlet Haredim Jerusalem reported that Ben Lulu lived in Har Nof and had planned to spend Shabbat with his sister, who was also in Vietnam. A former yeshiva classmate remembered his willingness to help others, even in the middle of the night. “He had the biggest heart I have ever seen,” the friend told the outlet.

Chaim Weingarten, ZAKA’s deputy director of operations, said its international unit and French branch were working together to overcome the complications and accelerate the arrangements. The organization’s latest account described those efforts as ongoing, with the immediate goal of bringing Ben Lulu back to Israel for burial.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman gently chided the current ambassador, Mike Huckabee, whom he said he considers a personal friend and a friend of Israel, over his use of the “settler violence” label after visiting Turmus Ayya, an Arab town near Ramallah in Samaria, Saturday and calling for “severe consequences” for Israelis who engaged in violence against Arabs in Judea and Samaria.

Calling Huckabee “my dear friend,” he wrote on X that “no one doubts where your heart is. Your support for Israel is unwavering and historic.”

He then went on to explain the context of the violence: the violent, relentless attacks by Arabs against Israeli settlers, which prompt reactions that, while sometimes inappropriate, usually constitute self-defense.

Credit: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

“Jews don’t wake up in the morning saying ‘I’m going to go kill a Palestinian today,'” Friedman wrote. “The opposite, of course, is not true — hundreds and hundreds of Jewish residents of J&S have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists.”

He also cautioned Huckabee on how this libel is being used against Israel by its enemies.

“The ‘settler violence libel is being used, as you recognize, as part of a coordinated PR effort by the same people who falsely accuse Israel of genocide,” he added. “The Palestinian-Americans … are now draping American flags on their houses so that attacks against them — which they instigate — can be filmed as attacks against America. It’s all a cynical campaign and its roots go back more than a century.”

Friedman explained that observing that only a tiny fraction of settlers engage in violence is a distinction the media does not recognize.

“Unfortunately, labeling the Jews who fight back as ‘terrorists’ is a win for the anti-Israel PR machine who then create a moral equivalency between both sides. Your correct observation that the Jews committing acts of violence are a tiny fraction of the total Jewish population is a distinction entirely lost on the media, who have a false narrative to uphold,” he said.

Germany’s Alternative for Germany political party won big in elections Sunday, sweeping 44 percent of the vote in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, with the Christian Democratic Union, led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, coming in a distant second at 18.5 percent.

“We have made history today,” said Ulrich Siegmund, the lead candidate of the AfD. The possibility remains that the next government will be the most extreme, far-right government in Germany since the Nazi era.

In 2025, Germany’s intelligence service classified the party as right-wing extremist, a classification that allowed intelligence monitoring of the group and that the AfD is challenging in court.

The AfD has run an anti-immigrant, anti-woke, anti-LGBT agenda and is known to be friendly to Moscow. But its rise to power is of grave concern to the Jewish community given its antisemitic tendencies. Its leaders have trivialized the Holocaust, sought to end the concept of remorse for the Holocaust, and engaged in antisemitic tropes.

Björn Höcke, the head of the AfD in the eastern state of Thuringia, said that a Holocaust memorial to murdered Jews was a “memorial of shame” and was convicted by a German court for using a Nazi slogan. Alexander Gauland, the former co-leader of the AfD in the federal parliament, trivialized the rise of Hitler to power and the Holocaust as a “speck of bird s— in over 1,000 years of successful German history.” Wolfgang Gedeon, a former regional AfD lawmaker in Baden-Württemberg, published a book in which he called Judaism the “domestic enemy” of the Christian West. The party failed to expel him.

The American Jewish Committee posted a statement on X expressing its dismay:

“AfD’s election win in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt marks a grim milestone: The party is now within reach of forming Germany’s first far-right state government since the Nazi era,” the AJC wrote.

“AJC Berlin has been sounding the alarm on the AfD’s rampant, intrinsic, and foundational antisemitism that is deeply embedded in its authoritarian-nationalist politics. The AfD’s rise remains a threat to German democracy and the future of Europe,” the group added.

Major airlines are resuming service to Israel after the suspension of flights over the summer due to the war with Iran.

Delta and United Airlines are expected to resume Sunday and Tuesday, respectively, with Delta offering one daily flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport and United offering two daily flights from Newark Liberty International Airport, following the resumption of flights by major European airlines ahead of the busy holiday season beginning with Rosh Hashanah this weekend.

While travelers are hoping this means a drop in airfare prices, travel agents are cautioning that price drops will take time and will likely not take effect until after the holiday season.

In an interview Sunday with an Israel-based outlet, Mark Feldman, CEO of Jerusalem’s Ziontours, noted the discrepancy in pricing between the two major airlines.

Credit: Al Drago/Getty Images

“It is curious that while Delta has aggressively been marketing their return with attractive fares, United has taken the opposite approach,” he said. “They have priced their flights for the remainder of 2026 at very high prices in their economy, Premium Economy and Business classes.”

“This month should prove to be a fascinating exercise in consumer decision making,” he added.

By next month, El Al, Arkia, and Israir are expected to join United and Delta in providing direct flights between the United States and Israel, and later in the year, United and Delta will resume service to Israel from other cities as well, including Delta from Atlanta and United from Chicago and Washington, D.C.

American Airlines is still holding off on providing service until the spring.

Protesters outside the U.S. Embassy in London Sunday carried signs that said “Rape by Dogs,” a reference to the allegation of severe abuse of Arab prisoners in Israeli prisons, including the ludicrous accusation that the IDF trains dogs to rape prisoners.

The allegations were made famous by a New York Times op-ed in May penned by Nicholas Kristof, in which he made the dog-rape accusation that was so flimsy it was never reported on the news side of The New York Times.

The column alleged a pattern of violent abuse of Arab prisoners, including rape, torture ,and sexual abuse, as well as the explosive and bizarre claim that the IDF trains dogs to rape detainees.

The piece ignited major backlash, and Israel’s Foreign Ministry slammed The New York Times for the column at the time.

The Foreign Ministry said the civil commission into Hamas’ systemic violence on and since Oct. 7 approached The New York Times about publishing its findings, but the paper of record said it wasn’t interested. Instead, the day before the commission’s report was released, the Times published Kristof’s column detailing the violence and sexual abuse allegedly inflicted by Israel on Arab prisoners while acknowledging there was no evidence that Israeli leaders ordered the abuse.

Instead, Kristof said, without evidence, that the system created a permission structure in which any kind of abuse is tolerated. For the piece, Kristof interviewed 14 men and women who gave searing accounts of torture at the hands of IDF soldiers, but Arabs have been known to lie to the media about Israel. A famous example is the fabricated Jenin massacre claim in April 2002.

“Months ago, the Civil Commission approached the New York Times with a report on Hamas’ systematic sexual violence on Oct. 7 and after,” the Foreign Ministry posted on X. “The New York Times said it was not interested.”

The ministry noted that the Times was alone among major outlets that did publish the report. For example, CNN and other international outlets ran the commission’s findings.

“Aware of the report and its release date, the night before its release the NYT ran a shameful attack on Israel, belittling Hamas’ sexual crimes. That tells you everything about the NYT’s agenda,” the ministry said.

In a separate post, the ministry called the allegations a “blood libel” and described them as an “inversion of reality.”

But the damage has already been done, with those who hate Israel primed to believe every accusation, no matter how incredible, and ready to use it against Israel at every opportunity.

The famous actress Susan Sarandon complained at the Venice International Film Festival Sunday that she couldn’t get starring roles in major films because she is a victim of Zionism.

Sarandon’s talent agency dropped her in November 2023 after she made antisemitic comments. At a pro-Pally protest on Nov. 17, in Union Square in New York City, she said that Jews were “getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence,” comments that ignited backlash for ignoring historical persecution and current rising antisemitism. Sarandon later apologized for those remarks.

The actress, who is worth a breathtaking $60 million, said that major studios won’t hire her, so she has been relegated to independent studios, like Indigo Film, Rai Cinema, and Versus, which, while independent, wield tremendous influence in European cinema and have produced award-winning films. She is starring in a film produced by these studios that is coming out this month.

“I’ve still had movies taken away recently because there are agencies that are telling people not to hire me still, but that’s the power structure,” she said, invoking an ancient anti-Jewish trope about Jewish power.

“I think within the people, certainly internationally, I feel welcome. So it depends if it’s a major studio. I think there is not just with me, but with other people that have been told that that is impossible in terms of being able to do this film. I thank Andrea for that because he didn’t listen to the warnings. So I think yes, there has been a change in terms of understanding of the situation, and I think the general public. But there are still very strongly held positions within my industry that are held by Zionists and who have not relaxed their feelings towards me. But I found my family, I found my people, and I’m okay,” she added.

Jewish activist Hen Mazzig called her one of the “Loudest Silenced People in the World.”

“Actress Susan Sarandon says the movie industry silenced her,” he posted on X. “She says it at every festival, on the main stage, covered by every Hollywood outlet on the front page. In June, I wrote about her in my essay: ‘The Loudest Silenced People in the World.'”

The Health Ministry said Sunday that a 9-year-old boy was admitted to the intensive care unit at Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa with a rare infection from a “brain-eating” amoeba he contracted during a swim in the Sea of Galilee.

Tests showed that he was suffering from encephalitis induced by the amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, which is potentially fatal. The child has been identified as Baruch Neriya from Pardes Hannah, and his family has asked the public to remember him in their prayers.

According to an epidemiological investigation, the boy had swum in the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Kinneret, the previous week. Speaking to reporters, Dr. Danny Eytan, director of the pediatric critical care unit at Rambam, said that after the child was admitted, “a suspicion arose that it was an amoeba infection.” Although the boy is in “very serious condition,” he said, “we hope for the best.”

TOPSHOT – Israeli religious Jews cool themselves in the Sea of Galilee on Aug. 12, 2025, during summer holidays on one of the hottest days of the season. (Credit: Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images)

“We are exposed to this amoeba, and in most cases we don’t even know it,” Rotem Lapidot, director of the infectious diseases department at Rambam, told Ynet. “In very rare cases it manages to enter the brain and cause a serious infection.”

She said that common symptoms include a high temperature, headaches, vomiting, nausea, neurological symptoms, and changes in consciousness, adding that fever, changes in consciousness, and headaches require immediate medical attention.

Naegleria fowleri thrives in freshwater sources. It cannot be contracted by drinking water infested with it, nor is it contagious. It’s rare for swimmers to contract the amoeba, but since it can enter the brain through the nose, it’s recommended to take special care to avoid getting water in the nose, either by pinching your nose with your fingers or by wearing nose plugs. However, while rare, the infection of the central nervous system can be fatal. Fewer than 500 cases have been reported worldwide, three of them in Israel. Of those three, two patients died from the infection.

Last week, a teenager in California and an 8-year-old in Louisiana died from the infection.

Israel is expanding its Shield of the North program to communities up to nine kilometers from the Lebanese border, offering eligible homeowners grants of up to NIS 182,000 to build reinforced safe rooms. Applications under the expanded program are expected to open September 15. 

The announcement brings a substantial expansion of protection for northern communities battered by years of Hezbollah missile and drone attacks. More than 15,000 safe rooms are planned across 89 communities, alongside a separate NIS 4.2 billion program to protect approximately 11,000 apartments in multi-unit residential buildings. These are planned construction and reinforcement projects, not shelters already completed. 

The joint announcement from the Prime Minister’s Office, Defense Ministry and Home Front Command implements government decision 4195. Under the homeowner-led construction track, eligible property owners will receive financial assistance to add a mamad, the reinforced residential room that provides shelter inside the home. Eligibility applies to designated frontline communities, rather than automatically to every property within the nine-kilometer area. 

The expansion increases both the geographic reach and financial support. The earlier homeowner-led program covered communities one to five kilometers from the border and offered NIS 132,000 per eligible safe room. The new maximum is NIS 50,000 higher. 

Apartment buildings will follow a different route. Their protection work will be coordinated centrally by the Construction and Housing Ministry and the Government Authority for Urban Renewal, rather than through the individual homeowner grant track. A separate ministry notice identifies Kiryat Shmona, Ma’alot-Tarshiha and Nahariya among the cities covered by the apartment-building program. 

The new projects come in addition to approximately 3,000 safe rooms already being advanced within one kilometer of the border. According to the joint statement, more than half have been completed or are being handed over. Officials also report completed protection work at more than 335 educational institutions, the installation of 1,600 additional portable shelters and refurbishment of more than 600 public shelters. 

The rollout will take years, not weeks. The underlying cabinet decision sets an end-of-2030 target for private-home protection in the one-to-nine-kilometer zone. The Defense Ministry and Home Front Command say they will publish the full eligibility criteria, community list, application instructions and grant implementation timetable separately. September 15 is the expected opening of applications, not a deadline for delivering the new shelters.

President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, arrived in Kyiv and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other senior officials as part of renewed U.S. efforts to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The visit followed more than three hours of talks in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov and Russian investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev. The White House described the discussions as “substantive” and said concrete plans for the next steps were discussed. However, no major breakthrough was announced.

According to Russian reports, Putin acknowledged that Witkoff and Kushner would travel to Kyiv after the meeting, telling them that continued diplomatic contacts were beneficial regardless of what followed.

Zelenskyy said Russian strikes prevented the two American envoys from flying directly into Kyiv, despite Ukraine preparing both Zhulyany and Boryspil airports for their arrival. Witkoff and Kushner were ultimately forced to enter Ukraine by train.

The visit marks their first official trip to Kyiv in their roles as U.S. peace negotiators.

Although Russia and Ukraine reportedly agreed to a temporary pause in attacks on their respective capitals during the diplomatic mission, strikes and fighting continued elsewhere. Ukraine also accused Russia of targeting airport infrastructure ahead of the envoys’ arrival.

The Israeli embassy in Belgium demanded an apology Sunday following revelations that a man killed in an Israeli airstrike in April 2024 who was an employee of a Belgian company turned out to be a terrorist.

Gabriel Epstein, senior policy associate at the Israel Policy Forum, published photos from an online Hamas account glorifying Abdullah Jamal Sobhi Nabhan, an employee of the Belgian international development agency Enabel, as a martyr. According to Epstein, Nabhan was killed alongside his father, brother, and son in the airstrike and was likely a member of Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigade.

At the time, amid widespread international backlash against Israel, Belgium summoned the Israeli ambassador to demand an explanation.

(Credit: Gabriel Epstein)

The main caption in the photo of Nabhan that Hamas posted online said that he was “the martyred fighter Abdullah Jamal Nabhan.”

The Israeli embassy denounced the Belgian government and the international community for their response and said that it’s owed a public apology but will also accept a private one.

“The Israeli Embassy is owed an apology!” the Israeli embassy in Belgium posted on X.

“In April 2024, Abdallah Nabhan, an employee of Belgium’s development agency Enabel, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Belgium summoned Israel’s ambassador, and international condemnation followed,” it added.

Credit: The Israeli Embassy in Belgium

“New evidence now indicates that Nabhan was a member of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade. A channel affiliated with the brigade identified him as a ‘mujahid’ and published an image of him in uniform,” the embassy continued.

“Before rushing to condemn Israel, facts matter,” the embassy said, in a direct rebuke to the Belgian government.

“Those who accused Israel then should acknowledge the evidence now,” it concluded. “A public apology would be preferable, but a private one will also be accepted.”

Rula Jebreal, an Arab journalist who was born in Haifa and who holds Israeli and Italian citizenship, called Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) an “AIPAC monkey” and “errand boy” on Wajahat Ali’s “The Left Hook Podcast,” igniting a firestorm across the political spectrum.

“His name is Hakeem. ‘Hakeem’ is an Arabic name which means ‘healer.’ He’s not a healer, he’s a divider,” Jebreal said.

“He is a bought and paid by AIPAC monkey,” she added. “With all due respect, and I don’t mean it in a racist way, he is just basically an errand boy, and we’re done and tired.”

Calling a Black person a “monkey” or a “boy” is known to be blatantly racist. Ali tried to downplay the racism by pointing out to Jebreal that although what she said was racist, it’s okay because she had clarified that she didn’t “mean it in a racist way.”

Jebreal agreed.

“There are these three monkeys — one, I cannot hear, I cannot see, I cannot speak — it reminds me of these three monkeys,” she said, referring to the Japanese cultural symbol of three wise monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.

The Congressional Black Caucus wasn’t buying it.

“To be clear, there isn’t a non-racist way to call Leader Jeffries—a Black man—a ‘monkey’ or ‘errand boy,'” the CBC posted on X. “Wajahat Ali, this is what happens when we hold ourselves to such low standards for what’s allowable in our discourse—people get comfortable being openly bigoted.”

The CBC made an appeal to call out racism wherever it appears on the political spectrum.

“We have to stop platforming and trafficking in anti-Black racism, whether it’s on the political right or the left,” the group said.

Pro-Israel Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) also slammed the journalist.

“Calling a Black man a ‘monkey’ is racist. Full stop. If Wajahat Ali and Rula Jebreal were on the far right, no one on the far left would have any trouble condemning them for dehumanizing a Black man in racist terms. The silence is deafening,” he wrote on X.

To show that Jebreal wasn’t just some Middle Eastern journalist with no understanding of the implications of the terms she used, a social media user pulled up an X post from 2018 in which she slammed Ron DeSantis for saying “don’t monkey this up” in an exhortation to voters not to elect his Black opponent, Andrew Gillum, calling his rhetoric racist for using the word “monkey.”

Following the backlash, Jebreal apologized on X.

“I am disgusted and horrified that Hakeem Jeffries is taking money from AIPAC amidst Israel’s genocide in Palestine.
That said, a term that I used to describe him was inappropriate and offensive and should never have been used.
I apologize unconditionally,” she wrote.

Anti-Black racism among Arabs in Israel and the disputed territories is a subject that receives no attention in the mainstream media. For example, a neighborhood in Gaza where Black Gazans live is called “Harat al Abid,” which means “neighborhood of slaves”; Black Palestinians there are routinely referred to as “abed,” which means “slave”; and a treat similar to the Israeli Krembo (a biscuit topped with a mound of a fluffy, marshmallow-like filling and covered with chocolate) is called “ras el abed,” which means “head of the slave.”

Iran is working to bring Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iraqi militias into a major, coordinated assault on Israel, according to Israeli intelligence assessments. The objective is to open multiple fronts together, with Tehran’s own forces participating from the outset rather than entering a conflict already underway. The report does not disclose a launch date or confirmed operational order.

The threat is not simply that several enemies could attack Israel. It is that they could deliberately synchronize their campaigns, forcing Israel to confront simultaneous emergencies rather than respond to fronts that escalate separately.

An earlier IDF assessment, identified renewed coordination between Hamas and Hezbollah with Iranian assistance. Israeli forces were encountering increased friction with terrorists in both Gaza and southern Lebanon, and the military assessed that the coordination was part of an effort to rebuild Tehran’s regional network and increase pressure on Israel.

That earlier reporting matters as the concern extends beyond threatening speeches to assessed cooperation between terrorist organizations confronting Israeli troops on different fronts. It does not, by itself, establish that every component of a larger offensive is ready.

Iran’s coordination efforts also extend beyond Hamas and Hezbollah. Separate reporting summarized by the Institute for the Study of War described Quds Force commanders holding calls with Hezbollah, Houthi and Iraqi militia leaders during a ceasefire to discuss widening the conflict with the United States. The account came from two senior Revolutionary Guard officers; ISW assessed that their disclosures likely also served Tehran’s effort to deter American and Israeli strikes.

Captured Hamas documents provide a disturbing backdrop. Records published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center showed that Yahya Sinwar pursued a broader campaign involving Iran and Hezbollah, with Iranian funding central to Hamas’ military buildup. The documents described an ambition to apply pressure from multiple directions and push Israel toward collapse.

Palestinian Hamas militants gather at the site of the handing over of the bodies of four Israeli hostages in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza on February 20, 2025. Hamas handed over the bodies of four hostages on February 20, including those of the Bibas family, who have become symbols of the hostage crisis that has gripped Israel since the Gaza war broke out. The transfer of the bodies is the first such handover of remains by Hamas since its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered the war. (Photo by Abood Abusalama / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP) (Photo by ABOOD ABUSALAMA/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

But Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion was not accompanied by a simultaneous, full-scale assault by the entire Iranian network. The latest report describes Tehran trying to eliminate that gap: making a multi-front campaign part of the plan from the beginning, rather than hoping other forces join afterward.

Separately, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir has launched “Dawn 2.0,” a surprise exercise testing the military’s ability to handle a sudden, complex, large-scale emergency across multiple fronts. Commanders across the military were called into action, standby forces were mobilized, and Zamir monitored the exercise from the military’s top command post and in the field.

The IDF says the exercise tests readiness and decision-making ahead of the Jewish holidays while incorporating lessons from Oct. 7. Its announcement does not link the drill to the reported Iranian plan, and it stresses that increased military traffic and aircraft activity are exercise-related, not an unfolding security incident.

The strategic danger is clear: coordination could make separate threats more dangerous together. For Israel, readiness means being able to recognize and confront that combined threat before simultaneous attacks become simultaneous surprises.

According to a report by Israeli broadcaster KAN News, Shin Bet agents worked undercover as aid workers, selling humanitarian supplies to Gazans who then resold them in local Gazan markets. In this way, they were able to get their Gazan contacts to monitor the movement of their targets, such as Mu’in al-Arabid, head of Hamas’ internal security apparatus, who was captured in a daring raid in Gaza last week.

The customers of the Shin Bet had no idea they were supplying intelligence to the Israelis until they heard of al-Arabid’s capture.

Before the raid, Shin Bet operatives took over their customers’ market stalls and hid their weapons there, which they grabbed before fleeing when the operation began.

Mu’in al-Arabid, head of Hamas’ internal security apparatus, is pictured here. (Credit: X)

The IDF and Shin Bet released a joint statement last week announcing the capture of the first high-level Hamas official deep inside Gaza in a long time. They did not mention that they received help from local anti-Hamas militias, but sources confirmed to KAN news that they were involved in the operation.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz emphasized the importance of al-Arabid to Hamas. Netanyahu said he had played a key role in hiding the 251 hostages abducted from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. A Gazan source told The Jerusalem Post that Hamas is seeking to “downplay the incident” and portray al-Arabid as a mid-level security official.

“Its internal security forces are actively pursuing militias supported by Israel,” the source added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin held more than three hours of closed-door talks at the Kremlin with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who arrived carrying President Donald Trump’s latest proposal aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.

The Americans presented “a number of ideas” for a possible settlement. The Kremlin called the discussions highly useful, constructive and unusually candid, while the White House described them as substantive. No breakthrough was announced, and the details of Trump’s proposal remain undisclosed.

Putin told the envoys Russia believes it is making battlefield progress and again stressed what Moscow calls the conflict’s “root causes.” The fundamental gap remains enormous: the Kremlin says its demands for Ukraine to surrender the entirety of four Russian-claimed regions and abandon NATO membership remain unchanged, conditions Kyiv has repeatedly rejected.

Witkoff and Kushner have now left Moscow and are expected in Kyiv for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Russia and Ukraine separately agreed to temporarily halt strikes on each other’s capitals around the diplomatic visits, creating a narrow window for Trump’s newest peace effort to move forward.

Ugandan-born New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing fierce criticism after presenting a ceremonial pen used to sign two 9/11 executive orders to his chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem.

Kassem previously represented convicted Al-Qaeda operative Ahmed al-Darbi, who pleaded guilty to participating in the 2002 bombing of the French oil tanker MV Limburg. Al-Darbi was also the brother-in-law of Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the terrorists who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon.

For relatives of those murdered on September 11, the symbolism was impossible to ignore.

“It’s BULLSH*T. How can you defend a guy like that who wants to do Americans or any innocent person harm?” said one man whose brother was killed in the North Tower.

Twenty-five years after the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil, critics say the ceremony offered disturbing evidence that New York’s leaders have already forgotten.

U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee slammed the British government after its foreign minister, Ed Miliband, accused Israel of blocking medication from entering Gaza Saturday.

“The Brits have lost it. The Jew hate of their government knows no boundaries and knows no facts,” he seethed on X.

The Israel Foreign Ministry also bitterly denounced Miliband, who is Jewish.

Referring to a video Miliband posted of himself discussing the matter, the Foreign Ministry wrote on X:

“If the Foreign Secretary were interested in facts rather than stories, he would know that there are no restrictions whatsoever on the entry of medicines into the Gaza Strip, and that no medicines are being blocked; that 22,500 tons of medical supplies have entered Gaza since the ceasefire began; and that Gazans exit the Strip for medical treatment, including 200 who did so in just the last two weeks.

“And of course, the British Foreign Secretary is well aware of all this, as the UK is a member of the International Gaza Support Center, which facilitates the delivery of medical aid to the Gaza Strip.

“But apparently, facts matter less (when making a video for a political audience).”

In the video, Miliband said he heard recurring horror stories of people dying while waiting for medication that Israel blocked from entering Gaza.

“So I just came out of this meeting, talking about Gaza to people who’ve been there and are there on the ground, and frankly, it was horrific what is unfolding,” he said. “You know, the stories that people were telling me of medicines being blocked, children dying while waiting for vital life-saving treatment.”

“When you hear that account of what is happening, you know that we, as a UK government, as the Prime Minister has said, have got to act and act more decisively than we have,” he added.

Just two days before this spat, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) posted on X that 22,500 tons of medical supplies had entered Gaza since the October 2025 ceasefire and that there are no restrictions on medications entering the Strip.

“Since the start of the ceasefire, more than 22,500 tons of medical supplies have entered the Strip. Medicines enter Gaza without restriction, alongside the continuous entry of medical equipment coordinated with the UN and approved organizations,” COGAT posted Thursday on X. “In addition, specific mechanisms are in place to import advanced medical equipment for international organizations, with careful consideration of security concerns, such as generators, X-ray machines, oxygen concentrators, and more equipment.”

“COGAT works to expand medical capacity in Gaza, with hospital bed capacity growing by more than 50% since the start of the ceasefire, according to WHO [World Health Organization] data,” COGAT added.

“Additionally, many hospitals and other medical centers are currently operating across the entire Strip. According to WHO data, across Gaza, there are 20 permanent hospitals, 15 field hospitals, 107 medical points, and 146 PHC clinics,” the organization said.

Miliband has been squabbling with the Israel Foreign Ministry in the past week over the construction of buildings in E1 in Judea, threatening to impose a “comprehensive package of measures” to stop what he says is the prevention of a two-state solution. In response, Israel said it would consider expelling British diplomats from the Gaza coordination center, among other more severe options.

Anti-Hamas activist and Palestinian-American Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib posted a video that he said showed Hamas shooting, killing, wounding, and kidnapping civilians in Khan Younis Thursday and then dragging them into the Nasser Medical Complex, where it operates interrogation rooms and torture chambers.

“Hamas’s fascist militias attacked civilians in Khan Younis today, shooting, wounding, and kidnapping several, then retreated straight into the Nasser Hospital Medical Complex, where they’ve built torture rooms and interrogation chambers in full view of UN agencies and international NGOs,” he posted Thursday on X.

Alkhatib slammed the “pro-Palestine” crowd for its silence on the brutality of Hamas toward its own people, saying they get stirred up only “when Jewish Israelis are involved.”

“And still, the ‘pro‑Palestine’ industrial complex won’t say a word,” he seethed. “Not Hasan Piker, not the DSA, not SJP or AMP, not the activist mobs, influencers, journalists, Hollywood names, singers, members of Congress, or Senate candidates.”

“None of them will touch the fact that Palestinians are being brutalized by Palestinian oppressors like Islamist terrorists such as Hamas, throughout Gaza and especially inside Gaza’s hospitals, because for them, Palestinian lives only seem to matter when Jewish Israelis are involved,” he added.

Alkhatib demanded to know if this was indeed the case.

“Tell the truth — is that not the case? Am I wrong?” he demanded.

Four Israeli athletes were excluded from the international triathlon in Derry, Northern Ireland, scheduled to take place Saturday, because the organizers said there would not be Israeli representation at the event.

The North West Triathlon Club (NWTC), organizer of the City of Derry Triathlon 2026, issued a statement Thursday night saying that it could not support Israeli representation at the triathlon, which is part of the Europe Triathlon Cup.

“This is not a position directed at anyone because of their religion or ethnicity, nor is it hostility towards an individual simply because they were born in Israel,” NWTC said, while confirming that was exactly what it was doing. “It is a position concerning representation of the State of Israel in international sport and the attempt to present normality on the international sporting stage while Palestinians continue to suffer.”

More than 600 athletes from about 20 countries will be participating in the event.

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) assembly member Julie Middleton slammed the decision, saying that it was “an awful reflection on Londonderry.”

“An international sporting event that should showcase our city’s hospitality and openness has instead become associated with the exclusion of athletes because they are Israeli,” she said.

Anti-Israel activists, on the other hand, cheered the move.

A flyer circulated online with a message titled “BDS Victory.”

“Triathletes from Israel will no longer be participating in the City of Derry triathlon!” the flyer said. “Within 24 hours of it being made public, the people of Derry used their collective voice.”

“The message was clear,” it added.

“Israelis are not welcome and should not be allowed to participate in sporting events here or anywhere in the world,” it declared.

The Israel Foreign Ministry criticized the NWTC for its decision.

“The decision by North West Triathlon Club (NWTC) in Londonderry to not allow Israeli athletes to compete is deeply troubling,” the ministry posted on X. “Sport should bring people together, not become a vehicle for discrimination and division. If the NWTC cannot provide safety to all participants and event goers, it raises serious questions as to the ability to hold any future events.”

“NWTC must allow uphold the principles of equality, fairness and inclusion. Israeli athletes must be afforded the same right to compete as athletes from every other nationality,” the ministry added.

The EU commissioner of health and animal welfare, Olivér Várhelyi, said Jews must be allowed to practice their faith openly amid a growing controversy in Belgium over the Jewish practice of brit milah, circumcision.

Speaking at a Rosh Hashanah event organized by the Conference of European Rabbis (CER) in Brussels, the commissioner, who is a member of the Fidesz party of former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, which strongly supports Israel, said, “Europe cannot say that the Jewish life belongs here, while making it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to live a full Jewish life here. Jewish traditions and Jewish religious practice must be therefore respected and protected.”

He also referred CER Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt’s proposal to confront religious extremism, especially within Muslim communities, that promotes violence against Jews.

EU Commissioner of Health and Animal Welfare Olivér Várhelyi. (Credit: Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)

“There is no justification for intimidation or violence. No Jew in Europe should ever have to choose between being visibly Jewish and feeling safe,” he said.

He added that belonging is more than just feeling safe.

“Belonging is much more than about security. It must be that Jewish life has a future in Europe. A future lived openly, confidently and proudly,” he declared.

Earlier this year, Belgian lawmakers indicted three men for what they alleged was the unlawful performance of brit milah, which under Belgian law must be performed by a certified surgeon. Traditionally, mohels tend not to be certified surgeons.

Critics of the move have pointed out that a ban on circumcision or Jewish ritual slaughter usually marks the beginning of an era of Jewish persecution. One of the first decrees of King Antiochus back in the day banned bris milah. More recently, the Nazis banned shechitah as early as 1933, an edict that became incorporated into the infamous 1935 Nuremberg Laws.

The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, and the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, both blasted the decision.

“Belgium joins a short and shameful list, together with Ireland, of countries that use criminal law to prosecute Jews for practicing Judaism,” Sa’ar wrote at the time. “This is a scarlet letter on Belgian society.”

Responding to Sa’ar’s post, White warned, “Belgium will be thought of now as antisemitic by the world. Until this is resolved — there is no way around it.”

Belgium has grown increasingly hostile to the United States and Israel. The country joined the International Court of Justice case against Israel brought by South Africa, and a leading politician posted a video comparing President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.

The investigation into the mohels began last year when anti-Israel activist Moshe Aryeh Friedman, who has pushed for limits on Jewish traditions like gender separation at Haredi schools, filed a complaint against the three men.

Although Belgium joined several other European nations in banning shechitah (kosher slaughter), it’s the first European country to ban brit milah.

Continuing its mission to go after every single terrorist who participated in the Oct. 7 attack, the IDF eliminated another Oct. 7 terrorist in the Khan Younis area of the Gaza Strip, the military announced Friday.

Muhammad Mahmoud Marshad Al-Qadi was a military company commander in the elite Nukhba unit that led the charge into Israel on Oct. 7. He infiltrated the Sufa outpost that belonged to the nearby kibbutz of the same name and commanded the infiltration of the outpost.

The Nukhba unit of Hamas is an elite special operations force within the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. The unit is composed of highly trained special operations combatants who carry out infiltrations, raids, and ambushes. Israel has said that this unit led the Oct. 7 attack against Israel in 2023.

On the morning of Oct. 7, Al-Qadi’s group of terrorists overran the Sufa outpost. A small group of Israeli soldiers and tank crews stayed and fought for hours before retaking the base.

Al-Qadi also participated in holding hostages captive in the Rafah area. More recently, he was involved in planning and advancing attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians and was viewed as a threat by the Israeli military. He also led terrorist training programs and played a key role in helping Hamas recoup its capabilities after it suffered devastating military losses.

The IDF vowed to continue to work to remove threats to Israelis.

“IDF troops under the Southern Command remain deployed in the area in accordance with the agreement and will continue to operate to remove any threat,” the military said.

South Korea is weighing the deployment of military assets to the Strait of Hormuz as Washington pushes its allies to help secure one of the world’s most important energy corridors.

The options reportedly include P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, the Navy’s Soyang logistics support ship and naval explosive-ordnance specialists trained to detect and clear mines. South Korean media reported that concrete preparations are underway, including discussions over regional ports and airfields that could support the mission. Some reports said a deployment could take place before the end of the year.

Seoul’s presidential office, however, denied that a final decision had been made. It confirmed that military measures are among the options being reviewed as South Korea considers how to support freedom of navigation, while accounting for domestic law, parliamentary approval and the need to maintain readiness against North Korea.

The package under discussion appears designed as a limited, noncombat contribution. P-8 aircraft could monitor hostile ships and submarines, while South Korean explosive-ordnance teams could cooperate with allied forces to locate and neutralize maritime threats. The Soyang would provide fuel, supplies and logistical support. Operating the aircraft and support vessel alone could require roughly 150 personnel, according to Korean reporting.

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, AT SEA – APRIL 04: In this handout image released by the South Korean Defense Ministry, South Korean Navy’s destroyer Yulgok Yi I (R) U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (C) and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s Umigiri, (L) sail in formation during a joint naval exercise in international waters off South Korea’s southern island of Jeju on April 04, 2023 at an undisclosed location. South Korea, the United States and Japan kicked off a trilateral naval exercise, involving an American aircraft carrier, in waters south of the Korean Peninsula amid joint efforts to reinforce deterrence against growing North Korean threats. (Photo by South Korean Defense Ministry via Getty Images)

The deliberations follow months of pressure from the Trump administration, which has demanded greater allied participation in protecting shipping from Iranian threats. President Donald Trump has publicly criticized Seoul for declining to assist U.S. operations against Iran, turning Hormuz into a wider test of the South Korea-U.S. alliance.

Seoul also has powerful interests of its own. South Korea received approximately 61% of its crude oil and 54% of its naphtha imports through the Strait of Hormuz last year. Its concerns intensified after the HMM-operated Namu was struck near the waterway; South Korean investigators found evidence pointing to Iranian-made anti-ship missile components, although they stopped short of conclusively assigning responsibility.

Any deployment would still require approval from South Korea’s National Assembly. But the increasingly detailed preparations suggest Seoul is moving closer to operational involvement, seeking to support the United States and protect vital energy shipments without directly entering combat against Iran.

Israeli Border Police thwarted a stabbing attack at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate after a 33-year-old terrorist from eastern Jerusalem approached officers with a knife and attempted to stab them. The troops opened fire, killing him at the scene.

Police said no officers were wounded. A man in his 30s suffered light injuries during the incident and was evacuated by United Hatzalah to Shaare Zedek Medical Center; authorities have not yet clarified exactly how he was hurt.

Jerusalem District commander Avshalom Peled arrived for a security assessment and praised the officers’ rapid response. The attack came only hours after more than 50,000 worshippers gathered at the Western Wall for Selichot prayers, underscoring the stakes of Israel’s heavy security presence around the Old City.

An Israeli Arab decided to stick it to the man and tell the truth about what living under Israeli oppression is like.

Over a period of approximately 30 years of living in Israel, he received about 2.5 million shekels’ worth of services in benefits, health care, education, and other kinds of support. His mother, who had been disabled by illness for roughly the same amount of time, received from the Israeli government a pension, housing, and living assistance, which he said in total were the equivalent of a new house.

“In other words, the state paid for a whole house so I could live in dignity and not have to depend on other people or the street,” he said.

He also dismissed the idea that Israel is an apartheid state.

“Thank you for that ‘apartheid’ that paid for a whole house for me, treated me, educated me, and supported my family for decades,” he declared.

“If Israel is so terrible, show me what Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran have spent on their own citizens. How many citizens there have received a similar level of social safety nets, healthcare support, and living assistance?” he added.

The Israeli citizen concluded by acknowledging that Israel isn’t perfect and then described what he believes is the crux of the problem.

“When a state invests in you from childhood, supports your family for decades, and gives you benefits equivalent to the price of a whole house, and you still describe yourself as a permanent victim, then maybe the problem isn’t the amount of support,” he said. “Maybe the problem is that you learned to play the role of the victim before you learned how to read or do the math.”

The White House has released official photographs from President Donald Trump’s historic Oval Office meeting with leading rabbonim representing some of America’s largest Chassidic and Orthodox Jewish communities.

The delegation included the Satmar Rebbes, the Bobover Rebbe, the Vizhnitz-Monsey Rebbe, representatives of the Skverer community and Beth Medrash Govoha Rosh Yeshiva HaRav Malkiel Kotler.

During the approximately 30-minute meeting, President Trump extended warm wishes to the Jewish community ahead of Rosh Hashanah and discussed issues affecting Orthodox Jews in the United States.

The extraordinary gathering marked the first time since 1979 that leaders representing several of America’s largest Chassidic communities met together with a sitting president at the White House. They delegation also met with Vice president JD Vance and congressman, Mike Lawler.

OpenAI has unveiled GPT-6 Astra, describing it as the “world’s most intelligent and aligned model” after it delivered extraordinary results across abstract reasoning, mathematics, cybersecurity, computer use and professional work.

The headline numbers are difficult to ignore. Astra scored 99.9% on ARC-AGI-3, 97.6% on the most difficult tier of FrontierMath, 100% on ExploitBench and 64.6% on Terminal-Bench Science. It also posted major gains in coding, long-context reasoning, browser navigation and autonomous computer work, often beating GPT-5.6 Sol by wide margins.

OpenAI Ceo Sam Altman speaks to journalists after meeting with US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on June 3, 2026. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)

The ARC-AGI-3 result may be the most important. Unlike conventional tests that reward memorized knowledge, ARC-AGI-3 places AI systems inside unfamiliar environments and forces them to discover the rules, form an internal model and plan their actions without instructions.

Using OpenAI’s specialized adapter, which preserves the model’s reasoning state across requests, Astra reached 99.9%. It still produced a state-of-the-art 62.7% with ARC Prize’s more standardized harness. More strikingly, Astra used fewer actions than the median human on 96% of completed levels and required roughly half as many actions overall. ARC Prize described the result as a material milestone in human-level action efficiency.

That does not scientifically prove that artificial general intelligence has arrived. There is no universally accepted definition of AGI, and no single benchmark can demonstrate every form of human intelligence. But OpenAI’s leaders are now speaking about Astra in terms previously reserved for future systems.

“It’s not unreasonable to feel that we are now in the AGI era,” OpenAI President Greg Brockman told reporters, suggesting historians could eventually identify Astra as the model that marked the transition. CEO Sam Altman has similarly described Astra’s ability to generate genuinely new discoveries as “very AGI-like.”

The model’s strongest argument for AGI is not any individual test. It is the combination of advanced reasoning with the ability to operate computers and complete real tasks.

Astra can navigate websites, fill out government forms, search for apartments and jobs, update business systems, analyze scientific information, build software and troubleshoot problems on screen. OpenAI says it completed some computer-based research tasks several times faster than people and achieved 72.6% on OSWorld 2.0, compared with 65.7% for GPT-5.6 Sol.

Its scientific results are equally significant. OpenAI says versions of Astra helped advance several long-standing mathematical problems, including new results involving gaps between prime numbers. On Terminal-Bench Science, the model scored nearly three times higher than its predecessor, while its 97.6% FrontierMath Tier 4 result suggests that some of the hardest existing mathematical benchmarks are approaching saturation.

Astra’s power also introduces unprecedented risks. It is the first broadly deployed OpenAI model to reach the company’s “Critical” cybersecurity threshold. Without its public safety restrictions, Astra achieved a perfect ExploitBench score, discovered two previously unknown software vulnerabilities during testing and demonstrated the ability to develop attacks against hardened systems.

OpenAI says Astra is substantially better aligned than earlier models and was far less likely to exceed its authorized scope during testing. But the company also acknowledged that Astra’s written reasoning is harder to monitor. The model has become better at controlling what appears in its internal reasoning trace, raising concerns that future systems could become intelligent enough to conceal unsafe behavior from human overseers.

Calling Astra the strongest AI model ever still requires qualification. It does not lead every independent benchmark. Artificial Analysis ranked its most powerful configuration eighth on its composite Intelligence Index, and OpenAI’s own published comparison shows rival models winning certain knowledge and coding evaluations. Astra’s advantage is its extraordinary breadth: reasoning, scientific work, cybersecurity, long-term context and real-world computer control operating inside one system.

GPT-6 Astra is initially reaching selected organizations before expanding to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise subscribers. It will also be offered through OpenAI’s API and Amazon’s cloud platforms, with an even more capable Astra Pro version planned for higher-tier customers.

AGI may not arrive through one dramatic announcement. It may emerge gradually, as models cross one human boundary after another. Astra has not settled that debate, but it has pushed it into far more serious territory. For the first time, the question is no longer only whether an AI can answer like an expert. It is whether it can understand a new environment, invent a strategy and perform the work faster than the humans who created it.

A Jewish man was punched in the head, robbed and subjected to antisemitic slurs during an apparently unprovoked attack near Manhattan’s Diamond District.

Surveillance footage shows the assailant approaching the victim near West 47th Street and Sixth Avenue, grabbing his hat and striking him hard in the side of the head. The blow reportedly left significant bruising around his temple.

When the victim tried to photograph his attacker, the suspect allegedly grabbed his phone, threw it to the ground and fled.

Two witnesses followed the suspect while the victim contacted 911 and Manhattan Shomrim. Shomrim volunteers coordinated with the NYPD, leading to the alleged attacker’s arrest.

The suspect was charged with felony robbery and assault-related hate crimes but was reportedly released without bail just hours later. The case remains active.

The assault comes amid a disturbing wave of antisemitic violence across New York City.

Recent incidents have included the stabbing of a Jewish man outside a synagogue, an attack on a rabbi walking to synagogue, violence during Shabbat services at Central Synagogue and a vehicle repeatedly rammed into Chabad World Headquarters in Crown Heights.

New NYPD data shows 425 confirmed hate crimes were recorded during the first eight months of 2026, up 15.8% from 367 during the same period last year.

Of those, 229 targeted Jews, an 8% increase from 212 last year. Anti-Jewish incidents accounted for 53.9% of all confirmed hate crimes in the city, despite Jews comprising only about 10% of New York’s population.

While city officials celebrated record-low shootings and murders over the summer, the numbers reveal a frightening reality: overall violent crime may be falling, but antisemitic violence continues to rise.

The House passed a bipartisan bill to crack down on the college boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, which had been introduced by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), who is Jewish, and Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-Va.).

Although the bill was bipartisan, it passed 237-169 mostly along party lines, with 33 Democrats voting for it and two Republicans voting against.

“No student, no professor should be shut out of research, study abroad opportunities, or academic partnerships, or feel unwelcome in the classroom because of where they’re from or what religion they practice,” Gottheimer said. “Yet that’s exactly what the boycott-divest-sanction movement seeks to do, targeting one country and one religion: Israel and Judaism.”

“My bipartisan bill with Congresswoman Foxx is narrow and targeted; it doesn’t touch anyone’s speech, protest, or academic debate,” the congressman explained. “It simply says that if your university takes federal taxpayer dollars, it can’t discriminate against academic partnerships or investments with one country. That’s it. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this bipartisan bill.”

Foxx slammed colleges for what she called the “antisemitic rot” that had taken root on college campuses.

“The antisemitic rot that has corroded college campuses must be eradicated,” she said. “Enough is enough!”

“The safety and security of Jewish students, faculty, and staff should never be threatened under any circumstances. Today, the House sent a clear message: if an institution of higher education chooses to capitulate to the caustic BDS movement, there will be consequences, starting with this bipartisan legislation,” she added.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said he opposes the BDS movement but voted against the bill because he supports free expression.

“It is the only way to ensure speech I do ​agree with is equally protected,” he explained.

According to Gottheimer’s website, the bill will accomplish the following goals, quoted directly from the website:

• Require colleges and universities to certify that the institution is not engaging in a non-expressive commercial boycott of Israel, or forgo the ability to receive federal student aid.
• Define “non-expressive commercial boycott of Israel” to mean a commercial action (including engaging in refusals to deal with Israel and terminating business activities) intended to limit commercial relations with Israel, or persons or entities conducting business in Israel or Israeli-controlled institutions, and is not based on a valid business reason.
• Direct the Department of Education to make publicly available a list of all institutions that do not certify.
• Require colleges and universities that are recipients of International Education Programs (Title VI) funding to not allow academic boycotts, but instead engage in academic exchange reciprocity.

Israel has begun releasing five Lebanese civilians detained during operations in southern Lebanon, linking the move to Beirut’s cooperation in a four-decade search for Jewish community leaders abducted and murdered by terrorist organizations during Lebanon’s civil war.

The first detainee, Malek Kamal Ghazi, was transferred through the International Committee of the Red Cross at the Naqoura crossing and handed over to the Lebanese Army. Lebanese officials said the remaining four were expected to follow. Israel determined after questioning that none of the five belonged to a terrorist organization or had participated in terrorism.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he instructed officials to intensify efforts to locate and return the victims’ remains. Israel has reportedly supplied Lebanon with maps, cemetery photographs, aerial imagery and other intelligence pointing to possible burial locations in Beirut and Sidon. Officials from both countries have also conducted activity on the ground as part of the search.

The victims belonged to Lebanon’s own Jewish community, which once numbered many thousands. Beginning in 1984, armed terrorists seized prominent Jews from the streets of West Beirut. Among them was Isaac Sasson, president of the Jewish community, who was kidnapped at gunpoint after returning from a business trip. Other victims included physician Dr. Elie Hallak, community secretary Salim Jammous and Elie Srour, who prepared Jewish dead for burial.

Several abductions were claimed by the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth, a Shiite terrorist network historically associated with the cells from which Hezbollah emerged. The terrorists accused some captives of working for Israel, allegations their families firmly rejected. Many were elderly Lebanese civilians whose families had lived in the country for generations. Most of their bodies were never returned.

Israel has now elevated their fate inside its direct negotiations with Lebanon. Officials reportedly assembled an intelligence file containing aerial photographs and information on potential burial sites, while Israel’s coordinator for prisoners and missing persons, Brig. Gen. (res.) Gal Hirsch, has remained in contact with victims’ relatives. Jerusalem also pressed for the search to be incorporated into the U.S.-mediated framework governing the talks.

Washington described the release as the product of U.S.-led mediation between the Israeli and Lebanese governments and expressed hope that it could open wider discussions on civilian issues. The breakthrough remains limited: the broader negotiations are still divided over the disarmament of Iran-backed Hezbollah and the conditions for a complete Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Further talks are expected in Rome.

The five-detainee release will not resolve that confrontation. But it has forced a long-buried truth back into view: the terrorist networks that accompanied Hezbollah’s rise did not target Israelis alone. They hunted Lebanon’s own Jews, devastated an ancient community and left families waiting decades for a grave.

Money spent on security for Jewish institutions surpassed $1 billion in 2025, according to data collected by the Jewish Federations of North America.

The JFNA said this reflects the rising cost of antisemitism and urged Congress to pass the Jewish American Security Act, which, at $1 billion, would fully fund the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP).

“The fact that Jewish communal spending has shot up 33% is a measure of how much more dangerous life has become for Jewish Americans, and sadly we know that we need even more investment to protect ourselves against the rising level of threat,” said Eric D. Fingerhut, President and CEO of the JFNA. “We are grateful for the partnership of Congress and this Administration, but the need has outpaced the resources. Passing the Jewish American Security Act and fully funding the Nonprofit Security Grant Program at $1 billion is the single most important step lawmakers can take to keep Jewish Americans and all faith communities safe.”

The study examined the security costs of 4,500 institutions such as  Jewish community centers, synagogues, schools, summer camps, and other Jewish nonprofit institutions but did not include privately owned businesses such as kosher restaurants, markets, and grocery stores or Judaica shops and Jewish bookstores. It found that the average expenditure for each institution was $225,000, a 33 percent increase from 2024, when an estimated total of $765 million was spent.

Security personnel such as security guards and security directors took up most of the expenditures, a problem the Jewish American Security Act would address by allowing more funds from the NSGP to flow toward security personnel.

Nevertheless, even more than $1 billion in security spending might not be enough.

“Despite the increased spending, events of recent years have proven that further security investments are still needed. Antisemitic threats and violence are rising, and Jewish Americans are having to increase their spending on security just to practice their faith without fear of violence,” the JFNA reported, citing the FBI hate crime statistic from 2025 that 64 percent of all religiously motivated hate crimes targeted Jews despite Jews representing only 2 percent of the population. The FBI also reported that Jews were the second-most targeted group in all hate crimes.

The JFNA estimates that “the total spend currently devoted to security would be enough to send 44,000 kids to Jewish Day School, cover the costs of every child attending Jewish summer camp, or fund every Birthright Trip for a decade.”

“Every dollar our community spends on guards and cameras is a dollar not spent on Jewish education, on caring for our elderly, on taking care of those in need,” Fingerhut said.

Anti-Israel protesters disrupted an event at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo earlier this week at which wounded Israeli veterans were presenting.

The event was sponsored by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), which posted footage of police attempting to move the protesters out.

“Even after being told by authorities they were violating university rules, they refused to leave,” CAMERA posted, explaining that protesters tried to disrupt the event.

The event, titled “Rising to the Challenge,” was hosted by Mustangs United for Israel and Chabad of SLO and Cal Poly and featured Eliyahu Green and Ariel Saat, who, according to Mustangs United for Israel’s Facebook post, “paused their lives to defend their people following October 7.” The group urged students to “hear their personal stories of service, recovery, resilience, and what it means to move forward after life-changing experiences.”

In the video footage posted by CAMERA, a police officer can be heard telling the protesters they need to leave, but that they can protest lawfully in a designated area.

“So, at this point, your presentation has amounted to a disruption of this event,” the officer said. “So we are going to have to ask you to step outside of the room, and there is a designated area where you are welcome to continue to spread the message.”

“You are welcome to step outside because now you are amounting to interrupting this event … You guys are violating 626.6 of campus policy. So once it gets to a point where you guys are destructing the activities of a college campus, you guys are violating 626.6. So like my partner said, you guys do have a designated area outside.”

The protesters challenged the officer by saying, “That’s not a crime” and interrupting him with chants of “Hey, hey, ho ho! The IDF has got to go.”

In the end, CAMERA said it took eight police officers to clear the protesters out.

“Cal Poly needed eight cops and a surveillance [drone] in order to ensure that the talk actually took place,” the group reported. “Students who attended had to leave through an alternate exit due to the crowd of protesters gathering in the main exit area.”

“This kind of harassment is designed to intimidate students and silence speakers. It’s exactly what CAMERA pushes back against every single day,” the group said.

The Anti-Defamation League is said to have snubbed Marvel actor Mark Ruffalo, famous for his role as the Hulk, who approached the ADL for help threading the needle on apologizing to Jews he offended with his antisemitic comments without backing down from any of his positions.

The ADL was not interested.

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who called Ruffalo’s comments “cynical and sickening,” reportedly said that he  wasn’t “interested in laundering Mark Ruffalo‘s reputation.” He also reportedly said that he “couldn’t help” the award-winning actor.

Instead, Ruffalo turned to States United Democracy Center co-founder Norm Eisen for help, and thus the open letter, at this point signed by about 180 Jewish Hollywood creatives, was born.

The open letter was published in Variety Tuesday and included such famous names as Joel Coen, Todd Haynes, James Schamus, Tony Kushner, and Hannah Einbinder.

The letter opened with the assertion that the signatories have “a simple message to share with the world: Enough! Enough with the false and dangerous weaponization of charges of antisemitism against those who are brave enough to point out the obvious: that the assault on the Palestinian people and the assault on our liberties at home are deeply interconnected, and there is nothing antisemitic about recognizing that fact.”

Critics say that Ruffalo’s criticism of Paramount for its merger with Warner Bros., which targeted Jewish businessmen, invoked antisemitic tropes about Jews and power. In his statement, the famous actor also accused Israel of genocide and apartheid.

While arguing that pointing out these connections is not antisemitism, the letter invoked antisemitic tropes by saying, “The AI road to WarnerMount runs through Gaza, and Ellison has often let us know the Orwellian world he has in store for us as he consolidates control over what we watch and how we watch it, knowing that as we watch he and his corrupt cohort will always be watching us: ‘Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting.’” Critics point out that this demonstrates the standard Jewish power trope, especially since it left out the context of Ellison’s remark, which was made in reference to recording criminal activity.

Recently, Ruffalo, along with Javier Bardem and about 20 other Marvel actors, came out in force to demand the release of convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti, provoking a fiery response from the Israeli government.

A second Israeli has been confirmed missing in the Nepal floods that struck the country’s border with China on Aug. 26, killing 1,273 people (1,252 in Nepal, 21 in Tibet), with more than 4,000 still missing.

Katerina (Katya) Sakovich, 41, also holds Belarusian citizenship and was at first listed as a Belarusian citizen until her family contacted the Israel Foreign Ministry for help in locating her. She had moved to Milan several years ago and had gone on a trip to Mount Kailash in Tibet. According to the Israel-based broadcaster KAN News, she was last seen at the Rasuwagadhi-Gyirong border crossing around the time the floods began.

Katerina (Katya) Sakovich. (Courtesy of her family)

“Israel’s consul in Kathmandu and the Foreign Ministry’s Department for Israelis in Distress Abroad are in continuous contact with her family and are working with the authorities and local officials in efforts to locate her,” the ministry said.

A 60-year-old Israeli man who has not been named is also missing. According to Chabad of Nepal, 30 Jewish tourists are also missing. About 600 foreign workers and tourists from nearly 40 countries are also among the missing.

“We are in contact with the families, local communities and officials on the ground, trying to piece together every detail,” said Chani Lifshitz, co-director of Chabad of Nepal. “We are checking every report, every name, every location, and every possible lead.”

“In the situation we are facing, even something as basic and sacred as a Jewish burial is no longer possible,” she added. “The bodies being recovered after days beneath the mud are in the worst possible condition, making identification extremely difficult.”

Defense Minister Israel Katz delivered remarks at a Rosh Hashanah event at the Defense Ministry Thursday, warning that if Iran attacks Israel, Israel will send it “back to the Stone Age.”

“There are signs that the heavy economic pressure Iran is facing and the fear of an uprising and the collapse of the regime could push them to desperation,” he said, adding that if Iran attacked, Israel would be freed from all constraints to hit back, including strikes on civilian and energy infrastructure.

“An Iranian attack on Israel would free us from any existing restrictions. We will cripple Iran’s infrastructure, including energy, and send them back to the Stone Age and darkness,” he said.

“The ayatollah regime in Iran knows very well why it is not attacking Israel: After we struck them powerfully twice, dealt a blow to the nuclear program, eliminated Khamenei, and severely damaged their strategic capabilities,” Katz said.

He said Iran could be driven to take “desperate steps” as a result of severe economic pain and fear of internal unrest leading to the toppling of the regime.

“Israel is very well prepared, defensively and offensively, for every possibility, and the IDF is ready to carry out the mission,” Katz assured those assembled.

Lexi Alexander, a Palestinian-American filmmaker, celebrated the murder of bank executive Erin Piacenti, who was killed Monday in a random stabbing attack in New York City.

The movie director posted a meme about Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, with an image of Batman gazing at a Bat signal replaced with Mangione’s face, which was shared in response to a post that identified Piacenti as a vice president of Bank of America.

Alexander was born in Germany to a German mother and Palestinian father. By age 19, she had become a World Karate Association champion in point-fighting and a world kickboxing champion. She moved to Hollywood, beginning her career in acting as a stunt performer. She also worked as a close-quarters combat instructor for the United States Marine Corps. She started screen writing in the early 2000s, and her debut, Johnny Flynton (2002), earned an Academy Award nomination.

Erin Piacenti was a new mother when she was killed in a random stabbing attack. (Credit: LinkedIn)

After stepping away from the film industry, Alexander moved from Hollywood to Ireland. Her post drew an immense amount of backlash from people furious at her callous attitude toward the brutal and random murder of an innocent woman.

Piacenti had just returned to work after a five-month maternity leave and had recently celebrated her second anniversary when she was fatally stabbed in the stomach by a mentally ill woman, who stabbed another person before being shot dead by police. The second victim is in stable condition.

“They released the hasbara bot farm just like the first time when we asked people to boycott Bofa [Bank of America]. Israel doesn’t care about the woman who got killed, they care about the positive rating Bofa gave them in the middle of a genocide. There is huge money at stake,” Alexander posted in response to another post about Bank of America.

Lexi Alexander, a Palestinian-American filmmaker, celebrated the murder of Erin Piacenti. (Credit: Getty Images)

“The irony (and stupidity) of this, is that she wants people to look through the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to see human atrocities, meanwhile pissing on a tragedy because of where the victim was employed to best support her new baby,” one social media user wrote.

“A young woman was murdered while innocently walking down the street, and you are celebrating,” wrote another poster. “You are absolute human garbage, and I suspect you know that deep-down.”

“Your anger is targeted at the wrong person,” another posted.

StopAntisemitism had the pithiest and most succinct post of all: “Sicko.”

Pamela Cisneros, 49, was killed by police shortly after stabbing two people in New York City. (Credit: Instagram)

Thailand will cut the visa-free stay granted to Israeli tourists from 60 days to 30 as part of a sweeping immigration overhaul affecting travelers from 60 countries and territories.

The new rules take effect on Sept. 15. Israel will remain on Thailand’s visa-exemption list alongside the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan and numerous European countries, meaning Israelis will still be able to enter for ordinary vacations without obtaining a visa in advance. Thai authorities have stressed that the change is not directed at Israel or any other specific nationality.

Israelis arriving by Sept. 14 may still receive stays of up to 60 days, while travelers already inside Thailand will be allowed to remain until the departure date stamped in their passports. After the new rules begin, visitors seeking more than 30 days may request a one-time extension of up to another month, although approval will remain at the discretion of immigration officials. Travelers planning extended stays may instead need to obtain a tourist visa before departure.

Thailand is also tightening so-called border runs. Visa-exempt travelers entering through land crossings will generally be limited to two such entries per calendar year. The same fixed cap will not apply to airport arrivals, but immigration authorities are expected to scrutinize foreigners who repeatedly leave and re-enter the country to prolong their stays. Thailand’s digital arrival-card system will also be used to examine travel histories and strengthen background screening.

Bangkok says the overhaul is intended to prevent illegal employment, extended residence disguised as tourism and criminal misuse of visa privileges. The existing 60-day program covers 93 countries and territories; the replacement system will grant 30-day visa-free entry to 60, including Israel.

English: Ben Gurion International Airport Tel Aviv (Credit: Ralf Roletschek, WIkipedia Commons)

The decision comes amid heightened scrutiny of foreign tourists in several popular destinations, including Phuket, where complaints involving some Israeli visitors have recently received significant attention. Still, the new policy is a broad international measure, not an Israel-specific restriction. Roughly 420,000 Israeli entries were recorded in Thailand last year, underscoring how heavily the change could affect one of Israelis’ most popular long-haul destinations.

For most short vacations, little will change. But backpackers, families planning extended trips and Israelis who spend part of the year in Thailand will now need to arrange an extension or secure the appropriate visa rather than relying on an automatic two-month stay.

An Oakland coffee shop accused of discriminating against Jewish customers who displayed the Star of David has shut its doors as its owner battles three lawsuits over the alleged treatment of Jewish patrons.

Jerusalem Coffee House, a Palestinian-owned cafe known for its outspoken pro-Palestinian identity, closed last week. The business said owner Abdulrahim Harara is turning his attention to legal challenges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.

The legal trouble stems from allegations involving two Jewish customers who say they were targeted at the cafe while wearing baseball caps bearing the Star of David.

In one highly publicized incident, Jewish customer Jonathan Hirsch entered the cafe with his 5-year-old son to have a drink and play chess. According to his lawsuit, Harara confronted Hirsch over the Star of David on his hat and ultimately ordered him to leave.

Video from the encounter showed Harara calling the symbol “violent” and questioning Hirsch about whether he was a Zionist.

The dispute eventually escalated beyond private litigation. The Justice Department filed a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing the cafe and its owner of religious discrimination in connection with the treatment of Hirsch and another Jewish customer.

The cafe had already drawn widespread criticism for its political messaging.

On October 7, 2024, exactly one year after the Hamas massacre in Israel, Jerusalem Coffee House introduced a menu featuring a drink called “Sweet Sinwar,” a name critics connected to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, one of the masterminds of the October 7 attack.

Another drink was dubbed “Iced in Tea Fada,” an apparent play on “intifada,” while the menu also incorporated inverted red triangles, a symbol that became associated with Hamas propaganda identifying Israeli targets.

Harara denied that “Sweet Sinwar” was a tribute to the Hamas leader, arguing that Sinwar is a Palestinian family name. He also maintained that the menu’s October 7 launch coincided with the cafe’s anniversary rather than being intended to commemorate the Hamas attack.

Now, the cafe that opened in October 2023 has closed while its owner fights multiple discrimination cases.

The Brandeis Center welcomed the shutdown.

“Discrimination comes with a price,” Brandeis Center chairman Kenneth Marcus told the San Francisco Standard.

For the Jewish customers who say they were singled out for openly displaying a Jewish symbol, however, the legal fight continues.

One of central Jerusalem’s most consequential development sites has hit the market with an opening price of NIS 420 million, approximately $140 million. The Benin Complex covers roughly 10 dunams, or 2.5 acres, between Jaffa Road, HaNevi’im Street and Raoul Wallenberg Street. Its estate administrators estimate the property’s value at closer to NIS 500 million, or about $167 million. Bids are due Dec. 3 and must include a formidable NIS 35 million guarantee.

The winning bidder will receive approved development rights for two residential towers rising 29 and 31 stories, containing a combined 295 apartments. The plans also allow approximately 200 hotel rooms, commercial and public space, and about 50,000 square meters, or 538,000 square feet, of primary floor area. Roughly half is designated for housing, with another 10,000 square meters for hotels and 14,000 square meters for commerce.

Earlier descriptions of the project referred to three towers and 370 apartments, but the figures are not contradictory. The full statutory plan covers approximately 14.1 dunams and includes an adjoining parcel approved for a third residential tower. That additional parcel and its development rights are not included in the current 10-dunam sale. The offering is therefore smaller than the complete master plan, though still large enough to reshape a major section of Jerusalem’s center.

The property’s most valuable strategic feature may sit beneath it. The future Jerusalem Center heavy-rail station is being built as part of the underground extension from Yitzhak Navon Station into the heart of the capital and eventually toward the Khan Station. Municipal notices show that infrastructure and station-access work is already underway. The development plan envisions direct aboveground and underground connections between the station and buildings in the complex, while the buyer will be required to coordinate construction with Israel Railways and honor existing agreements covering land transferred to the state.

The modern towers will rise around several protected buildings from Jerusalem’s past, including the former Kaminitz Hotel, Beit Navon and Beit Pasha. The historic properties are slated for restoration and new hotel, commercial or employment uses rather than demolition. Beit Navon carries an especially fitting connection: Yosef Navon Bey was a driving force behind the original Jaffa–Jerusalem railway, while the land surrounding his former residence is now poised to become a gateway for Jerusalem’s next generation of rail service.

The land belonged to Albert Benin, a wealthy Jerusalem property owner who died unmarried and without children. His will instructed the estate administrators to continue advancing the development plan and eventually sell the site. The proceeds are expected to support a permanent fund administered through UJA-Federation of New York, financing scholarships and loans for Israeli undergraduate students studying science, technology, engineering and medicine. The estate’s path to sale also passed through a major tax dispute, with a court ultimately recognizing UJA’s role as trustee for the educational mission and granting the relevant land transactions charitable tax treatment.

The project will not be simple. Its future developer must coordinate with an active underground railway project, preserve historic structures and build at immense scale in one of Jerusalem’s busiest districts. But that combination also makes the property exceptional: approved high-rise housing, hotels, commerce, history and direct heavy-rail access concentrated on a single central-city site.

The bidding will now reveal how aggressively Israel’s largest developers and investment groups value that opportunity. Whoever wins will be buying far more than land. It will gain the chance to build a new skyline and one of the principal entrances to the future center of Jerusalem.

PayPal is carrying out one of the deepest reductions in the history of its Israeli operation, with local reports estimating that more than 70 employees, nearly one-quarter of the workforce at its Tel Aviv development center, are being dismissed.

PayPal has not publicly disclosed the precise Israeli figure. CTech reported that dozens were affected, while other Israeli business outlets placed the number above 70 out of approximately 300 employees. The company said the cuts are part of its previously announced multiyear global transformation.

The scale of the reduction is especially significant because Tel Aviv is not simply a regional support office. PayPal’s Israeli operation is a major research and development hub staffed largely by software engineers and data scientists working on cybersecurity, fraud and money-laundering prevention, mobile applications, user experience, artificial intelligence and machine-learning systems that analyze vast numbers of transactions in real time.

The center was built largely around PayPal’s $169 million acquisition of Israeli fraud-detection startup Fraud Sciences in 2008. Its technology and talent helped establish Israel as a critical base for protecting PayPal’s global payments network.

The layoffs form part of the sweeping turnaround led by new CEO Enrique Lores. PayPal is expected to reduce its global workforce by approximately 20%, eliminating roughly 4,760 of the 23,800 positions it reported at the end of 2025 over a two- to three-year period.

The company is targeting at least $1.5 billion in annualized savings by eliminating overlapping functions, flattening management structures, merging teams and aggressively expanding its use of AI and automation. PayPal has described the broader objective as simplifying its organization, strengthening execution and directing investment toward the businesses with the greatest growth potential.

The Israeli dismissals are part of a global rollout already affecting several regions. PayPal plans to eliminate 164 jobs in Ireland, almost 12% of its 1,380-person workforce there. In the United States, employees working in areas including Braintree, buy now, pay later, corporate events and major-client management have publicly reported that their positions were eliminated during the restructuring.

The cuts come as PayPal fights to restore momentum against competitors including Apple Pay, Google Pay and newer fintech platforms. Its lucrative branded-checkout business has faced pressure, while Braintree has produced strong payment volumes but thinner margins. Reports that Stripe and private-equity giant Advent International recently abandoned a takeover pursuit valued at approximately $53 billion have placed even more attention on Lores’s ability to deliver a standalone turnaround.

This picture shows a view the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on March 22, 2026. The United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran on February 28, with Israel’s public broadcaster reporting that the Iranian supreme leader had been targeted, as the Islamic republic retaliated with barrages of missiles at Gulf states and Israel. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP via Getty Images) /

Yet the move does not appear to represent a wholesale retreat from Israeli technology. Earlier this year, PayPal completed its acquisition of Tel Aviv-based Cymbio, whose platform helps merchants sell through AI-powered shopping services including Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity.

The contrast is striking: PayPal is sharply reducing its established Israeli development operation while simultaneously absorbing an Israeli company central to its push into agentic commerce. That suggests the company is selectively redirecting resources toward the AI products Lores considers essential rather than abandoning Israel’s technology ecosystem.

PayPal has not revealed which Israeli teams were most heavily affected or whether further local reductions are planned. What is already clear is that even one of the company’s most strategically important fraud, cybersecurity and machine-learning centers is not insulated from its global AI-driven overhaul.

Russia has been quietly helping the Islamic Republic close one of the most important gaps in its missile arsenal: developing a ramjet-powered cruise missile capable of sustained flight at several times the speed of sound. The covert effort, code-named C430L, could eventually give Tehran a far more dangerous weapon against U.S. naval forces and fixed land targets, according to a Financial Times investigation based on leaked Russian correspondence, travel records and military patents.

The program began in 2023 and was formalized later that year through Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state arms exporter, and NPO Mashinostroyenia, one of Moscow’s most experienced missile-design organizations. This was not simply a sale of finished weapons. Russia reportedly sent senior engineers into Iran to help Tehran overcome difficult technical obstacles and build the capability itself.

Among those involved were Alexander Dergachev, a chief designer for sea-launched missiles; Alexander Chebakov, a specialist in supersonic ramjet propulsion; and Yuri Prokhorchuk, head of NPO’s aerodynamics and ballistics department. Rosoboronexport official Vladislav Kuzmichev later negotiated the C430L contract with Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics.

By 2025, Russian engineers were analyzing extensive technical material supplied by Iran and sending back detailed questions. Correspondence from June 2026 reportedly showed the two sides discussing the program’s next phase, indicating that the cooperation continued even after the outbreak of direct fighting involving Iran, Israel and the United States.

TOPSHOT – In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin meets with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of an international forum “Interrelation of times and civilizations – basis of peace and development” dedicated to the 300th anniversary of poet Magtymguly Fragi’s birthday in Ashgabat on October 11, 2024. (Photo by Alexander SHCHERBAK / POOL / AFP) (Photo by ALEXANDER SHCHERBAK/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

A ramjet uses a missile’s forward speed to compress incoming air and sustain powered flight after an initial booster accelerates it. That combination can produce a cruise missile traveling several times faster than sound, drastically reducing the time available for a ship or air-defense battery to detect, track and intercept it.

Iran already possesses an extensive ballistic-missile arsenal and produces slower cruise missiles, but developing a reliable ramjet-powered supersonic weapon has remained a major technical challenge. Tehran displayed a domestically developed ramjet engine in 2019 and later claimed that the IRGC had begun testing a prototype supersonic cruise missile.

TEHRAN, IRAN – JULY 4: A woman weeps as people gather at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla for a farewell ceremony for Iran’s late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on July 4, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. Khamenei and members of his family were killed on February 28 during U.S.-Israeli strikes at the beginning of the war, bringing an end to his 36-year rule over Iran. A multi-city state funeral will be held over six days before his body is laid to rest on July 9, in his hometown of Mashhad, Iran. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

The FT investigation found that Iran built and tested the propulsion system involved in C430L. However, there is currently no evidence that a completed Russian-assisted missile has entered operational service. Its range, guidance system, warhead and intended launch platforms also remain unknown.

The Russian organization involved is no minor contractor. The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned NPO Mashinostroyenia since 2014 and describes it as a leading Russian rocketry company responsible for cruise-missile systems launched from surface, underwater and ground platforms. It has also worked on intercontinental ballistic missiles and programs connected to Russia’s strategic nuclear forces.

The reported program reflects the increasingly transactional military alliance between two regimes confronting the West. Iran supplied Russia with Shahed attack drones and the technology needed to establish Russian production lines for them. Moscow now appears to be providing Tehran with something potentially more enduring than individual weapons: the engineering knowledge needed to design and manufacture an advanced missile domestically.

Iranian military missiles on public display in Abo Atash public park in Tehran, Iran

Russia and Iran formalized their expanding relationship through a 20-year strategic partnership that includes closer defense cooperation. The missile revelations also emerged as Vladimir Putin publicly reaffirmed Moscow’s support for Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and promised continued assistance despite U.S. pressure.

“A program like this would require political clearance from the very top in Russia,” missile expert Fabian Hinz told the Financial Times.

For Israel and the United States, the danger is larger than one potential missile. A finished weapon can be intercepted or destroyed. Engineering knowledge can be reused, improved and incorporated into future systems.

No operational C430L missile has been confirmed. But the leaked records indicate that Moscow is helping the Iranian regime move beyond importing advanced weapons and toward mastering a class of missile specifically suited for threatening warships and striking land targets.

Vice President JD Vance met with representatives of Temple Israel, the Michigan synagogue targeted in a violent antisemitic terrorist attack earlier this year, during a visit to the state this week.

The meeting brought Vance together with Rabbi Jen Lader and a Temple Israel security officer who helped stop the March attacker before he could reach children attending the synagogue’s preschool.

The significance of the meeting went far beyond a routine sit-down with Jewish community leaders. Temple Israel was the scene of a terrifying attack in March, when an assailant drove a vehicle into the synagogue while children were inside for preschool.

The attacker then emerged armed and was confronted by Temple Israel’s security team. A security officer was injured during the confrontation, but the guards successfully prevented the attacker from getting farther into the facility and potentially carrying out a mass-casualty attack.

Vance, who requested the meeting, later publicly recognized the Temple Israel representatives during a rally in Sterling Heights, prompting a standing ovation from the crowd.

“It could have been so much worse, ladies and gentlemen,” Vance said, referring to what he described as a “terrible, antisemitic terrorist attack.”

During their private meeting, Temple Israel representatives also discussed the continuing threat of antisemitism and the need for additional federal security assistance for Jewish institutions.

Rabbi Lader said the congregation has made similar appeals to political leaders from both parties.

“We’ve made the same requests to elected officials on both sides of the political aisle,” she said.

Vance also used his Michigan appearance to criticize Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed over his reaction to the Temple Israel attack.

El-Sayed initially condemned the violence but later drew outrage after discussing the Israel-Lebanon war in connection with the attack and writing, “Hurt people hurt people.” He has since apologized for the remarks.

Vance accused El-Sayed of displaying sympathy toward the attacker rather than focusing on the Jewish children and families who were placed in danger.

The Temple Israel attack and the political response to it have since become part of the broader debate over antisemitism and Jewish security in Michigan, home to one of America’s largest Jewish communities.

Israeli scientists at the Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva are on the cusp of a breakthrough in the treatment of celiac disease.

Celiac disease, which affects about 1 percent of the world’s population, is an autoimmune disease in which the ingestion of gluten triggers antibodies that damage the small intestine. Because there are no approved medications to treat celiac disease, patients suffering from the condition must follow the standard treatment of adhering to a strictly gluten-free diet.

But now Teva has produced promising results in the trial of its new medication to treat celiac disease, called TEV ‘408, which is an antibody administered via injection. Antibodies are proteins that can recognize a target in the body and act on it. TEV ‘408 is designed to block a protein called interleukin-15, or IL-15, which is implicated in the symptoms of celiac disease.

In a randomized, placebo-controlled trial involving 50 adults with celiac disease, each participant received a subcutaneous injection (an injection under the skin) of either TEV ‘408 or a placebo. The participants were instructed to wait two weeks and then eat products containing gluten daily for six weeks.

The results were statistically significant.

The researchers found, using the study’s measure of intestinal damage, an average increase in intestinal damage of 0.43 in people who took the medication compared with 0.88 in those who received the placebo, meeting the study’s primary endpoint of being clinically meaningful.

Researchers also examined intraepithelial lymphocytes, special cells found in the lining of the small intestine. An increased amount indicates active celiac disease. Among those who received the placebo, the density of these immune cells increased by 27.60, compared with only 0.37 for those who received TEV ‘408, which means that the medication also reduced inflammation in the small intestine.

Those who received the actual drug also reported lower gastrointestinal symptom scores, which means they experienced fewer or less severe gastrointestinal symptoms.

What’s more, the drug was well tolerated by the participants.

The results give hope for a future in which doctors no longer have to tell patients with celiac disease to avoid gluten, but to simply take a medication to prevent intestinal damage.

“A strict gluten-free diet has long been the only option for people living with celiac disease,” said Dr. Eric Hughes, Teva’s executive vice president of global research and development and chief medical officer.

“These results underscore the potential to move beyond managing gluten exposure and address celiac disease at its biological source,” he said.

The drug is also being studied for its possible use in treating other autoimmune disorders caused by IL-15, such as vitiligo, in which patches of skin lose their color.

A financing model that helped Israeli developers sell homes without openly cutting prices is reaching a painful reckoning. The Finance Ministry says the number of canceled new-home purchases signed between 2023 and 2025 has climbed from 1,294 at the beginning of the year to 1,821, a 41% increase. The official tally grew by 527 cancellations in just seven months.

At the center of the turmoil are the once-irresistible 20/80 and 10/90 promotions. Buyers paid only 10% or 20% when signing, then deferred the enormous remaining balance until construction was completed. In some contracts reviewed by the Finance Ministry, buyers reportedly paid virtually nothing upfront.

The arrangement gave developers a way to preserve their official asking prices while making expensive apartments appear immediately affordable. Buyers could postpone taking out a mortgage and, in some cases, hoped to resell their rights before delivery at a profit. But the financing problem never disappeared. It was simply pushed several years into the future.

That future is now arriving. Among contracts signed in 2023, 825 have already been canceled, pushing the cancellation rate to 4.3%. For purchases signed in 2024, the number of cancellations rose from 495 to 738 in seven months, lifting the cancellation rate from 1.5% to 2.3%. By comparison, only 0.5% of deals signed during the 2021 housing boom had been canceled at a similar stage.

The figures could deteriorate further. Only about 40% of the apartments sold in 2024 are ready for occupancy, while roughly one-quarter are not scheduled for delivery until 2028 or later. Many buyers therefore have not yet reached the moment when they must produce the remaining 80% or 90% of the purchase price.

Southern Israel is bearing the heaviest impact. The Beersheba tax region, which includes cities such as Beersheba, Ofakim, Sderot, Netivot and Kiryat Gat, recorded 475 cancellations. The Shfela followed with 225, central Israel with 212, Jerusalem with 200 and Tel Aviv with 167. Finance Ministry data also indicates that the pace of cancellations is accelerating in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, showing that the pressure is no longer limited to lower-priced peripheral markets.

The buyers walking away are not all financially distressed families. A Finance Ministry analysis of nearly 500 southern cancellations found that about 40% of those citing economic reasons earned no more than approximately NIS 12,000 per month. Yet roughly one-fifth belonged to households earning an average of NIS 60,000 gross monthly. Their canceled apartments cost an average of around NIS 1.7 million, suggesting that some buyers were not unable to complete the purchase but had decided the deal no longer made economic sense.

The low amount initially invested may have made that decision easier. In the cancellation files reviewed by Deputy Chief Economist Galit Ben Naim, half of the buyers had paid no more than a few tens of thousands of shekels, while one-third had paid nothing. Although apartment contracts can expose buyers to penalties worth hundreds of thousands of shekels, those penalties were frequently reduced or waived. In the southern region, the average cancellation payment was reportedly just NIS 20,000. In effect, some buyers had obtained something closer to a low-cost option on future apartment prices than a traditionally financed home purchase.

The Finance Ministry considers developer financing promotions the leading suspect, but it has not claimed definitive proof. Mandatory reporting of financing benefits began only in late 2024, after many of the contracts now being canceled had already been signed. Some purchases are also terminated because permits were delayed or other contractual conditions were not fulfilled. Still, the timing, concentration and payment structures provide strong circumstantial evidence that aggressive deferred-payment deals helped create the problem.

The Bank of Israel had already warned that such promotions could increase risks for buyers, developers and potentially the banking system. It imposed additional capital requirements on banks financing projects where more than 25% of contracts defer a substantial portion of the price until delivery. It also capped contractor-subsidized bullet and balloon mortgages at 10% of monthly housing-loan originations. The temporary restrictions remain in force through the end of 2026.

This does not mean Israel’s entire housing market is collapsing. The latest monthly report recorded 8,757 transactions, although the sharp annual increase was heavily influenced by an unusually weak wartime comparison period. More tellingly, free-market sales by developers remained 18% lower than during the same month two years earlier.

The decisive test will come as thousands of deferred-payment contracts reach delivery. Each must ultimately become real cash, be refinanced or return to developers as canceled inventory. The 41% surge is an early warning that part of Israel’s apparent housing demand may have been borrowed from the future.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani visited Eichler’s Judaica in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Borough Park Wednesday ahead of Rosh Hashanah, where he was gifted a bottle of honey. A shofar was also blown while he was in the store.

This marked his first visit to the heavily ultra-Orthodox neighborhood since taking office.

A protester shouting at the camera was forcibly escorted out of the store after yelling with her back to the mayor but facing the camera of a local news outlet.

“It’s all because of you we have so much anti-Semitism. I can’t believe you’re in … a Jewish store before Rosh Hashanah. You’re causing all the anti-Semitism. You’re not the ambassador for America. Shame on you for coming to Borough Park,” she said, before being pushed away.

In another video, a protester, who may be the same one, is heard shouting in the background.

Video footage showed Mamdani engaging with community leaders and touring the Judaica store. He wished the crowd assembled there a “Shana Tova,” which is the equivalent of “Happy New Year,” the traditional greeting before Rosh Hashanah, which begins later this month.

“It is so lovely to be here, especially before the High Holidays, and to wish everyone a shanah tovah, and I really just appreciate the welcome and the conversations,” he said.

Israel is preparing for the possibility that the Iranian regime will open a new direct front during the Jewish High Holidays, with Defense Minister Israel Katz warning that any missile or drone attack will trigger a powerful Israeli response against Iran.

Speaking at a conference hosted by Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth, Katz said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the IDF and Israel’s defense establishment are monitoring developments around the clock, including through secure late-night consultations. Israel does not intend to be surprised, he stressed, and will coordinate with Washington without surrendering its freedom to act independently. “Our planes are ready to take off.”

Iran has so far concentrated its latest attacks on American forces and U.S.-linked targets elsewhere in the region. Katz warned, however, that Tehran could abruptly redirect its fire toward Israel, particularly as the Jewish holidays approach. He said Israel is prepared both defensively and offensively and will not accept an Iranian attack under any pretext involving Lebanon, Gaza or Judea & Samaria.

The warning follows the heaviest exchange between Washington and Tehran in weeks. U.S. Central Command said American forces struck IRGC air-defense systems, radar installations, maritime assets, mine-laying capabilities and communications sites after Iranian attacks on commercial shipping and U.S. personnel.

The Islamic Republic retaliated with missiles and drones targeting American positions in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraqi Kurdistan. Initial U.S. assessments found no American fatalities, while Gulf governments reported interceptions and limited damage. Saudi Arabia separately accused Iran of attacking a state-owned tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, killing two Filipino crew members.

Katz said Israel is currently allowing the United States to lead the military response because the immediate confrontation centers on the Strait of Hormuz, freedom of navigation and global energy supplies. That restraint should not be mistaken for passivity. Israel continues to monitor Iran daily and retains full operational freedom should Tehran attempt to widen the war.

The defense minister also restated Israel’s permanent red line over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Katz said the Israeli-American campaign destroyed the regime’s nuclear-weapons production chain and that Israel has not detected a restart. Any attempt to rebuild the program, he warned, could produce another joint Israeli-American strike.

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) /

That assessment cannot yet be fully verified internationally. The International Atomic Energy Agency says inspectors still lack access to key Iranian facilities and cannot account for 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60%, material that could be brought to weapons grade if further enriched. The agency has described that information gap as an urgent proliferation concern.

The broader war has already moved through major strikes, a temporary truce and failed diplomatic arrangements without producing a lasting settlement. The renewed attacks across the Gulf demonstrate how quickly sporadic fighting can again become a regional confrontation involving military bases, commercial shipping, international airspace and Israel’s home front.

Katz’s message leaves Tehran little room for miscalculation: Israel is watching, its defenses are prepared and an attack during the Jewish holidays will be answered directly and forcefully.

Iranian officials announced Wednesday that four people were killed and more than 50 were wounded in a U.S. strike on a home in Sirik in the south of Iran, where a wedding was being held.

“A residential home was attacked while people were holding a wedding ceremony,” Ahmad Nafisi, deputy governor of Hormozgan province, said on Iranian state television.

“Two people were reported martyred and a number of others wounded,” he added.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei called the strike a “war crime.”

“The truth of this unlawful war of choice — and the true face of the war crime — is in Sirik, where a wedding ceremony was brutally bombed as part of America’s desperate struggle to conceal its failure,” he wrote on X.

The United States denied responsibility.

“We’re aware of the reports, which originated from Iranian state media. The U.S. military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC,” said CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins.

Critics of the Iranian regime believe the strike was caused by a misfired missile from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“An IRGC missile failed to reach its intended target and landed on a wedding in Iran instead,” wrote one social media user. “One assumes a wedding was not the strategic objective, though with the Islamic Regime that distinction grows less reassuring by the day.”

“There is a peculiar genius to the IRGC: Miss the enemy. Hit Iranians,” the poster added. “At this rate, the safest place to stand may be wherever the IRGC is actually aiming.”

“An IRGC missile struck a wedding ceremony after a failed launch,” wrote another. “This regime puts Iranian lives in danger even on a day that should be filled with joy.”

President Donald Trump floated the idea Wednesday in a Truth Social post of renaming the Strait of Hormuz “Trump Strait.”

“Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT??? Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The international waterway has some waters in Iran and Oman and is a vital maritime chokepoint, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil was shipped before the war.

Trump’s post follows a comment he made last month about seizing the strait and making it a U.S. territory.

“Pretty soon, I will be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump said.

This follows a streak of name changes Trump has implemented since beginning his second term in office.

• He signed an executive order in August renaming Lake Ontario Lake America.
• He ordered the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America in January 2025.
• In September 2025, he gave the Department of Defense the secondary name of Department of War.
• He changed the name of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts to the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in late 2025, but the courts later ordered him to remove his name.
• He added his name to the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., in late 2025.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited a military outpost Wednesday, accompanied by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen Eyal Zamir, IDF Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor, and 7th Armored Brigade commander Col. Elad Zuri.

According to an official statement from the social media account of the prime minister, he “received a briefing from the commanders in the field on the activity of IDF forces in the Yellow Line area, on the operational missions in the sector, and on the effort to remove threats and maintain the security of the forces and the communities.”

Addressing the soldiers, Netanyahu said that Israel is not withdrawing from the Yellow Line, that the threat from Hamas has largely been eradicated, and that more work remains to be done. He vowed that Israel would see to the demilitarization of Hamas and ensure that Gaza will never again pose a threat to Israel.

The full text of his remarks follows:

“I am here inside the Gaza Strip with the Chief of the General Staff, the Commander of the Southern Command, and our heroic commanders and soldiers. We control the area here. You can see Ashkelon right there, you can see all our communities from all directions: Sderot, Netivot, the kibbutzim.

“We control the area. We are not withdrawing. We remain on this line. We control 60% of the Strip, and there is more to come because we are eliminating the terrorists who threaten us, we are doing that day in and day out. Yesterday we took Hamas’s ‘Head of Shin Bet’ [chief of internal security service]. We will surely learn a few things.

“But we are doing everything to reach our goal: the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza. Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel. This goal has actually been achieved to a large extent, and there is more work to complete – and we will complete it.”

The reference to the capture of Hamas’ “Head of Shin Bet” pertains to Tuesday’s stunning raid in Gaza in which, under cover of airstrikes, IDF forces nabbed the head of Hamas’ internal security apparatus, which is equivalent to Israel’s Shin Bet. The Hamas official has been identified as Muein al-Arabid.

Shin Bet chief David Zini visited the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights Tuesday during a state visit to the United States.

Zini, accompanied by security personnel and Chabad community leaders, toured the synagogue, which is so iconic that it is simply known as “770,” and the nearby yeshiva. He met with local Chabad leaders and asked about the yeshiva students’ learning schedule and curriculum. He also met with Rabbi Yekusiel Feldman, a spiritual mentor at 770, and Rabbi Mendel Eisenbach, who manages the World Lubavitch Communications Center.

Later, Zini spoke to the locals as he strolled down Kingston Avenue.

The director of the Shin Bet was “warmly received by community leaders,” wrote Crown Heights Jewish community leader and police chaplain Rabbi Chanina Sperlin on social media.

“David Zini, Director of Shin Bet, Israel’s Security and Counterintelligence Service, and a longtime ally and friend of the Chabad-Lubavitch community in Israel, visited 770 Eastern Parkway, Chabad World Headquarters in Brooklyn, where he was warmly received by community leaders,” he wrote.

In a stunning admission to The Financial Times, outgoing United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said that its independent experts are “out of control.”

“We have many [rapporteurs] that are totally out of control, from the point of view of the Secretariat,” Guterres told the outlet, specifically referring to their rhetoric on Israel.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz slammed the U.N. for not firing these rapporteurs in a post on X earlier this week.

This video shows a montage of “out of control” rhetoric on Israel, followed by a strong response by UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer. (Credit: X)

“The reality is many Secretariat leaders privately admit the Special Rapporteurs, like Albanese, are out of control and a discredit to the UN, but have failed to hold them accountable even when they violate their code of conduct or abuse their posts to wage lawfare. This is a broken system that must be fixed,” he wrote.

One of the U.N.’s special rapporteurs, Francesca Albanese, who has become infamous for her antisemitic and inflammatory rhetoric, hit back, saying that the secretary-general didn’t say what he said.

“Of course the SG never meant what the pro-Apartheid scavengers spread,” she said in response to a media inquiry on X.

Albanese’s rhetoric was so antisemitic that a number of European countries called for her resignation, and the United States imposed sanctions on her which she has since fought in court.

“Albanese has functioned as Hamas’s de facto spokesperson at the UN,” said UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer. “Iran’s regime and its terrorist proxies routinely praise her. But numerous democracies have called for her removal, condemning her for Holocaust inversion and other ethical violations, making her the first UN human rights official in history to be so denounced. The United States sanctioned her. Guterres called her a horrible person in private. Now Ambassador Waltz confirms it: senior UN officials knew she was out of control. A human rights system that cannot remove its most notorious antisemite is not independent. It is broken.”

Sen. Ed Markey trounced his opponent, Rep. Seth Moulton, in the Democratic primary in Massachusetts Tuesday night, sweeping to victory with 75.9 percent of the vote to Moulton’s 24.1 percent even before all the votes were counted.

“Tonight is a testament to the power of the progressive movement,” the progressive anti-Israel candidate said Tuesday night, noting that he had spoken to Moulton before taking the state. “It is a progressive movement fueled by young people demanding more from their leaders.”

Moulton said he had called the octogenarian candidate to congratulate him and that he supported his opponent fully, saying that Democrats “must stand united this November to protect our democracy and defeat Donald Trump.”

While Markey is the more progressive of the two, having voted to cut military aid and munitions sales to Israel, Moulton distanced himself from AIPAC during his campaign, announcing that he had returned all the funds he received from the pro-Israel lobby and would not continue to receive funding from the group.

Ed Markey, left, and Seth Moulton. (Credit: Getty Images)

“In recent years AIPAC has aligned itself too closely with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government,” he said at the time. “I’m a friend of Israel, but not of its current government.”

Jeff Robbins, a Democratic operative, said in an interview with The Jewish Telegraphic Agency that AIPAC has become a litmus test for Democrats.

“It is clearly the safe thing to do, if you are running for a nomination in the Democratic Party, to aggressively distance yourself from Israel,” he said, adding that this attitude was “reflective of the reality that we have seen play out in spades over the last year, which means that Democrats are “running for the hills about AIPAC and treating it as a boogeyman,” 

“If you want to have a prayer of being elected in a Democratic primary in this country, you had better be able to say, ‘I don’t take money from AIPAC. In fact, I never heard of it before,’” he said.

More than 170 Jewish Hollywood creatives signed an open letter titled “Enough!” that was published Tuesday defending Mark Ruffalo, best known for his role as the Hulk, from charges of antisemitism.

The letter opened with the assertion that the signatories have “a simple message to share with the world: Enough! Enough with the false and dangerous weaponization of charges of antisemitism against those who are brave enough to point out the obvious: that the assault on the Palestinian people and the assault on our liberties at home are deeply interconnected, and there is nothing antisemitic about recognizing that fact.”

Critics say that Ruffalo’s criticism of Paramount for its merger with Warner Bros., which targeted Jewish businessmen, invoked antisemitic tropes about Jews and power. In his statement, the famous actor accused Israel of genocide and apartheid.

The open letter claimed to be a response to “the outrageous smear campaign against our respected colleague Mark Ruffalo,” contending that criticism of Israel, of Paramount for its support of Israel, and of Oracle for its work with the Israeli military is not necessarily antisemitic.

Hannah Einbinder was one of the letter’s signatories. (Credit: Alison Buck/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)

Paramount CEO David Ellison is the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. Oracle provides technological infrastructure, as well as database and cloud services, to Israeli government and military agencies.

“Hacks” star Hanna Einbinder, who has also waded deeply into the anti-Israel controversy, was one of the signatories of the letter. Other famous signatories included Joel Coen, Tony Kushner, Ilana Glazer, Lisa Cholodenko, and Todd Haynes.

The letter criticized the merger, saying that it will destroy jobs, “will further consolidate the oligarchic control of our media,” and “will strangle competition and creativity in film and television production and distribution.” It also said that this was part of a larger plan to support “the ongoing depredations being visited on the people of Palestine and their silencing of critics of those horrors,” adding that Gaza is “a territory which has become an open-air laboratory for AI-driven killing and control technologies like the ones celebrated by former Oracle CEO (and current Oracle and Paramount board member) Safra Catz.”

While arguing that pointing out these connections is not antisemitism, the letter invoked antisemitic tropes by saying, “The AI road to WarnerMount runs through Gaza, and Ellison has often let us know the Orwellian world he has in store for us as he consolidates control over what we watch and how we watch it, knowing that as we watch he and his corrupt cohort will always be watching us: ‘Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting.'” Critics point out that this demonstrates the standard Jewish power trope, especially since it left out the context of Ellison’s remark, which was made in reference to recording criminal activity.

Mark Goldfeder, director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, pointed out that the letter complains about an “outrageous smear campaign” without citing the actual smear.

“A letter devoted to rebutting an “outrageous smear” should be able to quote the smear and explain what is false. This one cannot,” he posted on X.

“The letter reproduces the very conspiracy structure it indignantly denies: Jewish billionaires using ‘astonishing’ wealth to consolidate media control, serve a foreign state, shape propaganda and build a surveillance apparatus to watch us all,” he said.

“Money. Media. Dual loyalty. Hidden control,” he added, pointing to these as classic antisemitic tropes the letter itself promoted.

Recently, Ruffalo, along with Javier Bardem and tens of other Marvel actors, came out in force to demand the release of convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti, provoking a fiery response from the Israeli government.

The FBI seized more than $560,000 in cryptocurrency intended for Hamas and took control of domains and servers powering the terror group’s online fundraising and recruitment system. The operation also gave investigators information on thousands of people who contacted Hamas seeking to donate through cryptocurrency or traditional payment methods, according to the Justice Department.

This was far more than a wallet freeze. Federal agents captured infrastructure tied to AlQassam.ps, the principal website used by Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, disrupting channels used to collect money, communicate with supporters and recruit for the terrorist organization. Control of the infrastructure allowed the FBI to intercept donations before they reached Hamas. “Your networks are not secure, your crypto is vulnerable,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro warned.

Unsealed court documents reveal how agents penetrated the operation. A confidential source in the United States spotted a Hamas fundraising message on Telegram and contacted an email address published by the Al-Qassam Brigades. Hamas responded with instructions to transfer USDT, a dollar-linked cryptocurrency, through a temporary wallet address on the TRON network.

The instructions read like a guide to avoiding law enforcement. Donors were told not to identify Hamas as the recipient, not to transfer funds directly from Binance and to route the money through other wallet services. Hamas periodically changed the wallet address, with each address intended for only one transfer. Investigators repeated the process through multiple confidential sources, collected new addresses and followed the money through consolidation wallets, exchanges and suspected financial mules.

One FBI affidavit estimates that the financing network received more than $3 million in donations and remained active months before the infrastructure seizures. The digital trail also passed through an internet provider in Tehran before later relying on infrastructure connected to American hosting and domain services, giving U.S. authorities an opening to move against it.

The $560,000 figure represents three separate court-authorized cryptocurrency seizures rather than one sudden raid. An earlier phase recovered approximately $201,400 in USDT from wallets and exchange accounts tied to a system that had already laundered more than $1.5 million. Subsequent warrants expanded both the amount recovered and the scope of the operation, culminating in the seizure of the online infrastructure itself.

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP – NOVEMBER 4: Search operations for the bodies of Israeli hostages continue as part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas at the Shujaiyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza on November 4, 2025. Egyptian heavy machinery, accompanied by teams from the International Committee of the Red Cross and Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, continued their third day of work around Baghdad Street to recover the bodies of Israeli captives killed during the conflict. (Photo by Khames Alrefi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Hamas has promoted cryptocurrency for years as an anonymous way to finance terrorism beyond the reach of banks. But blockchain transactions leave a permanent public record. In an earlier U.S. operation, investigators seized 150 cryptocurrency accounts linked to the Al-Qassam Brigades and covertly operated one of its websites, causing people attempting to finance Hamas to send money into wallets controlled by the United States instead.

The strategic damage may now exceed the value of the confiscated funds. The Justice Department said undermining donor confidence was a central goal: Hamas supporters can no longer know whether a donation address, email account or website is genuinely controlled by the terror group or has already been compromised by the FBI.

No new charges against individual donors were announced, but the Justice Department said the information collected on thousands of contacts will be used in future counterterrorism efforts. Hamas lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and critical infrastructure. Its would-be financiers may have handed American investigators something even more valuable: their digital identities.

The United States has reissued a sweeping security alert for Americans across the Middle East, warning that renewed fighting with Iran could trigger sudden escalation, flight cancellations, airspace closures and wider travel disruptions.

Versions of the warning were distributed by U.S. missions in Jerusalem, Amman, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Baghdad, Beirut, Kuwait City, Muscat and the virtual U.S. Embassy for Iran. Americans already in the region were urged to exercise heightened vigilance, while travelers were told to closely monitor airport and airline operations.

The latest alert is not an evacuation order. Unlike a more urgent warning issued last month, which advised Americans to consider leaving if tensions worsened, the new guidance focuses on preparedness rather than departure. In Israel, citizens were also advised to identify their nearest protected space and keep food, water, medicine and other essential supplies available.

The timing is critical. U.S. Central Command announced that American forces had completed a new wave of strikes against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, hitting air-defense sites, radar systems, maritime facilities, mine-laying capabilities and communications infrastructure. CENTCOM said the operation followed attempted IRGC attacks against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and American service members deployed to the region. More than 50,000 U.S. troops are currently operating across the Middle East.

INDIAN OCEAN – JANUARY 26: (—-EDITORIAL USE ONLY – MANDATORY CREDIT – ‘U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND / HANDOUT’ – NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS – DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS—-) Sailors aboard USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) perform routine maintenance as the aircraft carrier sails in the Indian Ocean, Jan. 26. The US deployed the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group to the Middle East on Monday as Washington strengthens its military presence in the region. The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier enters the region ‘to promote regional security and stability,’ the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said through the US social media company X. (Photo by CENTCOM/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Iran responded by launching ballistic missiles and drones toward U.S.-linked targets in the region, forcing Jordanian air defenses into action and raising fears that countries hosting American forces could again be pulled directly into the conflict. The exchange ended roughly a month without major military action between Washington and Tehran.

Washington’s warning extends beyond military installations and the immediate battlefield. The State Department said Iran and groups aligned with Tehran may target American interests overseas, including diplomatic facilities, businesses and other institutions associated with the United States. The alert does not identify a specific imminent plot, but cautions that locations previously untouched by the conflict should not be assumed safe.

TOPSHOT – Israeli air defence systems are activated to intercept Iranian missiles over the Israeli city of Tel Aviv early on June 18, 2025. Israel and Iran exchanged fire again on June 17, the fifth day of strikes in their most intense confrontation in history, fuelling fears of a drawn-out conflict that could engulf the Middle East. (Photo by Menahem Kahana / AFP via Getty Images)

For Americans in Israel, the practical message is readiness rather than panic: follow Home Front Command instructions, know the nearest shelter and do not assume a scheduled flight will operate if missile fire forces abrupt airspace restrictions. Travelers were also urged to confirm flights directly with their airlines and enroll in the State Department’s Smart Traveler Enrollment Program for emergency notices.

Much of the wording appeared in earlier U.S. warnings, meaning the language itself does not prove Washington has intelligence of a specific incoming attack. The important change is the moment in which it was reissued. American strikes have resumed, Iran is retaliating across borders, and U.S. forces say they remain prepared for additional operations. The fragile regional calm has once again become vulnerable to a rapid and unpredictable breakdown.