Swords of Iron: sources IIIIIIIII

This is part 9 of primary sources for Swords of Iron" or use the Template:

Main article: Swords of Iron

Continuing from Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8.

Introduction

Oct 7, 2023 atrocities, the thousands of "Palestinian" Arab Muslim barbarian (Hamas/PIJ, PFLP & ordinary Gazans) onslaught on southern Israel - under Allah Akbar cries: massacring youth at a festival, torching families alive at their homes, suffocating shelters with people in them, mass torture, mass rape - some even post mortem - all while laughing, slaughtering children in front of their parents - parents in front of their children, beheading babies, dismembering bodies, kidnapping kids, men women into Gaza while parading them to cheers of other racist Arab masses. It led to operation Swords of Iron.

Notes part I: Dec-22-26, 2025

Bondi massacre: Terrorists threw explosives at crowd - which didn't detonate. Naveed Ackram, one of the two terrorists who carried out the terror attack at Bondi Beach in Sydney, was released from the hospital where he was treated after being wounded in an exchange of fire with police, and transferred to a detention facility. According to documents released by the Sydney court, he faces 59 charges, including 15 murder charges. According to Australian ABC network, he and his father Sajjid Ackram, who was killed at the scene, threw four explosive devices at the crowd on the beach - which did not detonate (three pipe bombs and an additional tennis ball-shaped device). It was also noted that the two had trained and recorded a video in which they "justified" the attack. Ynet | 12.21.25 23:41 YNet

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Neo-Nazi. AmericaFest Horror: Myron Gaines Hurls Antisemitic Abuse at Pregnant Jewish Woman | WATCH. The conservative movement is going one way, and it's not up. Tucker, Candace and Fuentes are shining examples of this. And Charlie Kirk would be crying in his grave if he saw this happening at his beloved TPUSA.

Gila Isaacson. Dec 22, 2025. JFeed

Debbie Schlussel חי-ה דבורה שליסל @DebbieSchlussel: POS Nazi @MyronGainesX aka Muslim Amrou Fudl was an honored guest @TPUSA cozied up to by fellow Jew-hater TPUSA official & host @JackPosobiec (hired by his pal. Charlie). Outside the venue, he called a pregnant Jewish woman a "fat fucking Jew." Despicable From Leviathan: Leviathan @l3v1at4an: Amrou Fudl aka “Myron Gaines” calls a Jewish pregnant woman a “fat fucking Jew” outside of @TPUSA while wearing a shirt that mocks cooking Holocaust victims.

The conservative movement in the US has a big problem associating themselves with such degenerate grifters. on X Dec 21, 2025 on X

(Related:

Andrew Tate’s Muslim fanbase is growing. Some say he’s exploiting Islam for internet popularity. By Sana Noor Haq, CNN. Feb 16, 2025.

But being banned from major social media platforms did not silence Tate online. He continued to appear regularly last year on internet forums hosted by content creators including Mohammed Hijab and Myron Gaines – both of whom belong to a strand of Muslim male influencers known as “akh right bros.”

Taken from the Arabic word for “brother,” akh right bros situate themselves in opposition to so-called Western values in favor of a version of Islam that is rife with misogyny, according to Javad Hashmi, an Islamic studies scholar at Harvard University.

Andrew Tate’s Muslim fanbase is growing. Some say he’s exploiting Islam for internet popularity. By Sana Noor Haq, CNN

Feb 16, 2025 CNN

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'Yeah, we like Hitler' Gaines defends leaked GOP chat. ‘Fresh and Fit’ host Myron Gaines defends leaked GOP antisemitic group chat: ‘Yeah, we like Hitler’

By Grace Gilson/JTA October 17, 2025.

Myron Gaines, co-host of the popular podcast “Fresh and Fit” which is known for frequently airing antisemitic content, defended a leaked group chat where Young Republicans operatives praised Adolf Hitler.

“Yeah we like Hitler. No one gives a f–k what you woke jews think anymore,” wrote Gaines, whose real name is Amrou Fudl, in a post on X Wednesday replying to another post decrying Vice President J.D. Vance’s defense of the group chat.

“Bro was a revolutionary leader and saved germany,” Gaines’ post continued. “The jews[sic] declared[sic] war on Germany first[sic]. ...”

While condemnation for Gaines resounded in the replies to his post, later that night, Gaines posted a photo of himself superimposed on an image of Adolf Hitler, responding to Politico’s post of its exposé by writing, “Hitler was a real n—a and no one gives a f–k what stupid outlets you fruit loops say.”

Gaines antisemitic podcast. Like many products of the conservative “manosphere,” Gaines’ podcast, which he co-hosts with Walter Weekes and has over 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube, centers on misogynistic views about dating and gender roles. It has also increasingly embraced antisemitic conspiracy theories since the summer of 2023...

In July 2023, Gaines, who authored a book titled “Why Women Deserve Less,” hosted antisemitic influencer Sneako and far-right commentator Nick Fuentes for an episode that centered on Holocaust denial.

The following month, “Fresh and Fit” was demonetized by YouTube for “repeated violations” of its policies, and last July, a podcast episode on Rumble where guests blamed Jews for the Holocaust was taken down by the platform.

During a speaking engagement last April at Pennsylvania State University, where Gaines was met with student protests, he claimed to his audience that there were “...fingerprints all over” the 9/11 terror attacks and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

On his X account, he frequently refers to Jews as “kik[sic]es” and espouses conspiracy theories that Jews control the “media and the narrative.”

“Do you not see that jews engineer or pioneer every destructive industry into western civilization? Feminism, marxism, communism, transgenderism. pornography, usury. All of these things are completely antithetical to Christ,” wrote Gaines in a post on X in August. “Also, they killed Jesus...” JPost

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Facebook · Canada-Israel Friendship Association. 6.1K+ reactions · 4 months ago 👁️ MUST WATCH Watch as an IDF soldier humiliates and destroys ... Aug 11, 2025 MUST WATCH Watch as an IDF soldier humiliates and destroys Sudanese-American Muslim hatemonger, fanatical antisemite and rabid Israel hate. On FB

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American antisemitism. VP Vance: Consensus on Israel is Eroding Speaking at TPUSA'S America Fest, Vice President JD Vance said that "99% of Republicans, and probably 97% of Democrats, don't hate Jews because they're Jews." The VP said it's time for American support for Israel to be open to debate. Judah Pe'er. Dec 22, 2025 07:25

Remarks by US Vice President JD Vance at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest this week landed with particular unease in Israel, not because he attacked Israel directly, but because of what his framing reveals about a growing shift inside the Republican Party.

Vance addressed the wave of antisemitism that has roiled conservative politics by insisting it is largely being misdiagnosed. “99% of Republicans, and probably 97% of Democrats, don’t hate Jews because they’re Jewish,” he said. What Americans are reacting to, he argued, is not Jews, but a “consensus foreign policy” that should be open to challenge. The real task, in his view, is to debate US foreign commitments openly rather than “shutting down” dissent by labeling it antisemitic. On its face, this sounds reasonable. Debate about US aid, alliances, and overseas military engagement is legitimate and necessary. But for Israelis, the subtext is unmistakable: antisemitism is being reframed as policy disagreement, and the burden of proof is shifting away from those spreading antisemitic ideas and toward those objecting to them.

This distinction matters because the current American debate is not taking place in a vacuum. Vance made his comments amid a very public fight within the MAGA movement over the normalization of figures who traffic in explicit antisemitism, including white nationalist Nick Fuentes and conspiracy-peddling influencers like Candace Owens. When Vance declines to draw clear red lines, arguing instead against “purity tests,” it signals tolerance for an ecosystem in which antisemitism is increasingly treated as just another controversial opinion. For Israel, this is not an abstract concern. For decades, bipartisan American support for Israel rested on a moral consensus that antisemitism is not merely another viewpoint, and that attacks on Jews, whether rhetorical or physical, demand firm condemnation. Vance’s comments suggest that this consensus is eroding, particularly on the American right, where “America First” rhetoric is being used to recast hostility toward Israel as principled skepticism rather than prejudice.

That shift was on full display at the conference. Prominent conservative voices openly accused pro-Israel figures of dual loyalty, blamed Israel for political violence without evidence, and portrayed Jewish influence as corrosive to American interests. Yet Vance’s response was to minimize the problem and emphasize unity over exclusion. For Israelis, the message is troubling: the priority is preserving a political coalition, even if that means accommodating people who openly flirt with antisemitic tropes. The danger here is not that Republicans will suddenly “hate Jews,” as Vance put it. It is that antisemitism is being laundered through the language of foreign policy realism and free speech, making it harder to call out and easier to dismiss. When hostility toward Israel becomes indistinguishable from mainstream debate, Jewish communities pay the price first.

Vance is widely viewed as a leading contender for the post-Trump Republican future. His remarks suggest that future may involve a colder, more transactional relationship with Israel, and a greater willingness to tolerate antisemitism so long as it is packaged as dissent. Israelis would be wise to take note. JFeed

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The eighth, most dangerous front: How Turkey went from ally to strategic threat - opinion. Bit by bit, a Turkish front is forming, more dangerous than Israel’s seven arenas since Oct. 7. Erdogan’s ideology and ambition require Israel to refocus on a higher strategic risk.

By Maj.-gen. (Res.) Giora Eiland. December 22, 2025 09:57 Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s political and military leadership has claimed that seven different arenas threaten it. It seems that, bit by bit but consistently, an eighth menacing front is forming, one that in many ways is more dangerous than the others.

This is the Turkish front. Turkey, which until about 23 years ago was one of Israel’s greatest friends, has become a real enemy since Erdogan rose to power.

The main factors that explain Turkey’s defiant and threatening approach toward Israel, Cyprus, and Greece are its religious outlook, its national outlook, and its megalomania. However, Erdogan’s influence on Turkey is not the only factor that defines the Turkish ethos.

To understand the full context, one must examine the reality that has taken shape for more than a hundred years. During the First World War, the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled for centuries both in the Middle East and in the Balkans, collapsed.

Turkey, which had been allied with Germany and Austria, was defeated. At the conference convened in Lausanne in July 1923, Turkey was forced to accept the position of the victorious countries, Britain, France, Italy, and Greece. The main Turkish concession was in the territorial sphere. Turkey was forced to retreat to the borders recognized to this day.

How Turkey became Israel's largest strategic threat.

The fact that it was required to retreat to these borders does not mean that it accepted this decision. In fact, more than twenty years ago, when relations between Turkey and Israel were good, and the two countries’ militaries were cooperating, I, as an IDF major general, met with my Turkish counterparts many times. In our informal conversations, they told me the following:

“We understand that the days of the great Ottoman Empire have passed, and we do not expect them to return. However, we do not accept the borders that were imposed on us in 1923. Turkey’s natural borders must expand in at least three places: the southern border, the Aegean Sea, and Cyprus. Regarding the southern border, the just and correct border is the one that runs along the line between the city of Aleppo in Syria and the city of Mosul in Iraq. Regarding the Aegean Sea, the sea that separates Turkey from Greece, we believe it is not right that dozens of islands that exist in this sea, some only a few kilometers from the Turkish coast, have belonged to Greece since 1923. The correct border between Turkey and Greece should pass in the Aegean Sea midway between the mainland of Turkey and the mainland of Greece, and thus many islands would have to pass to Turkish sovereignty. Regarding Cyprus, its entire northern part is supposed to belong to Turkey.”

Since Erdogan came to power, Turkish national pride has not only grown, but two additional dimensions have been added to it: the megalomaniac personality of the Turkish president and his strict Islamist approach.

Until a few years ago, Israel could live with Turkey’s hostile approach toward it, since this approach was characterized mainly by words, by venomous statements, by attempts to jab at it through the flotilla to Gaza in 2010, and by funding provocations in Jerusalem.

Turkey's radicalization reflects willingness to act against Israel.

In the past two years, it is evident that there has been a radicalization in Turkey’s hostile position toward Israel, a radicalization that also reflects a willingness to move toward a military confrontation with it.

Three developments encourage Erdogan: First, Israel’s international isolation following the war in Gaza. Second, Turkish success in bringing about a coup in Syria, which ensured loyalty to the Turks from Syria’s leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa. Moreover, he depends on Turkish military assistance in order to strengthen his rule. Third, the personal connection and good relations between Erdogan and the president of the United States, Trump, who declared publicly that he loves him.

Israel apparently understands the magnitude of the Turkish threat. The likelihood that it will materialize into a direct military confrontation still seems distant, mainly because the United States will do everything it can to prevent it.

However, the severity of this threat, if it does occur, is more than troubling. Turkey has a huge and high-quality navy, and if it decides to attack Israel, it is certainly capable of creating a maritime blockade of Israel. In other words, Israel could find itself in a limited military confrontation with Turkey in the skies of Syria, since it cannot forgo its air control over all of southern Syria. This control is a necessary condition for the Israeli Air Force’s freedom of action against Iran.

It would be better for Israel to cooperate with Cyprus and Greece, since these two countries also identify the potential of Turkish aggression toward them.

The Iranian threat, on the one hand, and the potential Turkish threat, on the other, are considered the most significant dangers at the strategic level. These threats, and the need to prepare for them, explain why Israel must avoid renewing the war in Gaza and in Lebanon. In these arenas, Israel has the upper hand, and therefore it is right to direct its resources toward much greater risks. JPost

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Neo-Nazi. AmericaFest Horror: Myron Gaines Hurls Antisemitic Abuse at Pregnant Jewish Woman | WATCH. The conservative movement is going one way, and it's not up. Tucker, Candace and Fuentes are shining examples of this. And Charlie Kirk would be crying in his grave if he saw this happening at his beloved TPUSA.

Gila Isaacson. Dec 22, 2025. JFeed

(Related:

'Yeah, we like Hitler' Gaines defends leaked GOP chat. ‘Fresh and Fit’ host Myron Gaines defends leaked GOP antisemitic group chat: ‘Yeah, we like Hitler’

By Grace Gilson/JTA. October 17, 2025.

Myron Gaines, co-host of the popular podcast “Fresh and Fit” which is known for frequently airing antisemitic content, defended a leaked group chat where Young Republicans operatives praised Adolf Hitler.

“Yeah we like Hitler. No one gives a f–k what you woke jews think anymore,” wrote Gaines, whose real name is Amrou Fudl, in a post on X Wednesday replying to another post decrying Vice President J.D. Vance’s defense of the group chat.

“Bro was a revolutionary leader and saved germany,” Gaines’ post continued. “The jews[sic] declared[sic] war on Germany first[sic]. ...”

While condemnation for Gaines resounded in the replies to his post, later that night, Gaines posted a photo of himself superimposed on an image of Adolf Hitler, responding to Politico’s post of its exposé by writing, “Hitler was a real n—a and no one gives a f–k what stupid outlets you fruit loops say.”

Gaines antisemitic podcast. Like many products of the conservative “manosphere,” Gaines’ podcast, which he co-hosts with Walter Weekes and has over 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube, centers on misogynistic views about dating and gender roles. It has also increasingly embraced antisemitic conspiracy theories since the summer of 2023...

In July 2023, Gaines, who authored a book titled “Why Women Deserve Less,” hosted antisemitic influencer Sneako and far-right commentator Nick Fuentes for an episode that centered on Holocaust denial.

The following month, “Fresh and Fit” was demonetized by YouTube for “repeated violations” of its policies, and last July, a podcast episode on Rumble where guests blamed Jews for the Holocaust was taken down by the platform.

During a speaking engagement last April at Pennsylvania State University, where Gaines was met with student protests, he claimed to his audience that there were “...fingerprints all over” the 9/11 terror attacks and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

On his X account, he frequently refers to Jews as “kik[sic]es” and espouses conspiracy theories that Jews control the “media and the narrative.”

“Do you not see that jews engineer or pioneer every destructive industry into western civilization? Feminism, marxism, communism, transgenderism. pornography, usury. All of these things are completely antithetical to Christ,” wrote Gaines in a post on X in August. “Also, they killed Jesus...” JPost

__

But being banned from major social media platforms did not silence Tate online. He continued to appear regularly last year on internet forums hosted by content creators including Mohammed Hijab and Myron Gaines – both of whom belong to a strand of Muslim male influencers known as “akh right bros.”

Taken from the Arabic word for “brother,” akh right bros situate themselves in opposition to so-called Western values in favor of a version of Islam that is rife with misogyny, according to Javad Hashmi, an Islamic studies scholar at Harvard University.

Andrew Tate’s Muslim fanbase is growing. Some say he’s exploiting Islam for internet popularity. By Sana Noor Haq, CNN

Feb 16, 2025 CNN

Facebook · Canada-Israel Friendship Association. 6.1K+ reactions · 4 months ago 👁️ MUST WATCH Watch as an IDF soldier humiliates and destroys ... Aug 11, 2025 MUST WATCH Watch as an IDF soldier humiliates and destroys Sudanese-American Muslim hatemonger, fanatical antisemite and rabid Israel hate. On FB)

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A week after Bondi. Antisemite Arrested for Making Threats on Flight to Sydney. A nineteen year-old Australian man was arrested upon landing after making antisemitic threats on a flight from Bali, Indonesia, to Sydney. The threats, both verbal and hand gestures, were directed at a passenger the antisemite knew to be Jewish, police say.

Judah Pe'er. Dec 21, 2025 12:04

Australian Federal Police arrested a 19-year-old man on Wednesday after he allegedly threatened violence against a member of the Jewish community during a commercial flight from Bali, Indonesia, to Sydney. According to the Australian Federal Police, the arrest followed a request for assistance from the airline, which alerted authorities to an onboard incident involving antisemitic threats. AFP officers were waiting at Sydney International Airport and took the suspect into custody immediately after the aircraft landed. Police allege that during the flight the man made verbal threats and hand gestures indicating violence toward another passenger, whom he knew to be affiliated with the Jewish community.

Investigators have described the incident as an antisemitic offense, noting that the alleged conduct specifically targeted the victim on the basis of their identity.

The suspect, a resident of the western Sydney suburb of Condell Park, has been charged with one count of threatening force or violence against members of a group or their associates, an offense under section 80.2BB(2) of Australia’s Criminal Code. The charge carries a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment. The man was refused bail and is scheduled to appear before the New South Wales Local Court. Police have not released further details about the nature of the threats, citing ongoing legal proceedings, but confirmed that the alleged victim was not physically harmed. In a statement, federal police emphasized that incidents of hate-based threats are treated seriously, particularly when they occur in confined public spaces such as aircraft. Authorities also sought to reassure the public, stating that there are no current or impending threats to the wider community connected to this case. The arrest comes amid heightened concern within Australia’s Jewish community following a series of antisemitic incidents in recent months, including threats, vandalism, and violent attacks. Law enforcement agencies across the country have increased monitoring of hate crimes and publicly urged airlines, venues, and members of the public to report threatening behavior as early as possible.

Federal police reiterated that threatening violence against individuals or groups based on religion or ethnicity is a criminal offense under Australian law, regardless of whether the threats are carried out. “There is zero tolerance for behavior that intimidates or endangers people because of who they are,” an AFP spokesperson said. The case now moves to the courts, where prosecutors will seek to establish that the alleged threats constituted criminal intimidation motivated by antisemitism JFeed

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Mosques in Philippines post photos of Bondi terrorists to aid probe. Davao mosques display photos of Bondi terrorists as Muslim leaders urge locals to report any links to the attackers’ month-long stay before their deadly rampage in Australia. Israel National News. Dec 22, 2025, 6:47 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Elderly couple survives attack: 'We sneaked into a pickup truck'. An unlocked pickup truck and a split-second decision saved the lives of Benjamin and Reizel Simons, an elderly Jewish couple who fled the gunfire during the Bondi Beach attack. Israel National News. Dec 22, 2025, 11:54 AM (GMT+2) INN

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After the attack: New counterterrorism and public order measures in Australia. Gun purchase laws will be significantly tightened, and Australian police will be able to ban protests for three months. Nissan Tzur. Dec 22, 2025, 9:26 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Israeli man loses sight in eye after brutal assault in Cyprus. An Israeli man was beaten outside his hotel after the assailant heard him speaking in Hebrew on his phone. The victim was flown to Israel for surgery. Israel National News.

Dec 22, 2025, 10:39 AM (GMT+2)

An Israeli man was attacked over the weekend outside the hotel where he was staying in Limassol, Cyprus.

The victim's father told Kan News that the assault occurred after his son was speaking on the phone in Hebrew on Friday. According to him, while the son-who was on a post-army trip-was talking on the phone in Hebrew, a man approached him, asked for a cigarette, and then attacked him. He was evacuated to a local hospital and was flown to Israel yesterday (Sunday), where he underwent surgery on his eye but lost his eyesight in that eye.. INN

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Iranian-backed militias may be weighing disarmament amid Iraq political shift. US Envoy to Iraq, Mark Savaya, posted on X overnight between December 21 and 22 that the steps being taken by “armed groups” in Iraq are “welcome and encouraging.”

By Seth J. Frantzman. December 22, 2025.

The Iranian-backed militias in Iraq are increasingly in the spotlight as Iraq moves toward selecting a new prime minister, with the militias also being a center of focus in the US. JPost

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Israel gave critical information on the burial place of Ran Gvili, but Hamas ignores. Israeli security officials assess Hamas knows which terrorists hold information on Ran Gvili’s burial site but is refusing to interrogate them, with Israel avoiding their elimination to preserve the chance of his return. Israel National News. Dec 22, 2025, 10:13 AM (GMT+2) INN

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ADL: Over 20% of Mamdani's team have antisemitic history. ADL details antisemitic remarks, extremist ties, and vetting concerns surrounding key transition appointments. Israel National News. Dec 22, 2025, 11:08 PM (GMT+2)

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has issued a detailed report expressing concern over appointments to New York City Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani’s transition team, citing alleged antisemitic statements, anti-Israel activity, and associations among a significant number of appointees.

According to the ADL report, the organization has closely monitored the mayor-elect’s transition team, Transition Committee appointments, public statements, and early policy signals. ADL stated that it remains deeply concerned that some of these developments could affect the safety and security of New York City’s Jewish community.

The report highlights the December 17 appointment of Catherine Almonte Da Costa as Director of Appointments, a senior role responsible for recruiting and staffing the incoming administration. ADL said it identified antisemitic social media posts made by Da Costa between 2011 and 2012, including references to “money hungry Jews” and other classic antisemitic tropes. ADL described the posts as “indefensible.” Da Costa resigned on December 18, less than 24 hours after the findings were made public. Mamdani later told reporters that his team was changing its vetting process and said the administration would operate under a “standard of excellence,” including accountability when standards are not met.

ADL reported that on November 24, Mamdani announced more than 400 individuals appointed to serve on 17 Transition Committees tasked with recruiting senior staff and shaping policy direction. Following its review, ADL said that at least 20 percent of the appointees have a documented history of engaging in antisemitic, anti-Zionist, or anti-Israel rhetoric, or have ties to organizations that promote such views.

According to the report, the activities identified by ADL include spreading classic antisemitic tropes, vilifying supporters of Jewish self-determination, undermining the legitimacy of the State of Israel, expressing support for Hamas and its October 7 terror attack, and celebrating or justifying violence against Jews. ADL emphasized that it distinguishes between legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy and antisemitism.

The report stated that several appointees have publicly supported or participated in anti-Israel campus encampments during the spring of 2024. ADL said these encampments were associated with a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents on campus and, in some cases, included demands viewed as undermining Jewish student life. ADL documented that at least five appointees attended such encampments, while others publicly defended them and denied the presence of antisemitism, despite reported displays of pro-terror slogans and calls for violence.

ADL also cited ties between transition committee members and organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Within Our Lifetime. The report said these groups have publicly glorified Hamas’s October 7 attack, advocated for the dismantling of Zionism, or led demonstrations that ADL says have included antisemitic rhetoric and harassment of Jewish institutions.

In addition, ADL reported that at least four transition committee appointees have ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan or the organization itself. The report noted that Farrakhan has a long history of antisemitic rhetoric and that some appointees have publicly praised him, defended his statements, or participated in Nation of Islam events.

The report detailed specific social media posts by transition committee members made in the aftermath of the October 7 attack, including statements characterizing the attack as justified “resistance” or dismissing documented acts of rape and kidnapping as propaganda. ADL said such remarks are particularly troubling given the advisory role these individuals hold in shaping the incoming administration.

While noting that many transition appointees did not raise concerns and that at least 25 individuals have a history of supporting the Jewish community or working with ADL and partner organizations, ADL said the overall composition of the transition committees raises serious questions about the standards applied during the vetting process.

ADL acknowledged that Mamdani has publicly condemned antisemitic violence, including describing a December 14 shooting in Sydney, Australia, as “a vile act of antisemitic terror,” and has held meetings with Jewish community leaders, including representatives of the Satmar community and the New York Board of Rabbis. However, ADL said that the number of appointees with concerning records appears inconsistent with campaign commitments to prioritize Jewish safety.

The organization posed a series of questions to the mayor-elect regarding whether the documented statements and associations were identified during vetting, how they were deemed acceptable, and what standards will be applied to permanent administration appointments. ADL said it will continue to monitor the transition and assess how the incoming administration’s actions impact Jewish communal safety in New York City. INN

Severe report: One-fifth of Mamdani's staff "promotes terrorism and harasses Jews". The Anti-Defamation League has determined that 80 of the 400 staff members of the New York mayor-elect are affiliated with extremist anti-Zionist organizations • One of the employees was photographed at a pro-Palestinian demonstration next to a red triangle affiliated with Hamas • N12. Published: 23.12.25, 07:25 Mako

See: Representative Ayanna Pressley D-MA; The Progressive Caucus [Select Members]: During 2024–2025 legislative sessions, many progressives faced a "quandary" over foreign aid bills. Some chose to support Ukraine-focused provisions while opposing the Israel-related sections of large spending packages; Senator Chris Van Hollen D-MD: While a staunch supporter of Ukraine’s defense against Russia, he has become one of the most critics of Israel

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"Every Action Will Be Met". "Severe Response": Netanyahu Vows Hardline Retaliation as Iran Launches Ballistic Tests: Israeli intelligence has detected signs that Iran is rapidly rebuilding its ballistic missile arsenal, leading Prime Minister Netanyahu to issue a final warning that any provocation will face an immediate and crushing military response.

Eliana Fleming. Dec 22, 2025. JFeed

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Australia sets eyes on Hizb ut-Tahrir, neo-Nazis for post-Bondi ‘hate organization’ list. The new proscription, part of a package of counter antisemitism legislative measures in the wake of the Bondi Beach massacre, would make it a criminal offense to join and support hate organizations.

By Michael Starr. Dec. 22, 2025 14:20

The Australian federal government is targeting Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia (HTA) and neo-Nazi group White Australia as part of its new project to create a list of prohibited “hate organizations,” according to remarks by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.

The new proscription regime, part of a package of counter antisemitism legislative measures proposed in the wake of the Bondi Beach Massacre, would make it a criminal offense to join and support organizations listed by the Home Affairs Ministry and attorney-general.

At a press conference following Cabinet and National Security Committee meetings, Burke explained that the prohibited hate organizations list would be established for groups that did not meet the threshold for proscription as a terrorist organization.

“I’ve spoken before about my disgust for a very long time at organizations like Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Nationalist Socialist Network [White Australia], otherwise known as the Neo-Nazis,” said Burke. “I’m asking my department, as the drafting is done, to check it against previous behavior of Hizb ut-Tahrir and the National Socialist Network. Their behavior needs to be unacceptable, their behavior needs to be unlawful, their behavior needs to be enough that we can prescribe the organization and prohibit their activity in Australia.”

.. crackdown on Hizb ut-Tahrir and Nationalist Socialist Network.

HTA and White Australia, formerly known as the Nationalist Socialist Network, have raised the ire of Australian politicians in recent years for provocative public events.

“The organization’s condemnation of Israel and Jews attracts media attention and aids recruitment, but it deliberately stops short of promoting onshore acts of politically motivated violence. Hizb ut-Tahrir wants to test and stretch the boundaries of legality without breaking them,” said Burgess. “I fear its anti-Israel rhetoric is fueling and normalizing wider antisemitic narratives.”

Liberal Party Senator Michaelia Cash said in response to a planned HTA conference that the Australian government should list the pro-Caliphate group as a terrorist organization, noting that its chapters had been banned in countries including Germany, the UK, and Indonesia.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese issued a rebuke of HTA for hosting an October 7 Massacre anniversary event in Bankstown.

New South Wales parliament opposition members, such as Christopher Rath, have repeatedly raised concerns about HTA’s presence in universities in the state.

Last April, the Zionist Federation of Australia called for HTA to be designated as a terrorist organization, explaining that the group was “covertly pushing unwitting Australians towards extremism, and radicalizing its members in support of terror.”

HTA said on Thursday that it was horrified by last Sunday’s Bondi Beach Massacre, but declined to condemn the attack because it implied collective guilt and sanctioned government responses. The group, which seeks to establish a caliphate in the Muslim world, argued that antisemitism was not to blame for the attack.

“There can be no conversation about Bondi without centering the genocide in Gaza,” wrote HTA.

HTA implied that the terrorist attack was orchestrated by Zionists, as Israel was the primary beneficiary of the outcome.

“The ISIS bogeyman has conveniently reared its head again, at the precise time the Zionist entity is embarking upon a global campaign to demonize Islam and Muslims,” said HTA. “You don’t have to be a believer in conspiracy theories to appreciate that only Zionists will benefit from this tragedy. At the very least, the facts as they stand now should raise sufficient questions to slow the conversation down until real details are learned.”

On Friday, HTA issued a statement warning that Israel advocates were attempting to exploit the massacre for political gain, with the government supposedly bending to Israeli demands like with “the fake ‘wave’ of antisemitic attacks last summer.”

White Australia, another target mentioned by Burke, has received scrutiny at the same time as it has sought to establish a federal political party. On November 21, NSW White Australia leader Jack Eltis announced that the party had obtained 1,500 signatures for its members.

New legal regimes have been introduced in response to White Australia’s operations, the latest being the NSW parliament bills to make it an offense for conduct that indicates support for Nazi ideology.

The amendment came in response to the group’s protest outside the NSW parliament in November, in which the group protested against previous protest and anti-extremism laws. Outside the government building, the group raised a banner calling to “abolish the Jewish lobby,” accusing the Jewish community of orchestrating antisemitic incidents to manipulate politicians.

Albanese said at the Monday Canberra press briefing that other post-Bondi Massacre legislative measures, including the hate organization list, were being refined following their announcement on Thursday. The government sought to create an offense for provoking violence, increasing penalties for hate speech and property destruction advocacy, and making hate motivation a factor in all crimes. Burke also sought the power to cancel or reject visas of those engaging in radical behavior, and to ban the importation of extremist material. JPost

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Australian PM invites President Herzog to visit after Sydney attack. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke with President Isaac Herzog following the terror attack on Sydney’s Jewish community and invited him to visit Australia in the near future. Israel National News. Published: Dec 23, 2025, 11:20 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Antisemitism. Trio convicted in UK for terror plot to kill hundreds of Jews. Rob Potts, of the Manchester police, stated that if the terrorists had been successful, it could have been "one of the deadliest terrorist attacks to ever take place on UK soil." JNS Staff.

(Dec. 23, 2025 / JNS) Two brothers and a third man were convicted in a court near Manchester, in the United Kingdom, in “connection with a foiled terrorist plot intended to target the Jewish community in Greater Manchester,” the local police department said on Tuesday.

The trio aimed to “kill hundreds of innocent people” in an “Islamic State-inspired terrorist attack on Jewish communities in the north-west of England,” according to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The three hoped to smuggle four high-powered, military-grade AK-47 rifles, two pistols and 900 rounds of ammunition into the country and to use them to attack a march against antisemitism in the center of Manchester and “then to move the attack to an area of north Manchester occupied predominantly by the Jewish community,” according to prosecutors.

Sir Stephen Watson, chief constable of the Greater Manchester Police, stated that “it was clear throughout this trial that the scale of the offender’s hatred towards our Jewish community knew no bounds.”

“All too recently in Sydney, and of course here in Manchester in October, the very week before this trial began, we have felt the devastation of terrorism directed toward our Jewish community,” he said.

On Oct. 2, two Jews were killed in a terrorist attack by a jihadist on Yom Kippur at a synagogue in Manchester, England.

“A terrorist attack upon our Jewish friends and neighbors is an attack on us all and is an affront to all decent people in our country,” Watson said. “Today we are again reminded of the harm that such hate seeks to cause.”

According to the police department, Walid Saadaoui (38) and Amar Hussein (52) were convicted of planning terror attacks, and Bilel Saadaoui (36) was convicted of failing to report information about a terror attack.

Saadaoui told an undercover officer, whom he thought was a fellow extremist traveler, in 2023 that he wanted to carry out a “significant terrorist attack targeting Jewish people,” according to Manchester police. According to police, Saadaoui involved Hussein in the plot and later confessed to discussing it with his brother Bilel.

The three are slated to be sentenced on Feb. 13.

Rob Potts, assistant chief constable, stated that if the terrorists had been successful, “then what followed would have been devastating and potentially one of the deadliest terrorist attacks to ever take place on U.K. soil.”

The brothers are reportedly of Tunisian descent. UK prosecutors said that Hussein, “a Syrian who claimed to have fought in the Iraqi army,” was “known to be an Islamic State supporter.”

The group’s plan “included killing law-enforcement officers who might intervene,” police said.

According to prosecutors, Saadaoui told the police informant that he joined ISIS in 2013, before moving to the United Kingdom, and that he joined a Facebook page for Jews in North West England “covertly” to monitor events. JNS

Gun-Toting ISIS Fanatics Planned UK’s Worst Massacre on Jewish Street - JFeed.

UK authorities say averted ISIS plot could have become the deadliest terror attack in British history, as extremists armed with AK-47s planned a suicide massacre targeting Manchester’s Jewish community, schools, and synagogues. Gila Isaacson Dec 23, 2025 15:30

Two Islamic State extremists have been convicted of orchestrating a planned gun massacre targeting Manchester's Jewish community, in what authorities described as a potential "catastrophic" and "deadliest terrorist attack in UK history."

Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, were found guilty by a jury at Preston Crown Court on Tuesday of preparing acts of terrorism. Saadaoui's brother, Bilel Saadaoui, 36, was also convicted for failing to disclose information about the plot. The duo had acquired four AK-47 assault rifles, two handguns, and 1,200 rounds of ammunition, intending a suicide rampage on Jewish sites, with any Christian casualties considered a "bonus," prosecutors said. Their targets included areas around synagogues, schools, and gatherings in Manchester's Jewish quarter, the same neighborhood where a separate stabbing occurred outside a synagogue on October 2, 2025.

Greater Manchester Police Assistant Chief Constable Rob Potts warned that an attack in a crowded Jewish area would have caused "untold harm." "The consequences would have been catastrophic," he stated. Saadaoui, a former Italian restaurant owner in Great Yarmouth, idolized Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the ringleader of the 2015 Paris attacks that killed 130. Prosecutors said Saadaoui aimed to mimic that carnage in retaliation for Israeli actions in Gaza. After selling his business and home, he used £4,400 from the proceeds as a down payment on the weapons.

Surveillance footage captured Saadaoui scouting Jewish sites with an undercover officer posing as an arms dealer, dubbed "Farouk." He expressed intent to "kill them all, young, old, women, elderly," focusing on schools and events. The pair planned to recruit accomplices, disguise themselves in Jewish clothing, and target responders in an extended spree.

Hussein, an Iraqi ex-soldier who arrived in the UK in 2006 claiming Kuwaiti origin, lived above his workplace in Bolton and had a prior knife conviction. During arrest, he proclaimed, "I'm proud, be terrorist here, I'm proud. We are army from God [sic]."

The plot unraveled through a major undercover operation, codenamed Operation Catogenic, described as the North West's largest counter-terror probe. MI5 flagged Saadaoui's ISIS posts on Facebook in late 2023, leading to surveillance and the sting. Saadaoui was caught red-handed on May 8, 2024, retrieving deactivated weapons from a rented Lexus at a Lancashire hotel.Investigators linked Saadaoui to Hamid al Masalkhi, a Cardiff extremist who joined ISIS in 2013 and later died of cancer. The brothers used bird-keeping as code, calling guns "goldfinches" and ammo "bird seed." Mark Gardner, CEO of the Community Security Trust, praised the thwarting of these "incredibly dangerous individuals." "It may well have been the worst terrorist act in British history," he said, equating jihadist ideology to Nazism: "They want to kill Jews, end of story."

Saadaoui and Hussein twice reconnoitered Dover's port security, posing as tourists at the White Cliffs. Prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu KC called it "hardly the innocence of a teddy bears' picnic." Sentencing is pending. Potts hailed the operation for averting disaster, noting Saadaoui's "extreme danger" and Hussein's "fanatical, unrepentant" mindset. JFeed

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SwordOfSalomon @SwordOfSalomon: 🚨✈️📹 BREAKING NEWS • ANTISEMITIC INCIDENT AT PARIS-CDG AIRPORT :

The man who filmed, humiliated and publicly exposed Jewish children at Paris–CDG Airport has now been traced !

The video was recorded on 25 June 2025 at Terminal 2B, but was only posted on 19 December, which explains why it resurfaced months later. The publication was accompanied by the hashtag #freepalestine.

📱 The available elements point to a British national 🇬🇧, active on TikTok under the account @saint ._17, likely from Hackney, East London 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, which would explain his accent.

⚖️ The parents of the two children now have tangible elements to file a complaint: a face and a social media account.

❗ As the acts were committed on French soil 🇫🇷, it is now up to the French authorities to formally request cooperation from their British counterparts 🇬🇧 in order to identify the perpetrator through the proper legal channels of international judicial cooperation.

🇬🇧 @metpoliceuk @MetCC: We formally ask UK authorities to cooperate with French authorities and transmit the identity of this individual through official legal channels.

🚔 🇫🇷 @PoliceNationale @Interieur_Gouv @ParquetdeParis @prefpolice @NunezLaurent 🚔 🇬🇧 @metpoliceuk @MetCC cc @HenMazzig @StopAntisemites @mishtal Quote SwordOfSalomon @SwordOfSalomon · Dec 21 🚨✈️📹 ANTISEMITIC INCIDENT AT PARIS–CDG AIRPORT :

📆📍 Wednesday, June 25, 2025, at around 7:00 a.m, in the PlayStation Zone 🎮 of Terminal 2B at Paris–Charles de Gaulle Airport, a man in his early 30s, speaking with a British accent 🇬🇧, verbally and physically targeted two... Dec 21, 2025 on X

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Anglican lay minister nominated for Jerusalem security coordinator role Maj. Gen. Sean Salene is currently deputy U.S. Central Command commander in Tampa. JNS Staff. (Dec. 23, 2025 / JNS) Pete Hegseth, the U.S. defense secretary, said earlier this month that U.S. President Donald Trump had nominated Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Sean Salene to be U.S. security coordinator at the Israel-Palestinian Authority in Jerusalem, with the rank of lieutenant general JNS

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Bay Area officials laud school’s response to students arranging selves to form swastika “It undermines your confidence in so many ways, because you have a certain perception of your own community,” Rep. Sam Liccardo told JNS of the incident. Aaron Bandler. (Dec. 23, 2025 / JNS) Students arranging themselves to form a swastika at a San Jose, Calif., high school was “uniquely awful,” but elected officials told JNS that they have been encouraged by the response from the school and local community. JNS

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Poll: Likud, Bennett strengthen as coalition and opposition tie. A Channel 13 poll shows Likud and Naftali Bennett’s new party gaining strength, while the coalition and opposition blocs are tied at 55 seats each, with Arab parties holding the balance. Israel National News. Dec 23, 2025, 10:58 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Qatari propaganda. "Terror Channel:" Israel Bans Al-Jazeera Until 2027. The Knesset approved legislation overnight extending Israel’s ban on Al Jazeera broadcasts for an additional two years, despite ongoing delays in advancing a permanent version of the law. The law is based on the damage Al-Jazeera does to national security and their encitement to terror.

Judah Pe'er. Dec 23, 2025 01:27 JFeed

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Unstoppably Antisemitic. After Netflix Shocker, Yoseph Haddad Slams Dave Chappelle | WATCH. Yoseph Haddad has had more than enough of watching vicious Israel haters spread hatred and relentless, baseless bias. Gila Isaacson. Dec 23, 2025 17:14

Dave Chappelle's latest Netflix special, "The Unstoppable…", which dropped unexpectedly on December 19, is stirring up controversy again. This time, Israeli-Arab activist Joseph Haddad is calling out the comedian over parts of the show that touch on Israel, Jewish influence in Hollywood, and the Middle East conflict.

The roughly hour-long special, Chappelle's eighth with Netflix, showcases his no-holds-barred approach, diving into free speech, politics, and slices of his life in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He defends his gig at a comedy festival in Saudi Arabia, despite the heat over human rights issues linked to the Jamal Khashoggi killing. Chappelle also takes shots at folks like Bill Maher and conservative pundit Charlie Kirk, brushing off any MLK comparisons as "just meme stuff" and calling Kirk "a bigot with a podcast." But it's Chappelle's take on Israel that's really sparking debate. He calls out Israel's role in the conflict, using what some see as old stereotypes about Jewish power in showbiz, and ties it into bigger talks about paranoia and cancel culture worldwide.

Haddad, a vocal pro-Israel advocate with a big online presence, fired back in a video on X (once Twitter). He calls Chappelle a "vile little man". In the quick two-minute rant, Haddad hits him for hypocrisy, pointing to that Saudi show amid their own rights problems, plus ignorance on Israel-Palestine, and pushing damaging stereotypes. Haddad, who posts in Hebrew and English, even pokes fun at Chappelle's name, suggesting "Dave Shappal," and wonders if his 1998 switch to Islam is coloring his opinions. He throws in contested numbers like "over 18,000 children killed" and says Chappelle's bits are fueling attacks on Jews in real life.

The criticism isn't just from Haddad, pro-Israel folks are piling on across the web. X is buzzing with threads breaking down Chappelle's Israel jokes, highlighting ongoing clashes over what's fair game in comedy for touchy global issues. Fans love the special's bold edge, but critics say it veers into insensitivity, especially on trans topics and Jewish tropes, much like the fallout from "The Closer."

The truth is that it's not only the content which is wildly antismeitic, it's also the timing, coming in the wake of the slaughter of 15 people attending a Hunkkah party on Bondi Beach. But Chappelle has made it clear that he has taken a side, and it's the side that bashes everything Jewish and eveything Israeli does, while excusing himself as speaking 'as a comedian'. Netflix hasn't weighed in, sticking to their pattern of backing Chappelle through past storms.

Tens of thousands of his fans are masisvely disappointed. His comedy has veered away from comedy and itno straight up hatred. And there's nothing funny about that, as Haddad points out. JFeed

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Gaetz slams antisemitism envoy, blames Israel for sex-trafficking probe on Tucker Carlson's podcast. “Anti-semitism used to mean somebody who didn’t like Jews. Now it just means somebody Jews don’t like," Gaetz said in the episode. By Michael Starr. Dec. 23, 2025 15:21 JPost

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Laura Loomer rages that Tucker Carlson is turning the ‘GOP into modern-day Hitler Youth’. The Independent US Justin Baragona. Tue, December 23, 2025 at 9:48 PM GMT. Gaetz declared. He also told Carlson that “antisemitism used to mean somebody who didn’t like Jews – now it just means somebody Jews don’t like.” HuffPost

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Target 2027 . "Over One Hundred Missiles": Pentagon Leak Reveals China’s Massive New Nuclear Launch Sites A leaked Pentagon report reveals that China has loaded over one hundred intercontinental missiles into new silos while preparing its military to seize Taiwan by the year 2027. Eliana Fleming. Dec 23, 2025 14:19 JFeed

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Officer kidnapped due to connection to Ron Arad's abduction. Former Lebanese security officer Ahmad Shukr has disappeared. Lebanese sources claim he may have been kidnapped by Israel in an intelligence operation. Israel National News. Dec 23, 2025, 6:40 PM INN

_____ Antisemitic Article In Qatari Government. Daily: Zionism Seeks To Control The World, As Noted In The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion'. December 23, 2025. Qatar I Special Dispatch No. 12312

On November 2, 2025 the Qatari government daily Al-Sharq published an antisemitic article by Jordanian journalist lhsan Al-Faqih, which states that Zionism seeks to weaken the world's nations and dominate them by undermining the institution of the family. As proof Al-Faqih cites the Antisemitic fabrication known as The Protocols of the Enders of Zion,M which alleges that the Jews aim to undermine the institution of the family in non-Jewish societies. She stresses that, "although some are skeptical about attributing these Protocols to the Zionists, reality attests to the fact that many of the things that appear in them have come true, in a way that leaves no room for doubt about the authenticity of the Zionist modus operandi that is based on systematic sabotage." The article surveys the measures that the Zionists are allegedly taking to destroy the institution of the family, which include redefining the concept of family to encompass same-sex and unmarried couples, promoting the use of contraceptives, legalizing abortion, and pushing Arab and Islamic regimes to ban polygamy and promote gender equality. Finally, the author emphasizes that she is not speculating or advancing conspiracy theories, but describing realty, and that "Western memoirs are full of leaders' confessions about the Jewish influence and its role in wars, coups, and the dismantling of states." It should be noted that the Qatari press frequently publishes articles with antisemitic motifs derived both from Islamic sources such as the Quran and the Hadith (prophetic traditions) and from Western sources.] Memri

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Christian, Jewish, other holidays in the West are being hijacked by Islamist terror - opinion. Regrettably, as long as Western societies continue to placate, mollify, and coddle such pressures, this trajectory will only intensify.

([1]. A rabbi performs the Havdalah ceremony while Margaret Beazley, governor of New South Wales, holds the Havdalah candle, during a tribute for the victims of a mass shooting during a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on December 14, in Sydney, Australia, December 20, 2025).

By Alan Baker. December 22, 2025. The recent tragic and bestial Muslim terrorist attack against Australian Jews celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah on December 14 in the Bondi Beach area of Sydney, as dramatic and heart-rending as it was, cannot and should not be viewed as an isolated event.

Rather, it follows a growing pattern of systematic Islamist-inspired violence and intimidation deliberately directed against innocent civilians celebrating their traditional religious festivals and civic holidays in Western societies.

This phenomenon is not new. One of the earlier examples was the December 2016 terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, which left 12 people murdered and dozens wounded. In 2018, a similar Islamist attack at a Christmas market killed five people in Strasbourg, France. More recently, on December 21, 2024, five people – including a nine-year-old child – were killed when a vehicle rammed into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, injuring more than 200 others. The market was closed for the remainder of the season. A Saudi national who had lived in Germany since 2006 was arrested.

Such Islamist, anti-religious, anti-Christian, and antisemitic violence – and the ever-present threat accompanying it – is now spreading across Western societies like wildfire, casting a long shadow over the celebration of traditional religious and civic holidays.

In November 2025, the German town of Overath, near Cologne, cancelled its traditional Christmas market, citing prohibitive security costs driven by counterterrorism requirements. Similar cancellations have occurred in Dresden, Rostock, and elsewhere in Germany, where organizers say they can no longer afford the security measures imposed by authorities.

How Islamist violence terrorizes holiday celebrations in the West. Across Europe, large public festivities have been downgraded, restricted or cancelled outright. In Venice, public celebrations in historic squares have been curtailed and alcohol sales prohibited. In Belgrade, Serbia, the central Christmas concert was cancelled for security reasons. In Bratislava and elsewhere in Slovakia, the Chabad Jewish organization was compelled to limit its traditional eight-day Hanukkah celebrations to a single day due to security concerns. Beyond Europe, similar patterns are emerging. Out of fear of Islamist violence, combined with rising security costs and concerns over public disorder, major Christmas and New Year celebrations – including firework displays – have been cancelled or severely restricted in cities such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Sydney.

Private Health Premiums Rising? Seniors Are Finding more affordable options. Private Health Premiums Rising? Seniors Are Finding more affordable options. Sponsored by Which Health Insurer Even where celebrations continue, they do so under siege-like conditions. Salzburg’s iconic Christmas market, which attracts over 1.5 million visitors annually, is now guarded around the clock by private security and monitored by dozens of cameras. Elsewhere in Austria, Christmas markets have been cancelled entirely because organizers cannot meet mandated security requirements.

THIS ATMOSPHERE of fear has also penetrated educational and cultural institutions. In Andover, England, the head teacher of a primary school informed parents that there would be no reference to Christmas in the school’s festive performance “in order to be inclusive.” In Denmark, kindergartens and schools have been cancelling or diluting Christmas celebrations for years to avoid offending Muslim sensitivities.

Municipal authorities across Western Europe have followed suit. Nantes now celebrates a “Winter Journey” rather than Christmas. Bordeaux promotes “Festivities” without religious reference. Saint-Denis invites residents to “Beautiful Winter,” while its mayor reportedly wishes citizens a “Happy Winter.”

In Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union, reports in December 2025 described Islamist groups overrunning the Christmas market, forcing Christian families to flee in fear. In Milan, Islamist agitators disrupted festivities, climbed on statues, imposed Palestinian flags on celebrants, and blasted loud music to intimidate families attending the market.

These developments are not coincidental. The heightened threat levels confronting Western cities emanate largely from growing Muslim migrant populations influenced by religious incitement and social pressure, often reinforced by clerical authority. This reality imposes ever-increasing security burdens and costs on host societies.

A clear illustration of such religious influence appears in a fatwa issued by Sheikh Abd al-Aziz Ibn Baz, former Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, reproduced in 2024 in the Kuwaiti magazine Al Mujtama, regarding participation in non-Muslim holidays. The ruling explicitly forbids Muslims from celebrating or assisting in Christian or Jewish festivals, describing such participation as sinful and a form of cooperation with the “enemies of Allah.”

The implications of this worldview – and its growing presence within Western societies – must not be underestimated or trivialized.

How long will Western democracies, seemingly fixated on appeasing Muslim pressures and fearful of violent backlash, continue to erode their own Judeo-Christian traditions to avoid offending migrant sensitivities? How long will political correctness, misplaced guilt, and cultural appeasement override common sense and historical continuity?

Once-proud democracies with rich religious and civic traditions – including Australia, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, and Italy – appear increasingly unable or unwilling to defend their own cultural heritage. Even smaller nations across Europe are succumbing to the same pressures.

Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s, and other traditional festivals are now genuinely at risk – threatened by Islamist incitement and violence directed at the very societies that have offered refuge and opportunity.

Rather than integrating into the cultures of their host nations, radical elements reject them and seek to impose their own norms. Regrettably, as long as Western societies continue to placate, mollify, and coddle such pressures, this trajectory will only intensify.

Indeed, a deeply troubling and sad state of affairs.

The writer served as legal adviser to Israel’s Foreign Ministry and as Israel’s ambassador to Canada. He currently heads the international law program and the Global Law Forum at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. JPost

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Moving East . "Explosions Near Tehran": Revolutionary Guard Announces Sudden New Military Drills Iran has alerted citizens near Tehran to prepare for explosions and gunfire as the Revolutionary Guard launches new drills that Israel fears are a cover for a coming missile attack. Eliana Fleming. Dec 24, 2025. JFeed

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Sa’ar congratulates Honduras’. President-elect, vows to strengthen ties Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar congratulates Honduras’ new President Nasry Asfura, inviting him to Israel and pledging to deepen bilateral ties following Asfura’s narrow election victory. Israel National News. Dec 25, 2025, 2:18 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Conservative rot. Nick Fuentes: Tucker is Much Worse than Ben Shapiro | WATCH. Far-Right Commentator Nick Fuentes Claims Tucker Carlson Poses Greater Threat to White Interests Than Ben Shapiro Bianca Jones Dec 24, 2025 03:48 JFeed

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Antisemitic Power Play. Mamdani's First Test: Petition to Oust Jewish NYPD Boss Over Protest Crackdowns. Over 3,500 NYC attorneys demand Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani fire Jewish Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, a move that reeks of antisemitic exclusion and aligns with Mamdani's pro-Hamas sympathies. Eliana Fleming. Dec 24, 2025 13:09

In a chilling escalation of antisemitic efforts to purge Jews from positions of influence, more than 3,500 attorneys and public defenders in New York City have penned a letter to Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, demanding the ouster of Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, under the guise of concerns over policing practices. This push aligns perfectly with Mamdani's history of cavorting with pro-Hamas "activists" and chanting calls to "globalize the intifada," a euphemism for worldwide violence against Jews, raising alarms about his administration's intent to sideline pro-Israel voices and embolden terrorist sympathizers in America's largest city.

The letter accuses Tisch of overseeing an "expansion" of policing at pro-Palestinian demonstrations, where protesters often glorify Hamas terrorists responsible for the October 7, 2023, massacre that slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 251 others. Signatories claim increased stops involving Black and Brown New Yorkers and heightened enforcement at political rallies, asserting that such policies plague courts and communities daily. They decry the NYPD's alleged surveillance of picket lines, arrests of striking workers, and interventions in protests, while prioritizing low-income neighborhoods for minor offenses like fare evasion and retail theft. The union highlights the NYPD's hefty budget share amid cuts to other services, framing it as skewed priorities. JFeed

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Column. American Jewry. Mamdani’s team of Jew-haters will change New York. Why be surprised when this particular candidate, whose political career has been based on an obsession with destroying Israel, hires scores of antisemites to staff his administration? Jonathan S. Tobin. (Dec. 24, 2025 / JNS) The most important thing about the Anti-Defamation League’s latest “Mamdani Monitor” is that its results were so unsurprising and generated few headlines in New York or anywhere else. That 20% of New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s 400 appointees to various transition committees have ties to anti-Zionist and antisemitic groups—or have engaged in acts of Jew-hatred online—is, in and of itself, an astounding figure. It’s even more astounding when you consider that they are engaged in an effort to govern a city with the largest Jewish population in the world. JNS

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Jewish state will always stand with Christians, Netanyahu says on Christmas Eve. Netanyahu noted that the Jewish state is the only country in the region where Christians continue to live "with full rights and in total freedom." JNS Staff. (Dec. 25, 2025 / JNS) Jerusalem will always stand with its Christian friends in the Middle East and around the world, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Christmas Eve message on Wednesday night. JNS

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Times Square Christmas Hijack: "Jesus Is Palestinian" Billboard Blasts NYC. A massive Times Square billboard declaring "Jesus Is Palestinian" during Christmas season exposes the relentless pro-Hamas push to hijack holidays and spread anti-Israel falsehoods.

Eliana Fleming. Dec 24, 2025 21:34

In a diabolical move that reeks of attention-seeking hatred, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has plastered a giant. Times Square billboard. with the inflammatory message "Merry Christmas, Jesus Is Palestinian," turning one of Christianity's holiest seasons into a political weapon against Israel and Jews. The bright green display, adorned with festive stars and what appear to be Palestinian motifs, dominates the heart of New York City, one of the world's most iconic holiday destinations, where millions gather to celebrate Christmas lights and joy. It's absolutely disgusting how these pro-Hamas idiots feel compelled to make everything about them, hijacking a significant religious holiday for Christians worldwide to peddle anti-Israel lies and propaganda, harassing believers with their obsession during a time meant for peace and reflection.

The ADC, long criticized for downplaying Hamas terrorism and amplifying narratives that demonize Israel and erase it from biblical history, timed this stunt perfectly to maximize disruption amid the Christmas rush. The billboard's claim that Jesus, a Jewish figure born in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago, central to Christian theology as the Jewish Messiah, is "Palestinian" is a historical fabrication designed to erase Jewish roots and fuel modern political grievances.

This isn't advocacy; it's a calculated assault on religious harmony, mirroring how Hamas terrorists exploit civilians in Gaza while their supporters abroad twist facts to vilify Israel's existence. Coming weeks after the Sydney Chanukah massacre that killed 15 Jews, and amid a 400% global spike in antisemitic attacks since Hamas's October 7, 2023, slaughter of 1,200 Israelis, the billboard feels like another front in the war on the existence of Jewish identity and Israel throughout history. Critics see it as part of a broader pattern: pro-Hamas groups infiltrating public spaces to normalize hatred, from campus chants glorifying "intifada" to street protests blocking holiday events. In New York, home to over 1.1 million Jews, such displays risk inflaming tensions already high from synagogue vandalism and assaults. The ADC's move offers no bridge-building, only division, forcing Christmas revelers to confront terrorist-aligned messaging instead of seasonal cheer. As families admire Rockefeller Tree lights nearby, this billboard stands as a grim reminder of how far extremists will go to ruin moments of unity, spreading lies that Jesus, raised in Jewish tradition and crucified under Roman rule centuries before any "Palestinian" national identity, belongs to their cause. Diabolical doesn't begin to cover it, these harassers aren't fighting for peace in Gaza; they're waging cultural war on Jews and Christians alike, proving their "activism" is just veiled support for Hamas's barbarism. JFeed

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Three Months Later: Israel returns body of Allenby Crossing terrorist to Jordan. Israel National News. Dec 25, 2025, 8:32 AM INN

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Papal Hypocrisy Exposed. Pope Leo 'Forgets' to Mention Bondi Victims in Christmas Address. For those wondering, he didn't actually 'forget' to mention it and he's not senile; he chose to focus everyone's attention on Palestinians and ignore the Jewish bodies filling cemeteries due to rampant unchecked antisemitism.

Gila Isaacson. Dec 25, 2025 09:03 JFeed

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Georgetown University severs ties with UN’s Francesca Albanese over antisemitic remarks. Georgetown University has removed Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur, following her antisemitic remarks, including justifying the October 7th attacks, after a campaign by UN Watch.

By Shoshana Baker. December 25, 2025 Georgetown University has severed its ties with Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, due to her antisemitic statements, including those justifying the events of October 7th, according to an article by UN Watch.

Albanese was previously listed on the "Other Affiliated Scholars" page of Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration. However, she has now been completely removed, and her information can no longer be found on the university's site. Her biography page has also reportedly been deleted. JPost

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After Bondi Beach massacre: 600 global officials send solidarity letter to Australian mayor. Israel National News. Dec 24, 2025, 8:08 AM iNN

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Jewish Sydney hero: Give me your gun or we'll both die. Leibel Lazaroff, 21, severely injured in the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre, saved a police officer's life and attempted to stop the terrorist. Israel National News. Dec 24, 2025 [/419836 INN

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Bondi Beach aftermath Melbourne: Rabbi's Car Firebombed on Christmas Day. A car belonging to a local rabbi and bearing a “Happy Chanukah” sign was firebombed in Melbourne’s St Kilda East neighborhood early Christmas morning, in what police and Jewish community leaders say is a suspected antisemitic attack.

Judah Pe'er. Dec 25, 2025 04:00 JFeed

Antisemitic attack in Australia. Melbourne car with Hanukkah sign torched Elad Benari. Dec 25, 2025, 5:29 AM INN

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Ammunition, Hamas, & Hezbollah flags found in home of Sydney massacre supporter. Weapons, ammunition, and flags of Hamas and Hezbollah were found at the home of an Australian citizen who was arrested after praising the massacre at Bondi Beach and posting antisemitic content. Nitzan Tzur. Dec 24, 2025, 8:42 PM (GMT+2) INN

Bomb-making list, firearms, extremist flags seized from Perth man accused of backing Bondi attackers. By Nicolas Perpitch and Bridget McArthur Topic:Crime. Wednesday 24 December.

In short: Police charged Martin Thomas Glynn with making antisemitic comments on social media after he allegedly pledged support for the Bondi shooters just hours after the attack.

When they searched his home, they allegedly found a bomb-making shopping list, terrorist organisation flags, six registered rifles and a large amount of ammunition.

A tip of from the public led to his arrest, and the WA police commissioner said authorities had "no record of concern for this individual".

A bomb-making shopping list, terrorist organisation flags and thousands of ammunition rounds were seized from the Perth home of man alleged to have pledged support for the Bondi shooters, a Perth court has heard.

WARNING: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.

WA Police on Tuesday raided the suburban home of Martin Thomas Glynn, 39, who has been charged as part of the state's Operation Dalewood, launched in response to the Bondi terror attack.

Police allege they found six registered rifles, about 4,000 rounds of ammunition and flags belonging to terrorist organisations Hamas and Hezbollah.

It's also alleged they found images of smoke grenade bombs and open source information about making explosives on Mr Glynn's mobile phone.

He was charged with making antisemitic remarks on social media and appeared in the Fremantle Magistrates Court on Christmas Eve.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had been briefed on the case by the acting WA Premier and Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner.

In a social media post on Wednesday afternoon, he said counter terrorism police had offered their full support to WA Police.

Raid on suburban home. The court was told, Mr Glynn, who represented himself, took to his Instagram in the hours after the December 14 attack in which 15 people were killed at a Hannukah event at Bondi Beach.

"I just want to say that I, Martin Glynn, 100 per cent support the New South Wales shooters," one of the posts stated.

A large number of bunches of flowers are laid across a walkway at Bondi Beach. A Jewish flag flies alongside them. Floral tributes laid for those killed in the attack at Bondi. (ABC News: Che Chorley)

The prosecutor said the subsequent raid on his Yangebup home found handwritten notebooks titled "ideology, views, ideas and insights".

They allegedly included strongly antisemitic comments, as well as references to Hitler and the Holocaust, the prosecutor said.

Police also found flags of terrorist organisations Hamas and Hezbollah in the home.

The 39-year-old is facing three charges, including conduct intended to racially harass, carrying or possessing a prohibited weapon, and failing to store a firearm correctly.

WA government meets with Jewish leaders after Bondi attack A wide shot of a group of people including Roger Cook, Col Blanch and Jewish leaders seated around a table during a meeting. WA Premier Roger Cook condemns the "cowardly and heinous" attack in Bondi, after meeting with Jewish leaders in Perth.

The prosecutor said police found six rifles and a large amount of ammunition, including about 4,000 rounds of various calibre all over the house.

She said an illegal spring-loaded flick knife was also found in his bedside drawer.

She also noted the Palestinian flag was flying on a pole outside his house, which she claimed was creating angst among some neighbours.

WA Police commissioner Col Blanch said the Palestinian flag was not an illegal symbol to display and not a reason to investigate someone in itself.

Bomb shopping list. Police allegedly found images of smoke grenade bombs and open source information about making explosives on his mobile phone, the prosecutor said.

Bondi heroes to be recognised in new honours list. Floral tributes on promenade at Bondi Beach Those who showed "extraordinary" bravery during the Bondi terror attack will be recognised in a new honours list.

As a result, police executed a second search warrant at his home, assisted by the bomb squad, she said, and found what she called initiators for bomb making.

Mr Glynn told the court these were matches wrapped up that he used as a fire starter for his barbecue.

The prosecutor said police also found a bomb manufacturing shopping list, but not the items on it.

Mr Glynn said he had a collection of 50 flags and there were none on display, and that they were all packed away in a box.

The exterior of a recently built home Martin Glynn's home in Yangebup, in Perth's southern suburbs. (ABC News: Dominic Briggs)

He doubled down on the content of the social media posts, saying he said he had been "very opinionated".

"Watching the massacre of Palestinian people for the last two years, I was hoping to raise the hypocrisy," he told the court.

He then drew a parallel between the death toll from the Bondi attack to Palestinian deaths from the Gaza-Israel conflict.

'I'm a doomsday prepper'. He denied he had interests in bomb-making material, saying he had downloaded information but never procured anything.

"Yes, I am a doomsday prepper," he said.

"I don't intend to harm anyone."

He added the notebooks were ideas for a political party.

"It helps me get ideas off my chest so I don't become pent up" he said. "I keep to myself. My neighbours hardly know me."

Tip-off led to arrest WA's acting Premier Rita Saffioti revealed a tip-off from a member of the public led to Mr Glynn's arrest.

A side view of Rita Saffioti who is addressing media Acting WA Premier Rita Saffioti called a press conference on Christmas Eve following Mr Glynn's court appearance. (ABC News: Grace Burmas)

"A community member saw a post from the man online, recognised it wasn't right, and spoke and reported it to police," Ms Saffioti said.

Commissioner Blanch described the social media post as "of grave concern ... totally unacceptable and abhorrent".

He said police had "no record of concern for this individual", but it was early in the investigation.

"We don't want a repeat of Bondi in Western Australia," Commissioner Blanch said.

Mr Glynn said he had never had an issue with the law, did not have a violent past and had worked as an emergency services officer on mine sites.

Magistrate Tyres refused bail on the basis there appeared to be a strong prosecution case and in the interests of public safety, especially in light of the Bondi attacks.

He said Mr Glynn had identified himself as the author of the social media posts.

Mr Tyres noted the maximum penalty for the antisemitic comments was five years' jail and this alleged conduct did not seem to be at the lower end of the scale.

Mr Glynn has been remanded in custody until February 3. ABC.net.au

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Islamic terror. Boko Haram Bombs Nigerian Mosque, Five Dead. The blast occurred during evening prayers near the Gamboru market area, as congregants gathered inside the mosque. Emergency services rushed the wounded to the hospital, where several victims were reported to be in serious condition.

Judah Pe'er. Dec 25, 2025 02:29 JFeed

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Twice In A Week: Border Police demolished structures in Israeli homestead. Border Police and the Civil Administration soldiers demolished houses and a goat pen and arrested two right-wing activists at the Mikneh Avraham hilltop homestead. Israel National News. Published: Dec 25, 2025, 9:24 AM (GMT+2) INN

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9 months later. Houthis confirm deaths of senior commanders in US strikes. Israel National News Dec 25, 2025, 11:07 AM INN

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Iran sent Israeli to document former PM Bennett's home. Authorities arrested Israeli man on suspicion of carrying out surveillance missions for Iranian handlers, including filming near former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s home. Israel National News. Dec 25, 2025, 9:40 AM INN

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Controversial far-right activist Nick Fuentes argued that former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is "worse" for white Americans than conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. The remarks, which highlight tensions within right-wing circles over identity politics and immigration, have sparked online debate amid ongoing discussions about demographic shifts in the U.S JFeed

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Lessons from Biden Netanyahu: Israel Declares Munition Independence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel will invest billions over the next decade to build an independent domestic arms and munitions industry, intended to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers after repeated political restrictions during the war. Judah Pe'er. Dec 25, 2025 03:00 JFeed

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Watch. First time combat helicopter intercepts drones. Israel National News. Dec 25, 2025, 5:42 PM INN

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Captivity survivor: 'Hamas admits that the protests helped them' Israel National News Dec 25, 2025, 4:18 PM INN

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Lebanon. Key terrorist from Iranian 'Quds Force' eliminated. The IDF stated that the terrorist operated under the Revolutionary Guards and was involved in Iranian-directed terrorist activity against the State of Israel. Israel National News. Dec 25, 2025, 4:22 PM INN

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"They Kidnapped My Wife". The Raid on Abu Nassira: Hamas Terrorists Target Daughters and Wives to Stop the Resistance. Eliana Fleming. Dec 25, 2025. JFeed

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Australia. Online antisemitic discourse multiplies after Bondi massacre. Israel National News. Dec 25, 2025, 6:21 PM INN

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Notes part II: Dec 26, 2025 - Jan 6, 2026

Trump orders US strikes on ISIS in Nigeria. US forces strike ISIS targets in northwest Nigeria after Trump’s order, responding to terrorist attacks on Christians. Trump calls the strikes “powerful and deadly” in a Truth Social post. Israel National News. Dec 26, 2025, 1:24 AM INN

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Romi Gonen reveals: The terrorist put a gun to my head and threatened me. Former hostage Romi Gonen speaks publicly for the first time about the assaults she endured in captivity. President Herzog: “This is sexual violence and a systematic attempt to crush the soul.” Israel National News. Dec 26, 2025, 4:08 AM (GMT+2) INN

Gun to the Head: The Chilling First Interview With Nova Massacre Survivor Romi Gonen. 471 Days in Hell. Gun to the Head: The Chilling First Interview With Nova Massacre Survivor Romi Gonen Nearly a year after her return from 471 days in captivity, Romi Gonen reveals the harrowing details of the physical and mental abuse she endured at the hands of her Hamas captors.

Eliana Fleming. Dec 25, 2025 22:21

Almost a year has passed since Romi Gonen returned from captivity, yet the process of healing remains a long journey. The young woman, who was abducted from the Nova music festival and became a face of the hostage movement with her captivating smile, has finally decided to speak. In her first in-depth interview, she recounts the moments of her abduction, the terrifying phone calls with her mother, and the profound trauma she experienced while being held by terrorists in Gaza.

Now that all living hostages have returned, Romi feels she can finally share the full extent of the horrors she faced, including being used as a human shield by a senior Hamas leader.

Romi arrived at the party near Re'im with her best friend, Gaya Khalifa. As the massacre began, the two left a trail of messages and location pins as their families tried desperately to save them. Ben Shimoni, a friend of Gaya’s, eventually reached them in his car. Romi recalls being the 13th person Ben saved that day. While they were fleeing, Romi’s mother, Merav, stayed on the phone with her, refusing to let her daughter feel alone even as terrorists surrounded the vehicle. Merav describes her role as a mother during that call, stating that her only goal was to ensure Romi did not feel abandoned, even if her voice was the last thing Romi ever heard.

After her vehicle was ambushed, Romi was taken to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Wounded and terrified, she believed she would wake up without an arm. Following a surgery performed under heavy sedation, she was moved to an apartment where she was held alone by a group of men.

Romi bravely detailed the abuse she suffered, including an incident where a member of the medical staff forced his way into the shower while she was vulnerable and injured. She noted that people often avoid asking if she was harassed because they are afraid to hear the truth.

Her situation worsened when she was moved to the Shati refugee camp. There, her captors, Muhammad and Ibrahim, subjected her to a reality of constant fear. One captor began sleeping on a mattress right next to her and shackling her every night. Romi shared the most severe moment of her ordeal in the presence of her mother and sister, describing how one captor held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone what happened in that room. She recalled looking through a small window and seeing the blue sky and hearing birds chirp, a painful contrast to the filth and brutality she was experiencing. Shortly after, she was taken by motorcycle through the narrow alleys of the camp and told she was being moved deep underground. JFeed

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Lebanese President: 'Diplomatic efforts have reduced risk of war with Israel'. Israel National News. Dec 26, 2025, 6:21 AM INN

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New poll indicates coalition parties' support stable Israel National News. Dec 26, 2025, 1:28 PM INN

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Following intelligence: Prison Service moves terrorist to solitary confinement. Israel National News. Dec 26, 2025, 12:34 PM INN

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Watch: Unique military exercise in Judea and Samaria. IDF completes first-of-its-kind military exercise in Judea and Samaria, integrating aircraft and ground forces. Yoni Kempinski. Dec 26, 2025, 1:02 PM INN

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Victims of terror attack - Aviv Maor and Mordechai Shimshon. Aviv Maor (19) was stabbed to death near Tel Yosef; Mordechai Shimshon (68) was rammed in hit-and-run attack. Israel National News. Published: Dec 26, 2025, 1:33 PM (GMT+2) Updated: 15:36

Aviv Maor (19) was stabbed dead Friday afternoon near Kibbutz Tel Yosef in northern Israel, nearly immediately following a ramming attack in which Mordechai Shimshon, a 68-year-old pedestrian, was rammed and critically injured, later dying of his injuries.

A third victim, a 16-year-old teen boy, was lightly injured.

The terrorist escaped in his vehicle towards Afula, and was neutralized following the attacks. He was later identified as Ahmad al-Roub, a 37-year-old resident of the Palestinian Arab village of Qabatiya.

The parents of the murdered girl, who arrived at the scene minutes after the attack, lamented, "A terrorist took our daughter. She was standing down here, waiting for a ride, and he murdered our daughter."

Initial investigations indicate that the attack began in Beit She'an, on Hashomron Street. Magen David Adom (MDA) medics and paramedics began providing medical treatment and resuscitation to a 68-year-old man who had been rammed. A short time later, they were forced to declare his death.

On the city's Ya'akov Machluf Street, a 16-year-old boy was also rammed. He was transferred to the hospital with light injuries.

From there, the suspect continued to Highway 71, and near Ein Harod he rammed into a vehicle carrying a young woman.

"The terrorist rammed into them, when they were in a kibbutz vehicle," the young woman's father said. "He rammed them and they got out and escaped, and he chased after her and stabbed her in the ditch."

From there, the terrorist escaped in his vehicle towards Afula, where the vehicle was stopped near the city and the terrorist neutralized.

The Police Commissioner is en route to the scene.

The Jezreel Valley Council said that the incident appears to be a ramming attack.

At 12:31 p.m., MDA received a report of an injured woman on Highway 71 near Tel Yosef and Kibbutz Ein Harod. MDA EMTs and paramedics arriving at the scene provided medical treatment to a woman who was unconscious, but were forced to declare her death.

MDA paramedic Daniel Toito said: "We received reports of several incidents in the Beit Shean area. I arrived on Shomron Street and saw a 68 year old man lying unconscious, without a pulse and not breathing. I immediately began resuscitation efforts, including chest compressions and ventilation, but sadly he was pronounced dead at the scene."

MDA paramedic Lidor Cohen and senior MDA EMT Aviad Amar recounted: "We saw a 16-year-old boy lying on the sidewalk, suffering from injuries to his lower extremities. He and bystanders told us that he had been struck by a vehicle. We provided him with medical treatment and evacuated him by MDA ambulance to the hospital. He had minor injuries and was fully conscious."

The IDF confirmed: "Following an initial inquiry regarding the ramming and stabbing attack that was executed in the area of Beit She'an, and later on in Ein Harod and Afula, it appears that the terrorist is an unauthorized individual who had infiltrated into Israeli territory several days ago.

"IDF soldiers were dispatched to the scene, and situational assessments are being conducted in various regions.

"Additional troops are reinforcing the Menashe Regional Brigade area as well as preparing for an operation in the area of Qabatiya."

"Defense Minister Israel Katz instructed the IDF to act powerfully and immediately in Kafr Qabatiya, from which the murderous terrorist emerged, to locate and thwart all terrorists and strike all terror infrastructure in the village," a Ministry statement read.

"Whoever aids terror or provides protection and backing for terror will pay the full price."

The statement added, "My heart is with the bereaved families during their most difficult hour. I send condolences from the depths of my heart, and support the families following their incomprehensible loss."

"I would like to thank the security forces, who acted quickly, professionally, and with determination, and neutralized the terrorist." INN

6 injured. 2 Dead After Ramming, Stabbing Attacks in the North. Two people were killed and another injured in a suspected terror attack in northern Israel involving ramming and stabbing incidents near Beit She’an and Ein Harod. The suspect was arrested near Afula as police investigate the coordinated assault amid heightened security alerts.

Gila Isaacson Dec. 26, 2025. JFeed

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After deadly terror attack. IDF, Shin Bet launch operation in Qabatiya Israeli forces launch a major raid in Qabatiya after two people were murdered in a deadly terror attack in northern Israel. The IDF and Shin Bet are mapping the attacker’s home and detaining suspects. Israel National News. Dec 26, 2025, 8:11 PM INN

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Israel FM accuses Palestinian Authority of aiding terror with ‘Pay-for-Slay’ after deadly attack. Gideon Sa'ar's comments follow Friday's terror attacks that killed 2 Israelis. By Benjamin Weinthal. Fox News. Published December 26, 2025 12:16pm EST Updated December 26, 2025 12:25pm EST FoxNews

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Trio of Palestinians arrested for allegedly torching Christmas tree at Catholic church in West Bank.

By Landon Mion. Fox News Published December 25, 2025. ([2]. 'We will never leave Gaza': Israeli defense minister vows to take on 'fierce battle'Video 'We will never leave Gaza': Israeli defense minister vows to take on 'fierce battle' Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst has the latest on Israel's accusation against Hamas on 'America Reports']).

Three Palestinians were arrested on accusations of lighting a Christmas tree on fire ... FoxNews

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From Tehran to Turning Point USA: The political utility of Jew-hatred. Antisemitism has been repackaged as a multipurpose political and economic tool: profitable for podcasters, strategically valuable for hostile states and algorithmically optimized for maximum reach.

Alex Goldenberg. (Dec. 26, 2025 / JNS). Gunmen opened fire on families celebrating the first night of Chanukah at an event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, killing 15 people who ranged from an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor to a 10-year-old child. The attack followed an 893% increase in antisemitic incidents in Australia over the past decade.

In the United States, the Anti-Defamation League documented 9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024—the highest in 46 years of tracking, with physical assaults up 21%. That’s more than 25 incidents per day. This isn’t abstract data. It’s Jews burying family members.

The resurgence follows a pattern intelligence analysts recognize: convergence on a high-value target by actors with disparate objectives. Antisemitism has become operationally useful across the ideological spectrum. For the far-right podcaster, it’s a monetizable business model. For Iran, it’s asymmetric information warfare. For Qatar, it’s diplomatic leverage. For China, it’s a destabilization vector targeting American institutions. For domestic grifters and ideologues, it’s the conspiracy theory that explains everything while requiring no evidence. For the media, it is clickbait and a ratings boost.

The Turning Point USA conference revealed how this convergence manifests domestically. The central question: Are there any voices on the right espousing rhetoric too hateful to be platformed? The answer increasingly appears to be no, not even those voices trafficking in Holocaust denial.

Ben Shapiro, a conservative political commentator, stood virtually alone in calling out this normalization. He criticized former Fox News host and current podcaster Tucker Carlson for platforming self-avowed neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, who has called for executing Jews. He challenged conservative media personality Megyn Kelly and others for refusing to denounce far-right conspiracist Candace Owens’s theories about Israeli intelligence murdering Turning Point co-founder Charlie Kirk in September.

The response was predictable: conservative political strategist and pundit Steve Bannon called Shapiro “a cancer.” Kelly declared their friendship over. Carlson mocked him from the stage.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s position exemplified the problem. Days after the conference, he told the British outlet UnHerd that Fuentes could “eat s**t” for attacking his wife, Usha Vance, of Indian descent, with racial slurs. But when it mattered, on Sunday on the main stage at the conference, he chose coalition management over moral clarity.

Vance argued that U.S. President Donald Trump “did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless self-defeating purity tests” and declared that “we have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”

Consider the threat indicators that went unaddressed. Owens urged millions of followers to read Der Talmudjude, an 1871 antisemitic forgery that even Jew-hating Germany exposed as fraudulent, but that the Nazis recognized as a source text. Myron Gaines, a far-right podcaster, influencer, and author, wore a “Cookie Monster” oven sweatshirt to the conference, a Holocaust-denial meme where cookies represent Jews and ovens represent crematoria. He posed for photos with influential conservatives. No one objected.

Gaines (real name Amrou Fudl) isn’t subtle about his objectives. He boasts his Fresh & Fit podcast is “the biggest platform talking about the JQ” and monetizes Holocaust denial through his storefront, where he advertised the sweatshirt with a discount code “271k” for “6% off.” He offers 6% off for merchandise mocking the factually verified total of 6 million murdered Jews, while the “271k” discount code is a dog-whistle nod to the baseless, alternatively lesser total of 271,000 Jews killed during the Holocaust that is promoted online by neo-Nazi, far-right or Holocaust-denial social-media accounts.

Gaines has called the Holocaust a “hoax,” praised Adolf Hitler as “a revolutionary leader” and routinely uses “fat Jew” as a slur. The business model works because the attention economy rewards escalation. Controversy generates engagement, engagement generates revenue, algorithms optimize for watch time.

The foreign-influence dimension follows established patterns. Iran’s Masaf Institute launched hashtag campaigns exploiting USS Liberty conspiracies (an incident during the 1967 war) with more than 2,000 accounts pushing antisemitic narratives. Those narratives migrated from Iranian information operations to the conference floor at Turning Point, where young activists now confront Jewish conservatives with similar talking points.

Carlson’s trajectory illustrates how influence operations cultivate American voices. He recently appeared at Qatar’s Doha Forum, declaring his intention to buy property there. Qatar hosts Hamas leadership and has spent billions promoting Islamist extremism through Al Jazeera and affiliated networks. Carlson now argues that the Gulf State should replace Israel as America’s primary Middle Eastern ally, calling Israel’s actions “mass murder” by an “evil regime.” Whether this represents sincere conviction or successful cultivation, the operational effect is identical.

The left presents a mirror image. Neville Roy Singham’s Chinese Communist Party-affiliated network organized campus groups after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. I testified before Congress about this constellation of nonprofits exploiting regulatory loopholes to bankroll what congressional investigators described as “radical, antisemitic entities,” including National Students for Justice in Palestine. House Republicans documented how Singham’s organizations (The People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition, International People’s Assembly) function as “conduits through which CCP-affiliated entities co-opted pro-Palestinian activism to advance anti-American, anti-democratic and anti-capitalist agendas.”

These groups organized “Shut It Down for Palestine” campaigns featuring eliminationist rhetoric and attacks on critical infrastructure.

The threat picture: Iran amplifying far-right antisemitism through social-media operations, Qatar cultivating conservative influencers through access and economic incentives, Russia weaponizing deceptively edited content, and China bankrolling radical antisemitic campus networks. Different vectors, same target. This is antisemitism’s operational advantage: Its utility transcends ideology. A Nazi and a Marxist, a theocrat and an atheist, a grifter and a communist operative can all deploy identical conspiracy theories while advancing separate strategic objectives.

This is how institutional defenses fail—not through the initial breach but through immune system collapse. When calling out Holocaust denial makes you the target rather than the threat actor, then you’ve already lost. When boundary enforcement becomes boundary violation, there are no boundaries. The attack chain from “perfidious Jews” to “death penalty” to “Cookie Monster” ovens to mass-casualty events isn’t theoretical. We have the historical case studies. The progression is consistent and accelerating.

When this hatred achieves mainstream acceptance (amplified by podcasters with millions of followers, weaponized by hostile state actors, defended as “free speech”) and produces attacks like Bondi Beach, you’re not observing normal political friction. You’re watching the mechanics of how democracies fail to protect their most vulnerable citizens.

The threat requires decisive action. Platforms must enforce existing terms of service against coordinated inauthentic behavior. Law enforcement must treat incitement to genocide as the criminal act it is, not protected speech.

Both conservative and progressive institutions must choose between coalition maintenance and moral clarity. Right-wing leaders must decide whether platforming Holocaust deniers is an acceptable price for audience growth. Left-wing activists must confront how foreign adversaries have weaponized their movements to advance antisemitic agendas. Americans with platforms across the political spectrum must understand that silence functions as operational support.

The historical pattern is clear, and the contemporary threat indicators are impossible to ignore. Antisemitism has been repackaged as a multipurpose political and economic tool: profitable for podcasters, strategically valuable for hostile states and algorithmically optimized for maximum reach. What began as ancient hatred has evolved into modern infrastructure—and that infrastructure is producing body counts.

The question is whether American institutions, left and right, will respond to these threat indicators before the next attack, and the one after that, and the one after that. JNS

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Israel recognizes Somaliland as two nations establish full diplomatic relations Netanyahu congratulated Somaliland President H.E. Abdirahman Mohamed Abdillahi and praised his leadership and commitment to security, stability, and peace.

By Danielle Greyman-kennard, Reuters December 26, 2025.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu officially recognized Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state, the Prime Minister’s Office announced on Friday, making Israel the first nation to recognize the country.

Together with Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Somaliland’s president, Netanyahu signed a joint and mutual declaration on Friday. JPost

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Somalia, Egypt, Turkey and Djibouti condemn Israel's recognition of Somaliland. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu officially recognized Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state on Friday.

By Reuters, Danielle Greyman-kennard December 26, 2025.

The foreign ministers of Somalia, Egypt, Turkey and Djibouti condemned Israel's recognition of Somaliland, Somalia's breakaway region, Egypt said on Friday.

"The ministers affirmed their total rejection and condemnation of Israel's recognition of the Somaliland region, stressing their full support for the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Somalia," Egypt's foreign ministry said in a statement following a phone call between Egypt's foreign minister and his Somali, Turkish and Djiboutian counterparts. JPost

Israel is first to recognize Somaliland, Accords ‘spirit,’ says Netanyahu. "The State of Israel plans to immediately expand its relations with the Republic of Somaliland through extensive cooperation in the fields of agriculture, health, technology and economy," the Israeli prime minister said. JNS Staff. (Dec. 26, 2025 / JNS) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Friday that the Jewish state recognized Somaliland, becoming the first country to recognize the self-declared Horn of Africa nation.

“This declaration is in the spirit of the Abraham Accords, signed at the initiative of President Trump,” the Israeli premier said. (Washington doesn’t recognize Somaliland as an independent state.)

Netanyahu, who said that he and Gideon Sa’ar, the Israeli foreign minister, signed a “joint and mutual declaration” with Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, Somaliland president, stated that he invited the latter to visit Israel.

“The State of Israel plans to immediately expand its relations with the Republic of Somaliland through extensive cooperation in the fields of agriculture, health, technology and economy,” he said.

“Somaliland’s moment has arrived,” the state’s foreign affairs and international cooperation ministry stated. “Momentum is building.”.. Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, stated that “for those mocking why Israel would engage Somaliland, look at the map.”

“Somaliland sits on the Gulf of Aden, next to the Bab el-Mandeb—a chokepoint for global trade and energy. Across the water are Iran-backed Houthis firing on Israel and shipping,” he said. “Somaliland offers stability, ports, intelligence access and a non-Iranian platform on the Red Sea.”

“Similar reason why the U.S. has a military base in Djibouti,” he said.

“Somaliland is also the only stable and relatively successful state in the region, that is self-sustaining and doesn’t rely on international aid or international peacekeeping to govern,” stated Jonathan Conricus, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former international spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces.

“A rare success story in a very failing area,” he said.

David Makovsky, distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and director of its Koret Project on Arab-Israel Relations, stated that it is “hard to avoid the question: does Israel’s recognition of Somaliland today open the door—formally or informally—to access to military facilities there, aimed at countering Houthi drones and missiles from nearby Yemen across the Gulf of Aden?”

“Houthi attacks on Israel in this theater are new over the last year. Israel’s move looks like a diplomatic step, but one driven by what seems to be a security rationale and unclear if it will be escalatory,” he stated.

“The Houthis openly declare on their very flag: ‘God is the greatest. Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse upon the Jews. Victory to Islam,'” he added. “Their flag is not exactly stars and stripes.” JNS

Israel recognizes Somaliland as Trump scoffs: 'Does anyone know what it is?' Israel became the first UN member to recognize Somaliland, but the move drew a cool response in Washington; President Trump said the issue 'is under study' and dismissed a proposed naval base near Houthi areas as 'big deal,' as Turkey voiced anger and Somalia vowed a diplomatic response. Lior Ben Ari | 12.27.25 YNet

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IDF helicopters intercept drones along Egypt border; residents warn of rising threat. An IDF attack helicopter pilot intercepted two drones that crossed into Israel from Egypt within minutes; a control officer said the mission is to detect and thwart drone intrusions, but southern communities warn smuggling by drones is intensifying, saying 'there’s no end in sight'. Ilana Curiel | 12.27.25 YNet

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Italian police arrest seven for raising millions in terror funding for Hamas. Three associations that claimed to support Palestinian civilians are also implicated, allegedly serving as a front for Hamas funding, local police said.

By Jerusalem Post Staff. December 27, 2025.

Italian police arrested seven people on suspicion of raising millions of dollars for Hamas and issued arrest warrants for two other individuals, Italian officials and police confirmed on Saturday.

Three associations that claimed to support Palestinian civilians are also implicated, allegedly serving as a front for Hamas funding, police announced in a statement. JPost

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Sharaa's Syria stands at political impasse as Aleppo violence reflects deep divisions. BEHIND THE LINES: The Turkish foreign minister said, “We see that the SDF has no real intention of making significant progress in the negotiations on integration with the Damascus administration.”

CLASHES IN the north Syrian city of Aleppo left two civilians dead this week, after fighters associated with the Syrian National Army fired on the Kurdish-majority neighborhoods of Sheikh Maksoud and Ashrafiyeh, according to sources close to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

ByJonathan Spyer. December 27, 2025.

Clashes in the north Syrian city of Aleppo left two civilians dead this week. They broke out after fighters associated with the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) fired on the Kurdish majority neighborhoods of Sheikh Maksoud and Ashrafiyeh, according to sources close to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The Asayish, the SDF’s internal security force, which is deployed in the two neighborhoods, responded to the fire. For its part, SANA, the official Syrian government news agency, asserted that the SDF had initiated the exchanges. JPost

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Nigeria: US strikes ISIS targets again. The Nigerian government announced that the United States is conducting additional strikes against ISIS targets in the country and against the local jihad group "Lakurawa." "ISIS has found a way to cross the Sahel region and assist gangs with equipment and training," officials said. Last night, President Donald Trump announced that his military had attacked ISIS targets in the northwestern part of the country after they "brutally murdered innocent Christians in numbers not seen for many years." AFP|12.27.25. YNet

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Iranian President: 'We are in a state of total war with US, Israel and Europe'. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that "We are in a state of total war with the US, Israel and Europe. They do not want our country to stand on its feet." He added that "If they attack us again, they will receive a harsher response. The unity of Iranian society will foil all enemy plots." Lior Ben Ari|12.27.25 YNet

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Mamdani picks his mentor: The woke, radical, anti-Israel YouTuber Ms. Rachel. By Liel Leibovitz. Published Dec. 26, 2025, 5:47 p.m. ET NYPost

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Pennsylvania principal axed after ranting about ‘Jew money’ in voicemail to parent By David Spector. Published Dec. 27, 2025, 9:33 a.m. ET

A Pennsylvania principal whose antisemitic tirade about “Jew money” was inadvertently recorded has been fired.

Lower Gwynedd Elementary School Principal Phillip Leddy was axed Tuesday by the Wissahickon School Board.

Leddy, 45, was returning a call from a parent when he got the dad’s voicemail and left a message, but then apparently failed to end the call, Philadelphia’s ABC 7 reported. NYPost

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Hamas set to elect new terror leader with Khalil al-Hayya, Khaled Mashaal in pole position - report. According to Asharq, Hayya is expected to win due to his popularity in the Gaza Strip and involvement in Hamas operations in the West Bank.

By Jerusalem Post Staff. December 27, 2025.

Hamas is planning to hold internal elections to choose its new political bureau head, Saudi Arabia-based outlet Asharq News reported on Saturday.

The election, which was originally set to be held in early 2025, was ordered by a leadership council that was established after the deaths of Hamas’s previous political bureau heads, Ismail Haniyeh and the mastermind behind Hamas's October 7 massacre, Yahya Sinwar. JPost

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Ilhan Omar’s hubby’s $30M firm quietly scrubs names from website – as ‘Squad’ member faces mounting questions on sudden wealth amid Minnesota welfare fraud By Gabrielle Fahmy and Geoff Earle. Published Dec. 27, 2025, 9:18 a.m. ET

Embattled Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband’s venture capital firm quietly scrubbed key officer details — including former Obama officials — as scrutiny grows over the family’s skyrocketing wealth, The Post has learned.

Omar (D-MN) went from nearly broke to being worth up to $30 million in just a year — as a massive, up to $9 billion fraud scheme involving the Somali community in her district unfolded right under her nose in Minnesota.

Close to 90 people have been charged so far, including at least three with direct ties to the lefty Squad member, though she has not been charged. NYPost

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Security forces arrest brothers of Beit She'an terrorist. Brothers of terrorist from Qabatiya who carried out double terror attack in northern Israel are arrested; all three described as illegal infiltrators. Orly Harari. Dec 27, 2025, 5:59 PM (GMT+2) INN

Security forces seal Beit She'an terrorist's house. Dozens of suspects from the terrorist's city were arrested for questioning, and his house was sealed as a prelude to demolition. Israel National News. Dec 27, 2025, 9:45 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Following terror attack: Chief of Staff orders reinforcements for Central Command forces. IDF Chief of the General Staff Eyal Zamir holds situational assessment following double terror attack, orders series of steps to improve security. Israel National News. Dec 27, 2025, 11:04 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Tucker Carlson: “I Don’t Know Anyone Who’s Been Killed by Radical Islam.” Tucker tells Soros alum that Islamic terrorism "doesn't reflect the 'lived reality' of anyone I've ever met." December 27, 2025. By Daniel Greenfield.

In an interview with Harrison Berger, formerly of Drop Site News (which received $250,000 from George Soros), Tucker Carlson claimed that the recent TPUSA poll showing that a majority of attendees thought that “Radical Islam” was the greatest threat to America was really an Israeli “op”.

“I don’t know anyone in the United States in the last 24 years who’s been killed by radical Islam.” Tucker Carlson claimed.

He argued that, “I believe in measuring reality a little more empirically” meaning that since, presumably Tucker didn’t know them personally, they don’t matter and don’t exist.

The podcaster went on to argue that video games and pornography were much more dangerous than Islamic terrorism which is really not an issue.

“So anyone who believes that lie, I feel sorry for, but it doesn’t reflect the ‘lived reality’ of anyone I’ve ever met.”

‘Lived reality’ is a leftist term suggesting that personal experiences and feelings of especially ‘oppressed groups’ matter more than the facts.

The people believing that ‘lie’ included the late Charlie Kirk who warned that “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America”. Tucker has made common cause with the Left and Islam while echoing Obama and the Left in denying Islamic terrorism.

Tucker Carlson made his comments in an interview with Berger at ‘American Conservative’, a formerly conservative site which now hires Soros alums like Berger and promotes Islamic causes, and which had called for the creation of a ‘Palestinian’ state.

Perhaps some of these people don’t fall into Tucker’s ‘lived experience’, but they are the victims of Islamic terrorism.

This is Martin Richard, 8, who was killed by Muslim terrorists in the Boston Marathon bombings [3]

This is the Chechen Muslim terrorist who killed him [4]

This is Ann-Laure Decadt who was murdered in New York City by a Muslim terrorist. Tucker may not have known her personally, but her life still mattered. [5]

This is the Muslim terrorist who killed her. [6]

Why doesn’t Tucker want us to talk about this? As the authorities, who are very much in sync with Tucker, like to say after every attack, “no motive has been reliably established.” [7] FPM

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Toronto: Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupt Boxing Day Dalit Halevi. Published: Dec 27, 2025, 10:52 PM (GMT+2) Dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted Boxing Day at a central mall in downtown Toronto.

The protesters arrived with Palestinian flags, posters supporting the struggle against Israel and megaphones, and shouted anti-Israel slogans. INN

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Netanyahu to show Trump. This is how Iran is working to rebuild its missile program. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ask US President Donald Trump for green light to attack Iran, stress Gaza plan won't advance until Hamas disarmsa and last hostage's body is returned to Israel. Israel National News. Dec 28, 2025, 12:14 AM INN

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Newest member of Mamdani's inaugural committee praised people tearing Israeli hostage posters. In a now-deleted X/Twitter post, Lopez responded to a video of two women caught tearing down hostage posters, writing “All I see are heroes.”

By Shir Perets. December 28, 2025.

The newest member of New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s inaugural committee, Alvaro Lopez, a Democratic Socialists of America activist, previously praised women who tore down posters of Israeli hostages, the New York Post reported on Saturday.

In a now-deleted X/Twitter post, Lopez responded to a video of two women caught tearing down hostage posters, writing “All I see are heroes.” JPost

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British Muslim woman faces backlash after posting positive experience at Ben Gurion Airport. “They gave me a coffee, they gave me a cheese sandwich… we weren't strip-searched or anything like that, it was all good,” Sanam said.

By Shir Perets. December 29, 2025.

A British Muslim woman faced criticism and backlash after sharing her experience going through Ben-Gurion Airport security on TikTok on her way to visit the al-Aqsa Mosque earlier this month.

“The stories kind of put me off, but I'm here to share my story of immigration and security,” the woman, who goes by the username Sanam, said, adding that she hoped her positive experience would motivate others to visit.

“They gave me a coffee, they gave me a cheese sandwich… we weren't strip-searched or anything like that, it was all good.”

Many of the comments were shaming her for “promoting” the Israeli airport, asking, “How much did they pay you?” and criticising her for speaking positively of the state. JPost

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Iran and Turkey hold talks ‘for closer coordination among Islamic countries in addressing regional challenges’. By Christine Douglass-Williams | Dec 29, 2025

Turkey’s alliance with Iran is to “defend the interests of the Islamic world in international forums,” while the West continues to turn a blind eye to the true nature of Turkey, which is still a member of NATO. A top Israeli strategist described Turkey as the “new Iran,” for good reason.

On July 2025, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf met with Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey Numan Kurtulmus on the sidelines of the Sixth World Conference of Speakers of Parliament in Geneva, calling on Islamic and regional countries, especially Iran and Turkey, to unite and remain strong in opposition to the United States and Israel.

Three months later, in October 2025, Iran and Turkey discussed military cooperation and signaled their intent to build a stronger regional security partnership.

Muslim nations are more united than Western nations care to admit, to the latter’s detriment.

“Iran, Turkey stress parliamentary cooperation to boost bilateral ties,” Tehran Times, December 28, 2025:

TEHRAN – In line with efforts to strengthen bilateral and parliamentary relations, Mohammad Hassan Habibollahzadeh, Iran’s ambassador to Ankara, met and held talks with Abdulrahim Dosak, head of Turkey’s parliamentary group at the Parliamentary Union of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The cordial meeting highlighted the strategic importance of cooperation between Tehran and Ankara, as well as the need for closer coordination among Islamic countries in addressing regional challenges.

Both sides expressed satisfaction with the current level of Iran–Turkey relations and stressed the importance of exchanging parliamentary delegations and continuing cooperation between the two countries’ parliamentary friendship groups, describing such channels as key to expanding ties.

They also discussed the importance of cooperation within the framework of the Parliamentary Union of OIC member states, emphasizing the need to use the platform to defend the interests of the Islamic world in international forums…. IsraPundit

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Washington should hold off on selling F-35s to Turkey. History shows how quickly allies can turn into adversaries.

Moshe Phillips | Dec 29, 2025

When Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, tweeted on Dec. 9 that America “is in ongoing discussions with Turkey regarding their desire to rejoin the F-35 program,” it should have sent chills through any American who cares about the future of the Middle East. An F-35 stealth fighter jet taking off from Turkey could reach Israeli airspace in about 15 minutes. Cyprus is even closer, and Turkey doesn’t even recognize the Republic of Cyprus. IsraPundit

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U.S. at UN: Israel has right to recognize Somaliland, just as countries recognized 'Palestine'. U.S. Deputy Representative to the UN, Tami Bruce, said that Israel has the right to recognize Somaliland's independence - and compared the declaration to many European countries' recognition of a Palestinian state. She said that "earlier this year, several countries made a unilateral decision to recognize a Palestinian state that does not exist." The statement was made during an emergency discussion of the UN Security Council, whose members oppose the recognition of Somaliland. The Slovenian representative, whose country recognized a Palestinian state, attacked the comparison: "Palestine was illegally occupied, Somaliland is part of Somalia." AFP|12.29.25 YNet

US compares Somaliland recognition to Palestine, calls out UNSC's 'persistent double standards'. "This council’s persistent double standards and misdirection of focus distract from its mission of maintaining international peace and security," said US Deputy Representative to the UN Tammy Bruce.

By Tobias Holcman, Reuters. December 30, 2025 02:07 The United States Deputy Representative to the United Nations, Tammy Bruce, compared the Israeli recognition of Somaliland as an independent state to the actions taken by several countries to recognize a Palestinian state during a United Nations' Security Council (UNSC) meeting called to discuss the recognition on Monday.

"This council’s persistent double standards and misdirection of focus distract from its mission of maintaining international peace and security," Bruce said during her speech. JPost

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Britain announced it will not recognize Somaliland independence. Britain announced that it will not recognize the independence of Somaliland, and that it views it as part of Somalia. This follows Israel's recognition of Somaliland's independence. Reuters| 12.29.25 15:50 YNet

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"The Time Has Come": Mossad Spokesman Signals Active Presence in Iranian Streets Not Just Words. "The Time Has Come": Mossad Spokesman Signals Active Presence in Iranian Streets In a highly unusual and direct public statement, a verified Farsi language account associated with the Mossad has claimed that Israeli agents are present on the ground to support the Iranian people.

Eliana Fleming Dec 29, 2025 12:22 JFeed

Mossad's message to Iranians 'We're with you, not just from afar, but on the ground'. Israel National News. Dec 29, 2025, 5:12 PM INN

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The Next 48 Hours are Critical . "I Will Back the Strike": Trump Pledges Support for Israeli Action Against Iran President Donald Trump has explicitly backed further Israeli strikes on Iran if they continue their missile program, while also confirming that a presidential pardon for Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly on the way.

Eliana Fleming. Dec 29, 2025 13:07

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Monday for a pivotal meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss the future of the war and regional security. The summit, their fifth meeting since Trump’s second term began in January 2025, focused on the transition to the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire, potential strikes against Iran, and the precarious situation in southern Lebanon. At the start of the meeting, Trump issued a series of powerful statements, emphasizing that the primary goal is to move to the next stage of the Gaza agreement "as soon as possible" while demanding that the terrorists of Hamas be completely disarmed.

Trump went even further regarding the Iranian threat, stating that he would "definitely" back an Israeli strike on Iran if the regime continues to advance its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. He noted that he has heard reports of Iran attempting to rehabilitate its military power and warned that "if that’s true, we’ll have to dismantle it". Netanyahu is expected to present intelligence evidence showing that Iran has significantly increased its production of ballistic missiles and is working to revive its nuclear program since the "12 Day War".

One of the most surprising moments of the meeting involved Netanyahu’s legal situation in Israel. When asked about a pardon for the Prime Minister, Trump replied, "How can you not give him a pardon? He is a war hero". Trump claimed he had already spoken with President Isaac Herzog, who reportedly said a pardon "is on the way". Netanyahu responded by praising the American leader, stating that Israel has "never had a friend like President Trump, not even close".

Despite the warm public displays, significant tensions remain regarding the timeline for the "Day After" in Gaza and the situation in the West Bank. Trump’s advisors are reportedly pushing for the implementation of an International Stabilization Force (ISF) for Gaza, which Pakistan recently expressed interest in joining. However, Netanyahu is facing pressure at home not to move to Stage B of the ceasefire plan until the body of Ran Gvili, the final fallen hostage still held by terrorists, is returned for burial. Furthermore, White House officials have urged Trump to press Netanyahu on stabilizing the Palestinian Authority and curbing settlement construction, arguing that Israel cannot "choke" the Authority while expecting it to reform. JFeed

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A Direct Message in Hebrew. "No Permission Needed": Iran Issues Defiant Response to Trump’s Threats Ali Shamkhani, a senior political advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader, has issued a sharp and immediate rebuttal to Donald Trump’s latest warnings, delivering his message directly in Hebrew.

Eliana Fleming Dec 29, 2025 14:50 JFeed

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Racing the Clock in Gaza: The IDF’s Massive Mission to Erase Decades of Terror Tunnels The Hidden War. Racing the Clock in Gaza: The IDF’s Massive Mission to Erase Decades of Terror Tunnels Israeli military officials have admitted to a massive pre war intelligence failure regarding the sheer scale of the tunnel network in Gaza, sparking an intense, around the clock engineering operation to dismantle the underground threat before potential diplomatic shifts.

Eliana Fleming. Dec 29, 2025 13:46 JFeed

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Good Riddance. IDF Dumps Haaretz: Government Ban Hits Spokesman Subscription. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit cancels Haaretz subscription, enforcing a government decision to sever ties with the newspaper for spreading anti-Israel lies and supporting Hamas terrorists.

Eliana Fleming. Dec 29, 2025.

The IDF Spokesperson's Unit has canceled its subscription to Haaretz, implementing a November 2024 government decision that bars all state bodies from engaging with the newspaper due to its relentless anti-Israel bias and promotion of Hamas terrorist narratives. It's no wonder: Haaretz's one-sided "reporting," anything but factual journalism, should be kept far from the IDF and Israeli government.

The outlet has openly spread vicious anti-Israel lies about "genocide[sic]" and made horrific, disgusting accusations against IDF soldiers fighting Hamas terrorists who slaughtered 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, and kidnapped 251 others. No legitimate news source should spew such nasty Hamas-filled.propaganda while Israel defends its citizens from rocket barrages and tunnel ambushes.

Reporter Doron Kadosh revealed the move on Galei Tzahal, noting it's not isolated: accounts of additional senior IDF officials were recently disconnected from the newspaper. The government resolution declares it "will not accept a situation in which the publisher of an official newspaper in the State of Israel calls for sanctions against it and supports the state's enemies in the midst of a war, at a time when international bodies challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel, its right to self-defense, and effectively impose sanctions against it and its leaders."

It accuses Haaretz of publishing editorials during the war "that challenged the State of Israel's legitimacy in the world and its right to self-defense."

The decisionhighlights publisher Amos Schocken's s tatements at a Haaretz conference in London, where he reportedly called Palestinian terrorists "freedom fighters" and demanded sanctions on Prime Minister Netanyahu and Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, claiming Netanyahu's government imposes a "cruel apartheid[sic] regime" on Palestinians. The government responded: "Therefore, the government hereby declares its intention to sever all advertising relations with the newspaper Haaretz and calls on all its branches, ministries, and bodies, as well as any government corporation or body funded by it, not to engage with Haaretz in any way and not to publish any material in it."

This boycott reflects growing frustration with Haaretz's pattern of amplifying terrorist talking points, from downplaying Hamas atrocities to echoing blood libels that fuel global antisemitism, up 400% since October 7. While Israel buries 700 fallen soldiers and returns hostages like Hadar Goldin after 11 years in terrorist captivity, outlets like Haaretz undermine national unity with falsehoods that embolden enemies. The IDF's action sends a clear message: state institutions won't fund or legitimize propaganda that betrays the soldiers protecting the nation. JFeed

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Protests erupt across Iran as collapsing rial sparks unrest, regime blames 'enemy' influence Clashes have reportedly broken out across multiple streets in Tehran, with authorities using tear gas to disperse the protesters.

By Danielle Greyman-kennard December 29, 2025 17:03 Updated: December 29, 2025 22:51

A second day of protests in Iran raged on Monday as demonstrators voiced anger over the rapidly falling value of the rial. Regime officials blamed the unrest and broader economic decline on “enemy psychological warfare.”

Shopkeepers in Tehran closed their stores, and mass demonstrations broke out in response to the rial’s fall. Clashes reportedly occurred across multiple streets in Tehran, with authorities using tear gas to disperse the protesters, according to footage of the events. JPost

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‘There will be hell to pay’: Trump warns Hamas to disarm after Netanyahu talks After talks with Netanyahu, Trump says Hamas will be given a 'short time' to disarm or face 'hell to pay,' warns Iran cannot be allowed to rebuild its nuclear program and says he is open to talks with Tehran while pushing to expand the Abraham Accords ynet Global | published:12.29.25 15:10 YNet

'We'll knock them down': Trump backs attack on Iran if weapons development continues Trump was meeting with Netanyahu for talks on breaking a deadlock over the Gaza ceasefire and addressing Israeli concerns about Iran and Hezbollah. By Danielle Greyman-kennard, Amichai Stein, Reuters. December 29, 2025 JPost

Trump to JNS: If Israel had wrong prime minister, it wouldn’t exist. “He’s a wartime prime minister,” the U.S. president told JNS. “Israel, with other people, might not exist right now.”

([8]. U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Dec. 29, 2025).

(Dec. 29, 2025 / JNS) U.S. President Donald Trump credited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday for guiding the Jewish state to victory over a “force the likes of which very few countries could have handled.”

JNS asked Trump about his relationship with the Israeli premier.

“He’s a wartime prime minister,” Trump said of Netanyahu. “He’s taken Israel through a very dangerous period of drama.”

Standing alongside Netanyahu at a press conference outside the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., Trump said that under other leadership, Israel “might not exist right now.” JNS

Netanyahu visit breaks with Qatar, Turkey narrative on region. “The big test for the U.S. now is to go to the Turks into the Qataris and say, ‘You’ve been blowing smoke at us, and Hamas is not cooperating,’” Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former U.K. envoy to Yemen, told JNS. Andrew Bernard.

(Dec. 29, 2025 / JNS) U.S. President Donald Trump placed the blame for slow progress on the Gaza peace plan squarely on one party: Hamas.

After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday, the U.S. president said at his second press conference of the day that Israel has “lived up to the plan 100%.”

“I’m not concerned about anything that Israel is doing,” Trump said. “I’m concerned about what other people are doing, or maybe aren’t doing. But I’m not concerned. They’ve lived up to the plan.” JNS

Gazans have ‘great opportunity’ to leave during reconstruction, Trump says. “We don’t want the controversy right now,” the U.S. president said. “We’re helping Gaza.” JNS Staff.

(Dec. 29, 2025 / JNS). U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday after he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Palestinians had a “great opportunity” to depart Gaza during the reconstruction phase of his 20-point peace plan.

JNS asked the president, who spoke alongside Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., about a poll from May showing that about half of Gazans would be willing to emigrate.

“They’re there because they sort of have to be,” Trump told JNS, of the Palestinians in Gaza. “I’ve always said, ‘If they were given the opportunity to live in a better climate, they would move.’” JNS

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Strategic Surprises: Trump Teases a Major New Year’s Gift for Israel and the Middle East. Following a marathon two hour summit at Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump delivered a final ultimatum to Hamas terrorists while pledging devastating consequences for Iran if they continue their nuclear climb.

Eliana Fleming. Dec 29, 2025. JFeed

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Trump to receive 2026 Israel Prize for 'special contribution towards the Jewish people' Benjamin Netanyahu told Donald Trump he would receive the Israel Prize, but Education Ministry regulations raise questions over whether a non-Israeli citizen can be awarded the honor.

US President Donald Trump welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his Mar-a-Lago club on December 29, 2025 in Palm Beach, Florida.

By Amichai Steim. December 29, 2025 22:47 United States President Donald Trump will receive the Israel Prize in 2026, for his "special contribution towards the Jewish people," Education Minister Yoav Kisch announced on Monday.

Trump will be awarded the prize for his "work in the fight against antisemitism, his contribution to promoting the return of the hostages to Israel, the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and his consistent support for the right of the State of Israel to defend itself," a statement released by the Education Ministry explained. JPost

First Publication. Israel Prize Committee members who chose Trump: Miriam Peretz, Moshe Edri and Michal Abadi-Boiangiu. The members of the Israel Prize Committee who selected U.S. President Donald Trump for the prize for unique contribution to the Jewish people are Miriam Peretz, Moshe Edri and Michal Abadi-Boiangiu, ynet has learned. Kish said that "this is a historic decision expressing recognition of the extraordinary and lasting impact on the Jewish people in Israel and worldwide by a person who is not an Israeli citizen." The prize committee highlighted Trump's efforts in fighting antisemitism, his contribution to advancing the return of hostages, his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moving the U.S. embassy there, and his consistent support for Israel's right to defend itself. The ceremony will be held on Independence Day. Tamar Trabelsi-Hadad|12.29.25 YNet

During meeting with Netanyahu Trump informed he will receive the 'Israel Peace Prize'. Israel National News. Dec 29, 2025, 10:13 PM INN

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Omar’s Double Standards. Ilhan condemns Somaliland independence - while pushing for a Palestinian state that rewards terror. December 30, 2025. By Joseph Klein. FPM

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'Qatar Charity' Water Projects In Al-Shabaab's Somalia | MEMRI. December 30, 2025. Special Dispatch. No. 12316 'Qatar Charity' Operates 73 'Strategic' Water Projects In Regions Of Somalia Controlled By Al-Qaeda Affiliate Al-Shabaab. December 30, 2025

Qatar Charity, a Qatari government entity that bills itself as " the largest humanitarian and development NGO in the Global South" and has been linked to U.S. Treasury-designated terrorist fundraising networks, [2] is currently operating water projects that include drilling 73 surface wells in four regions in Somalia. According to the Facebook page "Somalia now – the truth first" (الصومال_ الآن – الحقيقة أولاً), 28 of these "strategic" wells are in the country's Hiran region, 20 are in the Bakool region, 15 are in the Bay region, and 10 are in the Gedo region.

About Qatar Charity. Qatar Charity was one of the entities designated in June 2017 as terrorist by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE; these entities had, according to the designation, "specifically financed, aided, and/or provided material support to Al-Qaeda and its associated organizations and networks." The aim was "to address the long-term and continuing threat of terrorist financing emanating from Qatar."

A U.S. lawsuit filed in June 2020 stated that Qatar Charity was one of three Qatari financial institutions with links to members of the Qatari royal family that provided funding to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas.

The organization has not been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., U.N., or E.U.

The Somalia Drought Emergency According to the UN, Somalia has recently declared a drought emergency, and is appealing for urgent international assistance as conditions continue to deteriorate across the northern, central and southern regions.

Although all parts of Somalia are affected by the drought, the wells drilled by Qatar Charity are concentrated primarily in regions that are either controlled by Al-Shabaab, the Al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia, or in areas where the organization is attempting to take control. MEMRI

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The Masks Are Off. Carlson and Owens have become leading Western apologists for Islam. December 31, 2025 by Mark Tapson l

It was bad enough that ostensibly conservative political commentators Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens both have been the main drivers of a growing divide in the MAGA movement, through their obsession with demonizing Israel and the Jews. Now they have also become leading Western apologists for Islam.

Are they even conservative? Were they ever? (Owens in particular has never been committed to anything but her own grift, not a political philosophy.) Conservatives are defenders; we preserve. Our mission, in large part, is to defend and preserve the liberties our forefathers earned for us. It is to defend and preserve the grand civilizational legacy of the best that has been thought and said. Progressives destroy; they are revolutionaries at heart, whose mission is to destroy the flawed status quo and pave the way for their utopian vision of an ideal society. By this standard, Carlson and Owens are not conservatives; they are destroyers, and the banner of conservatism they formerly flew has been exposed as a mere flag of convenience for them.

What has Owens, for example, built or preserved, apart from her own personal internet fiefdom? The sole focus of her work today seems to be to undermine and drain the surge of goodwill and momentum that fell to Turning Point USA after the heinous assassination of its founder Charlie Kirk, which Owens has lucratively exploited to weave in the antisemitic conspiracy theories that have made her a magnet for Jew-hating losers on the internet. Carlson, meanwhile, has also exploited the America First movement by demonizing Jews and Israel, going so far as to promote slimy white supremacist Nick “Hitler was cool” Fuentes (Carlson himself was recently named Antisemite of the Year by a Jewish civil rights group).

Lately he has shocked conservatives by completely dismissing Islam as a threat to the West: denying Hamas is a terrorist organization, defending sharia law, repeatedly defending Iran as no threat to America or American interests, and hyping wealthy Arab states as crime-free havens of modernization, morality, and sanity compared to Western decadence.

But his most recent, and arguably most outrageous, Islamophilic comments came in an interview published last Friday at The American Conservative, when he condemned what he claims is Right-wing hatred of Muslim Americans, declaring that “radical Islam” is not a problem for Americans. “I don’t know anyone in the United States in the last 24 years who’s been killed by radical Islam,” he stated:

I do know a lot of people who have killed themselves. I know people who’ve died of drug ODs, more than a few. I know people who can’t get jobs. None of the boys in my daughter’s class can get jobs, none of those white boys can get jobs. They’re being destroyed by Adderall and video games and porn. I see millions of Americans being destroyed, and none of it is at the hands of radical Islam. Is radical Islam more dangerous than OnlyFans? It’s not even close. Turning some huge percentage of American women into prostitutes. That’s not radical Islam doing that, actually.

This is such a poorly reasoned argument that one wonders how Carlson can ever be taken seriously as a political pundit. Two obvious flaws immediately come to mind. One is that Carlson is presenting a false choice: suggesting that because other societal ills exist, Islam can’t be a problem too. All of the issues Tucker lists are valid concerns – and so is Islam. How can anyone look at what has become of Europe, Australia, and Michigan thanks to mass Muslim immigration, and not accept that Islam is, as Charlie Kirk plainly put it, “incompatible with Western civilization”?

The other flaw is that Carlson says “radical Islam” is not a threat because it hasn’t killed any American he personally knows. That is his “lived reality” and that of everyone he has ever met, he says (“lived reality,” by the way, is a term which serves as a favorite tactic of the identity-politics Left to prioritize impressionistic, personal experience over empirical evidence and universal Truth).

This claim may or may not be true, because as we’ve seen with another Carlson psy-op, he has also denied knowing people like British activist Tommy Robinson, when there is abundant evidence that Carlson not only had spoken about Robinson publicly but even interviewed him.

In any case, it is shockingly willful blindness to pretend that because he doesn’t know the victims personally, the murders of Americans at the hands of jihadists either never happened or don’t matter because the victims weren’t part of his “lived reality.” To refresh his memory, here are merely a few notable examples:

The November 5, 2009 Fort Hood shooting by Nidal “Soldier of Allah” Hasan left 13 dead, including a pregnant woman (whose baby also died, making 14 victims); The December 2, 2025 massacre of 14 at a San Bernardino holiday party, carried out by “ISIS-inspired” husband-and-wife team Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik; The April 5, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing committed by Chechen brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Rolling Stone cover model Tamerlan Tsarnaev, which left 3 dead including an eight-year-old boy; The June 12, 2016 Pulse gay nightclub shooting in which ISIS enthusiast Omar Mateen slaughtered 49. Another ISIS devotee, Shamsud-din Jabar, plowed his vehicle through a Bourbon Street New Year’s crowd on January 1, 2025, killing 14.* Those are just a few of the attacks on American soil with the highest body count, and those numbers do not include the wounded, whose “lived reality” was forever marred. But Carlson didn’t know the victims personally, so the attacks never happened.

Note also that Carlson intentionally excluded from his time frame the obvious example of the 9/11 attacks, which murdered 3000 people, almost all Americans. He knew that if he factored that in, his argument would be immediately nullified, so in effect he was dismissing those murders as well.

And that doesn’t even begin to address Carlson’s willful ignorance of the jihad being waged beyond America’s borders: the devastating Islamization of Europe which is fast eclipsing its Christian identity, the genocide of Christians being waged by Islamic “rebels” in Nigeria, and terror attacks in Australia. If Carlson thinks none of this matters because it’s not impacting most Americans personally, he is either stunningly naïve for a political pundit, in willful denial, or knowingly pushing propaganda. My money is on the latter.

Elsewhere in the interview Carlson condemns the Right for attacking Muslims collectively. He is “disgusted” by people who “think that every Muslim is Usama bin Laden.” This is a shamefully inflammatory accusation. No serious American is claiming that every Muslim is another bin Laden. This is the same kind of false argument Leftists insist on making: when the Right says “Islam,” the Left twists it into “all Muslims.” This rhetorical judo is an intentionally disingenuous tactic that enables the Left to pervert legitimate concerns about Islamic dogma into simple bigotry.

Add these interview comments to his screechy AmFest 2025 speech in which Carlson yelled that he found it “disgusting” that “millions of Americans” were being attacked simply for being Muslim (fact check: this is not happening), and it is undeniable that he is purposefully whitewashing jihad and sharia law, and running interference for the Islamic imperative to bring all of dar al-Harb, the “House of War,” into the fold of dar al-Islam.

What has happened to Carlson, who almost overnight went from being the Great White Hope of conservative media to a massive disappointment? Many say he is being paid off by his Qatar masters – he claims in this most recent interview that he has “never taken a penny from a Muslim” – but Carlson has never been hurting for money; surely greed, or greed alone, cannot account for his newfound love affair with Islam. A friend suggested to me, only half-joking, that perhaps Carlson is being blackmailed. That actually might explain the unhinged intensity of his defense of Muslims he claims are not a problem for Americans. I have my own theory, but that’s for another time.

In any case, seemingly referencing Carlson’s controversial interview in a tweet that same day, Candace Owens, whose unhinged but lucrative, conspiracy-mongering obsessions include waging a bizarre campaign to expose the French President’s wife as a man, posted,

No matter how hard the GOP tries to make “radical Islam” happen, the base doesn’t care about it. We are way more concerned about Israel. You can deny reality and scream about Tucker, but the party can no longer be governed by those who refuse to acknowledge the Zionist elephant in the room.

Again, two things to note here. First, the Republican party is not trying to make the threat of Islam “happen”; Islamic supremacists the world over are doing a damn good job of making it happen all on their own, and have been for 1400 years. The Right is not hyping this threat out of proportion to reality; if anything, the Republican Party does not take it seriously enough to take effective action such as the basic first step of officially declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group.

Second, note how Owens claims that she represents the GOP “base.” She does not. What she does represent, and is empowering, is a growing segment of the Right which hates Jews more than it cares about the existential danger of Islam. They are “way more concerned about Israel” because Owens has done more than even Fuentes to fan the flames of the longstanding antisemitic trope that “the Jooz” run everything. Owens’ army believes, as all antisemites do, that jihadists only attack American interests because we support Israel and because Jewish influence runs Washington, D.C.; if that ended, they claim, Muslims would no longer have any incentive to attack us. There could not be a more willful historical ignorance.

Carlson’s and Owens’ total dismissal of Islam as an existential threat to America and the West is in complete contradiction to the prominence it has been given by solidly conservative influencers and activists like Allie Beth Stuckey and the recently assassinated Charlie Kirk. Stuckey posted on X a couple of months ago, “I asked my 840k Instagram followers (mostly Christian women) what their biggest concern is for the country right now, and by FAR the most common answer is the growing influence of Islam. I’d like to see this concern reflected in the GOP asap.” So would I.

Kirk famously noted in recent months that Islam is incompatible with the West, and that “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.” Now it’s the sword that the antisemitic, woke “Right” is using, too.

For better or worse (and it’s both), we live in a social media-driven political arena in which the subversive lies, conspiracy-mongering, and propaganda that Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens spew matters. Their combined following on X alone numbers nearly 25 million. Their podcast episodes rack up millions of views each. Everything they say or post becomes a flashpoint of political controversy. They cannot be ignored, and must not be; the No-Enemies-on-the-Right game plan that some conservatives argue is the only way to win is actually a losing strategy, as well as a morally reprehensible one. Carlson and Owens, and their mob of supporters, must be countered with full-throated condemnation from conservatives who care about the flourishing not only of America but of Western civilization at large – because those are the stakes.

• The mainstream media habit of describing jihadists as “ISIS-inspired” begs the question they refuse to address: What exactly inspires ISIS? Hint: it’s in the name “Islamic State.”

FPM

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Mamadani appoints pro-Palestinian activist as legal advisor in New York administration. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamadani announced the appointment of pro-Palestinian activist and attorney Ramzi Kassem to the position of Corporation Counsel – the highest legal position in the city government. Kassem has represented, among others, Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student who led pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus, as well as Ahmed al-Darbi, an al-Qaeda operative who admitted involvement in the attack on a French oil tanker in Yemen. Mamadani justified the choice citing Kassem's experience defending "those abandoned by the justice system." Daniel Edelson, New York|12.31.35 YNet

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December 30, 2025. A crazy Christian harasses some Muslims in Texas. CAIR blames the Jews. CAIR posted this video of a Christian wearing a crusader costume harassing some Muslims eating in a park in Austin, TX.

CAIR wrote: This hate is what Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, John Cornyn and other Israel First politicians have unleashed on Texas to distract the American people and silence critics of Israel, especially American Muslims. Israel was not mentioned in the video at all. No one said the Muslim group members were "critics of Israel" nor that the Crusader wannabe was a supporter of Israel. (The Crusaders didn't exactly like Jews who lived in the Holy Land.)

When CAIR sees a Christian harassing Muslims, the only way it can conceive of this is through Israel.

That is obsession. And, yes, when you interpret everything negative through the prism of the Jewish state, you are antisemitic. EoZ

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CNN Strikes again. Tense Clash on CNN as Commentators Spar Over Israel-Gaza War | WATCH. CNN's anti-Israel bias is nothing new. The same goes for people like Vigeland who refuse to admit the truth and sing the same old song about Israel the evil aggressor. We are sick of it.

Jfeed Staff. Dec 30, 2025 05:42

A fiery debate erupted on CNN's NewsNight with Abby Phillip on Monday evening, as conservative analyst Scott Jennings sharply confronted progressive commentator Emma Vigeland over her comparison of Israel's military actions in Gaza to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. JFeed

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US-led command center reveals IDF positions in Gaza during briefing with Arab states. Exclusive: In breach of protocol, American surveillance footage, meant to show humanitarian aid only, exposes Israeli forces on the ground during briefing with Arab officials; Israeli officers demand their removal, triggering sharp tensions with US personnel. Amir Ettinger | published: 12.30.25 05:18 YNet

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Major Scandal. Anger in Israel: US Displayed Sensitive Info at Kiryat Gat HQ. During a sensitive briefing at a U.S. military headquarters, representatives from Arab countries were exposed to live footage of IDF troops operating in Gaza. A senior Israeli officer demanded the immediate removal of the footage, which had been obtained outside the scope of authorized procedures.

Judah Pe'er. Dec 30, 2025 04:55

An unusual and troubling incident was revealed at a U.S. military headquarters in Kiryat Gat. During a routine morning briefing, live video of IDF combat units operating inside the Gaza Strip was displayed on screens in the room. In attendance, alongside American officers, were intelligence representatives from several Arab countries, including Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. JFeed

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'Your demands are legitimate': Iran scrambles to quell unrest amid economic meltdown.

After rare economic unrest in Tehran, President Pezeshkian urges dialogue with demonstrators amid currency collapse and business shutdowns; government vows to tackle inflation, while critics warn that lockdowns and repression won't ease public anger. Lior Ben Ari, AFP | published: 12.30.25 05:57 YNet

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US Ambassador: 'We stand with Iranian protesters'. US Ambassador to the UN publishes message of support for the Iranian people who are protesting against the Ayatollahs' regime on the streets of Tehran. Israel National News. Dec 30, 2025, 8:03 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Ben-Gvir leads large police offensive in Tarabin. The Minister of National Security joined an operation carried out by the police in a Bedouin village in the Negev. Israel National News. Published: Dec 30, 2025, 12:55 PM (GMT+2)

The Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, joined an operation carried out by the police as part of Operation New Order in the village of Tarabin in the Negev. The operation is a large-scale police effort to restore the rule of law in the region, particularly targeting Bedouin communities.

The operation was conducted following shooting incidents and vehicles being vandalized in the community of Givat Bar that occurred last Saturday.

This is the second time Minister Ben-Gvir has come to Tarabin in the past three days.

Upon his arrival the minister said, "We are fighting for our children. If the police are not in Tarabin the communities in the area will not be able to exist. This is not a war you finish in one day - and there are all kinds of background noises. We are taking a hard line against anyone who breaks the law, throws stones, burns vehicles and anyone who does not want us to be here. This is our home." INN

Israel Police operates in the Bedouin-Israeli town of Tirabin. December 30, 2025. Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich delivered a frightening warning at a meeting of his Religious Zionist party on Monday about Israel’s enemy within.

“After remarkable successes on external war fronts, the biggest threat today comes from within,” he declared. “The images and incidents from the Negev in recent days must trigger every alarm bell, reminding us of the tens—perhaps hundreds—of thousands of illegal weapons in the hands of criminal and terror groups in Arab society, including some of the most advanced and lethal explosives.”

Smotrich was referring to a large-scale police raid on Monday on the Bedouin-Israeli town of Tirabin al-Sana in the Negev after residents of the town vandalized property and set fire to cars in nearby Jewish yishuvim on Shabbos as a “revenge operation” for a police crackdown on crime in the town in recent months. Hundreds of police officers participated in the operation, which was aimed at addressing the lawlessness in Bedouin areas in the Negev, including the rampant theft of IDF weapons and equipment. YWN

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Concerning. Hamas is Planning a Giant New Multi-Front Assault on Israel After its 'Success' on October 7th. An Israeli NGO warns of an internal Hamas document revealing preparations for a massive, coordinated assault on Israel, potentially deadlier than October 7, raising alarms that the terror group is regrouping for a multi-front war from Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and Lebanon.

Jfeed Staff. Dec 30, 2025 05:11 JFeed

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More questions than answers. Israel Prepares New Gaza Scenarios After Trump-Netanyahu Summit Leaves Key Questions Unanswered. IDF maintains control over 54% of Gaza as security establishment weighs three potential paths forward, including first "terror-free city" in Rafah.

Jfeed Staff. Dec 30, 2025 04:10 JFeed

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US Treasury targets Iran-Venezuela weapons trade. The US sanctions Iran and Venezuela-linked entities for aiding Iran’s drone and missile programs, posing regional security threats. Israel National News. Dec 30, 2025, 7:13 PM (GMT+2) INN

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CENTCOM: 25 ISIS terrorists neutralized in Syria Israel National News Dec 31, 2025, 5:08 AM INN

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Netanyahu to Fox News. 'Hamas must disarm or disappear, Gaza peace depends on it'. In interview with Bret Baier, PM Netanyahu stresses disarming Hamas is key to Gaza peace, praises Trump’s support, warns Iran, and rejects claims his leadership prolongs war for political gain.

Israel National News Dec 31, 2025, 1:34 AM INN

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Gazan medical professionals were complicit in Hamas's crime | The Jerusalem Post.

How Gazan medical professionals were complicit in hostage captivity, sexual assault - opinion. If medical professionals can participate in terror without accountability, then the laws meant to protect humanity have been hollowed out from within.

By Zina Rakhamilova December 30, 2025 14:21

We have spent the better part of the last two years being inundated with propaganda and disinformation pushed by Hamas and amplified by its supporters around the world. But the greater crime lies not only in terrorists and those who cheer them.

It lies in the silence and inaction of human rights organizations and international health bodies that were created to prevent exactly these kinds of abuses. Their failure to respond meaningfully to Hamas’s crimes against Israelis and against the Palestinian people is a betrayal of the very principles they claim to uphold.

Romi Gonen's testimony. Last weekend, former Israeli hostage Romi Gonen spoke publicly for the first time about her time in Hamas captivity. Her testimony confirmed what many feared, but what made it especially disturbing was not only what happened to her but who inflicted part of that harm. Gonen revealed that during the 471 days she was held hostage, she was sexually assaulted four times, with the third assault being the most severe. Within the first four days of her captivity, before any Israeli response and before a single IDF soldier had entered Gaza, the first man to sexually assault her was a nurse, someone tasked with treating her bullet wound.

It has been a recurring pattern in Gaza for medical professionals, teachers, and journalists to use their positions as a cover for involvement in terror organizations. We know that hostages were held by Gazans working in ordinary professions in this way, but it is especially horrifying to learn that someone entrusted with her care used his position to abuse her. After the assault, Gonen was forced to continue living in the same house as the man who had violated her. JPost

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MDA deploys an ambulance every 22 seconds through 2025, with more than 1 million calls. According to their 2025 statistics report, MDA emergency vehicles were dispatched 1,383,026 times.

By Jerusalem Post Staff. December 30, 2025 23:39 Magen David Adom JPost

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American Jews mark Qatar as second greatest threat to Israel, after Iran - JPPI survey reveals The survey collected data from the JPPI’s "Voice of the Jewish People" panel, in which American Jews were surveyed on their views regarding political and religious topics.

By Jerusalem Post Staff December 31, 2025 00:35 American Jews consider Qatar the second most serious threat to the national security of Israel and the United States, according to a recent Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) survey.

The survey collected data from the JPPI’s "Voice of the Jewish People" panel, in which American Jews were surveyed on their views regarding political and religious topics. JPost

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Secret IDF Unit 504 interrogated 3,100 terrorists, IDF attacked 20,900 targets in 2025. The IDF additionally announced that it launched 20,900 attacks on targets across all fronts and killed around 2,100 Hamas terrorists this past year in newly unveiled 2025 military statistics.

By Yonah Jeremy Bob. December 31, 2025 06:02 The military’s intelligence Unit 504 (“the IDF’s Mossad”), responsible for covert and clandestine operations, interrogated 3,100 terrorists over the course of 2025, the IDF revealed on Wednesday.

Of the terrorists, 1,600 were interrogated in Israeli detention centers, and another 1,500 were interrogated in real-time in the field shortly after being captured.

In the field, interrogations are extremely difficult and complex as the interrogators are often not operating in a safe space, and the detainees are frequently physically or emotionally destabilized by a recent physical battle.

However, such field interrogations can be invaluable in leading to intelligence that can help thwart additional terror attacks in real-time and enable the capture of top terrorist commanders before they have time to change their hideouts, as well as the seizure of dangerous weapons before they can be transferred. During the Israel-Hamas War, it led to the locations of hostages, both living and deceased, before they could be moved.

Interrogations in detention centers can also lead to critical intelligence gains, though usually as part of longer-term projects and strategic goals.

Broader IDF statistics. Regarding wider issues, the IDF disclosed that the total number of attacks it undertook on all fronts during the year was 20,900.

Of those, 19,530 targets were in Gaza, with the remainder in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, and the West Bank.

In Gaza, the IDF killed four brigade-level commanders out of a total of five – among them, replacements for brigade commanders killed by the IDF in 2023-2024 – 14 battalion-level commanders, and 53 company-level commanders.

In fact, the only surviving Hamas brigade commander from the pre-Israel-Hamas War era is its current leader, Az al-din al-Hadad, the former Gaza City brigade commander.

The IDF refused requests to provide an updated total number of Hamas members killed in 2025. However, in August, it was reported that the number was around 2,100, and, given that there were few battles from then until the war ended in October, that number likely has only risen by a few hundred, at most.

In Lebanon in 2025, the IDF killed around 380 Hezbollah terrorists while attacking around 950 targets overall.

The IDF also said that Hezbollah violated the 2024 ceasefire 1,920 times, though it was unclear how many of these violations were blatant moves in southern Lebanon or more subtle moves north of the Litani River.

Next, the IDF said that it had killed 230 terrorists in the West Bank.

Moreover, it said it had arrested 7,400 Palestinians, though only 1,190 were said to be linked to Hamas – raising some questions about how seriously dangerous some of the detainees were.

There are other terror groups besides Hamas, but at the start of the war, close to 40-60% of those arrested were linked to Hamas.

The IDF did not report on how many of the arrestees were subsequently handed back to Hamas during the hostage exchanges, in which Israel released thousands of Palestinian security prisoners, nor on how many of those arrested would be held for lengthy periods.

Notably, the IDF said that it had confiscated NIS 16,480,000 from Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank.

IDF anti-Houthi operations. Summing up attacks against the Houthis of Yemen, the IDF said it had undertaken 20 aerial operations in 2025, striking 230 targets, although many of these targets were repeat strikes on the same location after Houthi efforts to repair targets that had been previously struck.

Ninety-one IDF soldiers were killed in 2025, and 821 were seriously wounded – a high number in an average year, but a significant drop from 2023-2024.

Moderately wounded IDF soldiers evacuated by land vehicles numbered 3,050; another 300 wounded were evacuated by helicopter.

The IDF Home Front Command supplied 1,500 new mini-safe-houses and renovated or improved around 200 larger bomb shelters.

The navy undertook 50 attacks, over a total of 130,000 hours spent at sea. JPost

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'When I got out, I knew I wanted a family': Ex-hostage Omer Wenkert on life after Gaza Abducted from the Nova music festival and held for 505 days, Omer Wenkert reunites with Adi Taub, his closest friend and now partner, as they share how trauma brought them together and why building a family is their next goal Dina Halutz|12.31.25 YNet

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Vigilance saves lives. Israeli Prison Service Thwarts Attempt to Smuggle Forbidden Messages via Lawyer Prison Service intercepts prohibited messages hidden in lawyer's belongings during prison visit. 34 attorneys faced legal action in 2025 for security violations.

Jfeed Staff. Dec 30, 2025 07:59 JFeed

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COGAT @cogatonline; Regarding MSF:

MSF chose not to cooperate with the registration process and refused to provide Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs with a list of its employees, as required by a government decision.

The organization’s attempts to attribute to itself a central impact on the medical response in the Gaza Strip are inconsistent with reality and are not supported by data. In practice, out of approximately 220 primary care clinics and medical points operating throughout the Gaza Strip, the organization operates only five. Out of 15 field hospitals established during the war, only two were operated by MSF, alongside 18 active government hospitals. The organization has fewer than 30 international staff operating in the Gaza Strip, with the bulk of its activity relying on local employees. In addition, from the start of the current ceasefire until today, the organization has brought in only 95 aid trucks, a negligible number compared to the tens of thousands of trucks that entered during the ceasefire.

These figures illustrate that the organization’s contribution to Gaza’s healthcare system does not justify the media campaign it is leading.

At the same time, Israel continues to work to strengthen the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip. Among other efforts, new field hospitals and additional clinics are being established in cooperation with the international community. This is alongside the continued operation of international medical organizations that have already been approved and are operating in the Gaza Strip on a significant scale, including the entry of medical equipment and medicines. Dec 30, 2025. on X

Israel says MSF failed to meet new Gaza aid rules. MSF voices concerns it may be barred from Gaza, Israel says it failed to comply with requirements. MSF did not cooperate with a government-required registration process and declined to provide Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs with a list of its employees, as mandated by a government decision.

By Reuters, Jerusalem Post Staff December 31, 2025. Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières expects to be barred from operating in Gaza once it misses Wednesday's deadline to comply with new registration rules for relief agencies that Israel says are meant to prevent Hamas from exploiting international aid JPost

Doctors Without Borders Misses Registration Deadline, Will Exit Gaza. Israeli authorities say the organization did not complete a mandatory registration process and refused to provide a list of its employees to the government, a step required under regulations. The rules are intended to prevent Hamas and other groups from exploiting international aid frameworks.

Judah Pe'er Dec 31, 2025 JFeed

What is MSF Hiding from Israel? Is Its Gaza Sector a genocidal Hamas-Linked UNRWA Model? January 02, 2026. What is MSF Hiding from Israel? Is Its Gaza Sector a Hamas-Linked UNRWA Model? Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, has been very controversial about its involvement in Gaza, especially in the context of its interactions with Israel. The organization, which often claims neutrality and humanitarian focus, has increasingly been accused of promoting anti-Israel narratives and downplaying or outright ignoring Hamas’s role in the Gaza conflict. This has led to growing concerns about MSF’s true intentions and the nature of its work in Gaza. So, what exactly is MSF hiding from Israel, and is its presence in Gaza mirroring the politically charged model of the Hamas-affiliated UNRWA?

MSF’s Lack of Transparency. Israel has raised significant concerns over MSF’s transparency, particularly its refusal to comply with basic registration requirements mandated by the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. The organization has declined to provide a list of its employees operating in Gaza, despite this being a standard procedure for organizations working in the region. This refusal to cooperate with Israeli authorities raises questions about the organization’s operations, especially in a politically volatile environment like Gaza.

While MSF claims to be a leading humanitarian actor in Gaza, the reality on the ground suggests otherwise. Out of 220 primary care clinics operating in the region, MSF operates just five. Additionally, of the 15 field hospitals established during the war, MSF ran only two. This stands in stark contrast to the 18 government-run hospitals operating in Gaza. Furthermore, MSF has only facilitated the entry of 95 aid trucks during the current ceasefire, a negligible number compared to the tens of thousands of trucks sent by other international organizations.

MSF and Hamas Propaganda: An Alarming Partnership? In recent months, MSF has found itself at the center of controversy, particularly due to its media appearances, including on platforms like PBS. In a critical article titled “Hamas Propaganda by Doctors Without Borders, Courtesy of PBS NewsHour” (Dec. 21, 2023), it was pointed out that PBS amplified Hamas propaganda by featuring MSF representatives without adequate scrutiny. The article claims that MSF has falsely presented itself as a neutral medical organization while consistently promoting anti-Israel narratives and minimizing or erasing Hamas’s role in the conflict.

The author of the article specifically targets two PBS segments:

Avril Benoit (Dec. 14, 2023): Benoit was accused of blaming Israel exclusively for the suffering in Gaza, dismissing evidence of Hamas’s military use of hospitals, and disregarding Israeli intelligence as unconvincing. Ghassan Abu Sittah (Dec. 18, 2023): Abu Sittah, a prominent MSF figure, was portrayed as an activist doctor who spread false claims about Israeli responsibility for the Al-Ahli hospital explosion and downplayed evidence of Hamas’s use of hospitals for military purposes. PBS presented these MSF figures as objective medical witnesses, while allegedly overlooking their political activism and the disputed nature of their claims. The article contends that substantial evidence shows Hamas has embedded military operations within hospitals, but MSF representatives continue to deny this in order to support accusations of Israeli war crimes. The piece concludes that PBS failed its journalistic responsibility by providing an uncritical platform to what the author characterizes as propaganda.

The Medicalization of Disinformation: MSF’s Shift in Neutrality. A deeper critique of MSF is offered in the analysis “The Medicalization of Hamas Disinformation: Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)” (Nov. 3, 2025). This article notes that MSF abandoned its longstanding neutrality after the October 7, 2023 massacre by Hamas, failing to condemn the attacks and instead framing them as a reaction to Israeli policies. It also claims that MSF, using the moral authority of medicine, helped spread unverified or false accusations of Israeli war crimes, particularly in relation to allegations that Israel deliberately targeted hospitals.

A central case is the explosion at the Al-Ahli Hospital on October 17, 2023. MSF physician Ghassan Abu Sittah participated in a Hamas Health Ministry press conference, where he provided “eyewitness” testimony blaming Israel for the explosion. However, intelligence from multiple countries, including Israel, the United States, France, Canada, and the UK, later indicated that the explosion was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket, not an Israeli airstrike.

Despite this, Abu Sittah and MSF continued to cite the incident as evidence of Israeli war crimes, refusing to retract their claims even after the truth came to light. MSF leaders like Avril Benoit and Christopher Lockyear also denied evidence of Hamas using hospitals for military purposes, despite credible documentation from multiple sources confirming this. The failure to retract or correct these false claims is troubling, especially given the significant role that medical organizations like MSF play in shaping international perceptions of the conflict.

MSF and Hamas: A Symbiotic Relationship? MSF’s role in Gaza seems increasingly intertwined with Hamas’s political agenda. The organization’s reliance on local staff, including individuals with potential ties to Hamas, raises concerns about its objectivity. Similar to the UNRWA, MSF’s operations in Gaza are deeply embedded within a political reality governed by Hamas. This proximity to Hamas’s power structure, combined with the organization’s refusal to acknowledge the group’s military use of hospitals, calls into question the integrity of MSF’s medical neutrality in the region.

In contrast, Israel continues to strengthen Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure through collaboration with other vetted international organizations that adhere to international standards. While MSF remains a key player in the region, its actions suggest that its role in Gaza is not purely humanitarian—rather, it appears to be part of a broader political narrative aimed at vilifying Israel and exonerating Hamas for its actions.

Conclusion: MSF’s Role in Distorting the Narrative. MSF’s recent actions and its media appearances have raised serious questions about its role in Gaza. By downplaying Hamas’s actions, amplifying disinformation about Israel, and refusing to acknowledge the evidence of Hamas’s military operations within medical facilities, MSF has compromised its once-vaunted status as a neutral humanitarian actor.

The organization’s activities in Gaza reflect a growing trend of political advocacy masquerading as medical neutrality. MSF’s unwillingness to cooperate with Israeli authorities, its refusal to retract false claims, and its role in amplifying Hamas propaganda have eroded its credibility. As a result, MSF is no longer viewed as a purely medical organization, but as an active participant in a political narrative that distorts the truth and undermines international understanding of the Gaza conflict.

Is MSF's work in Gaza truly humanitarian, or is it part of a broader strategy to promote Hamas’s agenda? The evidence suggests that the organization’s role in Gaza is far more politically motivated than it would have the world believe. Through its actions and media appearances, MSF has become a key player in a larger disinformation campaign that distorts the reality on the ground and influences global opinion against Israel.

Summary: “In Arabic and English, Different Messages About MSF Gunman, and the Hacker Defense” (Sept. 5, 2018) This article examines contradictory public accounts surrounding Hani Majdalawi, a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) worker killed at the Gaza border after Israeli forces said he threw a grenade at them. It focuses on how Majdalawi’s brother, Osama, presented sharply different narratives depending on language and audience.

In English-language media, particularly in a Los Angeles Times article, Osama described Hani as a peaceful, apolitical humanitarian who did not know how to use weapons and whose life centered on work and family. This portrayal framed the killing as suspicious and suggested Israeli authorities were concealing the truth.

By contrast, Arabic-language content attributed to Osama’s Facebook account described Hani as a “martyr” who had personally purchased a weapon and acted independently. This version aligned with posts from other family members and Palestinian social media and was reported by outlets such as Reuters.

After the discrepancy drew attention, the Majdalawi family issued a statement claiming their Facebook accounts had been hacked. They denied knowledge of any militant activity, said they relied only on Israeli accounts they distrusted, and demanded an independent investigation and the return of Hani’s body.

The article notes that the “hacker defense” is a commonly used explanation when controversial or damaging social media posts surface and questions its credibility in this case, highlighting the broader issue of inconsistent messaging across languages in coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Conclusion In conclusion, the actions and narratives presented by MSF in Gaza raise serious questions about the organization's impartiality and its role in advancing Hamas's propaganda. MSF's refusal to cooperate with Israeli authorities, its uncritical amplification of unverified anti-Israel claims, and its consistent downplaying of Hamas's use of hospitals for military purposes suggest that the organization's neutrality is not as steadfast as it claims. Israel, on the other hand, continues to support the humanitarian needs in Gaza through transparent, accountable efforts, working with organizations that adhere to international standards of neutrality and objectivity. MSF’s continued complicity in spreading falsehoods harms global understanding and undermines the credibility of humanitarian efforts in conflict zones.

NOTES: In Arabic and English: Different Messages About MSF, Gunman, and the Hacker Defense Published on September 5, 2018 by CAMERA Hamas Propaganda by Doctors Without Borders, Courtesy of PBS NewsHour Published on December 21, 2023 by CAMERA COGAT Official Statement on MSF Published on December 30, 2025 by COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and Gaza Published on December 25, 2025 by The Jerusalem Post BBC Again Fails to Provide Information Needed to Understand NGO’s Story Published on December 30, 2025 by CAMERA UK The Medicalization of Hamas Disinformation: Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Published on November 3, 2025 by CAMERA MSF politicized humanitarian Just sayin'

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Zohran Mamdani names two controversial lawyers to NYC’s top legal jobs — including 1 de Blasio admin alum. By Craig McCarthy, Hannah Fierick and David Propper. Published Dec. 30, 2025

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani named a pair of controversial lawyers to high-profile jobs in his administration Tuesday – including an ex-de Blasio aide who calls himself a “social justice attorney” and another who represented an al Qaeda terrorist.

The democratic socialist announced he would appoint crusading activist attorney Steven Banks — just the latest de Blasio administration retread– to head the city’s Law Department as corporation counsel and ex-Biden policy adviser Ramzi Kassem to serve as City Hall’s chief counsel.

While Mamdani lauded the two picks as personnel that understands the law and will “employ it as a critical tool in the fight for working people,” critics sounded the alarm over the pick’s track records.

Banks comes with a lengthy resume, but Big Apple insiders have raised concerns about him being too much of an activist.

Banks, who previously served as former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s homeless services director, notably battled the Eric Adams administration in court when Adams tried to roll back portions of the “right to shelter” rules to get a handle on the spiraling migrant crisis.

Zohran Mamdani and Kathy Hochul holding hands up in the air at a rally for "New York Is Not For Sale." Kathy Hochul’s suck-up to the left this year could push New York into even WORSE shape

Tax hike on NY workers will be needed to fund universal childcare program backed by Mamdani, Hochul: report An image collage containing 3 images, Image 1 shows New York City mayor elect Zohran Mamdani leaves his apartment building in Astoria, Queens Wednesday. , Image 2 shows Ahmed Tigani , Image 3 shows Julia Kerson will be one of Mamdani's deputy mayors. Zohran Mamdani reveals more de Blasio, Adams alums to join his administration

Banks was part of an effort earlier in his career as a member of the Legal Aid Society as it pushed to create and expand the city’s contentious shelter law that guarantees a bed to anyone without a home. He teamed up with the nonprofit again in a 2024 showdown with Adams.

Outgoing Queens Councilman Robert Holden, a moderate Democrat, predicted Banks’ tenure as corporation counsel “would be a disaster, but not a surprise.”

“He didn’t just have a hand in these policies, he helped design them.”

“The architects of the failed de Blasio era are back for more certain failures,” Holden added.

While serving as de Blasio’s Department of Social Services commissioner, he faced heat for financial scandals and awful conditions at a crucial not-for-profit homeless shelter that the agency worked with.

An audit from then-city Comptroller Scott Stringer found bloated costs and misspending while shelter residents were subjected to horrid conditions under Banks.

Banks, who labels himself a “public interest social justice attorney” on his LinkedIn page and has 40 years of legal experience, would need the majority of the City Council to approve his appointment.

The Law Department represents city agencies, the mayor and other elected officials in litigation. It also handles juvenile delinquency proceedings brought in Family Court and code enforcement proceedings brought in Criminal Court.

Banks joins a slew of other de Blasio alums making their return to city government.

Other notable appointments include incoming first deputy mayor Dean Fuleihan, Office of Budget Management director Sherif Soliman and Intergovernmental Affairs head Jahmila Edwards.

Meanwhile, Kassem, who was a senior policy advisor under former President Joe Biden, will serve as chief counsel, which is widely seen as the most important advisory role in the mayor’s office.

The City University of New York law professor’s appointment raised eyebrows because of some of his past clients.

Kassem was part of the legal team that defended Columbia University anti-Israel leader Mahmoud Khalil, a major player in the rowdy protest encampments last school year.

The team advocated for the rabblerouser when the Trump administration tried to deport him this year.

He also defended terrorist Ahmed al-Darbi, an al Qaeda member convicted in 2017 of the bombing of a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen in 2002.

The private swearing-in will be led by Attorney General Letitia James at midnight, while he will be publicly sworn in on the steps of City Hall at 1 p.m.

Kassem’s position doesn’t require approval from the City Council.

State Assemblyman Kalman Yeger, a Brooklyn Democrat, slammed Kassem’s appointment, claiming Mamdani is choosing to “telegraph to America Haters that they have a place in his City Hall.”

“In a city as great as New York, there are any number of brilliant legal minds willing and able to serve who have not previously defended terrorists as an Al Qaeda lawyer,” the former councilman said.

“The mayor-elect probably realized he couldn’t nominate him as Corporation Counsel, as that is subject to City Council confirmation, and even the City Council doesn’t hate America that much,” he added.

But Mamdani showered praise on both picks when he rolled out the latest appointments. “The rule-of-law is the bedrock of good governance, effective leadership, and a city that works for working people,” he said in a statement.

“With Steve Banks and Ramzi Kassem as my Corporations and Chief Counsel, our City will not only operate in accordance with the law, but will understand and employ it as a critical tool in the fight for working people and to protect their safety and fundamental freedoms.”

Also announced as an addition to the administration Tuesday was Elmhurst Hospital CEO Helen Arteaga, who will be Mamdani’s deputy mayor for health and human services.

Arteaga previously worked as an assistant vice president at Urban Health Plan Inc. for 15 years before joining Elmhurst in 2021.

Mamdani is set to be sworn in Jan. 1. NYPost

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"A Bullet in the Back". 60,000 Rifles: The Secret Intelligence Netanyahu Shared With Trump in Florida Following a warm two hour summit at Mar-a-Lago, Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it clear that any civilian reconstruction in Gaza is impossible while the terrorists of Hamas remain armed with tens of thousands of rifles.

Eliana Fleming. Dec 30, 2025 19:07 JFeed

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Texas man charged with trying to provide bomb materials to ISIS. By Christopher Hoffman, 3 News, December 30, 2025.

Federal prosecutors on Monday charged a 21-year-old Texas man with an international terrorism offense, accusing him of attempting to provide bomb-making materials and financial support to what he believed was the Islamic State, according to court documents and law enforcement officials.

The defendant, John Michael Garza Jr. of Midlothian, Texas, was charged with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. Prosecutors say Garza brought explosive components to a meeting on Dec. 22 and handed them to an individual he believed was an ISIS supporter. That person was, in fact, an undercover FBI agent.

Today’s announcement underscores the FBI’s commitment to combatting terrorism and demonstrates our continuous work to disrupt and thwart terrorist plots against the American public,” said FBI Director, Kash Patel. “Let this serve as a warning to those who plan to conduct attacks against the United States on behalf of terrorist organizations– you will be brought to justice.

According to the complaint, Garza explained how to assemble the materials into an explosive device and offered to send an instructional video detailing how to build a bomb. He was arrested shortly after leaving the meeting.

The case, announced by United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Ryan Raybould, was the result of a joint investigation involving the F.B.I. and the New York Police Department…. news3lv

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The Masks Are Off. Carlson and Owens have become leading Western apologists for (political) Islam. December 31, 2025, by Mark Tapson.

It was bad enough that ostensibly conservative political commentators Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens both have been the main drivers of a growing divide in the MAGA movement, through their obsession with demonizing Israel and the Jews. Now they have also become leading Western apologists for Islam.

Are they even conservative? Were they ever? (Owens in particular has never been committed to anything but her own grift, not a political philosophy.) Conservatives are defenders; we preserve. Our mission, in large part, is to defend and preserve the liberties our forefathers earned for us. It is to defend and preserve the grand civilizational legacy of the best that has been thought and said. Progressives destroy; they are revolutionaries at heart, whose mission is to destroy the flawed status quo and pave the way for their utopian vision of an ideal society. By this standard, Carlson and Owens are not conservatives; they are destroyers, and the banner of conservatism they formerly flew has been exposed as a mere flag of convenience for them.

What has Owens, for example, built or preserved, apart from her own personal internet fiefdom? The sole focus of her work today seems to be to undermine and drain the surge of goodwill and momentum that fell to Turning Point USA after the heinous assassination of its founder Charlie Kirk, which Owens has lucratively exploited to weave in the antisemitic conspiracy theories that have made her a magnet for Jew-hating losers on the internet. Carlson, meanwhile, has also exploited the America First movement by demonizing Jews and Israel, going so far as to promote slimy white supremacist Nick “Hitler was cool” Fuentes (Carlson himself was recently named Antisemite of the Year by a Jewish civil rights group).

Lately he has shocked conservatives by completely dismissing Islam as a threat to the West: denying Hamas is a terrorist organization, defending sharia law, repeatedly defending Iran as no threat to America or American interests, and hyping wealthy Arab states as crime-free havens of modernization, morality, and sanity compared to Western decadence.

But his most recent, and arguably most outrageous, Islamophilic comments came in an interview published last Friday at The American Conservative, when he condemned what he claims is Right-wing hatred of Muslim Americans, declaring that “radical Islam” is not a problem for Americans. “I don’t know anyone in the United States in the last 24 years who’s been killed by radical Islam,” he stated:

I do know a lot of people who have killed themselves. I know people who’ve died of drug ODs, more than a few. I know people who can’t get jobs. None of the boys in my daughter’s class can get jobs, none of those white boys can get jobs. They’re being destroyed by Adderall and video games and porn. I see millions of Americans being destroyed, and none of it is at the hands of radical Islam. Is radical Islam more dangerous than OnlyFans? It’s not even close. Turning some huge percentage of American women into prostitutes. That’s not radical Islam doing that, actually.

This is such a poorly reasoned argument that one wonders how Carlson can ever be taken seriously as a political pundit. Two obvious flaws immediately come to mind. One is that Carlson is presenting a false choice: suggesting that because other societal ills exist, Islam can’t be a problem too. All of the issues Tucker lists are valid concerns – and so is Islam. How can anyone look at what has become of Europe, Australia, and Michigan thanks to mass Muslim immigration, and not accept that Islam is, as Charlie Kirk plainly put it, “incompatible with Western civilization”?

The other flaw is that Carlson says “radical Islam” is not a threat because it hasn’t killed any American he personally knows. That is his “lived reality” and that of everyone he has ever met, he says (“lived reality,” by the way, is a term which serves as a favorite tactic of the identity-politics Left to prioritize impressionistic, personal experience over empirical evidence and universal Truth).

This claim may or may not be true, because as we’ve seen with another Carlson psy-op, he has also denied knowing people like British activist Tommy Robinson, when there is abundant evidence that Carlson not only had spoken about Robinson publicly but even interviewed him.

In any case, it is shockingly willful blindness to pretend that because he doesn’t know the victims personally, the murders of Americans at the hands of jihadists either never happened or don’t matter because the victims weren’t part of his “lived reality.” To refresh his memory, here are merely a few notable examples:

The November 5, 2009 Fort Hood shooting by Nidal “Soldier of Allah” Hasan left 13 dead, including a pregnant woman (whose baby also died, making 14 victims); The December 2, 2025 massacre of 14 at a San Bernardino holiday party, carried out by “ISIS-inspired” husband-and-wife team Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik; The April 5, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing committed by Chechen brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Rolling Stone cover model Tamerlan Tsarnaev, which left 3 dead including an eight-year-old boy; The June 12, 2016 Pulse gay nightclub shooting in which ISIS enthusiast Omar Mateen slaughtered 49. Another ISIS devotee, Shamsud-din Jabar, plowed his vehicle through a Bourbon Street New Year’s crowd on January 1, 2025, killing 14.* Those are just a few of the attacks on American soil with the highest body count, and those numbers do not include the wounded, whose “lived reality” was forever marred. But Carlson didn’t know the victims personally, so the attacks never happened.

Note also that Carlson intentionally excluded from his time frame the obvious example of the 9/11 attacks, which murdered 3000 people, almost all Americans. He knew that if he factored that in, his argument would be immediately nullified, so in effect he was dismissing those murders as well.

And that doesn’t even begin to address Carlson’s willful ignorance of the jihad being waged beyond America’s borders: the devastating Islamization of Europe which is fast eclipsing its Christian identity, the genocide of Christians being waged by Islamic “rebels” in Nigeria, and terror attacks in Australia. If Carlson thinks none of this matters because it’s not impacting most Americans personally, he is either stunningly naïve for a political pundit, in willful denial, or knowingly pushing propaganda. My money is on the latter.

Elsewhere in the interview Carlson condemns the Right for attacking Muslims collectively. He is “disgusted” by people who “think that every Muslim is Usama bin Laden.” This is a shamefully inflammatory accusation. No serious American is claiming that every Muslim is another bin Laden. This is the same kind of false argument Leftists insist on making: when the Right says “Islam,” the Left twists it into “all Muslims.” This rhetorical judo is an intentionally disingenuous tactic that enables the Left to pervert legitimate concerns about Islamic dogma into simple bigotry.

Add these interview comments to his screechy AmFest 2025 speech in which Carlson yelled that he found it “disgusting” that “millions of Americans” were being attacked simply for being Muslim (fact check: this is not happening), and it is undeniable that he is purposefully whitewashing jihad and sharia law, and running interference for the Islamic imperative to bring all of dar al-Harb, the “House of War,” into the fold of dar al-Islam.

What has happened to Carlson, who almost overnight went from being the Great White Hope of conservative media to a massive disappointment? Many say he is being paid off by his Qatar masters – he claims in this most recent interview that he has “never taken a penny from a Muslim” – but Carlson has never been hurting for money; surely greed, or greed alone, cannot account for his newfound love affair with Islam. A friend suggested to me, only half-joking, that perhaps Carlson is being blackmailed. That actually might explain the unhinged intensity of his defense of Muslims he claims are not a problem for Americans. I have my own theory, but that’s for another time.

In any case, seemingly referencing Carlson’s controversial interview in a tweet that same day, Candace Owens, whose unhinged but lucrative, conspiracy-mongering obsessions include waging a bizarre campaign to expose the French President’s wife as a man, posted,

No matter how hard the GOP tries to make “radical Islam” happen, the base doesn’t care about it. We are way more concerned about Israel. You can deny reality and scream about Tucker, but the party can no longer be governed by those who refuse to acknowledge the Zionist elephant in the room.

Again, two things to note here. First, the Republican party is not trying to make the threat of Islam “happen”; Islamic supremacists the world over are doing a damn good job of making it happen all on their own, and have been for 1400 years. The Right is not hyping this threat out of proportion to reality; if anything, the Republican Party does not take it seriously enough to take effective action such as the basic first step of officially declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group.

Second, note how Owens claims that she represents the GOP “base.” She does not. What she does represent, and is empowering, is a growing segment of the Right which hates Jews more than it cares about the existential danger of Islam. They are “way more concerned about Israel” because Owens has done more than even Fuentes to fan the flames of the longstanding antisemitic trope that “the Jooz” run everything. Owens’ army believes, as all antisemites do, that jihadists only attack American interests because we support Israel and because Jewish influence runs Washington, D.C.; if that ended, they claim, Muslims would no longer have any incentive to attack us. There could not be a more willful historical ignorance.

Carlson’s and Owens’ total dismissal of Islam as an existential threat to America and the West is in complete contradiction to the prominence it has been given by solidly conservative influencers and activists like Allie Beth Stuckey and the recently assassinated Charlie Kirk. Stuckey posted on X a couple of months ago, “I asked my 840k Instagram followers (mostly Christian women) what their biggest concern is for the country right now, and by FAR the most common answer is the growing influence of Islam. I’d like to see this concern reflected in the GOP asap.” So would I.

Kirk famously noted in recent months that Islam is incompatible with the West, and that “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.” Now it’s the sword that the antisemitic, woke “Right” is using, too.

For better or worse (and it’s both), we live in a social media-driven political arena in which the subversive lies, conspiracy-mongering, and propaganda that Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens spew matters. Their combined following on X alone numbers nearly 25 million. Their podcast episodes rack up millions of views each. Everything they say or post becomes a flashpoint of political controversy. They cannot be ignored, and must not be; the No-Enemies-on-the-Right game plan that some conservatives argue is the only way to win is actually a losing strategy, as well as a morally reprehensible one. Carlson and Owens, and their mob of supporters, must be countered with full-throated condemnation from conservatives who care about the flourishing not only of America but of Western civilization at large – because those are the stakes.

• The mainstream media habit of describing jihadists as “ISIS-inspired” begs the question they refuse to address: What exactly inspires ISIS? Hint: it’s in the name “Islamic State.”

FPM

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Mamdani must denounce the worrying anti-Israel sentiment among some Muslim New Yorkers. By Post Editorial Board. Published Dec. 31, 2025.

Much of the coverage of Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration will focus on how it heralds the rise of far-left socialists who aim to tax us until we cry.

But as he becomes the first mayor to take the oath of office on a Quran, Mamdani also represents the power of another voting bloc: Muslims.

With little fanfare, the number of Muslims in New York City has risen to nearly 1 million, representing 9% of the population. Twenty-two percent of all Muslims in America live in Gotham.

By some counts, they now equal the number of Jewish residents.

The shift has been happening for some time.

In 2016, the city recognized Eid al-Fitr (the end of Ramadan) and Eid al-Adha (the Feast of Sacrifice) as school holidays, and increased the number of halal options for students. During political campaigns, candidates now visit mosques as often as churches and synagogues.

Of course, as with any group, Muslims represent many interests and don’t vote in unison. Some have been here for generations. Others are new immigrants.

Many bodega owners are Muslim, and they were a strong voice when soft-on-crime laws led to an increase in shoplifting and violence. Yet there are also politicians like Mamdani that have called to defund the police.

One worrying trend, however, is a strong streak of anti-Israel sentiment among Muslim voters, which sometimes bleeds into violent calls against Jews, such as chants of “globalizing the intifada.” Mamdani already has been mealy-mouthed in denouncing the phrase, and had at least one member of his transition team resign after their antisemitic posts surfaced. NYPost

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Lawsuit against Arab security guard for attacking Jew. A civil lawsuit of 100,000 shekels has been filed against an Arab security guard who admitted to attacking a Jewish man at a police station in Kfar Saba. Israel National News. Published: Dec 31, 2025, 6:51 PM (GMT+2)

The Honenu organization filed a civil lawsuit today (Wednesday) for 100,000 NIS against an Arab security guard involved in the attack on a Jewish youth at the police station in Kfar Saba.

The attack occurred three years ago when the plaintiff arrived at the station and requested to undergo a search but faced discriminatory treatment by the security guard. The security guard, who is said to have acted out of nationalistic motives, headbutted the young man, causing a broken tooth and bleeding.

The incident began when the plaintiff approached the security guard after he was asked not to carry pepper spray in the station. The security guard responded, "It’s forbidden to bring it in." In response, the plaintiff asked, "Why are you doing this to me? Because I’m Jewish?" The security guard replied, "Yes." The security guard then attacked the plaintiff by headbutting him, causing injuries.

Attorney Chaim Bleicher from the Honenu organization, representing the plaintiff, claims that this was an impulsive act driven by racist motives. The lawsuit, which was filed after the security guard admitted to the attack under a conditional plea agreement, seeks to impose significant compensation on the security guard in order to deter antisemitic offenders.

Bleicher added: "This attack is not just a physical act of violence - it is an act of racist violence that requires severe treatment. This is a warning sign against antisemitic offenders acting out of nationalist motives." INN

Security guard punches citizen in the face "because he is Jewish". The incident occurred about two and a half years ago at the entrance to the Kfar Saba police station • The plaintiff was asked to hand over pepper spray he had, and after raising questions about the demand - the security guard attacked him • His lawyer claims that he also suffered psychological damage, due to a false arrest that was carried out after the attack. Avi Cohen. 12/31/2025, 16:00, updated 12/31/2025, 16:05 ILH

@honenu1: [Translated from Hebrew]. Watch the documentary: An Arab security guard at a police station punched a Jew in the face – and was sued for 100,000 shekels

Three years ago, an Arab security guard attacked a Jew who came to the police station in Kfar Saba. Following a demand from the Honenu organization, the Arab security guard was arrested, confessed to the attack as part of a conditional plea agreement, and was required to pay compensation to the plaintiff.

We are now filing a civil lawsuit against him for 100,000 ₪

Attorney Haim Bleicher: "State authorities are expected to ensure that they do not employ anti-Semitic lawbreakers" Rate this translation: Dec 31, 2025 on X

(A citizen claims he was attacked by a police station security guard because he is Jewish. A citizen who was required to report to the police station in Kfar Saba was attacked by a security guard at the entrance to the station, hitting him in the head. The documentation of the incident shows that when the security guard was asked if it was because of the citizen's Jewishness, the security guard answered in the affirmative. By Shilo Freid 19th of Adar 5773 (12/03/2023 19:10).

A citizen who was required to report to the police station in Kfar Saba was attacked by a security guard at the entrance to the station, hitting him in the head. The citizen wants to question the security guard and even claims that this was a nationalistic incident.

Attorney Haim Bleicher of the Honenu organization has asked the police to fire an Arab security guard who works at the Kfar Saba police station after he attacked a Jew who was required to report to the station, hitting him in the head and breaking his tooth, about a week ago.

In his letter, Attorney Bleicher describes the incident: "On March 3, 2023, my client was severely and severely attacked at the entrance to your station. My client, an 18-year-old male who must report to your station twice a week for a signature. My client arrived at the station, and a minority security guard was standing at the entrance. The security guard demanded that my client undergo a physical search, unlike other people who he allowed to enter without a search. My client asked the security guard why he was conducting a search on him? He replied, "Because I wanted to."

"My client later asked if it was because he was Jewish, and to his surprise the security guard answered, "Yes." My client has a photograph that clearly and completely documented the racist statement. After the security guard finished the search and my client went inside, the security guard called him back to him. My client returned toward the security guard, at which point the latter approached and attacked my client with a strong headbutt straight into his face. My client felt intense pain from the blow, blood began to flow from his nose, and one of his teeth was broken," Bleicher described.

Bleicher describes in his letter how the police conducted themselves after the attack on the Jew: "My stunned client turned to the police officer who had arrived at the scene and demanded that he take action to arrest the attacker. In a most puzzling manner, the police officer chose to push my client away, pushing him and informing him that he was being detained. My client expressed his protest at the injustice of the matter, and then the police officer informed him that he was under arrest, and took him to the detention cell at the station. Fifteen minutes later, the station commander arrived at my client's place, who told him the facts in detail. The commander informed my client that he would conduct an examination of the cameras and check his version. After a few minutes, the officer returned and informed my client that indeed, from viewing the cameras, it appeared that he had been attacked by the security guard. My client was released and directed to file a complaint on the spot. My client learned that the attacker had been released at the police station with only a minor condition of no contact."

In his letter, Bleicher demands that the police take action to arrest the Arab attacker and prosecute him for serious assault with a racial motive: "This is an extremely serious incident of an assault that causes serious injury, which has a racist connotation. Its seriousness increases sevenfold when it involves a security guard at a police station, who believes in the law, and in an act of abuse of authority. I will request that the cameras recording the incident, which, as mentioned, exist, be retrieved, so that they can be used as evidence to convict the attacker. I will request that the suspect be arrested and an indictment be filed against him for an assault that causes serious injury with a racial motive. All of this in parallel with the necessary step of initiating a dismissal procedure against the attacking security guard and terminating his employment immediately." Makor Rishon).

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Terror death toll falls in Judea and Samaria amid IDF crackdown. Israel National News. Dec 31, 2025, 9:55 PM INN

New Orders from Israel Katz. Terror Down by 80%: The Military Strategy Transforming Judea and Samaria Defense Minister Israel Katz has issued a directive to military commanders to prepare for potential mass casualty invasions in Judea and Samaria while announcing a massive 80% drop in regional terror.

Eliana Fleming. Dec 31, 2025 14:14 JFeed

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After two years: Hostages Families Forum concludes operations. Israel National News. Dec 31, 2025, 7:34 PM INN

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Netanyahu tells Evangelicals: This is a shared Judeo-Christian struggle. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with evangelical leaders in Florida, praising Christian Zionist support for Israel and warning of a broader battle for Judeo-Christian values and Western civilization. Israel National News. Dec 31, 2025, 8:25 PM (GMT+2) INN

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'Israel has come out stronger than ever before'. Speaking at the Chabad synagogue of Bal Harbour in Florida, PM Netanyahu says Israel is “stronger than ever,” urges Jews to “fight back” against antisemitism, and vows to return the last hostage from Gaza. Israel National News . Jan 1, 2026, 2:09 AM INN

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Eyeing Abraham Accords? Report: Somaliland President plans Israel visit Elad Benari. Jan 1, 2026, 4:08 AM INN

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Israeli Ambassador meets hero who tackled Bondi terrorist. Israel’s Ambassador meets Ahmed al Ahmed, the man who tackled one of the Bondi terrorists during the antisemitic attack that killed 15. Israel National News. Jan 1, 2026, 4:52 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Reports of IRCG Firing on Civilians as Iran Protests Reach Fourth Day | WATCH. Protests across Iran entered a fourth day on Wednesday as new footage appeared to show regime security forces firing on demonstrators in the southern city of Fasa, underscoring an intensifying crackdown as unrest spreads nationwide.

Judah Pe'er. Dec 31, 2025 06:32 JFeed

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Iran protests: IRGC fighter dead as protesters torch IRGC HQ in Hamedan. Protesters in Hamedan set an IRGC headquarters on fire as anti‑regime unrest intensifies amid economic collapse. One Basij member killed and several injured. Israel National News. Dec 31, 2025, 11:44 PM (GMT+2) INN

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After October 7: One woman’s mission to help Israel’s orphans heal. Founder Marlene Kolangi describes how Israel Orphans of 10/7 provides financial aid, play therapy and support to children shattered by October 7. Yoni Kempinski. Published: Dec 31, 2025, 9:10 PM (GMT+2) Updated: 1/1/2026, 5:23:46 AM INN

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From elimination of Mohammed Sinwar to senior Iranian officials: The IDF summarizes 2025. IDF summarizes 2025: Around 21,000 strikes and the elimination of senior leaders from Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime. Israel National News. Published: Dec 31, 2025, 6:17 AM (GMT+2) INN

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NYC’s Parting Gift to the Jewish Community One Final Act: Mayor Adams Drops Historic Antisemitism Report on Last Day. On his final day as mayor, Eric Adams released a groundbreaking report documenting the first municipal office in the United States dedicated entirely to fighting the rise of antisemitic hate.

Eliana Fleming. Dec 31, 2025 14:29

New York City Mayor Eric Adams concluded his term in office on Tuesday with a landmark release: the first annual report from the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism. Created in May 2025 as a direct response to the surge of hate following the October 7, 2023, attacks by the terrorists of Hamas, this office is the first of its kind in a major American city. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the policy framework and enforcement tools developed to protect the largest Jewish community outside of Israel during a year that saw antisemitic incidents account for the majority of hate crimes in the city. JFeed

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When Israel is charged with secretly doing what the Protocols say Jews do, it sure sounds antisemitic. December 31, 2025. Nashaat Eldehy is a fairly well known Egyptian media personality and commentator. He recently said on Egyptian TV that he was not antisemitic, but his criticisms of Israel are based on facts and disciplined analysis, far removed from whims and emotions.

And what does he think about Israel?

He says Israel possesses maps and works systematically to create crises within a number of countries in preparation for dismantling and dividing them. It deals with countries as if it is "reshaping" them to prevent any movement or stability, and Israeli interventions extend to a number of regions and countries, trying to secretly control Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and others.

That's funny, because that is exactly what the Protocols of the Elders of Zion say about a secret Jewish cabal, trying to control the nations of the world.

But he's not an antisemite! He gets his opinions based on facts, like, um, the Protocols! EoZ

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“Supreme Court Has Declared War On Chareidim & Torah Institutions:” Freezes Transfer Of NIS Billion. December 31, 2025. The petition filed by the Yesh Atid party on Tuesday against the transfer of approximately one billion shekels to Chareidi educational institutions was accepted by the Supreme Court, and Justice Yael Wilner announced an interim order freezing the transfer of the funds on Wednesday evening

Chairman of Degel HaTorah MK Moshe Gafni responded to the decision: “The Court has declared war on the Chareidi public and on Torah institutions. The Court requested a response within a few hours—something not customary even in court—and budgets that passed legally, according to accepted procedure and required approvals, were struck down with a stroke of the sword within half a day.”

“The judges’ convictions to harm the livelihood of teaching staff and the damage to the entire system will not be forgiven, nor will the wicked petitioners be forgiven. It turns out there is no democracy in the State of Israel, and the judges make decisions according to their own view and worldview, with no connection to the matters themselves or to the professional decisions made by the government and the Knesset. We will do everything to restore the situation to how it was.”

The Shas party responded to the High Court’s decision: “Antisemitic harassment. The Supreme Court is running wild like a reckless driver on a busy road, brutally and unprecedentedly trampling the Chareidi public—from stealing the daily bread of young children to harming Torah study and the education of tens of thousands of students.

“There are no judges in Jerusalem—only a dangerous group of pyromaniacs who, in their desperate struggle to save their crumbling rule, chose to take the Chareidi public hostage. We call on Jews around the world to raise a cry against this antisemitic harassment. The Chareidi public will stand firm like a fortified wall against these malicious decisions.”

MK Meir Porush responded: “Now it is absolutely clear—the judicial system is not concerned with security needs; it is at war against everything sacred. Lapid and the Supreme Court are trying to fight the holy education of Jewish children. No legal process will prevent us from passing on the mesoras Yisrael from generation to generation. Yesterday in the Selichos of Asara B’Teves[th], we said: ‘וַעֲדַת עָרִיצִים בִּקְשׁוּ נַפְשֵׁנוּ וְלֹא שָׂמוּךָ לְנֶגְדָּם.” [Psalm 86:14].

Likud MK Chanoch Milwidsky responded: “It is not surprising that a protégé of Justice Amit is freezing funds that were lawfully transferred to Chareidi institutions. The Court is grabbing more and more powers for itself. Unfortunately, for now, it is playing on an empty field. This will not stop until we decide to rise up against this judicial tyranny. We are already very late.”

Yair Lapid tweeted this evening on his X account: “I am pleased to report encouraging news from the Supreme Court—following the petition I filed on Tuesday together with MKs Vladimir Beliak, Naor Shiri, and Moshe Kinley Tor-Paz, it was decided to issue an interim order freezing the transfer of over 1,090,000,000 shekels that were transferred illegally to Chareidi institutions. We will continue to fight for the working and serving public.” YWN

"Haaretz, a so-called 'news' outlet that consistently peddles fake narratives, once again exposes its blatant hypocrisy. First, it publishes smear after smear against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), spreading lies and distorting the truth about the courageous men and women who protect their country against genocidal regimes/groups. Then, in a stunning display of double standards, it turns around and criticizes the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) community for not serving in the IDF, ignoring the deeply held religious and cultural beliefs that shape their choices.

The conclusion here is undeniable: Haaretz isn't driven by a commitment to truth or fairness; its agenda is steeped in anti-Jewish bigotry. It attacks the very heart of Israeli society, seeking to divide and weaken the Jewish community, all while pretending to advocate for unity. Their reporting isn't about facts—it's about furthering an ideological agenda that undermines the Jewish state and distorts its realities." [1.1.26] at EoZ

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New Gaza neighborhoods, stabilization force planned under US-led CMCC - exclusive A US-led coordination center is working with Israel and international partners on Gaza rebuilding plans, including new housing in Rafah and preparations for a stabilization force.

By Yonah Jeremy Bob. December 31, 2025 19:32 Updated: DECEMBER 31, 2025 22:50 JPost

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Despicable Pro-Palestinians. Pro-Palestinian Protesters Harass Family of Slain Israeli Officer Ran Gvili in Miami | WATCH. Pro-Palestinians really have zero shame when it comes to Jews. These are the same people who would have laughed at Jews being slain in the Holocaust, a despicable, brainless bunch of entitled idiots. Gila Isaacson Jan 1, 2026 04:04 JFeed

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Thanks to Sadiq Khan. Controversy Erupts Over Removal of Star of David from Israeli Flag in London's New Year's Eve Fireworks. The Star of David was missing from the Israeli flag in London's New Year's Eve fireworks display at London Eye. Former Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy demands Mayor Khan explain the omission.

Gila Isaacson Jan 1, 2026 05:05 JFeed

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IDF: Half of Hamas Tunnels Past Yellow Line Still Functional. Israeli security officials assess that only around 50% of the terror tunnels built by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the area between the Gaza border fence and the Yellow Line have been located and destroyed so far, raising concerns about the scale of the remaining threat.

Judah Pe'er. Jan 1, 2026 06:33 JFeed

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Arms smuggling route to Bedouin communities exposed. In a wide-ranging affair that came to be known as the Southern Route, a network of arms dealers was exposed that supplied weapons to the southern communities of Rahat and Segev Shalom. Israel National News. Published: Jan 1, 2026, 10:12 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Netanyahus attends Trumps' New Year's Eve gala. Israel National News. Jan 1, 2026, 6:44 PM INN

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'Turkey won't be part of intl. force in Gaza'. The minister and cabinet member states: Turkey and Qatar will not be part of the peace force that will deal with the future of Gaza. Shimon Cohen. Jan 1, 2026, 7:19 PM INN

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Smuggling ring busted. Smugglers tapped IDF comms, smuggled machine guns from Egypt. Israel National News. Jan 1, 2026, 3:29 PM INN

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80 years have passed since the Nuremberg Trials, it's time to talk about the Nukhba Trials. The Jewish jurist who coined the term genocide would have been horrified to discover how anti-Semites had adopted this attitude towards us | "They will try to kill us Jews again, don't let them forget" Ori Egoz. 01/01/26 14:03. 12 Tevet 5786. 80 years have passed since the Nuremberg Trials, it's time to talk about the Nahbub Trials Attorney Uri Egoz | , Photo: Private

Last night, New York Mayor Mamadani celebrated the Christian New Year by swearing allegiance to the Quran. The man who declared standing next to Trump in the Oval Office that Israel is committing genocide was sworn in yesterday with his best supporters by his side. They all have a huge influence on American discourse, especially on the younger generation. The main mistake that some of us make is to completely disregard this thing called world opinion. It's anti-Semitism, we say, so who cares. But what? It may be true that it is anti-Semitism, but anti-Semitism tends to manifest itself in actions. Pogroms, the Holocaust, 10/7. Anti-Semitism is the basis. Disdain is not a method of action.

Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish jurist who coined the term genocide, would have been horrified to discover how his term was cynically twisted and turned into Israel, which had suffered an attempted genocide on October 7, becoming accused of it itself. 80 years ago, between 1945 and 1946, the Nuremberg Trials took place to put senior Nazis on trial. Lemkin fought there to define the crime of genocide as a crime against humanity. Our story this time is his story.

([9] Nukhba terrorists in prison).

"I fight for the souls of the dead," I told Jackson. "Forty-nine of my family members were killed by the Nazis. They tortured us, murdered us, wanted to exterminate us. It was genocide and that should be the central argument at Nuremberg."

Instead of the vodka I wanted, I took another sip of my tea and tried to guess what Jackson was thinking as he paced the office. I looked at the former United States Attorney General, now Supreme Court Justice Truman himself had appointed to be the lead prosecutor in the Nazi trial. I knew Jackson thought the main argument should be the start of the war that Germany had led. That's where everything came from. Crimes against peace was what they called it in legal jargon, and it was an important argument, but in my opinion not the most important. How do I convince him now to change his main line of argument?

"Do you really think these people, as horrible as they are, can be prosecuted for a crime like genocide that hasn't even been written into the law yet?!" Jackson asked. "That's impossible in criminal law!" I smiled. "By that logic, the first murderer couldn't be prosecuted because at the beginning, the law against murder didn't even exist yet!"

A special international tribunal was established by the four superpowers - the USA, the USSR, Britain and France - to try the senior Nazis, headed by Hermann Goering, Hitler's right-hand man. Jackson was chosen to be the main prosecutor, and it was a great honor. The eyes of the whole world were on him, but on the other hand, Jackson and the others had to do everything properly under this magnifying glass. The question of what the point of such a trial was was always hanging over the place. Everyone would have wanted to kill the captured Nazis. Me too. Stalin himself suggested gathering the entire Nazi leadership, 50,000 people he estimated, and simply standing them against the wall and shooting them. Not a bad idea, I thought to myself on nights when I was suffocated by longing for Mom, Dad and everyone. Not a bad idea at all. But in the end, the decision was made to establish a court in Nuremberg, precisely where Hitler held his grand parades of power and began legislation against Jews, and to try the captured Nazi leaders. Now everyone was racking their brains over exactly how to do it and what crimes to put them on trial for.

That's why Jackson called me. I had been researching the issue of genocide since I was a state prosecutor in the Warsaw prosecutor's office. The first Jew. So in 1933, I presented my theory in Madrid following the murder of the Armenians in Turkey and the Assyrians in Iraq, and I explained that the persecution of a race, the erasure of its cultural heritage, the trampling of its rights, and finally its murder - this is called genocide. Something different from any ordinary criminal offense. I had a feeling that in the end it would also reach us Jews, and it would reach with indescribable force. When the war broke out, I saw it happening and years later I coined the term genocide. Genos is a tribe, a people in Greek, and sed means murder in Latin. Total destruction. But it was all in theory.

There was no such law yet, as Jackson said. "I understand, of course, the problem with prosecuting a crime that has never been enacted before." I told him, but... "But what?" Jackson asked sharply. ..."But there are behaviors that the human heart and morality cannot tolerate even if the law has not yet been enacted." Jackson waved his hand in awe. "No, not for me. In criminal law, you cannot judge a crime that does not exist. I will not take the risk that they will claim against us that we created a show trial! They will prosecute them for specific war crimes and for committing a crime against peace by actually starting the war! Germany, which started an aggressive war, dragged the entire world to the death of 70 million people!"

"You're wrong," I blurted out too quickly. "Wrong, big mistake."

Silence reigned.

"Any war can be said to be aggressive," I looked at Jackson. "And if you go down that line, they'll say that the United States itself is responsible for starting an aggressive war against Germany. After all, Germany never attacked it directly. You'll shoot yourself in the foot with that argument." I could see from his look that I had hit the right spot. Excellent. I continued: "This is our only chance to tell the world what really happened there. That's our job. The most important job."

Jackson put down the glass and then went to the safe. He opened it and took out a metal box with reels of film inside. I looked at the labels: Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Majdanek. "Are you going to show this in court?" I asked. "I've barely slept since I saw some of them," he replied. "And I still haven't been able to see everything."

The conscience of humanity is like a dying man. Humanity remembers its true sins only at the last moment, when it is no longer possible to correct them. "Allege genocide in court," I said, "and later we will make sure to enact the crime of genocide in a treaty in order to demand responsibility from anyone who dares to do it again."

A few years later, when this treaty was actually about to be signed at the UN, my Jewish brothers, the members of the World Jewish Congress in the American Committee, came out against me, and tried to torpedo the treaty with their own law. Instead of joining forces, they fought with me over who would get credit for the idea. I didn't believe that after everything we had been through, the quarrels of the Jews would make us forget where the real danger lay.

"Do you really think that there will be such events in the future?" Jackson asked after long minutes of silence. And I closed my eyes. The souls of my dead stood beside me and Mother placed her hand on my shoulder reassuringly. "The Jews will try to kill us again," she said. "Don't let them forget."

The Convention on the Prevention of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 after a stubborn struggle led by attorney Dr. Lemkin. At the Nuremberg Trials, its definition of genocide formed the legal basis for the prosecution of senior Nazi officials for crimes against humanity.

The author is a Lt. Col. (res.), a former judge in terrorist offenses, and a writer for theater and screen. Kipa

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'I'll carry this my entire life. You can't heal': Ex-hostage Romi Gonen discusses her trauma. Former Gaza hostage Romi Gonen delivers a raw account of isolation, sexual abuse, and survival in Hamas captivity, telling Channel 12’s Uvda that no one will silence her story anymore.

By James Genn. January 2, 2026 01:32

Former Gaza hostage Romi Gonen recounted her recovery process since her release from Hamas's terror captivity in the Gaza Strip, in the second part of an interview with Channel 12's "Uvda" broadcast on Thursday evening.

"It was very important for us to hear that nothing happened. Wow, it's...it's hard to say. On the one hand, I feel relieved to hear that no one has reached the situation I was in, but...it's just not fair," she said, holding back tears.

"It's...I'll carry this my entire life, because when I arrived on the 34th day [after the October 7 massacre], I went down to the tunnel alone, and I was there for 24 hours alone in silence. That crushes you," Gonen continued, as tears began to fill her eyes.

"I had to be alone with it, and it's not easy, I kept telling myself, 'You're strong, you're strong,' No! I'm not strong, and no, you can't heal from such a thing, you can't," she says, beginning to cry and struggling to speak through the emotions.

"How do you cope? How can we go through captivity when, after less than a month, three different guys [sexually] assaulted me? How can we move on? How can you continue to be with them without fear of it happening again? It's just not fair!" she affirmed, trying to work through the tears.

([10]. Former hostage Romi Gonen speaks to Channel 12's Uvda about her experiences in Hamas's terror captivity, December 25, 2025).

"Only when the other girls arrived, and we started talking and sharing experiences, did I suddenly understand that I was in by far the worst situation of them all. Not even by a little - I was in a horrible situation. How do you recover from such a thing?" she asked, continuing to cry.

The "girls" Gonen referred to were IDF Observers Agam Berger and Liri Albag. Dafna and Ela Elyakim, 15 and 8-year-old sisters, joined them on the following day. Shortly after, they were joined by Chen Almog-Goldstein and her three children, Agam (17), Gal (11), and Tal (9), along with Mia Schem, who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival, and IDF Observer Naama Levy.

Emily Damari also joined them on the 40th day.

Qualify For Simple Weight Loss With GLP-1 Meds! End Your Struggle Now! Qualify For Simple Weight Loss With GLP-1 Meds! End Your Struggle Now! Sponsored by bestglpmeds.com Left alone for 34 days in apartments above ground, moved to tunnels, joined by others Gonen recounted how she was held by herself for 34 days in apartments above ground before being taken down to the terror tunnels. "Suddenly, one of the commanders came up to me and told me that 'maybe two girls will come here soon.'" She recalled how she told him, 'Not maybe, bring them - I need them."

Berger entered the tunnel wearing a hijab, Gonen said. Berger sat down on the mattress, and Gonen turned to her and said, "Can I please just get a hug?"

"That's all I needed. I needed someone to hug me for a moment. Think about it, for 35 days, I was alone without any physical contact with human beings - except for the contact that is bad [referring to sexual assault," she commented.

"Then, Liri comes in. They lowered them one after the other, and she joined in the hug," Gonen added.

When the young Elyakim sisters came in, she recounted how she understood that they had been alone until now, and how that realization "shattered" her.

She also noted how she and Damari have been inseparable since joining each other 40 days after the massacre. "If I hadn't had Romi with me in captivity, I would have died," Damari commented.

Damari also noted how she realized at an early stage that Gonen had been abused before they met. "I think that was also one of my first questions - whether something had happened to someone?" Damari added.

Gonen speaks to Hamas arch-terrorist Izzadin al-Haddad.

Two weeks after Gonen was taken down into the terror tunnels, the first hostage return deal began. In the following days, the terrorist guards realized that she was shaken by an incident that occured in one of the apartments that she had been held in. The following day, while the first round of hostages were being released, the terrorists returned to the captivity cage. "They told me to put on a hijab because I am not going home. I am going to the commander's room upstairs," she recalled.

She recounted how she was led through the tunnels to a room located on a higher level, with a telephone waiting there for her.

"I picked up the phone, and he said 'Hello' to me. I realized that he speaks Hebrew. He asked me to tell him everything that happened," she said.

He listened and told her that "He wants to make some kind of deal. 'I will put you at the top of the list [of people to be released], and in return, you will promise me that you will keep quiet [about your experiences].' I, of course, thought 'What do I care, as long as he puts me at the top of the list? I want to go home, and then we will deal with the promise," she remembered, saying that she promised the terror commander.

Gonen added that she realized retrospectively that the commander on the end of the phone was Izzadin al-Haddad, then-head of Hamas's Gaza Brigade, who has since been promoted to commander of Hamas's so-called military wing, the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades.

"I spoke with the number one terrorist in Gaza now," she commented.

Gonen: 'Nobody will silence me any more' Gonen recalled how the realization of her coming release came as a surprise. On the morning of her release, 471 days after being taken captive from the Nova music festival, the terrorists called her to come watch television at 10:26 a.m.

A terrorist told her, "You are going out now alone, and a vehicle will be waiting for you in the street." She was sent out of the tunnel along with Emily Damari.

"It was a messed-up scene. We walked down the street like that, and we were like, 'We are walking down the street in Gaza alone,'" she added.

Hamas terrorists collected them from the street, uniting them with fellow hostage Doron Steinbrecher, who was being released at the same time.

Before reaching the handover point, the terrorists transferred them to another vehicle, where Haddad was waiting for them in the front seat.

"He turned around and said 'Hello, girls' to us. He then asked me if I remembered our promise. I told him yes, and he told me, 'See, you went out first,'" she recalled.

"He then said he hoped I would keep the promise, and I told him I would," she added.

"They often silenced my story and told me not to tell it. Now I am here, sitting in front of the camera, and honestly, no one will silence me anymore. It happened to me, and it is terrible, and I deal with the consequences of it day by day, but I am here. I beat it. I am in the aftermath, and I am much stronger than it," she concluded. JPost

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Doctors Without Borders advanced anti-Israel narrative, maintained terror ties - exclusive The well-known medical organization is one of several dozen NGOs prohibited from operating in Gaza and the West Bank since January 1.

PEOPLE AFFILIATED with Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hold signs during a vigil to honor colleagues and others who have been killed during the war in Gaza outside the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, US, December 6, 2023. PEOPLE AFFILIATED with Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hold signs during a vigil to honor colleagues and others who have been killed during the war in Gaza outside the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, US, December 6, 2023. (photo credit: REUTERS/JEENAH MOON)

By Mathilda Heller. January 1, 2026.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) “practiced advancing an extreme anti-Israeli narrative under the guise of humanitarian activity,” claimed Israeli ministry documents viewed exclusively by The Jerusalem Post.

The well-known medical organization is one of several dozen NGOs prohibited from operating in Gaza and the West Bank since January 1. The move was announced by Israel on Monday and has been met with significant international outrage.

In a letter to the media on Wednesday, the minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, claimed that security investigations determined that employees of certain international organizations operating in Gaza were directly involved in terrorist activity.

With regard to MSF specifically, Chikli claimed it maintained active ties to designated terrorist organizations: in June 2024, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative was identified as an MSF employee, and in September 2024, another MSF employee was identified as a Hamas sniper.

Chikli added that, “despite repeated and explicit demands,” the organization did not provide full transparency regarding the identities, roles, and activities of those individuals.

Under Israel’s current regulatory framework, licenses can be revoked for the following reasons: participation in efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel; legal warfare against IDF soldiers; Holocaust denial; and denial of the October 7 massacre.

As seen, revocation is explicitly allowed for organizations that are actively pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, which MSF is.

“Israel will not allow humanitarian frameworks to be exploited for terrorism,” said Chikli. “The message is unequivocal: humanitarian aid is welcome; terror under the guise of humanitarianism is not.”

Documents viewed by the Post shed more light on the reasoning behind the ban on MSF, the most well-known and arguably the most reputable of the banned groups.

One reason cited in the documents is that none of the organization's four branches, which registered in 2025 for a license to operate in Gaza, passed the check.

MSF Spain, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands allegedly did not provide comprehensive staff lists – including details of Palestinian employees – as explicitly mandated by the registration guidelines.

MSF accused of terrorist ties. Israel assessed that the MSF branches were operating “under the pretext of humanitarian activity,” while “in practice advancing an extreme anti-Israeli narrative, maintaining affiliations with terrorist entities, promoting boycotts, and willfully disregarding the registration obligations.” What terror ties is the organization accused of maintaining?

Israel’s Inter-Ministerial Team said it identified substantial indications of direct or indirect affiliations between MSF Belgium and terrorist organizations.

An MSF employee in Gaza, Fadi Al-Wadiya, was revealed to be a senior operative of Islamic Jihad and an expert in rocket systems, as evidenced in the MSF Belgium report and corroborated by IDF publications.

Another staff member, Mahmoud Abunejeila, has publicly expressed support for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Under Section 7.1(3) of the guidelines, Israel can deny an organization that has members who are terror operatives or who maintain ties with a proscribed terror group.

With regard to MSF France, Israel claims it has an “explicit agenda promoting political boycotts and arms embargoes against Israel.”

It cited the organization’s calls for an end to military support to Israel, as well as public support for BDS events.

MSF France has also repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” as well as intentional starvation of the people in Gaza. Israel found this to be “contrary to the neutrality expected” and thus grounds for denial.

"Such narratives, when disseminated by an international humanitarian body, carry dangerous implications: they undermine Israel’s legal standing, fuel hostile initiatives in diplomatic and legal arenas, and serve as a catalyst for campaigns of boycotts, sanctions, and isolation," the documents read.

“Such narratives, when disseminated by an international humanitarian body, carry dangerous implications: they undermine Israel’s legal standing, fuel hostile initiatives in diplomatic and legal arenas, and serve as a catalyst for campaigns of boycotts, sanctions, and isolation,” the documents read.

MSF Belgium has also accused Israel of crimes against humanity and, according to Israel, presents the Jewish state as “systematically oppressive, colonial, and discriminatory.”

The documents accused MSF Belgium of aiming to “undermine the very status of the State of Israel as a democratic state.”

Following an assessment of all of the above, the Inter-Ministry Team concluded that MSF’s operations are at an “extremely high risk level” and “pose significant exposure to the security of Israel.”

The documents cited the organization’s failure to comply with basic registration as an additional sign of bad intentions and lack of transparency.

As an alternative to the MSF branches, the documents recommend expanding the entry of professionals and teams from other health and medical organizations that “meet regulatory requirements and adhere to the principles of neutrality and transparency.”

It lists IMC, MedGlobal, and UK-MED as potential alternatives.

MSF International said on Wednesday that the Palestinian health system is “decimated, essential infrastructure is destroyed, and people struggle to meet basic needs.”

“People need more services, not less. If MSF and other NGOs lose access, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would be cut off from essential care,” it said.

The IDF, however, disputed this, saying the banned groups have produced only 1% of the aid and that many of them have been banned throughout the war, such that the current ban changes nothing on the ground.

Overall, the 24 organizations that have not been banned are producing 99% of the total aid volume, according to Israel, the IDF added. JPost

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Watch: Iran protesters torch Qassem Soleimani statue. Protesters in Iran burn a Qassem Soleimani statue, one day before the anniversary of his death, as nationwide unrest escalates. Elad Benari. Jan 2, 2026, 1:16 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Iranian man to Netanyahu: Iranians stood by you for 2 years, will you stand by us now? Iranian man to Netanyahu: Iranians stood by you for 2 years, will you stand by us now? An Iranian man published a video asking PM Netanyahu to support the Iranian people protesting against the regime. Israel National News. Jan 1, 2026, 10:20 PM (GMT+2)

An Iranian man published a video message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asking for the Israeli leader's support as Iranians take to the streets to protest against the Ayatollah's regime. INN

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The downplaying of momentous events in Iran. The terrible fact is that conscience in the West has become harnessed to absolute evil. There have been no demonstrations in Western streets chanting “Free, free Iran!” or “Death, death to the IRGC!” Opinion. Melanie Phillips. Jan 2, 2026, 6:58 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Combat Antisemitism Movement @CombatASemitism: On day one as Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani revoked the IHRA definition of antisemitism and overturned the city’s anti-BDS executive order.

In doing so, he erased years of actions taken under Mayor Eric Adams to protect the Jewish community.

These decisions endanger New York City’s Jewish population, the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. [11] Jan 2, 2026 X

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Once an antisemite, always an antisemite Mamdani Attacks New York's Jews on His Very First Day in Office. Why yes, Zohran is wasting no time making life unbearable for New York Jews, even doing a full-on Nazi salute. What can we even say? You asked for this and now you got it. And if you didn't vote him, open your eyes and get out, now.

Jfeed Staff. Jan 2, 2026 03:41

Zohran Mamdani, New York City's first Muslim and South Asian mayor, began his term on January 1 with a series of executive actions that have ignited fierce controversy, particularly among Jewish leaders and pro-Israel groups. He signed an order revoking all executive actions issued by his predecessor, Eric Adams, after Adams' September 2024 federal indictment.

This broad stroke nullified several policies related to Israel, protests, and antisemitism, prompting accusations from critics that Mamdani's moves amount to "active antisemitism" and endanger the city's large Jewish population.

Key Actions on Day One and the Backlash

Mamdani's inaugural day was marked by a midnight swearing-in ceremony in the historic Old City Hall subway station, followed by a public event at City Hall where he was sworn in by Senator Bernie Sanders using a Quran, a first for any New York mayor.

In his speech, he emphasized inclusivity, pledging to build a city that "protects, celebrates, and cherishes" its diverse communities, including Jewish and Palestinian New Yorkers.

However, his first major policy decision, the blanket revocation, directly impacted measures seen as safeguards for Jewish residents.

Revoking the Anti-BDS Order: Adams had barred city agencies from engaging in Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) activities against Israel. Mamdani's action lifted this, aligning with his longstanding support for BDS, which he has called "consistent with the core of my politics."

Critics, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Zionist organizations, argue this enables economic targeting of Israel and signals tolerance for antisemitism. Mamdani has defended BDS as a nonviolent tool for Palestinian rights, not hatred of Jews, but anyone with two eyes and half a brain knows excatly what he thinks about Jews and about Israel.

Ending Protest Restrictions Near Synagogues: An Adams-era directive instructed the NYPD to evaluate and potentially restrict protests outside houses of worship, such as buffer zones during services, following incidents like a 2025 demonstration near a synagogue.

By revoking this, Mamdani has drawn ire from those who say it allows harassment of Jewish congregants. Supporters, including civil liberties groups like the New York Civil Liberties Union, praise it as protecting free speech.

Scrapping the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism: Adams adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, which includes certain criticisms of Israel as potentially antisemitic. Mamdani eliminated it, citing free speech concerns and echoing his past statements that "anti-Zionism is not antisemitism."

Jewish advocacy groups like the ADL have

These moves have fueled claims that Mamdani is "actively antisemitic," with social media posts and commentators labeling them as "declaring open season on Jews" or predicting increased violence. For instance, the group StopAntisemitism highlighted the changes as removing protections for NYC's Jewish community, the largest outside Israel.

Mamdani's critics point to his past rhetoric, including calling Israel an "apartheid state" and supporting phrases like "globalize the intifada," which some interpret as calls for violence against Jews.He has consistently rejected these accusations, emphasizing his commitment to fighting all forms of hate and distinguishing criticism of Israeli policies from antisemitism.

Notably, Mamdani retained the Mayor's Office to Combat Antisemitism, created under Adams, and has met with Jewish leaders during his transition. Some anti-Zionist Jewish groups, like the Satmar Hasidim, have supported him, viewing his stance as promoting equity.

What Lies Ahead for New York's Jewish Community?

With NYC home to over 1.3 million Jews, Mamdani's term raises questions about safety and inclusion amid rising antisemitic incidents nationwide. Optimists point to his pledges for dialogue and protection, noting his administration's focus on housing affordability, free public transit, and social justice, policies that could benefit all residents, including Jewish New Yorkers.

Progressive voices, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, hail it as a "new era" for equity.

Pessimists, however, foresee challenges:

Increased Protests and Tensions: Without prior restrictions, pro-Palestinian demonstrations near synagogues could escalate, as seen in past incidents.

Economic and Policy Shifts: Plans to divest from Israel-linked companies could strain ties with Jewish and Israeli-American businesses.

Federal and Legal Battles: Under President Trump, threats of funding cuts loom, potentially exacerbating city divisions.

Community Polarization: While some Jewish groups engage with Mamdani, others plan advocacy to codify protections like IHRA into law.

Experts like AJC's Josh Kramer stress the need for monitoring, urging Mamdani to unequivocally combat hate.

As one analyst noted, "This isn't about one day; it's about sustaining trust over four years."

Trust? NY's Jews will be lucky to survive the next four years unscathed. It's time to consider leaving NYC, seriously. For anyone still wondering, just look at hime doing Hitler's salute. NY's loss is Florida's gain. JFeed

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Conf. of Presidents CEO: 'Mamdani cancelling Adams' antisemitism orders troubling sign'. Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations CEO William Daroff condemns Zohran Mamdani for cancelling the order recognizing the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Israel National News. Jan 2, 2026, 9:26 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Diaspora Minister: 'New York mayor an overt anitsemite & terror supporter'. Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli responds to NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's cancellation of executive orders that combatted antisemitism. Israel National News. Published: Jan 2, 2026, 1:23 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Akunis: Mamdani’s moves endanger New York City Jews. Israel’s Consul in New York warns that Mayor Mamdani’s cancellation of IHRA recognition and anti‑boycott rules endangers Jewish communities, after the Mayor revoked Israel‑related orders issued by Eric Adams. Elad Benari, Canada. Published: Jan 2, 2026, 9:14 PM INN

Mamdani's choice to cancel IHRA antisemitism definition must alarm New York Jews - comment.. Jews should start watching the exits when institutions start treating their safety as optional. And especially after the biggest Jewish city outside of Israel made protecting Jews a political matter.

By Zvika Klein. January 2, 2026. New York's new mayor took office on Thursday and immediately decided that defining antisemitism was too politically costly. Zohran Mamdani took power and, within hours, canceled the city's use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. He also got rid of rules that stopped city agencies from boycotting Israel.

He called it a "new beginning." A new beginning. When the biggest Jewish city outside of Israel says it can't agree on what Jew-hatred looks like anymore, that's what we're calling. JPost

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Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol: Here’s a list of all the news networks who have not covered Zohran Mamdani’s salute:

- NYTimes - CNN - Washington Post - MSNBC - NPR - USA Today - Reuters - Axios - ABC News

Every single one of them wrote stories on Elon Musk’s “salute”…

…do you get it yet?

7:23 PM · Jan 1, 2026 X

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Zohran Mamdani's Wife Sparks Outrage. Mamdani's wife wore $630 boots to his swearing in ceremony, and absolutely no one is impressed with her tone deaf choice of clothing.

Jfeed Staff. Jan 2, 2026 03:29

Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as New York City's 112th mayor on January 1, 2026, shortly after midnight. The ceremony highlighted his "everyman" persona and commitment to policies aimed at equity, such as taxing the rich more heavily and implementing rent freezes.

However, attention quickly shifted to his wife, Rama Duwaji, a 28-year-old artist, animator, and illustrator known for her outspoken criticism of US imperialism. During the event, she appeared to wear $630 Miista "Shelley Boots", luxury lace-up boots made from vegetable-tanned cow leather, featuring a memory foam insole and a 6 cm heel,along with a black coat, skirt, and gleaming earrings.

This wasn't the first instance of her sporting high-end fashion; during his November 2025 victory speech, Duwaji wore a denim top by Palestinian-Jordanian designer Zeid Hijazi and earrings from upscale NYC jeweler Eddie Borgo, whose pieces can retail for over $46,000.

The New York Post article framing this as a controversy sparked backlash on social media, with critics accusing the couple of hypocrisy. Comments included calling Mamdani's agenda a "scam" for pushing rent policies that could harm housing while his wife flaunts expensive items, labeling it "performative socialism," and sarcastically noting that seizing the means of production might make such luxuries accessible to all. JFeed

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Trump Threatens Iran: "We are Locked and Loaded". Trump’s statement came as protests inside Iran entered a sixth consecutive day, with mounting lethal force used against demonstrators. The language marked one of his most explicit public warnings to Tehran since unrest escalated earlier this week.

Judah Pe'er. Jan 2, 2026 03:47

US President Donald Trump warned Iran overnight that the United States was “locked and loaded and ready to go” if Iranian authorities continue killing protesters, issuing the threat in a post published early Friday morning. JFeed

'We are locked and loaded': Trump threatens to attack Iran regime if protesters harmed. 'The United States of America will come to their rescue,' President Donald Trump announced about the protestors on Truth Social.

By Jerusalem Post Staff January 2, 2026. US President Donald Trump declared that the United States was "locked and loaded and ready to go" if Iran killed any more protestors, in a post on Truth Social early Friday morning. JPost

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The journalistic mistake that softens Hamas and humanizes the wolf - opinion Targeted language promotes certain feelings and thoughts. When Hamas is referred to as a militant Palestinian group, it almost evokes sympathy against the backdrop of the war ruins in Gaza.

By Afshin Ellian January 2, 2026.

Language use reveals intention. Journalists learn to use words carefully. When Hamas is referred to as a militant Palestinian group, the audience does not immediately think of a terrorist organization. We are talking about a Palestinian group that is militant in conveying its ideas.

A militant does not have to be a terrorist. A resilient democracy (a democracy that defends itself) is often referred to as a militant democracy. This does not mean that democrats are going to resort to terrorist methods.

Targeted language promotes certain feelings and thoughts. When Hamas is referred to as a militant Palestinian group, it almost evokes sympathy against the backdrop of the war ruins in Gaza. The truth of the Gaza war disappears.

But if the Dutch national news medium - an important part of Dutch Public Broadcasting (funded by government money) - NOS Journal were to refer to Hamas as a terrorist organization every evening for two years, Hamas's Ministry of Health would also be seen as part of a terrorist organization. Then the audience would not accept the reports from this Hamas ministry as truth.

Moreover, they would wonder why the Gazans are not rebelling against a terrorist organization. The Gazans no longer need to fear that: the Israeli army is already in Gaza, and Hamas has been considerably weakened. This does not mean that the audience will no longer empathize with civilian victims. However, if the media uses the right words, the audience will take the complexity of the conflict into account. Ultimately, the audience will be less susceptible to anti-Semitic propaganda. JPost

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Father sings for fallen son: 'You were never torn from my heart'. Israel National News. Jan 2, 2026, 3:05 PM INN

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FBI foils New Year’s Eve ISIS‑inspired attack in North Carolina. Israel National News. Jan 2, 2026, 8:11 PM INN

FBI disrupts alleged ISIS-inspired New Year’s Eve attack plot targeting NC grocery store, fast food restaurant. Christian Sturdivant is charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization Greg Norman By Greg Norman Fox News Published January 2, 2026. FoxNews

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Hezbollah threat. Report: Israel weighs Lebanon operation. Israel is weighing a Lebanon operation as Hezbollah rebuilds under the ceasefire. Netanyahu discussed expanded strikes with Trump, while US officials urge waiting to allow further talks with Beirut. Elad Benari, Canada. Jan 2, 2026, 9:52 PM INN

Israel strikes Hezbollah sites in Southern Lebanon. A Radwan Force terror training compound was among the targets. JNS Staff. (Jan. 2, 2026 / JNS) JNS

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Antisemitic map marks Jewish-owned schools and businesses in Barcelona The map identified 152 schools, companies, nonprofits and businesses allegedly linked to Jews or Israel using a public, interactive mapping platform; following widespread criticism, the map was taken offline ynet | published:13:07 YNet

Spanish Jews warn map of local Jewish and ‘Zionist’ businesses will lead to violence. The project lists more than 150 Jewish and Israeli businesses, schools and organizations in Catalonia, with the goal of ‘understanding how Zionism operates’ By Zev Stub. January 2, 2026, 10:34 am TOI

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IDF: Militant who crossed yellow line in Gaza Strip eliminated. IDF soldiers eliminated a militant who crossed the yellow line in the Gaza Strip "and approached the forces in a way that posed an immediate threat," according to the IDF spokesperson. "IDF forces in the Southern Command are deployed in the area in accordance with the agreement and will continue to act to remove any immediate threat," the statement said. Yoav Zitun|01.02.26. YNet

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Rabbi lightly wounded in Jaffa attack The victim said the assailant shouted “Allahu Akbar.” JNS Staff. (Jan. 2, 2026 / JNS) A rabbi was lightly wounded in an assault on a Jaffa street on Thursday.

Police are investigating the attack as a possible nationalist or antisemitic incident, with the circumstances still under review, as the search for the suspect continues on Friday.

Rabbi Netanel Avitan, a rabbi at Jaffa’s Shirat Moshe Hesder Yeshivah and Israel Defense Forces reservist who was reportedly recently wounded in Gaza, was attacked while walking on Yefet Street shortly before 7 p.m., when an Arab allegedly punched him in the face, knocked him to the ground and broke his glasses before escaping. JNS

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‘Ready for imminent war’: IDF displays captured terrorist weaponry. “Hamas chose to smuggle weapons to carry out a massacre of civilians instead of helping its population,” lieutenant colonel tells JNS. Amelie Botbol. Jan. 2, 2026

“The anti-tank rocket launchers and rockets we found belonging to Hezbollah are the most technologically advanced weapons you see here today,” Lt. Col. (res.) Idan Sharon-Kettler, deputy commander of the Israel Defense Forces Asset Confiscation Unit, told JNS at an exhibition at the army’s Tzrifin Camp in central Israel.

Sharon-Kettler’s unit has been operating since 1973. He was called up for duty on Oct. 7, 2023, and since then, the unit has been actively extracting weapons and equipment from all areas in which the IDF is operating. JNS

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Mamdani deletes social-media posts about Israel, Jew-hatred from mayoral account “The decision to erase official statements affirming the safety and protection of Jews is not merely tone-deaf; it is shameful,” stated Mark Goldfeder, of the National Jewish Advocacy Center. (Jan. 2, 2026 / JNS)

Mark Goldfeder, director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, wrote to Zohran Mamdani on the latter’s inauguration day as mayor of New York City, informing him that he was violating city records law by deleting posts from his predecessor about Israel and about Jew-hatred.

“At a moment of unprecedented antisemitic intimidation, violence and exclusion in the city, the decision to erase official statements affirming the safety and protection of Jews is not merely tone-deaf; it is shameful,” Goldfeder wrote on Jan. 1.

After the official mayoral account transitioned from Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, screenshots circulated showing Mamdani’s name appearing over Adams-era posts supporting Israel and condemning antisemitism. These posts were later deleted from the account.

Goldfeder noted that posts from the mayor’s official social-media account “are not personal commentary, they are official city records,” adding that, under New York law, “public records may not be destroyed or otherwise disposed of except pursuant to an approved records-retention schedule.”

He called on the mayor to affirm the city’s commitment “to protecting Jewish New Yorkers, not as a favor, but as a fundamental obligation of office.”

“Your first days in office will define your administration,” Goldfeder wrote. “This is not how that definition should begin.”

U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote in response to Goldfeder’s letter that the attorney general’s office “will be extremely vigilant as to any and all violations of religious liberties in NYC.”

“We will investigate, sue and indict as needed,” she stated.

Along with the deletions, one of Mamdani’s first actions in office was to revoke all executive orders issued since Sept. 26, 2024, which included the city’s formal adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism and an order barring the city from participating in boycotts of Israel. JNS

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What Happened to Romi Gonen in Gaza. Inside Islamic hell. January 2, 2026. By Hugh Fitzgerald.

Every Israeli hostage story is different in its details, but what unites them all is the savagery and cruelty of their captors. Some of them keep quiet when they return to Israel. It was all so sordid. They are embarrassed to talk. Others think the world should know. In the latter category is Romi Gonen. More of her story can be found here: “‘If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you’: Ex-hostage Romi Gonen recounts captors’ repeated sexual assaults,” by Leon Kraiem, Times of Israel, December 26, 2025:

'Former hostage Romi Gonen shared that she was sexually assaulted by four different men on separate occasions during her 471 days as a hostage in Gaza, speaking in an interview that aired on Thursday.

The sit-down on Channel 12’s “Uvda” program detailed her harrowing ordeal, beginning with her abduction from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, when she was 23 years old.

Gonen, now 25, detailed being taken into the Strip, being moved between several private houses, and then being taken underground several weeks into the war. The hour-long segment is set to be followed up with more of the interview next week.

As soon as she was abducted, Gonen said, she was taken to Shifa Hospital — she’d been shot in the arm amid the Hamas-led terror rampage, before being kidnapped — and already there, she was abused.

As a woman, presumably a nurse, tried to find a vein in her arm, “a guy just started to tear off all my clothes. One of them took off my shoes. Another one took my earrings off my face, another one took the jewelry off my body.”

“I was just there, with some 15 people touching me, at the same time. Until it got to the point they were tearing off all my clothes, but I lay there naked. It was like an out-of-body experience, where you’re seeing everything from above,” she said. “I was sure I was going to wake up without an arm.”

When she came to, she was taken to the first house of her captivity.

Gonen said that, when she speaks about her time in Gaza, she imagines people all wonder: “‘Did they harass you?’ And people don’t ask that question.”

“I also wouldn’t ask, if I were you. But also, I think no one asks because no one wants to hear the answer,” she said.

“I went through all kinds of assaults, from four different men, over the course of my captivity. Different levels of severity.”…

The thousands of Hamas-led terrorists who invaded southern Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023, took 251 hostages back to Gaza, amid rampages in which some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, amid numerous acts of brutality, overt targeting of families in their homes and revelers at a music festival, and sexual assault.

Over the course of two years, through several ceasefire-hostage deals, the hostages were either rescued by troops or released in exchange for thousands of Palestinian security prisoners, including terror convicts serving life sentences. The body of one last hostage — Police Master Sgt. Ran Gvili — remains in the Strip.'

Subject to every sort of sexual assault by four captors, amid nonstop threats of violence, and real acts of violence carried out over 471 days of captivity, that she almost entirely spent deep underground, Romi Gonen came home to Israel, and as brave as she had been while enduring her calvary in Gaza, she was just as brave, or perhaps even braver, for choosing to tell her story to the world. FPM

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NYC rabbis alarmed by Mamdani’s first actions, appointments as mayor. “Wherever anti-Zionism has been normalized, it has led to an increase of hostilities toward Israel and the Jewish people,” Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch told JNS. “I would welcome the mayor waking up one day and understanding that.” Debra Nussbaum Cohen. (Jan. 2, 2026 / JNS) Within moments of Zohran Mamdani’s swearing in as New York City mayor at midnight on Jan. 1, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch called JNS from Jerusalem, explaining that his worries about the safety of Jewish New Yorkers, due to Mamdani’s longstanding anti-Zionism and pledges to institute anti-Israel municipal policies, continue unabated.

Hirsch, with other rabbis, had two long meetings with the then mayor-elect in the months leading up to the inauguration, as Mamdani actively pursued connections with many of New York’s Jewish leaders. Several of the latter had warned publicly that his views, if put into practice as mayor, would pose dangers for Jewish New Yorkers by leading to more antisemitism, which has already increased dramatically since Oct. 7.

The New York City area is home to about 1.3 million Jews, second only to Israel’s greater Tel Aviv area.

Hirsch published a video in November addressing Mamdani directly.

“You call Zionism, the liberation movement of the Jewish people, a racist project and a colonial enterprise,” the rabbi said in the video. “You support Students for Justice in Palestine and co-founded its Bowdoin College chapter, a group that rejects co-existence and seeks the dismantling of Israel altogether. You have never disavowed these views. The opposite. You’ve doubled down on them.” JNS

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Pro-Palestinian activists vandalize aircraft parts factory in Scotland linked to Israel supplier. About half an hour into 2026, masked activists attacked a factory near Edinburgh over alleged links to Israel, sharing footage of smashed machinery and sprayed graffiti ynet | published:01.02.26. YNet

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French mayor suspended after calling France ‘too Jewish’. Bernard Bazinet, mayor of Augignac, made the remark while supporting a boycott of Israel’s Eurovision bid; government and party condemn him for antisemitism and suspend him from office for one month. ynet | published:01.01.26 | 20:08 YNet

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Katz instructs IDF to prepare to resume combat in Gaza as Hamas refuses to disarm. Defense Minister Israel Katz told the IDF to prepare for renewed fighting in Gaza as talks stall and Hamas refuses to disarm.

By Amir Bohbot. January 2, 2026 06:38 Defense Minister Israel Katz instructed the IDF to prepare for the possibility of returning to intense fighting against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip, Walla learned on Friday.

The security establishment clarified that no instructions have been received from the political echelons to prepare for reopening the Rafah Border Crossing. JPost

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Michele Weiss and Justin Brasch mark milestones as first Orthodox Jewish mayors in their cities. The inaugurations of Michele Weiss in University Heights, Ohio, and Justin Brasch in White Plains, New York, this week marked a milestone for Orthodox representation in local politics.

By Grace Gilson/JTA Januar 3, 2026. (JTA) — This week, as New York City inaugurated its first Muslim mayor, two cities in the United States also made history with the swearing-in of their first Orthodox Jewish mayors.

While Orthodox mayors have been elected in cities and suburbs across the country, including New Jersey, New York State, and Florida, the inaugurations of Michele Weiss in University Heights, Ohio, and Justin Brasch in White Plains, New York, this week marked a milestone for Orthodox representation in local politics. JPost

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Arabic 'Mein Kampf' with Hitler’s image found as illegal Palestinian is arrested. Bat Yam police arrested the illegal Palestinian at a construction site in the city, detained his employer for questioning and ordered the site closed for 30 days. Meir Turgeman | published:01.02.26

The police on Tuesday arrested a Palestinian man who was in Israel illegally at a construction site in the coastal city of Bat Yam, authorities said. During the arrest, officers also found an Arabic-language copy of Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf,” bearing the Nazi leader’s photograph.

The man was identified by police as a Palestinian from the West Bank who did not have valid permits to be in Israel. Police said he was employed at the site and had also been sleeping there.

In a statement, the Tel Aviv District Police said the arrest was part of “focused enforcement activity against offenses involving the employment, transportation and housing of illegal residents.” The statement said police have stepped up inspections at businesses and construction sites where there is suspicion that Palestinians without permits may be present, “in order to strengthen public safety and security.” Police said officers from the Bat Yam station located the man at a construction site on Ha’orgim Street. His employer was detained for questioning, and the district police commander, Maj. Gen. Haim Sargarof, signed an administrative order closing the site for 30 days.

The discovery echoed a statement made last year by President.Isaac Herzog, about a month after the outbreak of the war in Gaza. Herzog said Israeli troops had found a copy of “Mein Kampf” in what he described as a children’s room that had been converted into a Hamas base in northern Gaza.

In an interview with the BBC at the time, Herzog said the book contained notes and markings made by a Hamas operative. “This is the book that led to the Holocaust and World War II,” Herzog said. “This book was found a few days ago in northern Gaza, in a children’s room that became a base used for terrorist activity by the Hamas terrorist organization. The terrorist wrote notes, marked sections and studied again and again the ideology of Adolf Hitler — hatred of Jews, killing Jews, burning and slaughtering Jews wherever they are. This is the real war we are facing.” YNet

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Lapid: 'Iran should pay attention to what's happening in Venezuela'. Opposition leader Yair Lapid commented on the U.S. strikes in Venezuela. He wrote in English on his X account that "the regime in Iran should pay attention to what is happening in Venezuela." Ynet|01.03.26 YNet

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Iran's ally turned enemy of Trump: Who are you, Nicolas Maduro? Trump announced that Maduro had been captured and flown out of the country, after months of military and political escalation. • The Venezuelan leader came to power in 2013 and became a brutal dictator who suppressed any attempt to replace him. • Under his rule, Venezuela collapsed economically and was condemned by the West, and greatly strengthened its cooperation with Iran and Hezbollah.

Tomer Almagor. N12. Published:01.03.26

United States President Donald Trump announced this morning (Saturday) that the United States had captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and flown him out of the country. The operation, which according to CBS was carried out by the US Army's Delta Force, is the culmination of the escalation between the two countries that has gradually built up in recent months. Maduro has ruled Venezuela with a strong hand for more than a decade, in the face of fierce opposition from the US and the West.

A brutal dictator who was branded by the West.

Maduro, 63, was born in the Venezuelan capital Caracas and worked as a bus driver in his youth. He later became an activist and labor union leader, and in 2000 was elected to the local parliament.

He is considered a protégé of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and under his leadership he has gained more and more power within the country and the socialist party. Under Chavez, Maduro served as foreign minister and vice president, and after his death in 2013, Maduro succeeded Chavez and entered the presidential palace.

Over the years, Maduro has increasingly weakened Venezuela's democratic institutions, turning it into a de facto dictatorship. Under his unpopular rule, Venezuela has suffered an economic and social collapse that has led to the flight of some 8 million citizens. According to the United Nations, more than half of Venezuelans live in extreme poverty, and more than 80% of them live in poverty.

In 2018, Maduro declared victory in the elections, but the West and the opposition claimed fraud, which did not prevent him from continuing to rule the country. Widespread waves of protests against him repeatedly broke out in the streets of Venezuela under his rule, but Maduro, as a political opponent, restricted freedom of expression and effectively became a dictator who stifled any democratic attempt to replace him.

Cooperation with Iran, Russia and China.

In recent years, dictator Maduro's Venezuela has become a key ally of Iran, as well as of Russia and China, which has purchased large quantities of oil from it. The cooperation with Iran and its terrorist arms has also been reflected in the significant establishment of the terrorist organization Hezbollah. About a month ago, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed in an interview that Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards have established themselves in Venezuela and are using it as a base for terrorist operations.

Maduro's security forces in Venezuela have over the years acquired Iranian Shahad drones, as well as attack vessels and missile boats from Iran. The operation to arrest Nicolas Maduro took place exactly six years after the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards, who was killed in a targeted assassination in Baghdad on January 3, 2020, on the orders of President Trump.

Trump's accusations.

In recent months, Trump has repeatedly expressed his opposition to Maduro, calling him a “dictator” and making it clear that his rule is illegitimate. The president has even called on Maduro to flee the country, offered a reward for anyone who helps arrest the leader and announced that he considers him to be the head of a terrorist organization. However, Trump said that the two have spoken in recent weeks, as part of efforts to reach a diplomatic solution.

Trump focused on three main allegations against Maduro and Venezuela. According to the president, Venezuela is responsible for waves of criminal immigration into the United States, has stolen oil from the United States, and is responsible for smuggling drugs into the United States. Following these accusations, in recent months Trump has ordered more and more forces to the region, and has carried out a series of attacks near the coast of Venezuela and even carried out operations on its territory. Mako

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GOP senator warns leaders of Iran and Cuba after US captures Venezuela’s Maduro. January 3, 2026

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, an ally of US President Donald Trump, tells the Axios news site that the leaders of Iran and Cuba should be concerned following the American military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

“There is a new sheriff in town. He has put life into the Monroe Doctrine,” Graham says. “If I were the leader of Iran, I would go pray in the mosque.”

Graham also says “all options will be on the table” when pressed if there could be further strikes in Venezuela. ToI

US attacks Venezuela, Trump: Maduro captured and flown out of the country. Trump confirmed that the United States attacked Venezuela and according to a CBS report, Maduro was captured by the US Army's Delta Force • Trump added new details: "Maduro was at home, which was more like a fortress" • The Venezuelan government declared a state of emergency in the country and general mobilization, Maduro's deputy confirmed that he had disappeared • Senator Lindsey Graham to N12: "If I were the leader of Iran, I would go pray in a mosque".

Barak Ravid, Assaf Rosenzweig, Tomer Almagor and the Bezalel Foundation. N12. Published:01.03.26. Mako

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Iran, Hezbollah condemn, Russia offers mediation after US operation on Venezuela US allies are "monitoring the situation." US President Trump will be holding a press conference later on Saturday to share more information.

By Tobias Holcman, Reuters January 3, 2026. JPost

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'Dangerous precedent': UN, world leaders decry US op. that saw capture of Venezuela's Maduro. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres decried the strikes on Venezuela as a “dangerous precedent," while Argentinian President Javier Milei celebrated the "excellent news."

By Goldie Katz. January 3, 2026.

Global outcry arose after the United States captured Venezuelan President Vincent Maduro and his wife under the cover of airstrikes in the Venezuelan capital on Saturday.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his “deep alarm” regarding the situation through a statement delivered by his spokesperson. He described the strike and capture as setting a “dangerous precedent,” warning of potentially “worrying implications for the region” that may result from the escalation JPost

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Indigenous solidarity: Mapuche leader visits Israel, finds common ground with Jewish people. DIASPORA AFFAIRS: A delegation from Chile, including the current president of a Mapuche community called Kupal Pichinao, Ivan Enrique Pardes Pichinao, recently visited Israel for the first time.

By Audrey Lynn Leinoff. January l 3, 2026 15:10 When Spain’s King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile launched their campaign to rid the realm of perceived heretics in the late 15th century, the Spaniards did not stop at persecuting Jews.

Beyond the execution of the gruesome, local autos-da-fé, by the early 16th century, for one, Spanish conquerors over 7,000 nautical miles away were brutalizing another ethnic group – the Mapuche.

A delegation from Chile, including the current president of a Mapuche community called Kupal Pichinao, Ivan Enrique Pardes Pichinao, recently visited Israel for the first time. He sat down with The Jerusalem Post to discuss why.

“We are the ‘People of the Land.’ ‘Mapu’ means land, ‘che’ means person. We are an indigenous nation that developed in what is now known as Chile and Argentina,” Pichinao said.

Beyond being “intrinsically linked” to the land from whence they come, he said, his people’s worldview is based on respect for and reciprocal ties with nature.

“Our way of life is also deeply rooted in a connection to family, a bond with Mother Earth, and the songs and ceremonies that have been passed down to us from generation to generation,” Pichinao added. Advertisement

The Mapuches’ history, much like the Jewish one, is riddled with instances of external forces invading, enslaving, and oppressing the local population.

“From the Inca Empire through the Spanish Crown to the modern state,” the Mapuche have had to engage in “constant resistance” to preserve their culture and identity, the leader said.

“Indeed, our community has been historically recognized for its strength and resistance to colonialism. We keep alive a rich culture, with traditions and an ancestral system of organization,” he continued.

They have been victorious overall. Case in point, try as they did, the Spaniards were never able to quash Pichinao’s people.

A strong nation of warriors When asked if he could share some of the legends pertaining to the community’s heroic figures dating back to those medieval times, Pichinao stipulated that he regarded passing on these stories as a hallowed task. “As president of the Kupal Pichinao community, I consider it a sacred duty to honor the memory of our weichafe (warriors) and lonko (leaders). They not only resisted the invading [Spanish] forces – they cemented the dignity we breathe today,” he said. “Their stories are not just history.

They are living songs that we pass on to new generations so that the spirit of our nation will never die.”

First and foremost, there was Lautaro, “the strategist of the wind.” Captured by the first governor of Colonial Chile, Pedro de Valdivia, Lautaro was enslaved as a stable boy. Instead of losing heart, he “keenly observed the weaknesses of the Spanish, learned their tactics, and, most importantly, mastered the use of a horse,” Pichinao detailed.

Armed with this knowledge, Lautaro escaped, returning to his people as a toqui (military chief).

“He introduced rotating companies – to avoid exhausting his forces – and ambush strategies that led to our victory in the 1553 Battle of Tucapel. Lautaro taught us that intelligence is as powerful as strength. He is the most iconic figure of our resistance. His legend stems from his ability to turn oppression into knowledge,” Pichinao said.

Then, there was Colo Colo, whose name means “the wisdom of consensus.” Reminiscent of Israel’s conundrum over its internal societal rifts, Colo Colo, at a time of great internal divides, sought a way to bridge the gaps between people.

“This wise lonko prevented a civil war between Mapuche factions by proposing the famous physical endurance log test. Today, his name transcends the battlefield, as Chile’s most popular soccer club is named after him. In sports, Colo Colo’s ‘Mapuche spirit’ is invoked to refer to the fighting spirit and unbreakable will to never give up. He represents the political maturity and judgment that sustains our people,” Pichinao said.

Last but not least, there was the female warrior Janequeo, whose name means “women’s leadership.” According to the Mapuche president, “Janequeo broke traditional norms by assuming military command in the Arauco War, demonstrating the strength of women in our culture. After her husband was murdered by the Spanish, she not only sought personal justice but also organized an army comprised of both men and women.

“Janequeo’s figure is essential in understanding that we are all equal when it comes to defending our land. Her courage is a benchmark of female leadership and strategy that endures to this day,” Pichinao noted.This is not a story to pass on

The Mapuches’ ancestral language, Mapudungun, is another way by which the community honors, preserves, and conveys its rich cultural history.

“Feytiñma che, ñi dungun mülen is a fundamental proverb in our oral tradition,” the president said. “It means ‘The words of those who have gone before us are still present.’ This saying underscores the immensity of our ancestral legacy. It teaches us that the truth and essence of our ancestors never disappear; they remain alive in the community’s memory.”

That said, in other instances, sounds, rather than articulated words, are used to convey emotions and meaning.

“The Afafán is one of the most important and powerful vocal expressions in Mapuche culture. It is a collective ritualistic shout performed in solemn ceremonies, social gatherings, or moments of great importance. But this is not just any shout – it is a controlled burst of energy that seeks to connect participants with their surroundings and spiritual forces,” Pichinao elaborated.

“The Afafán has multiple functions, depending on the context. Sometimes, it is meant to provide encouragement and strength, and in others, it marks notions of celebration and joy. Further, this yowl, conveyed in unison, has a spiritual dimension, used as an affirmation of one’s identity. The cry is a guttural and rhythmic sound. In Mapuche literature and stories, it is usually represented as follows: ‘Ya-ya-ya-ya-ya!’”

A Mapuche in Israel. As for the reason Pichinao has made his first-ever visit to the Jewish state now, this relates to a deep concern of his regarding what he sees unfolding among members of his own community. Often encountering images of the Mapuche draped in Palestinian flags with captions hailing Hamas’s assault, Pichinao said he feels that, beyond this forced conflation between two disparate cultures, his people’s cause and identity are, de facto, being hijacked once again by conceited, self-serving foreign powers.

This diminishes what they have fought for over the centuries – to remain the distinct nation that they are – Pichinao said.

“This visit to Israel is due to the work I have been doing with the Israeli Embassy in Chile, where we are collaborating to reduce antisemitism in Mapuche communities,” he noted.

“For many years now, this hatred has been taking root in my people’s hearts,” Pichinao continued. “Mapuche children, adults, and elders are seen at various gatherings carrying flags expressing hate for Israel and comparing totally different conflicts in the same way.

“Unfortunately, nowadays signs can be seen hanging on some restaurants in Mapuche tourist areas that read: ‘No Israelis allowed.’ It is a painful reality that motivates us to act. Together with the embassy, and quietly on our own, we have been working to find common ground between our two cultures,” the president said.

Although he is familiar with some aspects of Judaism, Pichinao’s recent trip to the Holy Land solidified his conviction that the Mapuche share with Jews what he could best describe as a spiritual bond: “Clearly, there is a supernatural connection between our peoples despite the distance between us.”

Pichinao listed numerous similarities he said he found. “We both believe in one God. We both have an ancestral and spiritual bond to the Earth.

“Further, lineage and family are central pillars in our social structure. Respecting our ancestors and preserving the continuity of our bloodline are of the utmost importance to us, as they are to you.”

And it does not stop there. Craftsmanship practices, notable among them artifacts pertaining to pottery, reminded him of creations made back home. Israeli cuisine and, interestingly, musical instruments also resonated with him.

Moreover, much like deeply entrenched AI biases against Jews, Pichinao noted that artificial intelligence displays similar bigotry when it comes to his people.

For instance, an Anti-Defamation League study released in March found that AI models exhibited “patterns of bias, misinformation, and selective engagement on issues related to Jewish people, Israel, and antisemitic tropes.”

“AI has significant biases about Mapuche culture as well. When asked to show an image of a Mapuche woman or man, for instance, the results often show people with features more like those of Native Americans or Canadians than ours. This ‘digital colonization’ renders our true appearance and aesthetic richness invisible,” Pichinao specified.

Perhaps the most common ground to be found between both ethnicities is the approach to land.

“At the heart of our existence – for both Jews and Mapuches – lies the concept of the Holy Land,” the president said. “With that, the protection of our sacred spaces is another core value. We defend the land not only as a resource, but as a spiritual home that faces constant threat.”

Common ground. The work to combat growing antisemitism within the Mapuche community began over two years ago with the former Israel ambassador to Chile, Gil Artzyeli, “with whom we share some of these cultural commonalities,” Pichinao said. “But we have not publicized this much on social media, due to the high level of online violence faced by those of us who work on these types of initiatives.”

Fortunately, Ambassador Peleg Lewi, the current Israeli envoy to Chile, has decided to continue this wonderful work, he said.

“My trip to Israel has deeply reinforced my conviction about the work we are doing,” Pichinao said. “During my visit to the Israel Museum, as I observed the ancient Hebrews’ history, I could not help but wonder: Who would have imagined that, while this rich history was being built here, more than 14,000 kilometers away, our Mapuche culture was doing exactly the same thing?”

“My motivation today is to continue to discover and highlight our bond. That is why I want to invite the Jewish community worldwide to join and support my pilot project that seeks to eradicate antisemitism in Mapuche communities.”

The project to which Pichinao was referring is the Mapuche-Jewish Fraternity Bond, which he said was “born from the direct observation of the cultural richness and love that both nations share.” Its stated purpose is to foster a profound awareness grounded in respect and mutual understanding.

In order to achieve this goal, this initiative aims to “promote the creation of documentaries, reports, and genuine encounters that allow both peoples to get to know each other without prejudice and to eradicate antisemitism through affection,” Pichinao said.

To this end, he further stated, “I offer my Mapuche community and myself as a bridge for the Jewish world to find a real space for dialogue and peace.

“I am convinced that these two great cultures seek the same things: peace, understanding, tolerance, and love for family. In today’s world, which has become so individualistic and disconnected, this project is key to spreading a message of unity. We are two ancient peoples who, by joining hands, can teach the modern world a great deal about brotherhood,” the leader remarked.

“The most important message I want to convey to Jews and Israelis is that the Mapuche are a people of dialogue, not hate. We are actively working to dismantle the misinformation and antisemitism that is being imported into our communities. Building bridges, promoting mutual respect instead of allowing distant geopolitical conflicts to contaminate our local identity movement – that is what we want.” JPost

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At least 10 killed, over 130 arrested in Iran as Khamenei blames West for unrest. As security forces crack down on demonstrations fueled by economic collapse, Iran’s supreme leader marks Soleimani’s death by denouncing 'rioters' while offering sympathy to struggling merchants Lior Ben Ari, news agencies | 1.3.26. YNet

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Northern Gaza: IDF takes out rocket launcher prepared in violation of ceasefire. IDF destroys Hamas shaft containing rocket launcher aimed at Sderot, which was prepared after the ceasefire. Israel National News. Published: Jan 3, 2026, 8:03 PM (GMT+2) INN

Israel strikes loaded rocket launcher in Gaza aimed at Sderot. In a separate incident, the IDF killed a terrorist who crossed the Yellow Line in violation of the ceasefire. (Jan. 3, 2026 | Updated Jan. 3, 13:23 / JNS) The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday carried out a precise strike on a Hamas tunnel shaft in the northern Gaza Strip containing a rocket launcher “loaded and ready to be launched toward the city of Sderot,” the military said.

“The shaft was used by Hamas to conceal a rocket launcher that was ready to fire toward southern Israel and posed an immediate threat to Israeli civilians,” the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said.

The army added that the terrorist group’s action was a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire.

The IDF noted that steps were taken before the strike to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence information. JNS

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Hamas claims it has only 'light weapons'. Dalit Halevi. Jan 3, 2026, 6:48 PM INN

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Huckabee slams Mamdani for supporting 'drug trafficker' Maduro. NY Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemns US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee hits back. 'Will he go to Maduro's jail cell to sip margaritas?' Israel National News. Published: Jan 3, 2026, 10:11 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Chikli urges Australia to confront radical Islam. In a letter to Cabinet minister Tony Burke, Israel’s Diaspora affairs minister offered assistance in training security personnel. JNS Staff. (Jan. 3, 2026 / JNS) Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister of Diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism, has written a sharply worded letter to Australian Cabinet Minister Tony Burke, warning that Canberra’s failure to explicitly name radical Islam as the ideological driver behind the recent Bondi Beach terrorist attack is undermining efforts to confront the threat. JNS

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Protests continue in Iran for seventh night as death toll rises to 16. [1.3.26] Summary. At least 15 protesters and one member of security forces have been killed during seven days of demonstrations in Iran that have spread to 174 locations nationwide, with rallies reported in 60 cities across 25 provinces.

At least 44 people have been shot and wounded by live ammunition or pellet guns fired by Iranian forces during the protests, Iran International could confirm.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday called the protesters 'rioters' in his first public speech since the beginning of the unrest and called for their repression.

Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States and President Donald Trump stand firmly with Iranians seeking freedom.

Mai Sato, the UN special rapporteur on Iran human rights, urged Iranian authorities to respect the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly and to refrain from using excessive force against protesters.

After two days of relative calm in Iran's capital, protesters poured into the streets in eastern and western districts of Tehran on Friday night. Similar protests were also held in the holy cities of Mashhad and Qom. IranIntl

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Congressional candidate pledges to push US recognition of West Bank as part of Israel. On West Bank visit, Brian Cole briefed by security officials who explained that a terrorist could hold a handheld rocket launcher and fire it directly over the Green Line; reaffirms Israel's right to defend itself Maayan Hoffman/The Media Line | updated:01.04.26 09:41 YNet

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Palestinian sentenced to life for 2024 murder of Shoah survivor. Terrorist Ibrahim Shalhob stabbed his victim in the upper body some 11 times while shouting “Allahu Akbar.” JNS Staff. (Jan. 4, 2026 / JNS) The Tel Aviv District Court on Sunday sentenced a Palestinian terrorist to life in prison for the fatal stabbing of 83-year-old Ludmila Lipovsky outside her nursing home in the central city of Herzliya on Dec. 27, 2024.

Ibrahim Shalhob, from the Palestinian terrorist hotspot of Tulkarem in Samaria, stabbed his victim in the upper body approximately 11 times while exclaiming “Allahu Akbar,” the ruling stated.

Lipovsky, a Holocaust survivor, was evacuated in critical condition to Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center’s Ichilov Hospital, where she succumbed to her wounds. Armed guards from the Israel Postal Company’s Brink’s courier unit shot Shalhob, who was subsequently arrested by police.

Lipovsky’s family was awarded 258,000 shekels ($81,000) in damages, the most allowed, according to a report by the Ynet Hebrew outlet.

The terrorist had previously served jail time under administrative detention three times, most recently from June 2023 to June 2024.

The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) said that Shalhob was also a past informant, who was involved in “thwarting terrorist infrastructures in Judea and Samaria, was exposed and transferred for rehabilitation in Israel.” JNS

Terrorist sentenced to life in prison for murder of 83-year-old Holocaust survivor. The court also ordered him to pay the maximum compensation permitted by law - NIS 258,000 - to Lipovsky’s family.

By Sarah Ben-nun, January 4, 2026. The Tel Aviv District Court on Sunday sentenced Ibrahim Shalhoub, 29, from the West Bank city of Tulkarm, to life imprisonment for the terror murder of Ludmila Lipovsky, an 83-year-old woman who was stabbed to death in Herzliya in December 2024.

Shalhoub pleaded guilty and was convicted of murder under aggravated circumstances as an act of terrorism, as well as unlawful possession of a knife.

The court also ordered him to pay the maximum compensation permitted by law - NIS 258,000 - to Lipovsky’s family.

According to the indictment and court findings, the attack took place on December 27, 2024, near a commercial area adjacent to an assisted-living complex in Herzliya.

Shalhoub had been living in Israel after being relocated from the West Bank following the exposure of his past cooperation with Israeli security authorities. The court noted that he was present in Israel lawfully when he carried out the attack.

'Exceptionally brutal' act of terror against defenseless woman.

In its sentencing decision, the court described the killing as an exceptionally brutal act of terror carried out against a defenseless elderly woman. Senior Judge Yaron Levy wrote that the offense gravely violated protected social values and was intended to terrorize the civilian population.

The ruling emphasized that the attack was committed during wartime, when Israel’s home front was under sustained threat. The court cited the broader social harm caused by such attacks, noting that beyond the murder itself, the act conveyed a message that no civilian or public space is safe.

During sentencing arguments, the prosecution sought a life sentence, stressing the severity of the attack and its timing. Prosecutor Hadas Forer Gafni told the court that the murder was carried out at a moment of heightened national anxiety, when Israel was facing attacks on multiple fronts.

“The horrifying murder was committed during a war, when fears are at their peak, and the state is under attack from every direction,” the prosecution said. “A terror attack of this kind in the heart of Herzliya is all the more severe.”

The court rejected defense arguments for leniency, finding no mitigating circumstances that could reduce Shalhoub’s culpability. In addition to the life sentence, the judges stressed the deterrent importance of imposing the harshest punishment available under Israeli law in cases of terror murder.

The sentence was handed down on Sunday, bringing the criminal proceedings to a close just over a year after the stabbing, which shocked residents of Herzliya and renewed public focus on lone-actor attacks carried out by individuals legally present inside Israel. JPost

Life imprisonment for terrorist who murdered Ludmila Lipovsky in Herzliya attack in 2024 Roy Rubinstein | published:01.04.26 02:42

The Tel Aviv District Court sentenced Ibrahim Shalhoub from Tulkarem to life imprisonment for stabbing to death Ludmila Lipovsky (83) in an attack at a shopping center in Herzliya in December 2024. The court also ordered the terrorist to pay 258,000 shekels in compensation to the victim's family. In the sentencing, the judges wrote that Shalhoub "took advantage of his stay permit in Israel to carry out the attack, brutally assaulted the deceased and did not stop his actions until he was neutralized by two Israel Post security guards." The terrorist was previously an assistant to the security establishment. YNet

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Col. Richard Kemp: Israel's accomplishments in 2025 were extraordinary, confounded critics. Former commander of the British military forces in Afghanistan speaks with Arutz Sheva about Israel's successes and failures in 2025 and looks ahead to 2026. Gary Willig. Published: Jan 4, 2026, 7:46 AM (GMT+2)

Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of the British military forces in Afghanistan, spoke to Israel National News - Arutz Sheva about Israel's accomplishments in 2025 and the challenges it faces in 2026.

"Israel’s accomplishments in 2025 were extraordinary, and many of them confounded its critics as well as objective experts. Perhaps the most unexpected success - and a supremely important achievement - was the release of virtually all the hostages. Prime Minister Netanyahu said he would get them back, and few believed him. Only one now remains, Ran Gvili, a heroic fighter killed defending his country on 7th October, and there is optimism that his corpse will be recovered," Col. Kemp stated.

He went on to listIsrael's accomplishments: "In Gaza, the courageous and hugely effective IDF decimated Hamas and forced them to cease fire, leaving them in control of less than half the Strip. This was achieved by fighting on the battlefield as well as the 12-day war against Iran and the strikes against Hamas leaders in Doha, both of which dramatically demoralised Hamas in Gaza and brought external pressure on them."

"The 12-day war itself was decisive. It effectively removed Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, degraded its air defences and ballistic missiles armoury and eliminated senior members of Tehran’s high command as well as key nuclear experts. With very limited damage against Israel, this war exposed Iran, a major regional power, as a paper tiger. That effect has played a significant role in the current uprisings in Iran. We don’t yet know whether this will lead to regime change but that is a distinct possibility given the intensity and spread of the protests.

"Last year, Israel also inflicted severe damage against the Houthis in response to terrorist aggression against Israeli territory and shipping.

On the northern front, "Israel has also built on its 2024 successes against Lebanese Hezballah, working to constrain their attempts to rebuild lost capability. And in Syria, a buffer zone has been created to protect the country as well as Syrian minorities against future threats, while at the same time working diplomatically to reduce the potential for aggression."

"Overall Israel’s military actions in 2025 have built on its successes in 2024, re-shaping the Middle East, reducing the threats against it and gaining increasing strength for itself. Despite a global campaign to undermine and delegitimise the country, Israel’s battlefield successes have been consolidated by a strengthened economy and some remarkable achievements in international trade including a multi-billion dollar gas deal with Egypt and significantly boosted arms sales with Germany and the UAE," he said.

He noted that "on top of all that, Israel’s historic recognition of Somaliland at the end of 2025 may have immense strategic benefits for Israel in the region."

According to Col. Kemp, the Trump Administration, which came into office in January 2025, deserves some of the credit for Israel's successes over the last year.

"The Trump Administration played a major role in Israel’s successes in 2025. It supplied vital munitions and military hardware, some of which had previously been hampered by the Biden Administration. Trump also provided essential diplomatic cover for Israel in a world characterised more by animosity than support for the Jewish state. Critically, Trump backed Israel’s defensive war against Iran, even putting his money where his mouth was by sending B2 bombers to bolster the assault on Iran’s war machine. Trump also leveraged Israel’s battlefield success in forcing through the Gaza ceasefire and enlisting the support of many international players, including countries like Turkey and Qatar which sided with Hamas against Israel," he said.

He added: "Despite the hopes and fake predictions of many journalists and so-called experts that the year would have seen a growing wedge between Trump and Netanyahu, there was not any significant daylight between the two. That itself was a remarkable achievement between two countries with very different national interests, achieved largely by the diplomatic skill of Netanyahu and his brilliant Minister of Strategic Affairs, Ron Dermer. The maintenance and development of the US-Israel strategic relationship in such difficult circumstances has perhaps been the shining light of diplomacy in 2025."

Despite Israel's successes over the last year, there were failures and setbacks on the international and diplomatic front. "In 2025 Israel has been unable to rally the support of many countries who should be her natural allies. That includes Britain, France, Australia and Canada, all of whom opted to turn their backs on Israel and reward Hamas terrorism by recognising a non-existent 'Palestinian state'. Each of these countries turned against Israel not because of foreign affairs but to satisfy elements of their anti-Israel domestic electorates."

"Likewise, the anti-Israel clamour in much of the international media, international bodies like the UN and so-called human rights groups has only grown in 2025, fed by a highly effective and long-standing political warfare campaign," Col. Kemp said.

Look ahead to 2026, Col. Kemp said: "In the coming year, Israel will have to disarm Hamas and remove them from control of Gaza. That should be the role of the International Stability Force under Trump’s peace plan. However, the prospects of any international forces confronting Hamas if they fail to voluntarily disarm are extremely slim."

"Likewise, Hezballah will have to be dealt with. Despite Israel’s efforts to contain them they continue to regenerate. Unless international pressure can prevail - which looks unlikely - Israel is likely to have to launch major operations against them in 2026.

"The Houthis remain a serious threat to Israel and global shipping. Again, in the absence of efffective international action, Israel is likely to have to return to the charge against the Houthis.

"Judea and Samaria remain volatile. So far, during this war, Israel has succeeded in preventing the major explosion there that many predicted and some malicious players have been working to ignite. That situation will remain extremely volatile in 2026.

"Turkey too represents an ongoing threat to Israel, with Erdogan’s imperialist ambitions in the region. In particular Turkish interference in Syria and Lebanon will need to be watched carefully this year, and countered when necessary.

"Depending on how the current protests develop in Iran, Israel, perhaps with US support, may also need to re-launch significant military operations there. It is possible the ayatollahs may attempt to rebuild their nuclear programme but probably the most urgent threat will come from current efforts to regenerate their ballistic missile arsenal.

He stated that "the challenges in 2026 will be many and serious but, going on the successes of 2025, we can be confident that Israel will again prevail, especially with the continued backing of President Trump."

While challenges remain, "there are also opportunities, including the potential for diplomatic normalisation with Islamic countries in the region and beyond, many of whom have been increasingly impressed by Israel’s actions since 7th October 2023. Of course, that runs counter to the predictions of many, especially those who wish Israel ill but do not understand regional dynamics."

"We can also expect Israel to build further on its economic success as well as its achievements in international trade, including arms sales," he added.

"European countries themselves should be looking at Israel as an exemplar, as they continue to grapple with dramatically growing internal problems, not least uncontrolled immigration, plus the threat from Russia. I’m not talking about copying Israel’s battlefield successes in 2025, but the national spirit in the country, especially among its young people, that has enabled them," Col. Kemp concluded. INN

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After Rafah crossing visit, Angelina Jolie prepares to leave Los Angeles. The Hollywood actress has begun showing her home to potential buyers after deciding to leave the United States for Europe; her friend says she 'can’t get far enough away from the drama' and sees leaving as the only option Inbal Hananel | updated:01.04.26 07:43 Over the past weekend, Angelina Jolie visited the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing as part of what was described as a “humanitarian tour” on behalf of Gaza residents. It is unfortunate she did not go a bit further and travel a few more miles to places such as Kibbutz Be’eri, or the site of the Nova music festival, to witness the atrocities committed there on October 7 — but that is a subject for another story. YNet

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Iranian woman appeals to PM for support of anti-regime protests. Iranian woman urges PM Netanyahu to support growing protests against the Islamic Republic, as demonstrations spread across Iran amid a deepening economic crisis and increasing signs of pressure on the regime. Israel National News. Jan 4, 2026, 1:35 PM INN

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Newborn baby named after Bondi Beach victim. Henry Amzalak was born eight days after the murder of his great-grandfather Tibor Weitzen at Bondi Beach. Israel National News. Jan 4, 2026, 1:27 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Rabbi Yehoshua Schmidt: 'I survived two attacks, the army found 28 bullets'. Rabbi Yehoshua Schmidt praises Otzma Yehudit, backs death penalty bill, reflects war and the two terror attacks he survived and his son's injury in the war. Dvir Amar. Jan 4, 2026, 12:14 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Arabs pelt minibus with Israel children between Chomesh and Shavei Shomron. Thankfully, no one was injured as a result of this terrorist activity. Jan 4, 2026. JFeed

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Poor Qatarlson. Tucker's 'Pro-Maduro' Rant Backfires Spectacularly | WATCH. As Maduro chills in a NYC lockup (politely wishing "Happy New Year" on camera), this saga highlights MAGA's internal rifts: Hawks vs. isolationists, with Tucker's old words spoiling the party.

Jfeed Staff. Jan 4, 2026 04:26 Just when you thought the dust was settling on President Trump's blockbuster capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, an old clip from Tucker Carlson has resurfaced and boy, has it curdled. What was once a fiery foreign policy takedown is now being roasted online as a prime example of "aged like milk," with critics calling out the Fox alum for seemingly soft-pedaling a dictator who's now in U.S. cuffs on narco-terrorism charges. JFeed

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It's always Israel. "Zionist Tint:" Acting Venezuelan President Blames Israel for Maduro Arrest Speaking in a televised address flanked by senior figures from the ruling elite, Rodríguez claimed the operation that transferred Maduro into U.S. custody was the work of “the Zionists." She offered no evidence to support the allegation. Judah Pe'er. Jan 4, 2026 JFeed

“Zionist Tint”: Maduro’s Regime Reverts to Antisemitic Panic Mode

The moment Nicolás Maduro fell into U.S. custody, Caracas reached for its oldest, ugliest weapon: blame the Jews.

In a deranged televised rant, Venezuela’s so-called “acting president” Delcy Rodríguez declared that “the Zionists” were behind Maduro’s arrest. No facts. No evidence. Just raw, reflexive antisemitism—the universal language of collapsing dictatorships and jihadist-aligned regimes.

This wasn’t a slip. It was a tell.

For years, Venezuela has functioned as an outpost of Iranian influence in the Western Hemisphere. Under Hugo Chávez, the regime handed out Venezuelan passports like party favors to Iranian operatives and Islamist extremists. Under Maduro, that infrastructure metastasized into a full-blown alliance: narco-state meets jihad-state.

Iranian propaganda outlet HispanTV still broadcasts freely from Venezuelan soil, spewing Tehran’s anti-Israel, anti-West poison across Latin America. Hezbollah financiers and facilitators—protected, laundered, and enabled by the regime—have operated with impunity. The Venezuela–Colombia border and Margarita Island have long been black holes of lawlessness where terror finance, drug trafficking, and Islamist logistics converge.

This is not about immigration. It is about terror networks with state protection.

Figures like Alex Saab, Hezbollah-linked money man and Maduro’s financial lifeline, expose the regime’s true nature: Venezuela is not merely corrupt—it is strategically aligned with Iran’s global jihadist project. When Rodríguez screams “Zionists,” she isn’t improvising. She’s signaling loyalty to Tehran and its proxies.

Blaming Israel is the last refuge of regimes that cannot explain reality. Maduro wasn’t “captured” by Zionists. He was caught because he ran a criminal enterprise masquerading as a government—propped up by Iran, sustained by Hezbollah cash, and addicted to antisemitic conspiracy theories.

The mask is off. Venezuela under Maduro isn’t just a failed state. It’s an Iranian satellite, a jihadist safe haven, and an antisemitic propaganda hub—and now it’s panicking because accountability finally arrived. at EoZ

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Hezbollah's Real Estate Plot. Hezbollah Planned to Take Over Kiryat Shmona from Within - Here's How. Minister Wasserlauf reveals Hezbollah attempted to purchase apartments in Kiryat Shmona during war to control northern Israeli city from within. Shin Bet investigating.

Gila Isaacson. Jan 4, 2026 10:34 Minister of the Negev, Galilee and National Resilience Yitzhak Wasserlauf claimed Sunday during a cabinet meeting that Hezbollah attempted to take control of the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona from within, by purchasing apartments in the city. JFeed

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Watch: Cheers for Bondi Beach heroes. Ahmed Al-Ahmad, who tackled the terrorist at Bondi Beach, and Jewish teen Haya Dadon, who was shot while protecting two small children, were honored by thousands of spectators in Sydney stadium. Nisan Tsur. Jan 4, 2026, 2:44 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Watch: Chabad truck 'song-bombs' Mamdani press conference. A Chabad truck playing the Hasidic song 'Hinei Ma Tov' passed by Zohran Mamdani's conference to announce members of his cabinet and other changes, bringing the proceedings to a breief halt. Israel National News. Jan 4, 2026, 5:15 PM INN

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Shocking footage: Infiltrator passes girl over security wall. Suspect arrested on suspicion of smuggling illegal entrants through the separation barrier and abusing a minor. Israel National News. Jan 4, 2026, 4:11 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Collapse of narco-terror hub: Maduro's fall weakening Iran, Hezbollah's drug network - analysis. Maduro’s removal and US oversight in Venezuela are already weakening Iran and Hezbollah’s South American foothold.

By Amichai Stein. January 4, 2026.. Less than 48 hours after the US operation against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, his government is still functioning at this stage, his vice president is acting as head of state, and therefore, it is not yet clear what Venezuela’s relations with Iran and Hezbollah will look like in the new era.

That said, it is already evident that the fact that Maduro is no longer the country’s dictator, and that everything that happens in Venezuela from now on will be under American supervision, constitutes a severe blow to the operational base of Tehran and the Lebanese terrorist organization in South America. JPost

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Graham Joins Trey Gowdy to Discuss the Fall of Maduro, Protests in Iran & Legislative Goals for 2026. USSenLindseyGraham. Jan 4, 2026. ... All right, chairman, let me span the globe with you. How do you see the protests that are unfolding in Iran? And is this an opportunity to rid the world of the single biggest sponsor of terrorism? Well, all the people who were protesting for the Palestinians, where are you today? Uh, standing behind the people of Iran are trying to throw over the Ayatollah, who's a religious Nazi, who who killed a 16-year-old girl for not wearing a head cover on a bus, who's tortured, raped, and maimed the population, who is the largest state sponsor of terrorism on the planet. The people are in open revolt. They've chosen not to live this way anymore... on YouTube

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Report: IRGC launches missile drills amid regional tensions. IRGC launches missile and air‑defense drills across Iran amid concerns of possible escalation with Israel. Elad Benari. Jan 4, 2026, 11:38 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Anti-Semitism Strikes Again: The Chilling Message Left at the Brandenburg Commissioner’s Door. German authorities are on high alert after a suspected arsonist set fire to the property of Brandenburg’s anti-Semitism commissioner, leaving behind a chilling symbol linked to the Hamas terrorist organization.

Eliana Fleming. Jan 4, 2026 17:15

A dangerous escalation in politically motivated violence has shaken the German state of Brandenburg following a targeted arson attack on the home of Andreas Büttner, the state's anti-Semitism commissioner. The incident, which occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning, has drawn sharp condemnation from top government officials who view the act as a direct assault on democratic values and the fight against hate speech. Investigators are treating the case as a potential act of extremism, particularly after discovering a controversial symbol painted on the commissioner's front door, suggesting a clear connection to current global tensions and the ongoing war.

The fire broke out at approximately 3:40 a.m. in the town of Templin, located north of Berlin. Local police and fire departments were alerted to a blaze in a shed on Büttner’s property. While firefighters were able to extinguish the flames quickly and prevent the fire from spreading to the main residence, the psychological impact on the family has been profound. Büttner, who was inside the house with his family at the time, later expressed the gravity of the situation to local reporters. "My family was in the house at the time," Büttner said, adding that while they are physically unharmed, they are under the impression of a serious attack. He remained resolute in his professional mission, stating firmly, "I will not be intimidated by this."

Beyond the physical damage to the shed, investigators found an "anti-constitutional symbol" painted near the scene. Security sources confirmed that a red triangle was discovered on the front door of the main house. This specific symbol is frequently associated with Hamas, as the terrorist group uses the inverted red triangle in its propaganda videos and publications to mark Israeli targets. The presence of this mark has led the state’s security service to prioritize the investigation as a high level extremist crime.

The political leadership of Brandenburg has stood firmly behind Büttner. Premier Dietmar Woidke issued a statement emphasizing that extremism in any form has no place in their society, declaring that violence against people or property remains absolutely unacceptable. Interior Minister René Wilke echoed these sentiments, describing Büttner's work as a special service for the state and its people. As the manhunt for the perpetrators continues, the German government has vowed to maintain its support for officials tasked with protecting Jewish life and fighting anti-Semitism, despite the increasing risks of physical retaliation from radical groups. JFeed

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Eva Schloss, Auschwitz survivor and Anne Frank’s stepsister, dies at 96. Auschwitz survivor and Anne Frank’s stepsister Eva Schloss dies at 96. A leading Holocaust educator, she leaves behind a legacy of combating hatred and prejudice. Israel National News. Jan 5, 2026, 1:09 AM (GMT+2) INN

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What Britain’s silence on Iran’s protests says about its foreign policy priorities - analysis. Why is there no statement about supporting regime change in Iran? And why are there no comments about the international law violations by the Iranian regime as it cracks down on protesters?

By Mathilda Heller. January 5, 2026 00:24 "Starmer’s silence on Iran is shocking,” the UK’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel opined on Saturday, referring to a dramatic absence of commentary from British politicians and British media regarding the weeklong anti-regime protests in Iran.

“With Iran’s cruel authoritarian regime emboldened by its brutal crackdown of freedom and democracy advocates within the country, Britain stands in silence as we see the chilling images of protesters being silenced and young activists being detained,” she added. JPost

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Report: Khamenei preparing to flee to Moscow if forces desert. Western intelligence report says Ayatollah Khamenei has a secret plan to flee Tehran with close aides if Iran’s security forces falter, as nationwide protests and economic unrest intensify. Israel National News. Jan 5, 2026, 4:16 AM (GMT+2) INN

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London café fires barista after swastika‑shaped coffee incident. Hampstead café fires a 19‑year‑old trainee barista after a Jewish customer received a cappuccino topped with cocoa powder resembling a swastika. Israel National News. Published: Jan 5, 2026, 5:22 AM (GMT+2) INN

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"It looks weak": Dems fume at their party's response to Maduro capture. Andrew Solender. January 4, 2026.

Some Democrats are grumbling at their party's largely oppositional stance to President Trump's raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, saying privately that their colleagues should be celebrating.

Why it matters: These lawmakers argue it could be a major political miscalculation if the party fails to applaud the downfall of a brutal dictator with sufficient volume, even given grave concerns about the operation's legality and longer-term ramifications.

Party leaders have raged at Trump for bypassing Congress and leaving them in the dark about the operation to capture Maduro, which involved striking several military targets in Venezuela's capital city. And many rank-and-file lawmakers, buoyed by polling that shows Americans largely oppose a protracted intervention in Venezuela, have also seized on Trump's comments that the U.S. will temporarily "run" the country. Some centrists and battleground-district members — who spoke to Axios on the condition of anonymity to offer candid criticisms of their party's messaging — have a different view. What we're hearing: One swing-district House Democrat told Axios in a text message on Saturday, "Nuance is dead in politics."

"Maduro is bad, glad he is gone ... You can't have it both ways," the lawmaker said, venting that "everything Trump touches must be bad according to the base." Another vulnerable House Democrat told Axios in a phone interview: "As Democrats we can't just condemn what happened ... I wish the Democratic Party would be a little bit more measured on this." "I think it looks weak," a third centrist House Democrat said. "If you don't acknowledge when there is a win for our country, then you lose all credibility." Acios

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German antisemitism commissioner's property set on fire, Hamas symbol graffitied nearby. Büttner said that the incident represented a "massive escalation" directed against him, his family, and his home, but he would not be intimidated.

BY Michael Starr. January 5, 2026.

A shed on the property of Brandenburg Commissioner for Combating Antisemitism Andreas Büttner was set on fire in a suspected arson attack on Sunday before dawn, according to the German politician and Brandenburg Police.

The shed was set alight while Büttner's family was home, but the commissioner and police said in statements that they were not harmed in the incident. JPost

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WATCH: IDF kills two Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon amid ongoing disarmament talks. Meanwhile, the IDF intercepted a drone attempting to smuggle rifles and cartridges over the Egyptian border.

By James Genn. January 5, 2026.

The IDF conducted a strike, killing two Hezbollah terrorists in al-Jumayjimah, southern Lebanon, on Sunday, the military confirmed on Monday. JPost

IDF strikes Hezbollah and Hamas terror targets in Lebanon, the military says. Amid rising tensions in the north, the IDF urged residents of four southern Lebanese villages to move at least 300 meters from marked buildings ahead of planned strikes Lior Ben Ari, Yoav Zitun | updated:1.5.26 11:11 YNet

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'Trump is a man of action,' US warns Iranian regime in Farsi-language message. A US State Department post warns Iran as protests continue, with reports of dozens killed, hundreds arrested, and Trump threatening similar action to capturing Venezuela's President Maduro.

By Tobias Holcman, James Genn. January 5, 2026.

The US State Department's Farsi account on Sunday published a picture of President Donald Trump along with the caption, Don't play games with President Trump," written in red text in Farsi.

The post featured a picture of Trump alongside US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with other officials standing behind them, and contained an additional warning that "President Trump is a man of action. If you didn't know, now you know." JPost

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Zohran Mamdani previously called to end sanctions on Venezuela, partly blamed penalties for US migrant crisis By Carl Campanile Published Jan. 4, 2026, 6:32 p.m. ET NYPost

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No longer silenced: Freed Israeli hostage details fear of being made a ‘sex slave’ for Hamas terrorists: ‘No one will silence me anymore’. By Caitlin McCormack. Published Jan. 4, 2026, 6:19 p.m. ET [12] A young woman held captive by Hamas for more than a year revealed her deep-seated fear that her captors would use her as a “sex slave” after repeated sexual assaults — and said they promised her an early release for her silence.

Romi Gonen, 25, is defiantly breaking her silence. “They often silenced my story and told me not to tell it. Now I am here, sitting in front of the camera, and honestly, no one will silence me anymore,” she bravely told CNN Sunday.

Gonen was taken hostage by Hamas terrorists during the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023. At just 23 years old, she was carted from one hideout to another in Gaza — and frequently abused to appease the terrorists’ abhorrent whims.

Romi Gonen, 25, told CNN she was sexually assaulted by her Hamas kidnappers multiple times.

After 471 days in captivity, she was one of the first three Israeli hostages released as part of the Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal

Gonen revealed in an interview with CNN that she was one of many hostages who suffered horrific sexual assaults at the hands of their Hamas captors.

She told the outlet that the first assault was just a few days into her capture. She was in total solitary confinement for the first 34 days and would only see her captors on occasion — including a pseudo medic who treated a gunshot wound she sustained to her arm during the Oct. 7 attack.

The supposed medic followed Gonen into the shower one day and brutally assaulted her under the pretext of treating her injury. “He was a ‘nurse’ so he allowed himself to ‘help me.’ I was wounded, powerless, and couldn’t do anything. He took everything from me. And I had to continue living with him in that house afterward,” she told the outlet.

There was a 16-day stretch where Gonen said two men named Ibrahim and Mohammed repeatedly harassed and threatened her. “I’m sitting on the bed. Ibrahim comes and sits next to me and harasses me. Everything is in complete silence. I start crying insanely, and he says, ‘Be careful. If you don’t calm down, I’ll get angry’,” she told the outlet.

“And that’s how the days go by: I go to the bathroom and Mohammed follows me. I sit on the toilet pulling down my pants with one hand, so he won’t see anything. Ibrahim keeps bothering me endlessly, touching my leg and thigh. I kick them off.”

In another instance, Gonen told the outlet she was forced into a bathroom by one of her captors, who followed her inside and assaulted her.

“I was crying like crazy, and he was having the time of his life, ecstatic, as if he had received the gift of a lifetime,” Gonen said. The then-23-year-old said she couldn’t help thinking to herself: “Romi, everyone in Israel thinks you’re dead, and you’re going to be his sex slave for life… Then he comes up to me, puts a gun to my head, and tells me, ‘If you tell anyone, I am going to kill you.’”

Gonen said she spoke with Hamas’ leader who offered her a place “at the top of the release list” for her silence on the assaults. At a certain point, the endless harassment became so apparent that senior Hamas commanders were made aware.

Gonen said she was led through a tunnel and put on the phone with Izz a Din al-Haddad, then head of the Hamas Gaza Brigade, and now the group’s Gaza leader.

She told the outlet she could recall being offered “some kind of deal. ‘I will put you at the top of the release list, and in return, you will promise me that you will keep quiet.’”

“They often silenced my story and told me not to tell it. Now I am here, sitting in front of the camera, and honestly, no one will silence me anymore. It happened to me, and it was terrible, and I deal with the consequences every day, but I am here. I beat it. I am in the aftermath, and I am much stronger than it,” she told the outlet.

Thirteen other women and two men confirmed they had also experienced or witnessed sexual violence while being held hostage in Gaza, according to a July 2025 report by the Dinah Project. MYPost

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Report: IRGC launches missile drills amid regional tensions. IRGC launches missile and air‑defense drills across Iran amid concerns of possible escalation with Israel. Elad Benari. Jan 4, 2026, 11:38 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Anti-Semitism Strikes Again: The Chilling Message Left at the Brandenburg Commissioner’s Door. German authorities are on high alert after a suspected arsonist set fire to the property of Brandenburg’s anti-Semitism commissioner, leaving behind a chilling symbol linked to the Hamas terrorist organization.

Eliana Fleming. Jan 4, 2026 17:15

A dangerous escalation in politically motivated violence has shaken the German state of Brandenburg following a targeted arson attack on the home of Andreas Büttner, the state's anti-Semitism commissioner. The incident, which occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning, has drawn sharp condemnation from top government officials who view the act as a direct assault on democratic values and the fight against hate speech. Investigators are treating the case as a potential act of extremism, particularly after discovering a controversial symbol painted on the commissioner's front door, suggesting a clear connection to current global tensions and the ongoing war.

The fire broke out at approximately 3:40 a.m. in the town of Templin, located north of Berlin. Local police and fire departments were alerted to a blaze in a shed on Büttner’s property. While firefighters were able to extinguish the flames quickly and prevent the fire from spreading to the main residence, the psychological impact on the family has been profound. Büttner, who was inside the house with his family at the time, later expressed the gravity of the situation to local reporters. "My family was in the house at the time," Büttner said, adding that while they are physically unharmed, they are under the impression of a serious attack. He remained resolute in his professional mission, stating firmly, "I will not be intimidated by this."

Beyond the physical damage to the shed, investigators found an "anti-constitutional symbol" painted near the scene. Security sources confirmed that a red triangle was discovered on the front door of the main house. This specific symbol is frequently associated with Hamas, as the terrorist group uses the inverted red triangle in its propaganda videos and publications to mark Israeli targets. The presence of this mark has led the state’s security service to prioritize the investigation as a high level extremist crime.

The political leadership of Brandenburg has stood firmly behind Büttner. Premier Dietmar Woidke issued a statement emphasizing that extremism in any form has no place in their society, declaring that violence against people or property remains absolutely unacceptable. Interior Minister René Wilke echoed these sentiments, describing Büttner's work as a special service for the state and its people. As the manhunt for the perpetrators continues, the German government has vowed to maintain its support for officials tasked with protecting Jewish life and fighting anti-Semitism, despite the increasing risks of physical retaliation from radical groups. JFeed

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Eva Schloss, Auschwitz survivor and Anne Frank’s stepsister, dies at 96. Auschwitz survivor and Anne Frank’s stepsister Eva Schloss dies at 96. A leading Holocaust educator, she leaves behind a legacy of combating hatred and prejudice. Israel National News. Jan 5, 2026, 1:09 AM (GMT+2) INN

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What Britain’s silence on Iran’s protests says about its foreign policy priorities - analysis. Why is there no statement about supporting regime change in Iran? And why are there no comments about the international law violations by the Iranian regime as it cracks down on protesters?

By Mathilda Heller. January 5, 2026 00:24 "Starmer’s silence on Iran is shocking,” the UK’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel opined on Saturday, referring to a dramatic absence of commentary from British politicians and British media regarding the weeklong anti-regime protests in Iran.

“With Iran’s cruel authoritarian regime emboldened by its brutal crackdown of freedom and democracy advocates within the country, Britain stands in silence as we see the chilling images of protesters being silenced and young activists being detained,” she added. JPost

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Report: Khamenei preparing to flee to Moscow if forces desert. Western intelligence report says Ayatollah Khamenei has a secret plan to flee Tehran with close aides if Iran’s security forces falter, as nationwide protests and economic unrest intensify. Israel National News. Jan 5, 2026, 4:16 AM (GMT+2) INN

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London café fires barista after swastika‑shaped coffee incident. Hampstead café fires a 19‑year‑old trainee barista after a Jewish customer received a cappuccino topped with cocoa powder resembling a swastika. Israel National News. Published: Jan 5, 2026, 5:22 AM (GMT+2) INN

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The connection between Venezuela's drugs and terror - and how it affects us. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs President Dr. Dan Diker warns that Venezuela has become a central hub for Iranian-backed terror, drug trafficking, and Hezbollah operations across Latin America. Shimon Cohen. Jan 5, 2026, 7:49 PM (GMT+2) INN

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David Collier: The Lie Beneath the Tree: From Wikipedia Fiction To Witch Hunt. Jan 5, 2026. In September 2025, a large delegation of U.S. legislators visited Ofakim – a small town in southern Israel and one of the communities devastated during the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023. During their visit, they planted trees – a simple, universal memorial act in honour of the murdered civilians.

That act has since been recast by anti-Israel activists as something sinister. Campaigners immediately claimed the trees were planted atop a “depopulated Palestinian village” – and some have gone further, calling for the legislators involved to be forced to resign.

Through a chain of factual errors, activist myth-making, and the quiet authority of “reference” sources that repeat those errors as fact, a unifying gesture of mourning has been transformed into an accusation of moral wrongdoing.

The fabrication of Ofakim as a “depopulated Palestinian village” was subsequently laundered through a media corps that hounded and interrogated participants – not over facts, but over fictions and libels treated as truths.

The truth is simple and decisive. There was no depopulated village at the site of Ofakim. No erased community beneath the tree. Yet the claim persists because it was never presented as an allegation, but instead stated and repeated as established fact – embedded, cited, and endlessly recycled.

In advancing the false “village” narrative, campaigners are not uncovering a buried injustice. They are erasing the victims of a real one – all in service of a story that never happened.

In the end we are left witnessing a witch hunt for people who visited an ally of the United States and planted a tree in memory of those slaughtered in a terrorist massacre...

The Genocide Lie.

Whatever position one takes on Israel’s war in Gaza, it does not meet the definition of genocide. The most basic and decisive test for genocide is intent. Without demonstrable intent to destroy a population as such, the charge collapses.

Attempts to infer genocidal intent by trawling for intemperate remarks made by Israeli politicians in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 atrocities amount to little more than propaganda-by-quotation. Angry rhetoric, spoken in the wake of mass murder, is not evidence of state policy – and international law does not operate on selective outrage.

More fundamentally, the allegation fails a test of basic logic. Israel is the dominant military power in the region. If the intent were the destruction or removal of Gaza’s population, the outcome would have been immediate and unmistakable.

Instead, Israel has issued extensive pre-strike warnings, established civilian evacuation routes and designated safety areas, and – crucially – committed ground forces to urban combat at enormous cost. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers have been killed fighting house to house. That choice makes no sense under a theory of genocide. An army seeking extermination does not voluntarily incur such losses; it uses overwhelming force from a distance.

To argue genocide, therefore, requires accepting an implausible proposition: that Israel deliberately sacrificed hundreds of its own soldiers, prolonged a costly war, and absorbed international condemnation – all to maintain the appearance of restraint while secretly pursuing the destruction of a population it manifestly had the power to eliminate far more quickly.

It is a political accusation, not a legal one, and it collapses under even minimal scrutiny.. DavidCollier

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Rockets in the Making. The Iranian Axis: New Intelligence Reveals the Global Network Re-Arming Hamas. Israeli intelligence has exposed three major smuggling routes being used by Hamas to rebuild its military strength in total defiance of the ceasefire and President Trump’s regional peace plan.

Eliana Fleming. Jan 5, 2026 18:33 JFeed

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Funds Hamas Killers. UK Rewards Terror: Palestine Embassy Opens in London Despite PA's Terror Paychecks The UK upgrades the Palestinian mission to full embassy status after recognizing a state led by an authority that pays stipends to terrorists, a move seen as rewarding Hamas without demanding the final hostages release or governance reform.

Eliana Fleming. Jan 5, 2026 14:12 JFeed

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Iran Street No Longer Fears the Basij Militia. Cracks in the Armor: Is the Mossad Reporting the Final Collapse of the Basij? A viral message from the Mossad has signaled a potential breaking point for the Iranian regime, reporting that thousands of security personnel are choosing to lay down their arms rather than fire on their own people.

Eliana Fleming Jan 5, 2026 17:25 JFeed

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Netanyahu using Putin channel to calm Iran. Kan 11 News reports that Netanyahu used Putin as a channel to send calming messages to Iran, while warning Tehran that any attack on Israel would bring “severe" consequences. Israel National News. Jan 6, 2026, 3:18 AM INN

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Iran enters tenth day of protests with 29 killed, 1,203 civilians detained so far - HRANA. At least 1,203 Iranians have been detained in the previous nine days of protest activity, according to HRANA's data. Still, "the actual number of detainees is estimated to be significantly higher."

By James Genn. January 6, 2026 10:03 As the protests across Iran that started last week entered their tenth day, the number of activists who have died has risen to at least 29, the Human Rights Activists News Agency reported on Tuesday morning.

This includes two who were" affiliated with law enforcement-security forces," HRANA noted.

In addition, at least 1,203 Iranians have been detained in the previous nine days of protest activity, according to HRANA's data. Still, "the actual number of detainees is estimated to be significantly higher," the agency commented.

Further, there have reportedly been at least 64 instances of protesters being injured by pellets and rubber bullets since the protests began. JPost

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HAMAS 'LIES' ROW Egyptian extremist’s mum appears to back baseless claims ‘Hamas did not torture Israeli hostages after October 7’. The re-post came a day before her son returned to the UK after spending years in prison in Egypt for 'spreading fake news'

Thomas Godfrey , News Reporter| Ava Solieri , Foreign News Reporter Published: 22:45, 3 Jan 2026 Updated: 01:41, 4 Jan 2026.

Unprecedented new look inside 'Gaza Metro' terror tunnels where Hamas plotted attacks & hostages were chained & tortured.

THE mother of extremist Alaa Abd El-Fattah appeared to back baseless claims that Hamas did not torture Israeli hostages after October 7.

Laila Soueif reposted the conspiracy theory a day before her British-Egyptian son, 44, returned to join her in the UK. He had spent years in jail in Egypt for “spreading fake news”.

But he was caught up in a row on his return over old online posts in which he called for Zionists and UK cops to be killed, and called himself a terrorist. TheSun

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Questions raised over £2m funding of new Islamic 'front' for Iranian regime Glasgow headquarters. The Iranian embassy hit back at the claims arguing they were 'politically motivated'. John Glover Money reporter 12:34, 04 Jan 2026 ScottishDailyExpress

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MIGRANT TAUNTS Hamas supporter who entered UK illegally in dinghy flaunts Christmas presents online after being released from jail. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp says British taxpayers are being 'laughed at' in Labour's Britain

Benedict Elliot | Thomas Godfrey , News Reporter Published: 23:15, 4 Jan 2026| Updated: 23:34, 4 Jan 2026 TheSun

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Notes part III: Jan 6, 2026 - Jan 22, 2026

Report: Venezuela's Maduro Gave Hizbullah 10,000 Passports. MEMRI. January 5, 2026. The Lebanese daily Al-Nahar on Jan. 3, 2026, quoted Lebanese Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Wehbe Katicha as saying that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro provided Lebanese Hizbullah with 10,000 Venezuelan passports, some of which were used by officers of of Syria's Assad regime to flee the country. MEMRI

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Israel, Syria, and US establish intelligence-sharing mechanism, set talks for civilian cooperation. Furthermore, it was agreed to begin talks between Jerusalem and Damascus in civilian areas, including medicine, energy, and agriculture, The 'Post' has learned.

By Amichai Stein, January 6, 2026. Israel, Syria, and the United States agreed to establish a joint “fusion mechanism” to serve as a communication cell for intelligence sharing, military de-escalation, diplomatic engagement, and commercial issues, according to a Tuesday statement. JPost

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In first visit, Sa'ar says Somaliland 'not a virtual state' in jab at Palestinian state recognition Sa'ar is the first Israeli official to visit Somaliland since Jerusalem recognized its independence on December 26.

By Amuchai Stein, Miriam Sela-Eitam, January 6, 2026. During his first diplomatic trip to Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar explained that, because Somaliland has operated for 35 years in accordance with international law, Israel could recognize Somaliland rather than Palestine.

"Unlike ‘Palestine’, Somaliland is not a virtual state," he said. JPost

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Pahlavi dismisses calls for US-led regime change in Iran, predicts 'Cyrus Accord' with Israel. Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi said regime change will be driven by Iranians themselves, rejecting foreign military intervention and predicting closer ties with Israel after the Islamic Republic’s.

By Games Genn. January 6, 2026.

Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi does not believe that it is necessary for the US to extract Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and put him on trial for his crimes, downplaying chatter that the US military may conduct such an operation, similar to the extraction of Maduro from Caracas, Venezuela.

Pahlavi's comments came during an interview with the Wall Street Journal's Tunku Varadarajan via Zoom, published on Monday.

"I think that change in Iran is ultimately in the hands of the people of Iran themselves," he affirmed.

"Many governments have reasons to hold Khamenei accountable, but I think it will be far more appropriate for this to be solely in the hands of the Iranian people, and to have world governments be supportive" of their fight to free themselves, he added. JPost

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Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. This MDA Paramedic Wore a Patch That Said "Peace Was Never an Option". This is not the kind of person you want treating you or your loved ones when you are sick. Not to mention the blatant disrespect and ingratitude this behavior shows.

Jfeed Staff. Jan 6, 2026 10:43

An Arab Israeli paramedic working for Magen David Adom (MDA), Arin Kabha, has been placed under house arrest for five days following controversy over a patch on her uniform featured in a viral TikTok video. Jfeed

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The Hezbollah-Venezuela Connection: What You Don't Know. For over 20 years, Hezbollah has built a sprawling terror network on Venezuela's Margarita Island, just 1,200 miles from Florida, with training camps, drug trafficking operations, and Iranian military support under the protection of the Maduro regime.

For over two decades, Venezuela has served as a critical outpost for Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere, with reports detailing the group's entrenchment on Margarita Island and ties to the former regimes of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro.

U.S. intelligence assessments and media investigations describe this presence as evolving from fundraising networks among the Lebanese diaspora in the 1980s to sophisticated operations involving training, smuggling, and financial schemes by the 2000s. Margarita Island, once a bustling tourist spot, has been highlighted as a primary hub, surpassing even the Tri-Border Area in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay for Hezbollah's regional activities.

Training Camps and Iranian Support.

Allegations of Hezbollah-operated training camps on Margarita Island surfaced as early as 2011, involving paramilitary instruction for recruits from Venezuela and other Latin American countries. These facilities reportedly include political indoctrination, weapons handling, and drug-related operations, all under the protection of the Venezuelan government. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been implicated in providing logistics, weapons, and instructors on Venezuelan territory, including collaborations with local militias known as colectivos. Some recruits have been sent to Iran, including to Qom for ideological training, or to Lebanon. Reports also note that Hezbollah operatives and fighters have relocated to Venezuela following Israeli strikes in Lebanon.

Illicit Networks: Drugs, Money, and Gold.

Hezbollah's operations in Venezuela are deeply intertwined with narcoterrorism, including partnerships with the Cartel of the Suns, a network allegedly involving Venezuelan military officials, and dissident factions of Colombia's FARC. Activities include cocaine trafficking and money laundering through trade-based schemes, often utilizing duty-free zones on Margarita Island. Additionally, gold-for-arms deals have been reported, with Hezbollah and Iran exploiting Venezuela's illegal gold trade to circumvent international sanctions and finance their activities.

A key enabler of these operations has been the issuance of Venezuelan passports and identification documents. Between 2010 and 2019, more than 10,000 such documents were provided to individuals from Lebanon, Iran, and Syria, often through networks linked to the regime. Figures like former Vice President Tareck El Aissami, accused of Hezbollah connections, have been tied to this system, which provides cover for operatives using fake identities. Earlier intelligence from 2013 documented similar patterns dating back to 2008–2012.

The Nassereddine Network and Regime Ties At the center of these activities is the Nassereddine family, a Lebanese-Venezuelan clan with deep connections. Ghazi Nassereddine, a former diplomat, and Abdallah Nassereddine, a businessman based on Margarita Island, have been accused of overseeing indoctrination, training, and smuggling operations. This network, which began under Chávez and grew under Maduro, has benefited from state protection, allowing Hezbollah to operate with relative impunity.

Strategic Implications and Proximity Concerns.

Margarita Island's location, approximately 1,200 miles from Florida, has amplified U.S. concerns, with officials labeling Venezuela not merely as a failed state but as a "staging ground" for Iranian and Hezbollah activities in the Americas. This positioning is seen as enabling potential threats through forward operations, including the use of duty-free zones and state-backed infrastructure.

After Maduro: Silence and Potential Disruption.

Following Nicolás Maduro's ouster in January 2026, Iran voiced protests, but Hezbollah has issued no public statements on the matter. Analyses suggest that the loss of regime protection could lead to the abandonment or disruption of some outposts, though entrenched networks may endure. Pro-Venezuelan sources, including state media under the former regime, have dismissed these claims as U.S.-driven propaganda. JFeed

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Northern Border heats up. Hezbollah Forges Ahead, Despite Impending War with Israel. Lebanon received an indirect message stating that if Hezbollah relinquishes its precision missiles and UAVs, this could help prevent war. However, Hezbollah rejected the proposal and refuses to involve the Lebanese state in addressing the issue, increasing the likelihood of near-term escalation.

Jfeed Staff. Jan 6, 2026 07:55 JFeed

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Aid organization attacks Israel claiming it's the third largest, COGAT: 'Provided only 0.14%'. The 'Save the Children' organization attacked Israel following its refusal to register it in the international organizations registration mechanism at the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, claiming that "Israeli requirements harm the organization" - which it describes as "the third largest humanitarian emergency organization in the Gaza Strip providing support to 1.6 million residents in the Gaza Strip." The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) responded that "the organization was indeed rejected. The registration process exists to prevent Hamas from exploiting aid to promote terrorism. In reality, there is a large gap between the dramatic declaration and its actual contribution. Its role amounts to less than 240 aid trucks, 0.14% of all aid that entered." Itamar Eichner|1.6.26 YNet

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Mamdani Official: “Impoverish the White Middle Class. "Private property is a weapon of white supremacy". January 6, 2026. By Daniel Greenfield.

There’s no floor. No such thing as too much. Leftist politics is an endless drop shaft and as a society free falls into it, it passes gulags, generational ones (in North Korea), death camps, mass famine, genetic engineering (China) and every horror imaginable.

So the thing you think is absolutely insane turns out to be the gateway to the next house of horrors.

View the Mamdani administration in that light. The new wave of DSAers are here to implement every insane ideological work product you can imagine in New York, in Seattle and any other place they control. Then they’ll try to do it at the national level.

And here’s a preview from Cea Weaver, Mamdani’s new ‘Tenant Director”.

“Private property is a weapon of white supremacy”... FPM

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HORROR IN YERUSHALAYIM: At Least 1 Killed When Bus Plows Into Chareidim Protesting IDF Draft. January 6, 2026

A deadly tragedy unfolded Tuesday afternoon in Yerushalayim, when a bus plowed into a group of Chareidi protesters during a large anti-draft demonstration, killing at least one person and injuring several others.

The incident occurred at the intersection of Yirmiyahu and Shamgar streets, where members of the Eida HaChareidis community had gathered for a hafganah protesting military conscription.

Emergency medical personnel rushed to the scene and began treating victims immediately. At least several individuals sustained injuries of varying severity, including a number reported to be in serious condition. Paramedics could be seen administering lifesaving care at the site as police secured the area.

Officials confirmed that one victim was tragically killed in the attack. The niftar was identified as an 18-year-old bochur. His name has not yet been released pending notification of family.

The bus driver was detained by police at the scene. Authorities have not yet clarified whether the incident is being treated as a deliberate attack or if other factors were involved. An investigation is ongoing. YWN

Bus driver rams into ultra-Orthodox protesters in Jerusalem, 14-year-old killed. Thousands of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) protesters gathered in Israel's capital on Tuesday evening • Driver arrested after killing one, injuring three others • Shas: "Haredi blood is not cheap."

By Miriam Sela-eitam, Tobias Holcman January 6, 2026. Yosef Eisenthal, a 14-year-old boy, was killed, and three were injured after a bus driver ran over ultra-Orthodox Jews during a haredi draft protest in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

"We responded to a severe collision involving a bus and several pedestrians," said United Hatzalah volunteer Dr. Aryeh Yaffe. "A male pedestrian was trapped unconscious under the vehicle. Fire and Rescue personnel extracted the patient, who was unfortunately found with no signs of life and pronounced deceased at the scene." JPost

This exemplifies Haaretz's signature incitement against the Haredim. The brazen hypocrisy of its racist worldview is unmistakable: On one hand, it whitewashes Arab racist terror as "freedom fighting," while fabricating lies to smear the IDF—brave defenders against genocidal Palestinian leaders—all to pander to global elites. On the other, it viciously hounds the Haredim, those devout Talmud scholars who largely shun weapons, demanding they join the very army it undermines. [1.6.26]. at EoZ [13]

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"We Don't Have the Capacity": Iranian President's Stunning Admission of State Failure 35 Dead and 4 Children Lost "We Don't Have the Capacity": Iranian President's Stunning Admission of State Failure. In an unprecedented admission of weakness, President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that the Iranian state is no longer capable of handling the massive wave of unrest and economic collapse sweeping the nation.

Eliana Fleming. Jan 6, 2026 18:06 JFeed

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Muslim radicals call for the execution of a cardinal in Iraq. By Elizabeth Owens, Zenit, January 5, 2026.

A single word, spoken from the pulpit on Christmas, has placed one of the Middle East’s most prominent Christian leaders under mounting pressure. Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, is facing an escalating campaign of intimidation in Iraq and neighboring Iran after remarks from his Christmas homily were lifted out of their pastoral context and reframed as a political provocation.

At the heart of the controversy lies the Arabic term commonly rendered as “normalization.” In his homily, Cardinal Sako employed the word as part of a spiritual appeal for healing after years of conflict: a call for social stability, restored trust among citizens, and reconciliation between families, communities and the Iraqi nation as a whole. According to the Chaldean Patriarchate, the intent was unmistakably religious, rooted in the Christmas message of peace and renewal, and entirely detached from regional geopolitics.

Yet in Iraq’s highly charged environment, language is never neutral. The word “normalization” has become politically radioactive, often used as shorthand for normalizing relations with Israel, an issue that can ignite immediate outrage. Critics seized on that association, recasting a pastoral exhortation as an alleged endorsement of forbidden political positions. Within hours, online narratives transformed a Christmas message into accusations of political betrayal.

The Patriarchate responded swiftly, stressing that the homily had no political content and explicitly rejecting claims that Cardinal Sako was advocating normalization with Israel. Officials reiterated that the message focused on peace, national cohesion and the dignity of Iraq, themes that have long marked the patriarch’s public ministry. The clarification, however, did little to stem the backlash….

Cardinal Sako’s own reported response underscores both the gravity of the moment and the depth of his commitment to his country. “If they want to put me on trial and execute me for the sake of Iraq, so be it,” he is quoted as saying. The remark, stark and unsettling, reflects the precarious position of Christian leaders in a region where theological language can be repurposed as political evidence, and where calls for peace may carry personal risk…. Zenit

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U.S. Calls Attack on Ilam Hospital “Clear Crime Against Humanity”. January 6, 2026. The United States government has strongly condemned the recent assault by Iranian security forces on a hospital in Ilam, calling it a “clear crime against humanity.” U.S. officials described the incident as a brutal and unlawful attack on a medical facility during ongoing nationwide protests in Iran.

In a post on the U.S. State Department’s social media accounts, the department shared graphic images of the raid and denounced the actions of Iranian security personnel, saying, “Hospitals are not battlefields.

These measures by the Islamic Republic regime are a gross violation of international law and show a complete disregard for human life.”

The criticism comes amid widespread unrest in Iran, where protests have entered their second week and security forces have intensified their crackdown following deadly clashes in the city of Malekshahi.

In response to the protests, Iranian security forces stormed Imam Khomeini Hospital in Ilam, the provincial capital in western Iran, where many injured demonstrators were receiving medical treatment.

According to local information obtained by IranWire, this was not the first attempt by security forces to breach the hospital. On the night of January 4, security forces surrounded the facility while protesters wounded in clashes in nearby Malekshahi were being treated inside.

Witnesses reported that doctors, nurses, and patients’ family members attempted to block the entrances to protect those sheltering in the hospital. Local eyewitnesses said security forces repeatedly entered the hospital compound, breaking down doors and attempting to seize wounded protesters.

Some medical staff and visitors resisted the intrusion, preventing full access to the wards. Several of the seriously injured, including individuals in critical condition or unconscious, remain hospitalized.

During unrest in Malekshahi County, near Ilam, at least seven protesters were killed when security forces opened fire on demonstrators.

Local sources identified the victims as Reza Azimzadeh, Fars (Farez) Aghamohammadi, Mostafa Aghamohammadi, Mehdi Emami-Pour, Mohammad Bazoneh, Mohammad Moghaddasi, and Latif Karimi.

Citizens and human rights activists have expressed outrage on social media and in international forums, describing the hospital raid and the broader suppression of protests as violations of international humanitarian law.

The U.S. condemnation adds to growing international pressure on Tehran as the protest movement continues to spread across Iranian cities and provinces IranWire

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U.S. Calls Attack on Ilam Hospital “Clear Crime Against Humanity”. January 6, 2026. The United States government has strongly condemned the recent assault by Iranian security forces on a hospital in Ilam, calling it a “clear crime against humanity.” U.S. officials described the incident as a brutal and unlawful attack on a medical facility during ongoing nationwide protests in Iran.

In a post on the U.S. State Department’s social media accounts, the department shared graphic images of the raid and denounced the actions of Iranian security personnel, saying, “Hospitals are not battlefields.

These measures by the Islamic Republic regime are a gross violation of international law and show a complete disregard for human life.”

The criticism comes amid widespread unrest in Iran, where protests have entered their second week and security forces have intensified their crackdown following deadly clashes in the city of Malekshahi.

In response to the protests, Iranian security forces stormed Imam Khomeini Hospital in Ilam, the provincial capital in western Iran, where many injured demonstrators were receiving medical treatment.

According to local information obtained by IranWire, this was not the first attempt by security forces to breach the hospital. On the night of January 4, security forces surrounded the facility while protesters wounded in clashes in nearby Malekshahi were being treated inside.

Witnesses reported that doctors, nurses, and patients’ family members attempted to block the entrances to protect those sheltering in the hospital. Local eyewitnesses said security forces repeatedly entered the hospital compound, breaking down doors and attempting to seize wounded protesters.

Some medical staff and visitors resisted the intrusion, preventing full access to the wards. Several of the seriously injured, including individuals in critical condition or unconscious, remain hospitalized.

During unrest in Malekshahi County, near Ilam, at least seven protesters were killed when security forces opened fire on demonstrators.

Local sources identified the victims as Reza Azimzadeh, Fars (Farez) Aghamohammadi, Mostafa Aghamohammadi, Mehdi Emami-Pour, Mohammad Bazoneh, Mohammad Moghaddasi, and Latif Karimi.

Citizens and human rights activists have expressed outrage on social media and in international forums, describing the hospital raid and the broader suppression of protests as violations of international humanitarian law.

The U.S. condemnation adds to growing international pressure on Tehran as the protest movement continues to spread across Iranian cities and provinces IranWire

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Israeli provokes antisemitic restaurant in Libya. Dan Shina, an Arabic teacher, decided to confront the 'October 7' restaurant in Libya. 'They feel no shame - for them, it’s a source of great pride.' i24NEWS. Published: Jan 6, 2026, 11:15 PM (GMT+2) Libyai24NEWS

Dan Shina, an Arabic teacher, regularly contacts individuals across the Arab world to examine how events connected to the State of Israel are presented and discussed.

This week, Shina turned his attention to a newly opened restaurant in Tripoli, Libya, whose name has sparked controversy: “October 7" - the date of Hamas’s brutal terror attack. During a conversation with a representative of the restaurant, Shina sought to determine whether the choice of name was deliberate.

According to Shina, the restaurant’s owners made it clear that they feel no shame over the name and even regard it as a source of pride, calling it “the day of happiness, the day of victory over the occupiers." INN

Mark Dubowitz @mdubowitz: Khamenei paid Hezbollah fighters about $1,280 per fighter per month. Now, he’s offering Iranians $7 per month per person. Jan 5, 2026 X

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The boy who was run over to death at a demonstration in Jerusalem is Yosef Eisenthal, 14 years old. N12. 01.06.2026. Eyewitnesses who were at the scene of the car-ramming are convinced that it was a terrorist attack. In the footage of the incident, the driver can be seen driving for several meters while another Haredi boy hangs on to his vehicle and finally falls.

Yaakov Zimberg, an eyewitness, told N12: "The bus arrived, the guys blocked it. He called for help, he had an Arab voice. They touched his windshield, blocked him and hit him on the windshield. He decided out of nowhere to press the gas pedal."

Dubi Cohen, another eyewitness, said: "There were a lot of guys in front of him. He just threw a lot of guys away. I saw with my own eyes two guys being dragged on his wheel."

Moshe Ben Tovim, who was present at the event, said: "Another guy hung onto the bus and fell, he is in good condition. The same driver continued at the same speed and someone else got between his tires and the end is known. This is not an accident, this is a terrorist attack for all intents and purposes. It was a great miracle that nothing more happened. Mako

Minister Zohar blames opposition incitement for death of haredi teen. Culture Minister Miki Zohar accused opposition lawmakers of fueling anti-haredi incitement, claiming it led to the death of 14-year-old Yosef Eisental at a Jerusalem anti-conscription protest. Israel National News. Jan 7, 2026, 6:28 PM (GMT+2) Israeli Minister of Culture and Sport Miki Zohar (Likud) launched an accusatory attack against the members of the opposition during a Knesset plenary session on Wednesday, claiming that the rampant anti-haredi incitement has "authorized their deaths" and led to the killing of 14-year-old Yosef Eisental at an anti-conscription rally.

"Your incitement against the haredi public is what led to this tragedy. You have permitted the blood of the haredi public. Shame on you," Zohar accused the opposition.

"Daily, you present them as the enemy of the nation. Calm down. They are valuable, important, and beneficial to Israeli society. Stop attacking them from morning to night until you turn them into an enemy."

Zohar added: "You authorized their deaths so that a driver allows himself to drive at a crazy speed into a protester and to kill a boy. So think what you're saying. Every word has meaning. Be responsible for what you say." INN

The judge was furious: '20 children were standing in front of him, he doesn't see and he drives on them? He is not the victim. This is not a political case'. Haredim 10. January 7, 2026

([14] The late Joseph Eisenthal).

The death of the late Yosef Eisenthal: The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court extended the detention of the bus driver, Fakhri Khatib, a 49-year-old resident of East Jerusalem, suspected of intentionally or negligently causing death and causing serious injury to a minor, by 9 days, until January 15. ch10

"Those Who Demanded Conscription Of Chareidim By Force Received The Image They Wanted". January 7, 2026.

The killing of a Chareidi boy, Yosef Eisenthal, z’l, who was run over by an Arab bus driver during a protest against the Chareidi draft law on Tuesday evening, was met with shock and consternation.

Shas chairman, MK Aryeh Deri, spoke on Tuesday evening with the Police Commissioner, Chief Superintendent Danny Levy, and demanded “to act with full determination to get to the truth and to bring the driver who ran him over to justice.”

Commissioner Levy said during the conversation that “the driver was immediately arrested and transferred for questioning; the police are treating the incident with the full severity of the law.”

The chairman of Degel HaTorah, MK Moshe Gafni, said on Tuesday in response to the incident. “The incident of the running over and killing of the boy at the demonstration in Jerusalem is shocking to the depths of the soul. We demand that the driver be brought to justice and punished with the full severity of the law. One cannot move on from such a horrifying act of killing.”

Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said, “Those who demanded the conscription of Chareidim in one fell swoop received the image they wanted this evening. This is a time for cheshbon hanefesh and repentance. An attempt to ignite a civil war endangers the future of the state. It is tearing the nation apart from within and bringing about severe hatred toward the Chareidi public that will take many years to repair.”

UTJ MK Yisrael Eichler contacted the chairman of the Knesset’s National Security Committee and demanded that an urgent meeting be held to probe the circumstances of the case.

In his letter, Eichler wrote that “the shocking case of a boy being run over by a rampaging bus driver during the Chareidi demonstration in Jerusalem cannot be swept under the rug under any circumstances. I request that you schedule an urgent discussion in the National Security Committee to examine how this happened and how the bus was not stopped before it plowed into the crowd.”

“I request that all relevant authorities from the police, the Ministry of Transportation, and the transportation company be summoned for this purpose. In addition, I request to determine whether the police response against road blockers was similar to road-blocking incidents during the Kaplan protests in Tel Aviv.”

Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion said, “I am deeply shaken by the terrible disaster that occurred this evening in Jerusalem, in which a 13-year-old boy lost his life in such a tragic manner during a demonstration. There is no ideological dispute—no matter how difficult—that justifies violence or harm to human life. This is a dangerous escalation and a severe deterioration that we must not pass over in silence. I send my heartfelt condolences to the family.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said, “My heart bleeds following the killing of the boy Yosef Eisenthal, z’l, this evening, as a result of being run over by a bus driver in Jerusalem. I share in the deep sorrow of his family at this difficult time.”

“This is a serious incident that must be investigated thoroughly and comprehensively. The police informed me that all investigative directions regarding the incident are being examined and that it is being treated with the utmost severity.” YWN

Tearful documentation. A flower that was cut off in the storm of battle: Thousands tearfully accompanied the young man Yosef Eisenthal to his rest. Jerusalem was wrapped in mourning: Thousands today accompanied the important young man Yosef Eisenthal, who was killed in a horrific accident on his way back from the protest. • His father, one of the yeshiva leaders, cried out: "He was all about the aspiration for aliyah in the Torah." • Torah luminaries paid tribute: "A public sacrifice for the sanctity of his name, may God bless him." • Chaim Goldberg presents tearful testimony (Haredi). Chaim Rosenbaum. Kikar haShabbat |(1.7.26) Kikar

"Tarof Toraf Yosef [Joseph has surely been torn up (Gen.37:33)]": Crowds laid to rest the young man who was run over. Crowds came to pay their respects to the important young man, the late Chaim Yosef Eisenthal, who was brutally run over to death at the end of a protest rally against conscription in Jerusalem. His father: "You will never be able to finish the tractate of Baba Batra that you studied in yeshiva." Nati Kalisch. 18th of Tevet 5786, 01/07/26. emess

Charedi teen killed in bus ramming during Jerusalem anti-enlistment protest. Charedi politicians claimed that the death of Yosef Eisentahl, 14, was the result of anti-Orthodox ‘incitement’.

January 7, 2026 10:38 By Jacob Jaffa.

A Charedi teen was killed on Tuesday evening when a bus ran over anti-conscription protestors in Jerusalem, Israeli police have confirmed

Ambulance service Magen David Adom (MDA) reported that the bus hit three pedestrians on Shamgar Street, before continuing on to Ohel Yehoshua Street, where it hit a fourth individual.

The deceased boy has been identified in Hebrew media as Yosef Eisenthal, a 14-year-old from the city’s Ramot neighbourhood. TheJC

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Following the unveiling of l 'Hamechadesh'. A request was made to the police to arrest the driver who abused the children. Against the backdrop of the shocking incident that occurred yesterday, in which the driver of the "Extra" company ran over the young man Yossi Eisenthal to death, the late Yossi Eisenthal, the exposure of the "Renewal" from about two weeks ago about another serious incident at the same company, has surfaced. Following the incident, Attorney Haim Bleicher from the Honenu organization wrote a letter to the Jerusalem District Commander demanding that the bus driver who held up children and refused to drop them off at the bus stop while threatening them, be arrested hn-news

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U.K. to Investigate Role of Islamic Doctrine on Grooming Gangs. Move Comes after Australian Scholar Documented Issue in 2025 Report January 6, 2026. Jules Gomes.

The Home Office has established a panel into the “grooming” gangs largely comprised of Muslim men from rural Pakistan who raped more than 250,000 young women from white, working class families in England over the course of decades. The new inquiry comes after decades of denial about the root causes of the abuse, observers state.(Shutterstock) A new government inquiry, marking a significant policy shift, will investigate the influence of Islam on the U.K.’s grooming gangs, predominantly composed of Muslim men of Pakistani origin.

The Home Office announced on December 9 that, according to its terms of reference, the Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs will “examine how ethnicity, religion or culture played a role in responses at a local and national level, as well as other issues of denial, as discussed in the National Audit. It will also consider the background (including ethnicity, religion and culture) of perpetrators and victims.” ME Forum

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‘Growing security threat’: illegal Palestinian construction creating a stranglehold around Jerusalem. According to new study, illegal Palestinian construction in Area C forms near-continuous ring that experts warn poses growing security threat to the capital, as state and municipal officials debate responsibility and response in wake of Oct. 7. Gilad Cohen|01.06.26 |

North of Jerusalem, between Pisgat Ze’ev and Beit Hanina, stands the unfinished shell of King Hussein’s palace. At Tel al-Ful, the Jordanian king began building a summer palace, but construction was halted during the 1967 Six-Day War and the structure has stood abandoned ever since.

On a clear day, the hill — also identified as biblical Gibeah of Saul — offers a panoramic view of the Jerusalem hills. It is a striking vista, but one that also raises security concerns.

Standing on the roof of the deserted building and turning from north to east, east to south and south to west, one can see a continuous chain of Arab villages, towns and neighborhoods — some Palestinian, some Israeli. To the north are the tall white towers of Ramallah, with Kafr Aqab below it, a village that is partly Palestinian and partly within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries, effectively linking Ramallah and Jerusalem.

To the east are the settlement of Adam, the Palestinian town of al-Ram and the Qalandiya refugee camp. Farther east lie Anata, al-Eizariya, Abu Dis and Jerusalem’s Sur Baher neighborhood. To the south are Jabal Mukaber, the Har Homa neighborhood, Beit Sahour and Bethlehem. To the west are Mevaseret Zion, Har Adar and the Palestinian villages of Biddu and Qubeiba.

In the early 2000s, Israel built the separation barrier from Har Adar to Gush Etzion to improve security and prevent illegal entry of Palestinians into Israel, as well as terror attacks. However, a report published last week by State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman found that the barrier around Jerusalem does not provide an adequate response to prevent the entry of undocumented Palestinians or terrorists.

Englman wrote that although the barrier was built to block and thwart infiltration, it has, for a long time, failed to deliver the required level of protection. He described this as a serious failure that endangers Israeli residents in general, and nearby neighborhoods in particular, especially in light of the events of October 7.

A study presented here for the first time, conducted by Regavim — a right-wing organization focused on land and construction issues — documents infrastructure and high-rise buildings constructed without permits on the other side of the barrier. According to the group, the construction effectively encircles Jerusalem and raises additional red flags about potential security risks to the capital.

The Regavim study is based on aerial photographs collected over the years and cross-referenced to track building trends. It identifies a sharp increase in construction around Jerusalem since 2008. According to the findings, illegal construction on the city’s outskirts has reached an estimated 40,000 structures, forming what the report describes as a near-continuous ring around Jerusalem. All of the buildings are located in Area C, which is under full Israeli civil and security control. The report says their locations allow observation and control over major access routes.

(Girl being smuggled through the West Bank security barrier, suspect arrested. Video: Israel Police).

A senior Jerusalem municipality official said that “there are things the public does not know that help ensure calm in Jerusalem. Security forces are doing sacred work so we can live safely and quietly. It is no coincidence that since October 7, there has been calm.” Despite those reassurances, retired police commander Levi Amitai, who previously headed the Jerusalem perimeter unit in the Border Police, offered a starkly different assessment. “From a security standpoint, this is a very serious danger,” he said. “A patrol moving along a fence beneath high-rise buildings is extremely dangerous. We saw what happened along the Philadelphi Corridor — in the end they had to demolish all of Rafah just to move there. Otherwise, you are controlled from all directions. Dealing with such a phenomenon is almost impossible.” Yehuda Noam, Regavim’s Jerusalem district director, said the construction around the city is not accidental but, in his view, part of a strategy aimed at controlling key points and “creating a stranglehold around Jerusalem.” “This reality has created a dense civilian infrastructure that serves as perfect cover for the infiltration of undocumented Palestinians and hostile terrorist activity,” Noam said. “There is no security buffer, and the maneuvering and response capability of the security forces drops to zero.” Referring to the state comptroller’s report, Noam added that “the comptroller dealt with the route of the fence, its design, protection and reinforcement. Terror does not start at the fence. It starts with education, with Israel’s withdrawal from the area, with enforced distance, with irrelevant agreements and with a lack of presence and enforcement.”

The office of Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion said in a statement that “the mayor and those responsible for security in the city are in close and continuous contact with security authorities and work in full coordination with them. Responsibility for security and for addressing construction issues in the Jerusalem perimeter lies with the state and the enforcement agencies.”

(Illegal construction around Jerusalem | Photos: Courtesy of the "Regavim" Association. [15]).

(Map Info Jerusalem Illegal Construction Wraps Buildings Houses. [16]) YNet

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EU-Funded NGO Backed Online Platform Targeting Jewish Businesses in Catalonia. Ailin Vilches Arguello. January 7, 2026.

Supporters of Hamas demonstrate outside the Israeli Embassy in Madrid, Oct. 18. Photo: Reuters/Guillermo Yllanes Gonzalez

The controversial online platform mapping Jewish-owned businesses, schools, and Israeli-linked companies in Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain, was promoted by an EU-funded non-governmental organization.

On Tuesday, NGO Monitor — an independent Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations — released new information showing that Engineers Without Borders – Catalonia (ESF-C) and Universities with Palestine (UAP) jointly promoted the BarcelonaZ project on social media, identifying themselves as its primary backers. Algemeiner

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Cooper Union settles federal lawsuit brought on behalf of Jewish students. “Settling this litigation is an important step as we move forward,” Steven McLaughlin, president of Cooper Union, told JNS. Vita Fellig.

(Jan. 9, 2026 / JNS) The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a private school in New York City that is one of the highest ranked in the nation for arts and engineering, settled a lawsuit, which the Lawfare Project brought on behalf of 10 Jewish students who alleged antisemitic harassment and intimidation on campus after Oct. 7. JNS

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Protesters in Tehran declare 'President Trump Street'. Crowds took to the streets for yet another night to protest the Iranian regime and expressed support for the Shah and the United States. Dalit Halevi. Published: Jan 7, 2026, 9:08 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Explosive Allegations Rock Trump Administration. Morgan Ortagus Has a Lebanese Boyfriend with Ties to Hezbollah. Morgan Ortagus stands accused of spending time with a Hezbollah-shadowed Lebanese tycoon, sparking her abrupt administrative leave and igniting fears of compromised U.S. secrets in the volatile Middle East arena.

Bianca Jones Jan 7, 2026 06:20

In a stunning development that has sent shockwaves through diplomatic circles, sources allege that Morgan Ortagus, the U.S. Counselor to the United Nations Mission and Special Representative for Lebanon, has been placed on administrative leave by the Trump administration pending an investigation into her purported activities with a prominent Lebanese national. JFeed

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MK: Reality cannot be that a teen is dragged under a bus. MK Tzvika Foghel, head of the National Security Committee, discusses violence in Arab society, recent ramming of haredi teen. Hezki Baruch. Published: Jan 7, 2026, 1:14 PM (GMT+2)

National Security Committee Chairman MK Tzvika Foghel spoke about a number of recent security and social incidents, including the ramming of a haredi boy during a protest in Jerusalem, the detention of Ran Gvili by Hamas in Gaza, and violent murders in the Arab sector.

Foghel began by referencing Gvili and said, "823 days. We are waiting for Ran Gvili. I will continue to remind everyone of this every morning." He also noted that he had recently heard, again, the story of Ran Gvili and his friends’ heroism, adding, "We must bring him home."

Regarding agreements with Hamas, he said, "We signed an agreement with evil ones, but even with evil ones who sign an agreement, it must be honored."

Regarding Tuesday night's ramming in Jerusalem, Foghel described, "I went to sleep last night with these unimaginable images, of a bus driving while dragging a boy under its wheels."

"It cannot be that this is happening in our reality," he said, adding that he would wait for the completion of the police investigation before convening a Committee discussion... INN

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This is how Hamas is getting richer - at the political echelon's directive. Data presented at security meetings shows Hamas raking in millions daily, political echelon ignoring IDF recommendations. Israel National News. Jan 7, 2026, 12:06 PM (GMT+2)

([17]. Hamas terrorists take over humanitarian aid trucks entering Gaza)

Israeli security officials have warned that the Hamas terror group in Gaza is seeing a significant economic improvement.

According to data recently presented in closed security discussions and published by Ynet, Hamas currently holds between 400 million to 1 billion shekels in cash in Gaza, and the sum, according to intelligence estimates, may be even higher.

Sources in the IDF have recommended reducing the number of aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip. Since the ceasefire with Hamas took effect in October, approximately 4,200 aid trucks have entered Gaza per week.

"The population in Gaza can survive with much less," the sources explained. "Seventy percent (70%) of it belongs to the private sector, which Hamas taxes twice - 15-25% on every truck carrying food, fuel, or medicine, and an additional tax on the goods when they are sold in the market. Hamas is making tens of millions of shekels a day, and the coffers keep growing."

Hamas has been preparing for war for years and has maintained cash reserves with which it paid the salaries of tens of thousands of its operatives and officials throughout the war.

The report also revealed that Qatar, Hamas' primary patron, demanded the continued flow of thousands of trucks each week as a condition for its support, which is why there is no discussion about halting the aid. Political sources have warned that Hamas is not honoring its commitments under the agreement and is expected to receive additional concessions, including the opening of the Rafah Crossing.

It was also revealed that Hamas continues to funnel money into the Strip through indirect means, including using apps to transfer money from supporting countries, taxing currency exchange transactions, and smuggling goods through unauthorized routes-sometimes even inside the trucks themselves. INN

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Shocking. How Israeli Aid Trucks Fuel Hamas' Hidden Cash Empire During Cease-Fire. In closed discussions held in recent weeks, intelligence sources presented more severe estimates regarding Hamas's solid economic situation, which holds, according to some estimates, cash amounting to about a billion shekels inside the Gaza Strip.

Jfeed Staff. Jan 7, 2026 06:59 Jfeed

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Trump administration moves to revoke residency of antisemitism researcher. A prominent antisemitism researcher and US permanent resident is seeking court protection after the Trump administration signaled possible action against him over his work on social media platforms.

By Andrew Lapin/JTA January 7, 2026 05:12 For years, Imran Ahmed has presented his research on how tech platforms enable the spread of antisemitism to receptive audiences across the ideological spectrum.

He’s worked with the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish Federations of North America; the latter credits Ahmed with the backbone of much of its own policy proposals. He’s appeared at a conference organized by the first Trump administration, with Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also in attendance. JPost

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Israeli-backed Palestinian militia says it killed two Hamas operatives in southern Gaza The militia shared a photo that it said depicted one of the slain men.

By Reuters, January 7, 2026 14:30 An Israeli-backed Palestinian militia said on Wednesday it had killed two Hamas operatives in southern Gaza, marking a renewed challenge to Hamas after Israel empowered its rivals in areas under Israeli military control.

The armed group, known as the Popular Forces, said in a statement that it had carried out a raid in Rafah, killing two Hamas members who refused to surrender and detaining a third. It shared a photo that it said depicted one of the slain men. JPost

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Iranian protesters 'claiming entire cities,' US House Foreign Affairs Committee says In a video, protesters can be heard shouting "Marg bar Khamenei," which translates to "Death to Khamenei."

By Sam Halpern January 7, 2026 09:22 Amid the ongoing demonstrations in Iran, protesters are “claiming entire cities,” the US House Foreign Affairs Committee stated in a post to X/Twitter early Wednesday morning.

“Anti-regime protesters are rising up and claiming entire cities. Iranians have had enough of the tyrannical Ayatollah and his murderous mullahs,” the Republican-run committee wrote. “The Iranian regime’s grip is unraveling.” JPost

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Report: Officer Ahmed Shoukr kidnapped by Mossad in complex operation, with Lebanese cooperation. The Saudi newspaper "Asharq Al-Awsat," published in London in Arabic, reported that Lebanese officer Ahmed Shoukr, who was reportedly kidnapped last month due to his involvement in the abduction of Israeli navigator Ron Arad, was captured in a "precise and complex security operation planned and executed by the Israeli Mossad, exploiting security gaps and direct cooperation with a Lebanese operative specifically recruited for this mission." It was further reported that the Lebanese operative, who was arrested, "explicitly admitted meeting Mossad officers in Africa who assigned him several missions, and that he received amounts ranging between $5,000 and $10,000 for each mission." Lior Ben Ari | published: 01.07.26 12:23 YNet

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Canadian Jewish leaders ‘dumbfounded’ after judge lets Holocaust memorial vandal off with time served. “It is an attack on the lessons we have learned to help prevent repeated mistakes and foster resilience against the illiberal ideologies sweeping the world,” Michael Teper, of the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation, told JNS. Dave Gordon. (Jan 7, 2026 / JNS). JNS

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Top US official faults EU over Jewish business map. State Under Secretary Sarah Rogers said the document showed that hate speech laws were used against conservatives but ignored vis-a-vis Jew haters. Canaan Lidor. (Jan. 7, 2026 / JNS) Following the emergence in France of an online map of Jewish-owned entities, U.S. Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers on Sunday accused European officials of selectively using hate speech laws to target critics of mass migration while ignoring antisemitism.

Rogers, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, leveled the criticism on X following an uproar over the map, which unidentified programmers had uploaded to the France-based cartography website GoGoCarto.

The creators of the undated map, which included the offices of mainstream Jewish groups in Barcelona among the 150-odd addresses listed, wrote that it showed how Zionism “operates and in what forms it presents itself.” GoGoCarto removed the addresses following complaints last week by Spanish and French Jews, the Enfoque Judio website reported. JNS

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Many appear duped by AI ‘rabbi’ with 100,000 social media followers. “AI should not replace human involvement and effort but can be an incredible tool when used responsibly,” Rabbi Gil Student told JNS. Jessica Russak-Hoffman. ([18] Screen capture of a website purporting to be for a Rabbi Menachem Goldberg. Source:goldbergrabbi.netlify.app/.Screen capture of a website purporting to be for a Rabbi Menachem Goldberg. Source: goldbergrabbi[dot]netlify.app/)

(Jan. 7, 2026 / JNS) An account purporting to depict a Rabbi Menachem Goldberg has some 100,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok, and although the accounts post videos that have backgrounds with apparently secular or Christian tapestries hanging on walls of synagogues with multiple Torah arks, some with nonsensical Hebrew inscriptions, some users appear to be duped by the account.

Some commenters thank the “rabbi,” who wears a long beard and a black hat, and thank “him” for his words of wisdom. Others appear to be aware that something is amiss with the account, that launched on Dec. 29.

Both the Instagram and TikTok accounts hawk publications called “The Five Pillars” ($9.99) and “Rabbi’s Blueprint” ($19.99).

According to a biography on the attached website, the “rabbi” has “dedicated over 40 years to studying and teaching the intersection of Jewish wisdom and financial prosperity. Based in Brooklyn, he has helped thousands of people from all backgrounds achieve meaningful success through timeless Torah principles.”

In some backgrounds of the films, the “rabbi” sits in an apparent sanctuary, in which a Torah scroll lies open and unattended on a desk. Leaving a Torah scroll open and unattended in that manner is taboo for Jews.

Many of the things that the “rabbi” says in the videos are platitudes, delivered in succession with minimal translations. The apparently-Haredi rabbi refers to “God” rather than “Hashem,” and does not tend to cite particular biblical verses or rabbinic commentators in any of his messages. He also refers often to “abundance” and “renewal.” He often signs off his videos by directing people to buy his books, and in several, says just “link in bio.”

He says at one point that the Torah says not to put a stumbling block before “another.” The verse says before a “blind person.”

Rabbi Gil Student, director of Jewish media and publications at the Orthodox Union, is part of the team developing Ohrbit, an artificial intelligence tool that delivers personalized Torah learning experiences.

“AI is a powerful tool to amplify Torah and help people study more Torah,” he told JNS. “AI should not replace human involvement and effort but can be an incredible tool when used responsibly.”

“AI requires transparency and responsibility,” he added. “Jewish tradition requires that any book, whether written by a human or AI, have a responsible human review and approbation.” JNS

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Faces Intense Rehabilitation. Bondi Beach Hero Gefen Biton to Return Home to Israel. Gefen knew what he was doing when he risked his life to diarm the gunmen on Bondi Beavh. Seconds later he was shot. Although he is in still in serious confition, he is well enough to return to Israel.

Jfeed Staff. Jan 7, 2026 09:04 JFeed

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IDF chief: New strategy focused on possibility of surprise war. Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said local readiness and civilian resilience are critical to Israel’s strategy for the next war. JNS Staff. (Jan. 7, 2026 / JNS) JNS

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Hamas fires on IDF troops ahead of Rafah crossing opening, senior terrorist targeted in response. Shooting occurred as Israel’s security establishment awaits approval from the political echelon to reopen the Rafah crossing in southern Gaza. Yoav Zitun | published: 01.07.26 13:53 YNet

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Pres Herzog: 'Situation in Negev is a national emergency'. President Isaac Herzog convened an emergency meeting with heads of local authorities from the Negev region in southern Israel. Israel National News. Jan 7, 2026, 9:09 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Gaza's Millionaires After October 7: Hamas-Linked Aid Thieves Networks Showcase Millions of Dollars Allegedly Raised in Donations, While Gaza Residents Received Nothing of the Donations | Watch 🎥 (The Scoops) [1.8.26]. On Telegram

Watch: Gaza's millionaires after October 7 – This is how a class of aid thieves was built under the auspices of Hamas. While the residents of Gaza are presented to the world as “humanitarian victims,” a corrupt stratum is exposed that is enriching itself with millions – with donations, in collaboration with Hamas, and under the protection of terrorism. David Feuchtunger. 19th of Tevet, 5768 (January 8, 2026)

In the two years that have passed since the October 7 massacre, a particularly serious phenomenon has become clearer: a new class of “millionaires” has emerged in the Gaza Strip, those who lived in absolute poverty before the war – and who are now displaying mountains of cash in dollars and euros on social media.

These are entities that have established huge donation networks, mainly in Europe and Arab and Muslim countries – including Turkey, the Middle East, Asia and North Africa. The funds were collected under the familiar title of “humanitarian aid”: food, shelter, medicine and help for civilians in Gaza. In practice, as evidenced by the documentation and testimonies, the vast majority of the money does not reach those in need at all.

The method is consistent and outrageous: A man, woman, or child from Gaza is filmed receiving a sum of money for a video. Immediately afterward, almost the entire amount is taken from them, leaving only crumbs in their hands. The real money flows into the pockets of the organizers, who continue to present themselves as “philanthropists” and solicit additional donations from around the world.

Security sources estimate that this activity does not take place without permission. These “millionaires” pay huge sums to Hamas – sponsorship fees – in exchange for protection, freedom of action, and permission to operate in the Gaza Strip. Thus, the humanitarian aid funds effectively become another financing mechanism for the terrorist regime.

The recently released video, in which one of those officials proudly displays millions of dollars, is just the tip of the iceberg. While the citizens of Gaza continue to live in poverty and hardship, a small and corrupt elite is becoming ostentatiously rich – under the eyes of the international community. JDN

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I Worked at a Palestinian Summer Camp - Richard McDaniel. January 7, 2026. When I worked for a reconciliation organization and lived in the largely Palestinian Christian town of Beit Sahour last summer, there were multiple aspects of Palestinian society that disturbed me. What I found most discomforting was its overwhelming celebration of martyrdom - glorifying those Palestinians who sacrificed themselves in the name of "Palestine." After witnessing a large crowd of young children chanting "we will die to make Palestine live" at the summer camp where I volunteered, a Palestinian teenager asked me: "What have we [Palestinians] ever done wrong?" I responded by mentioning the dozens of suicide bombings that took place in Israeli civilian areas during the Second Intifada. She replied: "But those are acts of resistance." Living in the West Bank taught me that most Palestinians, regardless of religion, have long bought into the Islamist celebration of martyrdom... Palestinian society's extremism and fetishization of death are encouraged (or mandated) by the Palestinian leadership in a mindset shared by both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas. Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin told me that because Hamas's "political-religious philosophy...is based on the sanctification of death," they're more than happy to never surrender... The nearly universal celebration of martyrdom across Palestinian society demonstrates that extremism is deeply entrenched within Palestinian culture. Consequently, Israel will never exist comfortably unless it tackles this Palestinian issue... Algemeiner

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Hamas Saxa: Georgetown Taps Hamas Apologist Mehdi Hasan as Visiting Fellow. Hasan, who left MSNBC after the left-wing network axed his show, will lead a discussion group on media's role 'in our polarized society'

Jessica Costescu. January 8, 2026.

Georgetown University has enlisted Hamas apologist and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan as a visiting fellow to lead a discussion series that "will explore the role of debate, media, and persuasion in our deeply polarized society."

As a Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service Spring 2026 Fellow, Hasan's discussion group will center on the topic "Who's Afraid of a Tough Question? Debate, Division, and Democracy in a Polarized Age." The four-week series will "challenge" students with questions like "Are calls for 'unity' and 'civility' sincere - or politically convenient?"

Hasan posted to X on Wednesday, "I'm looking forward to doing this and debating and discussing with the students. Thanks @georgetown and @GUPolitics."

Georgetown's decision to bring on Hasan follows years of the journalist making polarizing and inaccurate remarks. MSNBC canceled his show in November 2023 after he spent weeks disparaging Israel following Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack. After leaving the network, Hasan tweeted and then deleted a post arguing that the "Gaza genocide" was "worse than a lot of previous genocides - Rwanda, even the Holocaust." As a media figure in the United Kingdom, Hasan referred to non-Muslims as "animals."

Hasan came under fire last fall after bursting into laughter at a "joke" about Rep. Brian Mast's missing legs, which the Florida Republican lost after stepping on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in September 2010 during Operation Enduring Freedom.

After leaving MSNBC, Hasan founded Zeteo, a far-left media platform that charges $12 a month to "support Mehdi's brand of accountability journalism." The online publication has featured figures like Hasan Piker, the far-left streamer who once said "America deserved 9/11" and used a Zeteo appearance to lament the United States' triumph over the USSR. FreeBeacon

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Amnesty International Refuses to Admit That Hamas Wants to Kill All Jews and Annihilate Israel. By Darcie Grunblatt, Algemeiner. January 8, 2026.

In its nearly 200-page report on the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, “Targeting Civilians: Murder, Hostage-Taking and Other Violations by Palestinian Armed Groups in Israel and Gaza,” Amnesty International omitted years of statements by Hamas leaders and language from its charter demonstrating genocidal intent against Jews.

This omission renders Amnesty’s account of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack fundamentally flawed — because it disregards strong evidence of Hamas’ genocidal intent and distorts both the nature of the massacre and Israel’s response.

According to the former Deputy Director of Amnesty’s now defunct Israel branch, Yariv Mohar, this report on Hamas’ attack was delayed by eight months. It had already been nearly finalized by the same time the organization released its December 2024 report, titled, “‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.” The organization, according to Mohar, told Israeli staff that the two reports would be published within weeks of one another.

According to Mohar, Amnesty delayed the Hamas report to keep the focus on Gaza, fearing that highlighting Hamas’ atrocities would undermine efforts to end the war. Mohar added that this was driven by a belief that Western audiences prefer a simplified moral narrative, and also because of Amnesty’s fear of backlash from its ultra-radical activist base.

Notably, the non-profit’s substantially longer Gaza report in 2024 used several out-of-context and debunked quotes by Israeli leaders to portray them as having genocidal intent.

Conversely, Amnesty’s treatment of Hamas sharply downplays the terror group’s own explicit ideology and objectives.

Hamas’ charter calls for the complete destruction of Israel as a condition for the liberation of Palestine, achieved through holy war (jihad). The charter specifically states that Hamas’ “struggle” is “against the Jews.” Algemeiner

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Hamas document casts shadow over former EU envoy’s role in Gaza.

An internal Hamas assessment suggests the EU’s former top diplomat in the Palestinian territories pursued a personal approach to Gaza that crossed Brussels’ red lines.

Politics. Björn Stritzel. Euractiv. January 8, 2026. Conflict in West Bank.

An internal Hamas document seen by Euractiv suggests that the EU’s former envoy to the Palestinian territories, Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, pursued positions that diverged from official EU policy and were viewed favourably by Hamas leaders in Gaza.

Kühn von Burgsdorff served as the EU’s ambassador to the Palestinian territories and the Gaza Strip from January 2020 to July 2023.

During his tenure, he repeatedly drew criticism from Israeli officials and within the EU for positions seen as out of step with Brussels’ guidelines – including assurances to Palestinian NGOs found to have employed terrorists that they need not worry about losing EU funding, despite stricter anti-terror financing rules.

Paragliding in Gaza.

The controversy peaked in July 2023, shortly before he left his post, when Kühn von Burgsdorff went paragliding in Gaza. In video footage from the Hamas-controlled enclave, he spoke enthusiastically of a “free Palestine”. Weeks later, Hamas carried out its 7 October attack on Israel, killing more than 1,000 people and abducting around 250 others.

Now, an internal Hamas document seized by the Israeli military during its subsequent campaign in Gaza suggests that Islamist leaders in the enclave held the EU envoy in high regard. The Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor analysed the document and shared its findings with Euractiv... Euroactive

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Glasgow University rector backed violence and Hamas terror, tribunal hears. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a surgeon, is facing a medical hearing over his social media activity and other published commentary.

By Ian Leonard. January 7, 2026.

A world-leading plastic and reconstructive surgeon re-posted antisemitic and pro-terrorism messages on social media, a medical tribunal heard. TheJC

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Muslim radicals call for the execution of a cardinal in Iraq. By Elizabeth Owens, Zenit, January 5, 2026.

A single word, spoken from the pulpit on Christmas, has placed one of the Middle East’s most prominent Christian leaders under mounting pressure. Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, is facing an escalating campaign of intimidation in Iraq and neighboring Iran after remarks from his Christmas homily were lifted out of their pastoral context and reframed as a political provocation.

At the heart of the controversy lies the Arabic term commonly rendered as “normalization.” In his homily, Cardinal Sako employed the word as part of a spiritual appeal for healing after years of conflict: a call for social stability, restored trust among citizens, and reconciliation between families, communities and the Iraqi nation as a whole. According to the Chaldean Patriarchate, the intent was unmistakably religious, rooted in the Christmas message of peace and renewal, and entirely detached from regional geopolitics.

Yet in Iraq’s highly charged environment, language is never neutral. The word “normalization” has become politically radioactive, often used as shorthand for normalizing relations with Israel, an issue that can ignite immediate outrage. Critics seized on that association, recasting a pastoral exhortation as an alleged endorsement of forbidden political positions. Within hours, online narratives transformed a Christmas message into accusations of political betrayal.

The Patriarchate responded swiftly, stressing that the homily had no political content and explicitly rejecting claims that Cardinal Sako was advocating normalization with Israel. Officials reiterated that the message focused on peace, national cohesion and the dignity of Iraq, themes that have long marked the patriarch’s public ministry. The clarification, however, did little to stem the backlash….

Cardinal Sako’s own reported response underscores both the gravity of the moment and the depth of his commitment to his country. “If they want to put me on trial and execute me for the sake of Iraq, so be it,” he is quoted as saying. The remark, stark and unsettling, reflects the precarious position of Christian leaders in a region where theological language can be repurposed as political evidence, and where calls for peace may carry personal risk…. Zenit

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Glasgow University rector backed violence and Hamas terror, tribunal hears. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a surgeon, is facing a medical hearing over his social media activity and other published commentary.

By Ian Leonard. January 7, 2026.

A world-leading plastic and reconstructive surgeon re-posted antisemitic and pro-terrorism messages on social media, a medical tribunal heard. TheJC

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"The Haredi citizen is the most discriminated citizen in the country - and therefore the most neglected": Dr. Yoav Heller in an interview In a charged interview with Eli Gotthalf on "Kikar FM", Dr. Yoav Heller, chairman of the "Fourth Quarter" movement, claims that the death of the child Joseph Eisenthal, z"l, is not only a human tragedy, but a warning sign of a civil contract that has fallen apart | "The State of Israel is talking to mechanisms and activists - not to the Haredi citizen himself" (Kikar FM) . Kikar haShabbat |1.8.26 08:34

The death of the boy Yosef Eisenthal, may his memory be blessed, left behind not only deep pain, but also a trail of difficult questions. Among the chorus of voices heard in the days following the event, one voice stood out, unusual in its sharpness and the discomfort it created: Dr. Yoav Heller, chairman of the "Fourth Quarter" movement. Kikar

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"Our blood is cheap! One law for the Kaplan and one law for the Haredim" | The angry announcement - and the judge's outrageous claim. The Jerusalem faction sent a particularly angry message today after the court's decision to release the driver who ran over the late Yosef Eisenthal to house arrest | "One law for Kaplan [- radical leftists. Ed.] - and another law for the Haredim," the faction members wrote, clarifying: Haredim blood has been cheap | The full message sent by the faction members after Judge Bar Asher's outrageous decision (News, Haredim) bassl Beni Solomon. Kikar haShabbat |1.8.26 06:53 Kikar

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Watch | Minister Eliyahu's speech that infuriated Arab MKs: No other people commits terrorism like you, in the entire world. Yitzhak Bialik. 01.08.26 Minister Amichai Eliyahu's speech infuriated Arab MKs, after he asked them why the Arab sector, in the whole world, is more violent than other ethnicities and sectors. During the speech, the Arab MKs were expelled from the plenary.

Minister Eliyahu said in response to the video: "The hard truth must be told as it is." 0404

Minister Amichai Eliyahu to the angry Touma-Suleiman - Look at the savagery in your villages​.

January 08, 2026. Knesset Plenum – Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu​ Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu: Mr. Chairman – Mr. Acting Chairman, my fellow Knesset members, while we're here clucking our tongues, Minister Ben-Gvir has just gone down south to restore some order — something the State of Israel has desperately needed for many years.

In Arab society, there is violence — disproportionate violence compared to any other society or culture.

Only — only — in places where there is a policy of moderate Islam, which is very firm against the barbarism growing in Arab society, only there is there quiet.

Calls from the floor… Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu (continuing): The terrorism in Arab society…

Walid Al-Hawashla (Ra'am): … Chairman Nissim Vaturi: Walid Al-Hawashla, first warning.

Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu: I'm sorry it bothers you, but the terrorism in Arab society is a result of your education…

It's a shame you refuse to look reality in the eye.

Chairman Nissim Vaturi: Walid Al-Hawashla, you didn't say anything yesterday about "light foot on the gas" by the Arab driver, so calm down.

Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu: I want to tell you, MK Walid, that I travel on Highway 6 quite a lot. A gang of criminals rides there on motorcycles, without a rear license plate, without license plates at all, popping wheelies, showing off…

Walid Al-Hawashla: … Chairman Nissim Vaturi: Walid Al-Hawashla, third warning. Please leave.

(MK Walid Al-Hawashla leaves the plenum hall)

Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu (continuing): Why doesn't this happen in other sectors? Why doesn't this happen among other communities? You — stop throwing responsibility onto others. Take responsibility for your education. Take responsibility for the values you teach. You incite against the State of Israel. What did you think would happen?

Aida Touma-Suleiman (Hadash-Ta'al): …Shut up, at least shut up. Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu: This is not racism.

(Later – MK Aida Touma-Suleiman is also removed after repeated warnings)

Key statement: “The truth is that no other people commits terrorism like you commit terrorism, not in Israel — in the entire world… This is a cultural question.” Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu (closing section): Change the education. Change the culture. See how much illegal weaponry there is in your society.

Rely on the values of Abraham our father [patriarch] and not on the madness of radical Islam. Abraham our father is also your father — a man who loves peace, pursues peace, opens his home to guests, not to massacre, murder, and rape, not to family honor killings.

I'm not saying this cynically. You have a lot of work to do within yourselves — not just here in Israel, but throughout the world. But here it's even worse, because here for years we ignored it.

Thank God, we have a police minister who is doing wonders, restoring trust, straightening the backs of the police officers. Thank you very much.

(Verbatim-style translation of the heated Knesset exchange • January 7, 2026).

The Three Hundred and Fifty-Fourth Session of the Twenty-Fifth Knesset. Wednesday, 18th Tevet 5786 (7th January 2026). Jerusalem, Knesset, 11:00 AM [19] Just Sayin'

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Hamas missile lands near hospital. Missile launched towards Israel from near Gaza City misfires, IDF strikes back. Israel National News. Jan 8, 2026, 11:58 AM (GMT+2)

A missile launched from Gaza fell near a Gazan hospital, the IDF confirmed Thursday morning.

"A short while ago, a projectile was identified from the area of Gaza City toward the State of Israel," the IDF stated. "The projectile fell within the Gaza Strip territory near a hospital."

"Shortly after, the IDF precisely struck the launch point.

"The IDF strongly condemns any attempts by terrorist organizations to execute terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel." INN

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Sa'ar on Aleppo clashes: 'Contradicts promises of a new Syria'. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar said that "the attacks by Syrian regime forces on the Kurdish minority in Aleppo are serious and dangerous." Sa'ar added: "The international community in general and the West in particular have a debt of honor toward the Kurds who fought bravely and successfully against ISIS. Systematic and murderous oppression of various minorities in Syria contradicts the promises of a 'new Syria'." Itamar Eichner|01.08.26 01:40 YNet

Sa’ar: Silence amid Syrian regime-Kurdish clashes emboldens Damascus The international community “has a debt of honor to the Kurds” for their role for fighting ISIS, the Israeli foreign minister said. JNS Staff. (Jan. 8, 2026 / JNS) Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Thursday urged the international community not to remain silent in the wake of renewed clashes between Syrian government forces and Kurds in the city of Aleppo. JNS

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Israeli president reopens kibbutz kindergarten hit by Hezbollah missile. “We were here during the darkest days. We walked among the ruins and felt immense pain,” Isaac Herzog said. JNS Staff. (Jan. 8, 2026 / JNS) JBS

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Rocket launched from northern Gaza City landed near IDF positions in the Strip, no injuries. Hamas launched a rocket from northern Gaza City, which landed in the Gaza Strip area near IDF positions. There are no injuries. Yoav Zitun|01.08.26 04:07 YNet

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Iran unrest: Protesters chant 'Death to Khamenei,' topple Soleimani statue. Protesters chant “Death to Khamenei" and destroy Soleimani statue as anti-regime demonstrations in Iran continue. Elad Benari Jan 8, 2026, 5:15 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Australia launches royal commission into Bondi Beach shooting. PM Albanese bowed to mounting pressure for answers after the antisemitic attack. JNS Staff.

(Jan. 8, 2026 / JNS) Australia will launch a royal commission to investigate the terrorist shooting attack at a Dec. 14 Chanukah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach that left 15 dead, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday.

Officials and critics had demanded the high-powered federal inquiry into the antisemitic attack.

“I’ve repeatedly said that our government’s priority is to promote unity and social cohesion. And this is what Australia needs to heal,” Albanese told reporters in announcing the inquiry.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry welcomed Albanese’s announcement, with the organization’s president, Daniel Aghion KC, saying that Canberra “made the right decision” and that “this is the only way that Australia’s time-honored standards of decency and fairness can be upheld.”

The ECAJ “will cooperate fully” with Virginia Bell, the judge appointed to lead the royal commission, “and will make every effort to ensure that the full force of the community’s views and experiences of antisemitism in various sectors of society are brought to the forefront of the inquiry.”

Aghion added that the commission, among other advisable actions, should “examine key drivers contributing to antisemitism in Australia, including ideological, political and religious extremism; and assess the adequacy of government, law enforcement and institutional responses.” JNS

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Illlegal Arabs arrested for ripping mezuzahs off doorposts. Illegal Arabs from Hebron suspected of removal and theft of mezuzahs in central Israel. Israel National News. Jan 8, 2026, 11:31 AM (GMT+2) JaffaPA ArabsBat INN

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Arab Who Infiltrated Israel And Tore Down Dozens Of Mezuzahs Arrested. January 8, 2026. YWN

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Gazan rocket fired at Israel falls short, hits near hospital. The IDF struck the launch site, targeting the second Hamas ceasefire violation in the past 24 hours. (Jan. 8, 2026 / JNS) Palestinian terrorists fired a rocket toward Israel from the Gaza City area, which is under Hamas control, on Thursday.

“The launch fell within the territory of the Gaza Strip, near a hospital,” the Israel Defense Forces said. “In a rapid closing of the circle, the IDF struck the launch point in a targeted manner.”

The IDF said it “views with great severity any attempt by terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip to carry out terror plots against IDF forces and the civilians of the State of Israel.” It was Gazans’ second ceasefire violation in the past 24 hours. JNS

Ceasefire? Failed Rocket Launch from Gaza City Lands Near Hospital. According to the Israel Defense Forces, the failed launch originated from Gaza City and was intended for Israeli territory but malfunctioned and fell short, detonating inside Gaza near a hospital. No injuries in Israel were reported.

Judah Pe'er. Jan 8, 2026 04:33 A rocket launched from the Gaza Strip exploded inside the enclave on Thursday in what Israel described as a serious violation of the ceasefire agreement. JFeed

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Lebanese army claims first phase of Hezbollah disarmament complete. The military said it has completed the first stage of a five-phase plan to remove weapons from all non-state armed groups. Joshua Marks. (Jan. 8, 2026 / JNS) The Lebanese Armed Forces said Thursday it has completed the first phase of its national disarmament plan, expanding its control in the country’s south as part of efforts to “extend the state’s authority exclusively through its own forces over the entirety of Lebanese territory.”

In a statement, the army said it had “achieved the objectives of the first phase” of the plan, which focused on “expanding the Army’s operational presence, securing vital areas, and extending operational control” in the South Litani Sector, excluding land “that remains under Israeli occupation.”

Israel continues to hold five strategic hilltop positions inside Southern Lebanon along the border, citing the need to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its attack capabilities near Israeli communities.

The “Shield of the Homeland” (Dir al‑Watan) plan is the Lebanese army’s official five‑phase roadmap to disarm all non‑state militias in Lebanon, with a focus on Hezbollah.

Lebanese Armed Forces commander Gen. Rodolphe Haykal and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said on Dec. 20 that the military was finishing the first phase of its disarmament plan. JNS

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Laurie Cardoza-Moore: “Tucker appears to have Vance in a trance'. Zionist Christian Evangelical leader Laurie Cardoza-Moore criticizes US Vice President's lack of response to the antisemitism emerging from the right. Israel National News. Jan 8, 2026, 5:17 PM (GMT+2)

Zionist Christian Evangelical leader Laurie Cardoza-Moore and President of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations blasted US Vice President JD Vance for what she described as his "inability to take a moral, Christian stance on antisemitism." Her comments come in light of an interview that the Vice President did on Tuesday on CNN commentator Scott Jennings’ podcast.

The host of the award-winning Christian television program “Focus on Israel", which reaches a global audience of two billion, said: “Tucker appears to have Vance in a trance. It’s time for JD Vance to take a moral, Christian stand on antisemitism. There is no place for double-talk on this matter. You don’t get to condemn hatred, while befriending the haters. This is not a time to turn the other cheek. The scourge of Jew Hatred must be banished from the conservative movement before it destroys it from within."

She continued: “Mr. Vice President, you invoked Christian teachings about judging people by their actions, yet you appear to be blindsided by the hatred and actions of people like your friend Tucker Carslon. A clear line needs to be drawn in the sand on what is and is not acceptable. This is not about canceling people; it’s about advocating for the Judeo-Christian values upon which our Republic was founded."

Cardoza-Moore then doubled down on what she described as the grifters and Jew Haters on the woke right: “It is time for the White House to make it clear that grifters and Jew Haters like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes have no place in the Conservative movement. Their views and content are an abomination to God and trample on our Constitution."

“As President Trump has proven time and again, putting America First means standing with our allies in the face of adversity and not vilifying our own countrymen because of their color or creed. America First means American values first."

Laurie Cardoza-Moore was among the first Evangelical leaders to condemn Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens as anti-Semites. Carlson personally called Cardoza-Moore to beg her walk back her statements, which she only increased as his public Jew Hatred increased. Last year, the Founder of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations made international headlines by resigning from the Heritage Foundation’s Anti-Semitism Taskforce over their stance on Carlson. INN

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Kidnapping is only wrong when the victims are not Jewish babies. Remember: It is unacceptable to demand the release of babies, such as the Bibas brothers, as long as those babies are Jewish. You can deface the posters asking for their release. But is it perfectly acceptable to demand the release of mass murderers who are not Jewish. Opinion. Gary Willig. Jan 8, 2026, 5:30 PM (GMT+2)

Kidnapping is wrong, except for Jewish civilians and children. Kidnapping them is fine. That’s the only takeaway from the disparate responses to the mass kidnappings of civilians and children on October 7, 2023 and the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife by US forces over the weekend.

Don’t expect the people who went around ripping down and tearing up the posters of the Israeli hostages and drawing Hitler mustaches on kidnapped Jewish toddlers to act the same with Maduro. They are far more likely to be protesting against Maduro’s arrest and trial. Jewish children are Hitler, you see, while corrupt socialist dictators are innocents.

International law is apparently nothing more than a tool to protect dictators with the blood of countless people on their hands, not a tool to protect innocent people, or at least not Jews.

Case in point:

UN “Special Rapporteur" Francesca Albanese, who called Maduro’s arrest “a lethal blow" to international law. She is far more animated and concerned with protecting Maduro, who violated human rights on a massive scale for over a decade, than with protecting the innocents and the children who were abducted by Hamas. Her response to the mass slaughter and the mass kidnappings in southern Israel was not to appeal to international law on behalf of the victims, but to Tweet on October 7, as the massacre was ongoing, that 'Today’s violence must be put in context.’

We need to "understand" the people who murder and kidnap Jewish babies. There’s a “context" to that, you see, because they are Jews, and that makes it all right. There is apparently no “context" to Maduro’s capture, because whatever his crimes, he is not a Jew. That makes it wrong to kidnap him.

35 of the kidnapping victims were children under the age of 18, including Avigayil Idan (3 years old), Emily Hand (9), Ofri (10), Yuval (9), and Uriya Brodetz (5), Ariel (4) and Kfir Bibas (9 months), Ohad Munder (8), Hila Rotem (12), Agam (17), Gal (11), and Tal Goldstein-Almog (9), Ella (8) and Dafna Elyakim (15), Yagil (12), and Or Yaakov (16), Yuval Engel (10), Amit Shani (16), Ofir Engel (17), Yahel (3), and Naveh Shoham (8), Noam Avigdori (12), Emilia Aloni (5), twins Yuli and Emma Cunio (3), Eitan Yahalomi (12), Sahar (16) and Erez Calderon (12), Raz (4) and Aviv Asher (2), Aisha Zaidna(17), Mia Lemberg (17), Noam (17) and Alma Or (13), and Gali Tarshansky (13).

Where was Albanese’s vaunted “international law" when these teenagers, children, toddlers, and babies needed it? Why did their kidnappers deserve “context" when those who arrested Maduro do not?

Albanese rushed to write a book defending Hamas immediately after these children were abducted, co-opting a phrase made famous in one of the most explosive antisemitic episodes of the 19th century, “J’Accuse." Two months after the massacre, she condemned a call on Hamas to release all of the hostages, including all of the children, “unacceptable."

It was an act of such monstruous evil that it is still shocking over two years later.

Don’t expect any such condemnations of calls on the US to release Maduro. It is unacceptable to demand the release of babies in diapers as long as those babies are Jewish. But is it perfectly acceptable to demand the release of mass murderers who are not Jewish.

Kfir Bibas was 10 months old and his brother Ariel was 4 years od when they were murdered in cold blood by their captors. Kfir had not learned to walk or talk. He and his brother were never put on trial, nor could they have been. Their lives were snuffed out by monsters who declared themselves to be the judge, jury, and executioners of all Jews for the crime of being born Jews.

But since Albanese’s version of “international law" allows the kidnapping and murder of Jews, it is far worse for Maduro to be tried in an actual court of law for crimes he actually committed than it is for Jewish children to be kidnapped and murdered before their first birthday.

Spare us your crocodile tears. Any “law" that condemns the punishment of mass murderers and protects brutal dictators while abandoning and allowing the kidnapping and murder of children and babies who are born into the “wrong" ethnicity is no law. It is pure evil. It is barbarism pretending to be law INN

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Qatar is biggest foreign funder of US colleges, per Education Department. “Every single dollar given by our adversaries comes with strings attached,” Rep. Tim Walberg told JNS. “Enough is enough.” Aaron Bandler.

(Jan. 8, 2026 / JNS) Qatar has been the largest source of foreign funding for U.S. higher education institutions, according to data displayed in a new U.S Department of Education portal.

The portal, which went live on Jan. 2, explains that, under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965, federally funded universities are required to disclose, twice annually, any gifts and contracts from a foreign source that are worth at least $250,000 in a calendar year.

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, told JNS that “our college campuses are being flooded with foreign cash, but every single dollar given by our adversaries comes with strings attached.”

“America’s adversaries exploit these financial ties to steal research, spread divisive propaganda, push indoctrination and undermine free speech,” Walberg said.

“Enough is enough,” he added. “The Trump administration is making the reporting of foreign funds easier and more transparent so we can protect our students and the integrity of American education.” JNS

New Federal Data Shows Terrorism-Loving Qatar Has Poured $6.6 Billion Into U.S. Higher Education. January 8, 2026. The U.S. Department of Education’s newly launched foreign-funding disclosure portal is placing a spotlight on the role of Qatar in American higher education, revealing that the Gulf state is by far the largest foreign source of funding for U.S. colleges and universities.

According to data published on the portal, Qatar has provided approximately $6.6 billion in gifts and contracts to American higher education institutions—far more than any other foreign country. Germany followed with $4.4 billion, England with $4.3 billion, China with $4.1 billion, Canada with $4 billion, and Saudi Arabia with $3.9 billion.

The portal was created to enforce Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which requires federally funded universities to disclose, twice annually, foreign gifts and contracts totaling at least $250,000 in a calendar year. The reporting tool was rolled out as part of a broader push by the Trump administration to increase transparency around foreign influence on U.S. campuses.

Among the institutions receiving Qatari funding, Cornell University topped the list with roughly $2.3 billion, followed by Carnegie Mellon University at $1 billion, Texas A&M University at $992.8 million, and Georgetown University at $971.1 million.

Kenneth Marcus, chairman and CEO of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and a former assistant U.S. secretary of education for civil rights, said the scale of Qatari funding raises unavoidable questions about influence.

“It is hard to imagine that this amount of money doesn’t imply some amount of influence,” Marcus told JNS. “And it’s fair to ask what kind of influence Qatar is obtaining in exchange for its money.”

Overall, the portal shows that foreign governments and entities have provided $62.4 billion in contracts and gifts to 527 U.S. colleges and universities, underscoring the scope of foreign involvement in American higher education.

Announcing the portal’s anticipated launch in December, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the initiative was long overdue.

“After years of neglect by the Biden administration, the new portal will assist our institutions of higher education in fulfilling their statutory responsibilities,” McMahon said, adding that it would help protect national security by improving compliance. YWM

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GAO report finds ‘gaps’ in State Department reporting on UNRWA textbooks. The independent agency found the State Department “omitted required information,” missed deadlines and reported inaccurate information about UNRWA schools to Congress. Andrew Bernard. (Jan. 8, 2026 / JNS) The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report on Thursday finding that the U.S. State Department failed to properly inform Congress about efforts to reform Palestinian textbooks. JNS

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Tens of thousands take to the streets

President Trump warns US will "hit Iran very hard" if Iranian regime kills protesters. Internet and phones cut off in the Islamic Republic. Groups report at least 45 dead in riots so far.

Israel National News Jan 9, 2026, 12:55 AM INN

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German Jewish leader: AfD in government could trigger mass Jewish emigration. Germany’s top Jewish leader warns that AfD participation in government would make Jewish life untenable, as rising polls for the far-right party spark deep concern ahead of key state elections. Israel National News. Published: Jan 9, 2026, 1:09 AM (GMT+2) INN

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John Cleese tears into BBC over Iran bias row as actor fumes he's 'ashamed' of broadcaster: ‘It doesn’t want to offend Islamists!'. Alex Davies, GB News, January 8, 2026.

John Cleese has joined the growing list of voices expressing their dismay at the BBC over its coverage of the ongoing protests in Iran.

The widespread civil unrest in the Islamic Republic is said to have been sparked by the country’s economic woes, which as seen inflation skyrocket to more than 42 per cent and food prices surge by 72 per cent.

However, hostilities had been threatening to boil over for months prior to the latest protests against the regime’s corruption, civil rights abuses, and critical energy shortages.

Despite the monumental moment in the country’s history, the UK’s national broadcaster has been accused of “ignoring” developments in its coverage, both online and via broadcast.

In one of the most high-profile rows, the Israeli embassy publicly slammed the BBC over its reporting on the Iran protests, with embassy spokesman Alex Gandler claiming the broadcaster has maintained “near-total silence” on the demonstrations while devoting excessive attention to Gaza.

Iranian journalist Mani Barsharzad has added to the criticism, telling GB News that many Iranians perceive the BBC as biased in its coverage of the protests.

“There is a bias there because it doesn’t fit the narrative,” she said. “The narrative, which they want to say is ‘it is their own culture’. ‘If the Islamic Republic is oppressive, it’s because the people want that.’ But this is not the reality.”

Now, Mr Cleese has joined the critics. He took to X, where he reposted criticism of the broadcaster from the likes of Sharron Davies and Jake Wallis Simons, among others taking aim at the Beeb over the supposed lack of coverage from Iran.

Mr Cleese also reacted to a post claiming the BBC was “deliberately ignoring” the protests as it “does not want to offend Islamists in the UK”.

The actor endorsed the suggestion, replying: “This is the best explanation I’ve read so far. Incredible as it seems. I am so ashamed of the BBC.”… GBNews

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Tony Blair's sister-in-law sparks outrage after describing October 7 as 'legendary'.

17:03 EST 08 Jan 2026, updated 08:06 EST 09 Jan 2026. By Natalie Lisbona and Miles Dilworth.

Sir Tony Blair's sister-in-law has sparked outrage after footage emerged of her describing October 7 as a 'legendary day' for Muslims.

Lauren Booth, a British-born journalist who has converted to Islam, said 'only Allah knows' how many 'millions' would pick up the Quran in the wake of the attacks, arguing that the world had reached a historic 'tipping point'.

The comments, made during an interview with Turkish media last year, have sparked outrage given that October 7 marked the deadliest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. DailyMail

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UK must stop giving millions to the corrupted fiefdom of Unrwa. By Gideon Falter. January 8, 2026. The West is divided into nations that recognise the dangerous reality that has crept up on them, and nations that cling onto the hope that appeasement underpinned by the mirage of international law will prolong the illusion of peace.

While Israel has been forced to confront threats on seven fronts, the West has mostly had the luxury of appeasement.

A newly assertive United States has been awakened from the “All eyes on Rafah” delusion under President Biden, which obstructed Israel’s fight against antisemitic Hamas terrorists, to siding with Israel when President Trump neutered Iran’s threats of a second Holocaust by bombing their underground nuclear facilities.

Then there is the United Kingdom, which, along with others, continues to feebly call for “restraint” every time Israel strikes a blow against common enemies who hate Jews and the West, while keenly lapping up one piece of propaganda after another.

As Israeli hostages were starving in the dungeons of Gaza, Sir Keir Starmer demanded an end to the “man-made humanitarian crisis” there while recognising a State of Palestine without even conditioning it on the return of the hostages. He handed hardened terrorists the diplomatic jackpot free of charge. So much for moral clarity.

CAA’s polling now reveals that 91 per cent of British Jews opposed the move, with barely 5 per cent in favour. This was a climax of Britain’s immoral and self-defeating foreign policy, after decades under the spell of anti-Israel propaganda. Unsurprisingly, Israel pays little heed. British calls for “an immediate ceasefire” no longer land when Israeli children have been kidnapped in the wake of Palestinian terrorists committing the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust.

Nothing demonstrates willing Western gullibility more than the United Nations. For decades, the UN has been a parody of itself. Its Human Rights Council bulges with the worst perpetrators of human wrongs. As Israel witnessed in southern Lebanon, UN peacekeepers are simply a shield behind which terrorists prepare for mass murder.

Perhaps the worst UN agency is Unrwa. Whereas all the world’s refugees fall under the remit of UNHCR, Unrwa focuses only on those designated as refugees under their own special definition in Gaza and other territories neighbouring Israel. Founded in 1949, Unrwa spends over $3 billion a year on six million people, while UNHCR spends $11 billion on 21 times that number.

Unrwa is a corrupted fiefdom within the already distorted world of the UN. Its practices have been exposed endlessly. Its educational curricula have referred to the Jewish state as the “enemy”, taught mathematics by counting “martyred” terrorists, used phrases such as “jihad is one of the doors to paradise” in grammar lessons, and more. Its facilities have been used to store munitions and as rocket launch pads in practically every conflict with Israel.

Perhaps the worst open secret has been that Unrwa teachers and officials repeatedly moonlit as terrorists. Israeli intelligence alleged that 12 of Unrwa’s staff participated in October 7, including taking hostages. UN Watch investigators claimed that 490 Unrwa staff had links to terrorist organisations. Yahya Sinwar was found carrying an allegedly fake Unrwa identification card but there was no such excuse when the leader of Hamas in Lebanon was found to have served as head of the Unrwa teachers’ union.

Hostages who made it out of Gaza alive described being held by Unrwa personnel or in Unrwa facilities, including British-Israeli hostage Emily Damari.

The importance of Unrwa to Palestinian terrorists perhaps became most blatant amid the storm that followed the establishment by the US of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which essentially briefly replaced Unrwa. Its Gazan workers were murdered by Hamas, and disinformation campaigns convinced many a credulous Western leader and journalist that Israel was massacring Gazans collecting food amid a supposed famine depicted using the emaciated figures of children suffering from congenital diseases.

In a pre-October 7, totalitarian, Hamas-run Gaza, one might argue that there was no way Unrwa could operate without becoming enmeshed with terrorist organisations using it for cover. I would agree.

It is therefore no wonder that our polling found that 89 per cent of British Jews do not want taxpayers to fund Unrwa. When the previous government suspended funding to Unrwa, it had good reason.

TheJC

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Jerusalem Center for Foreign and Security Affairs. January 8, 2026 Iran's Candidate: This is how Tehran seeks to shape the new Hamas leadership. Iran supports Khalil al-Hayya as a candidate for head of Hamas' political bureau due to his close ties with the military wing and the resistance axis, and its assessment is that he ensures continuity of the military line without internal division. Yoni Ben-Menachem. Summary. The upcoming internal elections in Hamas for the position of chairman of the political bureau are taking place at a particularly sensitive time, against the backdrop of the war in the Gaza Strip, the fragile ceasefire, and the increasing involvement of regional players in the Palestinian arena. The race focuses on two main candidates: Khalil al-Hayya , head of Hamas’s political bureau in the Gaza Strip, and Khaled Meshaal, who is defined as the head of Hamas abroad. Behind the scenes, Iran sees in Al-Hayya a key figure capable of ensuring the continuation of the movement’s military line and strengthening the “resistance” axis.

Khalil al-Hayya played a central role in the management of the Gaza Strip throughout years of severe conflicts with Israel. In his roles as Hamas deputy chairman and as a member of the “Joint Administrative Council,” he was responsible for the movement’s most sensitive issues, primarily managing negotiations with Israel and rebuilding the organizational structure after a series of targeted assassinations carried out by Israel, which hit Hamas’ political and military leadership.

According to senior security sources, al-Hayya enjoys broad support in the Gaza Strip, both from the “Military Council” of the military wing, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, and from Hamas operatives imprisoned in Israeli prisons. In addition, he enjoys significant support in Judea and Samaria, partly due to his ties to Zaher al-Jabarin, the head of Hamas’ military wing in that region.

His position within the military wing in the Gaza Strip is considered particularly strong, and his ties to senior commanders who have not yet been eliminated – most notably Izz ad-Din al-Haddad – strengthen his political position. During the war, al-Hayya lost three of his sons and other relatives, a loss that enhanced his public image and earned him the nickname “the father of martyrs” among Hamas supporters in the Gaza Strip. JCFA

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Bondi hero Ahmed al-Ahmed honoured with gold menorah by Jewish billionaire Bill Ackman. By Jamie Shapiro. January 9, 2026.

Ahmed al-Ahmed, the unarmed bystander who wrestled a weapon from one of the Bondi Beach terrorists on December 14 has been presented with a golden menorah by Jewish billionaire Bill Ackman at a Chabad awards gala in New York.

The 43-year-old Muslim shopkeeper was shot several times as he tackled one of the gunmen during the antisemitic Chanukah terror attack in which 15 people killed..

Al-Ahmed wore a kippah at the awards event, which was also attended by relatives of several of the victims as well as leading community figures.

The shopkeeper, whose arm was in a sling, was met with a standing ovation.

Presenting him with the gold menorah, inscribed with the words “light will win”, hedgefund manager Ackman was visibly moved.

'[Jews] are 0.2 per cent of the world. So seeing someone step forward on behalf of people he didn't know, to risk his own life, and the calculus of going after a guy with a gun,' he told those gathered.

“It's really one of the great acts of heroism, and I think it was very reaffirming to the Jewish community to have someone stand up on behalf of our community in the most profound, life‑affirming way.”

Explaining the meaning behind the gift, Ackman said: “The menorah represented endurance, represented courage, represented persistence and, most of all, represented life and light in the darkness. And this man deserved this.”

Al-Ahmed told reporters: "It felt like my duty as a human being, helping [keep] people safe … I’m looking at the world from the side of peace."

The injuries al-Ahmed sustained have resulted in the loss of some motion in his fingers. He said: “Honestly, there’s a pain. You know, my fingers … They’re not working, but it’ll be all right … I need time, you know, one, two months, that’s what the doctor say ... Hopefully everything will be good."

A GoFundMe page set up to raise money for al-Ahmed and to "show support and gratitude" shows the largest donation comes from "William Ackman", who contributed $99,999 (£75,000), $1 (75 pence) less than the maximum donation the platform allows for individuals.

The total fund is nearing its $3 million (£2.3 million) target.

Rabbi Yehoram Ulman of Bondi Chabad, the father-in-law of one of the victims, British-born rabbi Eli Schlanger, travelled from Australia to the US alongside al-Ahmed and also spoke at the event. TheJC

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Employees of Popular NYC Bakery Move to Unionize Over Company’s Support for Israel, ‘Zionist Projects’. By Shiryn Ghermezian. January 9, 2026. Algemeiner

‘We make babka,’ says NYC bakery, accused by some staff of supporting Gaza... “We find it troubling that divisive political issues are being introduced into our workplace,” a Breads Bakery spokesman told JNS. Anna Rahmanan. (Jan. 9, 2026 / JNS) A spokesman for the Israeli-owned Breads Bakery told JNS that the New York City chain “is built on love and genuine care for our team” and that it celebrates “peace and embrace people of all cultures and beliefs,” after a newly-formed union of workers at the chain accused it of supporting “genocide” in Gaza. The group stated that management “recommended that workers refrain from speaking Arabic on the shop floor”.. JNS

After the workers' demand: The great support for the Israeli bakery in New York. Just days after Breads Bakery workers announced a strike and demanded to sever ties with Israel, dozens arrived at the New York branch to express support for the owner. "It's disturbing, we've never encountered a situation like this." Mako. 01.10.26 Mako

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Iran’s Leadership Draws Up Contingency Escape Plans Amid Widespread Anti-Government Protests: Reports. January 9, 2026. By Ailin Vilches Arguello.

As anti-government protests continue to rage and spread across Iran, the country’s leadership is reportedly preparing for a potential collapse of the regime, with senior officials said to be drawing up contingency escape plans and stockpiling resources.

On Thursday, British Conservative Member of Parliament Tom Tugendhat said intelligence reports indicate that Iranian senior officials are putting contingency measures in place, “which suggest that the regime itself is preparing for life after the fall.”

“We’re also seeing Russian cargo aircraft coming and landing in Tehran, presumably carrying weapons and ammunition, and we’re hearing reports of large amounts of gold leaving Iran,” the British lawmaker told Parliament.

Amid growing domestic unrest, the regime’s leadership has reportedly applied for French visas for their families in recent days, while also taking steps to secure assets abroad.

“In the past 24 hours, high-ranking dignitaries from the reformist clan — including the president of the Islamic Assembly — have been attempting to obtain French visas for their families via a Parisian lawyer,” Iranian-French journalist Emmanuel Razavi told the French news outlet Le Figaro.

Razavi also told the Nouvelle Revue Politique in a separate interview that the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, is one of the leaders seeking a visa. The journalist added that the nephew of former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani applied for a visa to France.

There have also been reports that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has a backup plan to flee the country if security forces fail to suppress the protests or begin to defect.

“The ‘plan B’ is for Khamenei and his very close circle of associates and family, including his son and nominated heir apparent, Mojtaba,” an intelligence source told the British newspaper The Times.

The Iranian leader would reportedly flee to Moscow, following the path of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

However, some experts have cast doubt on reports that Khamenei, who has not left Iran for decades, plans to flee, arguing the 86-year-old leader will likely die in the country. Algemeiner

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Insanity in Tehran: Regime Cuts Internet to 80 Million, Streams Tucker Carlson on Loop Unbelievable. Insanity in Tehran: Regime Cuts Internet to 80 Million, Streams Tucker Carlson on Loop In a twist of dystopian irony, the Islamic Republic has pulled the plug on the nation’s internet and phone lines, plunging 80 million citizens into digital darkness, only to fill the void with the voice of Tucker Carlson.

Yair Kleinbaum. Jan 8, 2026. JFeed

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Emboldened by Mamdani, Protesters in New York City Chant ‘We Support Hamas’ Outside Jewish Yeshiva. January 9, 2026. The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) has condemned an anti-Israel protest in New York City’s Queens borough on Thursday night, where demonstrators openly chanted “We support Hamas,” alongside calls for “intifada” and “people’s war,” outside a Jewish religious institution in a residential neighborhood. CAM

‘We support Hamas here,’ protesters chant outside synagogue in Queens, NY. “Hamas is a terrorist organization that calls for the genocide of Jews,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said. “No matter your political beliefs, this type of rhetoric is disgusting, it's dangerous and it has no place in New York.”

(Jan. 9, 2026 / JNS) Anti-Israel protesters chanted pro-Hamas slogans near a synagogue in Queens, N.Y., on Thursday, in a demonstration that forced the early closure of a daycare, two elementary schools and a religious site, according to a local official. JNS

Zohran is quiet. Mamdani Has Nothing to Say After Hamas Rally Outside Queens Synagogue | WATCH 200 protesters target Young Israel synagogue in Queens with pro-Hamas chants and calls for intifada. Schools dismiss early, community on edge as NYPD maintains heavy presence outside real estate event. Jfeed Staff. Jan 9, 2026 03:48 JFeed

Pro-Hamas chants outside New York synagogue, Mayor Adams condemns: 'No place for this in our city'. New York City Mayor Eric Adams condemned pro-Hamas chants heard during a demonstration outside a synagogue in the city, which was hosting a real estate sales event for Ma'ale Adumim, stating that "this rhetoric and these images are unacceptable and have no place in our city." The protest included chants of "intifada," "death to the IDF," and "we support Hamas." The demonstration also drew sharp condemnation from Jewish organizations, Consul Ophir Akunis and New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Daniel Edelson, New York|01.09.26 YNet

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Update on social network X: Iran flag emoji replaced with Shah's flag. Social network X has updated the emoji of Iran's flag to the Shah's flag, which displays the lion and sun symbol in its center and was in use until the Islamic Revolution in 1979, as a gesture of solidarity with the massive wave of protests across the country. Earlier today, a user opposing the regime called for this move in a tweet to the head of the network's product department, Nikita Bier, who replied: "Give me a few hours." The flag was updated in all emoji usages across the platform, including official accounts - such as that of Tehran's Foreign Ministry. Ynet|01.09.26 YNet

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France, Britain and Germany condemn killing of protesters in Iran. France, Britain and Germany condemned the killing of protesters in Iran. This was according to a statement released by the French presidential office. According to the statement, the three countries are "concerned about reports of violence by Iranian security forces and call on authorities to exercise restraint." Reuters|01.09.26 YNet

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Samoa plans to open embassy in Jerusalem, drawing praise and criticism. Currently, seven countries have embassies in Jerusalem: the United States, Honduras, Guatemala, Kosovo, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay and Fiji. Itamar Eichner | published: 1.9.26 05:59 YNet

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Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal: 🚨🇮🇷 IRANIAN OPPOSITION JOURNALIST SAYS: “MORE DEAD THAN IN THE 12-DAY-WAR”

Opposition journalist Ilia Hashemi says Iranian security forces killed more people during last night’s protests than died in the entire 12-day war (~1,060).

His claim is based on eyewitness accounts and a direct conversation with a hospital surgeon in Tehran.

“I was in the operating room all night,” the surgeon told him, adding that the number of protesters killed in Tehran, Karaj, and Shahriar was higher than the war’s death toll.

This comes amid an internet blackout and near-total information control. No official numbers. No independent access.

Hospitals overwhelmed, cameras off, narrative sealed.

If even partly true, it reframes the moment: the deadliest violence wasn’t external war - it was internal suppression, carried out in a single night..

Source: @Osint613 Jan 9, 2026. on X

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Despite storm. Israelis unite for weekly Shabbat call to bring Ran Gvili home. Israel National News. Jan 9, 2026, 8:46 PM INN

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IDF responds to Hamas violation of ceasefire. IDF responds to Hamas rocket launch, conducting targeted strikes on Hamas targets in northern and southern Gaza. Israel National News. Jan 9, 2026, 7:43 AM (GMT+2) INN

After failed projectile launch. IDF eliminates senior Hamas terrorists. IDF identifies senior Hamas terrorists eliminated in strikes in Gaza in the past 24 hours after a failed projectile launch toward Israel. In addition, terror infrastructure was destroyed. Israel National News. Jan 9, 2026, 8:07 PM INN

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IDF thwarts terror attack. Terror cell arrested in Hebron planned immediate terror attack, IDF reveals. Israel National News. Published: Jan 9, 2026, 2:42 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Police charge California man with terrorist threats after firing on home with Chanukah decorations. David Englin, of the Anti-Defamation League, told JNS that “we are grateful for the seriousness with which the Redlands Police Department conducted their investigation.” Aaron Bandler.

(Jan. 9, 2026 / JNS) A 23-year-old was arrested on Jan. 8 for allegedly firing a weapon at a Jewish home in Redlands, Calif., about an hour east of Los Angeles, the Redlands Police Department stated.

Police said the man, identified as Redlands resident Garrett Bailey Stater, was arrested without incident on charges of terrorizing and making terrorist threats. JNS

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UN school in New York investigates swastika carved in locker room. “This is a direct result of years of the United Nations turning a blind eye toward the demonization of Israel and the Jewish people,” said Danny Danon, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations. Jessica Russak-Hoffman. (Jan. 9, 2026 / JNS) An incident at the United Nations International School (UNIS) in New York is under investigation after a swastika was etched into a boys’ locker room on campus, school officials confirmed to JNS.

In a letter dated Jan. 8 to the school community that was provided to JNS, executive director Dan Brenner described the “antisemitic incident” as “deeply troubling.”

“Acts and symbols of hate have no place at UNIS,” Brenner wrote. “They cause real harm, particularly to our Jewish students, families, faculty and staff, and they run counter to the values of dignity, respect and international-mindedness that define our school.”

Brenner said the school, which educates children of diplomats and international civil servants in New York, is conducting an investigation. “There will be severe consequences for those involved,” he said, and the administration will be “taking deliberate steps to address this incident through education, dialogue and collective action.” JNS

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🚨 Breaking: Iran’s national TV is directly threatening that protesters will be killed 👇

“Don’t let your children go out tonight. If they do, don’t complain if they are shot.” pic.twitter.com/6Q6oQ85a23

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) January 9, 2026 on X

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Goldie Ghamari | گلسا قمری @gghamari: 🚨🚨🚨

Muslim savages from IRAQ are bragging on X about being on their way to Iran to defend Khamenei and the terrorist Islamic Republic occupying Iran from IRANIAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS.

When I tell you that Iran is occupied by non-Iranian Arab Muslim savages, I'm not exaggerating. January 9, 2026. on X

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Grand Mufti's Nazi War Crimes Exposed in Belgrade Files | Israel Hayom.

The Nazi war criminal the Arab world protected from justice. Yugoslavia sought to prosecute Jerusalem's Grand Mufti for war crimes, but Arab pressure buried the evidence. The archived investigation reveals his direct role in Nazi atrocities across the Balkans. By Ariel Bulshtein. 01-09-2026.

([20]. Adolf Hitler and Mohammed Amin al-Husseini in a meeting in Berlin in 1941 | Photo: AFP)

Stored in a protected Belgrade basement, among the tens of thousands of dusty files comprising Yugoslavia's national archives, sits a slim investigation folder documenting the crimes of Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, known throughout the region as Jerusalem's Grand Mufti. Though thin, the file's brevity reflects not a lack of evidence but rather the political forces that prevented full investigation. The Mufti's legacy includes rivers of blood flowing not only through the Land of Israel – where he orchestrated anti-Jewish pogroms throughout the 1920s and 1930s in a manner chillingly similar to the October 7 massacre – but across Nazi-occupied Europe as well.

Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia provided another stage for his lethal operations. Al-Husseini refused to limit himself to desk work – managing German propaganda, drafting pamphlets, broadcasting to the Muslim world, or developing strategies to mobilize Muslim minorities across the Soviet Union and Balkans for the Third Reich. The craving for direct action – the kind of Jewish bloodshed he had directed in the Land of Israel – compelled the Mufti to take his operations into the field, which he actively pursued. His "field" operations centered on occupied Yugoslavia, specifically Bosnia and Herzegovina, home to a substantial Muslim population. The Mufti's efforts resulted in the formation of three Waffen-SS divisions composed entirely of local Muslims. These units perpetrated horrific war crimes – massacring Serbs and Jews, incinerating entire villages with their inhabitants still inside, carrying out systematic rape, torture, and pillage.

When World War II concluded in summer 1945, Yugoslavia's liberated government moved to investigate the Mufti's role in Nazi atrocities, formally listing him as a war criminal and petitioning a United Nations special committee for his extradition. The investigation folder apparently originated during this period, though it tragically never advanced to substantive inquiry or trial. Al-Husseini's allies throughout the Arab world unleashed tremendous pressure and threats that forced Yugoslav authorities to retreat from extradition demands. Some sources maintain that Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito himself yielded to Arab requests, striking al-Husseini's name from the wanted list – whether from concern about global Muslim backlash or fear of retaliatory violence from Yugoslavia's own Muslim population.

([21]. "The first Nazi-Palestinian." Mohammed Amin al-Husseini. Photo: AFP)

Either way, although justice was not done with the Mufti, the file's documents, which were collected by Yugoslav investigators before they were ordered to stop, shed some light on the harmonious connection between the German Nazis and the Muslim Nazi, who is considered the father of the Palestinian nationalist movement, and on the way they collaborated.

In Hitler's service.

One of the most intriguing documents bears the date July 28, 1944 and was composed by Professor Gerhard von Mende, a senior and enthusiastic Nazi who was considered in the Third Reich's hierarchy an expert on Muslim minority affairs. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, he was appointed director of the Caucasus Department of the Ministry for Occupied Eastern Territories. In practice, von Mende and al-Husseini aimed for the same goal – to recruit the Muslim world for the Reich's war effort, and it is no wonder they had much to discuss.

According to the memo, "encouraging Islam appears useful" for Nazi Germany. "The Muslim peoples are natural allies of the German Reich in the struggle against Bolshevism," von Mende quoted the Mufti, and described in detail the practical steps he proposed. Among other things, "the Grand Mufti pointed to the urgent need to strengthen general propaganda through the employment of imams and mullahs within the military units themselves." Al-Husseini went even further and proposed establishing a school for mullahs that would serve both the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS.

To this school, according to al-Husseini's vision, candidates from various nationalities were to be recruited and trained, through integrated propaganda, to advance two totalitarian doctrines – political Islam and National Socialism. The Mufti did not just talk – a similar school had already been established by him in the Muslim region of Bosnia, and its graduates had already brought the gospel of Islam and Nazism to the occupied peoples of the Balkans. To him it was only natural to continue and deepen the alliance, not only in the field of education. He warmly recommended to von Mende establishing a Muslim religious council that would highlight Germany's friendly policy toward Islam and lead counter-propaganda efforts against the Allies. "Generally speaking, the conversation showed that the Grand Mufti is prepared to place at the Germans' disposal his influence for strengthening the fighting power of Muslim units in the Wehrmacht – provided that Muslim education is carried out in a logical and purposeful manner," von Mende summarized the conversation in a message to his superiors in the Reich capital.

Al-Husseini found common ground not only with von Mende, explains in a conversation with Israel Hayom Dr. Matthias Küntzel, a world-renowned expert on the relationship between Nazi ideology and antisemitism in the Arab world. "It is known that he was a friend of Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, head of the Gestapo, and Interior Minister of the German Reich. He had good relations with Himmler. The Mufti met Hitler only once, but with other figures in the Nazi leadership he had significant and important relationship networks."

A bottomless pit.

Reviewing the Mufti's file uncovers another facet of his character. Though his hatred toward Jews – and toward anyone he perceived as obstructing his path – was authentic and deeply felt, al-Husseini refused to serve the cause without compensation, however malicious and malevolent that cause might be. He demanded money, substantial amounts of it. Yugoslav investigators assembled invoices documenting his various expenditures (some involving trivially small, even laughable sums). He insisted the Germans reimburse every single expense, major and minor alike. His penny-pinching behavior inadvertently created a paper trail tracking his influence into territories far beyond traditional Muslim regions. One receipt documents a 2,000-mark payment covering "the Mufti's expenses in Vilnius." Another invoice from the Harem Hotel in Oybin, a German resort town, confirms that during late July 1944 the Mufti entertained numerous guests there – German Nazis and Muslim Nazis alike. Von Mende's name appears on that roster as well, the matching dates corroborating their meeting.

([22]. Mohammed Amin al-Husseini. Photo: GPO)

Available records indicate the Mufti collected from the Germans a monthly stipend of no less than 50,000 marks, supplemented by an additional 25,000 marks in foreign currency. These reimbursements swelled those already substantial sums, filling his coffers so generously that certain Nazis likened their Arab ally to a "bottomless pit." The Germans furnished al-Husseini with young women as well. Moral integrity never numbered among the Mufti's virtues.

Al-Husseini wasn't unique in this arrangement. Former Iraqi Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Kilani, an ardent antisemite, secured even greater compensation from the Nazis – 75,000 marks monthly, plus an additional 25,000 marks in foreign currency. The Germans possibly calculated that al-Kilani delivered superior value. In April 1941 he orchestrated a revolt in Iraq, temporarily establishing a pro-Nazi government that ultimately triggered the Farhud pogrom and massacred numerous Baghdad Jews. Al-Husseini and al-Kilani demonstrated capacity both for cooperation toward shared objectives (in 1942 they jointly authored correspondence expressing German support, driven by ambitions to destroy the emerging Jewish homeland in Palestine; roughly a year later they journeyed together to Italy's king seeking his backing for Arab causes) and for bitter disputes – primarily concerning precedence, prestige, and finances.

Operating alongside them, financed by and serving the Nazis, were additional Arab leaders and influencers including Shakib Arslan, Kamil Marwa, Mansour Daoud, and Sherif Sharaf. Understanding this network's activities requires knowing merely that Kamil Marwa received the "distinction" during the 1930s of translating "Mein Kampf" into Arabic for serialized publication in a Lebanese newspaper.

Nevertheless, al-Husseini distinguished himself from all others. Where al-Kilani bore the designation 'Iraqi representative', al-Husseini claimed to embody the pan-Islamic movement itself – to such degree that Himmler regarded him as something resembling a 'Muslim pope'. From this elevated position, offering the Nazis his services for Muslim recruitment became straightforward. Recruitment campaigns commenced with establishing propaganda machinery and broadcasting Nazi radio programming in Arabic, then advanced toward more practical and brutal undertakings.

Al-Husseini and al-Kilani sought to formalize their Nazi alliance through official documentation, refusing to rely solely on actions. They drafted a joint German-Italian declaration intended to secure from the Third Reich formal commitment for establishing an Arab state spanning the entire Middle Eastern region. Within Article 7 of this declaration they indulged their obsession – shared enthusiastically by their German partners – stipulating that Palestine's Jewish problem would be resolved "by the same methods being implemented to solve the Jewish problem in Axis nations." In 1942, responding to their explicit request, both Arab leaders received permission to tour the Sachsenhausen concentration and extermination camp outside Berlin, personally observing the "Jewish problem's" resolution. They approved of everything they witnessed, enthusiastically preparing to execute their portion wherever across the globe opportunity presented itself.

The Mufti, incidentally, never attempted concealing his familiarity with Nazi methods and objectives. In memoirs composed during his final years at his Damascus residence, he disclosed that his friend Himmler informed him around mid-1943 that "by that point approximately 3 million Jews had been exterminated."

From Jerusalem to Jerusalem.

Was the Mufti-Nazi alliance founded solely upon their mutual hatred of Jews? Evidence suggests the common ground between these two murderous ideologies extended considerably further. "The Mufti personally catalogued what he identified as the most significant convergence points between political Islam and Nazi doctrine," explains Dr. Küntzel. "He enumerated seven elements – primarily, unified leadership and the leader's elevated status, present in both systems; secondly, the culture of obedience and discipline; thirdly, the veneration accorded to battlefield martyrs; fourth, communitarian values and collective primacy over individual rights; fifth, motherhood glorification and absolute abortion prohibition; sixth, work ethic reverence and productivity worship; and seventh, their shared posture toward Jews and warfare against Judaism."

Q: Did the Nazis reciprocate al-Husseini's enthusiasm for Nazism with equal fervor?

"I'm far from certain. Nazi ranks contained divergent perspectives and disputes regarding the Mufti. Certain officials expressed bewilderment at his demands and voracious appetite – he constantly sought additional funds, more residences, expanded household staff, and increasingly extravagant material provisions. Conversely, his Himmler friendship bolstered his standing considerably. Whether al-Husseini actually met Adolf Eichmann remains unclear. Nazi leadership assigned personnel to manage the Mufti, though their responsibilities proved challenging. Al-Husseini demonstrated difficult temperament, repeatedly disappointing his German supervisors through his conduct. He envisioned himself commanding the entire Muslim world and broadcast arrogance indiscriminately." Dr. Matthias Küntzel, a world-renowned expert on the relationship between Nazi ideology and antisemitism in the Arab world.

Q: Didn't Nazi racial doctrine render him inferior and unacceptable by German standards?

"Hitler quotations exist suggesting the Mufti didn't appear Semitic. He possesses light hair and undoubtedly Aryan blood courses through his veins. Such rationales constructed the framework permitting him as an ally. This represented obvious nonsense, though admittedly the entire racial theory constituted accumulated nonsense."

Q: How would you evaluate his Yugoslav achievements? Did he successfully mobilize significant Balkan Muslim populations under Nazi banners?

"He enjoyed substantial fame throughout the Muslim world, amplified through his Nazi radio addresses broadcasting from Berlin. Consequently, his undertaking the mission of persuading Yugoslav Muslims to enlist in the SS represented tremendous development from the Nazi perspective. Naturally, answering the theoretical question whether Muslim unit formation would have occurred without him proves impossible, yet his role throughout this process carried undeniable importance. He journeyed to Bosnia, delivered speeches, exercised persuasion, while simultaneously guaranteeing Muslim recruits received halal-certified provisions and distinctly Muslim uniforms. He micromanaged every detail ensuring Muslims experienced comfort as SS soldiers. "Simultaneously, he incited recruits toward ruthless violence against opponents and enemies. He orchestrated mass murder. Brutality and lethal violence served as his defining characteristics consistently – originating in 1930s Palestine. These traits never evolved. Middle Eastern populations lived in terror of the Mufti's gang operatives during the 1930s. Yugoslav populations experienced terror from his SS forces throughout World War II. And Palestinian populations confronted identical brutality and murderousness post-1945 through Israel's establishment. Extensive documentation confirms this pattern."

The Mufti's life trajectory and criminal activities spanned three continents – across all of which he left rivers of blood. Throughout the Balkans, Serbian blood flowed primarily, though Jews and Roma numbered among victims as well. Muslim-Nazi collaboration's success in occupied Yugoslavia spawned proposals replicating this model elsewhere. "The Mufti alongside additional Muslim Nazi collaborators attempted orchestrating major initiatives connecting with Muslim populations throughout Soviet territories," Dr. Küntzel corroborates von Mende's memo details. "However, that aspect doesn't constitute the essential point – nor his encounters with senior Nazis during his German residence. My research uncovered that the period preceding his German arrival, and the period following his German stay, carried greater significance. Why? Because throughout his German phase, spanning 1941 through 1945, he operated under Nazi directives. He lacked complete autonomy. He naturally sought maximizing financial compensation, prestige, and similar benefits, yet couldn't execute everything he genuinely desired. Contrastingly, during earlier periods – specifically 1936 through 1939 – he executed a pivotal Middle Eastern role; then resumed that role from 1945 through 1948. Throughout those periods he worked preventing Jewish state establishment – and succeeded. Throughout those periods he inflicted greater damage than during his German phase."

Extermination project.

These testimonies represent merely a fraction of available evidence. The Mufti-Nazi alliance functioned and produced results even without requiring direct action. Al-Husseini's reputation and imagery preceded him everywhere. On January 30, 1942, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels documented in his diary how propaganda units distributed the Mufti's photograph throughout the Crimean Peninsula to recruit Muslim volunteers for Germany's military campaigns. This image depicting his Hitler meeting underwent duplication into tens of thousands of copies, distributed across Muslim population centers throughout Wehrmacht-conquered territories. Bosnian soldiers of the 13th Mountain SS Division reading the pamphlet "Islam and Judaism," written by the Mufti (Screenshot: Wikipedia)

The Mufti's schemes – both realized and unrealized – should have delivered him directly to the gallows. Yet during the war's closing weeks he remained in Berlin rather than Yugoslavia. "In April 1945 al-Husseini successfully departed the besieged Reich capital by aircraft, landing in Switzerland," Dr. Küntzel discloses. "Authorities there apprehended and transferred him into French custody. Yet France accommodated him in exceptionally comfortable conditions near Paris. Even from this pleasant confinement the French facilitated his escape, whereupon he 'resurfaced' in Cairo during 1946."

This dual escape couldn't have transpired without systematic planning and assistance from sympathetic parties, Dr. Küntzel maintains. Furthermore, even amid their annihilation the Nazis envisioned continuing Jewish extermination – operating through the Mufti. "They sustained his financing even throughout the Reich's terminal days, anticipating he would persist in pursuing Jews and executing everything possible preventing Jewish state establishment in Palestine," Küntzel contends. "By 1944-45 the Nazis were already strategizing the subsequent Middle Eastern war against Jews. This explains why the Mufti received such substantial funding during the war's final period, despite its inability to influence the conflict's trajectory or conclusion. Abundant documentation confirms this. "As early as 1942 the Nazis recognized their inability to defeat the Allied forces, yet victory against Jews remained their priority. Should Germany face death, they determined the Zionist project must perish as well. This perspective obviously didn't represent most German population sentiment – they confronted other concerns at war's end. However, specific Nazi leadership circles understood precisely why financing the Mufti mattered and why concealing weapons throughout the Middle East for imminent anti-Zionist struggle proved essential. They preplanned the Mufti's subsequent warfare steps against Jews."

Arab nationalist apologists attempting to sanitize the Mufti's record contend his Nazi assistance role shouldn't be exaggerated. How do you respond?

"The Mufti executed terrible satanic acts. This doesn't establish Mufti responsibility for Europe's Jewish 'Final Solution'. When al-Husseini reached Germany in 1941, Jewish extermination preparations were already complete. No evidence demonstrates the Mufti originated Hitler's Jewish extermination concept. This represented Hitler's and Germany's initiative, though the Mufti endorsed it enthusiastically, matching his worldview and strategic objectives. Subsequently, when Nazis considered rescuing certain Jewish children, the Mufti exerted maximum effort guaranteeing those children's murder in Poland rather than permitting their Palestine arrival."

Q: Did Mohammed Amin al-Husseini possess unusual characteristics?

"The Mufti's Jew-hatred proved extraordinary, utterly delusional. This constitutes his legacy bequeathed to Arab and Muslim populations. In 1937 he published a pamphlet titled 'Islam and Judaism'. This represents an incomparably significant document, conclusively demonstrating how Israel-hatred, Zionism-hatred, and Jew-hatred originated long preceding Israel's establishment. People erroneously assume Middle Eastern antisemitism emerged responding to Jewish state creation and its policies, yet this interpretation proves demonstrably false. The causal and chronological sequence operates in precisely opposite direction. The Mufti's pamphlet exhibits extreme antisemitism predating Israel's existence. Al-Husseini and his adherents prepared for Jewish warfare specifically to prevent their existence."

Q: How do you account for German public indifference toward these documented facts?

"The German public's unawareness proves deeply unfortunate. Despite how I and fellow researchers have exposed the connections between the Mufti's political Islam and Nazism, this information remains essentially an open secret for most individuals. Why? Because numerous 'experts' prefer attributing Middle Eastern antisemitism's existence to Israel. They characterize antisemitism as Israeli conduct's byproduct, and achieving this conclusion requires separating Nazi antisemitism – delusional even by their assessment – from Muslim antisemitism, supposedly justified. Consequently many deliberately suppress Nazi influence on 1930s and 1940s Middle Eastern developments." ILH

Explosive Archives Confirm the Nazi Origins of Palestinian Terror Finance. Files unearthed in Belgrade highlight the breadth of the Nazi–Muslim partnership and its modern-day consequences. Gerald Posner and Trisha Posner. Jan 09, 2026.

Archival material newly unsealed in Belgrade casts a harsh spotlight on collaboration between Nazi Germany and Islamist leadership during the Second World War. Hidden for decades in Yugoslavia’s national archives, a slim investigative file on Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, confirms both the scale of his operational role in Nazi Europe and the political suppression that later ensured the case would never be pursued.

The file [23] is not thin because evidence was lacking. It is thin because the investigation was stopped.

The documents reinforce a historical continuum stretching from the Mufti’s wartime collaboration with Nazi Germany to the postwar survival of Nazi capital networks that later financed the emergence of Palestinian terror organizations. This is precisely the through-line Patricia Posner and I documented in our 2024 joint investigation published by the Jewish Chronicle, Revealed: Nazi Financial Fixer Who Funded Palestinian Terror [24]. In that exposé we traced how François Genoud, a Swiss Nazi financier, preserved Hitler’s political and financial legacy and redirected looted Nazi assets into Middle Eastern militant causes in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The Belgrade materials focus heavily on al-Husseini’s activities in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia, particularly Bosnia and Herzegovina. Far from acting merely as a political intermediary or propagandist, the Mufti pushed aggressively for operational control. He helped facilitate the creation of multiple Waffen-SS divisions composed of local Muslims, units that went on to commit mass atrocities against Jews and Serbs, including village burnings, executions, rape, and systematic terror.

What emerges from the archive is not only violence, but design.

Just the Facts with Gerald Posner is a reader-supported publication. Subscriptions make this work possible.

Documents assembled by Yugoslav investigators before their work was halted reveal how deliberately the alliance between the Nazi leadership and the Mufti was constructed. A wartime memorandum authored by a senior German official responsible for Muslim minority affairs in occupied territories records extensive coordination between Nazi authorities and al-Husseini aimed at mobilizing Muslim populations for the Nazi war effort.

The Mufti was not simply endorsing Third Reich objectives. He was shaping policy. He advocated embedding religious authorities directly within German military units, arguing that imams should be used to indoctrinate and motivate Muslim soldiers serving in both the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS. He pushed for the creation of formal training institutions designed to fuse political Islam with National Socialist ideology, producing cadres capable of spreading both doctrines in tandem.

This was not theoretical. A similar religious training model had already been implemented under his direction in Bosnia. Graduates of that system were deployed across the Balkans, reinforcing Nazi control and participating directly in atrocities against civilian populations. The Belgrade files confirm that the fusion of Islamism and Nazism was neither accidental nor rhetorical. It was institutionalized.

The archives also expose another dimension of the alliance that resonates powerfully with what followed in the postwar period: money. JustTheFacts

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SHOCKING. Former Labour Blackburn MP Kate Hollern speaking about the ‘toxic’ general election campaign where she lost to Gaza thug Adnan Hussain MP." At one point, I was told I was going to be beheaded... When someone tells you, 'You are going to be beheaded', and you see a picture of yourself on social media covered in blood, of course it worries you."… [pic.twitter.com/kUtZatQC6E] — Subversive Force (@sirwg202110) January 8, 2026. on X

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Hengaw Human Rights Report: Nearly 2,000 Executions In Iran 2025 | MEMRI. January 8, 2026. Special Dispatch. No. 12319. Hengaw Human Rights Report For 2025: Iran Executed 1,858 Prisoners; 1,552 People Were Arrested Or Abducted By Authorities; 454 Political And Religious Activists Were Sentenced To 1,766 Years And 11 Days Of 'Discretionary' Punishment. January 8, 2026 MEMRI

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Pro-Iran Hackers Target Opposition News Site | MEMRI. Iraqi Militia-Linked Hackers Claim Cyberattack On Iranian Opposition Site Amid Surging Anti-Regime Protests January 9, 2026 MEMRI

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Ben Rhodes Heartbroken As Iranians March for Freedom. Architect of maligned nuclear deal wants Iranians to stop protesting and 'negotiate' with their oppressors.

Andrew Stiles. January 9, 2026. Iranians are revolting against the despotic regime that Barack Obama worked tirelessly to legitimize, and the former president's foreign policy guru is struggling to contain his despair.

Ben Rhodes, architect of the much-maligned Iran nuclear deal, hasn't posted anything on social media to express solidarity with the protesters who have been risking their lives since late December in one of the largest mass uprisings the country has ever seen. Instead, he has repeatedly denounced Donald Trump for vowing to protect the protesters from state-sanctioned violence.

When U.S. forces apprehended Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro—one of Iran's closest allies in Latin America—Rhodes was deeply concerned that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be next to fall. The operation took place less than 24 hours after Trump expressed support for the protesters in Iran and promised to "come to their rescue" if the regime turned violent.

"The thing that worries me is this kind of behavior can become contagious, and maybe it already has been," Rhodes said on Pod Save the World, his foreign policy podcast with former Obama bro Tommy Vietor. "It's probably not, like, entirely a coincidence that Trump is threatening Iran at the same time that he's doing this in Venezuela."

Days later, Rhodes and Vietor made fun of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) for wearing a "Make Iran Great Again" hat and saying that Trump has not "turned his back on the people of Iran" the way Obama did during the green revolution in 2009. "Cool hat, dork," Vietor quipped smugly.

Rhodes, whose hatred of Israel earned him the nickname "Hamas" in Obama's White House, proceeded to play Debbie Downer by listing off reasons why toppling the Iranian regime was actually worse than the status quo. "The problem going forward is there's no clear path to, like, what would come next," he lamented. If his good friend Khamenei were to be deposed, Rhodes contended, his other friends in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) would take control and "Trump bombing them isn't going to change that."

The Obama bro, who used to write the president's speeches, delivered a semi-coherent rant about the dangers of attacking the regime to hasten its downfall. "The question is whether or not, you know, Israel tries to take advantage of [the protests] by bombing Iran again, and see if that is like, you know, hitting a boxer who they think is about to go down," he said. "Um, I don't think that would be good because, actually, I think the more chaotic the collapse is of this regime, the more likely there's a civil war and the IRGC are the people that ... are running the place."

Rhodes continued to ramble about why the Iranian people shouldn't trust Trump and why, if they knew what was best for them, they would stop protesting and "negotiate" with their oppressors—just like he did in Obama's second term. "Like, what is in place after, like, whatever this, like," he said. "Um, can there be just some Iranian process to, like, negotiate, like, a pathway in a different direction? That will take time, but that's better than the regime collapsing and there being a civil war, or it's better than the supreme leader being ousted, but then the IRGC is in charge, right?"

On Thursday, Rhodes promoted a post from Bulwark journalist Tim Miller about how Vice President J.D. Vance was "the most appalling person in public life since segregation." That remains his most recent entry on his X feed. Meanwhile, in Iran, protesters across the country continue to risk their lives for freedom, but Rhodes has made no effort to acknowledge their courage.

Rhodes was one of several prominent Iran apologists who condemned the Israeli and U.S. military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025. Attacking Iran, he said, was an "utterly pointless, dangerous, and immoral act" that would escalate into full-blown war. (It did not.) Rhodes argued, without citing evidence, that the Middle East would be far more peaceful if Trump hadn't pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal he crafted with Obama. "Donald Trump's tearing up agreements contributed, I believe, directly to October 7, between Israel and Hamas," he said on MSNBC the day after U.S. bombers struck Iranian targets.

The inflammatory rhetoric from Rhodes and his fellow Obama bros appears to have radicalized Ryan Routh, the deranged liberal who tried to assassinate Trump in September 2024. Routh echoed the Obama bro talking points in a handwritten note outlining his motivations, denouncing Trump as unfit to be president because "he ended relations with Iran like a child and now the Middle East has unraveled."

Apart from his slavish devotion to the Iranian regime, Rhodes is best known for crying like a bitch when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. Weeks later, he flew to Havana to attend Fidel Castro's funeral alongside his grieving comrades from Iran. FreeBeacon

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Netanyahu signals Israel may phase out US military aid. In an interview with The Economist, PM Netanyahu vows to secure Israel’s future, restore its global standing, fight “propaganda," reassess US aid, and confront threats from Iran. Israel National News. Published: Jan 9, 2026, 9:48 PM (GMT+2) INN

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British report: Khamenei raised alert level to highest amid protests. Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has raised the alert level of the country's security forces to the highest level, amid citizen protests against the regime. This was reported by the British "Telegraph," which emphasized that Khamenei instructed the Revolutionary Guards to take control of the protests, amid fears of desertions from the army and police. The newspaper further claimed that according to Iranian sources, the alert level that Iran is currently at is even higher than during the 12-day war with Israel, and that "underground missile cities are ready to deal with external threats." Ynet|01.10.26 YNet

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Iranian intimidation campaign: Israelis receive threatening messages. Israelis received threatening messages as part of an Iranian intimidation campaign, which read: "We are coming. Look to the skies at midnight." Ynet|01.10.26 YNet

Masses of Israelis Received Threat: "We're Coming. Look at Midnight". N12. 01.10.26 The SMS Messages.. an Iranian Awareness Operation. Or Ravid. N12.1.10.26 ...Messing also claimed that the messages are being sent to "relatively high-profile" people who appear in the phone books leaked in previous hacks.

Cyber ​​Command: "Nothing more than an attempt to create panic". The National Cyber ​​Command updated that these messages, sent by an unidentified party, were received in the last hour. "This is nothing more than an attempt to create panic in the public," it said. "We are not pressuring, we are not sharing, we are simply continuing with our routine. It is important to emphasize: no device or account was hacked. This is a widespread distribution of a message, similar to spam messages Mako

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'We are Hamas here,' 'long live Oct 7': chants outside NYC synagogue spark outrage.

A broad chorus of NYC politicians, from Eric Adams and Richie Torres to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez condemn the chants as antisemitic.

i24NEWS. January 10, 2026.

A pro-Hamas protesters chanted slogans in support of the jihadist group outside a New York synagogue on Thursday, in the city's latest antisemitism outrage that drew condemnation from a wide range of political figures. New York City comptroller Marc D. Levine said "there is no ambiguity here. This is support of a terrorist organization. This cannot be normalized and excused. Truly reprehensible." [25]

Footage circulating on social media showed dozens of protesters chanting “Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas here” and "Love live October 7" outside the Young Israel synagogue in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens. [26]

An extremist anti-Israeli group named Pal-Awda identified the synagogue's location on social media earlier on Thursday...

Elizabeth Pipko | i24NEWSROOM. New York State Assemblyman Sam Berger, a Democrat who represents the area, said that local Jewish institutions voluntarily closed for the day after police notified them of the demonstration. [27]

New York Governor Kathy Hochul wrote that "Hamas is a terrorist organization that calls for the genocide of Jews. No matter your political beliefs, this type of rhetoric is disgusting, it's dangerous, and it has no place in New York." [28]

"Whatever the amnesia surrounding 10/7, the truth must never be forgotten: Hamas murdered, maimed, mutilated, raped, and tortured thousands of innocent Israelis. It is—and has always been—a barbaric oppressor of its own people," wrote congressman Ritchie Torres. "Support for Hamas is not an expression of empathy for Palestinians; it is an expression of antipathy toward Jews and Israelis. Hate has no place in NYC." The far-left, anti-Israel congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez joined the chorus of condemnations, thereby drawing ire from pro-Palestinian activists on social media. [29]

Former NYC mayor Eric Adams wrote that "The chants heard yesterday in the heart of the Jewish community in Kew Gardens, Queens, in support of Hamas were vile and deliberate acts of intimidation meant to terrorize our Jewish community." New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a brief, carefully worded statement of condemnation on X. [30]

"We're calling on the mayor to condemn this. Support for Hamas, a terrorist organization, an organization that is sworn to the destruction of Jews and Israelis around the world, that is very problematic," said Scott Richman, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, demanding stronger language from Mamdani. "And he needs to be clear. He's the leader of this city, and he needs to be the leader for all Jews, for all residents of the city, and make it clear that this is unacceptable language." i24

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Why the same network that tormented Jewish students now defends Maduro. Campaigns were orchestrated by foreign-funded organizations testing rapid-response capabilities for broader deployment against American interests. Alex Goldenberg. (Jan. 10, 2026 / JNS)

In a remarkable piece of investigative journalism published in Fox News, Asra Q. Nomani documented how a network of self-described Marxist and communist organizations mobilized pro-Nicolás Maduro protests across more than 100 American cities within 12 hours of his capture on Jan. 3 by U.S. forces. The minute-by-minute reconstruction reveals the operational capability that I described in my congressional testimony in December 2024: a sophisticated, foreign-funded rapid-response infrastructure operating on American soil.

Nomani’s reporting raises a critical question: What is this network actually built to do? The answer matters profoundly for understanding both the campus antisemitism many Jewish students experienced after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the broader threat to American foreign-policy coherence.

This infrastructure exists to mobilize immediate domestic opposition to U.S. actions that threaten authoritarian regimes aligned with Chinese and Russian interests. Not all anti-Israel protests fall into this category. But specific campaigns, particularly the “Shut It Down for Palestine” (SID4P) movement that blocked airports, bridges, tunnels and critical infrastructure, were organized by groups with documented ties to Neville Roy Singham, a Shanghai-based American tech billionaire who sold his company for $785 million.

What The New York Times investigation revealed in August 2023 was a global operation. Singham has been co-opting left-wing movements worldwide—from political parties in South Africa to news organizations in India and Brazil, systematically steering them toward pro-China Communist Party narratives. The Times tracked hundreds of millions of dollars flowing to groups that “mix progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points.”

In South Africa, Singham’s network funded the Nkrumah School, which hosts boot camps attended by activists and politicians from across Africa. According to U.S. tax records, one of Singham’s nonprofits donated at least $450,000 for training at the school. But activists who attended these sessions began noticing something troubling. What was marketed as liberation politics increasingly took a pro-China tilt. New Frame, a South African news outlet funded by Singham, shut down in July 2022 after staff questioned why there was no coverage of Uyghur oppression or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

This pattern of co-optation was repeated globally. In India, Singham funded NewsClick, which “sprinkled its coverage with Chinese government talking points.” In Brazil, funding went to Brasil de Fato, which interspersed articles about land rights with praise for Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The operational model was consistent: Find genuine progressive movements, provide substantial funding and gradually shift their focus toward CCP strategic priorities. JNS

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Former terrorist has 'reimagined' herself as an influencer.

Reality TV-loving jihadi bride who fled Britain for Syria is now influencer. 04:46 EST 10 Jan 2026, updated 06:35 EST 10 Jan 2026 By David Rivers and Jacob Dirnhuber.

She's a convicted terrorist who fled Britain with her toddler son and travelled to war-ravaged Syria to join ISIS - in the hope that the youngster would one day commit murderous atrocities.

Tareena Shakil notoriously posted sinister images on Facebook of her son wearing an Islamic State-branded balaclava along with others of her brandishing an AK47 assault rifle and a handgun beside the terror group's flag.

Now the Daily Mail can reveal that after an extraordinary transformation the former Islamic State poster girl has taken to using social media in an entirely different way.

Shakil, who earned the nickname the 'Towie jihadi' over her love of popular reality TV shows, has reinvented herself - as a jet-setting influencer.

The former hijab-wearing radical - who was jailed for six years in 2016 for joining ISIS and encouraging acts of terror on social media - now poses in an array of glamorous Western outfits and appears to aspire to a lifestyle far closer to the catwalk than the caliphate.

Her most recent Instagram postings show Shakil appeared to have travelled to Paris over Christmas after previously heading to the bright lights of London for a shopping trip - posing for pictures as she tried on outfits at a swanky Chanel store.

Earlier in the year she enjoyed a balloon ride over a desert landscape and a get-away-from-it-all escape to a paradise island in Thailand where she went on boat rides and paddled with elephants on a private beach. DailyMail

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In Poland: Israeli coaches were beaten in front of boys – and the delegation was expelled. An Israeli delegation of about 90 children and teenagers was verbally and physically attacked during a judo competition in Europe, after being subjected to anti-Semitic chants throughout the day. Two coaches were beaten, and instead of dealing with the attackers, it was decided to remove the delegation, which was forced to lock itself in a hotel for fear of its safety. Oren Aharoni. 1/10/2026

A serious anti-Semitic incident occurred today (Saturday) in the city of Bielsko-Biała, Poland, during a judo competition for children and teenagers. A large Israeli delegation, including about 90 athletes aged 7 to 16 from three clubs from Or Akiva and Sharon, went to the competition with the aim of competing, gaining experience and representing Israel with honor, but found itself in the middle of a violent event.

According to the testimony of the delegation members, the hostile atmosphere began in the early morning hours. Throughout the day, anti-Semitic chants were heard at the athletes and coaches, including "Free Palestine" and "Here come the Jews." The children, some very young, had to deal with curses and yelling while trying to concentrate on the battles on the mat.

The climax of the incident came when two of the delegation's coaches approached the judges in an attempt to address the events and conduct in the hall. At this point, it is alleged, a group of about 12 Polish men approached them, raised their hands, and physically attacked the two coaches. The coaches were beaten in front of other participants, including young athletes, which increased the sense of fear and shock among the entire delegation. ILH

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Iranian doctors say hundreds killed in protests, hospitals in Tehran enter crisis mode - report. Both TIME Magazine and the BBC reported hundreds of protesters killed in Iran, with several hospitals in Tehran entering crisis mode due to an overflow of wounded patients.

By Tobias Holcman. January 10, 2026 Hundreds of people were reportedly killed during the ongoing protests in Iran, according to Iranian doctors who spoke to Time magazine and the BBC.

The Time report mentioned that a doctor from Tehran, who spoke on condition of anonymity, stated that Iranian hospitals have recorded some 217 protesters killed since the protests began two weeks ago. JPost

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In one day: Hamas terrorists violate ceasefire three times. Terrorist attempts to steal IDF weapon, others threaten troops. Israel National News. Jan 10, 2026, 7:39 PM (GMT+2)

On Saturday, IDF troops operating in the southern Gaza Strip identified three terrorists who crossed the Yellow Line and approached the troops, posing an immediate threat to them.

One of the terrorists attempted to steal IDF equipment and subsequently fled. Following the identification, the IAF eliminated the terrorist west of the Yellow Line in order to remove the threat. INN

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London: Protester climbs Iranian Embassy to replace flag. Protester climbs Iranian Embassy in London to replace Islamic Republic flag with pre-evolution flag; Tehran protester says 'hundreds' dead in the streets. Israel National News. Jan 10, 2026, 9:29 PM INN

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Watch: Dancing at a wedding - with drawn weapons. Security forces raid event hall near Maaleh Adumim, following reports of illegal weapons at a wedding. Israel National News. Kan 10, 2026, 9:16 PM (GMT+2)

Security forces on Friday night raided an event hall in the village of Al-Eizariya, where a wedding was taking place, following identification and intelligence indicating the presence of illegal weapons at the site.

The operation was carried out by detectives from the Maaleh Adumim police station, together with Border Police fighters from Judea and Samaria and the Jerusalem Envelope unit.

Israel Police and Border Police forces who arrived at the location forced their way into the hall, detained those attending the celebration, and conducted a search. During the search, the forces located three weapons: two handguns - a Glock and a Jericho - and an M16 rifle. INN

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PA loses soulmate Maduro – front page JPost Magazine. PMW staff|Jan 11, 2026. PA loses soulmate Maduro – front page of The Jerusalem PostMagazine. [31]. The Palestinian Authority is firmly and fundamentally a part of the anti-American and anti-Western Axis. In this important article, which The Jerusalem Post chose to highlight as the front-page story in its Weekend Magazine, Palestinian Media Watch Director Itamar Marcus exposes the longstanding and close relationship between the PA and the communist anti-American dictators of Venezuela. Marcus calls the relationship one of "soulmates."

Israel rejects the creation of a Palestinian state or having Gaza placed under PA control because the PA is an anti-Semitic terror-supporting entity. The US and Western democracies must likewise reject PA rule because a PA entity will support forces hostile to the free world and erode the democratic world order Western governments seek to achieve.

By Itamar Marcus. January 9, 2026.

The Palestinian Authority has had a special and warm relationship with Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, and before him with Hugo Chavez, as one of soulmates.

The PA has actively and openly placed itself firmly in the camp of the notorious human rights-abusing Venezuelan dictators. Following the US raid and arrest of President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on charges including narco-terrorism and drug trafficking – with an audacious military operation in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas – the PA has remained silent for now, fearing a US reaction to its support for Maduro.

However, the PA camaraderie with Maduro has been fundamental to PA policy.

A few months ago, when US President Donald Trump started to threaten Venezuela, the PA held an anti-American demonstration at the Venezuelan embassy in Ramallah in support of Maduro. Ramallah Governor Laila Ghannam participated and posted her anti-American messages and pictures on her Facebook page:

"As a sign of rejecting the American threats against friendly Venezuela, I participated in the solidarity vigil that was organized by the national forces in front of the Venezuelan Embassy building of Caracas in the State of Palestine in order to affirm our people's support for the people and government of Venezuela." [Ramallah and Al-Bireh District Governor Laila Ghannam, Facebook page, Sept. 18, 2025]

Mahmoud Abbas's appointee Ahmad Assaf, who is the director of official PA TV, has a small statue of the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez prominently displayed in his office to show all visitors where the PA's ideology and values stand. [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 10, 2025]

The PA has prominently supported the Latin American dictators for years. In 2024, Venezuela held an election, and according to opposition sources, 70% voted against Maduro. Many Western democracies declined to recognize Maduro's election. The PA, however, welcomed Maduro's rule, and Abbas sent his special envoy to the inauguration.

"President Abbas' Advisor on International Affairs and Special Envoy Minister Riyad al-Maliki participated in the inauguration ceremony of President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro as the representative of President Mahmoud Abbas…

"Al-Maliki conveyed President Mahmoud Abbas' congratulations to President-elect Maduro and wishes for success in serving his country and his people… He also emphasized that the State of Palestine is showing interest in strengthening the relations with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in all areas of common interest." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 12, 2025]

In 2024, the PA sent Fatah leader Abbas Zaki to an event in Venezuela under the auspices of President Maduro. The PA leader praised the communist dictators of Latin America and compared Maduro to Fidel Castro and Che Guevara:

"Thank Allah who created in Latin America – which is geographically far but closest to the Palestinians' hearts – great leaders who are restoring the memory of [former Cuban President] Fidel Castro and [former Communist leader Che] Guevara, like President Maduro."

Maduro, in turn, expressed the dictator's support for the PA. "Maduro described what is happening in Palestine as the Israeli occupation committing a genocide against the Palestinian people for 75 years," i.e., since Israel's creation. [Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, Facebook page, June 18, 2024]

Ramallah-Caracas: Warm ties that stretch back

In 2023, Mahmoud Abbas sent the Chairman of the Palestinian National Council, Rawhi Fattouh, to Venezuela to deliver a personal message from Abbas to Maduro:

"Fattouh also laid a wreath of flowers on behalf of President Mahmoud Abbas on the monument of historic leader Hugo Chavez." [WAFA, official PA news agency, July 27, 2023]

The picture shows Fattouh and the wreath with the words "President of the State of Palestine Mr. Mahmoud Abbas" written in Spanish. [Palestinian National Council Chairman Rawhi Fattouh, Facebook page, July 28, 2023]

In 2018, Western democracies also rejected Maduro's election victory and announced that they would recognize opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate leader. Russia, China, Mexico, Syria, Iran, and Turkey supported Maduro, while the US, EU, Canada, Israel, and some countries in Latin America backed Guaidó. Aligning with the anti-democratic regimes, the PA rallied behind Maduro.

PA Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad al-Maliki participated in Maduro's inauguration ceremony and brought Maduro personal congratulations from Mahmoud Abbas:

"Al-Maliki congratulated President Maduro on receiving the presidency, wished him success in his service of the Venezuelan people, and conveyed to him the congratulations and wishes of [PA President] Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership that always stands by Venezuela and its people, as Palestine does not forget its friends." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 12, 2019]

The PA Foreign Ministry "condemned several states" for their "interference" against him:

"The PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed its concern given the events taking place in Venezuela and condemned several states' interference in the state's internal affairs and direct [interference] through support for the coup attempt against legally elected President Maduro." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 25, 2019]

PLO Executive Committee member Ahmed Majdalani, meanwhile, attacked the US and also accused it of "interference" in Venezuela's affairs while condemning the "coup attempt" against Maduro:

"The blatant American interference in states' affairs, as is happening in Venezuela, is a direct continuation of the policy of [US President Donald] Trump's administration, whose goal is to usurp the will of the peoples... and [condemned] the coup attempt against the legitimacy of elected President Maduro." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 25, 2018]

The PA official daily reported on demonstrations supporting Maduro:

"The Palestinian and Venezuelan peoples face the same enemy - which is the US." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 25, 2019]

An op-ed in the official PA daily ripped into US President Trump's speech at the UN about Venezuela:

"The new cowboy (i.e., US President Donald Trump) blatantly threatened a sovereign state – Venezuela – and its president. He announced that his administration would attack [Venezuelan] President Nicolás Maduro and unequivocally incited the army to carry out a coup against a president who was legally elected. He also attacked socialism as if his capitalist system is in better shape..." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 27, 2018]

Subsequently, protesters held posters with Venezuelan and Palestinian flags at a solidarity rally in Ramallah, where PA leaders also participated. One poster showed pictures of Donald Trump with an "X" across his face and the words

"American Imperialism, Enemy of the Nations."

The rally participants chanted: "America is the head of the snake, blessings from Ramallah to proud Caracas." [Official Fatah Facebook page, May 21, 2019]

As a sign of this friendship, the Palestinian Embassy in Venezuela erected a statue of "President Martyr Yasser Arafat in Liberator Simon Bolivar Monument Square." PA Ambassador Linda Sobeh "again emphasized Palestine's support for Venezuela in light of the situation that it is going through (i.e., violent clashes between the regime and opposition forces following Maduro's fraudulent election)." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 17, 2019]

As a further sign of camaraderie, the PA named a hospital after the dictator, which was called "the Palestinian-Venezuelan Hugo Chavez Eye Disease Hospital… according to the instructions of [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas, and constitutes a source of Palestinian national pride." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 1, 2018]

The PA's next move

With the Palestinian Authority desperate for US aid and support as it seeks a position of power in some future Gaza entity, Mahmoud Abbas is attempting to conceal his longstanding embrace of Venezuela's anti-American regime. Abbas seems petrified that President Trump might realize the PA's place squarely within the anti-American ideological axis.

Abbas has thus ensured that the PA's official daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, remained silent on the arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, even as the story featured prominently in other Palestinian newspapers. The fear was so acute that Abbas's paper did not publish a single news item about Venezuela on Jan. 5, let alone an opinion piece.

By contrast, independent Palestinian newspapers filled their pages with coverage of events in Venezuela, including columns sharply attacking the US. Al-Quds, the largest Palestinian daily, published 15 articles on the issue, seven of them openly critical of the US, and devoted an entire page to short commentary responses – all critical.

Al-Ayyam, the second-largest daily, ran 18 articles on Venezuela, at least two of them critical, and dedicated a full page to photographs highlighting pro-Maduro protests around the world.

The blackout in Al-Hayat is revealing precisely because it is unnatural. The paper's refusal to criticize the US over Venezuela exposes how tightly the PA's official media is controlled. The PA keenly fears the consequences of letting Washington know where it stands in the conflict between the US and the anti-American axis.

This sudden discipline does not signal an ideological change. The PA remains aligned with anti-American regimes and worldviews. The difference is tactical: What has changed is only the PA's need to hide its essential ideologies from Donald Trump. PalWatch

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Elder Of Ziyon. January 11, 2026. The only coherence in the incoherence is antisemitism. Here is video of a clash between anti-Ayatollah and anti-Israel protesters yesterday in Bellevue, WA:

Many are noting online the utter insanity of white women who pretend to care about the oppressed fighting against protesters of the quite oppressive Iranian regime which is especially misogynist.

It is similar to the LGBTQ activists who have taken up pro-Hamas, anti-Israel positions when they are the ones who would be attacked if they lived under Palestinian rule.

Finding hypocrisy is easy, but these people have a coherent philosophy in the midst of their obvious incoherence. People and movements are not inconsistent - in their own mindset, they are supremely consistent. The only question is to find what that mindset is.

In the case of these white women in Washington, it isn't "supporting the oppressed." The Iranian people are the oppressed.

It isn't Marxism. They don't look like they've read Das Kapital. They aren't interested in fighting capitalism..

It isn't anti-Trump. Trump may have expressed support for the Iranian people but it is not exactly a centerpiece of his policy at this point.

It isn't anti-America. There are plenty of people who hate America but they are generally not motivated to go out in the streets unless there is a specific event. Anti-ICE protests are one of the sparks that do prompt demonstrations, but what thread is there between anti-ICE and pro-mullahs?

If this were simply about opposing American power or capitalism, we would see comparable mass mobilization around Yemen, Syria, Iran, or Venezuela. We do not. Only anti-Israel protests reliably produce crowds. That fact alone tells us where the emotional and ideological center of gravity lies. If this were simply about opposing American power or capitalism, we would see comparable mass mobilization around Yemen, Syria, Iran, or Venezuela. We do not. Only anti-Israel protests reliably produce crowds. That fact alone tells us where the emotional and ideological center of gravity lies.

The only coherence in the incoherence is hating Jews under the guise of "anti-Zionism."

Think about it. These women are the most obvious beneficiaries of white privilege on the planet. Many of the Western progressive activists involved here are well-off suburbanites. Israel functions as a moral proxy that allows Western activists to discharge guilt without implicating themselves or their societies. Israel becomes the universal symbol for "white oppressors" and Palestinians the symbol for "oppressed people of color" and in that way they can externalize their own white guilt by blaming the Jews as being everything they hate about themselves. (There is similar logic behind land acknowledgements - empty performance to feel righteous, but no one handing their houses to native Americans.)

This is not simple hypocrisy, because hypocrisy presumes a failure to live up to stated values. Here, the values themselves are not operative. What is operative is a symbolic map in which Israel stands in for ‘everything evil about power,’ regardless of facts.

So if Israel is against the Iranian regime, then the regime must be good. If Israel fights Hamas, Hamas must be good. If Hezbollah or Houthis shoot missiles into Israel, they must be good.

I'm not saying that these activists consciously hate Jews. But their moral framework reliably collapses political evil onto Jews and the Jewish state. Structurally, it is the same thing. And as we've seen more recently, this collapse often becomes classic antisemitism, as protests migrate to synagogues and targeting Jews particularly.

Similarly, most of these activists are not consciously pro-Khamenei. They are structurally indifferent to Iranian agency. Once Israel occupies the ‘oppressor’ slot, anyone opposing Israel is provisionally good – including theocrats, terrorists, or regimes that murder women.

Antisemitism, whether explicit or not, is the only consistent throughline to their otherwise inconsistent positions.

For those who want some pretense of support for their ridiculous and contradictory positions, there are plenty of left-wing writers who can string two sentences together and therefore become all the evidence needed. At this moment, the only article in The Intercept about the Iranian protests, from a week ago (!), blames - Israel.

An entire progressive news site looks at Iranians being shot in the streets and the only thing it can write about is how this is somehow connected to the Zionists.

Once Israel is fixed as the embodiment of oppression, reality becomes optional. Iranian dissidents can be ignored. Islamist brutality can be excused. Women’s rights can be suspended. The only constant is that whatever harms Israel must be good.

That isn't moral reasoning. It is ideological coherence maintained by positioning Jews as the permanent moral antagonist - not coincidentally, the same position Jews have held for centuries. EoZ

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Former Haaretz Columnist Alon Pinkas Embroiled in Qatari Funding Scandal. Pinkas, the Qatari mouthpiece Former Haaretz Columnist Alon Pinkas Embroiled in Qatari Funding Scandal Is anyone actually surprised to discover that Haaretz's elite journalist is really just another Qatar mouthpiece?

Gila Isaacson. Jan 11, 2026. A brewing scandal at Haaretz, Israel's left-leaning newspaper often cited by critics of the country's policies, has come to light involving former columnist and diplomat Alon Pinkas, who allegedly received substantial payments linked to Qatari interests while contributing to the publication. The revelations, first reported by Haaretz itself following an internal probe, have prompted accusations of foreign influence and bias, particularly in coverage related to the Israel-Hamas war and hostage negotiations.

Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York and a vocal critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, received monthly payments totaling hundreds of thousands of shekels (equivalent to tens of thousands of U.S. dollars) from January 2024 through March 2025.

These funds were routed through Israeli businessman Gil Birger from Jay Footlik, a U.S.-based lobbyist whose firm, Third Circle, has represented Qatari entities. During this period, Pinkas authored at least seven opinion pieces in Haaretz's English edition that portrayed Qatar favorably, emphasizing its role as a key mediator in hostage deals, a U.S. ally, and a financier of Gaza at Israel's past request, aligning closely with talking points drafted by Footlik.

The issue surfaced amid broader investigations into "Qatargate," a series of alleged Qatari influence operations in Israel aimed at shaping public opinion on Gaza funding, hostage mediations, and criticisms of regional rivals like Egypt.

This marks the third such incident at Haaretz: Journalist Chaim Levinson was dismissed after receiving over NIS 200,000 from a similar network, and an anonymous column praising Qatar was tied to another Footlik associate, David Saig.

Israeli police have concluded their inquiry and forwarded findings to the State Attorney's Office, though no charges have been filed against Pinkas as of now...

Haaretz's hack columnists have been spewing venom at Netanyahu and Trump to whitewash a terror-sponsoring petro-state that hosts Hamas honchos in luxury, turning "journalism" into a paid propaganda parade that'd make Goebbels blush. These so-called intellectuals are just mercenary mouthpieces selling out their own country for a fistful of riyals, happily undermining Israel from within while the real enemies laugh all the way to the bank, because nothing says "moral imperative" like biting the hand that feeds you and then whining when you're called a traitor. JFeed

Avishai Grinzaig @avishaigrinzaig: The editor of Haaretz found out about this back on April 25, and whitewashed it. Only when Bar Peleg discovered this information in his own way was this information revealed and now published in Haaretz. Bar Peleg is truly a special kind of journalist. Jan 10, 2026. On X [32]

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‘Language is wrong,’ Mamdani says of pro-Hamas chants outside Queens synagogue "We will continue to ensure New Yorkers’ safety entering and exiting houses of worship as well as the constitutional right to protest," the New York City mayor said. JNS Staff New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Ms. Rachel visit children at District 2 3K/Pre-K Center in Manhattan on Jan. 9, 2026. Credit: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office.New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Ms. Rachel visit children at District 2 3K/Pre-K Center in Manhattan on Jan. 9, 2026. Credit: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office.

(Jan. 10, 2026 / JNS) New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who axed several of his predecessor’s pro-Israel executive orders on day one of the job, drew widespread criticism for his lack of response to pro-Hamas chants at a protest outside a Queens synagogue on Thursday night.

Long after the New York governor and others commented, Mamdani, who long declined to say that “globalize the intifada” calls for violence against Jews, had yet to comment on the incident.

By the time Shabbat had started, the mayor still had yet to issue a public comment.

“As New York Orthodox Jews shut off our phones for Shabbos, still no official statement from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on blatantly antisemitic protest in the Jewish community of Kew Gardens Hills,” stated Sam Berger, a member of the state Assembly.

Berger noted that the state governor and attorney general, members of Congress, and the city comptroller and city council speaker all issued statements. “Hard to call that standing ‘steadfast with our Jewish neighbors,'” he said of the mayor.

Mamdani later told Politico that “that language is wrong” and that “I think that language has no place in New York City.”

“The mayor’s clipped condemnation of the Thursday protest chants comes as local and national lawmakers supportive of Israel gave full-throated condemnations of protestors’ support for Hamas,” the publication reported. “Mamdani’s relative silence on the demonstration prompted pro-Israel activists to question why the mayor hadn’t publicly released a statement about the pro-Hamas rhetoric.”

Earlier in the day, Mamdani joined Ms. Rachel, who makes films for children and whose real name is Rachel Griffin-Accurso, in a meeting with preschoolers in the city’s second district.

Ms. Rachel has posted criticism of Israel often on Instagram, including accusing the Jewish state of “genocide.”

“I am vice president of the District 2 Community Education Council, and I can guarantee you that the majority of parents and families in our district don’t want you to invite and welcome antisemitic celebrities into our schools,” Danyela Souza Egorov wrote, in response to Mamdani.

“What melody did you pick for ‘destroy Israel, kill the Jews?'” wrote David Friedman, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel. JNS

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Describing Israel-Gaza war as ‘genocide’ trivialises term, says Chief Rabbi. Sir Ephraim Mirvis warns that assigning concept to war on Gaza reduces ‘humanity’s gravest crime to political insult’. Gabriella Swerling. Social and Religious Affairs Editor. 10 January 2026. Daily Telegraph

Britain's Chief Rabbi: Calling Gaza genocide trivializes the word. Britain's Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, denounced accusations of genocide in Gaza as being motivated only by hostility to the Jewish state. Israel National News. Published: Jan 11, 2026, 9:18 PM (GMT+2)

The Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, has criticised the use of the term "genocide" to describe Israel's military actions in Gaza, arguing that it diminishes the gravity of the word and turns "humanity’s gravest crime" into a mere political insult.

In an article written for The Telegraph, Sir Ephraim stated that the accusation is made too readily today. He wrote: “Today it takes almost no thought to repeat the accusation that Israel has committed ‘genocide’."

“Some repeat it from a place of singular hostility toward the world’s only Jewish state; others from an earnest desire to hasten an end to an unquestionably horrific conflict in which many innocent people have suffered. But whatever the motivation, the result is the same: this gravest of crimes is invoked casually, without due regard for the weight of the word itself."

He further explained: “In an age when hyperbole dominates our discourse and outrage is rewarded with clicks, campaigners reach instinctively for the most extreme language available. Faced with images on social media of immense, tragic suffering in Gaza, journalists, academics and celebrities understandably feel compelled to speak out."

“Yet the race to linguistic escalation has consequences. The ubiquity of a term is often wrongly understood as evidence of its veracity. And some terms have a meaning that must remain protected at all costs. ‘Genocide’ is one of them."

Sir Ephraim emphasised the legal definition of genocide, which requires intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. He said: “It is why Britain and her allies are not accused of genocide for our strategic bombing of Nazi Germany, despite the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who were killed. Intent is the moral and legal hinge. The clearest evidence that Israel did not intend to destroy the people of Gaza is that it did not in fact do so."

Describing the conflict as one that “Israel did not seek, nor start", he said Israel's goals have been the return of hostages and the disarmament of Hamas - a group he noted has sought the total destruction of Israel. He added: “If Hamas lays down its arms, there will be no fighting and no suffering. If Israel were to lay down its arms, there would be no Israel."

The Chief Rabbi also criticised some human rights organisations, saying they “appear to revel in misappropriating the term genocide" by expanding its definition and engaging in “a truly troubling moral deceit."

He acknowledged the suffering in Gaza, stating: “The tragic suffering of Palestinians abounds" and “no decent person could fail to be moved by it or wish to see its end". However, he argued there is no evidence of “systematic massacres, mass executions, or the targeted killing of civilians as a matter of policy".

Sir Ephraim warned that loose use of the term harms the concept itself: “When academics, activists, faith leaders and public figures declare, with unshakeable certainty, that genocide has occurred, they do something far more destructive than merely repeat a falsehood. They trivialise the very concept they claim to defend. What language is left for the Rohingya, expelled en masse, systematically raped and slaughtered? For the Uyghurs, subjected to mass internment, forced sterilisation and cultural erasure? For the ethnically targeted killing and mass rape in West Darfur? To invoke the term ‘genocide’ as an accusation against Israel is to strip it of its true meaning, reducing humanity’s gravest crime to a political insult."

He concluded: “The suffering of innocent people demands empathy, accountability and a genuine commitment to preventing future conflict. But to level the charge of genocide against Israel is to commit a moral inversion whose casualties include not only Israelis and Palestinians, but the very idea of human rights itself." INN

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IDF issues evacuation warning to residents in southern Lebanon: 'We will attack Hezbollah infrastructure'. IDF Arabic spokesperson, Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, issued an evacuation warning to Lebanese residents in areas located in the village of Hata in the southern part of the country. "The IDF will soon launch another attack against Hezbollah's military infrastructure in the village and against its forbidden attempts to restore its activities there. Residents of the complex - for your safety, move at least 300 meters away from the area marked in red on the map," said Lt. Col. Adraee. Lior Ben Ari|01.11.26 YNet

After warning civilians of imminent strikes, Israel hits Hezbollah infrastructure in south Lebanon. The Israeli military confirmed strikes on Hezbollah sites in Lebanon after Arabic spox. Col Avichay Adraee issued evacuation alerts to nearby civilians.

By James Genn. January 11, 2026. Following an evacuation warning to Lebanese civilians, the IDF confirmed that it had begun striking Hezbollah infrastructure in "several areas" of southern Lebanon on Sunday evening. The initial warning was issued by Arabic-language spokesperson Col. Avichay Adraee on X/Twitter. JPost

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Suspect in Custody Following Arson Attack at Reform Synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi. January 11, 2026. YWN

Jackson, Mississippi's sole synagogue set ablaze in arson attack, suspect arrested According to Southern Jewish life, there were no injuries, but the building suffered significant fire and smoke damage. The library was reportedly charred, and two Torah scrolls were destroyed.

By Michael Starr. January 11, 2026.

The Beth Israel synagogue erupted in flames on Saturday morning before dawn, according to Jackson, Mississippi, Mayor John Horhn, Jackson Fire Department (JFD) Chief RaSean Thomas, and the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life (ISJL), in what was suspected to be a hate-motivated arson.

The fire occurred at 3 a.m. but was contained and extinguished by the fire department, Horhn said in a statement. The ISJL said on Facebook that there were no injuries. A suspect was reportedly arrested by Sunday. JPost

After synagogue arson, Mississippi mayor decries bias based on faith, race, ethnicity, sexual identity. "Acts of antisemitism, racism and religious hatred are attacks on Jackson as a whole and will be treated as acts of terror against residents' safety and freedom to worship," the Jackson mayor stated. JNS Staff, Larry Brook, Southern Jewish Life. (Jan. 11, 2026 / JNS) John Horhn, mayor of Jackson, Miss., stated on Sunday that a fire had “occurred” at Beth Israel Congregation, a Reform synagogue, and the city’s lone Jewish house of worship, which traces its origin to 1860. JNS

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Netanyahu signs declaration with Germany: 'Cooperation in cybersecurity and counter-terrorism'. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed a declaration with German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, establishing "deep cooperation with Berlin in the fields of cybersecurity, counter-terrorism and advanced technologies, translating security commitment into joint action." The Prime Minister's Office also stated that "Iran and its proxies threaten regional stability and international security. Israel's enemies should know - our eyes are on them at all times and in all places. The declaration reflects Germany's historical responsibility - including strengthening Holocaust remembrance and cooperation with Yad Vashem." Itamar Eichner|01.11.26 YNet

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Israeli Cities on Alert Following Iran Unrest

Mayors Brief Residents.

Israeli Cities on Alert Following Iran Unrest Israeli officials are balancing hope for the fall of Iran's regime with preparations for extreme scenarios where the Iranian government might redirect focus toward Israel. Security officials emphasize that while monitoring continues, residents should maintain normal routines unless instructed otherwise by authorities. Gila Isaacson. Jan 11, 2026 JFeed

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Melbourne sees renewed anti-Israel protest as fires rage across Victoria state Organizers defy requests from police and mayor to postpone the event. Etgar Lefkovits. (Jan. 11, 2026 / JNS) A couple of thousand pro-Palestinian activists rallied against Israel in Melbourne on Sunday, defying police’s and local authorities’ requests to cancel their event due to raging bushfires in the Australian summer.

The anti-Israel protest came less than a month after the Bondi Beach attack at a Chanukah event in Sydney, and as hundreds of Iranian protesters were being killed by security forces of the Islamic Republic on the streets of Iran JNS

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Trump wants ‘full transparency’ from Bondi terror attack inquiry. Antisemitism envoy says U.S. is watching Australia’s royal commission amid concern over PM Albanese’s past pro-Palestinian activism and delayed action. Joshua Marks. (Jan. 11, 2026 / JNS) U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy on antisemitism says Washington is closely watching Australia’s royal commission into the Bondi Beach terrorist attack amid concern over Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s past pro‑Palestinian activism and his government’s handling of antisemitism. JNS

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New town breaks ground in Samaria. The town of Rehavam has begun construction as part of the government plan to bring one million residents to Samaria.

Israel National News. Jan 11, 2026, 10:24 PM INN

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Netanyahu: Israel in awe of the immense courage of the citizens of Iran. Israel National News. Jan 11, 2026, 4:20 PM INN

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Beautiful Defiance. Hessy Levinsons Taft, Jewish Infant Chosen as 'Perfect Aryan Baby' in Nazi Propaganda, Dies at 91. She was six months old when Goebbels chose her Jewish face for Nazi propaganda. Hessy Taft spent 91 years savoring the beautiful revenge of that photograph.

Gila Isaacson. Jan 11, 2026.

Hessy Levinsons Taft, whose photograph as a six-month-old baby was selected by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to represent the ideal Aryan child, despite her being Jewish, passed away on January 1, 2026, at her home in San Francisco. She was 91.

Born in 1934 in Berlin to Latvian Jewish opera singers, Pauline and Jacob Levinsons, Taft's early life unwittingly exposed the flaws in Nazi racial ideology.

Her parents commissioned a portrait from renowned photographer Hans Ballin, who, knowing the family's Jewish heritage, submitted the image to a contest seeking the "perfect Aryan baby" as a deliberate prank. The photo was chosen by Goebbels himself and featured on the cover of the pro-Nazi magazine Sonne ins Haus in 1935. It soon proliferated across Germany, appearing in magazines, advertisements, postcards, and even displayed in homes. Taft's parents were horrified upon discovering this, fearing severe repercussions from the regime.

When confronted by the Levinsons, Ballin explained his intent: to highlight the absurdity of Nazi racial theories. "I wanted to make the Nazis ridiculous," he reportedly said. The family kept the incident secret for decades, even from Taft herself, due to lingering fears. They fled Germany in 1938, first to France, then Latvia, and eventually Cuba before settling in the United States in 1949. Taft learned the full story only as an adult and later embraced it as a tale of ironic triumph over Nazi pseudoscience.

"I feel a sense of revenge," Taft said in a 1990 interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Good revenge." In her later years, Taft became a chemistry professor at St. John's University in New York, donated the original magazine to Yad Vashem in Israel, and shared her story through lectures and media appearances. She is survived by her husband, Earl Taft, and their children. JFeed

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Chaos erupts as U-Haul drives into crowd during anti-Iranian regime rally in Westwood By Tim Pulliam. Sunday, January 11, 2026 11:30PM PT

Chaos erupted after a U-Haul drove into a crowd during an anti-Iranian regime rally near the federal building in Westwood on Sunday afternoon. WESTWOOD, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- A protest that began peacefully in Westwood on Sunday afternoon turned chaotic after a U-Haul truck drove toward hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the federal building, prompting clashes between the crowd, the driver and police.

Note: Our latest coverage of this story has moved here.

Video shows the moment the truck moved into the crowd on Veteran Avenue as people screamed and rushed away around 3:30 p.m. Exclusive AIR7 shows officers pulling the driver from the truck while protesters surrounded him, attempting to strike him with objects, including flag poles, trash and their hands. One protester can be seen climbing onto the vehicle and kicking in its windshield.

After the driver was removed, protesters chased him and tried to hit him as police escorted him away and took him into custody. Demonstrators also tore political messages from the truc [33]

Sam Asghari Proudly Reps Roots, Waves Iranian Flag at L.A. Protest. Sam Asghari. Proudly Reps Iranian Roots At L.A. Protest By TMZ Staff. Published January 12, 2026 8:41 AM PST Sam Asghari went all in for his roots ... storming the streets of Los Angeles to stand loud, proud, and unmissable in support of the Iranian people.

In an IG video posted Sunday night, the Iranian-born model showed himself waving the Iranian flag shoulder to shoulder with massive crowds in L.A., home to one of the largest Iranian-American communities in the country.

"Free Iran" Protest In Los Angeles. Launch Gallery.

Sam and the crowd gathered near the federal building in Westwood ... making it clear they were pushing back against political repression and calling for regime change among all the protests and chaos that have erupted in Iran.

IYDK, protesters in Iran are demanding change amid a crushing economic crisis and brutal crackdowns ... with human rights groups claiming more than 500 people have been killed in recent days.

The same terror very nearly played out in L.A. ... 'cause among the powerful show of unity a man plowed a U-Haul truck through a group of demonstrators. Thankfully, no one was injured and the driver was arrested. [34] TMZ

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Suspect admits torching Mississippi synagogue 'due to its Jewish ties'. FBI says the suspect in the arson at Beth Israel in Jackson, Mississippi, confessed to targeting the synagogue for its “Jewish ties." Israel National News. Published: Jan 12, 2026, 11:41 PM (GMT+2)

Federal authorities say the man accused of setting fire to a historic Mississippi synagogue admitted he targeted the building because of its “Jewish ties", reported the Associated Press.

The suspect was charged Monday with maliciously damaging or destroying a building by means of fire or an explosive. According to an affidavit filed in US District Court in Mississippi, the FBI said he confessed to lighting the fire “due to the building's Jewish ties."

The blaze erupted shortly after 3:00 a.m. on Saturday at Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, ripping through the building but causing no injuries to congregants or firefighters. Security footage released Monday showed a masked and hooded individual pouring liquid from a gas can onto the floor and a couch in the lobby...

He also “admitted to starting a fire inside the Beth Israel Congregation/ISJL building," according to investigators from the Jackson Fire Department and Hinds County Sheriff's Office.

The suspect told investigators he stopped at a gas station on the way to purchase fuel used in the attack and removed his vehicle’s license plate there. He then used an ax to break a window, poured gasoline inside, and ignited it with a torch lighter, the affidavit says.

The FBI later recovered a burned cell phone believed to belong to the suspect, along with a hand torch that a congregation member found and turned over to authorities.

A Torah scroll that survived the Holocaust was protected behind glass and was not damaged, the congregation said. Five Torahs in the sanctuary were being evaluated for smoke damage. Two Torahs kept in the library - the area hit hardest - were destroyed, according to a synagogue representative.

The affidavit notes that the suspect’s father contacted the FBI to report that his son had confessed to setting the fire. Data recovered from Pittman’s phone corroborated the account, an agent wrote.

Beth Israel Congregation is the oldest synagogue in Jackson and was previously targeted in a 1967 Ku Klux Klan bombing that damaged the synagogue’s offices and the home of its rabbi at the time. No one was killed in that attack. INN

Fire damages historic synagogue; arrest made. January 12, 2026 — He was identified as Stephen Spencer Pittman, who told investigators he did it because of the building's “Jewish ties,” the AP reported.. Kiro7

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The G-Word Ultimatum: Wiener Yields to Antisemitic Pressure Cooker, Labels Jewish Self-Defense “Genocide”. Heckled into Submission: Radical Liberal Democrat Wiener Joins the “Genocide” Chorus to Save His Congressional Bid.

(After debate backlash, California Democrat Wiener says Israel-Hamas war meets genocide[sic] definition. JPost, 1.12.26. Genocide accusation comes after Wiener’s second thoughts. Wiener’s genocide accusation came after a lightning round of questions at the Thursday San Francisco debate, in which candidates were given policy questions and expected to hold placards indicating either a “yes” or “no” response. When the question arose of “is Israel committing genocide in Gaza,” San Francisco Board Supervisor Connie Chan and political activist Saikat Chakrabarti signaled “yes,” but Wiener didn’t raise his placard. Wiener’s response was met with boos and heckles from the audience, who called “shame” and demanded that he answer the question. Wiener’s rivals highlighted the moment, with Chan noting that she had voted on a January 2024 Board of Supervisors resolution demanding a ceasefire, and promised to support a congressional bill to block the transfer of munitions from the US to Israel. Chakrabarti said that the instance was indicative of the nature of the congressional race, “because you can’t call out a genocide when the whole world sees one, how can we trust you in DC?” [35])

The radical left’s pressure cooker is boiling over in San Francisco’s Democrat primary circus. You won’t get elected unless you spit out the magic word: genocide[-lie] against Israel. No nuance, no facts—just parrot the blood libel to appease the mob.

Look at Saikat Chakrabarti, the AOC alum, proudly citing the same tired, mocked playbook: pay-to-play “experts” from the IAGS (that $30 fee joke), the notorious Francesca Albanese (widely slammed as a modern Goebbels for her obsessive anti-Israel obsession), and the UN’s sham “commission” peddling classic anti-Jewish tropes like “Jewish control” from the likes of Pillay and Kothari. That’s the gospel they’re copying—straight from the antisemitism remix album.

Then comes the backlash theater. California State [radical liberal] Senator Scott Wiener—once hesitant—gets heckled and booed at a congressional candidate debate for not instantly waving the “yes” placard on “Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?” His rivals, Chan and Chakrabarti, gleefully flash “YES” like it’s a virtue signal badge.

Result? Wiener caves. On January 12, 2026, he drops the video: “I believe Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.” He admits he held back because of the Holocaust’s shadow and the trauma of accusing the Jewish state—but now? “We all have eyes… the absolute devastation… genocidal statements… the Israeli government has tried to destroy Gaza and push Palestinians out, and that qualifies as genocide.”

This isn’t moral evolution. It’s political survival. The far-left mob screamed “shame,” demanded purity tests, and Wiener folded to save his Pelosi-seat bid. In the radical liberal club, hesitation equals betrayal. Say the G-word or get primaried into oblivion.

Israel defends itself against real genocidal enemies, such as, “Palestine” regime in Gaza Hamas [with it clear genocidal charter and methods of maximizing its civilian casualties] terrorists who started this with October 7’s massacre—yet the narrative flips the victim into the villain. Classic inversion. The real genocide? Hamas’s charter and actions. But in this crowd, truth is optional when votes and applause are on the line. at EoZ

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Eliminated. Hamas Police Commander Killed in Khan Younis Shooting. Hamas police commander Mahmoud al-Astal killed in shooting attack on his vehicle in Khan Younis. Gaza Interior Ministry blames "Israeli agents" as unidentified gunmen flee scene after opening fire Monday morning. Gila Isaacson. Jan 12, 2026. JFeed

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Kasparian is Ignorant and Hateful Iranian Activist Masih Alinejad Slams Ana Kasparian's Ridiculous Iran Comments | WATCH Iranian activist Masih Alinejad torches Piers Morgan for platforming regime-apologist drivel amid Iran's bloody crackdown, because nothing says 'uncensored' like fueling tyrants' excuses to kill. Gila Isaacson. Jan 12, 2026 06:47 JFeed

M.A. Rothman @MichaelARothman: 𝗠𝗔𝗦𝗜𝗛 𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗝𝗔𝗗 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗢𝗦𝗘𝗦 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗗𝗔𝗡𝗚𝗘𝗥 𝗢𝗙 𝗔𝗡𝗔 𝗞𝗔𝗦𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗜𝗔𝗡’𝗦 𝗡𝗔𝗥𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗘 ⁣⁣⁣ Before you weigh in, 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝘂𝗽 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗠𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗵 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗷𝗮𝗱 𝗶𝘀. She isn’t a pundit. She’s a dissident the Iranian regime tried to kll on U.S. soil — multiple times.

And she erupted after hearing Ana Kasparian repeat talking points that the Islamic Republic uses to justify slaughtering protesters. ⁣⁣⁣ Here’s the 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗹𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗰𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗺 Ana made on international television — the part that matters: ⁣⁣⁣ 𝘒𝘢𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯: 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘐𝘳𝘢𝘯. 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘩𝘴. 𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘜𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘐𝘴𝘳𝘢𝘦𝘭… ⁣⁣⁣ That framing — calling it “external regime change” — is the same accusation Tehran blasts on state TV while the internet is shut down and bodies hit the streets. ⁣⁣⁣ Masih answered with lived reality, not punditry: ⁣⁣⁣ 𝘔𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘩: 𝘕𝘰, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘮𝘦. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘶𝘴. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘯, 𝘨𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘯, 𝘰𝘳 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶. ⁣⁣⁣ She explained the consequence Western commentators ignore: ⁣⁣⁣ 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘢𝘺 “𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦,” 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘭𝘭 𝘶𝘴. ⁣⁣⁣ Masih reminded viewers that Iranians have risen again and again since 2009 — six major uprisings — demanding change from within, while the regime shuts off the internet and hunts dissidents. ⁣⁣⁣ This isn’t abstract debate. Masih spelled out how the same narrative once led Tehran to order her assassination — and to hire killers on U.S. soil. ⁣⁣⁣ Her ask was simple and devastating: ⁣⁣⁣ 𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘶𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘬𝘭𝘭 𝘶𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴. ⁣⁣⁣ That’s not punditry.

That’s 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 — and a warning about the real-world cost of reckless narratives.

Jan 11, 2026 on X

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Iranian protesters are showing courage in the face of tyranny — but Israel-obsessed liberals don’t seem to care. New York Post | Jan. 11, 2026 |

As the Iranian uprising continues to escalate, it’s been reported that hundreds of protesters have been killed by the regime’s security forces.

The internet, phone signals and lighting have been cut, and it’s feared the killings are intensifying behind the blackout.

Yet the Iranian people have increasingly poured onto the streets to confront the regime’s murder and torture squads. There’s never been such a mass display of raw courage in the teeth of such vicious repression.

If the regime does fall, this will be a seismic event, reshaping the region and world politics. The insurrection might be the most consequential global event so far this century. Yet from Western liberals, there’s been little more than pursed lips.

There have been no demonstrations in support of the embattled protesters. People who screamed falsehoods about Israel’s “massacres” of women and children in Gaza have been struck totally dumb about the carnage of civilians being deliberately wrought in Iran.

Most Western media initially ignored the Iranian insurrection, then downplayed it as mere “cost of living” protests, and then began to amplify regime propaganda claims.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Monday that the Islamic Republic is "fully prepared for war" against any outsiders who interfere in the deadly nationwide protests against the regime.

DNC chair Ken Martin disturbingly compares US to Iran, claims Trump admin is ‘killing protesters’ Gut-wrenching footage shows grieving Iranian families search through rows of bodies after massacre of anti-regime protesters.

The reason is that the uprising is not just against the regime but against the repressive tyranny of Islam itself. This is intolerable to Western liberals, because it gets in the way of their fixed narrative that, when Islamists commit mass murder against the innocent, it’s justified resistance against Western-backed imperialism. NYPost

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"We Are Ready for War". Secret Dialogue: The Surprising Reason Iran is Still Talking to Trump’s Inner Circle While Iranian leaders publicly threaten to turn Israel into a target, a secret communication channel remains open between Tehran and President Trump’s special envoy to prevent a total military collapse.

Eliana Fleming. Jan 12, 2026 13:47

Behind the fiery rhetoric and threats of regional war, a desperate diplomatic dance is taking place between Tehran and Washington. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei confirmed today that a direct communication channel remains open between Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. This admission follows claims by President Donald Trump that the Iranian leadership reached out to request negotiations after he threatened "very strong" military options in response to the killing of protesters. While Tehran insists it has "never left the negotiating table," the outreach is widely viewed by international observers as a frantic attempt to buy time and de-escalate before American bombers are authorized to launch.

Publicly, however, the regime continues to project a posture of total defiance. Speaking to a crowd in Tehran, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf declared that Iran is currently fighting a "war on four fronts," including economic, psychological, military, and a "war against terrorism." He warned that in the event of any U.S. intervention, both Israel and American military bases in the region would be considered "legitimate targets." Qalibaf emphasized that the regime would not wait to be hit first, suggesting a doctrine of pre-emptive strikes if the "clear signs of threat" from the Trump administration continue to intensify.

This dual strategy of secret dialogue and public threats comes as the IDF raises its alert level to the highest point since the 12 day war in June. Israeli officials believe that Trump is currently receiving hourly updates on the death toll in Iran and may reach a point where he can no longer ignore the violence. In June 2025, U.S. B-2 bombers successfully used 13-ton bunker buster bombs against Iranian nuclear sites during Operation Am Kalavi, and the threat of a repeat performance is clearly driving the current diplomatic scramble. As Araghchi and Witkoff discuss a potential face to face meeting, the world remains on edge, waiting to see if the regime will offer real concessions or if the four front war will lead to a final, violent conclusion. JFeed

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Israelis receive more threatening messages. Amid the tension in the region and protests in Iran, Israelis once again received a threatening message in English with a mysterious and vague wording. Israel National News. Published: Jan 12, 2026, 4:47 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Trump imposes 25% tariff on nations doing business with Iran. Trump announces a 25% tariff on any country doing business with Iran amid the ongoing unrest in the Islamic Republic. Elad Benari. Jan 12, 2026, 11:58 PM INN

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Woman charged with four hate crimes, punching Orthodox Jew in NY. "Every person in this city should be able to safely worship and this type of antisemitic violence cannot be tolerated," a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney said.

(Jan. 12, 2026 / JNS) Isharae Summers, 35, was charged with 13 counts, including four hate crimes, for allegedly punching an Orthodox Jewish man in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood and shouting antisemitic slurs on Jan. 9.

Among the charges are two hate crime assaults in the third degree with intent to injure, two counts of hate crime menacing in the third degree and six counts of aggravated harassment in the second degree motivated by race or religion.

Summers pleaded not guilty to all counts in Kings Criminal Court on Sunday and was released with non-monetary conditions on bail.

The incident reportedly occurred at about 11:20 p.m. on Friday while the man was walking home with his family. The suspect is accused of verbally harassed the family and screaming “I’m gonna kill you Jews” and “I’m gonna kill your kids and choke your kids” while trailing the family for several blacks. She also allegedly punched the man in the head and chest, according to New York Post reporting.

The Post reported that the judge let the suspect go on supervised release, although the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office sought $50,000 cash bail.

“This was a horrific attack against a Jewish family walking home on the Sabbath,” a spokesman for Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, stated on Monday, per the Post.

“Every person in this city should be able to safely worship and this type of antisemitic violence cannot be tolerated in Brooklyn,” the spokesman said. “The defendant in this case is being charged with a hate crime and we will seek to hold her fully accountable.”

The New York City Police Department’s 79th Precinct and the Williamsburg Shomrim Shabbos Patrol reportedly responded to the scene. The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is said to be investigating the case.

The Anti-Defamation League of New York and New Jersey stated it has “connected with community and law-enforcement partners to gather information and provide support,” calling the increase in violent attacks on Jews "unacceptable." JNS

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Hours After The Attack: Police Arrest Palestinians For Assaulting Jewish Shepherd. January 12, 2026. YWN

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Trump to antisemites: You’re not welcome in MAGA. By Emily Goodin. Published Jan. 12, 2026, 4:46 p.m. ET President Trump had a resounding no for any antisemites claiming to be part of the Republican Party or his MAGA movement.

“I think we don’t need them,” he told The New York Times in an interview. “I think we don’t like them.”

His comments, made in a Wednesday interview but published on Sunday, came after a series of high profile ultra-conservative figures have made controversial comments about the Jewish people and antisemitic speech has split Republicans.

Trump said: “I condemn” antisemitism.

He said he’s an ally of Israel and was awarded its Israel Prize, considered the country’s highest honor.

“Look, if you talk about the antisemitic views, there’s been nobody better for us. As an example, I just got the Israel award, which is the biggest award they give. It was just given to me. First time it was ever given to anybody outside of Israel,” Trump said.

The president also noted that daughter Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner, and the couple’s three children are Jewish.

“My daughter happens to be Jewish, beautiful, three grandchildren are Jewish,” he said. “I’m very proud of them. I’m very proud of the whole, that whole family. I am the least antisemitic person probably there is anywhere in the world.”

But the Republican Party has been roiled by series controversies that have garnered wide-spread public attention.

Trump received the Israel prize from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year. Getty Images A group of young Republican leaders, in the fall, were revealed to praise Adolf Hitler in a series of chat groups.

And the Heritage Foundation, a premier conservative think tank in Washington DC, was roiled by a staff outcry after President Kevin Roberts defended a far-right figure who made anti-semitic remarks.

Start your day with all you need to know Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.

Roberts sparked the wave of resignations among the think tank after defending Tucker Carlson for interviewing Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes on his platform.

Trump noted to The Times that his daughter Ivanka, son-in-law Jared Kushner and their children are all Jewish. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Fuentes has been designated by the Anti-Defamation League as a “white supremacist leader.” In the October interview with Carlson, Fuentes denounced the influence of “organized Jewry” in American politics.

“I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer, either,” Roberts said of the interview, which got millions of views on social media.

The president defended Carlson at the time, saying he can interview whoever he wants. And he’s stayed close to him. Carlson was spotted at the White House last week, attending the president’s meeting with oil executives.

Trump distanced himself from antisemitic internet personality Nick Fuentes, who had dinner with the president at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 as a guest of Kanye West.

“I had dinner with him, one time, where he came as a guest of Kanye West. I didn’t know who he was bringing. He said, ‘Do you mind if I bring a friend?’ I said, ‘I don’t care.’ And it was Nick Fuentes? I don’t know Nick Fuentes,” the president told The Times.

He’s also no longer close with Candace Owens, a prominent right-wing political commentator, who’s faced multiple accusations of antisemitism due her public statements and posts on social media. Owens was named “Antisemite of the Year” in December by watchdog StopAntisemitism.

But she has become a prominent Trump critic who spewed conspiracy theories after Charlie Kirk’s assassination and was previously dismissed from the Daily Wire.

Meanwhile, he Trump administration has spent the past year defending Israel and leading a crackdown on universities, accusing them of spreading antisemitism and taking away millions in federal grants. NYPost

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Vandals in Santa Barbara, Calif., draw swastika in AEPi residence. The fraternity says two individuals broke into a private home and defaced the bathroom mirror. Jessica Russak-Hoffman.

(Jan. 13, 2026 / JNS) Antisemitic vandalism targeted members of the Sigma Beta chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) in Santa Barbara, Calif., over the weekend, when two individuals broke into a private residence where fraternity members live and defaced a bathroom mirror with a swastika drawn in shaving cream.

Jonathan Pierce, chief communications officer for AEPi, told JNS the house was broken into after a social event, and that the residence is privately owned and not an official fraternity house. He said previous incidents have occurred at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the administration needs to do “a better job of protecting students.”

“Luckily, nobody’s hurt,” he said. The image was discovered early Saturday morning, Jan. 10. JNS

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PBS Erases Gaza’s Jewish History, Destroys An Unharmed Church By: Darcie Grunblatt. January 12, 2026

In a Dec. 30, 2025 broadcast highlighting damage to the rich cultural history of the Gaza Strip during two years of war, PBS NewsHour laments that “the destruction is not just a humanitarian catastrophe, but an erasure of civilization’s memory.”

Ironically, though, Jeffrey Brown’s lengthy segment is itself guilty of erasing the memory of the rich Jewish cultural heritage in the Gaza Strip dating back to antiquity, while simultaneously trampling over present-day facts. CAMERA

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BBC again fails to inform on Hamas exploitation of schools. By: Hadar Sela January 13, 2026

On the morning of January 8 the BBC News website published a report headlined “Children in Gaza return to school after years without formal education” which is credited to the BBC’s Tokyo correspondent Shaimaa Khalil who, according to the by-line, appears to be visiting Jerusalem.

Part of Khalil’s report describes lessons being held in temporary classrooms in the grounds of a boys’ school formerly run by the Hamas government that chose to start the war on October 7, 2023... CAMERA

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At El País, Antisemitism Is a Feature, Not a Bug. By: Masha Gabriel January 11, 2026

“Antisemitism is a real problem and El País is sensitive to [the issue],” Guillermo Altares, foreign desk chief of El País’ insisted in a damage control interview last week. The editor’s pronouncement was in response to the troublesome fiasco over the hugely influential Spanish newspaper’s publication — and then stealthy deletion with no public apology — of an anti-Jewish slur that the federal judge presiding over former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s case in New York strives to be impartial “despite being a well-known member of the Jewish community.”

Professed sensitivity notwithstanding, in no time at all the Spanish news outlet embroiled itself in another ugly incident involving antisemitism, this time via its Catalonia edition.

In the city of Barcelona, an unidentified pro-BDS group created an online map called Barcelonaz identifying Jewish businesses, Israeli companies with interests in Spain, and Spanish or international companies operating in Israel. Notably, a Jewish school and restaurants also appeared on the map, which explicitly invited users to contribute more information about additional Jewish and Israel-affiliated sites — an unmistakable act of antisemitic targeting. Esteban Ibarra, president of the Movement Against Intolerance, described it as “organized criminal antisemitism.”

The French-based GoGoCarto, which hosted the map, deactivated the project following complaints from Jewish community organizations. The European Jewish Congress said of the project’s name:

The use of “NAZ” appears to deliberately associate Jews and Israelis with Nazism, a form of antisemitic inversion that trivializes Nazi crimes while demonizing Jewish identity.

In covering the antisemitic map which put a target on the backs of Spanish Jews, El País opted for a headline casting the hunted Jewish community as the predators of harmless “pro-Palestinian” advocates: “The Jewish community in Barcelona succeeds in shutting down a pro-Palestinian website that pointed to its businesses.”

In this gross inversion, in which an antisemitic website targeting Jews, including their businesses and even a school, is whitewashed as nothing more threatening than a “pro-Palestinian website,” Barcelona’s Jewish community becomes the bad actor.

In a second inversion casting the victimized local Jewish community into perpetrators, editors initially opted to place the story under the “Genocide” category rather than tagging the article under an appropriate label such as “Antisemitism” or “Discrimination.” (Screenshot at left). In doing so, it promoted the odious and unfounded libel that Israel is carrying out a genocide and promoted the antisemitic trope that Spanish Jews ought to be held responsible for the Jewish state’s purported war crime.

Following several complaints, and likely mindful of the scandal ignited just hours earlier by the remark about a judge being impartial “despite” being Jewish, the newspaper nominally softened the “Genocide” language to “Massacre in Gaza.” But the change is negligible, as the new slur likewise carries no direct relevance to the content of an article about the local Jewish community. It continues to recast the local Jewish community’s own victimhood into responsibility for faraway alleged war crimes.

“Neither Jesús [Sérvulo González] nor El País are antisemitic, it was a mistake that we corrected when we saw it,” Altares, the El País editor, strived to assure his Haaretz interviewer.

But the repeated association of “the Jews” with narratives of suspicion, violence, or collective guilt suggests an editorial pattern that demands serious reflection, not technical mistakes.

Borrowing the newspaper’s own words, one might almost say that El País strives to appear professional despite being antisemitic. CAMERA

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Turkey said ‘very likely’ to join Saudi Arabia-Pakistan mutual defense pact. Times of Israel, January 11, 2026.

Turkey is in advanced talks to join the mutual defense pact that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan reached in September, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A pact of the three US-allied Muslim nations could potentially put Ankara under Islamabad’s nuclear umbrella.

Saudi Arabia, which does not have nuclear weapons, signed the original agreement with Pakistan — the world’s only nuclear-armed Muslim nation — in the wake of Israel’s botched September 9 strike on Hamas’s leadership in Qatar. The strike sparked alarm and outrage among Gulf nations.

Under the agreement, which did not directly address nuclear arms, an attack on one country is considered an attack against all. Turkey, which also hosts Hamas leaders, is “very likely” to join the agreement, Bloomberg said. Ankara hosts US nuclear weapons as part of its role in NATO, but does not have any of its own…. TOI

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Julie Szego: The faux martyrs of Oz. Jan 12, 2026. Maybe I’m naive in still believing the answer to the radicalisation of Australian cultural life isn’t institutional purges of virulent anti-Zionists; for one thing, there’s too many of them. Instead, we should focus on letting contrary voices in. Because when Abdel-Fattah seeks to deny Zionists “cultural safety”, she’s insisting on that right for herself. She shouldn’t have it. Neither should she be censored. She and her fellow travellers should be forced to open their ideas to vigorous attack.

No more foreclosing of contestation on Israel-Palestine through the linguistic stitch-ups of “apartheid”, “settler-colonialism”, of “genocide”, a most convenient allegation that retrospectively cancels the “Never again” moral case for Jewish sovereignty in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Bring on the countercultural revolution. It is to the nation’s enduring shame that it has taken the murder of innocents for such a thing to even seem plausible.

But maybe it’s not too late for redemption.

Flood the festival programs and “progressive” opinion pages with Zionists, Jewish and non-Jewish. Most of all, move heaven and earth to platform Palestinians and Arabs bitterly opposed to the “pro-Palestine” movement in the West because it’s essentially pro-Hamas, the organisation that ritually sacrificed thousands of Palestinian children in a futile crusade to eliminate the state of Israel.

Platform, as this paper has done, diaspora Palestinians Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib and John Aziz; Palestinian nationalists who, while critical of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, advocate – genuinely – for a two-state solution and stand firmly against Jew-hating jihadism. Let them have it out with the likes of Abdel-Fattah.

Our cultural gatekeepers love to hear from the small number of Jewish anti-Zionists. Let them also hear from Palestinian dissenters from the “pro-Palestine” left.

Abdel-Fattah has accused the Adelaide Festival of “anti-Palestinian racism”. There’s plenty of that about but not in the way she thinks.

Is anything more racist than gatekeeping the boundaries of acceptable Palestinian opinion to exclude all but the most hardline?

Enough with flattering the world views of pampered radicals, spewing hate while believing themselves the embodiment of virtue, even as bodies pile up on the beach. on Substack

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Stop arguing about definitions of Jew-hatred, Jewish Dem lawmaker says. Antisemitism will only go away when everyone “rejects all of it, no matter what,” Rep. Greg Landsman said. Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) speaks at the Jewish Democratic Council of America’s 2024 Leadership Summit, in Washington, D.C., May 21, 2024. Credit: Jewish Democratic Council of America.Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) speaks at the Jewish Democratic Council of America’s 2024 Leadership Summit, in Washington, D.C., May 21, 2024. Credit: Jewish Democratic Council of America.

(Jan. 13, 2026 / JNS) In a statement about the arson attack on Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Miss., Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), who is Jewish, urged Americans to stop debating definitions of antisemitism. JNS

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Former FBI official Bongino defends support for Israel. The podcaster, who is not Jewish, said antisemitism is behind accusations that he took $6 million from AIPAC. (Jan. 13, 2026 / JNS) Dan Bongino, who announced a podcast after leaving his role as deputy FBI director, responded to online accusations that he is a “traitor” who received $6 million from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. That’s not “even remotely true,” he said.

When one exposes the liberal agenda, the “demon savages” scream back about the Jews, he wrote.

“Of course, none of what’s included below in this pile of human waste’s post is even remotely true,” he said. “Demon savages are so moronic they don’t realize campaign finance records are public.” JNS

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Anti-Israel activist introduces congressional candidate at NYC event. (Jan. 13, 2026 / JNS) Anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil, who led Palestinian protests at Columbia University and was a spokesman for the campus encampment, spoke at the campaign launch event for Claire Valdez, who is running for Congress in New York’s 7th District.

Khalil, 30, who was arrested by federal agents in 2025 and accused of providing false information on his green card application, took the stage to introduce the candidate at the launch at SILO Brooklyn on Jan. 9.

In footage on social media, Khalil appears to lead the crowd in a “free, free Palestine” chant and introduce Valdez, 36, as someone who was there for him “when the full weight of the state comes down hard.”

Valdez was “among the first of elected officials” to organize for his release, he said. “She put her body on the line,” he added, noting she “was arrested while protesting the genocide in Gaza.”

Khalil called out politicians who are “not doing something about the Israeli occupation.”

A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Valdez is a New York State assemblywoman. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) endorsed her in the 2024 election. JNS

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David Cunio recounts the hell of his captivity: 'The thought of my family kept me alive'.

"For a long time, we survived on 250 milliliters of water and half a pita per day," he says

i24NEWS. January 13, 2026 at 08:14 AM

In a moving testimony given to Israeli Channel N12, former hostage David Cunio spoke about the two years he spent in the hands of Hamas terrorists after the October 7, 2023 attack. He described the terror, the forced separation from his loved ones, hunger, and psychological warfare, but also the strength he drew from thinking about his family.

On October 7, while other members of the Cunio family were fighting to survive in neighboring houses, terrorists burst into David and Sharon’s home, set their house on fire, and violently tore them away from their lives. David tried to protect his wife and their daughters, Yuli and Emma, but he was ultimately captured while trying to escape with Yuli. Sharon and Emma were abducted separately. Injured, David, Sharon, and Yuli were taken to Gaza without knowing what had happened to Emma.

“We were tormented by the idea that Emma wasn’t with us,” he says. “We kept repeating that a little girl was missing, Yuli’s twin sister, but nobody knew anything. It was total chaos.”

The family was finally reunited at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, a scene cynically exploited by the terrorists for a propaganda video. The reunion, although long hoped for, was heartbreaking: Emma did not recognize her parents until Sharon gradually managed to reassure her.

David Cunio marks 35th birthday in Gaza captivity The most difficult moment for David, however, was the separation. On the 49th day, Sharon and the girls were released as part of the first hostage agreement, while he remained a prisoner. “Saying goodbye to Sharon, Yuli, and Emma was the worst moment of my life,” he confides. “I was begging not to be left behind.”

In the tunnels of Gaza, he endured extreme deprivation and mistreatment. “No food, no water. For a long time, we survived on 250 milliliters of water and half a pita per day,” he recounts. The hostages were forced to stand up whenever their captors passed by, despite weakness and dizziness, sometimes to the point of fainting.

To hold on, he clung mentally to his family. He would speak inwardly to his daughters, pray while holding a rubber band he’d found in his pocket, and wore improvised necklaces made with date pits around his neck. "It brought me back to reality, it gave me a bit of strength."

On the day of his release, he suddenly learns that his brother Ariel will be released with him. The reunion scene is overwhelmed with tears and emotion. But it is only during a video call with their family that they discover all their loved ones survived the massacre.

Today, David bears this testimony as a painful memory but also as proof of extraordinary human resilience: in the deepest darkness, the thought of those he loves kept him alive. i24

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‘Cut Jews’ throats’: Argentine doctor suspended Dr. Miqueas Martínez Secchi was suspended after posts calling to 'cut the throat artery' of Jews surfaced online. ynet Global|01.13.26 YNet

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Russia blasted for Holocaust distortion over ‘Genocide of the Soviet People’ Day. “Yad Vashem condemns this latest attempt to manipulate the historical facts of Nazi persecution for current political purposes,” said Israel's Holocaust Museum. Etgar Lefkovits. (Jan. 13, 2026 / JNS) Israel’s Holocaust Museum has accused Russia of Holocaust distortion over its decision to establish a new annual memorial day to commemorate the Nazi “Genocide of the Soviet People” while omitting any mention of their Jewish victims.

The new memorial day, which was signed into law by Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, will go into effect this year.

“Yad Vashem condemns this latest attempt to manipulate the historical facts of Nazi persecution for current political purposes,” Israel’s Holocaust Museum said in a Thursday post on X. “This new Russian law effectively erases the distinct Jewish dimension of the Shoah, despite the fact that they were the primary target of Nazi genocide.”

The Jerusalem Holocaust museum noted that while millions of Russians were killed during World War II, many of them in targeted murders, “the Holocaust is defined by the comprehensive campaign aimed at the total eradication of Jewish existence and the murder of six million Jewish men, women, and children, and as such must be recognized and remembered.”

The statement also added that the designated memorial date—April 19—set by the new Russian law has “profound significance” in Holocaust remembrance, as it marks the start of the famous uprising of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. JNS

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‘Israel saved us from genocide’: Interview with Syrian Druze leader. After more than 2,000 Druze were killed in a brutal massacre, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri says Israel’s airstrikes halted the bloodshed, condemns Syria’s rulers as jihadists and calls for an independent Druze entity in Sweida. Einav Halabi|01.13.26 04:57 [36]

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Syrian Druze appeal. 'We want Israel to control southern Syria' Israel National News. Jan 13, 2026, 5:19 PM INN

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Israeli-Argentine man freed from Venezuelan prison after 496 days. Itamar Eichner. |01.13.26 07:09 [37]

Netanyahu speaks with Yaakov Harari after his release from Venezuelan prison. PM Netanyahu spoke with Yaakov Harari, released from prison in Venezuela, praising diplomatic and security efforts to his release, thanking Israeli agencies, international partners, and the Harari family for their perseverance. Israel National News. Jan 13, 2026, 5:21 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Iran admits at least 2,000 killed as opposition reports over 12,000 dead in 'largest massacre' Lior Ben Ari|01.13.26 07:17 YNet

Over 12,000 estimated dead in Iran mass killings, largely over two nights, amid protests - report. Protesters gathered in Iran’s largest cemetery, Behesht-e Zahra, on Monday, chanting slogans such as “This year is the year of bloodshed, Seyyed Ali will be overthrown.”

By Fraidy Moser. January 13, 2026.

Over 12,000 people have been killed during the protests in Iran, largely over the course of Thursday and Friday nights, Iran International reported on Tuesday, describing the events as “the largest killing in Iran’s contemporary history.”

These figures are unconfirmed estimates by the outlet. Data from the US-based rights organization HRANA confirms the deaths of 646 people since the outbreak of the demonstrations last month. JPost

Iran protests death toll could be as high as 20,000 - CBS News. At least 12,000 people, and possibly as many as 20,000, have been killed during nationwide protests in Iran, CBS News reported, citing two sources including one inside Iran, hours after Iran International earlier reported a death toll of up to 12,000, largely over two consecutive nights of protests on January 8 and 9. IranIntl

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'They just kept killing': Eyewitnesses describe deadly crackdown in Iran. Jan 12, 2026. Roja Assadiand Sarah Namjoo, BBC Persian.

A protester holds up a picture of crown prince Reza Pahlavi in Kaj Square, north-western Tehran on Friday. "I saw it with my own eyes - they fired directly into lines of protesters, and people fell where they stood."

Omid's voice was shaking as he spoke, fearful of being traced. Breaking the wall of silence between Iran and the rest of the world takes immense courage, given the risk of reprisals by the authorities.

Omid, in his early 40s and whose name we have changed for his safety, has been protesting on the streets of a small city in southern Iran over the past few days against worsening economic hardship.

He said security forces had opened fire at unarmed protesters in his city with Kalashnikov-style assault rifles.

"We are fighting a brutal regime with empty hands," he said.

The BBC has received similar accounts of the crackdown by security forces following the widespread protests across the country last week.

Since then, internet access has been cut by the authorities, making reporting from Iran more difficult than ever. BBC Persian is banned from reporting inside Iran by the government.

One of the largest nationwide anti-government protests took place on Thursday, the twelfth night of demonstrations. Many people appear to have joined the protests on Thursday and Friday after calls from Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last shah of Iran who was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The following day, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said: "The Islamic Republic will not back down." It appears that the worst bloodshed occurred after that warning as security forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps take their orders from him.

Iranian authorities accused the US and Israel of fomenting trouble and condemned "terrorist actions", state media reported.

(Mortuary videos shows violent government crackdown in Iran).

A young woman from Tehran said last Thursday felt like "the day of judgement".

"Even remote neighbourhoods of Tehran were packed with protesters - places you wouldn't believe," she said.

"But on Friday, security forces only killed and killed and killed. Seeing it with my own eyes made me so unwell that I completely lost morale. Friday was a bloody day."

She said that, after Friday's killings, people were afraid to go out and that many were now chanting from alleys and inside their homes.

Tehran was a battlefield, she said, with protesters and security forces taking positions and cover on the streets.

But she added: "In war, both sides have weapons. Here, people only chant and get killed. It is a one-sided war."

Eyewitnesses in Fardis, a city just to the west of Tehran, said that on Friday, members of the paramilitary Basij force under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) suddenly attacked protesters after hours without a police presence on the streets.

The forces, who were in uniform and riding motorcycles, fired live ammunition directly at protesters, according to the witnesses. Unmarked cars were also driven into alleys, with occupants shooting at residents who were not involved in the protests, they said.

"Two or three people were killed in every alley," one witness alleged.

Map of Iran showing verified locations of protests since 28 December 2025, as of 11 January 2026

Those who have given accounts to BBC Persian say the reality inside Iran is hard for the outside world to imagine, and the death toll reported by international media so far only represents a fraction of their own estimates.

International news outlets are not allowed to work freely inside Iran and they are mostly relying on Iranian human rights groups who are active outside the country. On Monday the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) said at least 648 protesters in Iran had been killed, including nine people under the age of 18.

Some local sources and eyewitnesses report very high numbers of people killed across different cities, ranging from several hundreds to thousands.

The BBC is currently unable to independently verify these figures and, so far, Iranian authorities have not provided official or transparent statistics on the number of deaths of protesters.

However, Iranian media has reported that 100 security personnel had been killed during the protests, saying that protesters - whom they refer to as "rioters" - set fire to dozens of mosques and banks in various cities.

Eyewitness image A large group of people gather in front of buildings in Babol. Someone near the camera has their hands in the air. It is after dark and lights from buildings illuminater the area.Eyewitness image Footage posted on Thursday showed large crowds in Babol, northern Iran

Images posted on Thursday from Khorramabad in western Iran showed a man holding Iran's pre-revolutionary flag Videos verified by BBC Persian's fact-checking team also show police vehicles and some government buildings being set alight in different locations during the protests.

Testimonies and video sent to BBC Persian are mainly from larger cities such as Tehran, nearby Karaj, Rasht in the north, Mashhad in the north-east, and Shiraz in the south. These areas have greater access to the internet via the Starlink satellite network.

Information from small towns - where many early casualties occurred - is scarce as their access to Starlink is very limited.

But the volume, consistency, and similarity of the accounts received from various cities point to the severity of the crackdown and the widespread use of lethal violence.

Nurses and medics who spoke to the BBC said they had seen numerous dead bodies and injured protesters.

They reported that hospitals in many cities had been overwhelmed and were unable to treat those with severe injuries, especially to the head and eyes. Some witnesses reported bodies "stacked on top of each other" and not handed over to families.

Graphic videos published on the activist-run Telegram channel Vahid Online on Sunday showed a large number of bodies at the Kahrizak Forensic Medical Centre in Tehran, with many families either mourning or attempting to identify the corpses.

In one of the videos apparently from Kahrizak, relatives are seen looking at the photos of unidentified bodies displayed on a screen.

Many bodies in black bags were visible in the facility and on the street outside, only some of which seem to have been identified.

One video showed the inside of a warehouse containing several bodies, while another showed a truck being unloaded with people removing corpses from it.

A mortuary worker in a cemetery in Mashhad said that before sunrise on Friday morning between 180 and 200 bodies with severe head injuries were brought in and buried immediately.

A source in Rasht told BBC Persian that 70 bodies of protesters were transferred to a hospital mortuary in the city on Thursday. According to the source, security forces demanded "payment for bullets" before releasing bodies to families.

At the same time, a medical staff member at a hospital in eastern Tehran told BBC Persian that on Thursday, around 40 bodies were brought there the same day. The hospital's name has been withheld to protect the identity of the medic.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Sunday that he was "shocked by reports of violence and excessive use of force by the Iranian authorities against protesters resulting in deaths and injuries in recent days".

"I want to emphasise that regardless of the death toll, the use of lethal force by security forces is concerning," Mai Sato, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, told BBC Persian. BBC

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Israeli and Arab officials have privately suggested U.S. hold off on Iran strikes. January 13, 2026. Israeli officials have suggested the Trump administration delay large-scale strikes until the Iranian regime is even more strained, while one Arab official said there is “lack of enthusiasm from the neighborhood" for American military action in Iran right now. NBC News

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Iran set to execute 26-year-old protester on Wednesday without trial. While an estimated 2,000 people have been killed in anti-Islamic regime protests in recent weeks, Erfaneh Soltani is the first protester to be sentenced to execution.

By Danielle Greyman-kennard. January 13, 2026.

A 26-year-old protester is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday by the Islamic Republic after authorities reportedly neglected to offer the demonstrator any opportunity to defend himself in a court of law.

Erfaneh Soltani, who is scheduled to be executed, was denied any legal process or a defense lawyer, according to the US State Department. JPost

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Trump to Iranians: ‘keep protesting, help is on the way’; faces of Iran massacre victims emerge. First testimonies from Iran describe a brutal crackdown that killed at least 2,000 protesters and possibly far more; one detainee faces imminent execution as Farah Pahlavi issues a rare call saying ‘light will overcome darkness’ Lior Ben Ari, News Agencies|01.13.26. YNet

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EU Parliament bans Iranian diplomats over crackdown on protesters. Israel National News. Jan 13, 2026, 5:48 AM INN

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Bloodbath. WARNING: VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED - Videos Expose Executions in Iran. Harrowing footage from Kahrizak morgue shows families searching rows of body bags, contradicting regime narrative as Trump weighs ‘strong options’ to halt the violence.

Yair Kleinbaum. Jan 12, 2026 22:49 JFeed

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'This is our Berlin Wall,' Iranian activist Masih Alinejad tells 'Post' of protests - interview. Alinejad described a grim ritual familiar to Iranians living abroad: zooming in on photographs of the dead, searching for the faces of family members. "This is deliberate cruelty," she said.

By Amichai Stein January 13, 2026.

As images of mass protests and violent crackdowns continue to emerge from Iran, Iranian-American journalist and women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad says the world is witnessing not only a popular uprising, but a defining moral test for Western leaders - "this is our Berlin wall," she states in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

“When I see pictures of lifeless bodies stacked on top of each other, my heart is pounding,” Alinejad said in an emotional conversation. “But what makes me furious is not only the pain—it’s the silence outside Iran.” JPost

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US designates Muslim Brotherhood chapters as terrorist organizations. Secretary Rubio announces that the Lebanese, Jordanian, and Egyptian chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood are being designated under Trump's executive order. Israel National News. Published: Jan 13, 2026, 6:48 PM (GMT+2) INN

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South of Hebron: Israeli Bedouins disguised as IDF soldiers rob Arab stores. Israel National News. Jan 13, 2026, 1:03 PM INN

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Foreign Minister announces: Immediate suspension of contacts with UN agencies. Minister Gideon Saar announced the immediate suspension of contacts with several UN agencies and international organizations, following the US' withdrawal from similar bodies. Israel National News. Jan 13, 2026, 6:14 PM (GMT+2)

Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced today (Tuesday) the immediate suspension of contacts with several UN agencies and international organizations, following a review by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the wake of the United States' withdrawal from similar bodies.

In a statement released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it was reported that "Israel has severed ties with seven entities, and at the same time, further engagement with additional organizations will be examined as needed, in consultation with relevant government ministries."

Among the organizations from which contacts were severed, Israel has already terminated its relations with the Office of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, after it included the IDF in the "blacklist" alongside terrorist organizations; with UN Women - which ignored sexual violence against Israeli women on October 7; with the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), which have published anti-Israel reports for years.

Additionally, contacts were cut off with the UN Alliance of Civilizations - for which Israel was not invited to participate and which, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, served as a platform for attacks on Israel; with UN Energy - described as a wasteful and bureaucratic organization; and with the Global Forum on Migration and Development - which, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, harms Israel's ability to enforce its immigration laws. INN

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Drama in conservative media land. Megyn Kelly's Friends and Fans Are Ditching Her As Megyn Kelly spirals, observers are shaking their heads: She's ditching her fact-driven, inquisitive style for vendetta-fueled nonsense. This could torch her fanbase, with viewership dipping and ex-allies piling on the rebukes.

Bianca Jones. Jan 13, 2026 09:47 JFeed

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In ‘State of State’ address, Hochul pledges more protection against Jew-hatred.

A recent, pro-Hamas demonstration outside a Queens synagogue was “not free expression,” she said. “That’s harassment, and targeting a Jewish community in this way is antisemitism.”

Debra Nussbaum Cohen. (Jan. 13, 2026 / JNS)

In her annual State of the State speech on Tuesday in Albany, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called out antisemitism and announced that she is proposing a new law to ban demonstrations within 25 feet of a house of worship. 

The buffer zones will start at the property line of synagogues, churches, mosques and temples, “so those who simply want to pray can do so without fear or harassment,” she said.

“In 2026, we’ll take new steps to protect our houses of worship against the rising tide of antisemitism and Islamophobia,” she said. “New York has already invested $131 million to better secure these sacred places, but clearly, more must be done.”

The prior week, the governor noted, “protestors led pro-Hamas chants outside a synagogue in Kew Gardens Hills.”

“That’s not free expression. That’s harassment,” she said. “Targeting a Jewish community in this way is antisemitism.” JNS

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Cabinet convened; IDF increases alert level. Israel National News. Jan 13, 2026, 10:28 PM INN

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UK summons Iranian amb. over 'brutal' killing of protesters. Israel National News Jan 13, 2026, 10:21 PM INN

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'Very strong action' if protesters are hanged. In an interview with CBS News, Trump warns Iran of “very strong action" if it hangs protesters, pledging help for Iranian citizens. Elad Benari. Jan 14, 2026, 12:14 AM INN

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German Chancellor: 'Iranian regime in its final days and weeks’. Israel National News. Jan 13, 2026, 7:26 PM INN

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Amid fears of new offensive. Syria orders Kurdish withdrawal from Aleppo. Israel National News. Jan 14, 2026, 3:21 AM INN

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As death toll soars. EU to propose new sanctions against Iran. Israel National News. Jan 14, 2026, 3:45 AM INN

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Report: Trump and Mamdani quietly texting despite past clashes. Israel National News. Jan 14, 2026, 4:07 AM INN

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Kurds Accuse Syrian Army of War Crimes in Aleppo. John Hayward. 13 Jan 2026. The semi-autonomous Kurdish government in northeastern Syria on Sunday accused the Syrian Army and its affiliated militias of committing “war crimes” against Kurdish communities in the city of Aleppo. Breitbart

Post helping toppling Assad: Erdogan’s Neo-Ottoman Overreach: Syria, Gaza, and the "Islamic [influenced] NATO" Despite attempting to cast himself as the moral arbiter of the Middle East, Turkish Islamic semi-dicrator President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to use regional instability to mask his domestic failures and pursue a transparently expansionist "Neo-Ottoman" agenda.

1. Exploiting the Syrian Power Vacuum While the fall of the Assad regime in late 2024 was a victory for the Syrian people, Erdogan has swiftly pivoted from "liberator" to occupier. Turkey was the primary backer of the Syrian National Army (SNA), a proxy force critics argue is more loyal to Ankara than to the Syrian revolution. Following Assad’s collapse, Erdogan’s forces launched Operation Dawn of Freedom, a naked land grab aimed at expanding the Turkish-occupied "buffer zone" and crushing Kurdish aspirations for self-governance.Reference: Council on Foreign Relations (2024) – Analysis of Turkey’s "double-game" in Syria, balancing anti-Assad rhetoric with unilateral military incursions.

2. Systematic Crackdown on Kurdish Allies Erdogan’s primary objective in post-Assad Syria remains the destruction of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Despite the SDF being the West’s most reliable partner in the defeat of ISIS, Erdogan views them as an existential threat. By capitalizing on the chaos of the regime’s collapse, Turkish-backed forces moved to dismantle US-allied Kurdish enclaves in Aleppo and Manbij, effectively trading the fight against jihadism for a campaign of ethnic displacement.Reference: Modern Diplomacy (2025) – Reports on Erdogan’s leverage of the offensive to expand the 30-kilometer Turkish "security corridor."

3. Gaza: The Ejected Mediator In a desperate bid for Islamic leadership, the "Islamic Dictator" attempted to insert himself into the Gaza conflict by urging the Trump administration to grant Turkey a lead oversight role. However, Israel and several Arab neighbors flatly rejected his participation. Erdogan’s open embrace of Hamas leadership and his vitriolic rhetoric against the Israeli state have disqualified him as a "neutral broker," leaving Turkey sidelined while Qatar and Egypt maintain real diplomatic leverage.Reference: Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) (2025) – Policy brief on how Israel and regional Arab powers blocked Turkey’s "guarantor" proposal due to ideological ties.

4. The "Islamic [influenced] NATO": The Nuclear Pivot to Pakistan Finding himself increasingly isolated within NATO, Erdogan has turned toward a hardline "Pak-Turk" strategic alliance. In early 2026, reports emerged that Turkey is in advanced talks to join a Mutual Defense Pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. This so-called "Muslim NATO" allows Erdogan to project power toward India and the West, essentially seeking a seat under Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella to compensate for waning influence in the Mediterranean.

- Reference: Bloomberg / The Times of Israel (January 2026) – Investigation into the "Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement" and Turkey’s shift toward a trilateral nuclear security bloc. [1.14.26] at EoZ

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Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig: The new plaque at the Gisèle Halimi Center for women victims of violence in Bordeaux, France 🇫🇷, has been defaced with a swastika for the second time in six months.

Gisèle Halimi, a Tunisian-French Jewish lawyer, fought tirelessly for women’s rights, including the right to abortion and the defense of rape victims, and carried that fight into the French government.

The antisemites could not care less that France is safer for women because of her. All they see is a Jewish woman, and that alone makes her name a target.

This has nothing to do with Zionism or Gaza. It is the expression of thousands of years of hatred. How can the world not see the echo of the 1930s? Jan 13, 2026 on X

Ex-Navy SEAL, who saw US government as ‘controlled by Israel, Jews,’ convicted in plot to bomb police (Jan. 13, 2026 / JNS)

A U.S. Navy SEAL, who displayed neo-Nazi symbols and praised terrorist groups, was convicted on Jan. 12 of planning to use explosives against police at a California protest, federal prosecutors said on Monday.

A federal jury found Gregory Vandenberg, 49, guilty of “transporting explosives with intent to kill, injure or intimidate” law enforcement officers, and of trying to bring illegal fireworks into the state.

Prosecutors said Vandenberg was driving from El Paso to San Diego ahead of the June 14, 2025, “No Kings Day” protests when he stopped at a travel center in New Mexico. There, Vandenberg wore a shirt that read “Amalek,” a reference to a biblical tribe and nemesis of the Jews. JNS

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Traitors contestant compared Israel to Nazis in posts missed by BBC. Marzook Bana's past social media comments emerge. By Annabel Sinclair. January 13, 2026, 11:21 am The BBC is facing further criticism after social media posts by a contestant on The Traitors emerged in which he compared Israel to Nazi Germany, prompting outrage from Jewish organisations and fresh questions over vetting standards.

Marzook Bana, known as “Maz” on the prime-time reality series, posted comments on Facebook in 2021 likening an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank to the actions of the Nazis and accusing “Zionists” of forgetting the Holocaust.

Under an image appearing to show an Israeli checkpoint, Bana wrote: “Nazis all over again, the oppressed have become the oppressors!! The Zionists have short memories of what Hitler did. Never again, they said!! The world’s political leaders should be ashamed of themselves of being subservient to ISRAEL!”

In the same thread, he later stated that “to criticise Israel’s behaviour towards the Palestinian people is not antisemitic.”

Further posts attributed to Bana accused Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer of being positioned to “annihilate the Labour Party” and bowing to “his paymasters”. He later liked a reply identifying those “paymasters” as “the pro-Israeli lobby, the Board of Deputies and anyone else who finds the idea of Palestinians having human rights abhorrent”.

Bana, a 59-year-old retired police officer from Preston and a father of five, was eliminated from the programme last week. In a statement, he said: “I apologise for any offence my comments may have caused. It’s never been my intention to offend, marginalise or discriminate against any individual or group. I refute any allegations that I am antisemitic. My viewpoint has always been from a humanitarian perspective rather than a political one.”

Jewish groups said the language used echoed well-established antisemitic tropes, particularly Nazi comparisons and claims of covert Jewish influence over political leaders.

Studio Lambert, the production company behind The Traitors, said the comments were not uncovered during background checks. It said: “We employ reputable companies to conduct thorough background and social media checks as part of our due diligence, which we take extremely seriously.” JewishNews

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Less than 40% of CBC's reporting on Israel-Hamas conflict was 'balanced': study by Jewish group.

Head of public affairs at CBC says the study's sample is 'only a portion' of its coverage and CBC's Ombud has not found its reporting has 'violated its journalistic standards of impartiality'

Author of the article: By Courtney Greenberg Published Jan 12, 2026.

Less than 40 per cent of CBC’s reporting on the Israel-Hamas conflict was “balanced or neutral,” finds a new study by a Jewish advocacy group.

B’nai Brith Canada also found that more than 50 per cent of CBC’s news articles and videos included in the study met its threshold for pro-Palestinian bias, while less than seven per cent met the threshold for pro-Israel bias. This was based on a sample of 299 items published between Oct. 1, 2024 to April 30, 2025. NationalPost

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Open University drops ‘ancient Palestine’ reference after complaint. By Annabel Sinclair. January 13, 2026.

The Open University has agreed to stop using the term “ancient Palestine” in its teaching materials after a student raised concerns that the wording was historically inaccurate and risked erasing Jewish history.

The change follows a complaint backed by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), which warned the university that describing the Virgin Mary as being born in “ancient Palestine” could create a hostile learning environment for Jewish and Israeli students. The development was first reported by The Telegraph.

The wording appeared in Discovering the Arts and Humanities, an entry-level Open University module that introduces students to myths, religion and cultural history. Course materials referred to Mary’s birthplace as “ancient Palestine”, described Aramaic as “a language widely spoken in ancient Palestine”, and included a map labelled “Map of ancient Palestine”.

UKLFI argued that the terminology was anachronistic and politically loaded, particularly given the current climate following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on 7 October, 2023. The group said the term “Palestine” was not applied to the region of Judea, Samaria and Galilee until after the Bar Kokhba revolt, when the Roman emperor Hadrian renamed the province “Syria Palaestina” around 135 CE – more than a century after Mary’s lifetime.

Mary is widely believed to have been born in the late first century BCE in Galilee, a predominantly Jewish region under Roman rule, with most historical accounts identifying Nazareth as her home village.

In a letter to UKLFI, the Open University confirmed it would no longer use the term in future materials and would add context to existing content. The university acknowledged that the wording had become “problematic in a way that, perhaps, it was not when the materials were written in 2018.” JewishNews

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steven farber @steven_far29985: Shadi Hamid (of WAPO columns) and Dave Smith (of Joe Rogan fame) both know there is no genocide in Gaza but keep repeating that line to fan flames when the actual facts, data, and proper application of international law debunk the claims of genocide. [38] Jan 12, 2026. on X

Your opnion piece was eviscerated by two Holocaust and genocide professors in the @washingtonpost washingtonpost.com Opinion | Why it’s wrong to call Israel’s war in Gaza a ‘genocide’ 3:14 AM · Jan 13, 2026 [39] On X

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"She's One of Us". Hollywood Star Sydney Sweeney Meets Rescued Hostages Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or.

Hollywood actress Sydney Sweeney has demonstrated her deep support for the Jewish people by meeting with Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or, two survivors of the brutal captivity in Gaza. [40] Eliana Fleming. Jan 13, 2026  JFeed

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Iraq arrests suspect wanted by Australia over Melbourne synagogue firebombing. "This arrest is a significant disruption to an alleged serious criminal and his alleged criminal enterprise in Australia," said the Australian Federal Police Commissioner.

(Members of the Synagogue recover items from the Adass Israel Synagogue on December 06, 2024 in Melbourne, Australia). By Reuters. January 14, 2026 05:27 Iraqi officials have arrested a man wanted by Australian Federal Police as a person of interest in the investigation into a spate of firebombings, including an antisemitic attack on a Melbourne synagogue, police said on Wednesday.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said the arrested man, Kazem Hamad, was a threat to national security and that she had identified him as her "Number One priority." JPost

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Iran Targets Starlink Users as Protests Break Through Internet Blackout. January 13, 2026 YWN

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‘They said my wife died to break me’: Israeli, 72, freed from Venezuela prison speaks out After over a year in a Venezuelan prison, Yaakov Harari returns to Israel, describing harsh conditions, antisemitic abuse and psychological torment; Caracas accused him of being a mercenary and sentenced him to 25 years over photos found on his phone. Itamar Eichner | published: 01.14.26 | 20:43 YNet

Yaakov was imprisoned in Venezuela - and returned home yesterday: "A political prisoner". Harari's imprisonment, who was returned to Israel yesterday accompanied by his daughters, was kept under a veil of secrecy, due to the sensitivity of the affair - and his release came after the overthrow of the Maduro regime. "They told him he was a 'mercenary,' but it was a political imprisonment, he was a hostage. Completely cut off from us," his relatives say. "They took their mattresses. Because of the war, prisoners in the cell next to him lied to him that his wife was dead." Vered Pelman, Kalman Libeskind, Yair Ettinger.

After a year and three months: Yaakov Harari, a 72-year-old Israeli who was imprisoned in Venezuela, was returned to Israel yesterday. Harari was arrested at the Venezuelan border, where he tried to enter from Panama, as part of a business trip he made in South America. The forces in the country claimed that he was a "mercenary" - this is what Yossi Dahan, Harari's son-in-law, told Kalman Libeskind and Yair Ettinger on Channel 2's Kan News today.

Harari's imprisonment was kept under wraps due to the sensitivity of the affair - and his release came after the overthrow of the Maduro regime by American forces . "They started releasing political prisoners, that's what they called it," says Beit Shemesh Deputy Mayor Moshe Shitrit, who helped maintain contact with Harari. "There were prisoners from 48 countries there, it felt like political imprisonment, they were hostages." Shitrit adds: "A few minutes before he was released, they told him, 'Get organized and get out of here, you're on your way home.'"

From the time of his arrest until his release, Harari was almost completely cut off from his family and the outside world. "We didn't talk to him at all, we had no contact with him. It took a long time to figure out where he was. He had a granddaughter born during this time, and they brought him pictures of her through a country's ambassador who came to the prison. Yaakov said he saw the picture for two minutes, they brought it to him to see and took it away," says his son-in-law.

The first significant sign of life from Yaakov, his son-in-law says, came after a man who had been in prison with him and was released managed to track down a representative of the Jewish community in the United States and asked him to provide information to his relatives. "He was the first to tell us that he was healthy and alive," Dahan recalls.

Sheetrit, as mentioned, was the one who was in charge of the Israeli side of the relationship, and he recounts the chilling details he heard from the prisoner. "At a certain point, they took away their mattresses and blankets, they simply weren't in the cell." Harari suffered abuse from other prisoners of Muslim origin. "They didn't stop teasing him and telling him all sorts of crazy things about shooting down Israeli planes. At a certain point, someone decided to tell him that his wife was dead. It wasn't and won't be, she's with us alive." KAN

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@idfonline: Serious violation of the ceasefire agreement: IDF forces killed six terrorists in the Rafah area. Following yesterday's incident in which six armed terrorists were identified in the West Rafah area and after searches were carried out in the area, it can now be confirmed that the 7th Brigade combat team eliminated the six terrorists during the exchange of fire.

Various weapons were found on the eliminated terrorists.

The IDF views any violation of the agreement as serious and will continue to act against any attempt by terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip to carry out terrorist plots against IDF forces and citizens of the State of Israel. Jan 14, 2026 on X

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Ultra-Orthodox Israelis attacked near Ukraine-Poland border, assailant shouts antisemitic abuse. Group returning from pilgrimage site in Ukraine says a local man became violent at a gas station, hurled objects into their vehicle and shouted antisemitic slurs as their Ukrainian driver fled in fear. Itamar Eichner | published: 01.14.26 01:46 YNet

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WSJ: Gulf States Beg Trump: Don't Strike Iran - Oil Markets Could Explode. Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Qatar are privately lobbying the Trump administration to refrain from military strikes or regime change efforts targeting Iran, warning of catastrophic consequences for global oil markets and the U.S. economy

Gila Isaacson. Jan 14, 2026 JFeed

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Trump to announce second phase of Gaza plan today. U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to announce the second phase, including international oversight and a Palestinian technocratic government, despite Hamas not releasing the hostage Ran Gvili.

Israel National News. Jan 14, 2026, 7:49 AM INN

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Haredim attacked in Ukraine: 'Even in Israel they hate you'. The attacker approached the vehicle with several haredi passengers, opened the doors, shouting insults and acting violently. 'A frightening incident.' Israel National News. Published: Jan 14, 2026, 7:33 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Pallets of energy drinks spotted being sent as humanitarian aid. Israel National News. Jan 14, 2026, 11:25 AM INN

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ISA official recommends hanging for terrorists A former ISA official told a Knesset committee today that the cultural impact of hanging gives it more significance than other options for the death penalty. Israel National News. Jan 14, 2026, 12:00 PM INN

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Top crime boss linked to car bombing. Prosecutors say Abu Latif syndicate targeted real estate developer Itzik Teshuva in 2023 bombing after failed extortion. Roy Rubinstein|01.14.26 YNet

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Report: Israel, Iran exchanged pledges via Russia. IDF says it is closely monitoring developments amid growing reports of a potential US strike on Iran. Itamar Eichner|01.14.26 YNet

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USA withdraws personnel from Al-Udeid Airbase in Qatar. Israel National News Jan 14, 2026, 1:42 PM INN

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Mutilate Iranian Protestersm Tehran’s "Shoot to Kill" Orders. Targeted for Blindness: The Horrific Strategy to Mutilate Iranian Protesters. Medical staff in Tehran have revealed a systematic regime campaign to permanently blind and kill protesters, as death toll estimates soar to 12,000 amid a brutal national crackdown. Eliana Fleming Jan 14, 2026 JFeed

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Doctors in Iran 'Shooting at protesters is aimed to kill' Israel National News Jan 14, 2026, 4:52 PM INN

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The Dark Secrets Behind Tehran's State Media. Theater of Terror: Inside Iran’s Unprecedented Wave of 100 Forced Confessions. Human rights groups have documented an unprecedented surge in televised forced confessions, revealing a systematic regime effort to justify the mass execution of protesters through torture and state media propaganda. Eliana Fleming. Jan 14, 2026. JFeed

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Gaza Demilitarization Begins. BREAKING: Steve Witkoff Announces Launch of Phase Two in Gaza Peace Plan. US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff declares the launch of Phase Two in President Trump's Gaza plan, advancing to demilitarization and reconstruction while warning Hamas of consequences for failing to return the final deceased hostage. Eliana Fleming. Jan 14, 2026 JFeed

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Amid Iran tensions. Lufthansa group cancels night flights in and out of Israel. Israel National News. Jan 14, 2026, 9:14 PM INN

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Trump says he has been told killing of protesters in Iran has stopped. A potential US strike on Iran is still several days away, according to officials, who warned that any military action could prompt a strong Iranian response. Reuters, Itamar Eichner|01.14.26 YNet

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MK Ahmad Tibi removed from podium after inciting against Rabbi Eliyahu. During a speech in the Knesset plenum, MK Ahmad Tibi lashed out at Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, accused the coalition of failure, and claimed that “blood is flowing in the streets." Israel National News. Published: Jan 14, 2026, 9:24 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Betar to 'Post': NY order a 'chilling decision' that should 'terrify' Zionists and Jews - exclusive. Torossian said the "whole idea that we targeted random Palestinians and Muslims [is wrong]," adding "what they are saying is you can't counter people who attack synagogues."

By Mathilda Heller. January 14, 2026. "This is a very chilling decision which should terrify every Zionist and every Jew in New York," head of Betar US Ronn Torossian told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday. This comes after the New York Attorney General ordered the Zionist activist group to cease its campaign "of violence" in the city or face paying a $50,000 fine.

While labeled "far right" by many figures and groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, Torossian said that Betar is a mainstream Zionist organization, following the vision of Ze'ev Jabotinsky. He stressed that the HQ of Betar is in the Likud building, and many prominent Likud figures (such as Ofir Akunis and Danny Danon) were raised in the Betar movement.

He stressed that, despite the settlement with the AG (who accused Betar of "bias-motivated harassment and violence designed to terrorize communities"), Betar never signed any confession of guilt, and denies all allegations of wrongdoing.

Torossian told the Post that Betar was served a cease and desist letter in March 2025, after which it "voluntarily agreed to halt operations in NY, as we are active in Delaware. JPost

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Antisemitic caricature appears in New Jersey Christmas pageant. Jewish caricature in Ukrainian Christmas tradition resurfaces at New Jersey church, drawing criticism. Jackie Hajdenberg, JTA. Jan 17, 2026, 6:36 PM (GMT+2)

It had all the trappings of a conventional Christmas pageant: the three wise men, Christmas carols, and children dressed as angels.

But there was a twist: This pageant, performed on Sunday in New Jersey, also included a Hasidic Jewish caricature INN

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David Cunio recounts the hell of his captivity: 'The thought of my family kept me alive'. "For a long time, we survived on 250 milliliters of water and half a pita per day," he says. i24NEWS. January 13, 2026 at 02:14 PM David Cunio Recounts The Hell Of His Captivity: 'The Thought Of My Family ... 3 days ago — The most difficult moment for David, however, was the separation. On the 49th day, Sharon and the girls were released as part of the first hostage agreement, while he remained a prisoner. “Saying goodbye to Sharon, Yuli, and Emma was the worst moment of my life,” he confides. “I was begging not to be left behind.”

In the tunnels of Gaza, he endured extreme deprivation and mistreatment. “No food, no water. For a long time, we survived on 250 milliliters of water and half a pita per day,” he recounts. The hostages were forced to stand up whenever their captors passed by, despite weakness and dizziness, sometimes to the point of fainting. i24

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British police chief admits: ‘I passed false information on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans because of AI’. West Midlands Police chief apologizes to Parliament after admitting inaccurate intelligence used to bar Israeli fans from a Europa League match was generated by an AI tool, not verified reporting ynet|01.14.26 | YNet

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Hamas Figures Express Support For Iranian Regime: The Protestors Are Agents Of Israel And The U.S.; Iran Must Attack Israel. January 14, 2026. Iran, Palestinians I Special Dispatch No. 12329. In response to the mass protests in Iran, which are being brutally suppressed by the regime there, figures affiliated with and close to Hamas have voiced clear and unequivocal support for the Iranian regime, which for decades has assisted Hamas with weapons and funding... MEMRI

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How Turkey’s dangerous course in the Middle East fuels massacres - opinion. Ankara has created, sustained, and directed a well-established network of Islamist proxies.

By Veysi Dag. January 14, 2026.

After the massacres against the Alawite community in March and the Druze in July 2025, Kurdish residents of Aleppo’s Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafieh neighborhoods have become the latest victims. They were targeted by the same coalition of forces that includes the Turkish-backed Syrian Free Army (SFA), Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and affiliated jihadist groups.

Numerous images and video recordings circulating widely on social media show jihadists mutilating the bodies of Kurdish civilians and fighters, torturing children until they lose consciousness or die, and burning bodies while chanting “Allahu Akbar” and “Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews,” referring to an Arab massacre of Jews in the 7th century. While the immediate perpetrators identify themselves as Islamist jihadists, the true architect behind these atrocities is the Turkish state – its ministers, military, and intelligence apparatus.

Ankara has created, sustained, and directed a well-established network of Islamist proxies, providing them with equipment, intelligence, logistical support, and transportation. Hakan Fidan, the former head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and current foreign minister, has been central to this system, as revealed by leaked recordings dating back to 2014.

Turkey’s longstanding jihadist infrastructure Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Turkey has played a profoundly destructive role in shaping the conflict. Ankara actively endorsed radical jihadist groups across Syria and beyond and Istanbul served as the primary gateway for thousands of global jihadists from Europe, North Africa, Central Asia, and the Gulf.

These fighters passed freely through Turkish airports and were transported to the Syrian border with the assistance – or acquiescence – of Turkish intelligence. They were subsequently trained, armed, and deployed inside Syria. Turkey’s jihadist infrastructure was neither hidden nor accidental: international media reported on it extensively, human rights organizations documented it, and Western intelligence agencies acknowledged it.

Yet Turkey faced no serious repercussions, largely due to its NATO membership, its leverage over refugee flows, and its role in facilitating the movement of jihadists into Europe. This reluctance among Western capitals to confront Ankara enabled Turkish impunity while rendering it complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians – a toll rivaled only by the Bashar al-Assad regime itself.

Turkey’s policy in Syria has never been driven by a commitment to civilian protection or democratic transformation. Instead, Ankara has pursued a geopolitical agenda aimed at subordinating Syria to Turkish influence and crushing Kurdish political aspirations at any cost. The consequences are evident in Aleppo, where massacres of Kurdish civilians mirror earlier attacks on Alawite and Druze communities.

US political cover and the role of Tom Barrack These massacres are further compounded by the role of Tom Barrack, the US special envoy for Syria under President Donald Trump, whose policy has contributed to advancing Turkey’s regional ambitions and to the political legitimization of jihadist actors.

Despite a documented record of massacres, Barrack has repeatedly provided political cover for Turkish-backed forces and has continued to promote Ankara’s agenda. Numerous social media users, along with Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) director Rami Abdulrahman, have accused Barrack of complicity in the Aleppo massacre. His actions have effectively shielded jihadists from accountability.

The widespread circulation of videos documenting atrocities against Alawite, Druze, and Kurdish communities reveals methods strikingly similar to those employed by ISIS and Hamas. These acts are not isolated incidents but deliberate campaigns of terror, designed to inflict maximum suffering, terrorize civilian populations, dismantle social and political structures, and cleanse contested areas of minoritized communities in accordance with Ankara’s vision for Syria under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.

Ankara’s alignment with Iran and Hezbollah Turkey’s destabilizing role extends well beyond Syria. Ankara has expanded its regional maneuvering in ways that directly undermine US policy objectives, particularly with regard to Iran.

Turkey has quietly cooperated with Iran’s clerical regime to prevent its collapse, even as millions of Iranians demand meaningful political change. The recent visit of Fidan to Iran further cemented this cooperation, framed around a shared “common enemy” in Jerusalem.

This collaboration has manifested in intelligence sharing, coordination, and support for Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy. Turkey’s political, financial, and logistical ties to Hezbollah sharply contradict its claim to be a bulwark against extremism. By sustaining Hezbollah’s operational capacity and armament, Ankara contributes to instability in Lebanon, Syria, and beyond, while undermining efforts to curb Iran’s regional influence.

Multiple reports also indicate that Turkish forces have tracked Kurdish fighters across borders, entered Iranian territory, and shared actionable intelligence with Iranian security services. This cooperation has enabled Tehran to target and eliminate Kurdish fighters who pose no threat to Turkey but challenge Iran’s authoritarian system. These actions place Turkey directly at odds with America’s stated objectives in Iran, including support for human rights, democratic transformation, and constraints on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and proxy networks.

A policy that perpetuates violence Turkey’s regional policy seeks to expand its influence across the Middle East while suppressing communities – particularly Kurds – that challenge its domestic and external ambitions. The human cost of this strategy is immense. From the Syrian coast and Sweida to Aleppo and into Iran, Turkish maneuvering has inflicted severe harm to civilians.

This approach disproportionately targets minoritized communities, stifles democratic aspirations, strengthens authoritarian regimes, and perpetuates cycles of violence. Turkey’s policy fosters instability, generates chaos, and then exploits that chaos for geopolitical gain.

By supporting Iran’s authoritarian regime while strengthening jihadist networks in Syria, Ankara’s actions run counter to Trump’s stated vision for regional stabilization, peace, and the resolution of proxy wars. If the US administration is serious about achieving lasting stability in the Middle East, it may need to reconsider its approach to Turkey.

The massacres on the Syrian coast, in Sweida, and in Aleppo are not aberrations. They are the predictable outcomes of a decade-long Turkish policy that prioritizes power, expansion, and control over coexistence, stability, and peace. Until Turkey’s role is confronted, the cycle of violence is likely to persist – adding more communities to an already growing list of victims. JPost

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Why global media obsess over Israel and ignore deadlier wars - opinion. How disproportionate media attention and a misleading conflict frame turn Israel into a moral symbol while eclipsing far deadlier wars.

By Samuel J. Hyde. January 13, 2026. Updated: January 17, 2026.

When arguments about international coverage of Israel arise, they almost always begin in miniature. They circle around language. Is it a “settlement” or a “neighborhood”? A “security fence” or an “apartheid wall”? Was 1948 a war of independence or a Nakba? These debates have the feel of forensic disputes, as if the great drama of the Middle East might finally be settled by the correct choice of noun.

They are not unimportant. Words matter. But they are also a distraction. They keep us arguing on the surface of the story, while the deeper, more corrupting structures shaping it remain largely untouched, and thus unseen.

There are two such structures, two distortions so large that they become strangely invisible. Together, they help explain why Israel occupies such an outsized and morally charged place in the media’s imagination, particularly in the West.

Obsession with Israel.

The first is the sheer scale of attention. Not criticism, attention. A systemic fascination, bordering on obsession, with covering Israel as though it were the gravitational center of world affairs. The fascination is both disproportionate and scalable.

For example, as Prof. Gil Troy noted in his 64-page The Essential Guide to October 7 and Its Aftermath: Facts, Figures, History, published by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), “In the first nine months after October 7, 2023, the New York Times published 6,656 articles about the Gaza War. That compared to 80 articles about the American-led battle to free Mosul [Iraq] over nine months in 2016-2017, [some] 198 articles about the Tigray War in Ethiopia, which killed 600,000 in a year, and 5,434 articles during the first 13 years of Syria’s civil war. One Microsoft Copilot Artificial Intelligence analysis found [that] between 50,000 and 70,000 articles about Gaza were written worldwide in nine months – compared to 1,000 articles about Mosul in nine months.”

Former Associated Press reporter Matti Friedman observed that AP employed more full-time journalists covering Israel than it did covering China, India, and Russia combined.

The imbalance becomes even more bizarre at AP when extended further. Israel is covered by more full-time staff than all of sub-Saharan Africa combined, which is made up of dozens of countries, encompassing hundreds of millions of people, multiple wars, famines, mass displacement, and – in some cases – genocidal violence.

If news coverage were meant to be a rational analysis, this is not. Even if news were merely supposed to be the coverage of suffering, power, and danger on planet Earth, this would still be indefensible. You cannot plausibly cover Israel more than an entire continent without warping the reader’s sense of reality.

Illusion of centrality.

This saturation coverage creates the illusion of centrality. It trains audiences to believe that whatever they see most frequently must be the most important event in the world. Israel becomes not just another country among many but a kind of moral index of the age – a stage upon which the world’s conscience is imagined to be tested and revealed.

Meanwhile, catastrophes of far greater scale and brutality – such as the ongoing genocide in Sudan – flicker briefly, if at all, across the screen before disappearing into silence a week later.

This is not accidental. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict occupies a peculiar and disproportionate place in the West’s political imagination, unmatched by conflicts that are deadlier or more brutal. Israel is small enough to be grasped symbolically, but complex enough to absorb endless projection.

It is intimate, familiar, and endlessly legible to Western eyes in a way that “distant” tragedies are not. And so it becomes over-seen, over-examined, intensely dissected, and uniquely moralized until the examination itself becomes both activism and a substitute for understanding.

Regional conflict.

The second distortion is conceptual. Israel’s wars are routinely framed as the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” as though the entire story were a localized struggle between two neighboring peoples, one strong and one weak, one powerful and one victimized. This framing is tidy, emotionally resonant, and yet profoundly misleading.

Most of Israel’s wars have not been fought against Palestinians but against Egyptians and Jordanians, Syrians and Lebanese, Iraqis and, increasingly, Iranians. Israel’s most significant enemy today is the Islamic regime in Iran – a non-Arab, non-Palestinian regional power pursuing its own ideological, nuclear, and strategic ambitions. The rockets fired at Israel during the war did not come only from Gaza. They came from Lebanon, from Yemen, from Iraq, and from Iran itself.

Imagine for a moment a satellite photograph that does nothing but trace the arcs of ballistic missiles and rockets fired at Israel over the past years – a dark map illuminated by red lines streaking inward from multiple directions. Such an image would reveal instantly what the dominant narrative conceals: the contours of a regional war. A multi-front conflict involving state and non-state actors, militias and proxies, ideologies and regimes, stretching across the Middle East.

Yet this is not how the story is told. Instead, a vast and intricate regional struggle is reduced to a single dyad: Israelis vs Palestinians. In this reduction, Israel is cast as the dominant actor, the controlling force, and ultimately the villain. Power flows in one direction only. Agency belongs almost exclusively to Israel. The wider forces shaping the conflict fade into the background or vanish altogether.

Shrinking facts.

This is how media distortion always works – not by inventing the facts but by shrinking and enlarging them selectively. A small story is made to seem enormous. A large story is compressed until it fits the awaiting political template.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to international media on the Gaza war, in Jerusalem, August 10, 2025 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to international media on the Gaza war, in Jerusalem, August 10, 2025 (credit: CHAIM TZACH/GPO) The result is a narrative that is both emotionally compelling and intellectually impoverished, a morality play in which a villainous country called Israel comes to embody the worst sins of the modern age, while the broader regional dynamics dissolve into abstraction.

Once this narrative is established, it becomes self-reinforcing. The more Israel is covered by the media, the more it seems to matter uniquely. The more it is framed as the central actor in a simplified conflict, the easier it becomes to load it with symbolic meaning. Israel ceases to be a state acting within a volatile region and becomes instead a metaphor for everything the imagination fears about power and injustice.

That is why disputes over terminology feel so intense and yet change so little. The problem is not whether a journalist chooses one word over another. It is that the story being told is already too small to hold the truth, and too large to escape moral projection. It magnifies Israel until it eclipses the region, and then isolates it until it bears responsibility for forces far beyond its control.

To notice this is not to deny Palestinian suffering, nor to sanctify Israeli policy. It is to insist on proportionality, context, and intellectual honesty – qualities without which journalism becomes a kind of secular theology, assigning sin and virtue according to narrative convenience rather than reality.

If the coverage of Israel feels uniquely charged, moralized, and obsessive, it is because it is. And until we confront the media structures that produce this obsession – the imbalance of attention and the fiction of a purely local conflict – we will continue arguing over words while missing the story those words were meant to describe.

[Samuel J. Hyde is a South African-Israeli writer on Israel and the Middle East based in Tel Aviv. He began his career studying the rise of Nazism at the Holocaust and Genocide Center and is currently a fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute based in Jerusalem]. JPost

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London PR firm rewrites Wikipedia to burnish Qatar’s image.

Wikipedia is such a cesspool of far-left, pro-jihad propaganda that it is quite likely that other pages have been revised at the behest of well-heeled, malign actors as well.

“London PR firm rewrites Wikipedia for governments and billionaires,” by Claire Wilmot, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, January 14, 2026.

Twenty-five years after it was founded, Wikipedia stands as an unrivalled achievement. Not only is it the single largest collection of information in human history, it has also built a stellar reputation for reliability in a digital world awash with lies and deception.

For this reason, new AI tools have begun to carry the site’s contents far and wide. Chatbots and AI-generated search summaries – which are rapidly transforming the way people get their information – both use Wikipedia as a key source.

Now, we can reveal Wikipedia has been subject to shady, paid-for edits ordered by partners at an elite London PR firm with links to Downing Street. And the clients who benefitted from this “wikilaundering” are some of the world’s richest and most powerful people.

The firm in question is Portland Communications, whose founder Tim Allan is now the director of communications for Keir Starmer. And it has been busted once already for this practice, which is in breach of the British PR professionals’ code of conduct.

But after the firm was exposed, former employees told us, it simply started hiring middlemen instead. As one of them put it: “No one said, ‘We should stop doing this.’ The question was how we could keep doing it without getting caught.”

Portland’s subcontractors have polished the public image of Qatar by burying references to critical reporting ahead of the 2022 World Cup, according to the firm’s insiders. They have also obscured mentions of a major terrorist-financing case involving Qatari businessmen; scrubbed evidence that a billion-dollar Gates-funded project failed in its mission; and promoted one side of Libya’s post-Gaddafi government over the other.

Often, however, their changes were more subtle: burying bad press under descriptions of a client’s philanthropic work or swapping out critical news references with something more positive…

In December 2010, the tiny Gulf state of Qatar became the centre of huge international attention when it was chosen as the shock host for the 2022 World Cup. Almost immediately, the country’s human rights record began to draw intense scrutiny. And as stadium construction projects got underway, reports began to emerge detailing the deaths of migrant workers.

With its reputation in the spotlight, Qatar turned to Portland. In 2013, the firm was handed a lucrative contract with the country, its remit covering “government affairs through to nation branding”.

According to six former Portland employees involved in some of this work between 2013 and 2024, Wikipedia edits were a common request from the Qataris. They said Portland hired subcontractors to target pages detailing Qatar’s human rights record, particularly around stadium-building, with pages of prominent politicians also targeted.

TBIJ’s analysis confirms several networks of accounts editing pages to raise the prominence of positive coverage of Qatar, as well as hedging negative press or burying it under more favourable material. Many of these changes – some of which Wikipedia editors flagged as suspicious in separate investigations – were performed by accounts outside of the Web3 network.

Wikipedia reaches into AI and distributes information throughout the internet

Stephen Harrison, journalist. Other edits by the Web3 network focussed on the country’s business interests, including the removal of references to a case in which two Qatari billionaires were sued in the British high court for allegedly channelling funds to Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian terrorist group. The case appears to have collapsed in July 2024 after claimants withdrew some claims (lawyers told the Guardian that their clients had been intimidated by Qatari state operatives). But in October 2019, Web3’s network erased all mentions of the case from the page of the men’s business.

Three Wikipedia editors told us that in general, if a case is subject to media coverage as this one was, it should not be deleted…. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

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What is the actual death toll of the Iranian protests? | DW News. Jan 15, 2026 #iran #protests #qatar. Human rights groups say more than 2,500 people have been killed since anti-government protests erupted in Iran some three weeks ago. The Iranian government has been carrying out a vicious crackdown. "These figures, 12 thousands or 10 thousand, that are being circulated. They are laughable compared to we have seen." pn YouTube

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Report: UN Experts Silent on Iran. January 14, 2026. United Nations. According to a report published today by the Swiss non-governmental organization UN Watch, the majority of UN human rights experts—known officially as Special Procedures—have been mostly silent on the Islamic Republic’s violent crackdown against civilian protests since December 28, 2025. This includes experts who routinely speak out on Israel and are quick to condemn the United States. UNWarch

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The hypocrisy of the luvvies over Iran is sickening. Compared to the anti-Israel outcry, the double standards are despicable.

This regime is one of the most monstrous on earth. We must all combat it. Allister Heath. 14 January 2026 6:33pm GMT Where are the luvvies when you need them? Where is their outrage, their fury, their passion as thousands of freedom-loving Iranians, sons and daughters, are being massacred by millenarian Islamist theocrats?

Many Leftist entertainers, personalities and activists spent years occupying our streets, flooding social media, denouncing Israel’s just war of self-defence in Gaza as “genocide”, and yet now, when actual crimes against humanity are being committed in Iran, their near-silence is deafening. Every horror they claimed, falsely, Israel was inflicting upon Palestinians, the Iranian regime is actually meting out to its own people: protesters are being shot in the back of the head or machine-gunned in the streets, hospital rooms are being broken into, young people summarily executed, dissidents tortured.

It is pure, unadulterated evil, an obscene moment in history, a stain on humanity. So where are the chants of “from the Gulf to the Caspian Sea, Iran will be free”? Where is Greta Thunberg’s flotilla? Why isn’t Bob Vylan firing up the crowds against the Ayatollahs? Where are the pins, the Shir o Khorshid emblems, the pictures of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the emojis, the student protestors, the sit-ins, the storming of lectures, the mass demonstrations taking over central London?

The hypocrisy is sickening, the double standards despicable. The luvvies don’t really care about Iran, just as they are largely unbothered by deaths in Sudan, the persecution of the Uyghurs and the pogroms of October 7. They are more interested in demonising Israel and the West than in saving innocent lives.

The human rights lawyers, the ICC, the ICJ and all the other acronyms have proved equally useless, and we are still waiting for the UN resolutions and investigations. Three months ago, the UN Human Rights Council elected an Iranian regime diplomat to its advisory committee, an Orwellian parody if ever there was one. Tom Fletcher, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, falsely claimed last year that “14,000 babies” were facing starvation within 48 hours in Gaza, fuelling much anti-Israel hatred. As of Wednesday evening, his X feed has so far made no mention of the horrendously real Iranian massacre.

Why is there no such thing as LGBTQ+ for Iran, or Iranian Lives Matter, or Justice for Iran, or groups advocating “intersectional resistance” to the Ayatollahs’ “patriarchy and occupation”?

If you are the wrong kind of victim, the luvvies don’t care about you. As long as a regime is anti-Western, its atrocities don’t matter, or are whitewashed.

Where have those who supposedly care about ethnic cleansing been as millions of Iranians fled their beloved homeland since 1979, fuelling a diaspora of 4-6 million?

Erfan Soltani, 26, will be executed for demanding basic rights. Where are the anti-death penalty advocates who always protest America’s penal regime? Iran persecutes gays, women and religious minorities. Where are those bishops who claim to care about religious freedom in the Middle East? Where are all those who keep telling us (wrongly) that America is turning into a Handmaid’s Tale, when confronted with a real-world, woman-hating theocracy?

The Iranian director and filmmaker, Javad Ganji, was murdered last week. Why didn’t anybody at the Golden Globes care? Why did Mark Ruffalo not mention him? Where was the solidarity?

Mojtaba Torshiz, a former midfielder for Tractor, the Iranian football league winners, left his daughters with his parents and went out to protest. He and his wife were murdered. Rebin Moradi, 17, one of Tehran’s most promising youth footballers, was assassinated. Where are the international footballing authorities? Where are the Premier League footballers taking the knee?

For many not especially ideological celebrities or activists, loudly supporting Gaza was an act, a performative ritual, to signal their virtue, their membership of the high-status “good people’s” club. Iran’s young are heroes, taking on IRGC thugs and dying for their beliefs, yet speaking up for them isn’t modish, so the celebs keep shtum.

Such behaviour is despicable, but not as bad as those of the true believers. Millions of educated people across Europe and America have succumbed to the omnicause, an anti-Western, totalitarian mindvirus, the byproduct of hundreds of years of intellectual error from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Karl Marx, from Jacques Derrida to Edward Said, laced with Leninism, superstition, conspiratorial thinking and prejudice.

The omnicause deems America, Israel and the capitalist world as the epitome of Westernness, the fount of all evil, guilty of every “ism” and “cide”, and thus promotes and supports third worldist regimes and causes that undermine our societies. It is nihilistic and shape-changing, embracing any doctrine that advances its ends, regardless of contradictions.

Countries and movements are judged according to what they represent, not their actions; the Iranian revolution of 1979 is the original fusion of Leftism and Islamism, so it remains a model for deluded proponents of the omnicause.

This is why so few Western activists support Iran’s freedom-fighters. These dissidents are pro-freedom, pro-America and pro-democracy. They curse Hamas and Hezbollah, and demand the end to Tehran’s handouts to its proxies, anathema to our useful idiots.

The “oppressed” aren’t meant to have agency, so sinister motives must be attributed to the protesters, such as being in hock to foreign spies.

The Left dismiss their critics as “Islamophobic”, so cannot process scenes from Iran where women burn their compulsory hijabs and where crowds reject state-enforced religion as part of a secularist uprising.

There is a growing grassroots alliance between the Jewish and Iranian diasporas. There are Israeli flags in every anti-regime demo in Britain and America, and imperial Iranian flags in every pro-Israel demo. The regime-funded death squads of October 7 were horrifically similar to those roaming Iranian cities today; one day, a free Tehran will resemble Tel Aviv.

The failure of the Islamist dictatorship is total. The banks are collapsing. Chants of “Jāvid Shāh”, long live the Shah, dominate anti-regime demos; only a total break with the past 47 years will suffice.

The luvvies have disgraced themselves. This regime is one of the most monstrous on earth. We must all combat it. Its collapse, when it comes, will be akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall – but this time, rather than being freed from communism, millions will be liberated from Islamism. Long live a free Iran. DailyTelegraph

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Azar @Azar_Javidan: There has been a massacre in Iran in last few days, with estimates of more than 30,000 innocent, unarmed civilians being slaughtered by machine guns in the streets.

The World Should Wake Up Do Not Look Away

1. JavidShah
2. MassacreInIran

Quote: Azar @Azar_Javidan · Jan 14 Machine guns vs civilians in Tehran. A genocide is unfolding in Iran. Be the voice of Iran. [41]

1. MassacreInIran
2. JavidShah
3. JavidShahRevolution

[42] [43] [44] [45] 5:06 PM · Jan 15, 2026 on X

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Forced confession fears as Iran chief justice interrogates protesters. Paris (France) (AFP) – Iran's hardline judiciary chief has personally interrogated protesters arrested in a crackdown that has sparked an international outcry, amplifying fears among rights groups about the use of "forced confessions" to instil fear in society.

Issued on: 01/15/2026 - 16:25

On Thursday, state television showed Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, who has spent his career at the heart of the Islamic republic's legal apparatus and has been sanctioned by both the European Union and United States, quizzing several people the authorities accuse of being "rioters".

It aired footage of the former intelligence minister and top Tehran prosecutor interrogating two detained women, their faces blurred, both of whom broke down in tears while questioned.

The day earlier, he had spent five hours inside one of the prisons of Tehran to examine the cases of prisoners arrested in the protests, state television said, showing him interrogating some detainees.

According to rights groups, state television has broadcast dozens such "confessions" of individuals accused of attacks on security forces and other acts of violence in the demonstrations.

"State media began airing the forced confessions of protesters within days of the outbreak of protests," said Norway-based Iran Human Rights.

"Confessions that were obtained under coercion and torture being aired prior to legal proceedings violate the right of defendants to be presumed innocent until proven guilty," it added.

In another example, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said two teenage girls arrested in the central city of Isfahan were shown in "forced confessions" saying they received money from an individual to participate in street protests.

The use of such alleged admissions comes against the backdrop of a crackdown that rights group say has left thousands dead in rallies that have openly challenged the authority of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

'Work quickly'. In the latest footage, Ejei was shown seated in a room flanked by other officials, beneath a double picture of Khamenei and revolutionary founder Ruhollah Khomeini. The detainee sat in a chair opposite.

One woman, accused of sending a message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said: "I've done something that even I can’t forgive myself for."

"For what... to who," pressed Ejei, speaking softly while clasping his hands.

Another woman is accused of dropping concrete blocks on security forces in Tehran from a balcony.

"I don't know what happened, why I did something so foolish," she said, after Ejei pressed her by asking, "What was the day?" and "How did you know they were officers?"

No further evidence of their alleged involvement was shown.

US-based group United Against Nuclear Iran in 2024 described Ejei, who has vowed fast-track trials for those arrested, as a "ruthless enforcer of the Islamic republic with no regard for human rights".

Opposition groups also accuse him of involvement in the 1988 mass execution of political prisoners in the Islamic republic.

Media freedom NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has said he has "journalists' blood on his hands", recalling that Ejei in 2004 even bit a journalist on the shoulder during a debate.

"If a person burned someone, beheaded someone and set them on fire then we must do our work quickly," Ejei said on Wednesday.

With any delays, "it wouldn't have the same effect," he said. France24

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Iran attack postponed but not canceled: The reasons, and the brutal repression that achieved its goal. Analysis: Washington concluded that potential costs - harm to American bases, Israel, and energy industry in the Gulf - far outweigh any strategic gain and will return to diplomacy; Meanwhile, Iranians are terrified of the brutal suppression of the protest and have stopped. Ron Ben-Yishai|01.15.26 | 22:21 YNet

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Iran regime leaders ordering own children to slaughter civilians, commander’s daughter says. January 16, 2026 | 2:54pm Ruthless Iranian regime leaders are now ordering their own children to slaughter innocent civilians, a commander’s distraught daughter revealed as she sobbed in a gut-wrenching interview on Thursday.

The woman broke down on Persian media outlet Manoto TV as she said leaders are “Giving them batons, electric batons, guns, to go and kill fellow citizens,” adding her father has ordered her “to kill.”

“They are killing their own children, suppressing them,” she said of the regime’s commanders. NYPost

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Germany urges ban on AI-generated fake Holocaust images to prevent historical distortion. German memorial institutions and the government are urging social media platforms to halt the spread of AI-generated fake Holocaust images, clearly distinguish them from authentic material and label them, warning that such content distorts history and harms the memory of the victims Reuters|01.16.26 22:57 YNet

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Killers on the go. REGIME IMPORTS KILLERS: 5,000 Iraqi Militia Fighters Cross Border to Slaughter Iranian Protesters. As the Ayatollahs lose control of the streets, they are bringing in foreign mercenaries from Kataib Hezbollah and the PMF to do the dirty work. European and Iraqi military sources confirm the invasion

Yair Kleinbaum. Jan 16, 2026 JFeed

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🎗️ Jonah @jonahelshout: 30,000 Killed?

Goldie Ghamari Says #Iran’s #Uprising Could Topple the Regime. @gghamari is a[n] Iranian Canadian lawyer [youtube.com] 30,000 Killed? Goldie Ghamari Says Iran’s Uprising Could Topple the... Jan 16, 2026 on X

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Rawan Osman. January 15, 2026. The Iranian people are victims of the “Free Palestine” camp and its leaders. Silence is complicity — and they still have the nerve to cry “hypocrisy.” on FB

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6,000 sought care for eye injuries in Tehran during protests. January 15, 2026 More than 6,000 people with eye injuries have sought treatment at a major eye clinic in Tehran over the past few days following recent protests, the head of the Munich Eye Center told Iran International.

Amir Mobarez Parasta said the figure reflected the scale of eye trauma cases linked to the unrest, based on information he said he had received from his colleagues.

He said the number pointed to widespread eye injuries in recent days. IranIntl

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Pay for bullets: How Iran pressures families after killing protesters. Arash Sohrabi. January 15, 2026 Updated: 14:56 GMT After Iran’s deadliest protest crackdown in decades, authorities have extended their response beyond the streets into morgues, hospitals and family homes, turning the protesters’ bodies into a key tool for suppressing dissent and controlling the narrative.

Iran International has received a large volume of videos, audio testimonies and written accounts describing how the bodies of protesters killed in the latest unrest are being collected, stored and released under strict security conditions.

While a nationwide internet blackout, now about a week, has made independent verification difficult in some cases, Iran International has cross-checked and verified key elements through corroborating footage, eyewitness commentary and the consistency of reports from multiple cities. IranIntl

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Iranian forces attacked peaceful protesters with knives, live fire - sources January 15, 2026.

Iran’s security forces attacked protesters with knives and live gunfire in the northern town of Chamestan during demonstrations on January 8 and 9, local sources told Iran International.

Reports also indicate that security personnel fired live ammunition, targeting a number of protesters.

During the January 9 demonstrations in Chamestan, around 26 bodies were lying on the city’s main street, according to local sources. IranIntl

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From Archetype to Libel: The Misinterpretation of Amalek in Genocide Accusations. Jan 15, 2026. Conclusion: From Archetype to Libel The controversy surrounding the modern invocation of Amalek in Israeli discourse, especially after the October 7 massacre, highlights a fundamental conflict between internal Jewish cultural memory and external political misinterpretation. In Jewish legal and historical tradition, the term has long been regarded as a symbolic command rather than a literal one. Amalek is thus viewed as a metaphysical archetype of unprovoked, existential evil and baseless hatred, which appears throughout history in figures like Haman and the Nazis. When Prime Minister Netanyahu used the term, he engaged in a profound act of typological memory (Zakhor), placing the unprecedented trauma of October 7 within the ongoing struggle between cosmic good and evil. By imposing this literalist, hostile interpretation, detractors are engaging in defamation of the Jewish state.

Post-Script: The Anti-Zionist Echo Chamber The rejection of the present article by Analyse & Kritik, which published the original article by Azzam, serves as a sobering case study in the circular nature of modern anti-Zionist scholarship. Rather than engaging with the provided evidence, the peer-review process revealed a systemic refusal to permit any narrative that challenges the “genocide” label, treating the accusation not as a hypothesis to be tested but as an absolute truth. Central to this failure was the reviewers’ total omission of the vast body of internal Jewish interpretive traditions—sources that explicitly reject or spiritualize the Amalek archetype. By failing to engage with these central points, the reviewers maintained a closed system that dismissed dissenting data as “denial,” thereby precluding genuine academic exchange.

The review process appeared driven by a palpable ideological bias that favored political positioning over substantive analysis. For instance, one reviewer asserted, without providing a shred of evidence, that for “any Israeli ear,” the mention of Amalek carries an immediate association with complete annihilation. This claim was made while simultaneously ignoring the centuries of rabbinic legal tradition cited in the article—such as the rulings of the Sages and Maimonides—that explicitly state that the literal commandment against Amalek is inapplicable today. Furthermore, the use of charged, ad hominem language—specifically labeling the arguments as those of “Netanyahu apologists”—reveals a hostile environment where scholarship is judged by its political utility rather than its factual merit.

Ultimately, this experience highlights the intellectual “incest” inherent in much of the anti-Zionist academic ecosystem. The editor’s response, which took it for granted that Israel has committed “horrible” crimes and demanded that any publication must include “commenting on the destruction of Gaza,” functions as a form of gatekeeping. By dismissing the concept of “self-defense” as a “conventional cliché” and refusing to engage with the primary and secondary sources presented, the reviewers merely confirmed that their objective is not the pursuit of truth. Instead, they serve to protect an echo chamber in which the same scholars quote each other ad nauseam, effectively weaponizing the peer-review process to perpetuate the very libel this article seeks to expose. ISGAP

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Anti-Israel protesters enter BBC Scotland HQ. Israel National News. Jan 15, 2026, 8:01 PM INN

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Israel declares Iranian bank a terrorist organization. Israel National News. Jan 15, 2026, 7:01 PM INN

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The dramatic phone call between Netanyahu and Trump.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with US President Donald Trump and reportedly asked him to delay the possibility of a military strike on Iran.

Israel National News. Jan 15, 2026, 8:41 PM INN

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UK: NHS doctor suspended over social media posts praising Hamas. Israel National News. Jan 15, 2026, 8:42 PM INN

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The Israel Institute of New Zealand: "In 2 years of fighting in Gaza, 30k militants and 30-40k civilians died. The world screamed genocide[sic]. In 2 weeks, the Iranian regime has massacred 20k civilians. The world looked away." @israel_advocacy. January 16, 2026. on FB

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middleeastbull18: January 16, 2026 London witnessed a massive demonstration as around 30,000 protesters, including Iranians, Israelis and international supporters, gathered in central areas to express solidarity with Iran’s protest movement. Demonstrators called for freedom, human rights and an end to repression, highlighting growing global concern over the situation in Iran.

1. LondonProtest #IranProtests #IranFreedom #HumanRights #GlobalSolidarity #WorldNews #BreakingNews #FreeIran #TrendingNow #FreeIran #HumanRights #BreakingNews #StandWithIran

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Blackout. HEADLINE: IRAN GOES DARK UNTIL MARCH: Regime Burns Its Own Cities as Martial Law Descends After 5 PM. Russian sources confirm the internet blackout will last months. In Rasht, security forces torched a historic market to trap protesters as the country enters a new phase of total repression. Yair Kleinbaum. Jan 16, 2026 HFeex

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Corpse of slain Iranian mother of two found in grim 'warehouse of bodies'. January 16, 2026 The body bags at Tehran’s main cemetery were stacked in their many hundreds on rows and on shelves, according to an eyewitness, who found among the corpses of slain protestors his friend, a 41-year-old mother of two. IranIntl

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At least 1.5 million people took to Tehran streets on January 8, source says. January 16, 2026 IranIntl

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Defiance met with massacre: Iran’s biggest protest wave in generations. January 16, 2026 IranIntl

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Pay for bullets: How Iran pressures families after killing protesters. January 16, 2026 IranIntl

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Jan 16, 2026. Director Of NY MAS Youth Center Mohammad Badawy In Brooklyn Friday Sermon: As A Muslim, My Life's Mission Is To Fight The U.S. Government, The U.S. Army, And ICE Until My Last Breath - That Is My Reason For Existence.

1. 12497 I 01:16 Source: Online Platforms - "MAS Youth Center on YouTube".

Imam Mohammad Badawy, Director of the Muslim American Society (MAS) Youth Center in Brooklyn, NY, said in a January 16, 2026 Friday sermon that "as a Muslim," it is his life's mission to fight the U.S. government, the U.S. Army, ICE, or "whatever they control," declaring: "Do your worst."

He added that even if his body is broken, his spirit cannot be reached, and that he must fight these entities with "every single iota of strength, wealth, and spirit" he possesses, "to the last breath" and until he dies or until they cease their oppression and injustice. Badawy concluded: "That's my reason for existence. " MEMRI

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Steven Phillips, MD @StevePhillipsMD Declassified U.S. State Department telegram quoting an Arab League meeting in Lebanon in August 1960, when Arab states decided to create a "Palestinian entity" aimed at undermining Israel through UN manipulation & military action.

With the help of the Soviets, this resulted in the 1964 founding of the PLO, as a tool for collective Arab action against Israel, consistent with Russia's efforts to counter Israel's alliance with the West.

Arab-Soviet alliances during the Cold War shaped modern Palestinian nationalism primarily as an anti-Israel strategy rather than an indigenous pre-1948 movement.

Defund the UN.

[46] Jan 16, 2026 Download the app and never miss what’s happening. on X

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Trump Says Laura Loomer ‘Can Be a Little Nasty,’ But Is ‘Always Nice’ to Him: ‘That’s All That Matters’. Kathryn Wilkens. Fri, January 16, 2026 at 10:34 PM UTC

During a Friday press appearance to mark the renaming of a Palm Beach boulevard in his honor, President Donald Trump said that right-wing commentator Laura Loomer “can be a little nasty” but is “always nice” to him, adding, “And that’s all that matters.”

While touting the success of the “extraordinarily red” state of Florida, Trump reflected on one year ago, when “we were a dead country.”

Now, he said, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar are investing “two trillion dollars” each into the United States. “So we took in six trillion,” Trump claimed. “That’s why we have 18, because we took six from three countries. That helps, right? Laura? Is that right?” Trump said, gesturing to Loomer in the crowd. Importantly, per a November Bloomberg investigation, the “actual investment promises are significantly smaller, raising questions not just over the size of Trump’s claimed boom but the nature, durability, and real economic impact of the influx he wants credit for.”

“Hi, Laura,” the president continued on Friday, amidst cheers from the crowd. “Boy, you are something. What spirit you have. Laura Loomer. Thank you, honey, for being here. I appreciate it.” “You know, she can be a little nasty, but to me, she’s always nice, and that’s all that matters,” Trump said. “I want her to stay that way, too.”

According to two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Risen in July, Loomer acts as “Trump’s de facto national security adviser.” Earlier on Friday, Loomer actually slammed the president for meeting with former Fox host Tucker Carlson in the West Wing, writing, “Every time Tucker Qatarlson visits the White House, GOP voter turnout decreases.”

In a follow-up post, she added, “Looks like the 2 million Iranian American voters will be sitting out in the midterms,” insinuating that Carlson’s July interview with the president of Iran somehow influenced Trump not to use military force as the country “continue[s] to murder thousands of innocent people.” MediaIte

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🚨 BREAKING: Multiple Iranians INJURED In London - UK Police Crackdown On Anti-IRGC Protesters. Tousi TV. January 16, 2026. on YouTube

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Trump's help did not come, and the protest in Iran faded: "There is a lot of death". Guy Elster. January 16, 2026. Iran's nationwide protest movement appeared to be slowing down on Thursday, weighed down by a brutal crackdown by the authorities that has left thousands dead and tens of thousands in prison. In Tehran, Iranians reported relative calm on the streets, just a week after the protests peaked in Tehran and elsewhere in the capital, escalating into clashes between demonstrators and security forces. But they were brutally suppressed. A resident of the capital, Tehran, where the protest began in a bazaar two and a half weeks ago, told Al Jazeera that there was a heightened security presence alongside uncertainty about the future. "There is a large military presence on the streets of the capital and elsewhere," the resident said. He said Revolutionary Guards had been deployed in the capital, along with numerous checkpoints and police checkpoints. He added that armed forces were patrolling the streets on motorcycles. “There is a lot of uncertainty. A lot of people are worried,” said the resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of his safety. He said many expect American action soon, but opinions are divided about its implications. “There is a lot of death, sadness and anger.”

According to reports in American and other media outlets, Trump was under heavy pressure from leaders in the Middle East not to launch strikes, a move that would almost certainly lead to Iranian retaliatory strikes against American bases throughout the region. The New York Times reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the American president during a phone call, and Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Egypt were also among those pressuring him to give Tehran "another chance." On social media, some Iranians expressed disappointment at Trump's apparent withdrawal from military intervention. An artificial intelligence image showing Trump removing a mask and revealing former President Barack Obama - who was perceived among the Iranian diaspora as taking a soft line towards Iran - was widely circulated. The slowdown in protests came just two days after US President Donald Trump called on Iranians to "keep protesting - take over your institutions," and promised that "help is on the way." Intelligence assessments have indicated that the United States is preparing to attack Iran, a move Trump has threatened if the Iranian government continues to kill protesters. But on Wednesday night, Trump appeared to back away from the brink of military intervention, telling reporters that Iranian authorities were halting executions. “We’ve been told that the killing in Iran has stopped — it has stopped — it has stopped now. And there is no plan for executions, or executions, or executions — I’ve been told by a very competent source,” Trump said.

The White House later claimed that 800 executions planned in Iran had been canceled. White House spokeswoman Carolyn Levitt said Trump and his team had warned of “serious consequences” if the killings continued. “The president understands that today 800 executions that were planned and were scheduled to take place yesterday have been stopped,” she said. However, she said Trump continues to monitor the situation closely. “All options are still on the table for the president,” Levitt said. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Walz reiterated this at a U.N. Security Council meeting on Thursday night, saying the United States stands with “the brave people of Iran” and that Trump “has made it clear that all options are on the table to stop the massacre.” Iran's deputy ambassador to the UN, Hossein Darazi, sharply criticized the United States for what he called its "direct involvement in turning the unrest in Iran into violence." "Under the hollow pretext of concern for the Iranian people and claims of supporting human rights, the United States is trying to present itself as the friend of the Iranian people, while at the same time laying the foundations for political subversion and military intervention under a supposedly 'humanitarian' narrative," Darazi said. Russia's UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, accused the United States of convening the meeting in an attempt to "justify open aggression and interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state." Russia defended Iran's actions and was the only member of the council to do so. France's UN ambassador, Jerome Bonfon, called for the immediate release of all arbitrarily detained detainees and a moratorium on the death penalty, while Britain's deputy ambassador, Archibald Young, said that "Iran must urgently change course" and respect the fundamental rights of its citizens, "including the right to demonstrate without fear of violence or repression." At least 2,637 people have been killed in the protests, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

Human rights groups have expressed concern about forced confessions among detained protesters after state media broadcast footage of the head of the hardline judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohsani Ajayi, personally interrogating detainees. Ajayi, who is subject to US and European sanctions, is accused by opposition figures of involvement in the mass executions of political prisoners in 1988. Footage broadcast yesterday showed Ajayi interrogating women, one of whom was accused of sending a message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Another woman, accused of throwing concrete blocks at security forces, said during her interrogation by Ajayi: “I don’t know what happened, why did I do such a stupid thing.” From the beginning of the protests, state media broadcast footage of such confessions, as part of an attempt to portray the protests as a movement that originated from foreign intervention aimed at destabilizing Iran. The Norway-based Iran Human Rights organization said: “The broadcast of confessions obtained under duress and torture before legal proceedings violates the right of defendants to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.” The protests began on December 28 following a sharp drop in the value of the local currency, and quickly expanded to demands for political reforms and even an end to the Iranian regime’s rule. The protest spread to all 31 provinces of the country and is the most serious wave of unrest the government has faced in decades. Iranian President Masoud Pazakhian said yesterday that the government was working to improve living conditions in the country and to address the factors that ignited the protests. He pledged to fight corruption and price gouging, which he said would improve citizens’ purchasing power. Iran’s national currency has lost about two-thirds of its value in the past three years, while the prices of basic goods have soared, with food prices rising by 72% since last year. Experts have said that while the protests point to deep-seated problems in Iran's system of government that are likely to plague it in the long term, a state collapse is unlikely. This concern has also been raised by Israeli and Arab officials, who have told the US administration in recent days that the Iranian regime is not yet weak enough for US strikes to topple it. Hamal

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Melika Razavi (Poker player, Magician, Writer, Miss global Iran 2016, Miss global fitness 2016, Miss power woman 2017). melirazavii: Jan 16, 2026. This is Iran. This is what the Islamic Republic looks like. This is genocide, not “governance.”

Over 25,000 people are dead — men, women, children — murdered by their own government. Internet shut down. Communications cut. Streets turned into war zones so killing can happen in silence.

And still, some of you defend this regime. Not because you care about Iranians — but because of ideology, money, and comfort.

Call it what it is. IRGC. ISIS. Hamas. Different names, same violence, same terror, same blood on their hands.

Silence is complicity. Excuses are cowardice. History will remember who spoke up — and who chose comfort over humanity.

1. Iran #IranGenocide #IslamicRepublic #IRGC #HumanRights StopTheSilence FreeIran.

On Instagram

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Spawn of Iran’s ruling elite living large in US — and fed-up Iranian-Americans want them deported. By Bianca Heyward. Published Jan. 14, 2026, 8:58 p.m. ET

The pampered offspring of Iran’s ruling elite are living the American Dream as the country’s brutal regime kills protesters by the thousands — and fed-up Iranians in California and across the US want them out.

Two explosive online petitions have been gaining steam as they call on the US government to immediately deport Eissa Hashemi and Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani — the children of current and onetime prominent Iranian government figures enjoying the comforts of the “Great Satan’’ as opposed to the oppressive streets of Tehran.

Eissa Hashemi is the 43-year-old son of Masoumeh Ebtekar — a k a “Screaming Mary,” the radical spokeswoman for the militants who stormed the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

His mom was notorious for trying to create propaganda during the hostage crisis by cruelly urging the US victims to describe their horrific ordeal in positive terms.

“If she were on fire on the street, I wouldn’t piss on her to put it out,’’ traumatized former hostage Michael Metrinko once said.

After her son Hashemi graduated from the University of Tehran in 2006, he reportedly moved to the US in 2010 and pursued his Ph.D. in organizational leadership from The Chicago School in LA.

He currently is an adjunct associate professor at his alma mater, enjoying the freedom his mother helped strip from American diplomats decades ago.

Records show he resides in Agoura Hills in LA County.

Hashemi also did not respond to Post requests for comment.

Then there is Ardeshir-Larijani.

She is the daughter of Ali Larijani, the powerful former speaker of the country’s parliament who now serves as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. Her father serves as a righthand man to Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has called the US the “Great Satan.”

Not long after President Trump urged Iranians to keep demonstrating against their nation’s dictatorship and condemned its officials for the “senseless killing of protestors,” Larijani fired back at him on X.

“We declare the names of the main killers of the people of Iran: 1- Trump 2- Netanyahu,” Larijani wrote, referring to the president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu.

Ardeshir-Larijani, 40, lives in Atlanta, Ga., as her father rails against the West and oversees a legislative body that regularly burns the stars and stripes.

She is a licensed doctor and an assistant professor in the hematology and medical oncology department at the prestigious Emory University School of Medicine — and a world away from the deadly crackdown on human rights in Iran.

She did not respond to Post requests for comment Wednesday.

“Why are visas given to these people?’’ raged Mersedeh Shahinkar, who lost her right eye to a bullet during a protest involving women’s rights in Iran in 2022, to The Post on Wednesday.

“Why should they freely travel and live comfortably here? If Iran is good for them, if the Islamic Republic is good for them, they should go live there,” the California resident said.

The petitions on Change.org argue that it is a slap in the face to the American people — and the Iranian people suffering under the regime — to allow the relatives to stay here.

“We, the Iranian people, demand the deportation of these individuals,” the petitions read. “They benefit from the wealth of the Iranian people and live safely in the United States, while their families rule a brutal dictatorship in Iran.”

The petitions were created on Jan. 11 and 12 by “Iran Etehad” and have already collected tens of thousands of signatures.

The White House did not respond to a Post request for comment on whether the administration might try to boot the relatives NYPost

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When Iran shakes, the axis holds its breath: proxies brace for a mothership crash. Opinion: Iran’s proxies watch unrest with alarm, fearing collapse, as Gulf rivals warn it could leave Arabs 'under the Israeli hammer alone'. Dr. Michael Milshtein|01.17.26 YNet

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Michigan event to feature daughter of convicted Hamas fundraiser. The panel event will discuss what organizers call the “wrongful imprisonment” of the “Holy Land Five,” convicted in 2008 for funneling approximately $12.4 million to Hamas.

(Jan. 16, 2026 / JNS) A panel discussion on the “Holy Land Five” scheduled for Jan. 17 in Grand Rapids, Mich., will feature the daughter of one of the five Palestinian-Americans convicted in 2008 for providing material support to Hamas.

Nida Abu Baker, daughter of Shukri Abu Baker, “will share her story and recount the decades of struggle to free her father and his colleagues in the Holy Land Foundation—the largest Muslim nonprofit in the U.S. that was targeted with trumped-up material support for terrorism charges,” event organizers stated.

Five officials of the foundation, nicknamed the “Holy Land Five,” were convicted in Dallas in November 2008 on “108 charges of funneling $12.4 million to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization,” according to Canary Mission. JNS

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US sanctions Houthi revenue, procurement networks. Scott Bessent, U.S. treasury secretary, stated that “the Houthis threaten the United States by committing acts of terror and attacking commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea.”

(Jan. 16, 2026 / JNS) The United States imposed new sanctions on the Houthis on Friday, targeting networks that U.S. officials say help fund the group’s attacks and destabilizing activity in the region. JNS

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Israel rejects Trump's Gaza Peace Council Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that Trump's Gaza Peace Council was contrary to Israeli policy. Orly Harari. Published: Jan 17, 2026, 6:53 PM (GMT+2) The Prime Minister’s Office said Saturday night that the announcement regarding the composition of the Gaza Peace Council, which is subordinate to the peace conference, was made without coordination with Israel and contradicts Israeli policy.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar to raise the matter with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid criticized the government, saying: “For a year I have warned that if the government does not advance the Egyptian solution with the United States and the international community, Turkey and Qatar will end up influencing Gaza. Last night the makeup of the so-called ‘Peace Council’ was revealed. Turkey is included, Qatar is included, and according to the IDF Hamas still has 30,000 fighters in Gaza. This represents a complete diplomatic failure by the Netanyahu government, wasting the immense courage and sacrifice of IDF soldiers and commanders."

U.S. President Donald Trump announced Friday night the members of the Peace Council that will oversee the Gaza Strip. According to Trump, who will chair the body, its members include U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff; his son-in-law Jared Kushner; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; former British prime minister Tony Blair; businessman Mark Rowan; World Bank President Ajay Banga; and U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gabriel. The Turkish president’s office said Trump sent a letter to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan inviting him to join the Peace Council, which is intended to supervise the interim administration in Gaza. INN

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Nick Fuentes: My problem with Trump ‘is that he is not Hitler’. Nick Fuentes escalates rhetoric, says US President Donald Trump falls short of extremist agenda. Joseph Strauss, JTA.

Jan 17, 2026, 7:51 PM (GMT+2)

In the fall, a video of Nick Fuentes criticizing US President Donald Trump drew the praise of progressive ex-Congressman Jamaal Bowman.

“Finally getting it Nick," Bowman commented, apparently recognizing some common ground between himself on the left and Fuentes, on the far right, who said in the video that Trump was “better than the Democrats for Israel, for the oil and gas industry, for Silicon Valley, for Wall Street," but said he wasn’t “better for us." INN

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Bondi at IAC: 'DOJ will seek death penalty in murder of Israeli diplomats'. Yoni Kempinski, Florida. Jan 18, 2026, 3:18 AM INN

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Released hostage: I agreed to die in Gaza so that Israel could destroy Hamas. Hamas captivity survivor Eitan Mor expresses support for his father's position, says he refused offer to spy for Hamas. Israel National News. Published: Jan 17, 2026, 10:38 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Watch: Arab rioters attack Samaria homestead. On Friday, dozens of Arab rioters from the villages of Qaddum and Beit Lid attacked residents of the Shirat Tzion homestead in Samaria. Israel National News. Jan 17, 2026, 11:59 PM (GMT+2) [Samaria. Hilltop Youth] INN

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From Slogan to Industry: The invention of “Anti-Palestinian Racism". APR is a dangerous term that suggests that trying to combat antisemitism is itself racist against Palestinian Arabs. A full report is linked below. Op-ed. David Collier. Jan 18, 2026, 7:20 AM (GMT+2)

In recent years the term anti-Palestinian racism (APR) has moved from activist discourse into the language of public institutions across multiple Western democracies. In the UK it has now been raised in both Houses of Parliament. In the U.S. a group of elected officials turned the phrase into a political weapon. In Canada, the Canadian government provided funding to support the creation of APR educational resources. And in Australia, the public broadcaster recently gave favourable coverage to a report claiming anti-Palestinian racism was “widespread."

If you are not paying attention, you should be. While APR markets itself as part of serious anti-racist discourse, in reality it functions as a dangerous, antisemitic tool. APR doesn’t just try to name a prejudice. It rewires the moral rules. It turns Zionism into racism, Jewish self-definition into exclusion, and antisemitism safeguards into “censorship" - then demands institutions enforce that inversion as policy.

Once inverted framing takes hold, everything becomes distorted. Neutrality is recast as hostility. Jewish communal safety is treated as an obstacle. And the most aggressive forms of anti-Israel activism are rebranded as “anti-racist" virtue. None of this directly causes violence, but it changes the climate: what can be said, what must be tolerated, and further marginalises a Jewish community that is already under considerable threat.

And the truly scary part of all this? It was designed that way.

The pro-Corbyn network that incubated APR Today I publish a report (available for download) that traces the origins of the term anti-Palestinian racism, and shows how it evolved from a fringe activist slogan into a deliberately weaponised framework within the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The turning point came on 4 September 2018. The National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Labour Party had just voted to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, along with all its examples. The NEC adoption was a major defeat for Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters.

Until then, APR was largely confined to the online activist ecosystem around the Electronic Intifada, a fringe anti-Israel outlet.

Inside a key Corbyn support group there was an immediate reaction. Palestine Live was a Facebook group set to “Secret" visibility. Members included leading figures from Israel-hostile organisations, along with journalists and community organisers. The UK-founded network had an international feel, with representation from groups in North America and beyond.

Since 2015, Palestine Live had operated as a pro-Corbyn network. In early 2018, I published an exposé documenting the high levels of antisemitism and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories circulating inside the group, which triggered complaints and a formal party investigation.

The Invention of Anti-Palestinian Racism A day after the NEC vote, one of the then administrators of Palestine Liveposted a reaction to it. The message was simple and stark: “The Labour Party has an anti-Palestinian racism problem":

This linkage is at the heart of APR: it suggests that trying to combat antisemitism is itself racist against Palestinian Arabs.

Later the same month, a member of Palestine Live posted an anonymously written definition of anti-Palestinian racism. The following day, the pro-Corbyn activist group Jewish Voice for Labour, many of whose leaders were members of Palestine Live, published a slightly refined version on their website. APR, in recognisable form, had arrived.

The Internationalisation and Institutionalisation of Anti-Palestinian Racism A few weeks later, on 16 October 2018, the U.S.-based anti-Zionist outlet Mondoweisspublished an updated version, tightening the JVL version and polishing it for an international audience. There were now ten clauses in the definition, with the author suggesting the examples were absolutes, or “indisputable examples of anti-Palestinian racism."

Under this definition of APR, denying the (often false) narratives of anti-Israel activism, supporting the right of Israel to exist or even accusing someone of antisemitism could make you a racist.

The framework was now complete. It pushed back against efforts to combat antisemitism, while creating an atmosphere in which activist claims and antisemitic commentary became moral absolutes that could not be challenged.

Once this definition of anti-Palestinian racism had been introduced, it began to be incorporated as a key tool in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) arsenal:

In 2019, the Canadian government introduced a new anti-racism strategy “Building a Foundation for Change." The policy framework created a pathway for NGOs to propose new conceptualisations of racism and, potentially, to receive public funding.

Anti-Israel activists saw the opening, and launched an intensive campaign in Canada. In 2022, the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA) finally introduced a codified definition of anti-Palestinian Arab racism.

The ACLA definition reads as a formal rewrite of the JVL and Mondoweiss versions. It is less concerned with addressing prejudice than with recasting Jewish identity and Jewish self-determination as racist.

The Canadian government has since awarded ACLA a grant of CAN$100,000 to develop educational tools and provide training on the subject of APR.

The deed was done. APR had moved from an activist smear to a government-funded weapon.

The Weaponisation of Anti-Palestinian Racism. Having been incubated in the UK, internationalised in the U.S., and then codified in Canada, the Canadian government’s financial support officially legitimised the concept of anti-Palestinian racism. From this point, the ACLA definition could export itself internationally.

In both the U.S. and Australia, activist NGOs produced official-looking reports claiming APR was a widespread, urgent problem. Both supported the inclusion of educational material in schools as a key recommendation. These documents failed to meet basic academic standards, yet still received favourable treatment.

The term became a political weapon. In one U.S. state, a Senate resolution has been introduced labelling a tragic incident as an act of APR, even though there is no evidence at all to support it.

In the UK, Labour MP Nadia Whittome has been campaigning to get the UK government to recognise APR, and in March 2025 tabled a written question asking if the government will introduce educational material to tackle the problem in schools:

And it gets worse. On 16 July 2025, Manchester City Counciladopted a motion recognising the need to challenge anti-Palestinian racism.

What does this mean in practice? It means a sitting MP wants to introduce a framework that functions as an antisemitic propaganda weapon into schools, while Manchester City Council moved to reframe antisemitism safeguards as suspect, and to legitimise unsubstantiated activist narratives. If anyone objects, they could be accused of racism.

Changing the Air People Breathe Seventy-eight days later, just three miles away from the Town Hall, came the Yom Kippur terrorist attack at the Heaton Park synagogue. Two people were killed.

Manchester was not the only city where APR was being promoted against a backdrop of rising antisemitism. On 26 September there was an event launching a report into APR in Sydney. The venue was the Maritime Union Conference Centre. Just six miles from there, and seventy-nine days later, fifteen people were slaughtered in an antisemitic terror attack during a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach.

APR may not be directly responsible for either terrorist attack, but it is still a dangerous ideological weapon. APR reshapes the institutional climate. It is designed to change the air that people breathe.

The Jewish people are vulnerable and under attack around the world. Deliberately problematic concepts such as APR must not be allowed to make things worse than they are already.

The pushback starts here. Download the full report [47] and distribute it to local politicians, councils, journalists, and anyone involved in combating antisemitism. INN

Since when did grandchildren of immigrants become a separate "race?"

Arabs are Arabs are Arabs, whether with an Israeli ID or "palestine" paper.

The bigoted invented "APR," no wonder the same infamous racist 'iskandar323' pushes this on Wikipedia and had just removed data from the 30,000 massacred in 1988 Iran. A typical supporter of genocidal Islamists, Hamas or Iran. Just like the ORGANIZED gang of 32 wikipedians backing this. All "decide" what is a RS. at MyRightWord

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The Iranian protests reveal the “pro-Palestine” lie. Moment 586. Jan 18, 2026 Mark Changizi. YouTube. Dr. Mark Jangzizi, here's your science moment. They claimed that they were only pro Palestine, not pro- Hamas. They told us over and over again, "We're not pro Hamas, we're just pro Palestine." Now, never mind that the 10/7 war wasn't about Palestine at all. It was about Gaza. The Palestine Authority wasn't even part of the broad conflict that had half a dozen Islamic Republic proxies. Never mind that they never spoke out against Hamas, who had been Gaza's brutal, unelected oppressor for a generation. They started a war with their neighbor via a massive pogram and then fought from civilian centers. Never mind that they romanticized Hamas by wearing their kafia, believing their data, excusing their behavior. Never mind that they kept quiet about the Islamic Republic of Iran's oppression of Iranians, which was the mastermind behind the 10/7 war. Now, after the Iranian people rose up in an attempt to throw off the same kind of Islamist fascism that oppresses Gaza and wages war on Israel, we see in full light the lie. The pro Palestine forces were never anything more than allies of Islamist terrorists and dictatorships, allies in their hatred of the West, of the US, of Israel, and of Jews. No matter that the Iranian people are none of those things, all that matters is that the boot on the necks of Iranians has adorned itself with a virtue signal of hatred of the targeted out group of their sick cult. And that was your science moment. on YouTube

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'Every family knows a victim': Iranians in exile speak out on mass killings. Negar Mojtahedi. Iran International. Jan 17, 2026, 23:18 GMT

([48]. A group of protesters in Iran holding a placard on which the slogan "Long Live the Shah (King)" is sprayed).

Iranians in exile say few families have been spared by the brutal crackdown back home, describing to Iran International an unprecedented wave of killings as security forces unleash violence under a nationwide communications blackout.

For Alex, an Iranian living in Texas, the violence is no longer something he is witnessing from afar.

His cousin Mehdi was killed on Friday, January 9, in the western Iranian city of Kermanshah after joining nationwide protests following exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi’s call for Iranians to rise up.

Iran International is withholding Alex’s last name to protect family members inside Iran.

“The Basij shot him in the head and the stomach," Alex said, recounting what his aunt told him. "They (Basij) hunted him like a dog."

Authorities later cut internet access across much of the country, severing communication and leaving families unable to confirm who was alive or dead.

Alex only learned what had happened days later, on Wednesday afternoon, when landlines briefly reopened during the blackout. The connection was poor and repeatedly cut out, but he could hear his aunt howling in tears and screaming.

"I only got like three minutes out of the call but what I got out of it was my aunt screaming and she said he's been killed."

Mehdi was 32 years old. Alex said his aunt later identified the body at a forensic center after days of searching. He says his aunt recognized her son by his hair.

"His face was completely unrecognizable," said Alex.

He said authorities are now demanding payment from the family to release Mehdi’s body.

From Texas, Alex said he feels hollow and barely able to function, but believes speaking publicly is the only way to honor his cousin and push back against the silence imposed by the blackout.

"He wanted a free Iran and King Reza Pahlavi."

'Fear and helplessness'

In Canada, Iranian-Canadian Ghazal Shokri described a similar sense of fear and helplessness as she waits for fragile contact with her family inside Iran. She said she has heard her mother’s voice only for seconds and her sister’s for minutes since the violence escalated.

Shokri said the scale of the killings is unlike anything Iranians have experienced before, warning that nearly every family now knows someone who has been killed.

She said she is increasingly worried not only about the physical destruction of the country but about the long-term psychological toll on Iranian society, including widespread trauma, depression and lasting social damage.

“There is every family now in Iran knows a few people got killed," Ghazal said.

"Honestly, it's not easy to talk about it. I mean, as a human being, we haven't been designed for this," she said.

Another Iranian in exile, Sobhan Nofar, said the nationwide communications blackout has intensified fear among Iranians living abroad.

“That silence is terrifying,” he said.

He said the loss of contact with people inside Iran has left many Iranians outside the country sleepless and consumed by anxiety for their families, with every fragment of information feeling like evidence of a growing bloodbath.

Hediyeh, a journalist based in Washington, DC, says she is worried not only about the health of her parents and her husband's family, but also about their financial situation, as they largely relied on allowances the couple sent through friends and relatives.

With the internet shut down, it is no longer possible to send money to the family, leaving Hediyeh concerned about how the elderly parents will make ends meet under Iran’s severe economic conditions.

Iran International has reported that at least 12,000 people were killed in just two days as security forces unleashed what analysts describe as the deadliest wave of state violence in the Islamic Republic’s history. Other estimates suggest the toll may be even higher as the blackout continues to limit verification.

Growing calls for US action

The testimonies come as calls by Iranians inside the country and across the diaspora for US military action have intensified, with demands for targeted strikes against the Islamic Republic’s security and repression apparatus.

For Iranians in exile like Alex, Shokri and Nofar, the debate is no longer abstract. It is shaped by the names and faces of people they knew and by the fear that more families will soon join them in mourning.

"Every piece of news, videos or photos coming from Iran feels like another sense of a blood bath," said Nofar "I'm really scared, deeply scared but I don't allow myself to completely fall apart because I truly believe Iranian people are bigger than this terrorist regime."

As Iran remains largely cut off from the outside world, they say speaking publicly is one of the few ways left to ensure the dead are not reduced to statistics. IranIntl

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Detained protesters injected with unknown substances in Iran jail. Iran International. Jan 18, 2026. Protesters held in Iranian prisons have described abuse, including forced nudity, exposure to cold, and injections with substances of unknown composition while in custody, a source close to a detainee’s family told Iran International.

The source said a detained young protester sent a message from inside prison saying he and several others had been subjected to such treatment after their arrest.

According to the detainee, prison officers stripped detainees naked in the courtyard of the detention facility and kept them outside the building for a prolonged period in winter conditions. The officers then sprayed the detainees with cold water using a hose, the source said.

The detainee also said that the following day, prison officers injected him and several other prisoners with substances whose contents were not identified. IranIntl

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Israel, US back Argentina’s Quds Force terror designation. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and the U.S. State Department hailed Buenos Aires’ move to list Iran’s Quds Force as a terrorist group, calling it a key step against Iranian terror. JNS Staff.

(Jan. 18, 2026 / JNS) Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and the U.S. State Department on Saturday welcomed Argentina’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force as a terrorist organization, calling it an important step in combating Iranian-backed terrorism. JNS

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US ‘has no better friend’ than Israel, Graham says. The senator’s meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu came “at one of the most consequential moments in recent memory,” Lindsey Graham wrote. JNS Staff ([49]. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, Jan. 18, 2026. Credit: Lindsey Graham/X).

(Jan. 18, 2026 / JNS) The United States “has no better friend than the State of Israel,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said following a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Sunday.

In a post on X, the American lawmaker said the sit-down with the leader of the Jewish state was “great” and came “at one of the most consequential moments in recent memory.” JNS

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Mamdani asked to appoint head of Jew-hatred office who can engage with Jews. “We Jews are all navigating these new conditions we’re facing,” a member of one of the groups that signed the letter told JNS. Debra Nussbaum Cohen.

(Jan. 18, 2026 / JNS) As concerns about Zohran Mamdani and the safety of Jews continue to run high among many Jewish New Yorkers, 13 groups sent a letter to the new mayor asking that he appoint someone who is “grounded in the day-to-day realities of Jewish communal life and capable of engaging meaningfully with communities across all levels of observance, background and political belief” to lead the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.

The subtext of the letter? Please do not appoint an anti-Zionist, as Mamdani did with many of the Jews who were on his transition committees. The first Muslim to win the city’s top office, Mamdani has long been anti-Israel and has said that he would have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if he visits the Big Apple. JNS

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The Horn Brothers' Chilling Account. Two Years in the Dark: Freed Hostage Reveals the Details of Hamas’s Tunnel City. After more than 700 days in the depths of Gaza, Eitan Horn reveals how the strength of the Israeli people kept him alive when the government and the world seemed to forget.

Author: Eliana Fleming. Jan 18, 2026 JFeed

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The Shah’s Son Returns Hijacking the Regime: Iranian State TV Hacked to Broadcast Calls for Revolution In a daring act of cyber defiance, opposition hackers seized control of Iran’s state television to broadcast a message from the exiled son of the Shah, calling for the military to abandon the regime.

Eliana Fleming. Jan 18, 2026 JFeed

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'No longer safe'. Trump weighs asylum plan for UK Jews amid rising antisemitism. Israel National News. Jan 18, 2026, 11:37 PM INN

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Four months in prison for Arab who spat at IDF officer. Ahmad Muhammad, 25, from the PA city of Huwara, spat at an officer in uniform in Ramat Gan and fled the scene. Israel National News. Published: Jan 18, 2026, 10:01 PM (GMT+2)

The Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court on Thursday sentenced Ahmad Muhammad, 25, a resident of the Palestinian Authority city of Huwara, to four months in prison after he spat at an IDF officer while riding a public bus.

According to a report by Walla, Muhammad was convicted under a plea agreement on charges of assaulting an IDF officer and being illegally present in Israel. In delivering the sentence, the judge emphasized the seriousness of the offense, particularly as it occurred during a time of war.

The incident took place in May on bus line 161 in Ramat Gan. An IDF officer serving on active reserve duty, dressed in uniform, boarded the bus and sat near Muhammad. During the ride, Muhammad played music at a high volume, prompting the officer to move to another seat.

According to the amended indictment, to which Muhammad pleaded guilty, when the bus reached a stop he approached the officer from behind, leaned toward her, and spat in her face. As the bus doors opened, he fled the scene. Although the officer shouted after him, neither passengers nor the driver intervened. Muhammad returned to the Palestinian Authority but surrendered to authorities later that same evening... INN

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Iran warns Trump. 'Any attack on Khamenei is full-scale war'. Iran warns that any attack on Khamenei would mean war, as the US weighs military action amid escalating tensions. Elad Benari. Jan 19, 2026, 1:14 AM INN

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'The nicest tunnel is here'. Matan Angrest returns to the soccer pitch. Israel National News. Jan 18, 2026, 10:54 PM INN

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Despite drop in terror: IDF reports rise in rock and firebomb attacks. Yoni Kempinski. Jan 19, 2026, 7:23 PM INN

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Netanyahu. 'Turkish and Qatari soldiers? Not in Gaza' Israel National News. Jan 19, 2026, 6:06 PM INN

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IDF strikes Hezbollah terror assets in Lebanon. The Israeli military said it attacked Hezbollah “military” camps. JNS Staff. (Jan. 19, 2026 / JNS) The Israel Defense Forces said on Monday that it had attacked targets belonging to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror organization in Southern Lebanon.

In a statement, the Israeli military said it had struck Hezbollah “military” camps used to train terrorist operatives for planning and carrying out attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians. JNS

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Syrian army targets Kurdish forces in Aleppo, Israel sounds the alarm.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused the Syrian government of targeting the Kurdish population in Aleppo, warning that violence could escelate if the international community remains silent.

i24NEWS. January 08, 2026 at 12:30 PM latest revision January 19, 2026 at 01:26 PM Syrian government forces began a new military campaign in Aleppo on Thursday, announcing precision strikes against Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) positions in several northern neighborhoods of the city.

The operation prompted authorities to enforce a citywide curfew in affected districts and warn residents to avoid areas of active fighting. i24

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Sen. Graham Warns Damascus Against Military Action on Kurds, Threatens to Revive Caesar Sanctions. U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham says any attack on SDF would signal the nature of Syria’s new leadership and deepen regional instability.

2026-01-17 18:40 Kurdistan24

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Al-Monitor: Trump Urges End to Syria–SDF Violence, Secures Pledge to Avoid Hasakah. 2026-01-19. The call followed a meeting between Sharaa and SDF commander Mazloum Abdi to finalize a ceasefire agreement announced earlier, with both sides agreeing to continue cooperation against ISIS. Kurdistan24

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Senior Iranian UN Diplomat in Geneva Defects, Seeks Asylum in Switzerland. By i24 News and Algemeiner Staff. January 18, 2026.

i24 News – A senior Iranian diplomat posted to the United Nations’ European headquarters in Geneva has reportedly defected and applied for political asylum in Switzerland, according to diplomatic sources cited on Sunday by the Iranian opposition outlet Iran International.

The diplomat, Alireza Jiranieh Hokambad, served as a minister-counselor, the second-highest-ranking position in Iran’s UN delegation in Geneva. Algemeiner

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Argentina Blacklists Iran’s Quds Force as Country Marks Death of Nisman, Who Charged Tehran for AMIA Bombing The Algemeiner. Tuesday, January 20th | 2 Shevat 5786 By Ailin Vilches Arguello.

Argentine President Javier Milei has proscribed Iran’s Quds Force — the elite unit responsible for directing Tehran’s proxy militias and overseas terrorist operations — as the country’s Jewish community marks the 11th anniversary of the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who investigated the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

On Saturday, the Argentine president’s office announced that it had designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force as a foreign terrorist organization, describing the unit as specializing in “training for the execution of terrorist attacks in other countries.”

“Argentina was a victim of their operations in the 1990s, including the 1992 attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center,” the statement read, referring to the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) bombing.

With the designation, “members of the Quds Force and their allies are subject to financial sanctions and operational restrictions aimed at limiting their capacity to act, as well as protecting the Argentine financial system from being used to support their activities.”

Milei “maintains an unbreakable commitment to recognizing terrorists for what they are,” the statement continued.

The Argentine president has previously designated Hamas, the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s branches in Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan as terrorist organizations.

US and Israeli officials praised Milei’s latest move in the fight against terrorism, highlighting its significance in combating international extremist networks.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar applauded Milei’s decision, describing it as a “significant step that strengthens the international front against Iranian terrorism and honors the memory of the victims of the attacks on the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA.”

On Sunday, Argentina commemorated the 11th anniversary of Nisman’s death. Nisman died on Jan. 18, 2015, while investigating the 1994 AMIA bombing — the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentine history, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300 — as Argentine Jews renewed calls for justice after more than a decade without resolution.

“Eleven years after the assassination of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, we reaffirm our steadfast demand for justice,” the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, wrote in a post on X.

Last year, prosecutors handling the case released a report as part of the ongoing, still unresolved trial, confirming that Nisman was killed for trying to expose the Argentine government’s role in covering up the 1994 AMIA bombing.

In 2006, Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the attack and its Lebanese terrorist proxy Hezbollah for carrying it out. Nine years later, he accused former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in return for Iranian oil.

The alleged cover-up was reportedly formalized through the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 between Kirchner’s government and Iranian authorities, with the stated goal of cooperating to investigate the AMIA bombing.

One day before Nisman was set to appear before the Argentine Congress to present evidence supporting his allegations against Kirchner and several of her colleagues, he was found dead in his apartment, with a gunshot wound to the head and a pistol at his side.

An official investigation into his death initially concluded that the prosecutor took his own life. However, a federal judge later reversed this decision, stating that Nisman’s gunshot wound could not have been self-inflicted.

Investigations are still underway to identify both those who carried out the act and those who ordered it.

Kirchner is set to stand trial for the allegations against her, though there is no set date.

As for the AMIA investigation, an Argentine federal judge ordered last year the trial in absentia of Iranian and Lebanese nationals suspected of orchestrating the 1994 bombing.

The 10 suspects set to stand trial include former Iranian and Lebanese ministers and diplomats, all of whom are subject to international arrest warrants issued by Argentina for their alleged roles in the terrorist attack.

Lead prosecutor Sebastián Basso — who took over the case after the murder of his predecessor, Nisman — also requested that federal Judge Daniel Rafecas issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his alleged involvement in the attack.

Despite Argentina’s longstanding belief that Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group carried out the devastating attack at Iran’s request, the 1994 bombing has never been claimed or officially solved.

Tehran has consistently denied any involvement in any of these attacks and has refused to arrest or extradite any suspects. Algemeiner

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MLK was clear: Anti-Zionism is antisemitism King's support for Israel. The question is not what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say today – he already told us. The question is whether we are prepared to listen. Marc Schneier. Jan 18, 2026.

In March 1968, just weeks before his assassination, King addressed the Rabbinical Assembly in New York. His words were unequivocal: “Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity.” He went on to describe Israel as “one of the great outposts of democracy in the world,” language preserved in contemporaneous accounts and archival collections.

King’s support for Israel was not political posturing. It flowed directly from his understanding of oppression and liberation. He recognized what it meant for a people to be denied sovereignty, safety, and dignity. He saw in the Jewish people’s return to Israel a moral parallel to the Black struggle and the pursuit of equality.

The civil rights leader also warned against moral double standards. He understood how political language can be used to deny the legitimacy of a people while claiming the mantle of justice. Just as he confronted coded racism directed at Black Americans, he recognized the danger of rhetoric that singled out Jews by denying their collective right to self-determination.

King believed deeply in peace for both Israelis and Palestinians. He supported a political solution that would allow both peoples to live with dignity and security. But he never suggested that peace required the dismantling of the Jewish state. Peace, in his vision, was built on mutual recognition, not erasure.

A moral contradiction. Calls to deny Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish democracy are often framed as progressive. King would have recognized this for what it is: a moral contradiction.

Judaism is not merely a body of faith: It is a peoplehood rooted for thousands of years in its ancestral Land of Israel. To bifurcate Israel from the Jewish religion is to deny Jewish identity itself.

King believed justice is indivisible. You cannot fight racism while tolerating antisemitism. And you cannot champion liberation while denying Jews the same right.

The question is not what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say today – he already told us. The question is whether we are prepared to listen. JPost

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Sydney massacre was a warning for the world. Jan 18, 2026.

For decades, Israel has justified its existence to the world primarily through tragedy rather than justice. We spoke about the Holocaust, instead of about our inherent right to our land. We spoke the language of pain, rather than the language of purpose. Instead of standing upright as a nation with moral clarity, we presented ourselves as perpetual victims.

Even after Oct. 7, when moral clarity should have been unavoidable, Israel continued to apologize for its existence instead of stating a simple truth: This is the Jewish state by right, not by international permission and not by sympathy.

Antisemitism is not a reaction to a particular Israeli military operation. It is a reaction to moral weakness. It thrives on confusion. It responds to a message projected outward—that we ourselves are not certain of the justice of our cause.

When Israel speaks in the language of victimhood, the world hears an admission of guilt. When Israel hesitates to say plainly that this is our land and that the Jewish state requires no external validation, hatred and antisemitism re-emerge—and Jews become targets, even on the far side of the globe.

The attacks in Australia, America and Germany are therefore not a “Diaspora problem.” They are an indictment of an apologetic Israeli discourse.

Only a nation that is able to say, clearly and without hesitation, that we are here by right—rooted in history, faith and moral conviction, not in mercy—can protect not only its own citizens but Jewish communities everywhere.

Those who fail to understand that the battle over Jewish identity in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv directly affects the safety of Jews in Sydney, Australia; Jackson, Miss.; Giessen, Germany—and increasingly, London, New York and Los Angeles—do not understand what a Jewish state is.

It is time to stop apologizing. It is time to stop pleading with the world for understanding. It is time to return to the language of justice.

Because when Israel stands upright, Jews everywhere do. And for Americans, the lesson is unavoidable: a weak and apologetic Israel does not stabilize the democratic world. Rather, it accelerates the same forces of extremism and moral confusion that threaten U.S. cities, campuses and Jewish communal institutions. JNS

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Simon Sebag Montefiore warns of ‘devalued’ anti-racist language and threats to Holocaust memory. Lee Harpin. Jan 19, 2026. The celebrated historian Simon Sebag Montefiore has issued a striking warning about the devaluation of anti-racist language in contemporary discourse, arguing that terms such as “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” are now frequently manipulated to serve agendas running counter to their original intent.

Delivering the keynote speech at the Holocaust Education Trust’s event in Parliament, Montefiore observed:“Words are important—as we learned last week, the people behind the banning of a Jewish MP from his school because of his Jewishness were a cabal of teaching unions and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) coordinators who constantly repeat the language of anti-racism.

“We exist in a struggle where words have often come to mean their very opposite. In that case, and others, diversity came to mean discrimination, equity, injustice, inclusive, exclusion.

“And as it turns out, every bigot is a proud anti-racist to their bones. Every antisemite is against antisemitism, and naturally, everybody is against the Holocaust and genocide.”

At Monday evening’s event—held to mark this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations—the author warned that Holocaust memory is “in peril” and under attack from new forms of antisemitic distortion and ideological abuse.

Also among the speakers were Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Holocaust survivor Annick Lever, and several of the charity’s young ambassadors. HET’s chief executive, Karen Pollock, pointedly addressed recent concerns about the state of Holocaust education, stating: “Despite challenges, our experience at the Holocaust Educational Trust is that we’re working with hundreds more schools since October 7th,” following earlier newspaper reports suggesting Shoah education was being snubbed by many schools since the Hamas attacks.

In his main address, Montefiore recounted witnessing repeat protests outside the part Israeli-owned Miznon restaurant in Notting Hill, near his home.

“I hate to say it reminded me of Kristallnacht in Notting Hill Gate,” he said. “I came across a restaurant almost besieged by about 60 screaming activists who were referring specifically to the Holocaust, to the genocide, and applying this to an innocent restaurant, British owned, though with an Israeli connection, that they were specifically trying to drive out of Britain and trying to drive out of the neighborhood, trying to destroy a small business by terrorizing passers by, people going to the restaurant, and the owners of the restaurant.” JewishNews

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The Bad History of ‘Palestine 36’ An Oscar short-listed film, funded by Qatar, Turkey, and the BBC, rewrites the past to serve a modern political fantasy.

Oren Kessler. Jan 19, 2026.

And yet the film’s gravest failing may be depriving the Jews of a voice. I don’t mean metaphorically; I mean there are precisely two words spoken by a Jew, in any language, in the entire film.

In fact, Jews appear on-screen only twice. Early in the film, a Jewish figure is briefly ushered to a microphone at the inauguration of the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation. Later, Jewish immigrants are seen in the distance, silently toiling behind a kibbutz wall.

And that’s it. For a film centered on an Arab revolt against Jews, it’s a glaring, flagrant omission.

It would have been easy for the screenwriters to have included two stock Jewish characters: The “bad” Jew who is arrogant, land-greedy, and patronizing toward Arabs, and the “good” one who respects their culture, learns their language, and is willing to limit Jewish immigration. I suspect that behind this choice lies the deep-rooted Palestinian and wider Arab taboo against “normalization” of Israelis—in this case, even before they were Israelis.

Nonetheless, wishing something away doesn’t make it so. Like it or not, the Jews were there, and their continued arrival was the key driver of the revolt. Portraying the rebellion as directed primarily against British imperialism (with the Jews as the silent beneficiary thereof) is historical malpractice.

The film’s last quarter is a crescendo of British brutality that bears only a patchy resemblance to the historical record. Soldiers detonate a home despite knowing an elderly couple is in their bed, embracing as they await the end. Wingate shoots a civilian in the head after gathering the townspeople to watch. In the climax, troops force civilians onto a bus and force it to drive over a landmine. Among the dead is a Christian priest whose young son then kills a British soldier in revenge. It’s essentially the film’s only moment in which blood is spilled by Arab hands.

The British have much to answer for in Palestine—a handful of well-documented atrocities, like that at al-Bassa, are amply described in my book. They indeed demolished homes during the revolt, just not with people inside. Wingate did inflict collective punishment on uncooperative villages. But there is no evidence of him ever ordering an execution, much less conducting one himself, nor of the British murdering a priest (or imam), nor of any Christian Arabs (let alone children) taking up arms against them.

Only in the final credits, and only in minuscule type, does Palestine 36 concede that the movie is a work of fiction, merely “inspired by actual events and characters.” Such a disclaimer should have appeared prominently at the outset, not buried where few viewers would notice, although that would erroneously suggest that the spirit if not the details of the Arab uprising of 1936–1939 had been captured. It has not.

As publicly funded British institutions, the BFI and BBC Film should have insisted on transparency. Their failure to do so places them uncomfortably close to the film’s other state-backed co-producers, in Turkey and Qatar, which reliably promote their governments’ harmful, extremist agendas in the region. The omission raises an obvious question: whether the lack of candor reflects more than oversight, and instead a shared comfort with reshaping the historical record to suit a contemporary agenda.

All the world’s a stage, a British dramatist once wrote, and nowhere more so than the Holy Land. But it is an affront to history that a portrait of a revolt against Jews should treat the latter as silent props or erase them altogether. However the filmmakers feel about Jewish immigration, land purchase, and nation-building in mid-’30s Palestine, these too are part of the history. These too are “actual events” performed by “actual characters” in the century-long drama still playing out between the river and the sea. RuthfullyYours

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Emily Damari on one year of freedom and those who did not return.

Annabel Sinclair. Jan 19, 2026.

Emily Damari has marked one year since her release from Hamas captivity by reflecting on survival, recovery and the enduring absence of those who did not return home alive.

Damari, a dual British-Israeli citizen, was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza during the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023. She was shot during the abduction, losing two fingers, and held in Gaza for 471 days before being released on 19 January 2025, as part of a negotiated deal.

In a statement issued to mark the anniversary, Damari described the moment of her release as a return from prolonged darkness. “One year ago, after 471 days in the dark – 471 days of pain, of tunnels, of holding on with everything I had – I came back to life,” she said.

She recalled reuniting with her mother and experiencing ordinary moments once again. “I hugged my mum, I breathed real air, I saw the sun without fear. That moment, that first real breath of freedom, still hits me every single day.”

Damari spoke openly about the injuries she sustained during her kidnapping, saying they have come to symbolise resilience rather than victimhood. “My scars tell the story,” she said. “The hand missing two fingers, the marks on my leg – they aren’t just wounds. To me, they represent freedom, hope, and unbreakable strength.”

Since her return, she has become a prominent voice advocating for hostages taken on 7 October. She said the release of Gali and Ziv was central to her own sense of freedom, while acknowledging that one person she was waiting for will never return alive.

That person is Master Sgt. Ran Gvil, who was killed and whose body remains held in Gaza. Jewish News

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@YosephHaddad: Children should be playing in playgrounds, not having playgrounds named in their memory because they were kidnapped and murdered by a terrorist organization. We will never forget Ariel and Kfir Bibas, and their mother, Shiri. Jan 19, 2026. on X

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Bondi survivor Ya'akov Tetleroyd lost his father and nearly his arm in Bondi Beach terrorism event. He forgives the gunmen. Jan 19, 2026. Ya'akov Tetleroyd suffered a gunshot wound to the arm while his father, Boris, was killed in the Bondi terror attack.

Yet nearly six weeks on, the 38-year-old has let go of his anger towards the gunmen.

"I was initially very angry and very unforgiving," Mr Tetleroyd told 7.30 in an exclusive interview.

"Just saying, may God, just wanting to devour them, wanting for them to descend to the grave alive, that's what I wished for these people initially. But I came to a point where I thought to myself, if I can forgive my own person, my own people, I can forgive these people as well."

He said the reason for his personal forgiveness was so he no longer had to dwell on the terrorism event.

"It's not something that I want to carry with me every day.

"It's very easy to get caught in a cycle of hatred." Bondi terror survivor labels shooters 'evil and sick' but forgives them | 7.30 anc.net

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‘We owe it to the victims’: Jacinta Price reflects on parliament’s return after Bondi massacre. Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price discusses parliament’s early return following the Bondi massacre, saying politicians “owe it to the victims” to ensure history “is never repeated”. Sky News Australia. Jan 19, 2026 on YouTube

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Hate group members should ‘lose their citizenship’ Former Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo believes there should be amendments to take away citizenship from anyone convicted of a hate crime.

“I would go further, I’d amend section 36C of the Citizenship Act,” Mr Pezzullo told Sky News Australia.

“If you're convicted to be a member of one of the prohibited hate groups, you go on that list of offences that carry citizenship revocation, lose your citizenship.”

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Nicole Lampert: British schools have failed to properly teach children about the dangers of anti-Semitism. In truth, the Holocaust has become increasingly politicised for many years. HMD became watered down. First – and probably rightly – it included all the victims of the Nazis, including gay men, the Roma and Sinti gypsy groups, people with disabilities, and political enemies.

While this was encouraged – including by Jewish groups who wondered if the only way to get people to feel sorry for Holocaust victims was to universalise them – it also meant that the political ideology behind the Holocaust, the intentional and industrial attempt to eradicate an entire people, was neutered.

I even had to explain to my son’s own history teacher that the Holocaust is the word just for the murder of the Jews – and that it was a core plank of Nazi ideology separate from all its other evil behaviour.

But even that was not universal enough for some. Increasingly, HMD has become an “all genocides of the 20th century” day. Children should know about these genocides – Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur – but once again it meant the specific racist industrialised machine of the Holocaust became just another event in history.

Or, as Whoopi Goldberg (who appropriated a Jewish second name because she thought it would help her in Hollywood) once said: “White on white violence.”

Friends who worked in Holocaust education warned me quite soon after the October 7 massacre of the new problems they were facing, as schools they had worked with for years cancelled their Holocaust Memorial Day events. Too complicated.

At one point, I sat on a panel in front of a group of children about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. There had been a day of events, and a law expert had explained why what was happening in Gaza did not fall into the definition of genocide.

Yet, still, we were asked at least three times about why we weren’t talking about “the genocide” in Gaza.

This is hardly surprising when we look at what is going on in our schools and universities. The NEU, Britain’s biggest teaching union with half a million members, has become so openly and obsessively hostile to Israel that most Jewish teachers have left.

We were given an example of why, just a few days ago, when it emerged that teachers and members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (and frequently they are both) had helped stop Jewish Bristol MP Damian Egan from hosting a talk about democracy.

Teachers told this newspaper how one colleague told her Israel didn’t exist and how anti-Israel propaganda was being pushed in schools by teachers. Children are being educated in the new way of how to hate Jews instead of what anti-Semitism leads to.

As Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis writes: “The Shoah was not inevitable. It began not in concentration camps but in classrooms, newspapers and public squares where people learnt to look away.”

Here it is again in our classrooms, newspapers and public squares. Schools need to stop looking away but confront what their behaviour could lead to. I am not surprised this is too difficult for them. Telegraph

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David Collier: Open Letter to Manchester City Council: Don’t Undermine Antisemitism Safeguards.

Dear Councillors of Manchester City Council,

I am writing regarding Manchester City Council’s decision to adopt a motion referencing what activists are calling “anti-Palestinian racism” (APR), and the council’s intention to explore definitions and related commitments.

This is a serious and dangerous error.

As part of my own investigation into how the concept of APR was developed and is being promoted in activist circles, I watched the council discussion that took place on 16 July. I do recognise that while it did adopt a motion, Manchester City Council did not adopt the formal definition of APR on the night. I also note that Labour produced an amended version that stripped away some of the more overtly dangerous activist framing.

However, this is precisely the problem.

Even a watered-down motion still leaves the council trapped inside the activist premise that “APR” is a legitimate category requiring institutional recognition, policy development, and follow-on action. The council has effectively been manoeuvred into a corner – having accepted the framing, it is then left feeling obliged to “do something,” because backing away will be portrayed as indifference or hostility.

That is how this works. It is not neutral anti-racism. It is political pressure, and Manchester City Council should not allow itself to be manipulated into granting a dangerous concept such as APR any legitimacy at all.

Let me be clear at the outset – racism is real. Prejudice against anyone on the basis of race or ethnicity must be confronted.

But APR is not a neutral anti-racism concept. It is an activist framework designed to do something very specific. It reframes mainstream safeguards against antisemitism as illegitimate and pressures public bodies into treating anti-Israel political narratives as protected truth.

That is not “anti-racism”. It is political capture. Manchester does not need a new racism category. If a person is discriminated against because of their Arab, Middle Eastern, or Palestinian heritage, we already have the legal and institutional tools to address it. Jan 19, 2026. David Collier

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France faces court over embassy built on confiscated Jewish family home.

Annabel Sinclair. Jan 19, 2026.

The French government is appearing before a Paris court this week over its continued use of a former Jewish-owned mansion in Baghdad as its embassy, in a case brought by the descendants of Iraqi Jews who say the French state stopped paying rent after their property was confiscated under antisemitic laws.

The lawsuit, now formally being heard by a French administrative court, concerns a large riverside home built in the 1930s by brothers Ezra and Khedouri Lawee, members of Iraq’s once-thriving Jewish community. France has operated the buildings as its embassy since the mid-1960s and continues to do so today.

The Lawee family says it originally leased the property directly to France, believing that a foreign government tenant would protect it at a time when Iraqi Jews were increasingly targeted. But after Iraq nationalised Jewish-owned property in the late 1960s and 1970s, France allegedly stopped paying rent to the family and instead began paying the Iraqi state.

The descendants are now seeking around €22 million (approximately £19 million) in unpaid rent and damages, arguing that France benefited from discriminatory laws that stripped Jews of citizenship and assets, without ever compensating the original owners.

“To save the house, my father leased it to the French,” said Mayer Lawee, 86, the son of Ezra Lawee. “My father was upset. It’s his home. He built it from scratch, and it was taken away.”

Iraq was home to around 150,000 Jews in the 1940s, part of one of the oldest continuous Jewish communities in the world. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jews in Iraq faced escalating persecution, including arrests, denaturalisation and the seizure of property. By the early 1950s, the vast majority had fled or been expelled.

Much of the Lawee family settled in Canada, but their Baghdad home remained standing and under family ownership until it was leased to France. The family says it was never compensated when Iraq later claimed ownership. Jewish News

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Stanford SJP Calls for "Student Intifada," Plans Walkout Against Company That Helped Find Bin Laden.

Jan 19, 2026.

Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine is organizing a campus walkout on January 20 at noon, calling on the university to sever ties with Palantir Technologies, a data analytics company the group describes as part of a “genocide tech axis.” The protest at White Plaza is being co-organized by Tech For Palestine, Vigil for Gaza, Jewish Voice for Peace Stanford, the Stanford Asian American Action Committee, and involves the ACLU, according to promotional materials shared on social media.

The same SJP chapter recruited members last September by asking Stanford students to “join the student intifada,” using terminology historically associated with violent Palestinian uprisings. That Instagram post, dated September 18, 2025, featured an image of a person in a keffiyeh with the text “STANFORD SJP NEEDS YOU - JOIN THE STUDENT INTIFADA TODAY,” and promised to build solidarity while organizing against what they called Stanford’s “complicity in genocide[sic].”

The Target: Palantir.

The January protest centers on Palantir, a Silicon Valley firm founded in 2003 by Alex Karp, Peter Thiel, and others in the wake of September 11. The company was created specifically to help U.S. intelligence agencies “connect the dots” after the 9/11 attacks exposed fatal gaps in America’s ability to analyze disparate intelligence data.

Palantir’s software has played a role in some of America’s most significant counterterrorism operations. The company provided intelligence software that contributed to locating Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan in 2011. According to CEO Alex Karp, “Terror suspects leave patterns they don’t really realize they’re leaving,” and “at least one U.S. agency reported that hundreds of terror attacks around the world have been stopped with our product.”

The company’s work extends beyond counterterrorism. Palantir’s Maven platform is used by the entire U.S. military and international allies including the UK and Ukraine. Mike Gallagher, Palantir’s head of defense and former Republican congressman from Wisconsin, described Maven’s function simply: it “helps fewer good guys kill more bad guys.” According to Karp, Palantir is “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine” in its war against Russia.

What Stanford SJP Claims.

In their promotional materials for the walkout, Stanford SJP accuses Palantir of profiting from “ICE raids, police violence, and mass surveillance at home,” while helping to “power a digital dragnet that enables apartheid and mass killing in Palestine.” The group claims Stanford provides Palantir with “research, legitimacy, and talent,” framing the January 20 action as part of a “national day of action” against what they describe as escalating ICE terror under the Trump administration.

The protest organizers describe their goal as cutting off the “Stanford pipeline to Palantir and the genocide tech axis.” Stanford SJP previously attracted international attention for hosting a vigil in “honor of our martyrs”, in apparent reference to the terrorists who infiltrated Israel on October 7. JewishOnliner

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University of Washington lifts suspensions of anti-Israel protesters. “Long live the student intifada,” wrote the student group behind the May 5 protest, which allegedly resulted in $1 million in damages. (Jan. 19, 2026 / JNS)

The University of Washington has completed conduct hearings for the “UW33,” a group of students accused of occupying and damaging the university’s Interdisciplinary Engineering Building in May, finding them guilty of violations and lifting their suspensions.

The anti-Israel protest on May 5, organized by Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return, demanded the university sever ties with Boeing over the company’s dealings with Israel. University officials said demonstrators caused approximately $1 million in damage to the building on the public school’s Seattle campus.

The university suspended the involved students pending the results of a conduct hearing that has been completed, Victor Balta, a university spokesperson, told JNS.

“The students have been found responsible for violations of the student conduct code and held accountable,” Balta said. “The students were out of class and banned from campus for three quarters.”

Balta added that “SUPER is not a recognized student organization and does not enjoy the benefits” of such status.

SUPER UW celebrated the lifting of the suspensions. JNS

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Judge orders Ohio State to revoke student’s expulsion over anti-Israel videos.

“We’re disappointed in the ruling,” a spokesman for the university told JNS. (Jan. 19, 2026 / JNS)

A district judge issued a preliminary injunction last week, ordering Ohio State University to revoke its expulsion of a student who made anti-Israel videos.

Edmund Sargus Jr., a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, stated the student, Guy Christensen, was expelled from the university on the grounds that his videos were incitement and risked disrupting the campus.

According to Sargus, Christensen had said in a May video that he retracted his earlier condemnation of the shooting deaths of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., stating, “I take it back. I do not condemn the elimination of those two Zionist officials, who worked at the Israeli embassy last night.”

He also said in that video, “Israel has murdered thousands of Palestinian civilians in cold blood without any shame, with pride, rejoicing in the streets of Israel over this, and they get no attention in this country, while this attack is being used to weaponize violence against the movement.”

Christensen added that “we will meet it with our own greater resistance and escalation.”

In a separate May video responding to a comment by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) that Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza, Christensen stated that “screenshots are forever, and what you’ve said and done will haunt your family for eternity as you will eventually, if you’re still alive, end up in a Nuremberg trials for all the elected officials in America who facilitated and protected this genocide[sic].”

Sargus said Christensen’s videos did not constitute incitement because in past ones, he advocated for nonviolence and in subsequent ones, he stated that he is nonviolent. In the judge’s view, Christensen’s use of the words “resistance” and “escalation” was meant in a nonviolent manner, and that his videos had “no specific call to action” and “were unlikely to result in the imminent use of violence or lawless action.”

As for the university’s claims that Christensen’s presence could disrupt campus activities, Sargus stated this would be unlikely given that Christensen was on summer break at the time of the videos and did not identify himself as an OSU student, nor did any students express concern to the university about it.

Sargus said Christensen’s lawsuit is “likely to succeed on the merits” and ordered the school to remove his expulsion from his academic record. JNS

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What would MLK do? Demand that Arabs free their black slaves.

Charles Jacobs, Ben Poser. Jan 19, 2026.

The activist group “NYC Educators for Palestine” is apparently staging a “teach-in” for New York public school children of all ages, using Martin Luther King Jr. Day to equate the non-violent movement for black American civil rights with anti-Jewish jihad.

What these propagandists will never tell children as young as 6 is that their actions are covering up for history’s greatest anti-black catastrophes while blaming innocent Jews.

For a start, many of King’s own African ancestors were trafficked to the Americas in the first place, partially as the result of the enslavement of black people by Palestinians’ fellow Muslims. Arabs and Islamized Africans bear substantial responsibility for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, with the Europeans buying many slaves from Muslim rulers who eagerly profited from selling off their non-Muslim war captives.

By contrast, Jews were among the most passionate opponents of racial discrimination in America, making up nearly a quarter of all white freedom riders, with some murdered alongside blacks for their anti-racist activism.

Professed Arab “concern” for black civil rights during the 1960s was no more than a cynical disinformation campaign concocted by Communist China and the KGB to pull politically active black Americans closer toward Third Worldist Marxism and away from patriotic integrationism.

But these “educators” are hiding something far worse: Arabs and Muslims, kin to the Palestinians, still own black slaves. The following could serve as the basis for any serious curriculum on black-Arab relations:

In Algeria and Libya, tens of thousands of Africans attempting to make their way to Europe are enslaved by local Arabs, some terrorist militiamen. The Global Slavery Index says that they number 84,000 and 47,000, respectively. Those who escape have detailed torture, blackmail and use as grunt labor, with CNN disseminating chilling video in 2017 of a nighttime auction in which two Nigerien men were sold for the equivalent of $400 apiece.

The U.S. State Department’s 2024 human-rights report on Libya documents that “criminal and nonstate armed groups controlling extralegal facilities routinely tortured and abused detainees [including refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants], subjecting them to arbitrary killings, rape and sexual violence, beatings, electric shocks, burns, forced labor, and deprivation of food and water, according to dozens of testimonies shared with international aid agencies and human rights groups. In many instances, the purpose of this abuse was reportedly to extort payments from detainees’ families.” Those black migrants within Algeria who are not enslaved also face deeply seated (systemic) racism. Outrage as rabbi disinvited from MLK Day event over ties to Israel A California rabbi claimed his invitation to lead the closing prayer at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration was pulled because of his ties to Israel.

Rabbi Hanan Leberman, of Tifereth Israel Synagogue in in San Diego, posted a revealing letter on Instagram to organizers of the All Peoples Celebration in Balboa Park, claiming they disinvited him from the event.

He said his message “is deeply aligned with the Reverend Dr. King’s teachings, regardless of how I may be perceived by others.”

“When I agreed to participate in this event, I did so fully aware that I would be sharing a stage with individuals whose politics and ideas I do not always share.” the rabbi wrote. “That, to me, is precisely the work Dr. King called us to do: sharing space with those with whom we disagree, seeking common ground, and recommitting ourselves to the dream that all people are treated equally.”

It’s unclear who was responsible for dropping Leberman from the event or when the decision was made. Calls to event organizer Alliance San Diego by The Post weren’t immediately returned. JNS

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Canary Mission · Jan 18, 2026 @canarymission · Meet Lana Abugharbieh: Licensed to care but publicly promotes extremist rhetoric, Holocaust distortions, and inflammatory comparisons. on X

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Elliot Kaufman @ElliotKaufman6: This profile tries to be snotty about it, but it mostly seems like Bari was proved right?

Iran protests were a bigger deal than media first realized. Post-Oct 7, Israel was the target of a massive propaganda war. The Columbia prof was a crazy Jew-hater. Jan 19, 2026. on X

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StopAntisemitism · Jan 19, 2026 @StopAntisemites · Update: Jewish Miami nightlife mogul David Grutman has banned Nick Fuentes, Myron Gaines, SNEAKO, and the rest of their Nazi crew from all of his Miami establishments. Jan 19, 2026. on X

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Nicole Lampert @nicolelampert: Good to see @LauraTrottMP asking for a thorough investigation into the teaching union the NEU and the dangerous Jew hatred it has encouraged. The education secretary @bphillipsonMP

has pledged to root out antisemitism in our schools. She cannot do this without tackling the NEU as my stories from this weekend proved.

Jan 19, 2026. On X

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Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News. Tuesday, January 20, 2026 How the Left and the Right Keep Borrowing Each Other’s Antisemitic Ideas.

[50]

One of the most persistent errors in how antisemitism is discussed is the belief that it flows from ideology – that antisemitism is something generated by the Left, or the Right, or Islamism, depending on who is misbehaving at a given moment. History suggests something more unsettling.

Antisemitism is not only downstream of ideology. It is portable.

Across centuries, antisemitism has shown a remarkable ability to detach itself from one philosophical framework and reattach to another, reshaping its language while preserving its structure. It borrows the moral vocabulary of whatever movement it inhabits, presents itself as principled critique rather than inherited prejudice, and offers radicals a ready-made explanation for why the world is broken – and who is to blame.

Anti-Zionism has become one of antisemitism’s most effective modern vehicles precisely because it allowed ancient tropes to be rebranded as contemporary politics. What we are witnessing today, as right-wing antisemites increasingly adopt the language of left-wing and Arab anti-Zionism, is not a novelty. It is a recurrence.

And the history that produced it is far more entangled than our political categories allow.

For most of modern history, Zionism had nothing to do with left-wing antisemitism. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century leftist antisemitism was rooted in Enlightenment secularism, early socialist thought, and misdirected anti-capitalism. Jews were cast not as nationalists or colonizers, but as embodiments of abstraction, money, cosmopolitanism, and bourgeois exploitation – obstacles to the realization of a rational and egalitarian society.

Marx’s On the Jewish Question treated Judaism itself as a metaphor for capitalism. Proudhon and Bakunin were more explicit, describing Jews as parasitic, conspiratorial, and socially corrosive. This was what August Bebel famously called “the socialism of fools” – a critique of capitalism that replaced systemic analysis with scapegoating.

Zionism, when it appeared at all in left-wing discourse, was typically dismissed as a bourgeois distraction from class struggle. It was not yet the organizing metaphor it would later become.

European-style antisemitism begins circulating in the Arab East in the nineteenth century, carried by colonial penetration, missionary activity, and European education networks. One early and concrete marker is the Damascus Affair of 1840, a blood libel modeled on European Christian accusations and actively escalated by a French consul. This was not an Islamic inheritance; it was a European import.

In the Arab world, Zionism was greeted with alarm, and they needed a philosophical framework to fight it especially for Western audiences. Christian antisemitism found particular resonance in some Arab Christian milieus, where exposure to European religious polemics, nationalism, and racialized discourse was often earliest and most intense. Early Palestinian nationalist journalism in the 1910s and intellectual leadership included a significant Christian Arab component, long before the era of Islamist mass mobilization.

By the early twentieth century, a hybrid vocabulary already existed – one in which European antisemitic motifs could be localized, repurposed, and politicized.

Hajj Amin al-Husseini did not start Palestinian antisemitism but he ran with it. Initially he placed it in the context of Islamism, claiming that Jews planned to attack Muslim holy places and raising funds based on that fantasy. The Mufti's antisemitism and anti-Zionism clearly predate his formal alliance with Nazi Germany. Where they came from is not reducible to a single source: local elite rivalries, imported European tropes, religious mobilization, and the dynamics of mandatory politics all played roles.

What Nazism provided was not the creation of his antisemitism, but its acceleration, systematization, and internationalization. Fascist and Nazi ideology offered him a global explanatory framework, material resources, and a language of total struggle. His alliance with the Axis was opportunistic, ideological, and mutually reinforcing – but it built on pre-existing foundations.

This pattern – local antisemitic motifs fused with external ideological systems – repeats again and again.

The most consequential transformation came after the Holocaust.

In the West, overt antisemitism became morally radioactive. In the Soviet sphere, it was re-engineered. Stalin’s campaigns against “rootless cosmopolitans,” followed by the Doctors’ Plot and the Slánský trials, performed a decisive maneuver: they translated classic antisemitic tropes – conspiracy, dual loyalty, elite domination – into the language of anti-Zionism and anti-imperialism.

Jews were no longer targeted as Jews, but as Zionists, Western agents, and subversive elites.

This framework was exported aggressively. Soviet propaganda recast Israel as a racist, colonial outpost of American empire, a narrative that spread through Eastern Europe, the Arab world, and Western leftist movements. Anti-Zionism became a way to say what could no longer be said openly.

The Western Left’s embrace of decolonial theory in the 1960s and 1970s created a powerful point of convergence.

Third-Worldism reframed global politics as a struggle between colonizer and colonized. After the Six-Day War, Israel was reclassified – often abruptly and without historical nuance – from post-genocide refuge to imperial aggressor. Arab nationalist narratives, Soviet anti-Zionism, and New Left ideology fused into a single moral grammar.

All the antisemitic and anti-Zionist tropes converged. Concepts such as settler-colonialism, indigeneity erasure, racialized power, and structural domination – developed in other contexts – were retrofitted to the Jewish case, often by erasing Jewish history altogether. Older antisemitic tropes survived the translation intact, rebranded as structural critique.

Within the Palestinian movement itself, ideological incoherence was not a weakness but a feature.

Secular Marxist groups like the PFLP and Islamist movements like Hamas routinely cooperate, coordinate attacks, and avoid mutual criticism. Yasser Arafat mastered the art of balancing Islamists and leftists under a single nationalist umbrella. Palestinian nationalism subordinated theology and ideology alike to the primacy of anti-Zionism.

This mattered far beyond the Middle East. It taught Western activists that Islamism was not an obstacle to leftist solidarity, but a legitimate partner in “resistance.” It normalized silence about illiberalism, Islamist antisemitism, and violence in the name of unity.

Today's antisemitism on the Right is different from previous, crude neo-Nazi forms. Contemporary right-wing antisemites have discovered that left-wing and Arab anti-Zionist rhetoric offers moral camouflage. Language about apartheid, genocide, settler-colonialism, and global elites allows them to recycle older claims about Jewish power while borrowing the credibility of human-rights discourse.

This is not accidental. David Duke openly praised left-wing critiques of the “Israel lobby” for giving his views respectability. Neo-Nazi outlets have long cited progressive anti-Zionist publications as evidentiary support. More recent figures have simply made the synthesis explicit. And the desire for solidarity trumps ideology - when Hamas attacked Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023 in Israel proper, it characterized it as an attack on "settlements" and the Left immediately dropped any pretense of differentiating between Israel's pre-1967 borders and "occupation" to legitimize Hamas' position.

The ideological content barely matters anymore. Antisemitism adapts itself to whatever language will pass.

This is why the Left/Right binary fails so badly as an explanatory framework.

Antisemitism is not a consequence of ideological error so much as a reusable narrative technology – a way of personifying abstraction, assigning moral blame, and repurposing innate antisemitism as a moral position. It thrives wherever movements need an omnipotent villain who is both inside and outside the system.

-Sometimes that villain is capitalist. -Sometimes colonial. -Sometimes globalist. -Sometimes Zionist.

The labels change. The structure does not.

The current moment feels novel because the alliances feel strange: “anti-woke” conservatives echoing decolonial slogans, white nationalists waving Palestinian flags, leftists defending the indefensible to preserve solidarity. But this is not a rupture. It is a recurrence.

Antisemitism has always been a shared underground passage between radical movements. When one entrance collapses, another opens.

The tragedy is not merely that Jews keep finding themselves at the center of other people’s moral dramas. It is that societies keep mistaking the costume for the cause – congratulating themselves for opposing the wrong version of an ancient hatred while unknowingly reproducing its logic in a new dialect.

History does not absolve either side. It indicts both – repeatedly.

And it leaves us with a sobering conclusion: antisemitism is never re-invented. It is translated. EoZ

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'NYT’: Pennsylvania’s Shapiro says Harris vetting team asked if he was an ‘Israeli agent’ The Jewish governor was said to have responded. (Jan 19, 2026 / JNS) JNS

Biden envoy slams Harris over 'Israeli agent’ question to Shapiro. Deborah Lipstadt her deputy, Aaron Keyak, condemn Harris campaign staff after Josh Shapiro revealed he was asked if he was “an Israeli agent" during the vetting process for Harris’s running mate. Elad Benari. Jan 20, 2026, 2:15 AM (GMT+2) Kamala HarrisDeborah INN

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Jewish Americans Shouldn’t Be Shocked by Scott Wiener’s Genocide Lie. By Irit Tratt. Opinion.

At first glance, California State Sen. and Democratic candidate for US Congress Scott Wiener is representative of what many consider a genuine American Jewish success story: a Jewish boy from New Jersey whose childhood memories were shaped by parents who helped build a local Conservative synagogue.

Wiener possesses the boy-next-door charm and familiarity of a Jewish American who came of age in the 1980s and early 1990s, was academically gifted, and later graduated from Harvard Law School.

The budding lawmaker soon found his footing in politics and eventually rose to become a state senator in the nation’s most populous state.

The youthful-looking Wiener, who calls himself “one of the strongest LGBTQ civil rights champions in the nation,” also co-chairs the California Legislative Jewish Caucus.

The one critical wrinkle to Wiener’s path to Jewish political prominence is that the 55-year-old politician recently promoted the disgusting blood libel that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

After enduring jeers from left-wing attendees at last week’s candidate debate featuring Wiener and two other Democrats vying to succeed retiring Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Wiener pivoted from his initial refusal to characterize Israel’s actions as genocide and made the decision, days later, to turn against the Jewish state in a 90-second cringe-inducing video unveiled Sunday on the social media platform X.

For those following evolving attitudes toward Israel within liberal Jewish spaces, where Zionism is increasingly disassociated from Judaism, Wiener’s comments condemning Israel are perhaps the least shocking development in the progressive Democrat’s political career.

Jewish communities across America have spent decades nurturing ideological identities that focused on cultivating loyal liberals rather than strong Jews.

Moreover, when support for Israel is passed down from one generation to the next, with little explanation of the moral, legal, and historical rights undergirding the Jewish people’s right for self-determination, Zionism is treated as another dispensable political movement.

It’s a phenomenon that leaves people like Wiener susceptible to the anti-Israel animus entrapping a rising cohort of Jewish Democrats. It’s why anti-Zionists like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani will be quick to denounce a swastika plastered at a Jewish school in Brooklyn but grant a pass to violent pro-Hamas mobs descending on New York City synagogues that aim to disrupt Israel-related events.

Absent a firm framework explaining why it is a Jewish imperative to advance a pro-Israel narrative, the strategy to widen the wedge between Zionism and one’s Jewish identity will yield more Jews like Wiener who cave to the whims of keffiyeh-wearing voters... Algemeiner

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Witnesses report mass eye injuries during protests in Iran’s Bushehr. Iran International. Jan 20, 2026. Witnesses in the southern Iranian city of Bushehr have told Iran International that security forces fired at protesters from elevated positions over two nights, leaving more than 20 people with severe eye injuries.

According to the messages received by the outlet, forces fired from locations including rooftops, mosques and some school buildings on the night of Jan. 9 and 8.

Witnesses said medical centers were overwhelmed by the number of wounded, with staff struggling to cope with the influx of patients. IranIntl

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The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Jewish community leaders visited the Great Mosque of Stockholm to gift a Quran from Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque as an act of solidarity. Reporting by @pieceofshirr . From jpost.com Jan 20, 2026 on X

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The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Report: Senior Hamas leaders are preparing a “safe exit” from Gaza following the launch of Phase II of Trump’s Gaza plan. Leaders of the "military" factions insist they will stay, sources told a Saudi outlet. ✍️ @JamesGenn From jpost.com [51]. Jan 20, 2026 on X

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Demolition of UNRWA headquarters in Jerusalem begins | Watch. At Ammunition Hill in the capital, representatives of the Israel Land Authority began demolishing the UNRWA headquarters, after the Knesset decision to cut ties with the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. Idan Bloemhof|01.20.26 Updated:10:46

(Related Topics: Jerusalem UNRWA, October 7)

Representatives of the Israel Lands Authority (ILA), accompanied by security forces, arrived Tuesday morning to demolish the UNRWA headquarters in Jerusalem, located at Ammunition Hill.

The evacuation of the site — which took place earlier this month, and Tuesday’s demolition, stem from a government decision to cut ties with UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, by creating alternative services through other bodies. Legislation passed in the Knesset stipulates that the organization’s assets be transferred to the state and that its diplomatic immunity be revoked, because some of its staff are suspected of participating in the October 7 massacre. YNet

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Agreement to transfer Kurdish autonomy in Syria collapsing amid renewed fighting. Syrian president announced two days ago a ceasefire with SDF forces that maintain Kurdish autonomy, and said the Kurds agreed to hand over all territories to the stat and to integrate into security mechanisms; But a meeting between al-Sharaa and the SDF commander failed, and fighting resumed Lior Ben Ari, News Agencies|01.20.26 Updated:10:06

An agreement to transfer control of the Kurdish autonomous region in Syria appeared to be collapsing Tuesday morning, after a night of heavy fighting between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and forces loyal to President Ahmad al‑Sharaar. In response to the escalating violence, the Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria declared a general mobilization overnight and called on young Kurds living outside Syria to return home to defend their people.

Only two nights ago, the Syrian government announced a ceasefire deal with the SDF — an organization whose fighters are mostly Kurdish — following days of intense fighting in which Syrian army units stormed Kurdish strongholds and forced SDF fighters to withdraw. Al‑Sharaa described the agreement as a major victory and what was effectively a Kurdish surrender, saying the Kurds agreed to hand over control of all territory to the state, transfer rights to oil and gas fields, disband their military forces, and integrate as fighters within state security structures. YNet

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Netanyahu: Iran will face unprecedented force if it attacks Israel. "No one can predict what tomorrow will bring in Iran, but one thing is clear: no matter what happens—Iran will not return to being what it was," said the Israeli premier. Akiva Van Koningsveld.

(Jan. 20, 2026 / JNS) If the Islamic Republic attacks Israel, Jerusalem “will act with might that Iran has not seen before,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday. JNS

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The Blood Trail of Islamist Death Cult: From Tehran to Gaza.

The Regime Behind the Carnage: Iran’s War on Its Own People and on Israel. Iran’s Hypothetical Atrocities and Its Proxy War Against Israel.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has a dark history of brutally suppressing its own people, with estimates suggesting that in just two weeks of crackdowns (Jan/2026), it massacred between 20,000 and 50,000 unarmed civilians. Extrapolating this rate over two years yields a staggering 1.04 million to 2.6 million potential deaths—a chilling reminder of the regime’s capacity for mass murder against innocents, far exceeding even the most tragic conflicts.

This same ruthless regime fuels terrorism through its backing of genocidal Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza, providing weapons, funding, and training as part of its “axis of resistance” to destabilize the region and target Israel. On October 7, 2023, “Palestine” regime Hamas launched a barbaric invasion, massacring over 1,200 Israelis and taking hundreds hostage in acts of unspeakable cruelty, including rape, torture, and the slaughter of families. This unprovoked assault forced Israel into a defensive war to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure and secure its citizens from endless rocket barrages and threats.

In a cynical strategy to garner international sympathy, Hamas and PIJ deliberately embed their military operations—rocket launchers, tunnels, and command centers—amidst civilian areas like hospitals, schools, and UN facilities, using Gazan civilians as human shields to inflate casualties and demonize Israel’s precise responses. Despite these tactics, Israel’s military has gone to extraordinary lengths to minimize harm, issuing evacuation warnings, creating humanitarian corridors, and adhering to international law, even as Hamas diverts aid and holds its own people hostage to its ideology of destruction.

As of late 2025, Israel eliminated over 25,000 terrorists, early 2026, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry claims around 67,000–71,000 deaths, though these figures include combatants and are often inflated or unverified; independent analyses suggest the true toll, while heartbreaking, reflects the consequences of Hamas’s war crimes rather than Israeli aggression. Israel’s fight is not against Palestinians but against Iranian-backed extremists who prioritize jihad over peace, sacrificing their own to perpetuate conflict.

In the face of such evil, Israel’s resilience and commitment to defending democracy shine through, underscoring the moral clarity: a sovereign nation protecting its people from genocidal threats, while the world must hold Iran and its proxies accountable for the bloodshed they engineer. at N.E.R.

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Brutal. Triggernometry's Viral Skit Destroys Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tate and 'Friends' | WATCH. Hitler himself would rage-quit over today's motley crew of antisemites: Mexicans, Sudanese influencers, and IQ-deficient Arabs peddling Nazi vibes. TRIGGERnometry's viral Downfall parody exposes the pathetic irony.

Jfeed Staff. Jan 20, 2026 09:29 JFeed

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Violent ambush. TORONTO CHAOS: Pro-Palestinian Mob Targets Israeli Comedian Guy Hochman | WATCH. Jan 20, 2026. JFeed

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No apology issued Tate Brothers Deny That They Danced to Heil Hitler at Miami Club Despite clear footage, Andrew and Tristan Tate dodge accountability for a Miami nightclub fiasco where Kanye West's 'Heil Hitler' blared amid Nazi salutes. Denials fly, but no apology, exposing their toxic ties and hollow condemnations.

Bianca Jones Jan 20, 2026 08:54 JFeed

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Apology follows major backlash. Channel 13 Reporter Sparks Outrage with Tweet Wishing for End of Haredi Society "Only in museums": Channel 13's Yosef Israel ignites a firestorm by calling for the total erasure of Haredi society and branding them "leeches." Inside the brutal backlash, the Nazi comparisons, and the apology that failed to stop the outrage.

Jfeed Staff Jan 20, 2026 09:05 JFeed

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Melbourne Jewish teens threatened, ‘Heil Hitler’ yelled as car nearly struck boy. The five boys, who were dressed in traditional Chassidic garb, were walking home when they were subjected to antisemitic abuse and threats. JNS Staff. ([52]. A pro-Palestinian rally in Melbourne, Australia, on Oct. 15, 2023).

(Jan. 20, 2026 / JNS) Melbourne police said on Tuesday that they were investigating reports that a group of Jewish teenagers was threatened and narrowly missed being struck by a vehicle while walking home from school on Monday night.

Police said the five boys, who were dressed in traditional Chassidic garb, were walking home after evening classes when they were subjected to antisemitic abuse and threats by occupants of a white utility vehicle.

The occupants of the car were said to have shouted slurs, threatened to stab them and yelled “Heil Hitler,” before the vehicle narrowly missed one of the boys as the group frantically ran from the scene.

Victoria Police acting Commander Adrian Healy told ABC News that the car, which was fitted with New South Wales registration plates, then ran a red light and continued driving around the area looking for the boys.

The vehicle had been stolen and was previously used to carry out two aggravated burglaries and a series of car thefts in the same area, according to police.

The incident reportedly occurred near Melbourne’s Haredi Adass Israel Synagogue, which was firebombed on Dec. 6, 2024 in a terrorist attack Canberra has said was orchestrated by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The father of one of the victims, Chayim Klein, told ABC News that the boys did not carry mobile phones and had to run to a payphone to call police. He said they were put on hold and had to hang up to escape.

“They are little children. Yes, they’re 16, but they’re not exposed to this. They’re good boys. They’re in school, they study, they learn hard. They’re not used to that kind of behaviour or intimidation,” Klein told the outlet.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the “antisemitic hate incident … targeting young Jewish boys has no place in our country.”

“At a time when Australians are joining with the Jewish community in sorrow and solidarity, it is beyond disgusting to see these cowards shouting Nazi slogans at young people,” he said, per The Guardian.

The incident came as parliament convened in Canberra on Monday for a special sitting to commemorate the 15 people shot and murdered by two terrorists at a Chanukah celebration in Sydney on Dec. 14.

The father-and-son terrorists, inspired by Islamic State ideology, opened fire on a crowd gathered for a celebration of the holiday, killing and wounding dozens in a premeditated, antisemitic terrorist attack.

The Jewish community is “not alone,” Albanese said in his speech to the House of Representatives. “I give you this solemn promise on behalf of every Australian—we will not meet your suffering with silence. We will not leave you in darkness,” the premier’s remarks continued.

“We will continue to do everything required to ensure your security, uphold your safety, and protect and honor your place here with us, as Australians,” he vowed. JNS

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Florida club Vendome apologizes, fires employees for playing ‘Hitler’ song. The venue has since banned media personalities Nick Fuentes, Myron Gaines and Andrew Tate, who requested the song while in the VIP section.

(Jan. 20, 2026 / JNS) A Miami nightclub has fired three employees and permanently banned a group of antisemitic influencers, including far-right podcaster and “groyper” leader Nick Fuentes, blogger [Amrou Fudl ] Myron Gaines and former professional kickboxer Andrew Tate, after the club played the Kanye (“Ye”) West song, “Heil Hitler” on Jan. 17.

A widely circulated video shows the group in the VIP section of Vendome singing along to West’s song, which has been banned on major music streaming platforms.

“A group of influencers who bolster antisemitism with their hateful behavior walk into a club in Miami and request Ye’s ‘Heil Hitler’ song … No, this isn’t the setup of a joke. It actually happened. And guess what? The nightclub shamefully obliged,” the Anti-Defamation League said.

“Why would a nightclub play a song that glorifies Hitler and was banned by multiple streaming platforms?” the ADL asked rhetorically. “Imagine being Jewish, out for a fun night, and now you’re surrounded by people performing Nazis salutes to a song that glorifies the individual responsible for murdering 6 million other Jews. This is not ok.”

Vendome said on Jan. 19 that it had completed an interview review. “This isolated incident involved three people which have been terminated from their employment,” the club stated. “We have also permanently banned the individuals involved in this incident from the Vendome premises.”

It also acknowledged that the episode “should never have occurred,” and that it has implemented new safeguards to make sure that its venue “is never used as a platform for discrimination, hate, antisemitism or any other behavior harmful towards our community.”

JNS sought comment from Vendome but did not immediately hear back.

After the footage was circulated, Vendome released a statement saying it was “conducting an internal review to understand the circumstances surrounding how this requested song came to be played during a bottle parade. We will take immediate action to hold the responsible parties accountable.”

The club noted that “our ownership and leadership reflect a diverse group of partners, backgrounds and faiths, including members of the Jewish community, and we are deeply disturbed by the harm caused by this incident and the circulation of this footage.”

Vendome was founded by Jonathan Mansour, Adel Bourkia, Byram Zaied and Fallou Bathily, all French. Local outlets are reporting that Mansour can be spotted in the video.

Steven Meiner, the Orthodox Jewish mayor of Miami Beach, Fla., said he was “deeply disturbed by these videos of twisted individuals glorifying Hitler and the murder of millions.”

“Miami Beach is a welcoming, inclusive city built by people of all backgrounds and faiths,” he said. “These ‘influencers’ who spread hate should never have been welcomed into this club or allowed to play a song with ‘Heil Hitler’ lyrics that has been universally condemned.”

Daniella Levine Cava, mayor of Miami-Dade County, called the incident “deeply disturbing and unacceptable.” She stated that “we stand against antisemitism and all hate, and expect swift accountability to keep our community safe and respectful for all.” JNS

The Hitlerist Islamo Arab clubbing:

Owned by the French citizens: Jonathan Mansour, Adel Bourkia, Byram Zaied and Fallou Bathily.

Jonathan Mansour has Arab-Iraqi roots; Adel Bourkia and Byram Zaied appear to have North African French backgrounds - AKA Arabs.

• Fallou Bathily is of Senegalese West African descent [Senegal is 95-97% Muslim].

• Amrou Fudl is that infamous "Myron Gaines" black Muslim fascist.

• Andrew Tate converted to Islam, once praised ISIS and became vocal pro "Palestine..." The Arab Mansour was seen in the Hitlerism video.

at MyRightWord

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Netanyahu: Iran will face unprecedented force if it attacks Israel. "No one can predict what tomorrow will bring in Iran, but one thing is clear: no matter what happens—Iran will not return to being what it was," said the Israeli premier. Akiva Van Koningsveld. (Jan. 20, 2026 / JNS) If the Islamic Republic attacks Israel, Jerusalem “will act with might that Iran has not seen before,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday. JNS

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Number of UK Schools Marking Holocaust Has Dropped by Nearly 60% Since Oct. 7 Massacre. January 20, 2026 . By David Swindle

Tens of thousands joined the National March Against Antisemitism in London, Nov. 26, 2023. Photo: Tayfun Salci/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

The number of British schools commemorating the Holocaust has plummeted by nearly 60 percent following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.

Since Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists perpetrated the largest single-day massacre of Jews since World War II, the number of secondary schools across the UK signed up for events commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, which takes place annually on Jan. 27, dropped to fewer than 1,200 in 2024 and 854 in 2025, according to data from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

The figure had been rising each year since 2019, reaching more than 2,000 secondary schools in 2023.

There are about 4,200 secondary schools in the UK.

Sir Ephraim Mirvis, chief rabbi of the UK, commented on the figures in an essay published in The Sunday Times, expressing alarm about an increasingly hostile environment for the British Jewish community.

“I fear for what will happen this year,” Mirvis wrote. “For if we cannot teach our children to remember the past with integrity and resolve, then we must ask ourselves what kind of future they will inherit.” Algemeiner

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French Jewish Community Marks 20 Years Since Ilan Halimi’s Brutal Murder. By Ailin Vilches Arguello. January 20, 2026.

France’s Jewish community on Tuesday commemorated the 20th anniversary of the death of Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man who was brutally tortured to death, as his memory continues to be defaced amid a rising tide of antisemitism threatening Jews and Israelis across the country.

“Twenty years on, Ilan Halimi’s memory still needs to be protected and honored, yet it continues to come under attack, as recent vandalism at his memorial site shows,” the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — the main representative body of French Jews — wrote in a post on X.

“Antisemitism remains a persistent threat in France today,” the statement read.

Le 20 janvier 2006 marque l’enlèvement et le début de la séquestration d’Ilan Halimi, 23 ans, parce qu’il était Juif.

20 ans plus tard, alors que la mémoire d’Ilan Halimi doit être protégée et honorée, elle continue d’être atteinte, comme l’ont montré les récents actes de… [pic.twitter.com/Htu9ntMHhq] [53]

— CRIF (@Le_CRIF) January 20, 2026

Last week, another olive tree planted to honor Halimi’s memory was vandalized and cut down, as French authorities continue efforts to replant trees in remembrance of the young Jewish man who was murdered in 2006.

“We will bring those responsible to justice,” French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez wrote in a post on X. “Our collective outrage is matched only by our unwavering determination to combat antisemitic and anti-religious acts that continue to tarnish the memory of an innocent man.”

This latest antisemitic act came after a plaque honoring Halimi was vandalized in Cagnes-sur-Mer, a town in southeastern France, prompting local authorities to open an investigation for “destruction and antisemitic damage.”

According to local reports, a 29-year-old man with no prior criminal record has been arrested. While he admitted to the acts, he denied any antisemitic motive and is now awaiting trial.

Last year, a tree planted in memory of Halimi was also vandalized and cut down in Épinay-sur-Seine, a suburb north of Paris.

Two Tunisian twin brothers were arrested and convicted for cutting down the tree, but were acquitted of the antisemitism charges brought against them.

Both of them were sentenced to eight months in prison, but one of them received a suspended sentence, meaning he will not serve time unless he commits another offense or violates certain conditions.

According to local media, one of the brothers has reportedly been deported from France.

Halimi was abducted, held captive, and tortured in January 2006 by a gang of about 20 people in a low-income housing estate in the Paris suburb of Bagneux.

Three weeks later, Halimi was found in Essonne, south of Paris, naked, gagged, and handcuffed, with clear signs of torture and burns. The 23-year-old died on the way to the hospital.

In 2011, French authorities planted the first olive tree in Halimi’s memory. However, the young Jewish boy’s memory has faced attacks before, with two other trees planted in his honor vandalized in 2019 in Essonne, where he was found dying near a railway track. https://www.algemeiner.com/2026/01/20/french-jewish-community-marks-20-years-since-ilan-halimis-brutal-murder/ Algemeiner]

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US-Based Anti-Zionist Groups Spread Terrorist Propaganda on Social Media, New Report Shows. By Dion J. Pierre. January 20, 2026.

Anti-Zionist groups operating in the US are using social media to spread anti-Israel propaganda confected by foreign terrorist organizations based in Gaza and elsewhere across the Middle East, according to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

“Protesters and activists are not merely praising the activity of terror groups; they are actively sharing their official propaganda, disseminating communiqués, videos, and other materials directly into mainstream platforms,” says the report, titled “Digital Couriers.”

“This propaganda spread functions to normalize the eliminationist goals and terrorist tactics espoused by groups like Hamas and the [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] within certain activist circles in the US,” the report continues. “It blurs the line between legitimate protest and explicit endorsement of terrorism and antisemitic violence.”

The groups employ a number of social media platforms to further the mission, including “Resistance News Network” (RNN) on Telegram, a “radical, antisemitic, anti-Zionist” channel which “plays a key role in getting translated terrorist content into the hands of American activists, while also creating and packaging its own content and glorifying terror attacks and other violence.”

Instagram is another online service which pro-Hamas activists use as a news wire. It is especially popular with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), an organization that has been central to the campus antisemitism crisis that has seen Jewish students harassed, excluded, and assaulted at colleges across the US.

SJP, the ADL says, has shared messages by Hamas spokesmen, commemorated the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel as a day of celebration for the anti-Zionist movement, and shared footage from that day in which a Hamas fighter was “inside the home of an Israeli family.”

The ADL argues social media platforms should aim for “disrupting the pipeline,” enforcing their “existing policies” which already proscribe sharing content of foreign terrorist groups. College and universities, it continues, are responsible for ensuring that students do not do so and break federal law in the process.

“More broadly, it is incumbent upon the general public to engage in due diligence when consuming and sharing content online and associating with activist groups and individuals,” the report concludes.

Anti-Zionist groups have been flagged before for functioning as arms of Hamas while promoting Islamism as well as the geopolitical aims of countries such as Iran.

In October, SJP’s national office (NSJP) appeared to call for executing Muslim “collaborators” working with Israel in retaliation for the death of Palestinian influencer Saleh Al-Jafarawi during a brewing conflict between the Hamas terrorist group and a rival clan, Doghmush, in Gaza City.

“Saleh’s martyrdom is a testament to the fact that the fight against Zionism in all its manifestations — from the [Israel Defense Forces] to its collaborators — must continue,” the group said in a statement posted on social media. “In the face of hundreds of thousands of martyred Palestinians these past two years alone, collaborators and informants maintain their spineless disposition as objects of Zionist influence against their own people.”

The statement launched a series of unfounded charges alleging that anti-Hamas forces are “exploiting Gaza’s youth for money” and pilfering “desperately needed aid to the killing of their own people in service of Zionism.” NSJP added, “Death to the occupation. Death to Zionism. Death to all collaborators.”

Additionally, NSJP has publicly discussed its strategy of using the anti-Zionist student movement as a weapon for destroying the US, saying in 2024 that “divestment [from Israel] is not an incrementalist goal” but enacted with the later goal of setting off “the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself.” On the same day the group issued that statement, Columbia University’s most strident pro-Hamas organization was reported to be distributing literature calling on students to join the Palestinian terrorist group’s movement to destroy Israel during the school’s convocation ceremony.

“This booklet is part of a coordinated and intentional effort to uphold the principles of the thawabit and the Palestinian resistance movement overall by transmitting the words of the resistance directly,” said a pamphlet distributed by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), an SJP spinoff, to incoming freshmen. “This material aims to build popular support for the Palestinian war of national liberation, a war which is waged through armed struggle.”

Other sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose is to build an army of Muslims worldwide.

“We call upon the masses of our Arab and Islamic nations, its scholars, men, institutions, and active forces to come out in roaring crowds tomorrow,” it added, referring to an event which took place the previous December. “We also renew our invitation to the free people and those with living consciences around the world to continue and escalate their global public movement, rejecting the occupation’s crimes, in solidarity with our people and their just cause and legitimate struggle.”

Middle East experts have long suspected that foreign agents are conspiring with SJP chapters.

In July 2024, then-US National Intelligence Director Avril Haines issued a statement outlining how Iran has encouraged and provided financial support to the anti-Israel campus protest movement and explaining that it is part of a larger plan to “undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.” Haines also confirmed that US intelligence agencies have “observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.” [https://www.algemeiner.com/2026/01/20/us-based-anti-zionist-groups-spread-terrorist-propaganda-social-media-new-report-shows/ Algemeiner]

ALARMING: College Campus Activists Peddling Hamas Propaganda Encouraging Violence Against Jews. January 20, 2026.

Activists on New York City college campuses are helping funnel propaganda directly from Hamas onto mainstream American platforms, amplifying messaging that openly encourages violence against Jews, according to a new study released by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

The report, titled Digital Couriers: How U.S. Anti-Israel Activists Amplify Terror Propaganda on Mainstream Platforms, concludes that some anti-Israel protest movements have crossed a critical line, moving beyond rhetoric and into the active dissemination of official materials produced by Hamas.

“Protestors and activists are not merely praising the activity of terror groups; they are actively sharing their official propaganda, disseminating communiqués, videos, and other materials directly onto mainstream platforms,” the report states.

According to the study, the circulation of Hamas-produced content across Telegram, X, Instagram and other social media platforms has accelerated since the group’s October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel. Researchers warn that the trend reflects a growing normalization of terror rhetoric that explicitly endorses violence against both Israel and Jewish communities worldwide.

“This shared material, which openly praises violent actions and actors, comes at a time of heightened danger for Jews worldwide,” the report notes, pointing to record levels of antisemitic incidents in the United States. “American Jews specifically have been navigating an unprecedentedly high threat landscape.”

The ADL found that propaganda originating from Hamas’ official Arabic-language channels is often translated into English by intermediary accounts before being repackaged and shared by U.S.-based activist groups. One of the most prominent hubs cited in the report is Resistance News Network, a radical English-language Telegram channel with more than 150,000 subscribers that routinely promotes violence against Israel.

From there, the material has spread into activist ecosystems tied to American cities and campuses.

The study documents multiple cases involving groups and individuals in the city sharing or distributing Hamas material. In March 2025, the Bronx Anti-War Coalition reposted a Hamas propaganda poster accompanied by a caption from antisemitic rapper Jonathan Azaziah celebrating the destruction of Israel and using hashtags such as “#WeAreAllHamas.” The same group also reshared a Hamas military post praising a Houthi missile attack on Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport that injured civilians.

The report also highlights in-person dissemination. At Barnard College, activists distributed an English-language document authored by Hamas’ media office that explicitly justified the October 7 attacks. Similar incidents were identified at other institutions nationwide.

On social media, campus-based chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine were repeatedly cited. The SJP chapter at CUNY John Jay College shared a Hamas Al-Qassam Brigades graphic in July 2024 featuring militant imagery and militant slogans in Arabic. At the University of Illinois at Chicago, the SJP chapter posted video footage that appeared to show a Hamas gunman filming himself inside an Israeli family’s home during the October 7 assault. And at University of California, Davis, activists marked the one-year anniversary of the attack by quoting a Hamas spokesperson praising it as a historic military operation.

“These are not abstract expressions of solidarity,” the report notes. “They are direct reproductions of terrorist messaging, presented without context, condemnation, or disclaimers.”

The ADL warns that such activity risks radicalizing audiences, legitimizing terrorist violence, and eroding the guardrails that once kept extremist propaganda off major platforms. It urged social media companies to aggressively enforce existing policies that already prohibit content produced by designated terrorist organizations.

The group also called on Congress to pass the Stopping Terrorists Online Presence and Holding Accountable Tech Entities Act, which would compel platforms to better police terrorist content they currently claim to ban.

College administrators, the ADL said, have a separate responsibility. The report urges universities to clarify when distributing terrorist propaganda violates campus rules or state and federal law, and to hold registered student organizations accountable when they cross that threshold.

“More broadly,” the report concludes, “it is incumbent upon the general public to engage in due diligence when consuming and sharing content online and associating with activist groups and individuals.” YWN

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Israel Issues Veiled Warning to Turkey as Countries Clash Over Gaza Role. Ny Ailin Vilches Arguello. January 20, 2026.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday warned regional powers — in an apparent swipe at Turkey — to abandon any ambitions of restoring an empire, as tensions mount over postwar reconstruction in Gaza and competing efforts to assert regional influence.

At a joint press conference with Greek Defense Minister Nikos Dendias in Athens, Katz said Israel was determined “not to allow actors seeking to undermine regional stability to establish a foothold through terrorism, aggression, or military proxies — in Syria, in Gaza, in the Aegean Sea, or in any other arena.”

“Those who dream of dragging the region backward, establishing control through terror, or rebuilding empires at the expense of sovereign states will encounter a resolute alliance of free, strong nations capable of defending themselves,” Katz continued. Algemeiner

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Miaminewtimes: January 20, 2026. Over the weekend, videos began circulating online showing a group of right-wing influencers partying to rapper Kanye West’s song “Heil Hitler” at at Vendôme’s, a Miami Beach nightclub. In the clips, “manosphere” figures Andrew Tate and Myron Gaines, as well as well-known white nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes, are seen singing along to the song — which glorifies Adolf Hitler — inside the nightclub Vendôme.

The videos quickly drew widespread backlash, with hundreds of commenters flooding the nightclub's Instagram page and some calling for a boycott. In response, the club issued a statement condemning antisemitism and hate speech, calling the incident “deeply offensive and unacceptable” and saying it was investigating how it occurred.

However, the same viral clips appear to show Vendôme owner Jonathan Mansour standing alongside the influencers during their time at the club.

👉 To read the full developing story by Alex DeLuca, visit miaminewtimes.com at the link in bio. 📸 Screenshot via Kick on Instagram

End Jew Hatred @EndJewHatred: When Jew-hating rhetoric shows up at your door, you don’t appease it, you shut it down.

Miami nightlife entrepreneur @davidgrutman David Grutman did exactly that. After neo-Nazis Myron Gaines, Nick Fuentes, and their supporters were welcomed at Vendome, a club owned by competitor Jonathan Mansour, Grutman made it clear these individuals have no place in his venues or his city. He banned them from all of his nightclubs and restaurants, standing up against hatred without excuses. Jan 20, 2026 on X

Vendôme Co-Owner Appeared Alongside Influencers Partying to ‘Heil Hitler’. Jonathan Mansour is an owner and co-founder of the South Beach nightclub. By Alex DeLuca. January 20, 2026 MiamiNewTimes

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Crazy footage from inside the run-over bus: “Crazy! Oh my!” | Must investigate. New footage from inside the bus that ran over the young man Naftali Zvi Kramer (18) from Jerusalem, a student at the Satmar Yeshiva on Route 3533 at the entrance to Kommiyot. Girls who were on the bus documented the driver's rampage, which raises serious questions about the possibility of a deliberate runover. JDN staff. 3 Bishvat 5775 (January 21, 2026) HDN

An ordinary accident? The heavy question marks following the shocking footage of the run-over of the late teenager Naftali Kramer. While the police were quick to determine that the runover of the late Naftali Kramer was a "normal traffic accident," new footage from inside the bus reveals a different and horrifying reality: "We will not rest until the driver is brought to justice" | United Torah Judaism Chairman in conversation with Minister Ben Gvir: "An act committed with malice". Avi Gadlovitch| News in Israel. 21.01.26 | 10:35

An ordinary accident? The hard question marks following the shocking footage of the run-over of the late teenager Naftali Kramer The moment of the crush Photo: Courtesy of the family.

The terrible tragedy that occurred last night at the Kommiut intersection, in which the young man Naftali Zvi Kramer, a Satmar yeshiva student, lost his life, is taking a dramatic turn this morning. While in the early hours the police tried to portray the incident as a routine traffic accident unrelated to the demonstrations held in the area, a new video released this morning raises serious and disturbing question marks about the driver's conduct.

In the chilling footage from inside the bus, girls on the bus can be heard recognizing the approaching danger even before the impact. The screams heard on the bus left no doubt about the panic that gripped the passengers at the way the driver was driving: "Here are all the boys, what is he doing? He's crazy, motherfucker... It's boys, enough! What is this, what did he do, you idiot!"

Seconds later, a horrific scream is heard – the moment when the bus violently hit the late Kramer, who was on his way to a yeshiva. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and the shock turned into heavy mourning with his funeral procession held at night in Jerusalem.

The driver is expected to be brought in for an extended detention on suspicion of reckless homicide, negligent homicide, and endangering human life on a highway. In light of the new evidence, Kramer's family is demanding that the police complete their investigation of the driver.

"The blood of the Haredim is not in vain".

Following the shocking documentation, United Torah Judaism Chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf spoke this morning with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and demanded an uncompromising investigation.

"The new footage, which shows the bus driver accelerating toward the group of protesters, leaves no room for doubt that the action was done maliciously," Goldknopf attacked. According to him, Minister Ben Gvir promised that the police would investigate the incident thoroughly and emphasized: "The blood of our Haredi brothers will not be in vain."

MK Meir Porush also commented and linked the matter to the tragedy of the killing of the young man Yosef Eisenthal, the late: "The serious phenomenon whereby time after time, ultra-Orthodox Jews participating in protests are injured, and in two cases this even claimed human lives, requires a rigorous and incisive examination. Every person has the right to protest, and every Jew in the Land of Israel deserves the opportunity to express his pain over what is happening without fear of being harmed. Every effort must be made to ensure that these acts will not, God forbid, be repeated, and the drivers who run over people must be punished very severely." Bhol

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The courage of Iranians and the cowardice of Westerners Cowardice is an effective survival strategy for effete westerners, but courage emerges in Iran where fear no longer has any power. Opinion. Giulio Meotti Jan 20, 2026, 7:11 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Fatah shares Hamas’s goal to destroy Israel. Much of the international community has clung to the fiction that Hamas and Fatah are different—that Hamas is irredeemably extremist, while Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, is flawed but pragmatic.

Moshe Phillips. (Jan. 19, 2026 / JNS) Abbas Zaki, a senior Fatah leader and member of its Central Committee, the Palestinian Authority’s ruling political party, said recently that “Israel is doomed to perish.”

This is not an isolated incident; when examined closely, there’s little difference between the future that Fatah and Hamas want. And that is a future where Israel does not exist.

Zaki said this is as part of a Jan. 9 interview with Arabi 21, an Arabic news website based in the United Kingdom: “In the end, the winner is the one who remains on the land … and those who will remain are the ones with the idea, the idea that says there is no escaping the fact that this land will be liberated, and that the land of peace cannot be based on revenge. Israel is doomed to perish.”

There is no ambiguity here. No mistranslation. No context that softens the meaning. This is not the rhetoric of a partner for peace or the language of a movement committed to a peaceful future. It is a declaration of intent—one that mirrors, almost perfectly, the genocidal aims openly proclaimed by Hamas.

But there’s more. Zaki is not a marginal figure in Fatah. Twenty years ago, he served as the top representative to Lebanon for the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which at the time was one of the terror group’s most visible and important foreign-affairs posts. He went on to a position in Beijing. Fatah is the dominant faction of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority.

Nor was this anywhere near the first time Zaki spoke honestly about his desire to see Israelis and Jews slaughtered. In 2014, he said, “These Israelis have no religion and no principles, they are an advanced instrument of evil,” and “I believe that God will gather them so we can kill them.”

And just days after Hamas led the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, The Times of Israel reported: “In an interview with the Lebanese channel, Fatah’s Abbas Zaki thanked the armed wings of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, responsible for the Oct. 7 onslaught.”

For years, much of the international community has clung to the comforting fiction that Hamas and Fatah are fundamentally different—that Hamas is irredeemably extremist while Fatah, which dominates the P.A., is merely flawed but pragmatic. Zaki’s words expose that illusion. It is really hard to tell what separates Hamas and Fatah.

As uncomfortable as it may be for New York Times pundits and leaders of groups like J Street, who have spent decades heavily invested in the “peace process,” the truth is this: Hamas and Fatah share more in common than what separates them, and chief among their shared goals is the elimination of the Jewish state.

The P.A. and Hamas are partners in terrorism. The past moments of tension between the two terrorist groups reflected either internal disputes unrelated to Israel or arguments over tactics regarding Israel, not differences in their overall goals.

In July 2024, Hamas and Fatah agreed to form a unity government together after the Israel-Hamas war ends, and they issued a joint statement about their commitment to future meetings. The unity pact their representatives signed in Beijing (of all places) made their true motives very clear. Mahmoud Abbas, head of the P.A., has not made any official new statements since Beijing, saying that he will no longer abide by his July 2024 pledge that he would work with Hamas.

That unity agreement should have been a diplomatic earthquake. Instead, it was met with shrugs, rationalizations and willful blindness. Western governments that bankroll the P.A. continue to pretend that Fatah is a moderating force, even as it openly aligns itself with Hamas—the very organization responsible for mass murder, hostage-taking and the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.

Consider that the 90-year-old Abbas has also long been given a free pass from the United Nations and others regarding the P.A.’s harboring and protecting of terrorists. The P.A. has one of the largest per-capita security forces in the world (more than 60,000 men), largely armed and trained by the United States. Yet instead of using those forces to arrest and extradite terrorists—as the Oslo Accords require—Abbas and friends pay salaries to terrorists and their families, and shelter fugitive terrorists so Israel can’t capture them.

This is not a failure of capacity. It is a failure of will—and, more accurately, a reflection of intent. The P.A. does not arrest terrorists because it does not see them as criminals. It sees them as assets.

That truth became even clearer with the cosmetic rebranding of the notorious “pay-for-slay” system that has rewarded Palestinian Arab terrorism for decades. We were told this system had been reformed. We were told it is now humanitarian, not ideological. This, too, was a lie.

The only way to truly end “pay-for-slay” is for the P.A. to announce that anybody who has engaged in violence against Israel is disqualified from any P.A. payments. That would demonstrate that the entity sincerely rejects terrorism. Anything less is a sham, which is designed to pull the wool over the eyes of the international community.

Zaki said the quiet part out loud: Israel is “doomed to perish.” Hamas has been saying the same thing for years. The difference is no longer substantive, only stylistic.

It is long past time for the international community to stop rewarding duplicity. Diplomatic recognition of the P.A., financial aid without conditions and the pretense that Abbas represents a peaceful alternative have all failed. They have not moderated P.A. leadership; they have emboldened it.

If words still matter, then Zaki’s utterances must have consequences. Governments that genuinely oppose terrorism and support Israel’s right to exist should immediately suspend diplomatic recognition of the P.A.; cut off funding that enables terrorism; and demand real, verifiable rejection of violence, not empty promises.

The future cannot be built on fantasies. And it certainly cannot be built with partners who openly proclaim that Israel “is doomed to perish.” JNS

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Trump on Iran: 'I ordered more bombers, hope we won't need to take action'. U.S. President Donald Trump said that "Iran must stop with the nuclear program." He said this in an interview with CNBC, adding: "I ordered 25 more B2 bombers. I hope that no further action will be needed - they are firing indiscriminately at people in the streets." Ynet|01.21.26. [https://www.ynetnews.com/article/cpqsqy80n YNet[

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'80 million hostages': Iranians under a digital siege amid internet blackout “The Islamic Republic turned the streets into rivers of blood. No one has been able to show the depth of the crimes, because the regime shut down the internet," one anonymous citizen wrote.

Iranians gather while blocking a street during a protest in Tehran, Iran on January 9, 2026. The nationwide protests started in Tehran's Grand Bazaar against the failing economic policies in late December, which spread to universities and other cities

By Alex Winston. January 20, 2026 Many have described the current protests inside Iran as a “Berlin Wall” moment, meant to evoke the unforgettable, positive transformation European geopolitics underwent when the wall came down. Instead, for the past few weeks, what has taken place in Iran is better described as a digital Iron Curtain descending across the country.

What little information escapes the digital wall erected by the Islamic Republic comes only in fragments: text-only messages, broken calls lasting mere seconds, testimony passed through intermediaries abroad. Together, they describe a country under de facto martial law, where streets are controlled by guns and communication itself has become a punishable act. JPost

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Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News. Wednesday, January 21, 2026 The NYT coverage of Iran murdering civilians vs. Gaza shows how media bias works It has been nearly a month since Iran has been mowing down civilians in the streets.

The Jerusalem Post [54] sums it up: The human cost is staggering. According to figures cited by Iranian officials themselves, at least 5,000 people have been killed since protests erupted on December 28, including around 500 members of the security forces. Authorities blame “terrorists and armed rioters.” Human rights activists and opposition groups dispute that narrative and say the death toll could be far higher, potentially exceeding 20,000.

At least 24,669 Iranians have been arrested.

A doctor inside Iran described the killings as “genocide under digital darkness” to the British newspaper The Sunday Times. One couple told the paper they were given “ten minutes to cry” when shown the body of their daughter – after being forced to pay a $5,000 “bullet fee” to recover her remains. After paying, they were driven five hours to another town, where her body had been thrown into an old grave.

Numerous families have reported being charged exorbitant sums to retrieve the bodies of loved ones killed by the regime.

Images shared from within Iran during the past week also show injured protesters admitted to hospitals – tubes and catheters still attached, admission tags visible – and then shot point-blank in the head, their bodies lying on the ground. Doctors have also reportedly refused to treat protesters, branding them enemies of the regime.

Beyond live fire, the blackout is the Islamic Republic’s central weapon against the demonstrators. With mobile data cut nationwide and only sporadic landline access available, Iranians are isolated from one another and from the outside world. Evidence cannot be shared; deaths cannot be documented.

Several Iranians contacted by the Post used the same word to describe their condition.

Hostages. By any reasonable measure, Iran is treating its own people worse than Israel treated Gazans in the first month of its war. While "human rights activists" complained about Israel's supposed limits on reporting, there were plenty of photos and stories that were published and Hamas' press releases were treated as truth.

During October 2023, the New York Times routinely had top stories about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, above the fold, accompanied by photos of Gaza civilians that were three columns wide:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4xAKf0tNyme_wizBc0uXyLbzvYs-zi6peTUEvExfIJRl8LWNLRVzdClswZuoamb89U92c7lEkB_DHxITp1_6wuQVVP7tz_IrXYZBUd-rq9oXRaTfVaIDpVE4Z24czm3mvMTjrGLjHQNtZKwwz1PUL7KK51jAZAQfFpWiJ9e7FRxeHevoos76O-w/w640-h402/download%20-%202026-01-21T074259.957.png

When Iran is the top story, it is more about politics than human lives. I only found one photo above the fold of Iranian civilians - very few stories about Iran make it to the front page, and of those only a tiny number center people being killed.

Here is one of the few.

Keep in mind that even according to Hamas, less than 10,000 were killed in the first month of the war. Human rights activists say 20,000 protesters were killed in Iran - all targeted killings of civilians.

To be sure, there are few photos of Iran that get smuggled out. The NYT did put one up of body bags. Notice that the deaths were placed in the subhead, not the headline.

But the Gaza war was on the front page every single day. These recent Iran articles are the exceptions, not the rule. Even though the regime is ruthlessly attacking its own people, murdering thousands.

The Times could use infographics to replace photos if they thought that the Iranian story was something to emphasize.

Clearly they felt Gaza was. EoZ

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Wednesday, January 21, 2026. Why Anti-Zionist Narratives Cannot Tolerate Jewish Victimhood.

The most extreme anti-Israel accusations are rarely argued. They are asserted, repeated, and emotionally charged, because their function is not to weigh evidence but to establish a moral starting point: Israeli Jews must be understood as uniquely malevolent actors.

Once that assumption is in place, accusations of colonialism, apartheid, or genocide no longer need to be demonstrated. They feel self-evident. Evidence becomes secondary to repetition, and contradiction is dismissed as propaganda.

There is a feedback loop. In order to believe anti-Israel accusations like "settler colonialism[sic]," "apartheid[sic]" or "genocide[sic]," one must initially believe that Israeli Jews [sic] are evil[sic[. Because if you think of them as normal human beings, it is easy to find alternative explanations for the cherry picked evidence that supposedly "prove" those accusations. It happens with Amnesty, it happens with Turkey, it happens with SJP and with Candace Owens.

This is why anti-Zionist narratives work so hard to condition moral intuition. Through slogans, analogies, and fictionalized portrayals, ordinary people are trained to associate Israeli Jews with the worst crimes imaginable. The aim is not persuasion but habituation – to make bad faith feel like common sense.

This conditioning also explains a striking and otherwise baffling pattern: any portrayal of Israelis as victims is treated as inherently suspect. Haters work overtime to make sure that no one else looks at Jews as being normal people, or victims of terror, who are just trying to survive in a neighborhood where most people want to see them dead. October 7 victims cannot be victims - they must be perpetrators. Bondi Beach victims must be part of a false flag operation.

This is not because the facts are unclear. It is because Jewish victimhood breaks the narrative.

To acknowledge Israeli Jews as victims is to acknowledge them as human. And once Jews are allowed to be human – capable of fear, vulnerability, and legitimate self-defense – the entire moral structure of the anti-Zionist narrative begins to collapse. The villain cannot be a victim without destroying the story.

As a result, suffering must be denied, inverted, or blamed on the Jews themselves. Even mass violence is reframed as provocation, manipulation, or performance. The denial is not incidental; it is structural. Anything that humanizes Jews threatens the propaganda’s core objective. Even antisemitism is blamed on Jews - if it is bad, it must be the Jews' fault.

If one begins instead with the assumption that Israelis are ordinary people living under extreme and often tragic constraints, the standard accusations no longer cohere. Civilian deaths remain tragic. Policies can be criticized, sometimes harshly. But claims of genocide or apartheid require importing a prior belief in uniquely evil intent.

That belief is not a conclusion drawn from evidence. It is the belief system that makes the narrative possible in the first place.

Antisemitism is not merely the emotional fuel of anti-Zionism. It is the moral infrastructure that cannot tolerate Jewish humanity. EoZ

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Terror group paraphernalia sold at fundraiser in New York youth center. Pop-up shop held to support Sudan features items in support of Hamas, Hezbollah and the PFLP By Luke Tress. 20 Jan 2026. NEW YORK — Vendors sold paraphernalia for US-designated terrorist groups during a fundraiser held at a New York City youth center on Sunday, according to videos posted online.

The footage showed tables at the event arrayed with keychains, pins and stickers in support of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The US State Department has designated all three groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. ToI

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Turkish Muslim student faces arrest, death threats after calling herself Zionist - interview. Aspiring-journalist Avci moved to Israel from Turkey five years ago. Last week, Instagram influencer Tal The Traveler posted a video in which he asked Avci if she is a Zionist.

([55]. TURKISH MUSLIM student Türkü Avci, now unable to go back to Turkey because of an arrest warrant in her name).

By Mathilda Heller. January 20, 2026. “There is a warrant out for my arrest,” Turkish Muslim student Turku Avci told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Aspiring journalist Avci moved to Israel from Turkey five years ago to study at the Hebrew University. Last week, Instagram influencer Tal Oran, who goes by the username Tal the Traveler, uploaded a video in which he asked Avci if she, a Turkish Muslim woman, was a Zionist. JPost

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Muslim Brotherhood Leaders Attend Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan's Verna In Lahore, Jamaat-e-Islami Emir Hafiz Naeem-ur-Rehman: 'Israel Is An Illegitimate Child Of The West'; 'America Is An Open Enemy Of Humanity'.

January 20, 2026 I By Tufail Ahmad and Yigal Carmon.

Pakistan I Inquiry & Analysis Series No. 1906.

A delegation of Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen ("the Muslim Brotherhood," MB) was among 150 delegates of Islamic religious organizations from 45 countries that took part in the three-day ijtema ("religious congregation") organized by Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan on November 21-23, 2025.[1]

The gathering addressed several issues concerning Pakistan and the Islamic world, while an international session on the second day of the three-day event was focused on Gaza and Israel.

The MB delegation was led by Dr. Muhyiddin Al-Zayt, member of the MB Supreme Administrative Authority, on behalf of Dr. Salah Abdel Haq, the acting General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood.[2]

According to the official website of the Muslim Brotherhood, the delegation members included Dr. Helmy Al-Gazzar and Mahmoud Al-Ibiary, members of the MB Supreme Administrative Authority; and Suhaib Abdel Maqsoud, also a member of the MB Supreme Administrative Authority and its media spokesperson.[3]

It should be noted that on November 24, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the banning of the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), especially the organization's chapters in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt for engaging in or facilitating and supporting violence and destabilization campaigns that "harm their own regions, United States citizens, and United States interests" - according to a White House announcement. MEMRI

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Activist Probed for Anti-Israel Posts No Longer Assistant Attorney General of Michigan, State Tells JNS. By JNS.org -January 20, 2026.

([56].Zena Ozeir listed on a flyer for a Jan. 17, 2026 event. Source: Screen capture).

Jessica Russak-Hoffman | JNS

Zena Ozeir lists her current role on LinkedIn as assistant attorney general of the state of Michigan — a role that she has held since June 2023, per her profile.

The office of Dana Nessel, Michigan attorney general and a Democrat, told JNS exclusively that Ozeir does not currently hold that position.

“Zena Ozeir is no longer employed by the Michigan Department of Attorney General,” Kimberly Bush, Nessel’s director of public information and education, told JNS.

JNS sought comment from Nessel’s office about whether Ozeir was dismissed, and if so, whether it was as a result of a probe by the state office of her social media posts.

In June 2024, Nessel’s office told the Detroit News that it was investigating social-media posts, in which Ozeir appeared to direct expletives at America and Israel.

She made her handle private after the Detroit News sought comment from Nessel’s office, the paper said.

On Jan. 17, Ozeir was a panelist at an in-person event, which the group Palestine Solidarity Grand Rapids hosted in the city, per one of its social media posts. The event was hosted at the Fountain Street Church Sanctuary, per a flier, which identifies Ozeir as an “attorney, activist and USPCN member.” (The latter refers to the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, which “works closely with and unequivocally supports Students for Justice in Palestine,” per its site.)

The event flyer calls for the Holy Land 5 — leaders of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, who were convicted in 2008 of funnelling millions of dollars to Hamas — to be freed.

According to the Grand Rapids group, more than 100 people attended the panel, which featured Nida Abu Baker, whose father, Shukri Abu Baker, is one of the five who were convicted. Anti-war activist Tom Burke was also listed on the flier.

“We have learned that the law is not meant to protect us,” Ozeir said at the event. “This was something that’s been going on before Palestine was in the headlines all the time, and before 2023, and it’s a shame that it took a genocide for Palestine to become front and center.”

“The Holy Land Foundation case established that humanitarian aid providing public-support benefit to a group like Hamas constitutes terrorism support,” she added. “Wherever the wind blows, you could wake up one day, and Trump says, ‘Hey, I’m going to designate this a foreign terrorist organization, and then you are at risk of material support of terrorism.’”

The State Bar of California website states that Ozeir has an active license. It lists her address as the Michigan Office of the Attorney General. JewishExponent

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Michigan has to be more clear about how, why its assistant attorney general left, Jewish groups says. JNS reported that Zena Ozeir is no longer an assistant attorney general in the Wolverine State, although the state attorney general’s office wouldn’t say if she was dismissed for antisemitic posts. Jessica Russak-Hoffman. (Jan. 21, 2026 / JNS) National Jewish organizations called for the state of Michigan to be more clear about the nature of Zena Ozeir’s departure from the state government after JNS reported on Tuesday that she is no longer an assistant Michigan attorney general.

“No public office holder should be engaging in this kind of hateful and inciteful rhetoric,” Daniel Mariaschin, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, told JNS.

“There is an obligation on the part of the Michigan attorney general’s office to make clear precisely what prompted her departure from such an influential public position,” Mariaschin said.

After JNS reported that Ozeir still listed her job as current on LinkedIn, she changed her profile to state that she is an “assistant attorney general” but that her job in that capacity at the Michigan Department of Attorney General ended in January 2026.

The office of Dana Nessel, Michigan attorney general and a Democrat, told JNS on Tuesday that Ozeir does not currently hold that position. “Zena Ozeir is no longer employed by the Michigan Department of Attorney General,” Kimberly Bush, Nessel’s director of public information and education, told JNS JNS

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Iran hospitals, morgues face body bag shortages, local sources say. Iran International l. January 21, 2026 Iran hospitals, morgues face body bag shortages, local sources say Medical facilities in several Iranian cities are facing shortages of body bags as the number of people killed in nationwide protests rises, witnesses told Iran International, describing a heavy security presence at hospitals and morgues.

In messages received from inside Iran on Wednesday, sources said the shortage has led to the accumulation of protesters’ bodies in hospital halls and morgues, while security forces have intervened in the process of handing over the remains.

They said hospital entrances are being tightly controlled, medical staff and families are under pressure, and the registration of information related to the dead has been restricted, in an apparent effort to prevent the true number of those killed from becoming public. Iran Intl

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US deploys F‑15 squadron to Mideast as tensions with Iran rise. CENTCOM deploys an F‑15 squadron to the Middle East, citing enhanced readiness and regional security as tensions with Iran persist. Israel National News. Jan 21, 2026, 5:22 AM (GMT+2) INN

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EU moves to expand drone, missile tech ban on Iran. EU chief Ursula von der Leyen announces plans to expand drone and missile tech export bans on Iran as the regime’s crackdown leaves thousands dead. Israel National News. Jan 21, 2026, 5:40 AM (GMT+2) INN

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IAEA chief warns Iran standoff nearing breaking point. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi warns Iran must account for missing enriched uranium and allow inspections at bombed sites, saying the standoff “cannot go on forever". Elad Benari. Jan 21, 2026, 6:57 AM (GMT+2) INN

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U.S. Troops in Israel. Exposed: Pentagon Planning Massive "Mega-Base" in Gaza Envelope - Here's What to Know. Secret US Plan Exposed: The Pentagon is planning a $500 million "mega-base" near the Gaza border to house thousands of international peacekeepers. Report reveals a dramatic expansion of US military presence in Israel. Jfeed Staff. Jan 21, 2026 13:06 JFeed

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IDF Responds to Gaza Incident: "We Struck Suspects Operating a Hamas Drone". IDF Confirms Drone Strike: The Israeli military responds to the deadly incident in Gaza, stating forces targeted suspects operating a "Hamas drone" that posed a threat. The event is under review.read more Jfeed Staff. January 21, 2026. JFeed

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WARNING: GRAPHIC. Chilling Footage: Iranian Security Forces Attack Protester with Axe [VERY GRAPHIC]. Horrific screams echo as Iranian thugs hack a defenseless protester with an axe, raw proof of Tehran's savage tyranny crushing dissent. Jfeed Staff. January 21, 2026. JFeed

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Netanyahu Joins Trump's 'Board of Peace' Despite Serious Concerns. Trump's UN Alternative: The "Board of Peace" expands beyond Gaza with a $1B entry fee. As Israel and Argentina sign on, Europe pushes back against the initiative to bypass the United Nations. Jfeed Staff. January 21, 2026 JFeed

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The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Opinion: To fixate on flawed accusations against Israel while ignoring genuine, massive atrocities elsewhere is to repeat ominous historical precedents. From jpost.com [57] Jan 21, 2026. on X

Buzzwords and false allegations are Western human rights inversion - opinion. To fixate on flawed accusations against Israel while ignoring genuine, massive atrocities elsewhere is to repeat ominous historical precedents.

By Alan Baker. January 21, 2026.

With tragedies abounding, the Western brainwashing machinery is working overtime against Israel.

Thousands murdered and brutally subjugated in Iran. Thousands of non-Arab ethnic groups butchered in Sudan. Massive death tolls in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Myanmar violently represses its Rohingya and other minorities. Mass atrocities by Boko Haram and other extremist groups in Nigeria. Extrajudicial killings of civilians in Tanzania. Massacres of Christians in churches and hospitals in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But Western media outlets, social-media platforms, UN and human rights committees, political leaders and parliamentarians, incited university students, and ignorant show-biz celebrities spout accusations against Israel of genocide, apartheid, starvation, and disproportionate military actions. Such paragons of humanitarian virtue claim to defend human rights and advocate for Palestinians, but glaringly ignore everyone else and deny the rights to which Israel and its citizens are entitled. They ignore genocidal violence and terror by Palestinian and Islamist fanatics, which is incited by Palestinian leadership and supported, encouraged, and financed by Iran, Qatar, and Turkey.

No less glaring is the fact that the Western world chooses to forget the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023 – the rape, torture, burning, and butchery of thousands of Israelis and foreigners; the taking of hundreds of hostages; and the use of Hamas’s own civilians as human shields. A child wears a Hamas head banner after Friday prayers in Gaza City.

What should be a universal moral standard of human rights has become a cynical and transparent political weapon, directed against Israel.

Popular buzzwords against Israel.

Popular buzzwords – “genocide,” “apartheid,” “colonialism,” “racism,” “starvation,” and “indiscriminate destruction” – are the lingua franca of this propaganda fixation against Israel. They are chanted at demonstrations, repeated in Western parliaments, and echoed in politicized international courts.

A well-financed system of brainwashing, funded by Qatar, Iran, and Turkey, feeds this narrative, which is eagerly absorbed by a woke-inspired international chorus of useful idiots in Europe and the West.

The allegation of “genocide” is particularly offensive and contrived. It was coined in 1944 by the Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin in response to the Nazi attempt to annihilate the Jews and was criminalized in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. Today it is cynically repackaged and applied against Israel, most prominently in South Africa’s absurd claims at the International Court of Justice. Thus, a legal instrument intended to punish genocide, as well as a once-respected international court, have been turned into political weapons.

This genocide accusation willfully misinterprets the convention’s definition, while those accusing Israel conveniently ignore explicit genocidal calls to eliminate Israel “from the river to the sea,” which heralded Hamas’s October 7 “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack. No proceedings have been initiated against those inciting or supporting genocide against Israel and the Jewish people.

The apartheid claim.

Equally contrived is the buzzword “apartheid,” copy-pasted from South Africa’s repressive system of institutionalized racial segregation. The UN-driven attempt to label Israel an apartheid state traces back to the 1975 General Assembly’s politicized resolution branding Zionism as racism – later revoked in 1991 but never erased from the public narrative.

It resurfaced at the 2001 Durban Racism Conference and continues to fuel campaigns to delegitimize Israel and justify sanctions modeled on those once imposed on South Africa.

This propaganda ignores Israel’s multi-racial, pluralistic democracy, where Arab citizens enjoy constitutional equality, freedom of expression, and full political representation. Israel’s security restrictions on Palestinian movement and access in parts of Judea and Samaria are not racially based, but a legitimate response to ongoing terror and incitement by Hamas and other groups.

False starvation charge.

The allegation that Israel pursues a policy of starvation in Gaza is another false charge, promoted through manipulated Hamas statistics and willingly amplified by Arab and foreign media, UN bodies, and even the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in his arrest warrant against Israel’s prime minister.

Hardships faced by civilians in Gaza stem from the conflict situation – including chaotic handling of aid by international bodies and the systematic commandeering of trucks and cargo by Hamas, which sells supplies at inflated prices in local markets.

A controversial August 2025 study by the UN-affiliated “Famine Review Committee” fueled this narrative, despite being widely criticized and discredited for methodological flaws and data manipulation. Israel enables rapid and unimpeded passage of relief into Gaza, as reflected in UN and World Food Programme statistics on functioning food markets and the availability of humanitarian goods.

Accusations of indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks and destruction by Israel in Gaza, disseminated by the Hamas disinformation machine, are readily amplified by sympathetic politicians and media. In reality, the Jewish state undertakes significant efforts, consistent with international humanitarian law, to warn civilians and remove them from combat areas – even as Hamas deliberately embeds its terror infrastructure and operatives in homes, schools, hospitals, high-rises, and an extensive tunnel network beneath civilian neighborhoods. International law explicitly prohibits such use of human shields.

Property used for acts of terror constitutes a legitimate military target.

To fixate on flawed accusations against Israel while ignoring genuine, massive atrocities elsewhere is to repeat ominous historical precedents. This inversion of human-rights values, aimed solely at singling out Israel, should be obvious – but sadly, it is not.

The author is director of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs and head of the Global Law Forum. He participated in negotiating and drafting the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, as well as peace treaties with Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, as well as having served as legal adviser and deputy director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and as its ambassador to Canada. JPost

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Iran acknowledges: At least 3,117 dead in protests. Nitsan Keidar. Jan 21, 2026, 9:05 PM https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/421267

Eight Muslim‑majority nations join the US‑backed Peace Council for Gaza, supporting Trump’s initiative to secure a ceasefire, rebuild Gaza, and advance a political framework. Israel National News. Jan 22, 2026, 4:18 AM (GMT+2)

Foreign ministers from Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates announced on Wednesday that their countries will join a Peace Council for Gaza, following an invitation extended by US President Donald Trump to their leaders, reported Turkish media.

The joint statement, released by Turkey’s Foreign Ministry, reflects a significant diplomatic alignment among major Muslim‑majority states around the American‑led initiative. Each country will sign membership documents according to its own legal and procedural requirements, with Egypt, Pakistan and the UAE already formally declaring participation.

The eight ministers reaffirmed their support for President Trump’s peace efforts and committed to implementing the Peace Council mission as a transitional administration. The mission is outlined in the Comprehensive Plan to End the Conflict in Gaza, approved under UN Security Council Resolution 2803.

According to the statement, the initiative seeks to secure a lasting ceasefire, support Gaza’s reconstruction, and advance what it describes as a just and sustainable peace based on the Palestinian right to self‑determination and statehood under international law. The ministers said these goals are intended to promote security and stability for all peoples in the region.

The ministers emphasized their determination to pursue “fair and lasting peace," noting that diplomatic coordination among the participating countries will continue.

Trump's Board of Peace, an international body chaired by the US President himself, is a central element of the Trump administration's efforts to secure lasting stability in Gaza following the ceasefire which went into effect in October.

The Board of Peace is tasked with providing strategic oversight for Gaza's demilitarization, reconstruction, and transitional governance, coordinating with a Palestinian Arab-led National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) while mobilizing international resources and funding.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Wednesday morning that he has accepted Trump’s invitation and will join the "Board of Peace." INN

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Iranian man pretends to be dead for three days, fearing a regime execution - report According to the account shared by the IHRDC, the family of the man spent three days looking for their son, who had gone missing, searching hospitals and the Behesht Zahra cemetery.

By Sam Halpern. January 21, 2026. An Iranian man lay among the dead at a Kahrizak forensic facility, pretending to be deceased for three days, fearing that if he were discovered, regime officers would execute him with a “finishing shot,” the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center reported on Wednesday, citing an account it had received. JPost

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Witnesses say some victims still breathing at Tehran morgue.

Iran International. January 21, 2026.

Some victims were still breathing among the bodies of dead protesters seen at Tehran’s Kahrizak Forensic Medical Center after a crackdown on protests in the capital, witnesses said in messages sent to Iran International on Wednesday.

According to the accounts, witnesses saw “two piles of bodies” at Kahrizak, some of whom were still breathing, with security forces stacking bodies on top of one another.

Three eye witnesses said security forces used live ammunition and metal pellets during demonstrations in eastern Tehran on Jan. 9, leaving streets “filled with blood.”

They said the shooting took place in the area from Golbarg Street toward Haft-Hoz, adding that it was impossible to film because “bullets and pellets were coming from all directions.”

The witnesses described seeing the body of a naked man lying in a roadside drainage channel.

The eyewitnesses said they were injured but did not seek medical treatment out of fear of arrest or being shot at close range. They added that one of their friends was killed the same night.

They said clinics were overwhelmed with wounded people and that residents searching for missing relatives were forced to step over bodies. IranIntl

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Iranian security forces kill flower shop owner who sheltered protesters.

Iran International. January 21, 2026.

A shopkeeper who sheltered protesters was shot dead by security forces in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz during nationwide demonstrations, people familiar with the matter told Iran International in messages received on Wednesday. IranIntl

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Protesters outside US embassy demand US, Israeli action after Kurdish massacre. Several signs pointed to Israel’s close relationship with the Kurdish community. One read “Israel loves Kurdistan,” while others went further, openly calling for military action against the regime.

Around 50 protesters gathered outside the US embassy to protest against what they described as Washington's inaction in the face of the latest massacre in Syria carried out by the Sharaa regime, on January 21, 2026.

By Danielle Greyman-Kennard January 22, 2026 00:32 Around 50 protesters gathered outside the US embassy on Wednesday night, their voices rising in protest against what they described as Washington’s inaction in the face of the latest massacre carried out by the Sharaa regime. This time, after months of attacks on Syrian minorities, the violence was directed at Syrian Kurds.

Several signs pointed to Israel’s close relationship with the Kurdish community. One read “Israel loves Kurdistan,” while others went further, openly calling for military action against the Sharaa regime. “Bomb Juliani now,” one banner declared. JPost

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Trump on Iran: 'We hope there’s not going to be further action'

Speaking to CNBC, Trump says Iran canceled 837 planned executions after his threat of military action, urges Tehran to stop pursuing nuclear weapons. Elad Benari. Jan 21, 2026, 11:44 PM INN

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ץ׳ Exclusive | After club vows to investigate Nazi incident, it turns out its owners were amid the far-right revelers. Miami club owners who vowed to probe Nick Fuentes’ Nazi night out revealed to have partied with far-right revelers instead. By Mara Siegler. Published. Jan. 20, 2026.

A Miami nightclub solemnly vowed to investigate after a group of white supremacists and accused sex-traffickers were given VIP treatment and danced to Kanye West’s song “Heil Hitler” while enjoying bottle service. But Page Six has learned that the club’s owners were partying with the vile posse.

A group of extremists partied at a Miami nightclub called Vendome this weekend. @Antunes1/X

At least it should make the investigation easy! Over the weekend, video circulated of reviled internet personality Nick Fuentes, Holocaust denier Myron Gaines, right-wing internet personalities Sneako and Clavicular, and Andrew and Tristan Tate — who both stand accused of rape and human trafficking — partying at Vendôme.

They were taped singing along and dancing to the West song.

([58]. The group posted video of Myron Gaines giving a Nazi salute on the way to the club).

By Monday, the club released a statement saying, “We want to make it unequivocally clear: Vendôme and our hospitality group do not condone antisemitism, hate speech, or prejudice of any kind. These values are fundamentally opposed to who we are and the environments we strive to create.” It even said its fired a number of staffers over the matter, and claimed that it “permanently banned the individuals involved” and has “implemented new protocols and safeguards” to ensure it does not happen again.

But video reviewed by Page Six appears to show the club’s owners, Byram Zaied and Jonathan Mansour, partying in the group with Fuentes and friends all evening.

([59]. Nightclub owner Byram Zaied, shown here also crossing his arms in his LinkedIn photo, appears to be standing next to Andrew Tate in video taken during the evening).

One clip shows a man who appears to be Zaied standing next to Andrew, and in a livestream of the evening on Kick by Sneako, a man who appears to be Mansour can be seen at a table with the former kickboxer, who was treated to several shout-outs over the club’s sound system, while club staff carried an illuminated sign reading “Welcome Andrew Tate.”

There’s also video of the hate-filled crew listening to “Heil Hitler” in a van on the way to the club. Gaines, who wrote the book “Why Women Deserve Less,” can be seen yelling “Jews mad!” and throwing a Nazi salute.

Reps for the club did not respond when we asked if Mansour or Zaied were present in the VIP area, and Mansour hung up on us when we called, saying the club had already made a statement. Mansour also did not respond when we sent him a screenshot from the video, asking if the man in the image was him.

DJ Vybz was deejaying the evening.

Both Tate brothers have been charged with human trafficking and rape and are under investigation in three countries... [60].

Fuentes is one of the most well known white supremacists and has espoused misogynistic and homophobic views. Sneako has been banned from several sites for hateful content. Gaines is known for his antisemitic and male supremacist views. Online streamer Clavicular is under age at only 20 years old. He focuses on “looksmaxxing” — a term used by so-called “incels” to describe an uncompromising and sometimes dangerous pursuit of conventional good looks — and advocates using crystal meth as an appetite suppressant and breaking bones to “improve” appearance.

[...] When we asked McBride if Zaied and Mansour were at the table with Tate, he told us he didn’t know.

The club issued an apology after getting backlash. Hours later they said they completed their investigation.

Miami Beach mayor Steven Meiner condemned the incident. He tells Page Six that his office is investigating. He told us, “Multiple [Miami] club owners [have reached out to me since the incident] and said, ‘You don’t play that song, it’s off limits and you don’t have this group’.” He added, “It’s well known to not allow them a forum in a club. How did they get in and get treated as VIPs?” “Miami Beach is a welcoming inclusive city built by people of all backgrounds and faiths,” Meiner said in a statement. “I have and will continue to fight against hate speech against any group. Antisemitism, hate speech, or the normalization of extremist ideology has no place in our Miami Beach community, our nightlife or any public setting.”

On Sunday, Fuentes and Sneako tried to get into David Grutman’s Gekko and were turned away because they were with security guards carrying guns. PageSix

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Putin to meet Kushner and Witkoff on Ukraine, Trump’s Peace Board. Elad Benari. Jan 22, 2026, 5:23 AM INN

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Dozens of swastikas found in Brooklyn playground, hate crimes probe underway. Dozens of swastikas found in a Brooklyn playground on two separate days, prompting a Hate Crime Task Force investigation and strong condemnation from Jewish organizations. Israel National News. Published: Jan 22, 2026, 2:15 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Day of mourning for Bondi Beach shooting victims begins in Australia. "Today is an opportunity for us to remember and pay respect to the 15 lives," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters on Thursday.

By Reuters. January 22, 2026. Australia began a national day of mourning on Thursday for the victims of the Bondi Beach mass shooting, with flags across the country flown at half mast ahead of a commemoration event at Sydney's iconic Opera House.

A father and son opened fire at an event celebrating Hanukkah on December 14, killing 15 people in Australia's worst mass shooting in decades.

Police claim the men were inspired by Islamic State to carry out the attack, that the government has called an act of terrorism against Jewish people.

"Today is an opportunity for us to remember and pay respect to the 15 lives," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters on Thursday.

"It's an opportunity for us as a nation to wrap our arms around the Jewish community because people were targeted because they were Jewish Australians." JPost

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Trump Admin Crackdown. DHS: Mahmoud Khalil Will be Deported to Algeria. No exact date for Khalil's re-arrest has been announced, but DHS indicates enforcement is forthcoming. Khalil's legal team has until April 2026 to appeal the underlying deportation order, though the appeals court ruling accelerates the process.

Jfeed Staff. Jan 22, 2026 05:25 JFeed

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"Send Them to Hell": Fury in Gaza Over Hamas Leaders' Exit Rumors Betrayal from the Streets of Gaza "Send Them to Hell": Fury in Gaza Over Hamas Leaders' Exit Rumors As reports emerge that remaining Hamas leaders are negotiating a permanent escape to foreign soil, the people of Gaza are breaking their silence to condemn the corrupt officials who left them to face total ruin.

Eliana Fleming Jan 21, 2026. JFeed

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President Trump. 'Iran shoots protesters and continues experiments with nukes'. The U.S. president addressed the possibility of military action against Iran and said his threats to the Tehran regime prevented executions of protesters. Nitzan Kedar. Jan 22, 2026, 10:02 AM INN

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Survey: Half of Irish adults unaware 6 million Jews were killed in Holocaust. Recent survey reveals alarming gaps in Holocaust knowledge among Irish adults, with half unaware of the six million Jewish victims and 8% denying its occurrence. Grace Gilson, JTA. Published: Jan 22, 2026, 7:39 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Iran still among world’s worst countries for torture of jailed journalists – CPJ January 22, 2026. Updated: 04:05 GMT Iran remains one of the world’s worst countries for abusing detained journalists, with reporters subjected to torture and harsh prison conditions amid intensified repression following nationwide protests, according to a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

"Iran held five journalists as of December 1, down from a peak of 55 three years earlier, but has generated the highest number of documented torture and beating cases against imprisoned media workers since records began in 1992," CPJ’s 2025 global prison census published on Wednesday said. IranInt

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IDF forces thwart weapons smuggling from the east. The IDF spokesperson announced that IDF observation units identified a drone last night crossing into Israeli territory from the east, carrying ten pistols. IDF forces from the Yoav Brigade intercepted the drone. The pistols were transferred to security forces for further handling. Yoav Zitun|01.22.26 YNet

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Britain: Concerned about Putin's participation in Gaza 'Peace Council', will not join. British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said that Britain will not join President Donald Trump's 'Peace Council' for Gaza at this stage due to concerns regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin's participation. This was reported by the BBC. Cooper said that the country will not participate in the signing ceremony that will be held today on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Ynet|01.22.26. YNet

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Trump at presentation of 'Peace Council' for Gaza: If Hamas doesn't surrender weapons - it's their end. President Trump said at the presentation of the "Peace Council" for Gaza that "Hamas was born with weapons in its hands. If it doesn't surrender them - that will be its end." Ynet|01.22.26 YNet

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Croccdile tears. Ms. Rachel in Tears After Accidentally Showing Us She is a Massive Antisemite | WATCH. Can Ms. Rachel get any more pathetic? We all know she hates Israel and Jews. She should just stop pretending. Jfeed Staff. Jan 22, 2026 10:12

Popular children's entertainer Ms. Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, is once again at the center of controversy after admitting to accidentally "liking" an antisemitic comment on her Instagram page. The 43-year-old YouTube star, known for her educational "Songs for Littles" channel with over 11 million subscribers, broke down in an emotional video apology, claiming the mishap occurred while trying to delete the hateful remark.

The comment in question, "Free America from the Jews," was posted under one of Accurso's recent advocacy updates and was liked by her account along with a few others, as shown in widely circulated screenshots. In her tearful response posted on January 21, she explained: "I tapped a comment that was antisemitic to delete it and it liked it by accident... I'm old, so I am not as good with touching things online, I guess." She stressed her commitment to combating hate, adding, "I am against all forms of hate including antisemitism against the Jewish people," and shared evidence of a direct message alerting her to the issue the previous day.

This incident comes on the heels of prior accusations of antisemitism leveled against Accurso for her pro-Palestine activism. In December 2025, she was nominated for "Antisemite of the Year" by StopAntisemitism, a pro-Israel watchdog group, over social media posts focusing on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which critics argued echoed Hamas narratives and ignored Israeli perspectives. Advocacy efforts, including over 800 letters from groups like Pens for Swords, urged her to balance her messaging. Compounding the fallout, Accurso interacted with a comment from the pro-Palestine account Palestine News Network (PNN) in her apology thread, which speculated the antisemitic remark was a "planted op" by adversaries, a claim some interpreted as endorsing a conspiracy theory. Media coverage from outlets including the New York Post and Daily Mail has amplified the story, highlighting the challenges of online scrutiny for public figures No further updates have been provided by her team as of this morning.

Sadly for her, none of us believe her silly excuses after she spent years demonizing Israel, making videos for her millions of followers about poor suffering Gazan children, while not being able to find it in herself to mention the Israeli children massacred on October 7th. Mamdani, not a big fan of Jews himself, also knows how she feels about Israel and Jews, and that's why he appointed her to sit on his inaugural committee. JFeed

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Baruch Dayan HaEmet. IDF Soldier Asa'el Ba'abad Dies After Hamas Violates Ceasefire. Heartbreak in Bnei Adam: After a three-month battle for his life, St.-Sgt. Asa'el Ba'avad has died from injuries sustained in Gaza. He leaves behind a wife and five children. Israel Gantz pays tribute to the "heroic fighter."

Gila Isaacson. Jan 22, 2026 09:34 JFeed

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Frightening. "We Will Just Hang You": Nazi Poster Terrifies Parents at Jewish Daycare in North Carolina. "We'll just hang you": Horrifying antisemitic poster found at a Jewish school in Charlotte. The sign included a swastika and threats of murder against the community.

Jfeed Staff. Jan 22, 2026 09:02 JFeed

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Trump: Hamas ‘will be blown away very quickly’ if it won’t disarm. At Davos, the U.S. president says the terrorist group agreed to give up its weapons under phase two of his Gaza peace plan. JNS Staff. (Jan. 22, 2026 / JNS) President Donald Trump warned in Davos on Wednesday that Hamas “will be blown away very quickly” if it fails to disarm under the second phase of his Gaza peace plan. JNS

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IDF hits Hezbollah arms routes, top smuggler. Muhammad Awasha, a key weapons dealer and smuggler, died near Sidon. JNS Staff. (Jan. 22, 2026 / JNS) JNS

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US hits Hamas nonprofit support network with sanctions. “Hamas’s insidious practice of operating behind civilian organizations endangers Palestinians and undermines efforts to build a lasting and prosperous peace,” the federal government said. Mike Wagenheim. (Jan. 21, 2026 / JNS) The U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned six Gaza-based organizations and the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad on Wednesday for what it said was their support of Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

“Hamas’s insidious practice of operating behind civilian organizations endangers Palestinians and undermines efforts to build a lasting and prosperous peace,” the department stated.

It accuses Hamas of operating a network of organizations in Gaza that “purport to be independent,” hiding their ties to the terror organization to raise funds from overseas donors.

“We are committed to ensuring that humanitarian aid can be delivered by reliable and safe organizations and supporting stabilization efforts for the Gaza Strip,” stated Tommy Pigott, principal deputy U.S. State Department spokesman.

The ties to Hamas were exposed by “documentary evidence taken from Hamas offices after Oct. 7, 2023,” the Treasury Department stated.

The sanctioned organizations include Gaza-based Waed Society, Al-Nur Society, Qawafil Society, Al-Falah Society, Merciful Hands and Al-Salameh Society. JNS

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Israeli forces nab key bombmaker in Samaria raid Magav and Shin Bet arrest Tulkarm terror explosives manufacturer in Shuweika village operation. JNS Staff.

(Jan. 22, 2026 / JNS) Israeli Border Police arrested a Palestinian explosives expert in the Samaria village of Shuweika this week, authorities said Wednesday.​

The suspect, identified as Fadi Bahati, was described as a key explosives manufacturer for a terror group operating in the Tulkarm area. He was arrested following intelligence from the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) in an operation carried out by undercover and uniformed Magav forces under the IDF’s Ephraim Brigade. JNS

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Istanbul meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood . Daniel Abascal. 3 Jan 2026 — The Istanbul meeting cannot be treated as a mere organizational event, but as a sign of a strategic shift in the Muslim Brotherhood's actions.. Atalayar

Turkey Hosts a Secret Meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood. By Clare M. Lopez -January 16, 2026.

Mostly unnoticed in the recent flurry of world events, from the people’s uprising in the streets of Iran to the lightning fast seizure and extradition of Venezuelan dictator, Nicolas Maduro, by the United States (U.S.) in a 2-3 January 2026 overnight raid, was an important meeting in Istanbul, Turkey of leadership figures, branches, and networks associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of these representatives came from Brotherhood groups in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, but others also represented Brotherhood chapters based in Europe.

Preceding the Istanbul meeting itself, on New Year’s Day, 1 January 2026, large pro-HAMAS rallies were held in Istanbul in support of populations in Gaza and to protest Israel’s post-October 7, 2023 operations against HAMAS, Gaza’s Brotherhood off-shoot there. Tens of thousands converged at Istanbul’s Galata Bridge. The rallies reportedly were attended by Turkish officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son, Bilal. The Erdogan regime has long been supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood and permissively allows HAMAS terror cells that attempt to launch attacks in Judea and Samaria to operate from its territory.

On 3 January 2026, delegations from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, and Yemen, in addition to representatives from Turkey’s own Istanbul Front and the Brotherhood’s international office in London, met in a secretive closed-door session in Istanbul. The Muslim Brotherhood is a designated terrorist group in a number of these participating countries and others, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Additionally, on 24 November 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14362 to begin the process of officially designating certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs). A White House Fact Sheet was issued the same day to explain the process, which directs Secretary of State, Marco Rubio and Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, in consultation with Attorney General Pam Bondi and Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, to submit a report within 45 days.

In the face of such international pressure, exclusion, and a perceived loss of influence and presence across the region, but especially in areas of conflict like Gaza, the Istanbul meeting was intended to re-focus efforts and respective roles for the Brotherhood across the MENA region. Topics of discussion at the Istanbul meeting reportedly included how the Muslim Brotherhood should re-establish its presence and manage specific current conflict situations in Sudan and Yemen.

Escalating conflict in Yemen has been marked especially in the southern Hadramout region by 2-3 January 2026 Saudi airstrikes targeted at the UAE-backed Southern Transition Council (STC). The STC, formed in 2017, seeks to establish a breakaway Yemen “State of South Arabia”, while Saudi Arabia continues to back the internationally-recognized government of the Republic of Yemen. Mohammed Saleh Batees, the acting head of the STC’s Executive Authority in Hadramout, has issued warning statements about the possible returning influence of Al-Qa’eda, the Brotherhood, and the Iran-backed Houthis, which seized control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in 2014. To resolve the dispute between rival Gulf powers Saudi Arabia and the UAE, both of which oppose the Houthis, a delegation led by STC leader Aidarous al-Zubaidi, is due to travel in coming days to Saudi Arabia at Saudi invitation.

Similarly, in Sudan, the UAE reportedly has provided military support to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is engaged in conflict with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, has long supported the Sudanese Khartoum government in a relationship that goes back to the 1950s. As in Yemen, the widening split between the two is playing out across the region, as Saudi Arabia seeks to “maintain stability in the volatile region” – including a unified state for Yemen – while the UAE appears to be “pursuing access to resources and strategic geography” near the strategic Horn of Africa and Red Sea, according to reporting from the Africa Defense Forum. It’s important to note, however, that Saudi policy in Yemen does not imply any kind of Saudi shift towards the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned as a terrorist organization in the Kingdom.

In this wider regional scenario, the Istanbul meeting would seem to be seeking opportunistic advantage for Muslim Brotherhood territorial meddling arising out of current difficulties in the Gulf relationship between the Emiratis and Saudis. That a STC delegation (although it seems without Aidarous al-Zubaidi, the leader of Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council), did travel for talks to Saudi Arabia on 7 January, 2026, offers hope that Saudi-Emirati rivalry might find some solution, rather than providing a dangerous and unnecessary opening for the Muslim Brotherhood.

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Notes part IIII: Jan 22-Feb 22, 2026

Iran Protest Deaths Seen Rising With One Estimate Topping 20,000.

By Patrick Sykes and Golnar Motevalli. January 22, 2026 at 11:56 AM GMT

The number of people reported killed in Iran’s protest crackdown has surged as rights groups continue to verify suspected fatalities, with the United Nations warning the total could be more than 20,000.

The US-based Human Rights Activist News Agency said it’s verified 4,902 deaths during the unrest that erupted in late December, according to a statement on its website. The group is reviewing a further 9,387, while more than 26,000 people have been arrested, it said.. Bloomberg

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Details of the agreement between the US and Hamas. The agreement between the US and the terrorist organization concerns the disarmament of Hamas and includes several key principles. Israel National News. Jan 22, 2026, 9:15 PM (GMT+2)

The details of the agreement being developed between the United States and Hamas were revealed this evening (Thursday) on i24NEWS. The agreement concerns the disarmament of Hamas and includes several key principles.

According to the report, Hamas is expected to declare that "at Israel's request, it no longer poses a threat." The agreement will be based on a distinction between heavy, offensive weapons and light, personal, and defensive weapons, according to definitions that will be formulated by Hamas.

If signed, the agreement will be referred to as the "Understanding Agreement on the Issue of Weapons," rather than a "Weapons Surrender Agreement."

The agreement was first reported by Sky News Arabic, which reported that in exchange for recognition as a political body, Hamas would agree to surrender its weapons and provide maps of the tunnels in the Gaza Strip.

The sources mentioned that under the agreement, "the cessation of weapons use will allow some members of Hamas' leadership, both military and political, to leave the Gaza Strip with an American assurance that Israel will not harm them in the future."

The sources also added that the United States agreed to include several former Hamas police officers and officials in the management of "New Gaza," provided they undergo Israeli and American security screenings.

It was also reported that the US administration informed mediators that Israel has reservations about the agreement, especially regarding the possibility of Hamas remaining a political party in the Palestinian Arab arena. INN

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Endless terror tunnels. IDF Destroys Kilometer-Long Hamas Tunnel in Gaza Complete with Living Quarters | WATCH. Israeli forces have blown up an extensive underground tunnel network in central Gaza, uncovering weapons and living spaces used by Hamas terrorists. The operation comes amid preparations for the next phase of a ceasefire deal.

Gila Isaacson. Jan 22, 2026 JFeed

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'Yahel was 3 years old, and a Hamas terrorist was holding her. I didn't think, I ran and took her'. Former hostage Adi Shoham speaks for the first time since her release from Gaza; She waited two years to tell her story because her husband Tal was still held by Hamas and they called her and threatened to kill him ynet|01.22.26 |

Adi Shoham, a psychologist specializing in trauma therapy who was abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, has spoken publicly for the first time since her release. Shoham, her mother, and her two young children — Yahel and Naveh — were taken from her parents’ home, and her husband, Tal Shoham, was kidnapped separately. Tal survived 505 days in captivity before being released in January 2025.

In an interview on Pgisha (Meeting)with Roni Kuban on Kan 11, her first since being freed, Shoham explained the reason for her silence over the past two years: phone threats from Hamas directed at her husband. The program is scheduled to air Saturday night after the news. YNet

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Disturbing. Kurdish Women Worldwide Braid Hair in Defiant Response to Syrian Terrorist's Atrocity | WATCH. Kurdish women worldwide braid hair in protest after a militant in Raqqa, Syria, killed and desecrated a YPJ fighter by cutting her braid. Solidarity surges with chants of "Jin, Jiyan, Azadî" amid Rojava clashes.

Bianca Jones. Jan 22, 2026 15:08 JFeed

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Crocodile tears. Ms. Rachel in Tears After Accidentally Showing Us She is a Massive Antisemite | WATCH. Can Ms. Rachel get any more pathetic? We all know she hates Israel and Jews. She should just stop pretending. Jfeed Staff. Jan 22, 2026 10:12

Popular children's entertainer Ms. Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, is once again at the center of controversy after admitting to accidentally "liking" an antisemitic comment on her Instagram page. The 43-year-old YouTube star, known for her educational "Songs for Littles" channel with over 11 million subscribers, broke down in an emotional video apology, claiming the mishap occurred while trying to delete the hateful remark. The comment in question, "Free America from the Jews," was posted under one of Accurso's recent advocacy updates and was liked by her account along with a few others, as shown in widely circulated screenshots. In her tearful response posted on January 21, she explained: "I tapped a comment that was antisemitic to delete it and it liked it by accident... I'm old, so I am not as good with touching things online, I guess." She stressed her commitment to combating hate, adding, "I am against all forms of hate including antisemitism against the Jewish people," and shared evidence of a direct message alerting her to the issue the previous day.

This incident comes on the heels of prior accusations of antisemitism leveled against Accurso for her pro-Palestine activism. In December 2025, she was nominated for "Antisemite of the Year" by StopAntisemitism, a pro-Israel watchdog group, over social media posts focusing on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which critics argued echoed Hamas narratives and ignored Israeli perspectives. Advocacy efforts, including over 800 letters from groups like Pens for Swords, urged her to balance her messaging. Compounding the fallout, Accurso interacted with a comment from the pro-Palestine account Palestine News Network (PNN) in her apology thread, which speculated the antisemitic remark was a "planted op" by adversaries, a claim some interpreted as endorsing a conspiracy theory.

Media coverage from outlets including the New York Post and Daily Mail has amplified the story, highlighting the challenges of online scrutiny for public figures No further updates have been provided by her team as of this morning.

Sadly for her, none of us believe her silly excuses after she spent years demonizing Israel, making videos for her millions of followers about poor suffering Gazan children, while not being able to find it in herself to mention the Israeli children massacred on October 7th.

Mamdani, not a big fan of Jews himself, also knows how she feels about Israel and Jews, and that's why he appointed her to sit on his inaugural committee. JFeed

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The University of Pennsylvania is gaslighting the courts on antisemitism. The Ivy League school is falsely claiming that it is standing up for Jews by stonewalling the Trump administration’s efforts to punish blatant hatred on campus since Oct. 7. Jonathan S. Tobin. (Jan. 22, 2026 / JNS) Give credit to the University of Pennsylvania for one thing. It’s not short on chutzpah.

The school has brazenly tolerated and even encouraged widespread and blatant acts of antisemitism on campus since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. But when an agency of the federal government sought to probe what had happened, Penn stonewalled requests for cooperation and transparency.

Faced with such intransigence, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued a subpoena asking for the school’s records, including the identification of employees who could have been exposed to alleged harassment and the names of all employees who complained about the behavior. In its quest to find people potentially affected, the EEOC demanded a list of employees in Penn’s Jewish Studies Program. That was in addition to a list of all clubs, groups, organizations and recreation groups related to the Jewish religion, including points of contact and a roster of members, and the names of employees who lodged antisemitism complaints. JNS

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House panel advances bill to boost US ties with Israel, Eastern Mediterranean The bipartisan bill “ensures U.S. diplomacy keeps pace” as the region emerges as a “central hub for energy and infrastructure,” said Rep. Brad Schneider. Mike Wagenheim Sunrise on the U.S. Capitol's east front in Washington, D.C., Jan. 31, 2022. Credit: Architect of the Capitol.Sunrise on the U.S. Capitol's east front in Washington, D.C., Jan. 31, 2022. Credit: Architect of the Capitol.

(Jan. 22, 2026 / JNS) A bipartisan bill aimed at reinforcing U.S. ties with Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean region advanced through the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday by a 45-2 vote.

H.R. 3307, titled the Eastern Mediterranean Gateway Act, seeks to elevate the region as a strategic priority in U.S. foreign policy by strengthening support for initiatives such as the U.S.-led 3+1 dialogue with Greece, Israel and Cyprus, as well as the East Mediterranean Gas Forum, which covers issues like energy security, regional integration and economic cooperation. JNS

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Putin meets Abbas in Moscow, pledges to secure Palestinian interests in Board of Peace. Russian President Vladimir Putin said frozen assets in the United States would be used to pay the $1 billion fee. JNS Staff. (Jan. 22, 2026 / JNS) Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday during a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the Kremlin that he will accept President Donald Trump’s invitation to join the Board of Peace (BoP) and meet the $1 billion requirement.

Trump’s 20-point plan to end the Gaza conflict calls for the establishment of a transitional administration to govern the Gaza Strip, of which the Board of Peace is to be a critical part.

A $1 billion fee is required for member countries to secure a permanent seat. Russia said it would pay using frozen assets in the United States, which would require U.S. action to unblock.

Putin made clear he was joining the BoP to secure Palestinian interests and will pay the $1 billion “first and foremost to support the Palestinian people and to direct those funds to the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip and, in general, to resolve Palestinian problems,” according to TASS, Russia’s state-owned news agency. JNS

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Israeli official: 'Until Ran Gwaili returns - Rafah crossing will not open'. An Israeli official said that "Until Ran Gwaili returns - Rafah crossing will not open." The statement came in response to a claim by Ali Sha'ath, head of the National Committee for Gaza Administration (the Palestinian "technocratic government"), who said that the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt would open next week in both directions. Moran Azulay|01.22.26. YNet

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Gaza technocratic PM: 'Rafah crossing will open next week'. Ali Shaath, head of the national committee for Gaza management (the Palestinian "technocratic government"), said that the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt will open next week in both directions. Ynet|01.22.26 YNet

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Two teens arrested over swastikas in Brooklyn playground. Two 15‑year‑olds arrested after dozens of swastikas and antisemitic messages were spray‑painted in a Brooklyn playground. Israel National News. Published: Jan 23, 2026, 3:24 AM (GMT+2)

Two teenagers have been arrested after allegedly spray‑painting dozens of swastikas and other antisemitic messages throughout a Brooklyn playground frequented by Jewish children, the NYPD said on Thursday, according to NBC4.

Police launched a hate‑crime investigation after nearly five dozen symbols were discovered late Wednesday morning across walls, a court and a slide at Gravesend Park in Borough Park. Photos from the scene showed one wall defaced with the words "Adolf Hitler."

City crews later painted over the graffiti, but only after NYPD investigators documented the vandalism and confirmed it was being treated as a hate crime.

The Anti‑Defamation League noted that this was the second consecutive day swastikas had been found in the same park. Police said more than a dozen swastikas were discovered earlier in the week on the playground and handball court.

On Thursday, officers arrested two 15‑year‑old boys in connection with the incidents, reported NBC4. One was charged with aggravated harassment and criminal mischief as a hate crime, while the second faces multiple counts of aggravated harassment.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned the attacks, saying, "I am sickened by this antisemitic vandalism …. Antisemitism has no place in our city, and I stand shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish New Yorkers who were targeted."

New York Governor Kathy Hochul also denounced the vandalism, calling it a "depraved act of antisemitism. In a children's playground where our kids should feel safe and have fun. There is no excuse. There is zero tolerance."

New York has seen a sharp uptick in incidents of antisemitism since October 7, 2023. Data released by the New York City Police Department on the day before the mayoral election in November, won by Mamdani, revealed that Jews were the victims in 62% of all hate crimes reported last month, with 29 antisemitic incidents out of a total of 47.

On the very day that Mamdani was elected, swastikas were sprayed on the Magen David Yeshiva in Brooklyn.

Nearly two weeks after the election, antisemitic graffiti reading “F**k Jews" was found scrawled on a sidewalk in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn.

In December, a Jewish man was stabbed in broad daylight in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn in what police are investigating as a possible antisemitic attack. INN

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The Genocide Slur Is Not Just for Jews. Judging Israel’s wartime behavior through epithets, TikTok clips, and faulty balance sheets poses a direct danger to American lives. By John Spencer. January 22, 2026.

The casual use of the word genocide to target Israel is not only a slur—it is also dangerous to Americans. That’s because, if this ahistorical, amoral, and largely evidence-free way of judging war is allowed to take hold in public discourse and, worse, harden into international legal practice, it will not remain confined to one conflict or one ally. It will be turned on the United States and every other military that may have to fight and win in cities.

Israel is not the endpoint of the debate over the rules of war in the age of TikTok. It is the test case. If the rules are rewritten here, American soldiers will inherit them in the next urban war.

I hope we never see another Gaza war again, a war in which an enemy builds a strategy around civilian suffering not as the tragic cost of fighting that’s to be avoided whenever possible, but as the path to victory itself—a strategy of human sacrifice for political gain. These slogans of genocide and the normalization of lawfare risk stripping any law-abiding military of the ability to defend itself or protect innocent civilians from harm.

This matters because the legal and moral test is not whether the death toll in a given battle or conflict is high or low: That number can often be a measure of how determined an adversary is to keep fighting. The test is how a force fights. Proportionality is not a civilian death quota. It is an assessment of whether expected incidental harm would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated—a judgment made under uncertainty, with imperfect information, against an adaptive enemy. Precautions are not a public relations checklist. They are measures that are feasible under the circumstances, balancing mission accomplishment and force protection.

The problem is the framework that is increasingly being normalized, in which lawfare replaces law, moral arithmetic replaces judgment, statistics replace intent, and civilian deaths become proof of illegality by default.

Genocide under international law requires intent to destroy a protected group in whole or in part. That intent is the defining legal element. Without it, the charge collapses. When genocide becomes a label applied whenever civilian casualties are high, the term loses meaning, and law becomes a weapon rather than a restraint.

There has been no genocide in Gaza. Israel has not intentionally targeted civilians. Its intent has been to return hostages, dismantle Hamas as a military and governing organization following the Oct. 7 mass casualty attack, and do so while sustaining civilian life under extraordinarily difficult combat conditions. Intent matters. Context matters. Law matters.

Israel has taken more measures to reduce civilian harm than any military in history operating in dense urban terrain against an enemy deliberately embedded among civilians. These measures include mass warnings before strikes, evacuation corridors coordinated at scale, daily humanitarian pauses, precision targeting based on layered intelligence, and operational restraints that deliberately increase risk to its own soldiers to reduce harm to civilians. No other military facing an enemy that systematically hides among the population has attempted civilian harm mitigation at this scale, over this duration, while under constant attack.

Hamas, by contrast, has openly declared and operationalized a strategy of using civilians as shields. It has tortured, sexually abused, starved, and murdered hostages. It has threatened civilians who attempt to leave combat zones or accept unauthorized aid. All of this constitutes war crimes. When international discourse erases this distinction and instead accuses the defender of genocide, it does not protect civilians. It rewards the most cynical and unlawful tactics in modern warfare.

The genocide accusation collapses further when measured against observable reality rather than slogans. Israel has conducted this war while facilitating a scale of humanitarian assistance, medical access, vaccination campaigns, and civilian protection measures unprecedented in a conflict where the defending force does not control the territory and the enemy does. Aid, food, water, fuel, medical supplies, and vaccines have entered Gaza throughout the war, even as Hamas retained territorial control and continued fighting. Israel coordinated humanitarian corridors, medical evacuations, and pauses in combat while under attack. No historical case of genocide includes a state feeding, vaccinating, providing medical care to, and sustaining the civilian population of the territory in which it is supposedly committing extermination.

Wanting to destroy your enemy is not genocide. It is war. War is not illegal, and in some cases, it is necessary. The aim of many of those accusing Israel of genocide is in fact to make it impossible for any law-abiding nation to defend itself against those who openly proclaim their desire to destroy us, and imagine that our adherence to law and to norms of conflict will assist them in achieving their aims. TabletMag

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You Can’t Have It Both Ways on ‘Genocide’ By Seth Mandel. January 22, 2026. A number of Democrats were clearly hoping that once the war in Gaza was over, they could stop talking about it. But that’s not how litmus tests work.

“I am somebody who looks at the videos, the photos, the amount of pain that has been caused in the Middle East, and you can’t not be heartbroken,” Michigan Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow, who in October joined the jackals in falsely accusing Israel of genocide, told a local radio station. “But I also feel like we are getting lost in this conversation, and it feels like a political purity test on a word — a word that, by the way, to people who lost family members in the Holocaust, does mean something very different and very visceral — and we’re losing sight of what I believe is a broadly shared goal among most Michiganders, that this violence needs to stop, that a temporary cease-fire needs to become a permanent cease-fire, that Palestinians deserve long term peace and security, that Israelis deserve long term peace and security, and that should be the role of the next U.S. senator.”

It’s awfully rare to have a “genocide” take place, acknowledge it, and then plead with people to stop talking about it. One reason McMorrow wants to stop talking about it is that she doesn’t actually think Israel committed genocide, just as she doesn’t think the earth is flat. But she caved to pressure to say so because she wants the votes of people who think the Jewish state should be destroyed.

In other words, McMorrow, like many of her fellow Democrats, falsely accused Israel of genocide to please actual promoters of genocide.

In that sense, of course McMorrow doesn’t want to talk about her disgraceful kowtowing to anti-Semites for political gain.

Yet she’s not wrong about the problem of some in her party wanting to use a blood libel as a purity test. It’s just that if she really thinks the war in Gaza was a genocide, she wouldn’t be so troubled by its status as a litmus test.

Put another way: Should “genocide” be a litmus test? I’d bet McMorrow thinks so. If she were running against a Holocaust denier, for example, would she say that she is troubled by the amount of criticism the denier were facing? To ask the question is to answer it.

McMorrow almost gets there herself, when she says that the genocide accusation “does mean something very different and very visceral” to those “who lost family members in the Holocaust.” But it’s not that the word genocide means something very different to them. Genocide was coined to categorize the Holocaust. That’s what genocide means. People who lost family in the Holocaust are bothered by the term being applied inaccurately.

What McMorrow wants is to earn points with her party’s base by passing the litmus test without having to revisit what she had to do to pass that test. She never considers her other option: to answer the question honestly.

Similarly, today Jewish Insider reports that Scott Wiener is stepping away from his post as co-chair of the California legislature’s Jewish Caucus. As I wrote last week, Wiener declined to say Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza constituted genocide at a candidates debate against two of his congressional primary opponents. He, like Mallory McMorrow, thought they had moved on. He was wrong, and he got slammed by progressives for equivocating, and so he filmed a soul-crushingly pathetic video changing his answer to “yes.”

It certainly would be inappropriate for him to continue on as Jewish Caucus co-chair, and he recognized as much. But I was struck by his plea for open-mindedness: “As we move through this moment, it is even more important for Jews here and globally to foster open dialogue and acceptance of disagreement, even on the hardest of issues.”

Does he feel that way about other genocides? Again, how much “acceptance of disagreement” does he feel there should be in the Jewish community toward Holocaust denial?

Wiener and McMorrow—and who knows how many others, but the number is high—don’t think Israel committed genocide. They don’t actually believe that there are much more important things to talk about and that genocide is a distraction. They lowered themselves to gain the approval of terrible people, and they feel dirty about it, and they would like to not have to do it again. Their problem is simple: It’s degrading to accuse Israel of genocide and then have to look at yourself in the mirror. Commentary Magazine

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Trump: 'We have a massive armada headed to Iran. They know what we want'. During a conversation with journalists aboard Air Force One, US President Donald Trump said, "We have a massive armada moving toward Iran. I hope nothing happens and we won't need to use it." Trump added: "We are monitoring Iran. We have many ships heading that way, a large fleet." He again claimed that with his threat to the Iranians, "I stopped 837 executions - mostly young people. I said - if you hang them, you'll face an attack like you've never experienced before, and they canceled it." When asked if he would demand Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei resign from his position, he said: "I don't want to get into that, but they know what we want. There's a lot of killing." Ynet|01.22.26 22:13 YNet

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Trump cancels Canada's invitation to Peace Council. US President Donald Trump informed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney that he is canceling his invitation to the Peace Council. In a post on TruthSocial, Trump addressed Carney and wrote: "The Peace Council is withdrawing its invitation regarding Canada's membership to what will be the most prestigious council of leaders ever assembled." Ynet| 01.23.26 03:06 YNet

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Cleared for publication: Reserve soldier Asael Babayev, who was wounded in Rafah, dies of his injuries. The IDF spokesperson has cleared for publication that Staff Sergeant (res.) Asael Babayev, a reserve soldier in the 941 Infantry Battalion, died of his injuries after being severely wounded in combat in Rafah on October 19 last year and fighting for his life for about three months. Babayev was wounded by an anti-tank missile in the incident in which Major Yaniv Kola and Second Lieutenant Itay Yaavetz were killed. He is survived by his wife and five children. Yoav Zitun, Idan Bloemhof| 01.23.26 04:17 YNet

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Terrorists throw rocks at vehicles between Mitzpe Alon and Alon Junction. Jan 23, 2026

Terrorists hurled rocks at vehicles traveling between Mitzpe Alon and Alon Junction on Thursday evening.

No injuries were reported, but damage was caused to a vehicle. INN

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Trump on Iran: We’re watching them very closely. Jan 23, 2026 Trump says the US has a “massive fleet" headed towards Iran and is watching Iran “very closely" after it cancelled executions of protesters last week. INN

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KLM cancels Israel flights amid regional security tensions. Iris Lifshitz-Klieger|01.23.26 [|https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hj4ayuwiwx YNet]

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Witkoff and Kushner head to Israel. Itamar Eichner|01.23.26 YNet

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Judge grants sweeping immigration protections to plaintiffs in anti-Israel protest case. “The court recommends that an advisory jury be empaneled to assist the court in deciding factual issues,” judge William Young wrote. “The people’s participation in this act of government is long overdue.” Andrew Bernard.

(Jan. 23, 2026 / JNS) A federal judge ruled on Thursday that academic groups suing the Trump administration to halt the deportations of students and faculty who engaged in anti-Israel protests will be granted a blanket presumption that their activity is protected free speech under the First Amendment.

The ruling from judge William Young, a Reagan appointee to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, shifts the burden to the government to prove that any change in the immigration status of members of the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association is justified.

“It shall be presumed that the alteration in immigration status is in retribution for the exercise during the course of the present case of their First Amendment rights,” Young wrote.

The groups sued the Trump administration in March over its “ideological-deportation policy” after the arrest and attempt to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the anti-Israel protest movement at Columbia University.

“While President Trump and other administration officials have described pro-Palestinian campus protests as ‘pro-Hamas,’ they have stretched that label beyond the breaking point to encompass any speech supportive of Palestinian human rights or critical of Israel’s military actions in Gaza,” the plaintiffs wrote.

“They have left no doubt that their new policy entails the arrest, detention and deportation of noncitizen students and faculty for constitutionally protected speech and association,” they added in the complaint.

Young ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in September.

At a hearing earlier this month, Young described the actions of the Trump administration as “an unconstitutional conspiracy to pick off certain people” for their protests, Politico reported.

“I find it breathtaking that I have been compelled on the evidence to find the conduct of such high-level officers of our government—cabinet secretaries—conspired to infringe the First Amendment rights of people with such rights here in the United States,” Young said. “These cabinet secretaries have failed in their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution.”

Young’s rulings in the case have raised eyebrows over his unusual commentary and suggestions.

In September, Young attached a hand-written postcard from an anonymous sender asking, “Trump has pardons and tanks … what do you have?” to the top of his ruling.

“Alone I have nothing but my sense of duty,” Young wrote in reply, in a space above the listed plaintiffs that is usually left blank. “Together, we the people of the United States—you and me—have our magnificent Constitution.”

Young’s ruling on Thursday includes more unusual remedies and commentary on the case.

“The court recommends that an advisory jury be empaneled to assist the court in deciding factual issues,” Young wrote. “The moral effect of a jury verdict cannot be overstated. The American jury is the most robust and vital expression of direct democracy extent in the world today.”

“The people’s participation in this act of government is long overdue,” he added.

The protections extended to the plaintiffs include only non-citizens, who were members of AAUP or MESA between the time the plaintiffs brought suit and Young’s decision on the case in September. They do not apply to any such members who were convicted of a crime or whose immigration status expired.

In an appendix to Thursday’s ruling, Young mused about potential applications of his decision involving situations not directly related to the case, including the hypothetical revocation of temporary protected immigration status to Venezuelans and comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

“If it’s just speech—it may be repulsive speech or disgusting speech, but if it’s just speech, well, the Department of State can’t do that,” Young wrote. “Again, this is a hypothetical. But let’s say that happened, we’ll assume that happened. And then the person comes in and says, ‘I’m a member of this class. You can’t do that to me.’”

“Well again, the government’s going to have to prove that their reason was not in fact in retribution,” he said, “and in addition, my second, that it’s an appropriate exercise of governmental power.”

The Trump administration can appeal Young’s ruling. JNS

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Trump admin imposes additional sanctions on Iranian illicit oil export network. “Tehran’s decision to support terrorists over its own people has caused Iran's currency and living conditions to be in free fall,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. Mike Wagenheim.

(Jan. 23, 2026 / JNS) The Trump administration has imposed additional sanctions targeting Iran as part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against the Islamic regime, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced on Jan. 23. JNS

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NYC speaker visits vandalized Brooklyn playground, touts new anti-hate safety plan. “These abhorrent incidents are part of an alarming trend,” said Julie Menin.

(Jan. 23, 2026 / JNS) Julie Menin, the newly elected speaker of the New York City Council, visited a park playground in Brooklyn, N.Y., that was vandalized twice in a single week with dozens of red- and blue-painted swastikas, and the name: Adolf Hitler.

On Thursday, the same day that two teenage boys were arrested for the incidents at Gravesend Park in the Borough Park neighborhood, she toured the site withother communal leaders. JNS

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Georgia congressman says medical board, Emory must oust daughter of top Iranian official. “Dr. Ardeshir-Larijani’s continued role treating American patients at a major U.S. medical institution is unacceptable,” Rep. Buddy Carter stated. Mike Wagenheim. (Jan. 23, 2026 / JNS) Dr. Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, an oncologist, ought to be fired from Emory University due to her “familial ties” to an Iranian leader, whom the federal government sanctioned earlier this month, Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) wrote to the Atlanta private school. JNS

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Witnesses report sniper killing and nighttime burial of teenage protester in Karaj. Iran International. Jan 24, 2026 Images and messages received by Iran International indicate that protesters in Karaj were killed by sniper fire during demonstrations, followed by the nighttime burial of victims, including a 16-year-old boy identified as Reza.

According to witness accounts on January 8 and at around 9:00 at night, Reza was shot dead in an alley in the Shahin Villa neighborhood. Witnesses said the shot was fired by a sniper positioned on the rooftop of a fruit shop.

Witnesses said Reza was moved after being shot into a nearby home’s parking area, where he died. After the situation calmed, his body was taken to a local clinic.

The following day, people close to the family were told that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces had buried the teenager’s body overnight and informed the family of the grave’s location.

According to residents, armed forces were deployed at Shahin Villa’s Eighth and Ninth bases and prevented people from approaching by firing live ammunition. Witnesses said at least six people were killed by gunfire on Shahin Villa Street alone, adding that the shooting appeared targeted, particularly against younger protesters. IranIntl

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US targets Iran's 'shadow fleet' over crackdown on protesters By Daphne Psaledakis and Timothy Gardner January 23, 2026. 4:59 PM GMT.

Summary. US targets nine vessels in the shadow fleet Treasury: the revenues fund regional militants, weapons programs. WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on nine vessels of what is known as the shadow fleet and eight related firms, the U.S. Treasury Department said, as the Trump administration sought to escalate pressure on Iran over the recent killing of protesters. The Treasury said the vessels and their respective owners or management firms, which include entities based in India, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, have collectively transported hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Iranian oil and petroleum products to foreign markets. Reuters

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US threatens to starve Iraq of its oil dollars over Iranian influence, sources say. By Maha El Dahan, Timour Azhari and Humeyra Pamuk. January 23, 2026. Reuters

U.S. threatens to target Iraq oil. Reuters. Jan 24, 2026. — Washington has threatened senior Iraqi politicians with sanctions targeting the Iraqi state, including potentially its critical oil revenues. JPost

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The death rates in Iran are vastly higher than those in Gaza — and the obvious reason why. Mark Changizi. Jan 24, 2026. Per capita per unit time, suppose around 30,000 Iranians were massacred in just a couple of days. Let’s contrast that with Gazan civilian deaths, which may be of the same order of magnitude relative to population, but spread over two years. Let’s put Gazan deaths at 50,000 (a likely overestimate).

Iran: 167 deaths per million per day

(30,000 of 90 million killed in 2 days)

Gaza: 34 deaths per million per day

(50,000 of 2 million killed in 2 years)

Even this is not a fair comparison. Per-capita rates implicitly treat all 90 million Iranians as equally at risk as all 2 million Gazans. But that plainly isn’t so. In Gaza, a very large fraction of the population was genuinely at risk even while staying at home, precisely because Hamas embedded its military activity within civilian areas. In Iran, by contrast, the killings would be a straightforward massacre concentrated on demonstrators and their immediate surroundings; so long as one avoided the protests, one was almost certainly safe.

So using total population as the denominator already dilutes the intensity of what a 30,000-dead-in-two-days Iran scenario would represent. Adjusting for who was actually exposed would only widen the gap further — astronomically so.

It also isn’t a fair comparison for another reason: the notion of a “civilian” in Gaza is inherently fuzzy. There are large numbers of Hamas supporters among the civilian population — many aiding, abetting, or directly participating in Hamas’ war effort — and their deaths would nevertheless be labeled “civilian.” In Iran, by contrast, every last person killed was a civilian.

And even this understates Iran’s dead. Authoritarian regimes systematically suppress reporting, intimidate families, and conceal bodies. The true toll in Iran would almost certainly be higher than what could ever be reliably counted, whereas Gaza’s deaths are tracked by Hamas itself, who wants to exaggerate, not underreport, the number.

The main moral is this:

If Israel had truly been “genociding” Gazans for two years, as has been claimed since 10/7 itself, the number of deaths per million per day would be orders of magnitude higher. And Israel is more — not less — technologically and militarily capable than the IRGC at doing so.

The numbers are vastly different because the situations are not comparable in the first place. In Iran it was a straight-out massacre, whereas in Gaza the deaths were inadvertent casualties resulting from Hamas fighting from civilian centers. LoofWired

Mamdani efforts to unwind 50 years of NYC investment in Israel Bonds can’t be ignored, ADL says. “Policy evolution is legitimate. Policy exceptionalism aimed solely at the Jewish state is not,” Jonathan Greenblatt told JNS. Debra Nussbaum Cohen. (Jan. 23, 2026 / JNS) A fight over whether New York City should invest in Israel has brought into stark relief a conflict between two of its most powerful elected officials: the mayor and the comptroller, who is charged with managing $294.6 billion in pension funds on behalf of some 750,000 teachers, firefighters and police officers. JNS

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Three Top Belgian Universities Spark Outrage by Honoring Controversial UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. By Ailin Vilches Arguello. January 23, 2026

Three Belgian universities sparked outrage within the local Jewish community this week by announcing plans to award honorary doctorates to UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who has an extensive history of using her role to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas attacks against the Jewish state.

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Ghent University, and the University of Antwerp — three of Belgium’s top-ranked institutions — are expected to award Albanese honorary doctorates in April, recognizing “the importance of [her] contributions, which are deemed of undeniable significance.”

The honorary doctorate recognizes Albanese’s “exceptional commitment to the protection of human rights and the strengthening of international law,” the three universities wrote in a joint statement.

Herwig Leirs, rector of the University of Antwerp, praised Albanese for her “determination in publishing truthful reports on the condition in the occupied Palestinian territories, with particular focus on Gaza in recent years.”

In the months following the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Israeli government of perpetrating a “genocide[sic]” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000[sic] people have been killed in Gaza as a result of Israeli actions.

On Monday, Jewish leaders across Belgium joined in condemning this latest decision, with both the French-speaking Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium (CCJOB) and the Flemish-speaking Forum of Jewish Organizations (FJO) calling for the honor to be revoked.

“This sends the wrong message to students and is in no way an example of academic integrity or ethics,” FJO wrote in a statement on Monday.

“Her repeated comparisons of Israel to the Nazis are perceived as Holocaust trivialization and antisemitic under the IHRA definition, and the US government also labels it as such,” the statement reads. Algemeiner

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"The Fleet Is Already on the Way" – Trump Issues Dramatic Ultimatum to Iran. President Trump revealed the scale of military preparations against Iran: "If they deviate from the line – we will act with even greater ease than before." Meanwhile, the president confirmed that Putin has already committed a billion dollars to the Board of Peace, and dismissively canceled the invitation to the Canadian Prime Minister: "A council too prestigious for him" Jfeed Staff Jan 23, 2026. JFeed

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UN official who financed Rina Schnerb HY"D murder on Gaza Board. How can the U.S. be elevating a leftist Dutch globalist who hates Trump and Geert Wilders? What is Witkoff's motivation for doing so? Opinion. Daniel Greenfield. Jan 24, 2026, 7:55 PM (GMT+2)

(JNS) “The entire population of Gaza is facing the risk of famine," Sigrid Kaag, the U.N.’s coordinator for Gaza, falsely claimed, echoing Hamas propaganda. “Israel must halt its devastating strikes."

Kaag, a leftist Dutch politician and U.N. official, had been picked for the role in Gaza by the Biden administration. And she had all the right credentials including from the U.N.’s World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum and leftist politics. She had cheered the BLM race riots and claimed that America was systematically racist because New Yorkers had mistaken her husband, who worked for a Muslim terrorist group, for a janitor.

Now she’s been picked for a seat on the Gaza Executive Board by the Witkoff team.

Kaag was ousted from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1994 after she secretly married a top member of the PLO, Anas al-Qaq. The same behavior that made her untrustworthy, however, qualified her for a job at the U.N. There she worked for the International Organization for Migration, the U.N.’s mass migration group, and UNRWA, the U.N.’s “Palestinian" agency, a front for Hamas.

Kaag’s hostility to Israel was public with the leftist Dutch politician blasting a significant proportion of Israel’s Jewish population as “illegal colonists on confiscated land" and complaining that someone had supposedly called her a “whore of the Arabs."

Back then she also complained that “Netanyahu’s way is of soundbites with racist, demagogic overtones about the Palestinian peace partner." The “peace partners" in question were the terrorists whom her husband was working for who were busy murdering Israelis.

As a member of the radical leftist Democrats 66 (D66) party, Kaag had her eye on political office while complaining that the Netherlands was racist and biased against her PLO husband and children. “Sometimes, because of my marriage and career, I am treated as a foreigner in my own country. And then I wonder: Who decides that? Who is the Dutch foreign national, and who is not?"

After working as a U.N. official in Syria and Lebanon, and despite having been previously ousted from the ministry for her marriage to a PLO official, she became the minister of foreign affairs in the Netherlands. The Netherlands was struggling with Muslim mass migration and appeasement of Muslim terrorists, and Kaag had the expertise to make both of those problems worse.

In 2018, Kaag, who had previously discussed her relationship with Hezbollah, visited Iran and met with its leaders while wearing a “headscarf." Geert Wilders, the popular Dutch leader who had rallied the public to defy Islamization, blasted Kaag for “submissively" bowing “for the fascist ayatollahs of Iran" at a time when Iranian women were risking their lives to appear in public without a hijab.

“While women are beaten there on the street for taking off their headscarves, you put on a headscarf and bowed to the ayatollahs. With that you’ve squandered women’s rights and betrayed those women," Wilders declared during his country’s election debates.

In 2019, Rina Shnerb, a 17-year-old girl, was hiking with her father and brother in Israel when she was killed in a Muslim terrorist attack. "I wanted to believe it was just a dream," Rabbi Eitan Shnerb, her father, said from his hospital bed. “I immediately called to Rina, shouting ‘Rina, Rina.’"

Kaag was forced to admit that her ministry had helped pay the salaries of Rina’s killers through a “nonprofit" acting as a front group for a terrorist organization. Kaag had allowed $12 million in funding to the “nonprofit" despite being repeatedly warned that the money was going to terrorists.

Around this time, the Dutch government was accused of directing money to a Muslim Brotherhood front group. Hamas is one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s organizations.

“She was photographed with terrorist Arafat and financed Palestinian terrorists," Wilders noted.

In 2021, Kaag was forced to resign once again, this time over the Afghanistan withdrawal. The former U.N. official, whose entire claim to fame was her expertise in the Muslim world, claimed that she had been caught by surprise. The Dutch evacuation under Kaag was so last-minute that they failed to leave until they received a message in the middle of the night from American forces warning that their embassy would soon be overrun by the Taliban.

She ran for office on a platform of fighting racism, bringing more Muslim refugees to the Netherlands and implementing the Paris climate accords which would wipe out Dutch agriculture.

“You are deliberately pursuing discriminatory policies. We need to talk about racism and exclusion, and you’re participating in that wholeheartedly," Kaag ranted at Wilders.

Two years later, the Biden administration selected her as the U.N. humanitarian envoy for Gaza. Kaag refused to cooperate with the Trump administration, spread lies about a fake famine and was part of a U.N. “aid" system that sabotaged aid deliveries in order to try and fake a famine to bail out Hamas. As a former UNRWA official, a U.N. organization whose ranks were heavily infiltrated by Hamas, Kaag was the worst possible person for the job.

That’s why the U.N. appointed her its special envoy for the Middle East.

By 2024, Sigrid Kaag had been caught meeting at the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

Now, the White House has announced that Kaag had been appointed to the Gaza Executive Board alongside Steven Witkoff, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who has praised Hamas, and Ali al-Thawadi, a Qatari official allegedly linked to the corruption trial of Sen. Bob Menendez, and allegedly linked to espionage against America and other nations.

In the past, Kaag had made little secret of her preference for the Biden administration, which had handpicked her for office, complaining after Donald Trump’s reelection, “I find it very hard to keep projecting that there’s still hope. There used to be some alignment with Washington-a willingness to think about international law and the civilian population in Gaza. That’s just gone.

“Last year around this time, there was still an American administration that was engaged with international law and concerned about the civilian population in Gaza," she whined.

However Kaag developed ties with Witkoff, whose disastrous tenure has included adopting the Biden administration’s policies on Gaza. And Kaag and Witkoff apparently bonded.

“I had WhatsApp contact with Steve Witkoff," Kaag told an interviewer.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s foreign policy has been hijacked by the same swamp and foreign policy blob that threw billions of dollars and decades of prestige into creating a “Palestinian Arab terror state." That’s the cause to which Saag is still dedicated. Now with US backing.

Saag’s appointment is yet more evidence that the architects of this disastrous policy are hostile to Trump, to America, and to the free world. Giving Saag, a globalist U.N. official, a role in Gaza will prime her for a political comeback in the Netherlands at the expense of Geert Wilders. The move undermines American national interests, the interests of Dutch patriots and the interests of Israel.

Whose interests are being served by elevating a leftist Dutch U.N. globalist who hates Trump? INN

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Flight cancellations Major Airlines Cancel Flights to Israel and Gulf States KLM, Air France, and Lufthansa cancel or adjust flights to Israel, Dubai, and Riyadh as US-Iran tensions escalate. Thousands stranded amid widening airspace closure

Jfeed Staff Jan 24, 2026 16:49 JFeed

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Arab stone-throwing attack caught on camera. Arabs from the town of Bir Zeit attacked a Jewish shepherd from Kfar Tarfon in the Binyamin region over Shabbat. Israel National News. Published: Jan 24, 2026, 7:54 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Report: Khamenei moved to underground bunker. Israel National News. Jan 24, 2026, 6:50 PM INN

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Anger in Israel at US special envoy Steve Witkoff. Israeli official claims: “Witkoff pushed to bring our major rival Turkey to the border. The clock is ticking backward toward a confrontation with Turkey." Israel National News. Jan 25, 2026, 1:28 AM INN

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Family of last hostage urges Witkoff, Kushner to pressure Hamas, not Israel. The imminent arrival of the American delegation was met with indignation by the family of Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, whose body remains in Gaza. JNS Staff. (Jan. 24, 2026 / JNS) The family of the last deceased hostage held in Gaza raised concerns on Saturday following the news that U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Board of Peace member Jared Kushner were to arrive in Israel later in the day and reportedly pressure Jerusalem into opening the Strip’s Rafah Crossing to Egypt, despite Hamas’s failure to retrieve the body of Border Police Master Sgt. Ran Gvili. JNS

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Hundreds at rally in Meitar: Without Ran, there's no 'stage two'. Hundreds of attendees at Meitar rally call for the immediate return of deceased hostage Ran Gvili and the completion of the first phase of the deal with Hamas. Israel National News. Published: Jan 25, 2026, 12:05 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Germany arrests Lebanese suspect in Hamas plot targeting Jewish institutions. German police arrest a Lebanese man accused of aiding a Hamas plot to attack Jewish and Israeli institutions. Israel National News. Jan 25, 2026, 4:44 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Teen arrested north of Toronto for antisemitic threats on Jewish sites. 14‑year‑old boy from Newmarket, north of Toronto, arrested after police say he made antisemitic calls to Jewish institutions. He faces multiple charges. Dalit Halevi. Jan 25, 2026, 5:30 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Iran Protest Death Toll Could Top 30,000, According to Local Health Officials.

By Kay Armin Serjoie, Roxana Saberi, and Fatemeh Jamalpour. Jan 25, 2026 12:59 AM GMT

As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone, two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health told TIME—indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll. So many people were slaughtered by Iranian security services on that Thursday and Friday, it overwhelmed the state’s capacity to dispose of the dead. Stocks of body bags were exhausted, the officials said, and eighteen-wheel semi-trailers replaced ambulances.

The government’s internal count of the dead, not previously revealed, far surpasses the toll of 3,117 announced on Jan. 21 by regime hardliners who report directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (Ministries report to the elected President.) The 30,000 figure is also far beyond tallies being compiled by activists methodically assigning names to the dead. As of Saturday, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said it had confirmed 5,459 deaths and is investigating 17,031 more.

TIME has been unable to independently verify these figures.

The Health Ministry’s two-day figure roughly aligns with a count gathered by physicians and first responders, and also shared with TIME. That surreptitious tally of deaths recorded by hospitals stood at 30,304 as of Friday, according to Dr. Amir Parasta, a German-Iranian eye surgeon who prepared a report of the data. Parasta said that number does not reflect protest-related deaths of people registered at military hospitals, whose bodies were taken directly to morgues, or that happened in locales the inquiry did not reach. Iran’s National Security Council has said protests took place in around 4,000 locations across the country.

“We are getting closer to reality,” Dr. Parasta said. “But I guess the real figures are still way higher.”

That appears to be the reality implicit in the government’s internal figure of more than 30,000 deaths in two days. A slaughter on that scale, in the space of 48 hours, had experts on mass killing groping for comparisons.

“Most spasms of killing are not from shootings,” said Les Roberts, a professor at Columbia University who specializes in the epidemiology of violent death. “In Aleppo [Syria] and in Fallujah [Iraq], when spasms of death this high have occurred over a few days, it involved mostly explosives with some shooting.”

The only parallel offered by online databases occurred in the Holocaust. On the outskirts of Kyiv on Sept. 29 and 30, 1941, Nazi death squads executed 33,000 Ukrainian Jews by gunshot in a ravine known as Babyn Yar.

In Iran, the killing fields extended across the country where, since Dec. 28, hundreds of thousands of citizens had assembled in the streets chanting first, for relief from an economy in freefall, and soon for the downfall of the Islamic regime. During the first week, security forces confronted some demonstrations, using mostly non-lethal force, but with officials also offering conciliatory language, the regime response was uncertain. That changed during the weekend commencing Jan. 8. Protests peaked, as opposition groups, including Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s former shah, urged people to join the throngs, and U.S. President Donald Trump repeated vows to protect them, though no help arrived.

Witnesses say millions were in the streets when authorities shut down the internet and all other communications with the outside world. Rooftop snipers and trucks mounted with heavy machine guns opened fire, according to eyewitnesses and cell phone footage. On Friday, Jan. 9, an official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned on state television to anyone venturing into the streets, “if … a bullet hits you, don’t complain.”

It took days for the reality to penetrate the internet blackout. Images of the bloodied bodies trickled out via illicit Starlink satellite internet connections. The task of counting the dead was hampered, however, because the authorities had also cut off lines of communications inside Iran. The first firm information came from a Tehran doctor who told TIME that just six hospitals in the capital had recorded at least 217 protester deaths after Thursday’s assault. Health care workers in Iran estimated at least 16,500 protesters had been killed by Jan. 10, according to an earlier report by Dr. Parasta in Munich. Friday’s update built on that research, he said.

“I am genuinely impressed by how quickly this work was pulled together under extremely constrained and risky conditions,” said Paul B. Spiegel, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University International School of Health. Like Roberts, he expressed wariness of extrapolating from the figures provided by hospitals.

Roberts, who traveled into war zones to research civilian death rates in Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo, said, “the 30,000 verified deaths are almost certainly an underestimate.”

The emergence of the Ministry of Health numbers appears to confirm that—while underscoring the stakes for both Iranians and a regime that, in 1979, came to power when a sitting government was confronted by millions of people demanding its downfall.

On Friday, Jan. 9, Sahba Rashtian, an aspiring animation artist, joined friends on the streets in Isfahan, a city in central Iran famous for its beauty. "Before anyone started chanting," a friend told TIME, "Sahba was seen collapsed on the ground. Her sister noticed blood on her hand.”

Sahba died on an operating table at a nearby hospital. She was 23.

“She always joked about her beautiful name,” her friend said. “She’d laugh and say, ‘Sahba means wine, and I am forbidden in the Islamic Republic.’”

At the burial, the friend said, religious rites were barred, and Rashtian’s father wore white.

“Congratulations,” he told mourners, according to the friend. “My daughter became a martyr on the path to freedom.” Time

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Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal". Iran International. 25 January 2026

Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal. Iran International's Editorial Board January 25, 2026. Men stand amid rows of corpses in a morgue in Tehran following mass killings of protestors by security forces in this undated image obtained by Iran International Men stand amid rows of corpses in a morgue in Tehran following mass killings of protestors by security forces in this undated image obtained by Iran International More than 36,500 Iranians were killed by security forces during the January 8-9 crackdown on nationwide protests, making it the deadliest two-day protest massacre in history, according to documents reviewed by Iran International's Editorial Board.

Iran International's Editorial Board can confirm the death toll after reviewing newly obtained classified documents, field reports, and accounts from medical staff, witnesses, and victims’ families.

The new information provides a clearer picture of the killing pattern and the scale of a crime that can now be described as the largest and bloodiest massacre of civilians during street protests, over a two-day period, in history.

Iran International has received reports and evidence indicating the extrajudicial execution of a number of detainees in Tehran and other cities. Images released from morgues leave little doubt that some wounded citizens were shot in the head while hospitalized and undergoing medical treatment. It is evident that, had these individuals sustained fatal head wounds on the streets, there would have been no reason to admit them to hospital or begin treatment in the first place. IranIntl

Report: Death toll in Iran surpasses 36,000 Iran International reports a high death toll based on confidential reports and medical testimonies, alongside allegations of extrajudicial executions Israel National News. Published: Jan 25, 2026, 12:41 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Arab affairs reporter warns: 'Rafah Crossing will create Hamastan'. Channel 12 correspondent says allowing Egypt sole control over Gaza’s main gateway could entrench Hamas rule and turn the Strip into a permanent jihadist front. Israel National News. Jan 25, 2026, 6:10 PM INN

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Rafah Crossing. Witkoff hints: US, Israel coordinating on future steps. US envoy says talks were constructive as Washington and Jerusalem coordinate next steps on Phase 2 of Trump’s Gaza plan and broader regional issues. Israel National News. Jan 25, 2026, 4:35 PM INN

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Government approves five new towns in the Negev. The government on Sunday approved a proposal by Construction and Housing Minister Haim Katz and Settlements Minister Orit Struck to establish five new community settlements in the eastern Be'er Sheva metropolitan area. Hezki Baruch. Jan 25, 2026, 4:34 PM (GMT+2) INN

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'I'm a steel pipe, Hamas made me into a rocket'. A new AI video gives a voice to the humanitarian supplies taken by Hamas for military purposes. Israel National News. Jan 25, 2026, 5:33 PM (GMT+2) INN

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IDF completes year-long effort to destroy southern Gaza terror tunnel route The tunnel was located in territory where the IDF remains deployed under the U.S.-brokered truce. JNS Staff. (Jan. 25, 2026 / JNS) The Israel Defense Forces has completed a year-long operation to demolish a 2.5-mile long tunnel east of the Yellow Line in southern Gaza, where the IDF remains deployed under the U.S.-brokered truce deal, the military said on Sunday. JNS

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CENTCOM chief meets IDF’s Zamir amid US military buildup. Adm. Brad Cooper visited the Jewish state as a guest of Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir. JNS Staff. (Jan. 25, 2026 / JNS) Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of United States Central Command (CENTCOM), held meetings in Israel on Saturday amid the ongoing U.S. military buildup in the region in response to tensions with the Iranian regime. JNS

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Netanyahu meets Witkoff, Kushner to discuss next steps in Gaza. Jared Kushner said the “master plan” to rebuild Gaza depends on Hamas disarming. JNS Staff. (Jan. 25, 2026 / JNS) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on Saturday with a United States delegation, including Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and the architect of the White House’s Gaza initiative, Jared Kushner, to discuss the implementation of Trump’s 20-point plan to end the Gaza Conflict. JNS

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Days before Holocaust Remembrance Day, Holocaust survivors launch ‘Book of Hope’ in Jerusalem. At emotional ceremony at the Friends of Zion Museum, 52 Holocaust survivors share personal stories of survival and hope; with candles lit in memory of victims, leaders praise their heroism and resilience, calling their testimony a gift to future generations ynet Global| 01.25.26 19:02

Just days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, dozens of Holocaust survivors gathered at the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem for an emotional ceremony marking the launch of a new book titled “I Also Remember a Miracle.”

The book, compiled by Michal Fundeminsky, director of the survivors’ group “Dolls and Dreams,” features 52 personal stories of survival and the small miracles that shaped each survivor’s journey. It was born from weekly gatherings held every Sunday at the museum, which for years has served as a home for the group, offering regular programming and even a dedicated guesthouse for survivors to stay on site. YNet

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New details: IDF search for Ran Gvili underway in Gaza City After Hamas said its information led to searches at a 'specific location,' Israel confirmed a wide operation began over the weekend to locate the last slain hostage at a Gaza City cemetery, as the cabinet debates reopening the Rafah crossing Yoav Zitun, Itamar Eichner|01.25.26 YNet

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Holocaust survivor who fought Nazis with art and humor now hits the big screen. Joseph Bau survived the Holocaust through art, forged documents and quiet acts of resistance; he married fellow prisoner Rebecca in a Nazi camp; now, his story is told in a new film and preserved at a Tel Aviv museum fighting to stay open.

Rinat Perera Danieli|01.25.26 | 14:55

For Joseph Bau, survival itself was never a single act of heroism but a sequence of improbabilities that bordered on the miraculous. From evading execution to marrying Rebecca in the camps and finding her again after the war, he survived moments that logic could not explain.

Joseph Bau was born in Krakow in 1920. He was a young art student when the Nazis invaded Poland. His studies were cut short, but his creativity became a weapon. YNet

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Iran may have killed over 30,000 protesters in two days: Report. By Brady Knox. Washington Examiner. January 25, 2026. — Over two weeks, the Rapid Support Forces murdered thousands of civilians, with one estimate putting the kill count at over 60,000. Washington Examiner

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Disturbing. Iran Threatens Death Penalty for Sharing Videos of Its Gruesome Massacres. After slaughtering over 30,000 citizens in just 48 hours, the Iranian regime has issued a chilling ultimatum: Record the carnage and face the gallows. With chemical weapons used on protesters and hospitals turned into execution chambers, Tehran is now criminalizing the truth to hide the deadliest massacre in its modern history. Jfeed Staff. Jan 26, 2026. JFeed

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The final hostage. BREAKING: Body of Ran Gvili, the Final Oct. 7 Hostage, Returned to Israel After 843 days, the circle has finally closed. The IDF has recovered the body of Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, the final hostage held in Gaza since October 7. Following a high-stakes operation in a Shuja'iyya cemetery, the "Hero of Alumim" has finally returned to Israel for a state burial. Jfeed Staff. Jan 26, 2026. JFeed

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Seized and Silenced. Ransom for the Dead: How the Ayatollahs Are Profiting from Their Own Killing Spree. A UN expert has revealed that Iranian security forces are kidnapping wounded protesters directly from hospital beds and extorting families for thousands of dollars to return the bodies of the dead. Eliana Fleming. Jan 26, 2026 JFeed

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Rasht's Night of Slaughter. Burned Alive or Shot Dead: How The Iranian Forces Turned a Bazaar Into a Death Trap. Victims in the Iranian city of Rasht were forced to choose between being burned alive in a deliberate market fire or running into a barrage of assault rifle fire from waiting security forces. Eliana Fleming. Jan 26, 2026 JFeed

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109,000 Tonnes of Death. The Iranian Method: Myanmar Adopts High-Seas Sanction-Busting Tactics to Bomb Civilians. Investigations have uncovered a massive surge in jet fuel reaching Myanmar via "ghost ships" and ship-to-ship transfers, mirroring the evasive tactics used by Iran to bypass global sanctions. Eliana Fleming Jan 26, 2026 JFeed

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"We Kept Our Promise" Shehecheyanu in Gaza: Rabbi's Blessing as Ran Gvili Comes Home. After 843 days in Hamas captivity following his death on October 7, the body of fallen hostage Ran Gvili was recovered from a mass grave in northern Gaza during Operation "Brave Heart," bringing immense relief and emotion to his family and the nation. Eliana Fleming Jan 26, 2026. JFeed

'Objective completed'. IDF Chief of Staff recites Shehecheyanu blessing. Israel National News. Jan 26, 2026, 9:05 PM INN

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New footage from the mission to find Ran Gvili. Israel National News. Jan 26, 2026, 5:40 PM INN

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Emotional moment: Former hostages remove the ‘Bring Them Home’ pin. Israel National News. Jan 26, 2026, 11:37 PM INN

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Ran Gvili's family speaks out: Our pride is stronger than the sorrow. Israel National News. Jan 26, 2026, 9:46 PM INN

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Jerusalem: Ran Gvili’s picture projected onto National Institutions Building. Israel National News. Jan 27, 2026, 4:08 AM INN

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Jewish leaders welcome return of Ran Gvili. Israel National News. Jan 27, 2026, 5:24 AM INN

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ADL calls Kanye West’s apology ‘long overdue’ but insufficient. Elad Benari. Jan 27, 2026, 4:52 AM INN

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US official links Hamas disarmament to amnesty. US official says Hamas disarmament may come with amnesty under Trump’s Gaza plan. Elad Benari. Jan 27, 2026, 3:10 AM INN

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Iran threatens 'regret‑inducing' response to US attack. Elad Benari. Jan 27, 2026, 5:41 AM INN

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If elected. Flávio Bolsonaro vows to move Brazil’s embassy to Jerusalem. Israel National News. Jan 27, 2026, 6:16 AM INN

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Trump says Iran situation is 'in flux' as officials warn of attack in coming days. Trump said he sent a 'big armada' near Iran, but diplomacy remains possible, adding 'they want to talk,' as officials told The NYT fears are growing of a strike in coming days; US official said the USS Lincoln could be in position within a day or two Itamar Eichner, News Agencies|01.27.26. YNet

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From a Romanian forced labor camp to a proud IDF legacy. As Israel marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 97-year-old survivor Arie Reiter and his granddaughter, Sgt. A., share a powerful testament of revival. Yaakov Lappin. Jan. 27, 2026.

In 1944, a teenage Jewish boy named Arie Reiter was sent to a forced labor camp to pave roads for the retreating German and Romanian armies.

More than 80 years later, his granddaughter, Sgt. A., serves as a commander in the IDF’s School for Computer Professions (known by its Hebrew acronym, Basmach), protecting the digital infrastructure of the Jewish state. This state, Reiter said, seemed like a surreal fantasy in the camps of Europe during those darkest of days.

Their shared story, told ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday, encapsulates the arc of Jewish history in the modern era, from history’s worst and industrial genocide against a scattered people, to national self-determination and rebuilding.

“If I would have stood up when in the camp, and told people that we’d have a country, a military, that we’d have children and grandchildren as officers, that we’d have the best air force in the world, they would have wanted to put me in an insane asylum, Reiter, who was born in the Romanian city of Vaslui, told JNS on Monday.

For Reiter, now 97 and a resident of Beersheva since 1951, the memories of his childhood under the fascist Romanian regime in the Second World War remain vivid and brutally painful. Romania, under the leadership of Ion Antonescu, allied with Hitler, adopting the Nuremberg Laws and participating in the invasion of the Soviet Union.

“All the laws that the fascists, the Germans invented, were also in Romania,” Reiter said. “They expelled all Jews from universities, high schools, and schools. Jewish lawyers couldn’t represent Romanians. Jewish doctors couldn’t treat Romanians.” .. JNS

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Erdogan warns Israel, Greece and Cyprus: Turkey will defend its maritime rights. Remarks come ahead of a trilateral summit in Jerusalem aimed at deepening security and energy cooperation with Athens and Nicosia amid tensions with Ankara|01.27.26 YNet

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From a Romanian forced labor camp to a proud IDF legacy. As Israel marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 97-year-old survivor Arie Reiter and his granddaughter, Sgt. A., share a powerful testament of revival. Yaakov Lappin. Jan. 27, 2026

In 1944, a teenage Jewish boy named Arie Reiter was sent to a forced labor camp to pave roads for the retreating German and Romanian armies.

More than 80 years later, his granddaughter, Sgt. A., serves as a commander in the IDF’s School for Computer Professions (known by its Hebrew acronym, Basmach), protecting the digital infrastructure of the Jewish state. This state, Reiter said, seemed like a surreal fantasy in the camps of Europe during those darkest of days.

Their shared story, told ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday, encapsulates the arc of Jewish history in the modern era, from history’s worst and industrial genocide against a scattered people, to national self-determination and rebuilding.

“If I would have stood up when in the camp, and told people that we’d have a country, a military, that we’d have children and grandchildren as officers, that we’d have the best air force in the world, they would have wanted to put me in an insane asylum, Reiter, who was born in the Romanian city of Vaslui, told JNS on Monday.

For Reiter, now 97 and a resident of Beersheva since 1951, the memories of his childhood under the fascist Romanian regime in the Second World War remain vivid and brutally painful. Romania, under the leadership of Ion Antonescu, allied with Hitler, adopting the Nuremberg Laws and participating in the invasion of the Soviet Union.

“All the laws that the fascists, the Germans invented, were also in Romania,” Reiter said. “They expelled all Jews from universities, high schools, and schools. Jewish lawyers couldn’t represent Romanians. Jewish doctors couldn’t treat Romanians.” .. JNS

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Trump Briefed on Iran’s 'Weakest Point Since 1979' as U.S. Weighs Action. Intelligence reports show the Iranian regime is at its weakest since 1979. As protests hit Khamenei’s strongholds, Senator Lindsey Graham signals that "evil must be defeated." Gila Isaacson. Jan 27, 2025 JFeed

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'No reasonable person can get used to it': IDF commander on recovering Gvili's remains - interview. Gvili was killed in battle fighting infiltrating Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, after saving the lives of partygoers fleeing the Nova music festival in Re’im and defending Kibbutz Alumim.

By Maya Zanger-Nadis. January 27, 2026. “This was a very complex mission - not only operationally, but also mentally and physically,” Maj. E (res), an IDF company commander in the Alexandroni Infantry Brigade, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday after Israeli forces recovered the remains of St.-Sgt.-Maj. Ran Gvili from northern Gaza.

Gvili was killed in battle fighting infiltrating Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, after saving the lives of partygoers fleeing the Nova music festival in Re’im and defending Kibbutz Alumim from Hamas terrorists. [https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-884709

111,681 Holocaust survivors remain in Israel. New data shows 12,000 Holocaust survivors died in Israel in 2025, with fewer than 200,000 still alive worldwide. Shira Kadari-Ovadia|01.27.26 YNet

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Hamas seeks role for its police in Gaza ahead of disarmament talks, sources say. Hamas is pushing to integrate its roughly 10,000 police officers into a new US-backed Palestinian administration for Gaza, a move likely to face Israeli opposition as disarmament talks continue.

By Reuters, Shir Perets. January 27, 2026. Hamas is seeking to incorporate its 10,000 police officers into a new US-backed Palestinian administration for Gaza, sources say on Tuesday, a demand likely to be opposed by Israel as the terror group debates whether to surrender its arms.

The terror group retains control of just under half of Gaza following an October ceasefire deal brokered by US President Donald Trump. The agreement ties further Israeli troop withdrawals to Hamas giving up its weapons. JPost

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Hamas banking on Qatar, Turkey to allow its forces into Gaza peacekeeping force ANALYSIS. This idea would seem to be an obvious non-starter for how to proceed in Gaza, especially as Israel and the Trump administration want to see Hamas disarmed. January 27, 2026 JPost

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PIJ knowingly fired faulty rockets in Gaza, killing 'a thousand' Palestinians, document reveals. "We are at war. And even if a thousand people are killed by friendly fire, that is the price of war," PIJ's Akram al-Ajouri reportedly said.

By Sam Halpern. January 27, 2026. Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza knowingly launched defective rockets throughout the course of the Israel-Hamas War, killing 'a thousand' Gazans, KAN Reshet Bet reported on Tuesday, citing a document recovered from the Gaza Strip.

The Foreign Ministry later confirmed the authenticity of the document, sharing it on X/Twitter.

According to the report, the document, which contains a summary of a Beirut meeting between a Hamas official and Akram al-Ajouri, the head of PIJ’s al-Quds Brigades, was investigated by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. The al-Quds Brigades is Palestinian Islamic Jihad's military wing.

According to the document, which reveals that Hamas leaders were upset that so many PIJ rockets were falling short inside of Gaza and killing Palestinians, reveals that Hamas viewed the problem as an issue damaging public perception within Gaza. JPost

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Israel alarmed as US pullout opens door to Turkish-led jihadist surge in Syria. Commentary: US troop drawdown creates a vacuum in Syria that Turkey is poised to fill, threatening Israel’s air freedom in the north and en route to Iran; security chiefs urge swift diplomatic action and warn of growing risks to Jordan’s stability. Ron Ben-Yishai|01.27.26 16:38

The sudden and ruthless manner in which the Trump administration turned its back on the Kurds in Syria—effectively giving a green light to President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s jihadist forces to invade their autonomous region in the country’s northeast and massacre them—has raised alarm within Israel’s security establishment.

The concern stems not only from what is seen as an immoral abandonment of an ally, and not only because something similar could one day happen to Israel, but also because the decision was made in Washington as a direct result of the influence wielded by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the U.S. president.

From an Israeli perspective, what matters even more is that, in parallel to the fighting in the Kurdish region, the White House has decided to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria in the very near future. For those who may have forgotten: east of the Euphrates, American troops had been working effectively with the Syrian Democratic Forces—mostly Kurds with some Arab tribal fighters—against some 3,000 Islamic State terrorists waging terror and guerrilla warfare against local regimes and American interests in Syria and Iraq.

This is not the first time Trump has sought to pull U.S. forces out of Syria. It also happened during his first term as president, when Israel intervened and partially prevented the move. Currently, about 900 American troops remain in Syria, but this time, Trump appears determined to bring them home. This was one of the main issues raised during the recent meeting between U.S. CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper and IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir. The withdrawal of American troops from Syria marks a significant milestone in the U.S.’s official policy of reducing its military presence in key strategic areas across the Middle East.

The rationale behind this shift, as outlined in the Pentagon’s recently released National Defense Strategy document, is that America’s regional allies will assume a larger and more active role in defending their own interests against the hostile intentions of Iran and its proxies. The document highlights Israel as a model to follow—a country capable of defending itself with what it terms “limited assistance” from the United States. Still, in Israel, there is growing concern that the drawdown of American forces erodes deterrence capabilities and restricts its operational freedom in the region, particularly in the air. More troubling, however, is that the vacuum left by the U.S. withdrawal threatens regional stability. This, in turn, poses risks to the Jordanian regime and creates space for hostile actors—from Turkey to the Shiite militias in Iraq—to move closer to Israel’s eastern and northern borders. Israeli defense and policy officials are also troubled by the growing influence of Turkey and Qatar over the White House. This trend, they believe, stems from close personal ties and shared business interests between their leaders and Trump and his inner circle. As a result, the Israeli government and military have had to swallow a number of unwelcome security-related concessions Trump has imposed, particularly concerning Syria and Gaza. Israeli intelligence officials note that while the Shiite axis has weakened, a new force is emerging opposite Israel: the Sunni axis, led by Qatar and Turkey, with the quiet involvement of Pakistan and possibly other regional states. All of them are aligned with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the IDF, this bloc is referred to as the “Ikhwan Axis”—the Brotherhood Axis.

At this stage, it does not pose a direct and immediate threat to Israel, but the rhetoric of Turkey’s Erdogan and Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani is seen as a clear warning sign of its potential danger. Turkey commands the second-largest army in NATO and continues to strengthen its military. While there is currently no indication that it may become a direct military adversary, Israel is working to block its entrenchment efforts in Syria and the Gaza Strip. As for Qatar, it is expected to continue its campaign of influence and information warfare, which is severely damaging Israel’s image and international standing, particularly in the United States. Concern in the Hashemite Kingdom Several developments on the ground help explain the concerns of Israeli decision-makers regarding two key trends: the U.S. military withdrawal from the region and Trump’s close ties with leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood axis. Currently, there are about 3,000 American military personnel in Iraq—mostly specialists and advisers—spread across several bases, including in the Kurdish autonomous region in the north. Under an agreement with the Iraqi government, the U.S. is set to withdraw most of them by the end of September. Afterward, American troops will remain almost exclusively in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq.

As noted, around 900 U.S. troops are still stationed in Syria. Alongside Kurdish-led SDF fighters and with coalition air support, they successfully battled ISIS for eight years and played a decisive role in driving the group out of Syria and Iraq. Now, as the White House moves to bring them home, the U.S. is pressuring the Kurds to comply with al-Sharaa’s demands to surrender their weapons, integrate into his army and live under his rule. The Kurds, however, fear such an arrangement—with good reason—since Sunni jihadists view them as infidels to be killed, as they did with the Druze and Alawites. The atrocities committed by regime forces in Kurdish areas in recent days have only reinforced these fears. Another major concern involves some 9,000 ISIS detainees held by the Kurds east of the Euphrates who had not taken part in the group's ongoing guerrilla war in southeastern Syria and Iraq. Amid the recent fighting between Kurdish forces and the regime, some prisoners managed to escape. These are jihadists, no different from those serving in al-Sharaa’s military. CENTCOM officials fear that, despite the regime’s pledge to act against ISIS, it may eventually release the remaining detainees, who would then resume attacks. Israeli officials are worried that at least some of these thousands could make their way to southern Syria and approach the Golan Heights border. What happens next is all too predictable.

In the meantime, the Shiite-led Iraqi government has agreed, at Washington’s request, to take in ISIS detainees from Syria into its own prison facilities, recognizing that if it does not and those terrorists are freed, Iraqi civilians—especially Shiites—will be in danger. The U.S. began transferring ISIS prisoners from Syria to Iraqi-run detention camps last week, and the operation is still underway. CENTCOM’s senior command is unhappy with the direction being set by the White House, noting that the order to pull American troops from Syria is restricting its ability to operate and gather intelligence in the Middle East. While the U.S. still maintains a base with several hundred troops at al-Tanf on the Syria-Iraq border, it is possible that this outpost will also be shut down. Such a move would not only expose Syria and Iraq to renewed activity by jihadists—both Sunni and Shiite—but would also severely threaten the stability of the Jordanian regime. ynet has learned that the Pentagon is also considering scaling back or even completely withdrawing from U.S. bases in Jordan. This prospect is causing significant concern in both Amman and Jerusalem, as it would leave the kingdom vulnerable to Iraqi Shiite militias entrenched along its border, and increase the threat to the monarchy from jihadist and Muslim Brotherhood elements operating inside Jordan and in southern Syria. Concerns over Erdogan’s encroachment But the main issue currently troubling Israeli defense officials is Turkey’s growing presence and military entrenchment in Syria. This neo-imperialist push, aimed at turning Syria into a satellite or client state that serves President Erdogan’s interests, is not only about reaping economic benefits from Saudi-funded reconstruction. It also seeks to give the Turkish military the ability to deploy radar systems, air defense batteries and forward bases near Israel, thus severely limiting its aerial freedom of action over Syria and Iraq. That air freedom is among Israel’s most critical strategic assets in its efforts to counter Iran and other regional threats. The air corridors over Syria and Iraq have enabled Israeli Air Force missions deep into western, central and southern Iran. Maintaining this operational latitude is vital for preventing future force buildup and attack capabilities by hostile actors operating in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Faced with this reality, Israel could soon confront a strategic dilemma: whether to act forcefully against Turkish entrenchment—even at the risk of direct military friction with a NATO member closely tied to Washington—or to refrain from action, at the cost of allowing serious erosion of a key strategic asset. Security officials warn that this process will likely not happen overnight, but rather gradually—a “drip” of incremental Turkish moves, each one too small to justify a major Israeli response, but together forming a new reality within months or years in which Israeli aircraft no longer enjoy freedom of movement over Syria and Iraq. Compounding this is the fact that under the Trump administration, Washington has shown far less willingness to engage militarily in the Middle East, focusing instead on China, Ukraine and domestic concerns. In such a scenario, Israel could find itself largely alone in defending its northern airspace autonomy. This has led to the security establishment’s central recommendation to Israel’s political leadership: do not wait for the new reality to become permanent—take action now on three fronts. First, diplomatically with Washington: Prime Minister Netanyahu must leverage his direct influence on Trump and engage American Jewish organizations such as AIPAC to counterbalance the growing Turkish-Qatari influence in Congress. Second, the IDF must reinforce border defenses with Syria and Jordan by all available means. Third, Israel must deepen its alliance with the United Arab Emirates and expand cooperation with Saudi Arabia and other moderate Sunni states. If necessary, military action may also be required to establish clear red lines for Turkey and prevent it from turning Syria into a direct military sphere of influence. In any case, concern alone is not a strategy. The most urgent and strategic task now facing Israel is to recognize the emerging reality to its north and east, and to prepare for it swiftly and effectively. YNet

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‘Hezbollah 2.0’ Trap. The Great Gaza Gamble: Is Israel Trading Blood for a Paper Peace? As Trump launches Phase B of his Gaza peace plan, concerns grow in Israel over the roles of Qatar and Turkey in reconstruction. Will a "technocratic" government be a shield for a Hamas comeback? Jfeed Staff. Jan 27, 2026 JFeed

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From 2014 to 2026: the 255 hostages freed from Gaza through deals, rescues and diplomacy. With the recovery of Ran Gvili, the hostage era that began in 2014 has come to an end; military rescues, three hostage deals and diplomatic gestures led to the release of 255 men, women, children and soldiers held by by Hamas and other groups in Gaza. Nina Fox, Maya Bar|01.27.26

The return of the last Israeli hostage, Ran Gvili, for burial in Israel, and his identification at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, marked the end of an era of captivity that began in 2014 during Operation Protective Edge and reached its darkest hour after the October 7 massacre in southern Israel. After more than 400 weeks, no Israeli hostages remain in the hands of Hamas or other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip. These are the stories of the 255 hostages.

Hostages held since 2014. Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul, a Golani Brigade soldier, was killed in combat between July 19 and 20, 2014, during Operation Protective Edge, when his armored personnel carrier was hit in the Shejaiya neighborhood. More than a decade later, his body was recovered and returned to Israel in a covert intelligence operation. Lt. Hadar Goldin, a Givati Brigade officer, was killed less than a month later. His body was held by Hamas for more than 400 consecutive weeks and was returned to Israel as part of the final hostage deal. After the war, on Sept. 7, 2014, Avera Mengistu crossed the Gaza border and was abducted by Hamas. He was held alive for more than a decade and released in February 2025. Several months later, Hisham al-Sayed , who crossed into Gaza while suffering from severe mental illness, was also released in the same deal. The October 7 kidnappings A total of 251 people were abducted from Israel to the Gaza Strip during Hamas’ terror attack on October 7.

They were taken alive by terrorists and Palestinian civilians, on foot or aboard cars, motorcycles and tractors, some of them stolen, and during battles fought to defend the communities along the Gaza border. Forty-four Israelis were kidnapped from the Nova music festival in the Re’im forest, and 207 Israelis and foreign nationals were abducted from kibbutzim, IDF bases where they were serving, and various combat zones across the Gaza border area.

Hostages released without a deal. Four women were released early on “humanitarian grounds”: Natalie Raanan and Judith Raanan, an American mother and daughter from Chicago Nurit Cooper and Yocheved Lifshitz from Kibbutz Nir Oz IDF rescue operations Ori Megidish, an IDF surveillance soldier, was rescued from Gaza City on October 30, 2023 On Feb. 12, 2024, Fernando Marman and Luis Har were rescued from Rafah On June 8, 2024, Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv were rescued from Nuseirat; Yamam officer Arnon Zamora was killed, and the operation was named in his honor On Aug. 27, 2024, Qaid Farhan al-Qadi was rescued alone from a tunnel in Rafah

Bodies recovered during the war. Among those whose bodies were located and returned for burial: Ilan Weiss, Idan Shtivi, Nattapong Pinta, Staff Sgt. Shay Levinson, Yonatan Samerano, Ofra Keidar, Yehudit Weiss, Cpl. Noa Marciano, Ofir Tzarfati, Shani Louk, Itzik Gelerenter, Amit Buskila, Ron Binyamin, Hanan Yablonka, Michel Nisenbaum, Youssef al-Ziyadne and his son Hamza, Yagev Buchshtab, Cpl. Nik Beizer, Ron Sherman, Elia Toledano, Sgt. Kiril Brodski, Staff Sgt. Tomer Ahimas, Eden Zecharya, Ziv Dado, Oren Goldin, Maya Goren, Sgt. Shaked Dahan, Alex Dancyg, Yoram Metzger, Avraham Munder, Chaim Peri, Nadav Popplewell, Elad Katzir, Master Sgt. Ravid Katz, Itay Svirsky, Orion Hernandez, Yair Yaakov, Aviv Atzili, Gad Haggai and Judy Weinstein-Haggai.

Also returned were the bodies of Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer Talalka, who were mistakenly killed by IDF fire, and Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Uri Danino, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov and Almog Sarusi, who were executed in a tunnel in Rafah.

The first hostage deal (November 2023) Eighty hostages were released alive in seven stages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners. Among them: Ruth Munder, Keren Munder and her son Ohad; Danielle Aloni and her daughter Emilia; Doron Katz-Asher and her daughters Raz and Aviv; Yaffa Adar; Adina Moshe; Margalit Moses; Hanna Katzir; Channah Peri; Sharon Avigdori and her daughter Noam; Liam Or; Emily Hand; Raya Rotem and her daughter Hila; Shiri Weiss and her daughter Noga; Shoshan Haran; Adi Shoham and her children Nave and Yahel; Hagar Brodetz and her children Ofri, Yuval and Oriya; Abigail Idan.

Additional releases included: Maya Regev, Itay Regev, Dafna Elyakim, Ella Elyakim, Chen Goldstein-Almog and her children Agam, Gal and Tal; Elma Avraham; Aviva Siegel; Sharon Cunio and her twin daughters Emma and Yuli; Karina Engel and her daughters Mika and Yuval; Sahar and Erez Kalderon; Or and Yagil Yaakov; Meirav Tal; Ditza Heiman; Eitan Yahalomi; Tamar Metzger; Noralyn Babadilla; Ada Sagi; Rimon Kirsht; Ofelia Roitman; Gabriela Leimberg and her daughter Mia; Clara Marman; Raz Ben Ami; Yarden Roman-Gat; Liat Atzili; Moran Stella Yanai; Ofir Engel; Amit Shani; Gali Tarshansky; Yelena Trufanov; Irena Tatti; Ilana Gritzewsky; Bilal al-Ziyadne and his sister Aisha; Amit Soussana; Sapir Cohen; Mia Schem; Shani Goren; Nili Margalit. Dozens of Thai nationals and Filipino citizen Jimmy Pacheco were also released.

The second hostage deal. More than a year later, a second deal led to the release of the remaining living hostages, including: Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy, Ohad Ben Ami, Yarden Bibas, Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, Doron Steinbrecher, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Yair Horn, Omer Wenkert, Alexander Trufanov, Eliya Cohen, Or Levy, Gadi Moses, Keith Siegel, Ofer Calderon, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem Tov, Eli Sharabi, Arbel Yehud, Sathian Suwannakham, Pongsak Tanna, Bannawat Saethao, Watchara Sriaoun and Surasak Rumnao.

Also released were. Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed. Returned for burial were Shlomo Mansour, Ohad Yahalomi, Tsachi Idan, Oded Lifshitz, Itzik Elgarat, Shiri Bibas and her children Ariel and Kfir.

The final releases. In May 2025, Hamas released Edan Alexander, an American-Israeli soldier, as a gesture to U.S. President Donald Trump. Months later, the final deal led to the release of: Bar Kupershtein, Evyatar David, Yosef Ohana, Segev Kalfon, Avinatan Or, Elkana Bohbot, Maxim Herkin, Nimrod Cohen, Matan Zangauker, Eitan Horn, Eitan Mor, twins Gali and Ziv Berman, Omri Miran, Alon Ohel, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Rom Braslavski, Ariel Cunio, David Cunio and Matan Angrest.

The bodies returned included: Guy Iluz, Bipin Joshi, Yossi Sharabi, Capt. Daniel Perez, Staff Sgt. Tamir Nimrodi, Uriel Baruch, Eitan Levy, Inbar Haiman, Muhammad El-Atrash, Eliyahu Margalit, Ronen Engel, Tal Haimi, Aryeh Zalmanovich, Tamir Adar, Sahar Baruch, Amiram Cooper, Col. Asaf Hamami, Capt. Omer Neutra, Staff Sgt. Oz Daniel, Staff Sgt. Itay Chen, Joshua Luito Mollel, Lior Rudaeff, Meni Godard, Dror Or, Sonthaya Oakkharasri and Sudthisak Rinthalak. With the return of Ran Gvili, the final hostage held in Gaza, Israel closed a painful chapter spanning more than a decade, from 2014 through war, loss, rescue and return. All 255 are now home. YNet

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How the IDF recovered Ran Gvili's body, IDF commander tells all. In an Arutz Sheva interview, the deputy commander of the IDF Rabbinate combat unit recounts Operation Courageous Heart to recover Ran Gvili. Shimon Cohen. Jan 28, 2026, 6:24 PM (GMT+2) The Deputy Commander of the Southern Command Search Unit, the Military Rabbinate's Combat Unit, Major A., recounts in an interview with Arutz Sheva-Israel National News Operation Courageous Heart, the mission to recover the final deceased hostage, Ran Gvili, from the Gaza Strip.

Maj. A. says that the preparations for the operation had begun earlier, but due to various constraints, the operation was delayed. This being said, his soldiers were ready for action for a while, until "last week they were notified of a window of opportunity to execute the mission, and we began to get ready. We called the soldiers from their homes three days before the operation, we were issued the dedicated gear, and we practiced on dummies."

A. also notes that there were other units under his unit's command, including the dentists' unit, which identified the body, soldiers from an explosives ordnance unit to ensure the soldiers' safety, a unit of terrain experts, an IDF anthropologist, members of the Captives and Missing Persons Unit, and his soldiers who carried out the work.

"We joined an engineering unit that dug in the dirt with the excavators and pulled out the remains. This is very precise work; it demands great concentration by the troops," he explains, and notes that the forces entered the territory of the cemetery after a navigation and signage team that studied aerial images preceded them and marked points where there was a possibility to find Ran's body.

Regarding the work with the engineering vehicles, Maj. A. stresses that it was the most gentle work done by the heaviest tools. Before the start of the mission, A. spoke to his soldiers about its sensitivity, and in the field, there was strict coordination between a director on the ground and the excavator operator.

The excavator removed the bodies from the ground, arranging them in a manner that allowed for an initial examination by forensic dentists, with meticulous documentation and marking of details to ensure that everything planned to be removed from the grave was indeed recovered.

"We began on Sunday afternoon, and we were prepared for a few more days. For this, we called up a few more soldiers to allow for the constant execution of the operation, but we found Ran even before the next group of soldiers. There was a great sense of pride, the feeling of coming full circle on a biblical level," A. says. He recalls that in his speech to the soldiers, he mentioned the story of Samsons who toppled the pillars and, with his death killled more Philistines than he killed when he was alive, and the bible describes how Samson's brothers went to remove the rubble and find his body. "We have the same spirit and the same heritage."

In response to our question, Maj. (Res.) A. says that the work on the ground was also accompanied by risks that cannot and should not be detailed, given that this was an active combat zone. In this context, he noted the security envelope provided to his soldiers by the Alexandroni Brigade, while emphasizing that the danger was indeed present throughout the entire operation.

Regarding the composition of his unit, the combat unit of the Military Rabbinate, Maj. A. explained: “These are infantry fighters from all IDF units, religious and secular alike, who are willing to carry out the mission that the people of Israel need," he said.

He went on to describe a meaningful sense of closure experienced by his soldiers following the recovery of Ran Gvili: “Before the war, we were required to assist along the Judea and Samaria sector. We were stationed at the Lamed-Heh outpost, where we carried out operational activity for nearly a month. During that period, we conducted a drill to maintain our operational readiness, and at its conclusion, we held a formation in which we recounted the Lamed-Heh convoy incident, in which our soldiers were killed and their bodies abused until a British officer understood the importance of the matter and brought the fallen to Kfar Etzion, where the Vilna Gaon’s lottery was conducted. We pledged that we would not leave a fallen soldier behind. As a unit, we swore to bring everyone back. We held that formation on the anniversary of the fall of the Lamed-Heh platoon, and now, on the Hebrew date of the 8th of Shevat, we found Ran Gvili. For us, this is a very special closing of a circle."

Toward the end of the conversation, we asked Maj. A. about the findings discovered in Ran’s grave in Gaza. He said that the items found indeed matched what the force had expected to find. This included dental identification, as well as the fact that “based on the information we received, we understood that he might be found with some of his uniform, and indeed we found those items in that same grave together with his remains." The information was obtained through both human intelligence and various additional technological means. INN

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HATE IN QUEENS: Rebbi Punched in Face in Antisemitic Attack; Suspect Arrested After Shomrim Intervention. January 27, 2026 YWN

Rabbi attacked in Queens on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Rabbi assaulted in a targeted antisemitic attack in Queens on Holocaust Remembrance Day, prompting widespread condemnation from city leaders, including Mayor Mamdani. Israel National News. Jan 28, 2026, 4:52 AM (GMT+2)

A rabbi was verbally and physically attacked in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens in New York, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

City authorities described the incident as "targeted antisemitic attack", according to a report in Ynet.

According to Yeshiva World News, the attack occurred when a rabbi was approached by a suspect who, without provocation, began shouting and cursing antisemitic epithets before punching him in the face and throwing him to the ground.

Witnesses said the suspect also made threatening gestures, forming his hands into the shape of a gun and pointing them at the victim before fleeing the scene.

The NYPD said that the suspect was arrested at the scene and that the victim did not require medical treatment.

Local leaders condemned the incident. Congresswoman Grace Meng, Senator Joe Addabbo, Senator Leroy Comrie, New York State Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi, New York State Assemblyman Sam Berger, and New York City Council member Lynn Schulman issued a joint statement denouncing the attack.

“We are outraged by the antisemitic attack that occurred in our district, in which a Rabbi was verbally harassed, physically assaulted, and threatened for being Jewish. This was a targeted act of hate, and it has no place in our community or anywhere in New York City," they said.

“No one should ever fear for their safety because of their religion, identity, or beliefs. The rise in antisemitic incidents across our city and country is deeply concerning, and this attack- occurring on Holocaust Remembrance Day - underscores the urgent responsibility we all share to confront hate before it escalates into violence," they added.

“We are relieved that the victim did not suffer serious injuries, and we stand in solidarity with him and with the Jewish community during this painful moment. We thank the officers of the 112th Precinct for their swift response and for taking the individual responsible into custody."

“We call on all New Yorkers to reject antisemitism and all forms of hatred, and to stand united in defense of the safety, dignity, and humanity of our neighbors," the statement concluded.

Julie Menin, Speaker of the New York City Council, said, “I'm appalled by this horrific antisemitic assault that occurred on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, of all days."

She added, “This act of violence is yet another example of the deeply disturbing pattern of hateful incidents against our Jewish community. It’s why the Council’s Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism is so urgently needed."

“No New Yorker should ever be subjected to hatred or violence for who they are or how they worship, and we are taking action to put an end to it," stressed Menin.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he was “horrified by the antisemitic assault on a rabbi in Forest Hills."

“On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, New Yorkers were confronted with a painful truth: antisemitism is not a thing of the past-it is a present danger that demands action from all of us. There is no place for antisemitism in our city. I stand in solidarity with Jewish New Yorkers and my administration is committed to rooting out this hatred," he added.

New York has seen a sharp uptick in incidents of antisemitism since October 7, 2023. Data released by the New York City Police Department on the day before the mayoral election in November, won by Mamdani who has come under fire for his anti-Israel views, revealed that Jews were the victims in 62% of all hate crimes reported last month, with 29 antisemitic incidents out of a total of 47.

On the very day that Mamdani was elected, swastikas were sprayed on the Magen David Yeshiva in Brooklyn.

[Over 800 severe antisemitic incidents in 2025, 21 Jews murdered].

Nearly two weeks after the election, antisemitic graffiti reading “F**k Jews" was found scrawled on a sidewalk in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Last week, two teenagers were arrested after allegedly spray‑painting dozens of swastikas and other antisemitic messages throughout a Brooklyn playground frequented by Jewish children INN

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Over 800 severe antisemitic incidents in 2025, 21 Jews murdered. Most incidents were recorded in the US, the UK, France, Australia, and Canada, the Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry found. Israel National News. Jan 27, 2026, 9:39 PM (GMT+2 INN

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NO SURPRISES: PA Still Pays $2,000 A Month To Terrorist Who Smiled After Murdering 8 Children. January 28, 2026. YWN

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Rubio: 'No one knows who will rule Iran after Khamenei'. US Secretary of State updates Senate on the 'massive armada' that President Trump was headed toward Iran. Israel National News. Jan 28, 2026, 7:30 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Avi Kaner ابراهيم אבי @AviKaner: The death toll in Iran is now over 60,000 according to my sources on the ground at hospitals. #IranMassacre . Jan 28, 2026 on X

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Iranian Spies Planned Attacks on US Air Base From Ankara to Cyprus: The Lethal Route of Iran’s Armed Drone Smuggling Network Turkish intelligence has dismantled a sophisticated Iranian espionage network that was conducting reconnaissance on the US Incirlik Air Base and plotting to smuggle armed drones into Cyprus.

Eliana Fleming Jan 28, 2026 22 JFeed

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Harvard professor with history of anti-Israel bias elected to Pulitzer Prize Board. Vijay Iyer’s appointment “suggests that those who write fairly about Israel will be marginalized,” Daniel Mariaschin, of B’nai B’rith, told JNS. Jessica Russak-Hoffman. (Jan. 28, 2026 / JNS) The Pulitzer Prize Board is facing scrutiny following the election of Vijay Iyer, a composer, pianist and professor at Harvard University with a documented history of anti-Israel bias and activism. JNS

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‘Early enough’ to stop AI from having social media’s Jew-hatred problem, ADL says. Daniel Kelley, of the ADL, told JNS that when technology companies started investing in the problem of antisemitism on social media, "they were doing it after the horse had left the barn in many respects.” Aaron Bandler. (Jan. 28, 2026 / JNS) JNS

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Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @DrewPavlou: BREAKING: West Sydney hospital in a heavily multicultural area secretly changed the name and religion of a Jewish shooting victim from Bondi while she was under their care.

They referred to her during treatment with the Anglo alias “Karen Jones” because the hospital staff could not be trusted if they knew she was Jewish.

This comes after two Muslim extremist nurses at another West Sydney hospital said on video that they would kill any “Zionist” patient in their care.

Most successful multicultural country in the world btw. Jan 28, 2026. on X

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Qatar and US take charge in Gaza as IDF urges halt to Hamas aid, return to war. Yoav Zitun|01.28.26 YNet

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Trump weighs strikes on Iranian leadership to inspire renewed protests, sources say. Reuters|01.28.26 YNet

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Netanyahu holds fire as Trump may be setting another trap for Iran. Itamar Eichner|01.28.26 YNet

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US backs international arms buyback to demilitarize Gaza. Reuters|01.28.26 YNet

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'Attack the heart of Tel Aviv': in sharp retort to Trump, Iran warns of all-out war Lior Ben Ari, news agencies|01.28.26 YNet

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Al-Maliki defiant as Trump threatens to withdraw US support if he returns to power Associated Press|01.28.26 | YNet

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Cruel Cover-Up Exposed: How Iran Rebrands Slain Protesters as Regime Soldiers. Iranian authorities are refusing to release bodies of killed protesters unless families sign documents claiming the dead were Basij members slain by demonstrators, while demanding huge payments for bullets used in the killings, as the death toll climbs into the thousands amid a brutal nationwide suppression.

Eliana Fleming. Jan 28, 2026 JFeed

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German FM: ‘I’m ashamed that Jews fear to speak Hebrew in my country’. Johann Wadephul defends Israel ties despite a partial arms embargo, vows Berlin will keep buying Israeli defense systems. Nissan Shtrauchler.

(Jan. 29, 2026 / Israel Hayom) Eighty-one years after the Holocaust, in a scenario that once seemed inconceivable, Israel and Germany have become allies. Germans defend Israel in the international arena, and Israel provides military defense for Germany.

In an interview marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jan. 27, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, one of Israel’s most prominent friends in the Bundestag, explained why Berlin will continue purchasing weapons from Israel and supporting it in the international arena despite imposing sanctions on it during the recent Gaza war.

He discussed whether the future generation in Germany is forgetting the Holocaust and how to combat the fact that Jews fear wearing Jewish symbols in Germany. JNS

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Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Palestinians trust Hamas more than any other group. Jan 28, 2026.

The latest Arab Barometer poll of Palestinians has been released, the third one since the Gaza war.

On most questions, the answers are roughly what they were in previous polls, but there is one major difference: West Bank Palestinians now trust Hamas more than any other Palestinian group.

Trust in Hamas went up from 18% to 46% from those surveyed: EoZ

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Columbia U to screen film praising a Jew-hating, terrorist loving liar as a heroic doctor. Jan 28, 2026

Coming soon, to Columbia University:

"A State of Passion" is about Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, a British-Arab plastic surgeon who is described as "a face of Palestinian resistance" from his activities in Gaza during wartime.

The film will not discuss Abu Sittah's penchant for making up lies about Israel. Nor will it discuss his antisemitism. 

During the Gaza war, for example, Abu Sittah claims that he - and he alone - saw photographs taken by Al Jazeera that he says proved that Israeli doctors "expertly" removed organs from living Palestinian prisoners. This is a blood libel; it is absurd to think that any such photographs exist yet they weren't publicized where doctors worldwide could confirm it. Al Jazeera colluded with Abu Sittah - because they know that he will say anything to condemn Israel, no matter how far from the truth it might be.

He has a history of doing exactly that.

I found an Arabic language interview where he claimed that Israel had targeted every Palestinian Red Crescent hospital in the first days of the 1982 Lebanon war. 

It was a lie.

He further claimed that Ben Gurion said "I cannot bear to think that we will have to live in the same country as these people." Another lie.

He further alleged that when Israel arrested Shifa hospital director Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, "They broke his arms. They made him walk on all fours with a chain around his neck. They made him eat from a plate on the floor in front of the other doctors, because he refused to go on TV and say that the Israelis were right."

Salmiya himself never made any such claims when he was released and gave a press conference, and his arms were clearly not broken.  It was a lie.

Abu Sittah also is a fan of terrorists who attack Jews, retweeting one who said  “We congratulate our brothers in Hamas and our comrades in the Popular Front on the anniversary of their inception.”

He also praised the PFLP terrorist who bombed a cinema in Tel Aviv in December 1974, killing two. 

Beyond his lies and love of murderers, Abu Sittah is also a rabid Jew hater. 

He has repeatedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany, for example calling Gaza a "Final Solution." 

Abu Sittah also falsely claimed that 66% of Israelis are allergic to olive tree pollen, linking to a study that says no such thing. It was only looking at people who already had allergies and who lived near olive groves. Allergies are correlated with exposure. Lebanese people with allergies are more likely to be allergic to cedar and cypress pollen. 

When a doctor misrepresents a medical paper to push an antisemitic theory, it casts doubt on his competence as an activist as well as his medical credentials. 

Abu Sittah is not a hero. He is a contemptible, antisemitic terror supporter. EoZ

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Vance's Holocaust statement criticized for ignoring Jews and Nazis. Vance omits mention of Jews from Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, incensing Jewish critics on both sides of the aisle. Andrew Lapin, JTA. Jan 29, 2026, 12:08 PM (GMT+2)

US Vice President JD Vance made a statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day that failed to mention either Jews or Nazis, igniting further Jewish criticism of the vice president from both sides of the aisle.

The statement was the latest in a series of comments Vance has made that have triggered concern regarding his hesitancy to call out antisemites in the conservative movement.

“Today we remember the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust, the millions of stories of individual bravery and heroism, and one of the enduring lessons of one of the darkest chapters in human history: that while humans create beautiful things and are full of compassion, we’re also capable of unspeakable brutality," Vance tweeted Tuesday. “And we promise never again to go down the darkest path."

His post included photos of the vice president and his wife Usha visiting a Holocaust memorial site, meeting representatives and signing a guestbook. Vance visited Dachau last year.

Tablet, the Jewish digital magazine that promotes conservative ideas but has drawn a line of skepticism around the Vice President, swiftly criticized Vance’s comments.

“Thank you Mr. Vice President for this unique commemoration of the Holocaust that manages to avoid mentioning Jews or condemning Nazis," the site’s Twitter account posted. The post was retweeted by Jews across the political spectrum, including pro-Palestinian activist and former Congressional candidate Cameron Kasky, and its sentiments were echoed by many other Jews.

“It really takes effort on the part of Vice President Vance to issue a Holocaust Remembrance Day statement like this without any mention of six million Jews lost, the Jewish people, Nazis, or the issue of antisemitism," Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, tweeted.

Other Trump administration officials, including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well as the official White House statement, mentioned Jews or antisemitism in their own commemorations of the holiday. Some arms of the government had blasted Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz the day before the holiday for comparing immigration raids in his state to Anne Frank.

American Jewish groups have anxiously parsed Vance’s approach to antisemitism over the last few months. The vice president has previously failed to condemn a college student’s antisemitic question; remains close with Tucker Carlson; and has said several times that antisemitism is not a problem in the conservative movement. “We have far more important work to do than canceling each other," he said at a Turning Point USA conference in December.

He has also said that stopping immigration is the best way to combat antisemitism. INN

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New footage reveals Afula terrorist sped up, drove off the road, to kill Israeli. Israel National News. Published: Jan 29, 2026, 10:11 AM (GMT+2)

The Northern District Prosecutor's Office will file at the Nazareth District Court a serious indictment Thursday against terrorist Ahmad Abu al-Roub, a 34-year-old resident of Qabatiya in northern Samaria.

The indictment follows a terror attack last month in which Abu al-Roub murdered two Israelis and injured three others.

It charges him with two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder.. INN

(Related: Aviv Maor and Mordechai Shimshon killed in terror attack. Aviv Maor (19) was stabbed to death near Tel Yosef; Mordechai Shimshon (68) was rammed in hit-and-run attack. Dec 26, 2025. [61])

Terrorist who killed 2 in north to be indicted  Ahmad Abu al-Rub stole employer’s car and went on rampage, killing Shimshon. Mordechai, Aviv Maor; new footage released. Eitan Glikman|01.29.26 YNet

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Multiple Countries Evacuate Diplomatic Staff from Middle East as Signs Indicate US Could Attack Iran Soon. Multiple countries, including European nations and the UK, are evacuating non-essential diplomatic staff from the Middle East amid rising U.S.-Iran tensions and potential Israeli involvement. Further departures expected in 24-48 hours as regional conflicts escalate.

Jfeed Staff. Jan 29, 2026. JFeed

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For the First Time in 25 Years, Jews Pray at Joseph's Tomb in Broad Daylight. In a dramatic policy shift by Defense Minister Israel Katz, hundreds of worshippers held morning prayers at Joseph's Tomb in Nablus during daylight hours. This marks the first authorized daytime service since the site was abandoned 25 years ago, signaling a broader plan to restore a permanent Jewish presence.

Jfeed Staff. Jan 29, 2026 JFeed

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Strategic Threat Assessment. Iranian "Missile Superpower" May Target Millions of Israeli Civilians. Brig. Gen. (Res.) Zvika Haimovich, former Commander of Israel's Air Defense Array, warns that Iran remains a "missile superpower" despite recent setbacks. He predicts Tehran may target population centers from Haifa to Beersheba to force millions into shelters, while advising Israel to let the Trump administration lead the offensive. Jfeed Staff. Jan 29, 2026 JFeed

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From 3,100 missing to closure: IDF Hostage Command winds down after historic mission. Born in the chaos of Oct. 7 amid shock and thousands missing, Hostage Command ends two years of intense, emotional operations with the burial of Ran Gvili, marking quiet missions, deep intel ties and the looming question: what happens next? Elisha Ben Kimon|01.29.26 YNet

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EU appears poised to sanction Iran's Revolutionary Guard over protest crackdown. Move puts IRGC 'on same footing with al-Qaida, Hamas, Islamic State,' says EU foreign policy chief Kallas, adding pressure as Iran’s economy reels under sanctions Associated Press|1.29.26. YNet

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Yad Vashem nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. Etgar Lefkovits. (Jan. 29, 2026 / JNS) JNS

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Netanyahu hosts Bosnia Serb leaders in Jerusalem. JNS Staff. (Jan. 29, 2026 / JNS) JNS

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Honduras president receives credentials of Israeli ambassador on taking office. JNS Staff. (Jan. 29, 2026 / JNS) JNS

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Netanyahu: IDF soldiers paid with their lives due to US arms embargo. "We did not have enough ammunition, and people fell—heroes fell," said the Israeli premier. JNS Staff.

(Jan. 28, 2026 / JNS) Israel Defense Forces soldiers paid with their lives because of a weapons embargo that ended when U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday.

“I have one more thing to tell you, you can get a translation,” Netanyahu said, speaking at the end of a Hebrew-language press briefing that focused on the return of the remains of Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, the last captive taken during the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023.

“I said we paid very heavy prices in the war—the fallen and wounded, truly heavy costs. Part of this is what happens during war,” the prime minister continued.

Netanyahu noted that Gaza was full of booby-trapped buildings. After the IDF called on the civilian population to evacuate the combat zone, the military initially used artillery and airstrikes to eliminate terrorists who remained in structures rigged with explosives, the premier said.

However, “at a certain stage, we reached a stage where we did not have enough ammunition, and people fell—heroes fell,” he said. JNS

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Earth’s Bologna Show Canceled Over Band’s Objection To Venue’s Palestinian Flag. By Tom Breihan. Jan 27, 2026. Right now, drone-metal pioneers Earth are touring Europe. On Tuesday night (Jan. 27), Earth were slated to play at the Bologna, Italy venue TPO, which hosts cultural events as well as underground bands. According to various reports from the show, Earth did not perform because Dylan Carlson, the band's frontman and sole permanent member, objected to the Palestinian flag hanging in the venue. Stereogum

The band refused to perform because of the Palestinian flag on stage. The acclaimed metal band Earth was scheduled to perform at TPO in Bologna, Italy, but when they saw a Palestinian flag on stage, they asked for it to be removed. When their request was denied, they decided not to go on stage and play. "The venue chose politics over music, it's not about us," explained band leader Dylan Carlson.

Yiftach Carmeli. Published:01.29.26. ([62]. Earth band refused to go on stage because of the Palestinian flag). https://www.mako.co.il/music-news/Article-13491a0bd390c91026.htm

Yoseph Haddad @YosephHaddad: The American metal band Earth was supposed to perform at a venue in Bologna, Italy, but when they discovered a Palestinian flag was flying on stage, they asked the venue to remove it, and when the venue refused, they decided not to go to the show. They deserve our utmost respect. on X

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement @ICEgov: FORMER IRGC MEMBERS DEPORTED BACK TO IRAN.

Ehsan Khaledi, Mohammad Mehrani and Morteza Nasirikakolaki — all three came to the U.S. illegally in 2024, and all three were on a flight back home to Iran this past weekend.

Foreign terrorist organizers are NOT welcome in our country.

[63]. Jan 28, 2026 on X

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Eyal Waldman from the Kaplan protest leaders: It was a mistake to play with the army, there is definitely a connection between the refusal and October 7 . Last edited on 29.01.26 at 12:30 Greetings, Mila. ([64]). Rotter

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IDF says nearly 70,000 Gazans died in war | The Jerusalem Post.

IDF confirms some 70,000 Gazans died in Israel-Hamas war, none from starvation. Additionally, according to the IDF, throughout the war, 112,000 aid trucks were brought into Gaza, including 1,700,000 tons of food and 1,800,000 tents and tarpaulin covers.

By Yonah Jeremmy Bob. Jan 29, 2026 The IDF, for the first time on Wednesday, confirmed that approximately 70,000 Gazans were killed during the Israel-Hamas War, while disputing the percentage of civilian deaths claimed by the UN and declaring that no healthy persons died from starvation.

While various international groups have claimed that the overwhelming majority of those who died were civilians, the IDF continues to contest that number and has said that around 25,000 were Hamas terrorists. Further, the IDF has presented evidence that, through early 2024 – the period when Hamas was firing large daily rocket salvos – around 13% of their rockets were misfires, leading to the killing of many Palestinians.

There have also been other periods of time where Hamas executed large numbers of Palestinians whom it viewed as political opponents or civilians whom it was trying to prevent from fleeing an area that the IDF said needed to be evacuated. While the IDF said on Thursday that it is working on a fuller evaluation of the breakdown of civilians to combatants and estimates of those killed by Hamas, no Israeli official has provided a set estimate on that to date.

No date was given for when this breakdown will be publicized, suggesting that it will not be in the near future.

Estimates by international organizations and some media have said that as many as around 450 Palestinians have died of starvation, but the IDF on Thursday said these numbers are a mix of fake statistics or include persons who suffered from dangerous health conditions prior to the war.

IDF sources noted cases where they spoke to humanitarian aid officials who claimed that two specific children had died, but the military was able to quickly establish that they were actually still alive.

There were also multiple other cases in which the global media graphically documented children whose bodies appeared contorted and who eventually died, with the military later clarifying that they had serious pre-war health conditions that had already caused their distorted-looking appearance.

IDF: UN officials exaggerated claims of Gazan starvation. The IDF has not given a more detailed, comprehensive counter-claim regarding the list of persons the UN claims starved to death, but is expected to give significant information confidentially to the International Court of Justice on March 12. More broadly, the IDF has said that UN aid officials in the field have admitted that their headquarters political bosses invented or exaggerated the food insecurity in Gaza in order to pressure Israel into ending the war earlier. IDF officials have also admitted that there was a food insecurity crisis in July-August 2025, but said they acted rapidly enough at the time in increasing the volume of food aid trucks to avoid a starvation crisis. According to the IDF, throughout the war, 112,000 aid trucks were brought into Gaza, including 1,700,000 tons of food, as well as 1,800,000 tents and tarpaulin covers. During this time, 600,000 children received polio vaccinations.

Currently, 16 field hospitals are operating, and over the course of the war, 9,600 tons of medical items have been brought into Gaza. During the same period, 5,000 international aid workers entered the Strip, while 42,000 Gazans exited to a third country to receive health treatment or travel using their dual citizenship status.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories has also provided 1,300 food pallets to southern Syrian communities, mostly to Druze Syrians, during the war. COGAT chief Maj.-Gen. Ghassan Alian is soon to step down after nearly five years in his post, a long extension of the standard term. Yoram Halevi, a top former police official, will replace him.

Critics have said that Halevi is an outside political appointee designed to reduce professional expert disagreements with the West Bank government and the Gaza police Policy. JPost

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EU countries who blocked IRGC terror designation were threatened by Iran - report

However, the sources noted that some of those opposed to labeling the IRGC as a terrorist organization are of the belief that there should always be a line of communication between Europe and Iran.

By Idan Kweller. Jan 29, 2026.

Several European countries that had previously blocked the European Union from designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terror organization were threatened to do so by the IRGC Quds Force, according to several political sources. 

According to the sources, the countries had been warned by the Quds Force, a branch of the IRGC that operates abroad, that "there could be consequences" should the designation go through.  JPost

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Germany vows 'rapid' implementation of IRGC terror designation. January 29, 2026.

The European Union will move rapidly to implement a legally binding designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation, Germany’s foreign minister said on Wednesday, calling the decision long overdue.

In a statement issued on January 29, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said the designation sent a strong political message and showed that the EU recognised the scale of repression inside Iran.

“The next step will be the rapid implementation towards a legally binding listing,” he said, adding that the bloc stood “side by side with the Iranian people” and opposed repression.

Wadephul accused the Revolutionary Guard and its auxiliary forces of attacking protesters with extreme violence, carrying out executions, and playing a destabilising role across the Middle East.

“In short, they have blood on their hands,” he added. IranIntl

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Iran Rounds Up Thousands in Mass Arrest Campaign After Crushing Unrest. January 29, 2026. By Reuters and Algemeiner Staff.

Plainclothes Iranian security forces have rounded up thousands of people in a campaign of mass arrests and intimidation to deter further protests after crushing the bloodiest unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, sources told Reuters.

Modest protests that began last month in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar over economic hardship unleashed long-suppressed wider grievances and swiftly escalated into the gravest existential threat to Iran‘s Shi’ite theocracy in nearly five decades, with protesters commonly calling for ruling clerics to step down.

Authorities cut internet access and stifled the unrest with overwhelming force that killed thousands, according to rights groups. Tehran blames “armed terrorists” linked to Israel and the United States for the violence.

Within days, plainclothes security forces launched a campaign of widespread arrests accompanied by an intensified street presence based around checkpoints, according to five activists who spoke on condition of anonymity from inside Iran.

They said detainees had been placed in secret lockups.

“They are arresting everyone,” one of the activists said. “No one knows where they are being taken or where they are being held. With these arrests and threats, they are trying to inject fear into society.”

Similar accounts were given to Reuters by lawyers, medics, witnesses, and two Iranian officials speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution by security services.

They said the roundups appeared aimed at preventing any serious revival of protests by spreading fear just as the clerical establishment faces rising external pressure.

Uncertainty over the possibility of military action against the Islamic Republic has lingered since US President Donald Trump said last week that an “armada” was heading toward the country but that he hoped he would not have to use it.

On Wednesday, however, he doubled down on his threats by demanding Iran negotiate curbs on its nuclear program, warning that any future US attack would be “far worse” than one day of airstrikes last June on three nuclear sites.

Multiple Western and Middle Eastern sources told Reuters this week that Trump is weighing options against Iran that include targeted strikes on security forces and leaders to inspire protesters, although Israeli and Arab officials said air power alone would not topple the clerical establishment.

ROUNDED UP FOR PROTESTS IN PREVIOUS YEARS

One of the activists said security forces were detaining not only people accused of involvement in the latest unrest but also those arrested during protests in previous years, “even if they had not participated this time, plus members of their families.”

The latest death toll compiled by the US-based HRANA rights group stands at 6,373 – 5,993 protesters, 214 security personnel, 113 under-18s, and 53 bystanders. Arrests stand at 42,486, according to HRANA, which is investigating an additional nearly 20,000 possible deaths.

Several media outlets have reported the death toll could exceed 30,000 citing sources inside Iran.

Judiciary officials have warned that “those committing sabotage, burning public property, and involved in armed clashes with security forces” could face death sentences.

The UN human rights office told Reuters on Thursday it understood that the number of detainees was very high and they were at risk of torture and unfair trials. Mai Soto, the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, said the thousands of detainees included doctors and health-care workers.

UNOFFICIAL DETENTION CENTERS, THOUSANDS OF ARRESTS

Two Iranian officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to Reuters that thousands of arrests had been carried out in the past few days.

They said many detainees were being held in unofficial detention sites, “including warehouses and other improvised locations,” and the judiciary was acting quickly to process cases.

Iranian authorities declined to comment publicly on the number of arrests, or say where the detainees were being held. Authorities said on Jan. 21 that 3,117 were killed in the unrest, including 2,427 civilians and security personnel.

Amnesty International reported on Jan. 23 that “sweeping arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, bans on gatherings, and attacks to silence families of victims mark the suffocating militarization imposed in Iran by the Islamic Republic’s authorities in the aftermath of protest massacres.”

Arrests are continuing across the sprawling country, from small towns to the capital, witnesses and activists said.

“They arrested my brother and my cousin a few days ago,” said a resident of northwestern Iran who asked not to be named.

“They stormed our home in plainclothes, searched the entire house, and took all the laptops and mobile phones. They warned us that if we make this public, they will arrest all of us.”

FAMILIES FRANTIC OVER MISSING YOUNG PEOPLE

More than 60% of Iran‘s 92 million people are under the age of 30. Although the latest protests were snuffed out, clerical rulers will eventually risk more demonstrations if the heavy repression persists, according to rights activists.

Three Iranian lawyers told Reuters that dozens of families had approached them in recent days seeking help for relatives who had been detained.

“Many families are coming to us asking for legal assistance for their detained children,” one lawyer said. “Some of those arrested are under 18 – boys and girls.”

Human rights groups have long said Iranian security organs use informal detention sites during periods of serious unrest, holding detainees without access to lawyers or family members for extended periods.

Five doctors told Reuters that protesters wounded during protests had been removed from hospitals by security forces and dozens of doctors had been summoned by authorities or warned against helping injured demonstrators.

Prison authorities denied holding wounded protesters.

Families of five detainees said the lack of information about their whereabouts itself had become a form of punishment.

“We don’t know where they are, whether they are still alive, or when we’ll see them,” said an Iranian man whose daughter was rounded up. “They took my child as if they were arresting a terrorist.” Algemeiner

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Al Jazeera to host Iranian FM, Hamas leader, and CCP propagandist at its forum in February. Among the listed speakers is Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, head of the terrorist group abroad.

By Mathilda Heller. Jan 29, 2026

Al Jazeera Media Network is set to host Iran's foreign minister, a senior Hamas leader, and an Erdogan propagandist at its upcoming Forum on February 7.

The forum will be held from 7 to 9 February 2026 in the capital Doha and is titled "The Palestinian Cause and the Regional Balance of Power in the Context of an Emerging Multipolar World." JPost

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US: Brooklyn resident jailed for collaborating with Iran in plot to kill journalist. Carlyle Rivera, a 50-year-old man from Brooklyn, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for collaborating with Iran's Revolutionary Guards in an attempt to assassinate journalist Masih Ali Nejad in New York. According to the charges, Rivera received $100,000 from an Iranian source, purchased weapons and stalked her with his accomplice. Ali Nejad has been a constant target of Tehran due to her activism against the regime. According to a previous indictment, the same Iranian source also planned a mass shooting of Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka and assassinations of Jewish businessmen in New York. The US Department of Justice stated that the sentence sends a "clear message. We will not allow assassinations by a foreign enemy on US soil." Daniel Adelson, New York|01.29.26 YNet

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Senior Hamas official: We did not discuss disarmament ‘for a single moment’. Musa Abu Marzouk claimed Hamas has veto power over members of the U.S.-backed National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, which is meant to exclude the terror group. JNS Staff. (Jan. 29, 2026 / JNS) JNS

Hamas Doubles Down on Refusal to Disarm as Trump Pushes Phase Two of Gaza Peace Plan. January 29, 2026. Algemeiner

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PA continues ‘pay-for-slay,’ especially abroad, despite claims of reform. An Israeli watchdog group discovered that terrorist families living outside P.A. territories received their full payments from the “Martyr’s Fund.” David Isaac. (Jan. 29, 2026 / JNS) The Palestinian Authority’s attempt to throw off Western scrutiny by claiming it has ended pay-for-slay suffered another setback after beneficiaries on Monday celebrated receiving the payments.

Families living abroad received their full payments from the “Martyr’s Fund,” the program which provides monthly stipends for attacks against Israelis, according to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an Israeli watchdog group. Payments typically go to the families of the terrorists. JNS

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Trump declares national emergency over Cuba, threatens tariffs on nations that supply oil to communist regime. Move would allow for duties on imports from foreign countries that 'directly or indirectly sell or otherwise provide any oil' to the island country. By Jasmine Baehr Fox News Published January 29, 2026 10:04pm EST

State Department signals US interest in regime change in Cuba. Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy has the latest on U.S.-Canada relations and NATO on ‘Special Report.’ FoxNews

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Thursday, January 29, 2026 26% of European teachers think that "Jews murder Christian children for their blood" isn't or might not be antisemitic UNESCO surveyed over 2,000 teachers in the EU about how much antisemitism they witness in the classroom.

The main headlines are bad enough:

- 78% of teachers said they had encountered at least one antisemitic incident among students

- More than a quarter reported seeing nine or more such incidents.

- 61% said they had come across Holocaust denial or distortion in the classroom, with one in ten saying this occurred frequently.

- One in ten teachers reported witnessing physical attacks on Jewish pupils at least once,

- 44% said they had seen students making Nazi gestures or wearing or drawing Nazi symbols.

But I think the most noteworthy and frightening results came from a different question.

The teachers were asked to judge whether a series of statements were antisemitic or not. All of them are.

36.7% are not sure that defacing a Holocaust memorial with "Free Palestine" is antisemitic.

36% think "Jews control the media" might not be antisemitic.

25.7% think the classic blood libel of Jews murdering and drinking the blood of Christian children is either not antisemitic or "depends on context."

Holocaust denial, using derogatory terms for Jews, attacking Jewish properties - a significant number of these teachers don't consider those necessarily antisemitic.

The survey didn't ask the question, but one can assume that a majority of those who answered that these things were definitely not antisemitic actually believe them to be true.

Which means that at least 10% of European teachers are antisemites. Moreover, since so many had no idea what antisemitism actually means, the statistics of how many witnessed antisemitism in their classrooms are certainly undercounted.

I don't know what the numbers would be in America, but the EU has been a harbinger of US antisemitism for quite a while now. This is what US and Canadian classrooms will look like in a few years, unless someone starts to take the fight against antisemitism seriously. Unfortunately I cannot imagine US teachers unions supporting the training and vetting that would be necessary to stop this from happening in America. EoZ

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A New Axis? Saudi Arabia Sides with Qatar and Turkey as Tensions with UAE Explode. Major Jewish organizations are set to meet with Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman in Washington to deliver a stern warning against the Kingdom's recent embrace of anti-Israel rhetoric and hostile regional alliances.

Eliana Fleming. Jan 30, 2026. JFeed

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President Donald Trump on Thursday declared a national emergency via an executive order over Cuba, accusing the communist regime of aligning with hostile foreign powers and terrorist groups while moving to punish countries that supply the island nation with oil.

Thursday's executive order states that the policies and actions of the Cuban government constitute "an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."

To address that threat, Trump ordered the creation of a tariff mechanism that allows the U.S. to impose additional duties on imports from foreign countries that "directly or indirectly sell or otherwise provide any oil to Cuba," according to the order.

The White House said the move marks a significant escalation in U.S. pressure on the Cuban government, aimed at protecting American national security and foreign policy interests. FoxNews

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Former hostage Sasha Troufanov describes torture, harassment. Former hostage Sasha Troufanov, held 498 days in Gaza, warns in interview with BBC that rebuilding Gaza won't prevent future attacks: “The terrorists told me 'we will do this again and again.'" Israel National News. Published: Jan 30, 2026, 6:14 AM (GMT+2)

Sasha Troufanov, a former Israeli hostage who was held for nearly 500 days in Gaza, spoke to the BBC and said the return of the body of the final hostage Ran Gvili this week means all the released captives can "now breathe and start our lives again".

Troufanov, 30, an Amazon electronics engineer, was taken hostage on October 7, 2023 by Islamic Jihad terrorists. His fiancée Sapir Cohen, mother and grandmother were also kidnapped and taken to Gaza. The women were released after more than 50 days as hostages. He was freed a year ago, after 498 days in captivity. Sasha’s father, Vitaly, was murdered during the attack.

In his first international interview, Troufanov, on a visit to London, told BBC that with the return on Monday of Gvili's body, meaning all the hostages were back, "it felt wonderful. We waited so long for this to happen.

"I was carrying this burden ever since I came back. It was like a weight on my shoulders that kept me from coming back to my life. Although we were released, we didn't really come out of Gaza because our friends and brothers were still there."

Troufanov and Cohen had been visiting his family on Kibbutz Nir Oz near the border with Gaza on October 7, 2023, when terrorists stormed their homes. Cohen rolled herself up in a blanket and hid under the bed but they were both captured. Troufanov was punched and also stabbed in the shoulder.

"I saw the terrorist with so much anger and hate in his face, holding his knife trying to stab me even more."

As the attackers tried to take Troufanov off the kibbutz he managed to momentarily escape but when he gave up running they still shot him twice in each leg.

When he arrived in Gaza, he says he was then beaten by civilians and thought "this is the moment you're going to die".

While in Gaza, Troufanov received almost no medical treatment. He was taken once to a family home and once to a hospital where his broken leg was wrapped first with a wooden broom and then with part of a metal grill.

Unlike many other hostages, he was held almost entirely in isolation. For only two of the 498 days in captivity did Troufanov see another hostage.

At the start he was held above ground, for more than six weeks locked in a cage and given barely enough food to survive. Here, he says he experienced sexual harassment.

Taken underground to the tunnels, Troufanov says he was left for months alone, his captors only bringing food then leaving him in a silent, cramped, humid space so dark he couldn't see his hand in front of his face.

"I remember feeling that I am buried underneath the ground while I am still alive. I was losing it. I was having a hard time to find hope in this place. Many times I lost hope completely. I said to myself: 'This is the last place you will see alive.'"

Now that all the hostages have returned to Israel, the second phase of US President Donald Trump's plan to end the war in Gaza is set to commence. Troufanov, however, believes that these measures aren't enough to ensure an attack like the one on October 7 won't happen again.

"Rebuilding Gaza, after what happened in the war, is understandable. But first of all we need to make sure that the people of Gaza will stop trying to hurt Israel. The terrorists were telling me: 'We will do this again and again,'" he told the BBC.

"Rebuilding Gaza and opening the Rafah crossing is in vain as it will never solve the real problem. We need to find a way to make this hatred and encouragement of terrorist activity stop."

The former hostage now has to rehabilitate mentally and physically. He is currently on crutches after surgery on his leg but hopes to dance at his wedding to Sapir Cohen in a few weeks. "It's a victory: overcoming hate and fear and saying to ourselves: 'We will build life together and we will continue.'" INN

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October 7 victim's brother survives terror attack. Following a terrorist attack attempt on Highway 449 targeting the brother of Nova festival victim Elyakim Leibman, the IDF conducted extensive engineering work to prevent terrorism in the area. Israel National News. Jan 30, 2026, 9:35 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Watch: Terrorist who planned attack arrested in Tulkarm. Border Police arrested Hadar Shahada based on intelligence that he had planned to carry out an attack in the immediate future. Israel National News. Jan 30, 2026, 1:00 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Watch: Moving convoy honors Ran Gvili. Motorcycle convoy drives to site of Nova massacre, attended by former MK and honoring fallen Yasam fighter and last hostage Ran Gvili. Israel National News. Jan 30, 2026, 2:04 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Israel moves to phase B. Rafah Crossing to open on Sunday. Uzi Baruch. Jan 30, 2026, 1:43 PM INN

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Over ceasefire breach. IDF strikes Hezbollah infrastructure in Lebanon. Israel National News Jan 30, 2026, 8:36 PM INN

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IDF captures key Hamas commander after terrorists exit Rafah tunnel. The IDF and Shin Bet arrest Hamas commander who was among eight terrorists who exited a tunnel in Rafah. Three terrorists were eliminated, and searches continue for the remaining terrorists. Israel National News. Jan 30, 2026, 9:13 PM (GMT+2) INN

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'Only they know for sure'. Trump hints he gave Iran ultimatum. Elad Benari, Canada Jan 30, 2026, 8:11 PM INN

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Police crack down on mosque loudspeaker noise. Following citizen complaints, Police Commissioner Danny Levi instructed districts to enforce noise laws against mosques using loudspeakers at unlawful volumes. Hezki Baruch. Jan 30, 2026, 2:54 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Man charged with hate crime after ramming Chabad headquarters in New York. 36-year-old charged with hate crimes after ramming his car five times into Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn.

Israel National News.  Jan 30, 2026, 4:40 AM (GMT+2)

Dan Sohail, 36, is the man suspected of driving a car into the doors to a synagogue at Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, five times on Wednesday evening, Joseph Kenny, chief of detectives at the New York City Police Department, said at a press conference on Thursday.

The suspect, of Carteret, N.J., "had recently connected with the Lubavitch community," and removed blockades from the same site the prior day, Kenny said, according to JNS.

"This incident is being investigated as a hate crime, and the NYPD's hate crime task force took the lead on this case," Kenny stated. "We are collaborating with our state and federal partners." INN

Sohail is a masculine given name of Arabic and Persian origin, primarily meaning "the star Canopus," the second-brightest star in the night sky. It is widely used in Muslim communities across South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, symbolizing brilliance, beauty, guidance, and being "easy-going". Key Aspects of the Name Sohail: Origin: The name is derived from the Arabic word suhayl (سهيل), a diminutive of sahl meaning "easy" or "smooth". Meaning: Associated with the star Canopus, the name translates to "shining," "bright," "noble," or "glorious". In some contexts, it also implies "moon-glow". Cultural Significance: It is popular in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Arab nations. ... google

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Israel and South Africa expel eachother's diplomats. Pretoria orders Israel’s chargé d’affaires to leave within 72 hours as Jerusalem responds by expelling South Africa’s senior diplomatic representative. Israel National News. Jan 30, 2026, 3:48 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Spain arrests Chinese hair salon owner for financing Hamas. Spanish police arrest a Chinese hair salon owner near Barcelona for allegedly financing Hamas through 600,000 euros in cryptocurrency transfers. Israel National News. Jan 30, 2026, 11:27 PM (GMT+2)

Spanish police have detained a 38-year-old Chinese national who owned a hair salon near Barcelona on suspicion of financing the militant group Hamas through about 600,000 euros in cryptocurrency transfers, regional police said on Friday, according to Reuters.

Investigators traced at least 31 crypto transactions from virtual wallets controlled by the suspect to addresses that are suspected of being linked to an entity used by the terrorist group.

Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by the 27-member European Union and other Western nations. INN

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Houthis cheer after Israel’s UN envoy cites their slogan at Security Council. After Ambassador Danny Danon quoted the Houthis’ 'death to America, death to Israel' slogan at the UN, the Yemen-based terrorist group hailed it as proof that Israel and the US are afraid. Lior Ben Ari|01.31.26

On Wednesday, after delivering a speech at the UN Security Council, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, posted on the social media platform X that “I made it clear to the Security Council: the Houthis are not fighting for land or borders. Their flag says it all, ‘death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews.’” YNet

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US approves more than $6.5 billion in potential military sales to Israel, Pentagon says. Arms packages to include 30 Apache helicopters and 3,250 armored vehicles, alongside a $9B deal with Saudi Arabia for 730 Patriot missiles; Washington says moves won't alter regional balance of power News agencies|01.31.26 YNet

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Terrorist violating Lebanon ceasefire eliminated IDF eliminates terrorist attempting to re-establish Hezbollah terror infrastructure. Israel National News. Jan 31, 2026, 7:50 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Saudi warning: No Trump strike means stronger Iran regime Lior Ben Ari|01.31.26 YNet

Saudi Arabia warns: If Trump backtracks, it will strengthen the Iranian regime. If US President Donald Trump doesn't follow through on promises to strike Iran, IRGC will be 'emboldened,' Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman warns. Israel National News. Jan 31, 2026, 8:45 PM (GMT+2) INN

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IDF kills Hamas, Islamic Jihad terrorists after Gaza truce violation. The military also hit a weapons storage facility, an arms manufacturing plant and two launch sites. (Jan. 31, 2026 / JNS) The Israel Defense Forces said Saturday that it struck four commanders and additional terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad across the Gaza Strip, in response to a ceasefire violation the previous day in which terrorists were identified exiting tunnels in eastern Rafah.

The military said it also struck a Hamas weapons storage facility, an arms manufacturing plant and two launch sites in central Gaza.

“The terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip systematically violate international law, brutally exploiting civilian infrastructure and the Gazan population as human shields for terrorist activities,” the IDF said. JNS

IDF strikes Gaza after Hamas ceasefire violations; 28 reported killed. ynet|01.31.26 YNet

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LTC Nadav Shoshani @LTC_Shoshani: The IDF clarifies that the details published do not reflect official IDF data. Any publication or report on this matter will be released through official and orderly channels. Quote Piers Morgan @piersmorgan · Jan 29 For over 2yrs, most of my pro-Israel guests have angrily denied the Gaza Health Ministry’s casualty numbers and said they were wildly exaggerated. Now, the IDF has accepted they’re accurate. x.com/haaretzcom/sta… Jan 30, 2026 on X

IDF disputes Gaza death toll after reports cite Hamas-run Health Ministry figures. After reports cite senior Israeli officials endorsing Palestinian death toll of 70,000, military says number not based on official IDF data and that its own analysis of casualties, distinguishing terrorists from civilians, still underway. Yoav Zitun|01.31.26 |

The IDF pushed back Friday against reports that it had adopted casualty figures provided by Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, saying the widely cited number of 70,000 Palestinians killed in the war is not based on official Israeli data.

The statement follows confusion sparked earlier in the week when senior Israeli defense officials, speaking to local media, appeared to endorse the Palestinian death toll. “We estimate that around 70,000 Gazans have been killed in the war, not including the missing,” officials were quoted as saying. They added that the IDF was in the process of distinguishing between terrorists and non-combatants in its accounting.

For much of the two-year war, Israeli authorities have rejected the casualty numbers published by Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is operated by Hamas officials. However, the remarks by unnamed military sources Thursday raised eyebrows, appearing to mark a shift in the IDF’s position.

Responding to the growing controversy, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, the IDF’s international spokesperson, cited a post by British journalist Piers Morgan criticizing the apparent about-face. Shoshani wrote on X that “the details published do not reflect official IDF data. Any publication or report on this matter will be released through official and orderly channels.” YNet

"Why the IDF should hire a PR firm, not a general." Maj.-Gen. Ghassan Alian of Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, when asked how many Gazans Israel killed, mentioned Hamas’s figure of 70,000 without checking or knowing. By Gil Hoffman. Jerusalem Post. Feb 6, 2026. [65]

"No, the IDF Did Not Accept Hamas' Gaza Casualty Figures." Rachel O'Donoghue. HonestReporting. February 1, 2026.

Key Takeaways:

Headlines claiming the IDF “accepted” Hamas’ 70,000 death toll stemmed from an anonymous briefing remark—not official data—and were later clarified by the IDF as not reflecting its position, yet the narrative spread globally before the correction.

Hamas’ published figures lump together combatants, civilians, natural deaths, and deaths caused by Hamas itself, with no breakdown—embedding an estimated ~11,000 natural deaths, ~1,000 errors, and ~4,000 internal or misfire-related killings that are routinely attributed to Israel.

Reconstructing the data shows roughly 25,000 Hamas fighters killed and about 36,000 civilians—a civilian-to-combatant ratio of around 1.5:1—undercutting claims of indiscriminate slaughter and revealing how unexamined casualty headlines distort the reality of the war.

— The IDF clarifies that the details published do not reflect official IDF data. Any publication or report on this matter will be released through official and orderly channels. [66]

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Moody's upgrades Israel's credit outlook Israel National News. Jan 31, 2026, 7:10 PM INN

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Iran threatens to attack Israel. Dalit Halevi. Jan 31, 2026, 6:33 PM INN

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Maryland man arrested for attempting to join ISIS, attack Jews. Israel National News. Jan 31, 2026, 8:15 PM ...Michael Sam Teekaye, Jr., 22, pled guilty to attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. INN

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Mysterious explosions in southern Iran. Iranian media claims explosions were caused by exploding gas balloons, explosion reported in Qom, around 140 kilometers from Tehran. Uzi Baruch. Jan 31, 2026, 6:08 PM INN

Iran: 6 killed in explosions in Bandar Abbas and near Iraq border; Israel denies link Lior Ben Ari|01.31.26 YNet

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Palestinian immigrant jailed for murder-for-hire plot, convicted of trying to pay inmates to kill targets. Nahro Sudoi Innab "came here to take advantage of the American dream, but he has repeatedly tried to hire thugs to murder his perceived enemies," the U.S. Justice Department said. JNS Staff

(Jan. 30, 2026 / JNS) A federal jury convicted Nahro Sudoi Innab, 70, of Rocky Mount, N.C., on three counts of making interstate calls to plan new murders while the Palestinian immigrant was in jail awaiting a prison term after pleading guilty to having tried to murder other people.

He faces up to 30 years in prison for the new convictions.

“This Palestinian immigrant came here to take advantage of the American dream, but he has repeatedly tried to hire thugs to murder his perceived enemies,” Ellis Boyle, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, stated on Friday (https://www.jns.org/palestinian-immigrant-jailed-for-murder-for-hire-plot-convicted-of-trying-to-pay-inmates-to-kill-targets/ JNS]

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Palestinian immigrant jailed for murder-for-hire plot, convicted of trying to pay inmates to kill targets. Nahro Sudoi Innab "came here to take advantage of the American dream, but he has repeatedly tried to hire thugs to murder his perceived enemies," the U.S. Justice Department said. JNS Staff

(Jan. 30, 2026 / JNS) A federal jury convicted Nahro Sudoi Innab, 70, of Rocky Mount, N.C., on three counts of making interstate calls to plan new murders while the Palestinian immigrant was in jail awaiting a prison term after pleading guilty to having tried to murder other people.

He faces up to 30 years in prison for the new convictions.

“This Palestinian immigrant came here to take advantage of the American dream, but he has repeatedly tried to hire thugs to murder his perceived enemies,” Ellis Boyle, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, stated on Friday JNS

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Father of former hostage to join faculty at Columbia University. Jonathan Dekel-Chen, the father of Sagui Dekel-Chen, is set to join the School of International and Public Affairs.

(Jan. 30, 2026 / JNS) Jonathan Dekel-Chen, the father of former Israeli-American hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, is slated to join the faculty at Columbia University as a visiting professor at the School of International and Public Affairs in July.

Dekel-Chen, 62, currently holds the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, focusing on contemporary Jewish history. He said that at Columbia, he hopes to give a “holistic perspective” to modern conflicts. JNS

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Largest US labor union accused of ignoring Jewish concerns during Holocaust education event. The National Education Association “used a webinar meant to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day to instead make links to events in Minnesota and call for activism,” the North American Values Institute said. Jessica Russak-Hoffman.

(Jan. 30, 2026 / JNS) The National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union, is being accused of politicizing an online International Holocaust Remembrance Day event.

The Jan. 27 “understanding antisemitism” event was a conversation between Becky Pringle, president of the union, and Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

“At JCPA, we believe that engagement and solidarity, not retrenchment and insularity, is the way to strengthen our democracy and end the rise of antisemitism, bigotry and hate in our country,” JCPA stated. “Together with our allies at the National Education Association, JCPA is working to provide educators, administrators and school boards with the resources needed to provide Jewish students and educators with safe, inclusive spaces.” JNS

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Man arrested after allegedly threatening Florida temple with bomb.

(Jan. 30, 2026 / JNS) A man was arrested on Jan. 28 as a result of a bomb threat made against a synagogue in Ormond Beach, Fla., six miles from Daytona Beach in the northern part of the state, according to local police.

The Ormond Beach Police Department stated that Robert Tuck, 57, is suspected of calling Temple Beth-El, a Reform synagogue in the city, that morning and making the threat. The synagogue’s elementary school was subsequently placed on lockdown, and law enforcement searched the area for explosives, ultimately finding none JNS

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naz_hashem

Feb 1, 2026. The Epstein files shocked the world, and rightly so. What was exposed was ugly, disturbing, and inhumane. But I keep thinking if people truly saw what happens under Khamenei’s regime, inside his prisons, inside the mullahs homes, the shock would be far greater. Pedophilia, the abuse of young girls, and the systematic exploitation and torture of women are not isolated crimes. They are part of a brutal system that operates daily, in silence, and has been for 46 years. This includes pushing girls as young as nine into marriage under extremist interpretations of Sharia law, stripping them of childhood, consent, and protection. Innocent people are violated with total impunity while the world looks away. #FreeIran . on Instagram

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"It’s Like a Game": Iranian Basij Boasts of Sniper 'Headshots' on Protesters. In a chilling deleted post, Arshia Maghsoudi allegedly admitted to using a Dragunov rifle to "kill teenagers," claiming commanders told him to "shoot as much as you can."

Jfeed Staff. Feb 1, 2026 ...In the story, Maghsoudi wrote: "For the first time, they gave us a Dragunov. They told us think of it as a sniper game - 'shoot as much as you can'. So I went and landed a ton of headshots." JFeed

titoipr: IranRevolution2026 Jan 25, 2026. His name is Arshia Maghsoudi. He is a member of the Basij paramilitary organization of the IRGC terrorist force. He is bragging about killing Iranian protesters and claims involvement in the killing of teenage girls for the Iran's Islamic Regime. He has posted his own images posing with an SVD sniper rifle, which he claims to have used to kill teenagers. Threads

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'Finish the job': accounts point to Iran's executions of injured protesters. Feb 1, 2026. Accounts from grieving families, medics and rights groups point to a grim pattern in Iran’s crackdown: wounded protesters were not just denied care but deliberately shot again in hospitals or removed alive and later killed.

For families searching for wounded protesters in Iran’s latest crackdown, hospitals have offered no refuge—only dead ends.

One such case was described by the Wall Street Journal in a report on Sunday, which recounted the final hours of a teenage protester identified as Sam, shot and then taken away while still alive.

According to the paper, a medic told Sam’s family that he was “in critical condition being treated for a single gunshot wound in the back of his head,” before security forces arrived and removed him along with other patients.

The medic urged the family to look elsewhere. “The medic advised them to check the morgues,” Sam’s father, Parviz, said, according to the report.

They found him days later. “They found him inside a body bag on Jan. 11 with a second bullet wound that tore through half of his face and made him almost unrecognizable,” Parviz told the Journal.

The second shot—delivered after medical care had begun—was not an act of mercy. It was finalization.

Similar accounts have emerged from Karaj, west of Tehran, where witnesses told Iran International that armed forces surrounded hospitals following days of mass killings and resistance.

Witnesses speaking to Iran International on the condition of anonymity report the abduction of wounded protesters from hospitals and the execution of injured people who were unable to move.

A Karaj taxi driver, who said he witnessed the violence firsthand, described security forces loading both dead and wounded protesters into trucks without distinction.

“Even the wounded were not separated from the dead. They piled everyone together. Someone injured like that will die anyway,” he said.

A photo received by Iran International showed the body of a deceased protester at Kahrizak morgue south of Tehran with his hands bound.

In the image, the man’s body is seen inside a black body bag typically used for those killed, with his hands tied and placed on his abdomen.

The image appeared to show that the citizen was in the custody of security forces at the time of his death and that he died while in detention.

Other witnesses said the killings continued inside medical facilities. One source told Iran International that agents used suppressed weapons. “That person was crying and saying they were shooting the wounded with silenced guns,” the witness said, describing what was explicitly referred to as a finishing shot.

Hospitals including Ghasem Soleimani, Kasra and Takht-e Jamshid were placed under armed lockdown, according to eyewitness reports, with families barred from entry and medical staff working under threat.

One healthcare worker said more than 400 people killed during January 8-9 were brought to Karaj hospitals alone.

The practice has been documented elsewhere. The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center previously reported that one wounded protester, terrified of being executed in hospital, remained motionless for three days inside a plastic body bag used for transporting corpses. His family eventually located him alive in Kahrizak.

In Karaj, fear of those final shots drove families to keep bodies hidden at home rather than risk official channels. According to reports and accounts obtained by Iran International, authorities halted burials, closed morgues, and restricted funerals to a single family member, firing shots into the air to disperse mourners.

What emerges from these accounts is not chaos but method.

Wounded protesters—those who survived initial gunfire—appear to have been treated as liabilities. Removing them from hospitals, or killing them outright, ensured that testimony would not survive.

Sam’s father said his son had dreamed of studying information technology in Germany, where he planned to reunite with him. Instead, he was shot once, treated, and then shot again.

The second bullet did what the first did not. IranIntl

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UK lawyers say Britannica erased Israel from content. A British legal group alleges Britannica Kids omits Israel from maps and mislabels the region as “Palestine,” distorting history in children’s materials. JNS Staff. (Feb. 1, 2026 / JNS) A British legal group has accused Encyclopaedia Britannica of erasing Israel from its children’s educational materials, alleging that entries on the Britannica Kids website misrepresent Middle Eastern history and geography. JNS

Encyclopedia Britannica relabels Israel as Palestine. The Encyclopedia Britannica has removed a controversial map from its Britannica Kids section that labeled the entire territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as "Palestine," with no mention of Israel. Israel National News. Feb 1, 2026, 1:43 PM (GMT+2)

The Encyclopedia Britannica has removed a controversial map from its Britannica Kids section that labeled the entire territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as "Palestine," with no mention of Israel. The change followed complaints from the pro-Israel group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) and an inquiry by The Telegraph, which highlighted concerns that the depiction erased Israel's existence and echoed the politically charged slogan "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."

The original map, accompanied by a caption describing "Palestine" as the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, drew criticism for aligning with rhetoric used by pro-Palestinian activists and groups like Hamas. UKLFI argued in a letter to Britannica's publishers that this framing promoted a modern political agenda and effectively denied the State of Israel's presence in the same geographic area.

The controversy first gained attention in November 2024 when London-based Jewish children's book author Shari Black flagged the issue directly to Britannica. She expressed surprise at what she called historical inaccuracies in content aimed at children, saying it appeared to push an agenda of delegitimizing Israel-despite the country's establishment through international consensus.

UKLFI further criticized Britannica Kids' broader historical references to "Palestine" as a term extending thousands of years back, noting that historians trace its use to Roman Emperor Hadrian in 135 CE, who applied it to the region (formerly Judea) after the Bar Kokhba revolt to diminish Jewish identity.

Britannica's editor-in-chief, Theodore Pappas, responded to the concerns by saying the company would review the claims from UKLFI and make adjustments if necessary.

UKLFI Director Caroline Turner emphasized that retroactively applying the "Palestine" label across the region's history distorts historical developments and creates a misleading sense of continuity.

After The Telegraph's inquiry, Britannica removed the map and revised the entry to state: "Today the State of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip are located within this area." INN

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Mob attacks shepherd, attempt to seize weapon. Four terrorists attacked a shepherd east of Homesh in Samaria and attempted to steal the personal firearm of a local farm owner. IDF forces responded, and no casualties were reported. Israel National News. Feb 1, 2026, 3:38 PM INN

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Gal Hirsch reveals: Hostage rescue missions were halted to avoid endangering captives. The Hostages and Missing Persons. Coordinator, in an interview with i24NEWS, denies claims that hostage deals were delayed due to politics. "There were no political considerations in decision-making in our field." Israel National News. Feb 1, 2026, 2:59 AM (GMT+2)

The Hostages and Missing Persons Coordinator, Gal Hirsch, stated in an interview with i24NEWS that although he feared it would be extremely difficult to bring back all the hostages held by Hamas, he maintained throughout that Israel is capable of achieving this goal.

“I had many such concerns, but as time passed and I observed how Hamas and Islamic Jihad operate, I knew the likelihood of returning them all was very high. I said we would bring them back - and I meant it," Hirsch emphasized.

He revealed that there were multiple rescue operations planned that ultimately were not executed, despite Israeli forces being in close proximity to the hostages.

“There were operations that were planned but not carried out. We were very close to the hostages, and decisions were made not to proceed. Ultimately, even with available forces, operational capability, and strong intelligence, you still need to ensure the conditions are right for success."

When asked whether more could have been done to return additional hostages alive, Hirsch responded: “I don’t think we were angels. In hindsight, perhaps some things could have been done differently. The Prime Minister listened to everyone for long hours. Ultimately, what brings the hostages home is a combination of military and political pressure. Hamas had a plan from the beginning, after October 7. They intended to repeat such events until Sinwar’s elimination - all while accusing us of not wanting a deal." INN

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When medical journals become platforms for political messaging: The Lancet and Gaza. Opinion: Recent Gaza coverage by the British medical journal The Lancet highlights a shift from scientific inquiry to moral advocacy, raising concerns about bias, editorial framing and the erosion of academic neutrality in politically charged contexts Dr. Daniel Radzik|02.01.2026

The recent exchange on the war in Gaza published by The Lancet—one of the most prestigious and influential medical journals in the world—is less revealing for the conclusions it reaches than for the editorial logic it embodies. What is at stake is not simply a disagreement over data or terminology, but a broader question: what happens when a scientific journal no longer presents itself as a forum for inquiry, but as a platform for moral positioning?

The sequence is by now well known. On August 16, 2025, The Lancet published the correspondence by De Vogli R., Montomoli J., Abu-Sittah G., and Pappé I. “Break the selective silence on the genocide in Gaza” (vol. 406, no. 10504, pp.688-689). The title itself signals a departure from the usual conventions of scientific communication. A legally and historically contested term — “genocide[SIC]” — is introduced not as a hypothesis to be examined, but as a premise that frames the entire discussion. The reader is not invited to evaluate the claim; it is asked to accept the vocabulary in which the claim is already embedded.

This editorial choice matters. Scientific journals do not merely transmit information; they structure legitimacy. By selecting language, sources and tone, they shape what counts as a reasonable question and what falls outside the boundaries of acceptable discourse.

That boundary was briefly reintroduced on January 24, 2026, when Benedict Nobile and Philippe Courtet published “Gaza: the urgent need for rigour over rhetoric” (The Lancet, vol. 407, no. 10526, pp.336-337), a commentary regarding the previous article. Their intervention was modest in scope. It did not offer an alternative narrative, nor did it minimize civilian suffering. It simply asked whether the standards of terminology, source evaluation and analytical distinction normally expected in medical literature were being upheld.

In a journal committed to pluralism, this would have been the beginning of a methodological exchange. Instead, the authors’ reply, published in the same issue, marked a decisive editorial turn. The concerns raised were not treated as part of legitimate scholarly debate, but reframed as “genocide denial.” With that move, the discussion shifted from evidence to intent, from method to morality.

This is the crucial meta-editorial moment. Once disagreement is recoded as ethical failure, the space for scientific inquiry effectively closes. The journal no longer curates a debate; it enforces a moral frame. For Israeli readers, this sequence is significant not because Israel is criticised — criticism is neither new nor inherently problematic — but because Israel appears as the case in which editorial restraint is relaxed. The journal does not simply take a position; it naturalises that position through the authority of medicine, transforming contested claims into quasi-clinical facts. The broader implication is uncomfortable. If scientific journals assume the role of moral adjudicators, their authority ceases to rest on openness and verification, and begins to resemble that of advocacy institutions. The risk is not only bias, but a redefinition of what scientific legitimacy means. Israel, in this context, is not just the subject of the debate. It is the testing ground for a model of scientific communication in which editorial framing replaces inquiry, and moral certainty displaces analytical doubt. Whether this model will remain confined to Israel or extend to other conflicts and contexts remains an open question. What is clear is that when journals stop asking questions, science loses one of its defining virtues: the willingness to remain uncertain, especially when certainty is most politically convenient. [Dr. Daniel Radzik, member of the Italian Jewish Medical Association]. YNet

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Israel says Doctors Without Borders employs terror affiliates, orders exit from Gaza. Diaspora Affairs Ministry says group refused to share names of Palestinian staff, alleges ties to terror groups; MSF cites safety concerns and rising toll on aid workers amid war in Gaza. Itamar Eichner|02.01.16

The Diaspora Affairs Ministry on Sunday accused Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) of employing individuals affiliated with terrorist organizations in Gaza and the West Bank, and announced the aid group would halt operations in the Gaza Strip after refusing to share the names of its Palestinian staff.

“In light of the refusal, the organization will cease operations and exit the Gaza Strip,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that alternative medical aid was being arranged “to ensure continuity of humanitarian assistance for Gaza residents.”

The ministry said the demand for names was in accordance with official procedures that apply to all international humanitarian organizations operating in the region. The requirement, officials said, is meant to prevent the misuse of humanitarian cover for terrorist activity.

Doctors Without Borders, a France-based NGO founded over 50 years ago, has operated in global conflict zones including Israel and the Palestinian territories. The group cited safety concerns as the reason for withholding the names, warning that disclosing the information could endanger its workers. It also pointed to the high death toll among aid workers during Israel’s war in Gaza. YNet

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Mormon charities transferred millions to Hamas-linked NGOs. The Church also finances Islamist groups through its official international humanitarian arm, LDS Charities, the Middle East Forum think tank found. JNS Staff.

(Feb. 1, 2026 / JNS) [...] A major Salt Lake City-based Mormon charity, Globus Relief, gave a total of at least $119 million to 10 radical Islamist charities tied to the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hamas, the investigative report by the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum think tank found.

The Mormon charity’s top grantee, Islamic Relief, is a leading Islamist charitable institution whose branches have been described by the Dutch and German governments as components of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, the study states.

The investigation notes that Islamic Relief branches have repeatedly partnered with senior Hamas officials in Gaza.

Another Mormon-run charity, Lifting Hands International, has provided nearly $20 million to Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), the chief U.S. charitable arm of the violent South Asian Islamist movement Jamaat-e-Islami, the study found.

The Church ... also finances Islamist groups through its official international humanitarian arm, LDS Charities, the study found. It operates under the church’s 501(c) status, and is exempt from filing a nonprofit public tax return. making its actual donations uncertain.

The Church..is among the world’s wealthiest religious institutions with a total net worth estimated at $293 billion as of 2024.

The Church did not respond to an email seeking comment. JNS

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Candace Howls at Claim that Erika Kirk Killed Charlie. Descending into the abyss. February 2, 2026 by Frontpagemag.com FPM

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Candles for the People of Iran. Every candle represents a life stolen. Every photo, a future erased. February 2, 2026 by Frontpagemag.com.

As the Iranian people continue to rise up courageously in the face of unconscionable suppression by the fundamentalist mullah regime, the number of protesters massacred skyrockets. Estimates of the murdered range widely, but number into the tens of thousands. The social media post below cites 86,677 Iranians in 33 days and depicts the tragedy of so many lives brutally cut short simply for seeking freedom.

Meanwhile the Iranian people wonder if President Trump will follow through on his promise to come to their aid and support… [67] FPM

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The Return of ‘United in Hate’. A pivotal book makes a vital comeback at the right - and dire - time. February 2, 2026 by Daniel Greenfield.

When ‘United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas‘ first appeared, the Obama era was only beginning, Obama’s ‘New Middle East’ was still far on the horizon, and the ‘Iran Deal’ had yet to be dealt. What made Jamie Glazov’s magnum opus so remarkable was how thoroughly it not only recapitulated the ugly history of Communism, but anticipated what was only an emerging alliance between two terrible ideologies united by their hateful mutual ambition to destroy civilization as we know it and love it.

Even as it connected the dots between the two totalitarian ideologies, ‘United in Hate’ also helped conservatives bridge the Cold War era and the 9/11 period. Many conservatives were struggling to understand the nature of the new Jihadist enemy and how it differed from the old Communist foe. The Carter and Reagan era flirtations with the Afghan ‘Mujahadeen’ was only one manifestation of deeper links that had been built with the Saudis, the Pakistanis and other players in Al Qaeda during the Cold War, and some conservatives continued to defend Islam.

Even though the Obama era is in the rearview mirror, the situation today is not so different.

Some conservatives view Islamists as ‘natural allies’ against ‘woke’ leftists the way that some foolishly believed that Islam was a natural opponent, rather than a partner, of Communism. In doing so, they ignore much of history, including the vital role Communists played in spreading and supporting Islamic terrorism, and the Marxist-Islamist riots taking place in major cities now.

Including in Minneapolis.

That is why the return of ‘United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas‘ is badly needed. The book’s vital dive into the bloody murk of Communist brutality and evil, and the ideological underpinnings of Islamic mass murder, is supplemented by a new section of Oct 7 which chillingly and recently brought Marxists and Islamists together with the common aim of not only destroying Israel, but America, and the entire civilized world (the Columbia University pro-Hamas encampment insisted it was “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization”) that connects it to the current events of the moment.

And from Minneapolis to the Hamas riots, the moment couldn’t be more relevant.

“The believer has filled the void left by communism’s disappearance with radical Islam. Instead of living vicariously through the oppression imposed by the KGB or the Red Guards, the believer now satisfies his yearnings through the violence perpetrated by suicide bombers,” Glazov warns in ‘United in Hate’. “We can see a balance in this scale. The less brutal an ideology is, the less interest the average believer has in it and the less praise he is inclined to give it. By contrast, when the death cult is in full gear, the believer supports it most strongly.”

That is what we have seen in the embrace of the BLM riots, the riots for Hamas and now for illegal alien murderers and pedophiles in Minneapolis. The more evil and violent the cause, the more enthusiasm there is for it. Hamas became far more popular after Oct 7. The BLM race riots and the riots in defense of illegal aliens only took off once they became truly violent.

That’s why the abortion rallies petered out and #NoKings recorded sizable crowd sizes, but no real enthusiasm and fire. It’s why the violence of Jihad will always attract the most leftist support. Nothing today can quite compare to the untarnished brutality and genocide of Islam.

That is why Islam and the Left are natural allies. Both seek to realize a utopia ‘tabula rasa’ through revolutionary violence. Violence in this scenario is not just a means, it’s an end in and of itself, a cleansing ceremony that transforms the world, and makes the otherwise unworkable communes and caliphates seem more real, while excusing the inability to maintain them.

What cannot be achieved can always be exterminated. And that is what the triumphs of Communism and Islam come down to, not triumphs of civilization, but conquest and destruction. A new and better world never came into being, whether it was given 70 years in the USSR or over 1,000 years under Islam, Homo Sovieticus and Homo Islamus led only to barbarism.

Those on the right who seek to make common cause with Islam are either fundamentally naive about Islam or are telling on themselves about what sort of new world order they envision.

The destruction of America, specifically, and Western Civilization in general, ‘unites’ the two terror ideologies profiled in ‘United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas‘. Both Marxism and Islam represent warped religions, heresies promising a kingdom of heaven on earth that is to be realized through the gross material agency of the sword, not by heaven.

America is everything they resent and are jealous of. Its perfect imperfection must be shattered and torn apart so that everyone can see once and for all that their way is the only right one.

As Glazov writes in ‘United in Hate‘, radicals “gravitate toward genocide because believers consider themselves higher life forms, their inferiors become not only expendable but necessary waste… this is where the Western Left and militant Islam (like the Western Left and Communism) intersect: human life must be sacrificed for the sake of the idea.”

The pursuit of the ‘idea’ killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Just as it licensed the murder of thousands in Tehran. Reasonable causes, right or wrong, fight for realizable benefits, from territory to individual rights, but the fanatical causes depicted in ‘United in Hate’ fight for the supremacy of their ideology, and whether they are Nazis and Communists or Marxists and Islamists, horseshoe theory draws them together, at least for a time, because their governing monad is ideology, the transcendence of the real by the unreal, the limitations of the world by the unlimited will of the ego through the medium of unlimited power to build a new world order.

What we call ‘extremism’ is really the desire to unmake the real world for an unreal one.

That is why the reemergence of ‘United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas‘ is worth celebrating. A book too long absent returns now at just the right time. FPM

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Strong Language Trump’s Explosive Message to Influencers - "Let Me Cook" | WATCH In first-ever direct rebuke, Trump tells far-right antisemites including Owens and Carlson to "shut up," defending his close relationship with Israel.

Jfeed Staff. Feb 1, 2026 The video marks the first time Trump has launched such a blunt, direct attack against these antisemitic influencers, who regularly criticize the president's foreign policy and his close ties to Israel.

The move signals Trump's willingness to confront elements within his own political coalition over their antisemitic rhetoric, even as he seeks to consolidate support across the Republican Party. JFeed

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Diplomatic Crisis. Erdogan’s Newest Hostage? Israeli Woman Rotting in Turkish Jail for "Insulting Palestine" Handcuffed in Taksim Square and held for 10 days in freezing conditions, Is this a legal arrest or a political kidnapping?

Yair Kleinbaum. Feb 2, 2026 04:31 What began as a solo trip to Turkey has turned into a nightmare for one Israeli woman, who has now spent over 10 days in Turkish custody. Her alleged crime? Insulting the Turkish flag, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and, most controversially, the "State of Palestine." JFeed

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NFL Stars Fundraise for Islamic Charity Tied to Minnesota's Feeding Our Future Fraud Scandal. NFL-backed Human Development Fund shares an address with shell company featured in fraud scandal, among other links.

Azeez Al-Shaair (Adam Schefter / X), Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images). [68]

Chuck Ross. LFebruary 2, 2026

Human Development Fund, an upstart Islamic charity touted by the National Football League and various Muslim influencers, professes to provide "hot meals" to orphans in Gaza. But a Washington Free Beacon investigation found the group’s founders have an array of links to the Feeding Our Future fraud, in which more than 80 people conspired to steal $250 million from a federal program designed to give free meals to poor Minnesota children.

HDF founder and CEO Abdirahman Kariye is an imam at Dar Al-Farooq, a predominantly Somali mosque near Minneapolis that served as a food distribution site for Feeding Our Future. HDF director of fundraising events Khalid Omar is a director of Dar Al-Farooq. FreeBeacon

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Immigrant Who Threw 89-Year-Old Jewish Neighbor from 17th-Floor Balcony Will Stand Trial. French court to determine if the brutal 2022 killing of René Hadjadj was a targeted hate crime or a psychotic break, as the Jewish community demands accountability. Author: Yair Kleinbaum Yair Kleinbaum. Feb 2, 2026 06:50 JFeed

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Sinwar's Chilling Plan. Hamas Leader Wanted 10 Years of Captivity: Gal Hirsch Drops Bombshell Details. Israel's former hostage coordinator Gal Hirsch disclosed that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar planned to keep the hostages captive for up to ten years as leverage in endless negotiations. Hirsch detailed the impossible rescue challenges, the intelligence gaps, and the emotional toll of witnessing atrocities while fighting to bring people home. Eliana Fleming. Feb 2, 2026 JFeed

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The New Gaza. GAZA: THE NEW EMIRATE? UAE to Assume Full Control in Shock Multi-Billion Dollar "Takeover" Backed by Israel and U.S. Abu Dhabi moves to become Gaza’s "Civilian Sponsor," deploying armed security and multi-billion dollar investments in a revolutionary post-war blueprint.

Yair Kleinbaum Feb 2, 2026 04:42 JFeed

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Windows smashed at Paris Jewish school, investigation underway. Jewish school in Paris vandalized, with windows smashed and a CCTV camera torn off. Authorities launch an investigation. Israel National News. Feb 2, 2026, 5:44 AM (GMT+2) INN

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'Peace requires Iran regime’s fall'. Sen. Lindsey Graham says peace requires Iran’s regime to fall, as Trump urges Tehran to reach a deal and responds to Khamenei’s warning that any conflict would become a regional war. Elad Benari. Feb 2, 2026, 6:25 AM INN

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Former Haredi Minister: 'Religious Zionism loses their souls in the army'. Former minister Shlomo Benizri claimed that those who send their children to the IDF do not care about their spiritual wellbeing. Israel National News. Published: Feb 2, 2026, 8:14 AM (GMT+2) [Shlomo Benizri]. INN

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IDF demolishes home of terrorist who murdered Shalev Home of terrorist Mahmoud Abed, who murdered 22-year-old Shalev Zevuloni in July, is demolished. Israel National News. Feb 2, 2026, 8:24 AM INN

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Tehran Fixing Launchers Fast Iran Doubles Missile Production to Counter Trump. A former Iranian diplomat reveals that Tehran has doubled its missile production and moved launchers into hardened mountain positions, as Gulf nations warn the U.S. they cannot survive an Iranian counterattack. Eliana Fleming Feb 2, 2026 JFeed

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Ankara Summit Incoming. US and Iran Set for Face-to-Face in Istanbul Friday: Nuclear Talks Back On. White House special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi are expected to hold direct talks in Istanbul on Friday, marking the first meeting since the collapse of negotiations and the 12-day war in June. The session follows intense mediation by Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar, even as U.S. military forces remain heavily deployed in the Gulf. Eliana Fleming Feb 2, 2026. JFeed

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Britain targets Iran minister, police chiefs in new sanctions. Israel National News. Feb 2, 2026, 8:50 PM INN

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Khamenei adviser warns: 'A US strike will pull Israel into the conflict'. Israel National News. Feb 2, 2026, 11:46 PM INN

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'We have big ships heading there, we have talks going with them'. Trump reiterates that major US forces are heading toward Iran as Washington continues talks, warning that while a deal is possible, failure could lead to “bad things." Elad Benari. Feb 3, 2026, 12:04 AM INN

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Netanyahu’s office: 'PA will have no role in Gaza'. Elad Benari. Feb 3, 2026, 1:11 AM INN

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Iranian officials say Tehran may halt nuclear program to ease tensions with US. Two Iranian officials told the New York Times a dramatic nuclear compromise with the United States is possible, saying Tehran favors a regional nuclear consortium proposed last year and could transfer enriched uranium to Russia, as Israel fears a deal without missile limits. Lior Ben Ari|2.3.26 YNet

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Campus Antisemitism. ‘Extreme’ anti-Zionists taking over Wikipedia, former US official says. Kenneth L. Marcus, of the Brandeis Center, told JNS that the crowd-sourced encyclopedia quotes him out of context. Aaron Bandler.

(Feb. 2, 2026 / JNS) Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman and CEO of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and a former assistant U.S. secretary of education for civil rights, is cited four times in Wikipedia’s entry on “weaponization of antisemitism” and five times in notes at the bottom of the page.

“While warning in 2010 against denying or minimizing antisemitism, attorney and academic Kenneth L. Marcus also cautioned against overuse of the ‘antisemitism card,’ paralleling concerns raised by Richard Thompson Ford with the broader misuse of ‘the race card,’” states the page on one of the internet’s most visited websites.

Marcus told JNS that Wikipedia reveals its bias by having a page on “weaponizing” Jew-hatred at all, and that the references to his thinking are taken out of context.

“The so-called ‘weaponization’ is really more of a smear against Jewish advocates and should be recognized in that way,” he said.

“They may think that by citing my work, they are providing some degree of balance, but the opposite is the case,” Marcus told JNS. “I have previously cautioned against either minimizing or exaggerating antisemitism, just as I have made the same caution about other forms of bias.”

The Wikipedia entry cites his work “somewhat out of context, as if it were support for the inappropriate charge of weaponization,” Marcus said.

The former education official has tried to refute the notion of weaponized charges of Jew-hatred.

“Advocates for the Jewish community, such as myself, are very aware of the dangers of exaggeration and have been clear about the need for objective assessments,” he said. “This should be seen as an indication that weaponization charges are, at best, exaggerated or distorted and, at worst, fabricated.”

The Wikipedia article states that some have compared charging Israel’s critics with Jew-hatred to “Soviet censorship, McCarthyism and rhetorical strategies against the South African anti-apartheid movement.”

One of the citations appended to that sentence is a 2024 article by the Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Marshall Ganz. The Brandeis Center filed a lawsuit against Harvard in May 2024, alleging that the school found Ganz responsible for a hostile environment against three Israeli students but didn’t address the situation.

“Ganz is hardly an appropriate authority on the subject matter in light of his own positions and in light of the fact that he has been found to have discriminated against Israeli students,” Marcus told JNS. “This is just another example of Wikipedians, who profess to provide an objective assessment, in fact relying to an excessive extent on questionable figures.”

‘Taken over’.

Activists are pushing particular narratives on Wikipedia, where there is an indication that some foreign countries are paying for slanted edits to pages, according to Marcus. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is probing whether there are “systematic efforts” to promote Jew-hatred and anti-Israel material on the site.

“Wars develop within Wikipedia communities that are every bit as intense as the wars going on in the Middle East, so reasonable people are often scared away,” Marcus told JNS. “The result is that pages are taken over by extremist, anti-Zionist advocates.”

The encyclopedia’s entry on the movement to boycott Israel, which Marcus sees as an “antisemitic hate movement,” states that BDS is “a nonviolent, Palestinian-led movement” pushing for the Jewish state to obey international law.

Wikipedia doesn’t mention that the movement emerged from the Arab League’s boycott of the Jewish state, which “relates to the prior Nazi boycott, as well as earlier anti-Jewish boycotts in prior years,” Marcus told JNS.

The entry depicts “the BDS movement, inaccurately, as a human rights campaign, as opposed to a rebranded antisemitic boycott,” he said. “It’s not so much that they don’t mention the Arab League boycott and other boycotts of Israel, but they certainly downplay those in favor of a different narrative that the Wikipedians advance.”

The entry “takes at face value the self-serving descriptions of members of that movement rather than viewing the BDS movement in a more objective light,” he said.

The page cites a “relatively small number of mainstream, reasonable commentators,” who are “overshadowed” by a “very substantial number” of “highly biased, anti-Zionist figures and platforms,” according to Marcus.

“A very large number of major figures, including public officials, have pointed out the antisemitic character of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement,” he told JNS. “At a minimum, this entry should have a discussion of the major figures who have explained why BDS is antisemitic.”

PR for anti-Zionists.

The opening lines of Wikipedia’s entry for Students for Justice in Palestine “couldn’t have been written much more favorably if it had been developed by a public relations firm working on SJP’s behalf,” according to Marcus.

The group is a “pro-Palestinian college student activism organization” that has “organized events about Israel’s human-rights violations,” per the entry, which quotes The New York Times calling it “the leading pro-Palestinian voice on campus.”

The page mentions charges, including by the Brandeis Center, that the student group is antisemitic, but “those accusations are relatively minimal as compared to the apparently favorable discussion of this highly controversial organization,” Marcus said.

JNS also asked Marcus about Wikipedia’s entries for anti-Israel protests at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at Columbia University in 2024. The Brandeis Center has active lawsuits related to both.

Although the center’s suit against UCLA has generated media coverage, Marcus said, “facts disclosed in that lawsuit are largely unreported in this article,” in the UCLA entry on the site.

“At best it’s lazy, but the fact that the omission is one-sided raises a significant question,” he told JNS.

The entry on Columbia portrays the private school as “the subject of a peaceful student protest activity as opposed to a series of hateful, violent activities that were the product of outside organizations, outside agitators, and yes, some students as well,” Marcus told JNS.

“The impression is given that this was largely a peaceful protest that provoked a forceful response from the Trump administration, but without giving a real understanding of the antisemitism that required a response,” he said.

“What’s scary about these articles is not just that people, including students, rely so much on Wikipedia,” but that artificial intelligence models “rely so heavily on it,” according to Marcus.

The site can “launder accusations” from anti-Israel sources and “turn them into encyclopedia entries,” which “become the basis for AI-generated materials that become the basis for all sorts of education indoctrination and decision-making,” which “should be frightening to people,” he said. JNS

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US pick to govern Gaza called Israel ‘colonialist’ implant. Ali Shaath’s “ideology is taken directly from the Palestinian Authority’s playbook of hate and terror promotion,” says Palestinian Media Watch. David Isaac.

(Feb. 2, 2026 / JNS) Ali Shaath, who has been tasked to head the Gaza administration reconstruction of the Strip, was praised by the White House last month as “a widely respected technocratic leader.” But an Israeli watchdog group said Shaath shares the radical anti-Israel ideology one would expect from a former Palestinian Authority functionary.

“[H]is ideology is taken directly from the Palestinian Authority’s playbook of hate and terror promotion,” said Palestinian Media Watch in a statement on Sunday.

Before U.S. President Donald Trump tapped Shaath to lead the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), Shaath shared his views about Israel and terrorism in an April 2025 podcast, as revealed by PMW.

In the YouTube interview, Shaath declared Israel a Western colonial project. “This colonialist [Israel], who was planted by America and Western Europe … , they planted it [Israel] in Palestine since the Balfour Promise [i.e., Declaration].” JNS

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Anti-Israel, former president of Chile nominated to be next UN secretary-general. Michelle Bachelet, who green-lit a blacklist of companies operating in Judea and Samaria, could replace outgoing United Nations chief António Guterres. Mike Wagenheim.

(Feb. 2, 2026 / JNS) Backed by Mexico and Brazil, Gabriel Boric, Chile’s outgoing president, nominated former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, a harsh critic of the Jewish state, to be the next secretary-general of the United Nations.

Boric, who is also anti-Israel, made the announcement on Monday. José Antonio Kast, a right-wing politician who is set to assume the Chilean presidency next month, would be unlikely to nominate Bachelet, 74, for the role.

Bachelet, who was Brazil’s president twice—from 2006-10 and 2014-18—was the first head of U.N. Women and served as U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

She was a frequent critic of the Jewish state, which broke ties with her office in 2020 over her decision to implement a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution mandating the publication of a blacklist of companies engaged in business in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.

According to U.N. Watch, Bachelet issued 14 comments about Israel, more than any democratic country. She made the same number of statements about Syria and fewer about Iran, according to the watchdog.

Bachelet used her final hours in office to decry Israel over its denial of visas to her staff. She ignored antisemitic comments made by a member of the Human Rights Council’s commission of inquiry on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for which the commissioner later apologized. JNS

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Inside the Terrifying Wave of Violence Gripping NYC Streets. "Kill All the Jews": Antisemitic Attacks Explode by 182% in Mamdani’s First Month Antisemitic hate crimes have nearly tripled in New York City during Mayor Zohran Mamdani's first month in office, as the NYPD reports that Jews are now targeted in over half of all bias incidents citywide.

Eliana Fleming Feb 3, 2026 New York City’s Jewish community is facing a surge of violence and harassment that has reached levels unseen in recent years. According to newly released data from the NYPD, antisemitic hate crimes skyrocketed by 182 percent in January 2026, the very same month that Mayor Zohran Mamdani took the oath of office. While the police department has celebrated historic lows in gun violence and homicides, the statistics for bias-motivated crimes paint a grim picture of a city divided. Jews, who make up roughly 10 percent of the population, were the victims of more than 53 percent of all reported hate crimes in January. This explosion in targeted hatred comes as the new mayoral administration faces intense scrutiny for its radical shift in policy toward Israel, including the revocation of measures meant to combat the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The Truth About 'No Fuss' Cremations - What Most People Don't KnowSponsored The Truth About 'No Fuss' Cremations - What Most People Don't Know goldenleaves.com A Month of Targeted Violence

The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force investigated 31 anti-Jewish incidents in January, a massive jump from the 11 recorded during the same period last year. These figures indicate that Jews are being targeted at a rate more than four times higher than the next most-impacted group, New York’s Muslim community, which saw seven reported incidents. The violence has been both brazen and physical, occurring in broad daylight across multiple boroughs. In Forest Hills, Queens, a rabbi was verbally harassed with antisemitic slurs before being punched in the face and chest on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the global headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement was the site of a terrifying vehicle-ramming attack, where a man repeatedly drove a car into the building's doors while a celebratory crowd of 1,000 people was inside.

Earlier in the month, a Jewish family was stalked and harassed by a woman who screamed "kill all the Jews" before punching the father. These incidents have created an atmosphere of deep-seated fear, particularly as Jewish leaders point to a lack of clear condemnation from the Mayor's office regarding radical slogans like "globalize the intifada," which many view as a direct call for attacks on Jews worldwide. Critics argue that the Mayor’s refusal to distance himself from such rhetoric has signaled a new era of permission for antisemites to act on their prejudices.

The Policy Shift and Political Fallout.

The timing of this wave of hate is inextricably linked to the first executive actions of the Mamdani administration. On his first day in office, Mayor Mamdani issued an order revoking several directives from the previous administration, including the city's formal recognition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. He also scrapped an order that prohibited mayoral appointees and city agencies from boycotting or divesting from Israel. Jewish community leaders warn that by removing these protections, the Mayor has effectively legitimized antisemitic tropes that masquerade as political criticism.

While Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch highlighted that overall crime, including retail theft and school-zone violence, has dropped significantly under a "data-driven strategy," the failure to stem the tide of religious bias remains a glaring exception. Mayor Mamdani has publicly advocated for New York City to divest from Israel Bonds and has even suggested he would seek the arrest of the Israeli Prime Minister if he ever visited the city. For many New Yorkers, the message is clear: the city’s leadership has prioritized a radical anti-Israel agenda over the safety of its Jewish citizens. As the war against terrorists continues abroad, the streets of New York have become a secondary front in a battle of ideologies that shows no signs of cooling down. JFeed

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Another Iran diplomat seeks asylum in Switzerland, sources say. Feb 3, 2026, 12:07 GMT IranIntl

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Investigation uncovers hundreds of Nazi-linked accounts at Credit Suisse. UBS executives told U.S. senators that the Swiss bank fears litigation from Jewish groups over Holocaust restitution claims as it refuses to release additional documents. Andrew Bernard. (Feb. 3, 2026 / JNS) The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony about newly uncovered links between the Nazis and a Swiss banking conglomerate, amid an ongoing legal dispute over restitution to Holocaust victims. JNS

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PBS to air four-part documentary series on blacks, Jews in America. “The black and Jewish communities found themselves swimming against parallel currents,” said host Henry Louis Gates Jr.

(Feb. 3, 2026 / JNS) PBS is set to air a new four-part documentary series written by “Finding Your Roots” host Henry Louis Gates Jr., which examines the relationship between black and Jewish Americans throughout U.S. history.

Titled “Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History,” the series premieres on Feb. 3 and is scheduled to run on consecutive Tuesdays through Feb. 24.

PBS described the project, which airs during Black History Month, as tracing a relationship “defined by solidarity and strained by division,” shaped by the forces of racism and antisemitism, and by civic and cultural cooperation, particularly during the civil-rights era. JNS

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San Diego officials address Jew-hatred, seek to reopen state security grants. The city council has a “clear moral compass when it comes to addressing antisemitism in our community,” Sara Brown, of AJC San Diego, told JNS. Jessica Russak-Hoffman.

(Feb. 3, 2026 / JNS) The Public Safety Committee of the San Diego City Council met on Jan. 30 to address rising antisemitism and hate crimes, with committee chair Marni von Wilpert calling for education, stronger enforcement and public accountability. JNS

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US Navy downs Iranian drone approaching aircraft carrier in Arabian Sea. The unmanned aircraft “aggressively approached a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier with unclear intent” and ignored de-escalatory measures by U.S. forces, CENTCOM stated.

(Feb. 3, 2026 / JNS) A U.S. Navy fighter jet shot down an Iranian Shahed-139 drone that approached the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea, roughly 500 miles from Iran’s southern coast, U.S. Central Command stated on Tuesday.

The unmanned aircraft “aggressively approached a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier with unclear intent” and ignored multiple attempts by U.S. forces to de-escalate the encounter while operating in international waters, according to CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins.

A Navy F-35C fighter jet, launched from the aircraft carrier, destroyed the drone. No U.S. personnel were injured, and no American equipment was damaged, the military said. JNS

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Congressional watchdog says UNRWA wrong to say its report absolves agency. Mike Wagenheim. (Feb. 3, 2026 / JNS) JNS

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Terror attack foiled in Central Israel: Wanted terrorist captured in Sharon region. Israeli security forces captured a wanted terrorist from the Balata refugee camp who was planning an attack in central Israel. The suspect has been transferred for interrogation by the Shin Bet. Israel National News. Feb 3, 2026, 9:17 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Despite handover. Secret Memo Reveals Hamas' Plan to Maintain Control of Gaza. KAN News reported on an internal Hamas document outlining strategies to retain de facto power under the new governing authority • The memo contradicts the ceasefire's requirement to exclude Hamas from administration • Hamas has denied plans to fully relinquish control.

Jfeed Staff. Feb 3, 2026. JFeed

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Jesse Kline: Israel-haters can't stop lying about a 'genocide'. Whether Hamas's official death toll is correct or not, it is not evidence of Israeli war crimes. Author of the article:By Jesse Kline Published Feb 04, 2026

Late last week, numerous media outlets reported that an unnamed Israeli “security official” conceded that the Israel Defence Forces believes the death toll in Gaza to be around 70,000, which is in line with the number reported by the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel’s enemies predictably seized on the reports as proof that a “genocide” has been taking place, but that is simply not the case.

Throughout the war, numerous independent researchers have found serious discrepancies in the numbers put out by the Hamas-run Health Ministry, but whether this was evidence of a deliberate attempt to mislead or simply a function of trying to keep statistics in an active war zone was never clear.

We still don’t know for sure: shortly after the briefing was given to local media, an IDF spokesperson cast doubt on the reports, saying that, “The details published do not reflect official IDF data,” and that, “Any publication or report on this matter will be released through official and orderly channels.”

But even if the figures put out by the Health Ministry, which claims that 71,667 people have died since the start of the war, are generally accurate, it is only evidence that this has been a brutal and punishing war — something we already knew — not that Israel is guilty of war crimes.

The fact that Israel-haters consistently try to conceal is that Hamas’s numbers do not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, which is vitally important. Simply stating that 70,000 people have died in two years of war is intentionally misleading, as the insinuation is that Israeli forces are slaughtering civilians en masse.

The reality is that, last August, the IDF estimated it had killed at least 23,600 terrorists since Oct. 7, 2023, or 38 per cent of the 62,000 Gazans that the Health Ministry claimed had died up to that point.

The Health Ministry numbers also don’t distinguish between those who have been killed as a result of Israeli actions and those who perished in “friendly fire” incidents, such as the 471 who were reported dead after an errant terrorist rocket hit the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital.

Even if we take both sides’ August 2025 numbers at face value and count every dead civilian as a war death, it would indicate that civilians accounted for 62 per cent of the war dead. This number is certainly high, but still lower than estimates for the Korean War (74 per cent), the Gulf War (87-88 per cent) and the Iraq War (66-67 per cent).

It is also lower than the 67 per cent civilian death rate in the October 7 massacre, so anyone screaming about “proportionality” should check their facts.

There is no doubt that the harms caused to civilians in Gaza are much higher than they should be, but that is because Hamas embeds terrorist infrastructure in civilian areas, including neighbourhoods, schools, hospitals and mosques. Even so, Hamas’s persistent claim that the overwhelming majority of deaths are women and children is likely a complete fabrication.

An April 2025 report written by two Australian academics and published by the U.S.-based Henry Jackson Society examined the Health Ministry’s own data and found that, between October 2023 and March 2025, 51 per cent of the casualties were women and children — a far cry from the 70 per cent that Hamas’s Government Media Office has been claiming throughout the war and media outlets have been repeating ad nauseam.

When specifically examining the effects of Israel’s military operation in Khan Younis, the researchers found that males between the ages of 15 and 40 were over-represented, and that females under the age of 18 made up nine per cent of the fatalities, while underage boys constituted 13 per cent.

This shows that the vast majority of the dead were fighting-age males — which one would expect to see in a war, but not in a genocide. The higher percentage of underage boys also indicates that many of them were not innocent children who happened to get caught in the crossfire, but child soldiers brandishing AK-47s.

Indeed, Palestinian terrorist groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have a long history of recruiting child soldiers, dating back to the Second Intifada, when they were used as suicide bombers.

Before the war, Hamas ran annual summer camps, attended by tens of thousands of children, to “prepare the youth” to make “sacrifices.” These, according to the U.S. State Department, “involved firearm instruction and military training,” and “served as recruitment events.” And during the war, Israel found hard evidence that “minors are active in the military wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip.”

Part of the disconnect stems from the fact that while the Gaza Health Ministry is responsible for collecting data, the numbers are often spun by Hamas’s propaganda arm, the Government Media Office. Even if the baseline death toll is relatively trustworthy, it’s completely irresponsible of the global media to unquestioningly parrot Hamas’s claims about women and children being over-represented among the dead.

And even if it’s true that over 70,000 have died since the start of the war, this cannot be construed as evidence that Israel is perpetrating a genocide. Even being generous and assuming that 10,000 people are buried under the rubble and have yet to be added to the death count, the number of dead after more than two years of war still only represents around 3.7 per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million.

By comparison, the global Jewish population was reduced by 34 per cent during the Holocaust, and in Rwanda, the two-year genocide in the early 1990s caused the population to decrease by 28 per cent.

It’s telling that Hamas and its useful idiots in the West were accusing Israel of “genocide” on October 7, before its military campaign even got underway, despite the fact that the Palestinian population in the territories increased by 336 per cent between 1967 and 2017.

There has clearly been a concerted effort on the part of Hamas and its backers to push the narrative that Israel is committing crimes against humanity in order to gain sympathy in West and among world leaders, even though the data shows that there has never been a systematic attempt to eliminate Palestinians — not before the war, and not after.

People on both sides of the debate should have a keen interest in knowing the truth, yet Israel’s enemies only seem interested in peddling lies intended to demonize the Jewish state.

The war in Gaza has unquestionably caused an immense amount of human suffering and we should all support current efforts to bring a lasting peace to the region. Yet we cannot begin to mend the deep wounds this war has caused — both in the Middle East and here at home — if we cannot be honest about what we know, what we don’t know and what the data is actually telling us. National Post

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Swedes for grenade attack targeting Israeli embassy. Two Swedes convicted of terrorism for throwing grenades near the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen, receiving 12‑ and 14‑year sentences, with both planning to appeal. Israel National News. Feb 4, 2026, 6:25 AM (GMT+2) SwedenCopenhagenDenmarkIsraeli A Danish court has convicted two Swedish nationals of terrorism and attempted murder for detonating two hand grenades near the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen in October 2024, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday.

According to the Swedish news agency TT, the Copenhagen City Court sentenced the 18‑year‑old to 12 years in prison and the 21‑year‑old to 14 years. Authorities said the pair acted on behalf of a criminal gang.

The attack took place in the early hours of October 2, 2024, when the two threw hand grenades toward the Israeli embassy. The explosives did not reach the embassy and instead detonated on the terrace of a nearby residential building where a family with children lived. No injuries were reported. INN

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Posters glorifying Bondi Beach terrorist spark outrage across Melbourne. Melbourne removes dozens of copycat “Aussie" posters featuring one of the two Bondi Beach Hanukkah terrorists, drawing condemnation from Jewish leaders and officials. Israel National News. Published: Feb 4, 2026, 4:52 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Trump nearly pulled out of Iran talks after Gulf aggression. Wall Street Journal reports that Trump considered abandoning Iran talks after a drone incident and harassment of a US vessel, but negotiations are still expected to proceed later this week.

Elad Benari. Feb 4, 2026, 3:16 AM INN

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Security guard at Prague airport forces ultra-Orthodox woman to remove head covering. The woman, who was flying to London with her husband, said she took off her headscarf out of fear of being arrested; 'I said I'm a religious Jew and I can't take it off but he yelled again, Take it off'; She was afraid of arrest so she complied. Itamar Eichner | published: 02.04.26 | border control officer at Vaclav Havel Airport in Prague forced an ultra-Orthodox woman to remove her head covering in front of numerous passengers and shouted at her during passport control in what is being described as a serious antisemitic incident. YNet

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The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: The Jewish governor of Pennsylvania this week rebuked one of his state’s most visible elected officials for comparing ICE officers to Nazis, leading to a protracted war of words between the two men. From jpost.com [69] 5:13 AM · Feb 4, 2026 on X

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Northern Gaza. IDF reservist severely injured by terrorists Terrorists open fire at IDF forces near 'yellow line,' severely injuring one reservist. IDF: 'Gross violation of ceasefire.' Israel National News. Feb 4, 2026, 7:22 AM INN

An IDF reserve officer was severely wounded on Tuesday night during routine operational activity near the yellow line in northern Gaza, after terrorists opened fire on troops, the military confirmed on Wednesday. From jpost.com [70]. 7:15 AM · Feb 4, 2026. on X

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Queens: Teen arrested for antisemitic death threat emails to high school. Elad Benari. Feb 4, 2026, 5:11 AM INN

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Report: Houthis preparing to attack Red Sea shipping again. Israel National News. Feb 4, 2026, 7:55 AM INN

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Netanyahu tells Witkoff Gaza must be demilitarized. Trump’s Middle East envoy is due to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. JNS Staff. (Feb. 4, 2026 / JNS) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with White House special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff on Tuesday, emphasizing that Israel will not compromise on its war aims in the Gaza Strip, and cautioning against trusting Iranian promises. JNS

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The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Report: Saudi Arabia’s state-aligned media outlets have been adopting an increasingly anti-Israel tone in recent months, The Wall Street Journal reported. From jpost.com [71]. Feb 4, 2026 on X

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US slams South Africa’s expulsion of Israeli diplomat. (Feb. 4, 2026 / JNS) U.S. State Department Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott said South Africa’s expulsion of Israel’s senior diplomat prioritized political grievances over the country’s national interests and its citizens’ well-being.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Pigott called Pretoria’s move “another example of its poor foreign policy choices. Expelling a diplomat for calling out the African National Congress party’s ties to Hamas and other antisemitic radicals prioritizes grievance politics over the good of South Africa and its citizens.”

South Africa declared Israel’s chargé d’affaires, Ariel Seidman, persona non grata on Jan. 30 and ordered him to leave the country within 72 hours, according to a statement from the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Department of International Relations and Cooperation, DIRCO).

South African officials said the decision was based on what they described as “violations of diplomatic norms,” including the alleged use of official Israeli platforms to criticize South African leadership and a failure to notify authorities of visits by senior Israeli officials.

In response, Israel’s Foreign Ministry designated South Africa’s top diplomat in Israel, Shaun Edward Byneveldt, persona non grata, ordering him to leave the country within 72 hours. The ministry said that “additional steps will be considered in due course.”

The diplomatic exchange further strains relations between Jerusalem and Pretoria, which have deteriorated sharply since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Both countries recalled their ambassadors in the weeks that followed.

South Africa has been a leading critic of Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and has pursued legal action against Israel at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, both based in The Hague.

The United States has strongly opposed South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ. President Donald Trump last year froze most U.S. aid to South Africa, citing Pretoria’s positions toward Washington, including its ties with Russia and Iran and its legal campaign against Israel.

Incoming U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Leo Brent Bozell has said that defending American policy on Israel will be a top priority when he assumes his post later this year. JNS

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Hamas terrorists use ambulances, schools, hospitals in violation of US-brokered ceasefire, IDF official says. 'There are disturbing developments over the last few weeks. We see the return of Hamas to the front line,' IDF official says By Benjamin Weinthal Fox News. Published February 4, 2026.

Amid the recent start of phase two of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Hamas and the Jewish state, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claim that Hamas has violated the deal through its misuse of ambulances, hospitals and schools to regain control of the northern Gaza Strip.

The IDF provided Fox News Digital with exclusive video footage of what it alleges is Hamas operatives using an ambulance to transport terrorists and weapons from the "inner yard of the Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital" to various checkpoints in northern Gaza.

"You see an armed suspect going into the ambulance with a Kalashnikov. The ambulance is connecting the dots for us. We passed the information to the American headquarters of the footage of the militants," an IDF official said of the video shared with Fox News Digital.

The first phase of the agreement required that Hamas return all hostages held in Gaza. The second core part involves the disarming of Hamas, the U.S. and EU-designated terrorist movement.

An IDF spokesperson told Fox News Digital, "There are disturbing developments over the last few weeks. We see the return of Hamas to the front line, to the yellow line."

The yellow line separates IDF-controlled territory in Gaza, which is estimated to be 53%, from the enclave area not under Israeli control.

"Hamas has returned to schools, hospitals and kindergartens and is turning them into military bases. A Hamas commander is in charge of each school in Jabalia in northern Gaza," the IDF official claimed.

They continued, "We have seen Hamas with Kalashnikovs and, over the past few weeks, Hamas has been using ambulances. We have tracked over several weeks that Hamas uses ambulances to do checks in Jabalia. It is a big change. We see the confidence of Hamas using ambulances. It is a symbol for Hamas that it is gaining confidence and rebuilding itself, a sign of a potential raid on our bases in the future." Fox News

Restricted Video. RAW FOOTAGE: Hamas terrorists systematically using ambulances to move terrorists & weapons from a hospital to a school, in violation of the ceasefire agreement. on X

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US struggles to secure Gaza reconstruction funds amid Hamas disarmament standoff. February 4, 2026. The United States has yet to secure funding commitments for its Gaza reconstruction plan as potential donors voice concerns that disagreements over Hamas disarmament could lead to the continuation of full-scale war in the enclave, sources told Reuters.

Hamas laying down its weapons is a key requirement under US President Donald Trump's plan to end the Gaza war. It calls for the IDF to withdraw troops as Hamas disarms and for Gaza's reconstruction to be overseen by a "Board of Peace" chaired by the US President.

Trump's plan got a boost this week with the reopening of Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt. But sources close to Hamas say the terrorist group has yet to start talks on disarming, a move that is meant to precede the start of rebuilding Gaza's destroyed cities.

Two sources with direct knowledge of the Board's planning said that countries were hesitant to commit funds to a rebuilding plan unveiled last month by Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, until Hamas disarms.

"Countries want to see the funding will go for reconstruction within demilitarized places, and not to throw the money into another war zone," one of the sources said.

"If we pass that obstacle, then funding will not be an issue."

Seven Western diplomats told Reuters that the funding holdup, which has not been previously reported, was also being driven by a demand by some potential donors for funds to be managed by the United Nations rather than the Board of Peace.

The funding delay leaves Gaza's population in limbo, unable to begin clearing rubble or rebuilding basic infrastructure, and feeds into worries among US allies that a fragile October truce, shaken by repeated Hamas cease-fire breaches, could break down and lead to a resumption of heavy fighting between Israel and Hamas terrorists.

Alongside governments, potential donors could also include private sector contributors, diplomats, and the two sources said. They estimated the potential rebuilding cost to be in the range of $100 billion.

That money would fund a "New Gaza" rebuilt from scratch to include seafront residential towers, data centers, and industrial parks, Kushner said at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 22. JPost

I hate to see this from the CEO of the very respected military forum @WarOnTheRocks Not just because it opens with ad hominem attacks, but because it doubles down on defending an article full of unsubstantiated claims, faulty sourcing, and analytical errors that have already been… [72]

— John Spencer (@SpencerGuard) February 4, 2026. on X

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Grassley, Fetterman urge Treasury to implement whistleblower program to combat terror financing. The program “is a critical tool for America’s ongoing fight against terrorists, drug-traffickers and sanctioned state actors who are threats to our national security,” the senators wrote. (Feb. 4, 2026 / JNS) Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) are urging the U.S. Department of the Treasury to accelerate a long-delayed whistleblower program to expose money laundering and terrorist financing. JNS

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After over 27,000 projectiles, Israeli authorities seek to improve protection gaps. Hospitals should prioritize protection of trauma and emergency surgery rooms, a former defense official tells JNS. Yaakov Lappin. (Feb. 4, 2026 / JNS) Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught on Israel and the multi-arena war that ensued, the Israeli home front faced waves of rocket, missile and drone attacks, totaling more than 27,000 projectiles, according to a report published in January by the Office of the Israeli State Comptroller, Matanyahu Englman.

While Israeli air defense systems successfully intercepted most of the threats heading towards populated areas, saving countless lives and billions of shekels in damages, the attacks still took a major toll. By the end of November 2024, at least 63 Israeli civilians and foreign nationals were killed by enemy projectile fire, with 43 of them killed by Hezbollah attacks and 20 from Gaza.

During Israel’s Rising Lion operation against Iran in June 2025, another 33 civilians were killed and 3,500 were injured by Iranian ballistic missile attacks, even though Israeli air defenses intercepted 86 percent of the incoming threats, according to Defense Ministry figures. This, the Comptroller’s report stated, stresses the importance of protection for the civilian population “even more so.”.. JNS

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IDF highlights work of unit that killed 60 Hezbollah terrorists. Unit 869 also destroyed dozens of sites in Southern Lebanon to hinder the Iranian proxy's military recovery. JNS Staff.

(Feb. 4, 2026 / JNS) Troops from Unit 869, part of the Israel Defense Forces’ 91st Division, are operating in Southern Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its terrorist capabilities, the army said on Tuesday.

According to the IDF, the unit eliminated about 60 Hezbollah terrorists over the past year and dismantled dozens of the Iranian proxy’s structures, weapons depots and observation posts. [https://www.jns.org/idf-highlights-work-of-unit-that-killed-60-hezbollah-terrorists/ JNS]

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Israeli envoy in NY: Wouldn’t accept Mamdani invite unless he recognizes Israel. “How am I supposed to meet with someone who does not recognize me,” Ofir Akunis told JNS.

(Feb. 4, 2026 / JNS) Ofir Akunis, Israel’s consul general in the world’s largest Jewish city outside its borders, is deeply offended by Zohran Mamdani’s oft-stated views that Israel, as a Jewish state, is illegitimate. As long as that is true, Akunis said, he will not meet with the new New York City mayor. JNS

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Canadian Jewish groups warn Carney government after antisemitism envoy eliminated. Prime Minister Mark Carney replaces Canada’s antisemitism and Islamophobia envoys with a new national unity council, prompting Jewish groups to warn the government not to weaken efforts against rising antisemitism. Israel National News. Feb 5, 2026, 6:16 AM (GMT+2) INN

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UK: Six anti-Israel activists cleared in Elbit burglary trial. UK jury acquits six Palestine Action activists over a 2024 raid on an Elbit factory, while prosecutors consider retrial on charges where no verdict was reached. Elad Benari. Feb 5, 2026, 4:39 AM INN

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Mamdani picks head of left-wing organization to lead NYC antisemitism office New York City Mayor selects Phylisa Wisdom of the New York Jewish Agenda to lead NYC’s antisemitism office, prompting concern from Jewish leaders. Israel National News. Published: Feb 5, 2026, 5:54 AM (GMT+2)

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has selected Phylisa Wisdom to lead the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, according to sources who spoke with the Daily News on Wednesday.

Wisdom currently heads the New York Jewish Agenda, a self-described progressive advocacy group which has routinely criticized Israeli policies, particularly during the Gaza conflict, while insisting that legitimate criticism of the Jewish state isn't inherently antisemitic.

The office was created by Adams in May 2025 and has been viewed as a political challenge for Mamdani, who has faced intense criticism over his anti-Israel stance.

Mamdani caused an uproar on his first day in office when he cancelled executive orders related to Israel, which were issued by his predecessor, Eric Adams.

The move cancelled an order signed by Adams in June of 2025 formally recognizing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.

Another executive order which was cancelled prohibited mayoral appointees and agency staff from boycotting and disinvesting from Israel.

At the time, Mamdani committed to keeping the Office to Combat Antisemitism intact despite the fact that it was created by Adams. INN

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Australian charged over death threats against President Herzog. Australian police charge 19-year-old for alleged online death threats against President Herzog ahead of his visit. Elad Benari. Feb 5, 2026, 4:12 AM (GMT+2) [...] President Herzog is expected to arrive in Australia on Sunday for a five-day visit, following an invitation from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after the terrorist shooting at Bondi Beach in December. Herzog is set to meet survivors and families of the victims of the December 14 attack at a Hanukkah celebration, which killed 15 people. INN

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'Trump will keep options open on Iran, including military force'. Vice President JD Vance says Trump will keep all options open on Iran, stressing diplomacy but warning the US could use military force to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Israel National News. Feb 5, 2026, 1:11 AM INN

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Murderer of Israeli diplomats in DC hit with new terror charges. Elias Rodriguez, accused of killing two Israeli embassy staffers, now faces new terrorism charges, with prosecutors saying the attack was an act of terror and could carry a mandatory life sentence. Israel National News. Feb 5, 2026, 3:15 AM (GMT+2) INN

There is a strong likelihood that the Houthis will resume their attacks on Israel and on US ships if the US strikes Iran, Israeli public broadcaster KAN News reported. From jpost.com [73] 8:22 AM · Feb 5, 2026 on X

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The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Israeli aerospace start-up AiR EV announced a strategic partnership with Singapore ST Engineering as it unveiled its largest cargo drone at the Singapore Airshow on Wednesday. From jpost.com [74]. Feb 5, 2026. on X

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The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: On Iran, Netanyahu told Knesset's defense committee that Israel would "respond with force never before seen" should the Islamic Republic choose to carry out strikes against Israeli targets. Feb 5, 2026 on X

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The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post Analysis: Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa met with representatives from Chevron Worldwide and Qatar’s Power International Holding Company. The goal was to move forward in developing an offshore oil and gas field. ✍️ @sfrantzman From jpost.com [75] Feb 5, 2026 on X

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Netanyahu: I warned of Hamas invasion pre-Oct. 7. In closed Knesset session, prime minister defends Gaza policy, says security chiefs favored calm over action and claims records show he urged preemptive strikes on Hamas leaders. Shilo Freid|2.5.26 YNet

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Israel prepares for possible renewed Gaza fighting as Hamas rebuilds and reserve call-ups loom. Yoav Zitun|2.5.26 07:54 YNet

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Three men shot dead in northern Israel as violence grips Arab sector. Hassan Shaalan |2.5.26 08:32 YNet

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Bereaved parents: 'Stop Hamas supporter from building a hotel in Jerusalem'. Hezki Baruch. Feb 5, 2026. ...Bereaved parents Rubi Chen, Eyal Waldman, and Yizhar Shai have addressed the Jerusalem Municipality, demanding that the district planning committee not approve next week the allocation of land opposite the Old City to the Arab businessman Bashar al-Masri for the construction of a hotel. INN

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Ceasefire violation in Gaza - again. IDF troops identified approaching terrorists, neutralized threat, military statement confirms. Israel National News. Feb 5, 2026, 2:39 PM (GMT+2) .."Earlier today (Thursday), IDF troops operating in the southern Gaza Strip identified a terrorist who approached the Yellow Line and approached the troops, posing an imminent threat to them," the IDF confirmed INN

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Lebanon concerned: Syria to aid Israel in next war? Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa says his country has not forgotten its 'revenge' against Lebanon. Israel National News. Feb 5, 2026, 1:15 PM (GMT+2) Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has warned that his forces have not forgotten their vengeance against the Hezbollah terror group, the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Akhbar reported Thursday. INN

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Iran claims: 'Missile can reach Israel in 10 minutes'. An Iranian report claims that the Khoramshahr-4 missile has been deployed in underground facilities, with speeds of up to 16 times the speed of sound, a range of 2,000 kilometers, and a heavy warhead. Israel National News. Feb 5, 2026, 5:26 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Watch: Soldier who was seriously injured plants tree at the Gaza Border. The "Nachala" movement held a march toward the ruins of the Nisanit settlement. A special moment occurred when a soldier who lost his leg planted a tree next to the fence. Israel National News. Feb 5, 2026, 7:15 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Watch: YAMAM raids and arrests a protection gang. A wide-ranging nighttime operation by the Northern District special forces raided targets in Jenin and villages in northern Israel to arrest five suspects who extorted a businessman. Israel National News. Feb 5, 2026, 8:04 PM (GMT+2) INN

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19 years later: Terrorist who murdered David Rubin and Ahikam Amihai sentenced The military court sentenced Ali Dandis, who murdered IDF soldiers in 2007, to three life sentences and awarded unprecedented compensation to the families of the victims. Israel National News. Feb 5, 2026, 7:56 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Daily biblical study good for ‘spiritual, educational needs,’ Jewish women say. Some 22,000 women from 30 countries are completing a two-year cycle of daily biblical study called Nach Yomi. Rikki Zagelbaum.

(Feb. 5, 2026 / JNS) Yaelle Schachna describes the benefits of her daily biblical study in physical terms.

“You could be having a really hard day, and then you’d listen to the shiur and feel like you got a gentle hug or a pick-me-up,” the resident of Melbourne, Australia, told JNS of taking part in lessons as part of a program of the Orthodox Union’s Women’s Initiative.

“Learning while waiting for the hostages to come home and seeing how these stories still apply today reinforced the timelessness of Torah,” she said. “It wasn’t just stories or old words, it felt like a roadmap for our lives.”

Schachna is one of 22,000 women from more than 30 countries who are taking part in the OU’s Nach Yomi program. Nach is an acronym that refers to the final two sections of Jewish scripture, Prophets and Writings, and yomi means “daily.” In the program, women read a biblical chapter a day, completing all of the 34 books, a combined 742 chapters, every two years.

Participating helped Schachna feel connected to Jewish women worldwide, she told JNS. JNS

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North Carolina neo-Nazi gets five years for threats to kill Jewish state rep, [reform]"rabbi". "Crimes rooted in antisemitism and any hate crime against race, religion or protected groups, will be prioritized," the U.S. Justice Department said. JNS Staff.

(Feb. 5, 2026 / JNS) Ariel Collazo Ramos, 32, of High Point, N.C., was sentenced to five years in prison—the statutory maximum—and then three years of supervised release on Wednesday for threatening to kill Georgia state representative Esther Panitch .. of Temple Beth Israel in Macon, Ga.

“Both women publicly backed the passage of Georgia House Bill 30, the state’s first legislation defining antisemitism,” the U.S. Justice Department said.

“Individuals like this defendant will face federal prosecution for criminal acts driven by hatred,” stated William Keyes, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. “This case underscores that crimes rooted in antisemitism and any hate crime against race, religion or protected groups will be prioritized.” JNS

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Florida city adopts IHRA definition of Jew-hatred in unanimous vote. “If you want to go out and say you hate Jews, nothing’s stopping you,” a city commissioner stated. “You want to assault someone while screaming ‘death to Jews,’ it's a hate crime.”

(Feb. 5, 2026 / JNS) The city commission of Parkland, Fla., unanimously adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism on Wednesday, amending city provisions to guide how Jew-hatred and hate crimes are considered in enforcing local laws.

The ordinance creates a new section of the city’s code formally adopting the IHRA definition and incorporates language from Florida state law addressing antisemitism and hate crimes. City officials stressed that the measure does not restrict speech or infringe on First Amendment rights.

According to the meeting agenda, the ordinance is intended to “demonstrate the city’s commitment to combat antisemitism” and includes provisions governing implementation, conflicts, severability, codification and an effective date.

Public comment featured testimony from members of Parkland’s Jewish community, all of whom spoke in support of the measure. No speakers testified in opposition.

Rabbi Shuey Biston said he was speaking “not only as a rabbi but as a 28-year Parkland resident who has built a life here, raised a family here and believes deeply in the moral soul of Parkland.” JNS

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Israel launches strikes on Hezbollah terror targets across Lebanon. "Over the past several months, Hezbollah terrorist activity was identified at the sites," the IDF stated. JNS Staff. (Feb. 5, 2026 | Updated Feb. 5, 13:06 / JNS) The Israel Defense Forces launched a wave of strikes on Thursday night targeting Hezbollah terror infrastructure in “several areas in Lebanon.”

“A short while ago, the IDF struck tunnel shafts used for weapons storage at several Hezbollah military sites across Lebanon,” the IDF stated. “Following the strikes, secondary explosions were identified, indicating the presence of weapons in the area.”

The Israeli military statement noted that “over the past several months, Hezbollah terrorist activity was identified at the sites, constituting a violation of the ceasefire understandings between Israel and Lebanon.” JNS

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Haverford College permanently bans protester who disrupted Israeli journalist’s talk. “Shouting down a speaker whom one does not agree with is never acceptable and stands outside of our shared community values,” the president of the college stated. Jessica Russak-Hoffman.

(Feb. 5, 2026 / JNS) Haverford College in the Philadelphia-area suburbs has permanently banned an individual who disrupted a campus talk on Feb. 1 featuring Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur, the college announced following an investigation by Campus Safety.

Video of the incident circulating on social media shows an anti-Israel protester draped in a keffiyeh using a bullhorn to shout over Rettig Gur during the event. The protester yelled about “children slaughtered by the IOF,” an acronym used by critics to refer to the Israel Defense Forces, and warned the audience, “When Gaza is burned, you will all burn too.”

After the protester was escorted from the room, Rettig Gur told the audience, “It crossed our field of experience and evaporated. And do you know what it was? The howling cry of a lonely, uneducated human.”

In a Feb. 4 letter to the campus community, Campus Safety Director Jerry Fayette stated that the college launched an investigation after witnesses observed “clear violations of Haverford’s Policy on Expressive Freedom and Responsibility.” The letter was provided to JNS by the college.

Fayette said the investigation identified “both the individual who used the bullhorn and an audience member who initiated physical contact” with that person. Neither individual is a student or a member of the Haverford College community, he said. JNS

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University of Nebraska regents rule out Israel divestment vote approved by Lincoln student govt. Paul Kenney, chair of the university's Board of Regents, stated that he and his colleagues “do not have plans to act on the divestiture resolution.” Mike Wagenheim. (Feb. 5, 2026 / JNS) While the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s student government approved a bill on Wednesday calling for the university’s divestment from Israel, Paul Kenney, chair of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents, ruled out any actions on the measure.

“While the University of Nebraska respects student governance and our students’ right to voice their perspectives, the members of the NU Board of Regents do not have plans to act on the divestiture resolution,” Kenney stated on Thursday.

The motion, backed by Students for Justice in Palestine and titled the Divest for Humanity Act, passed by a 22-10 vote after several hours of debate on Wednesday night. It called on the university’s student association to explore divestment from weapons manufacturers, sought to encourage the university’s Board of Regents to amend investment policies and cited a “moral imperative” to oppose Israel, with added references to “apartheid” and “genocide.”

While the resolution mentioned other global conflicts, it only called for action against Israel.

SJP, which has been banned on multiple campuses across the United States due to its use of violence, harassment and other conduct violations, claims that the University of Nebraska’s system invests $9 million into defense contractors, including Boeing and General Dynamics, which do business with Israel.

Leo Terrell, chair of the U.S. Department of Justice Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, wrote ahead of the vote that SJP is “a group that has celebrated attacks by terrorist organizations and is now targeting American companies through its BDS campaign.”

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) wrote that the boycott and divestment movement against Israel and SJP “are fueling antisemitism on college campuses. Endorsing this movement would make UNL less safe for Jewish students.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) stated that Israeli boycotts are “fueled by antisemitic hate.”

“The BDS movement seeks to isolate and defeat Israel, the only democracy in the region,” the congressman wrote. “Israel is our best ally in the region as well.”

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, stated that “Antisemitism can have no place or platform at Nebraska’s flagship university.” JNS

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AIPAC calls out Democratic lawmakers for ‘timidity’ on Iran killing teenage protesters. “For two years, the ‘Performative Outrage Squad’ raced to microphones to lecture about their supposed concern for human rights and civilian lives,” Deryn Sousa of AIPAC told JNS.

Jessica Russak-Hoffman. (Feb. 5, 2026 / JNS) The American Israel Public Affairs Committee criticized Democratic lawmakers for their “timidity” on Iran’s killing of teenagers protesting the regime.

“All quiet from Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ro Khanna, Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal,” AIPAC stated on Tuesday. “So-called champions for human rights have a blind eye for a repressive regime that just mowed down its own people.”

“Shameful hypocrisy,” the lobbying group added, sharing a Wall Street Journal story alleging that “an expanding list of teenagers and other young people” have been killed by Iran.

“Nothing to say if they can’t blame Israel,” AIPAC wrote.

While all the lawmakers listed, except for Omar, have released statements condemning violence against Iranian protesters, AIPAC noted the relative silence compared to their condemnations of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

“For two years, the ‘Performative Outrage Squad’ raced to microphones to lecture about their supposed concern for human rights and civilian lives,” Deryn Sousa, a spokesperson for AIPAC, told JNS on Wednesday.

“Their timidity now, as the Iranian regime butchers its own people yearning to be free, exposes their anti-Israel criticism as hollow posturing—phony virtue signaling to smear and lie about the world’s only Jewish state,” Sousa said.

Jayapal, who recently met with left-wing Jewish organizations J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace, wrote about the Iranian protesters on Jan. 22. “My heart is with the families of those killed by the Iranian government,” she stated.

Sanders, who condemned the Trump administration on Monday for “spending taxpayer dollars to arm Netanyahu’s genocidal government,” has not posted about the Iranian protesters on his social media.

In a Jan. 13 statement in which he blamed the existence of the Iranian regime on “Western-backed intervention” to “protect Western oil interests,” Sanders called on Iran to end violence against protesters. JNS

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Mamdani Visits Attempted Police-Stabber in Hospital. Traditionally, New York City mayors are supposed to visit injured police officers in the hospital. February 5, 2026 by Daniel Greenfield 17 Comments FPM

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Ousted NYC Anti-Semitism Czar: Mamdani Replaced Me With Left-Wing Activist Because I'm a 'Proud Jew' Who Doesn't Hate Israel. Rabbi Moshe Davis's replacement, Phylisa Wisdom, has bashed Israel and tweeted of having 'totally missed Yom Kippur'. Jon Levine. February 5, 2026 FreeBeacon

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PEN America, Advocate for 'Free Expression,' Withdraws Defense of Israeli Comedian Who Refused To Condemn Jewish State. The organization has long supported those same rights for members of terrorist groups and anti-Semites.

Alana Goodman. February 5, 2026 FreeBeacon

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EXCLUSIVE: Palestinian Authority To Pay $315 Million to Terrorists and Their Families Across Middle East in 2026, Watchdog Report Reveals. The report confirms the State Department's determination last week that the PA has not ended its 'pay-to-slay' program as promised. Adam Kredo. February 6, 2026 FreeBeacon

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Meet the Next Chair of the Harvard History Dept, Who Called Trump 'Narcissist White Supremacist Habitual Liar Lunatic’. Professor Maya Jasanoff brought fruit to anti-Israel encampment, joined lawsuit for Columbia’s Khalil.

Ira Stoll. February 5, 2026 FreeBeacon

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The Media’s Lies About Israel. When obsession replaces reality. February 6, 2026 by Hugh Fitzgerald.

An examination of the world media’s obsessive coverage of Israel can be found here: “Why global media obsess over Israel and ignore deadlier wars – opinion,” by Samuel J. Hyde, Jerusalem Post [76], January 13, 2026:

'If news coverage were meant to be a rational analysis, this is not. Even if news were merely supposed to be the coverage of suffering, power, and danger on planet Earth, this would still be indefensible. You cannot plausibly cover Israel more than an entire continent without warping the reader’s sense of reality.This saturation coverage creates the illusion of centrality. It trains audiences to believe that whatever they see most frequently must be the most important event in the world. Israel becomes not just another country among many but a kind of moral index of the age – a stage upon which the world’s conscience is imagined to be tested and revealed.

Meanwhile, catastrophes of far greater scale and brutality – such as the ongoing genocide in Sudan – flicker briefly, if at all, across the screen before disappearing into silence a week later.

This is not accidental. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict occupies a peculiar and disproportionate place in the West’s political imagination, unmatched by conflicts that are deadlier or more brutal. Israel is small enough to be grasped symbolically, but complex enough to absorb endless projection.It is intimate, familiar, and endlessly legible to Western eyes in a way that “distant” tragedies are not. And so it becomes over-seen, over-examined, intensely dissected, and uniquely moralized until the examination itself becomes both activism and a substitute for understanding.

The second distortion is conceptual. Israel’s wars are routinely framed as the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” as though the entire story were a localized struggle between two neighboring peoples, one strong and one weak, one powerful and one victimized. This framing is tidy, emotionally resonant, and yet profoundly misleading….'

Indeed, the KGB suggested to the Palestinian Arabs the very invention of the “Palestinian people,” that dates to the mid-1960s, as a way for the conflict to be viewed in a different way. No longer would the war be seen as one of an Arab gang-up — involving close to 20 countries at the time (there are now 22 Arab states), or still worse, a gang-up of Muslim countries, of which there are 57 — against tiny Israel. Instead, the conflict was now presented as one in which the powerful state of Israel was maltreating the largely helpless “Palestinian people.” It was preposterous, but by dint of constant repetition, this view of the matter prevailed.

'The problem is not whether a journalist chooses one word over another. It is that the story being told is already too small to hold the truth, and too large to escape moral projection. It magnifies Israel until it eclipses the region, and then isolates it until it bears responsibility for forces far beyond its control.'

Here I beg to differ. To me, the choice of words is much more significant than the author of the piece, Samuel J. Hyde, believes. For audiences worldwide to hear from the BBC, Al Jazeera, AP, and all other mainstream media that “Israel is attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank” has a very different effect on that audience than does the report that “Israel is attacking Palestinians in Judea and Samaria.” The term “West Bank” dates back to 1950, when the government of Jordan decided to stop using the names “Judea and Samaria” because they were “too Jewish,” and instead came up with “West Bank.” And the word “occupied” is used both by those who with malice aforethought wish to deny an Israeli claim to that territory, and by those who are unthinkingly using that word without comprehending its effect.

The media’s obsessive coverage ascribes to Israel a significance — a negative significance — it does not possess. To wit, the media claims that if only Israel would make concessions, all manner of things would be well in the most violent region of the world. And the Israelis must also refer to the conflict’s real dimensions. It is not, and never was, a conflict between “two tiny peoples, each struggling for its homeland.” The ”peoples” involved are the Jews of Israel and the Arabs of 22 Arab states, further supported by a few dozen non-Arab Muslim states. That is the true context of what is now being presented as merely a conflict between “two peoples,” with Israel being much more powerful than the “poor Palestinians” who have done nothing to deserve the blows that Israel has been inflicting. FPM

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Nuclear Talks. Iran Agrees to Include Missiles and Terror Funding in Oman Talks.

Senior Iranian officials tell press that Tehran has committed to discuss ballistic missile program and funding of regional terror proxies in upcoming talks with U.S.

Jfeed Staff. Feb 5, 2026 15:05 JFeed

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Shifting Religious Landscape Plan to Convert East London Synagogue Into Mosque Ignites Fury. A local Muslim community in Whitechapel is fundraising to purchase the historic Nelson Street Synagogue at auction, aiming to transform the site into an Islamic center.

Jfeed Staff. Feb 5, 2026 JFeed

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Manchester terrorist’s father says 'Hitler did to the Jews what they deserved'. The father of the terrorist who murdered two Jews at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur, a doctor by profession, posted an inciting, antisemitic message, writing: 'Israel is a state that grew on the skulls of our people in Palestine'. Itamar Eichner|02.05.26 | 18:15

The father of Jihad al-Shami, the terrorist who murdered two Jews at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur last year, posted an inciting and antisemitic message on his Facebook account in which he likened the Palestinians to the basket in which Moses was placed.

The father, Faraj al-Shami, is a surgeon who previously worked for several nongovernmental organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, and operated in various conflict zones, including South Sudan, Afghanistan and Mali YNet

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Lebanese army chief denies Hezbollah is a terror group, Graham walks out. Sen. Lindsey Graham says he ended a meeting with Lebanon’s defense chief after the general refused to call Hezbollah a terrorist group, warns the US cannot rely on partners who deny the threat. Elad Benari. Feb 6, 2026, 12:11 AM (GMT+2) INN

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IDF strikes terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip following ceasefire violation. IDF strikes terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, in response to a violation of the ceasefire agreement in which terrorists fired shots toward IDF troops operating in the area of the Yellow Line. Israel National News. Published: Feb 6, 2026, 2:45 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Call for global support Anti-Israel activists plan 100‑boat flotilla to Gaza. Israel National News. Feb 6, 2026, 5:53 AM INN

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Senate launches probe into Mamdani’s antisemitism policy changes. Senate panel investigating Mayor Mamdani for rescinding his predecessor’s antisemitism and anti-BDS orders, warning the move could jeopardize $2.2B in federal funding and weaken protections for Jewish students.

Elad Benari. Feb 6, 2026, 4:55 AM INN

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Siren in Karmei Tzur: IDF hunts suspected infiltrators near community fence. Siren sounds in Karmei Tzur after two suspects seen near the community fence. Residents ordered into protected spaces as IDF forces search the area and reinforce security. Israel National News. Feb 6, 2026, 11:09 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Chilling warning. U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee: "Iran is a Real Threat to the U.S." U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee issues a chilling warning: Iranian "sleeper cells" and Hezbollah operatives may already be on U.S. soil. As tensions soar, Huckabee argues that Tehran's 47-year "Death to America" mission is no longer a distant threat but a global danger lurking in the Western Hemisphere.

Jfeed Staff. Feb 7, 2026 20:05 JFeed

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Sanctuary City. NYC’s Mayor Signs Order Banning ICE from New York. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani just signed a defiant executive order to ban ICE from city property. Invoking the Quran and calling federal enforcement an "abuse of power," Mamdani is drawing a line in the sand against the Trump administration.

Jfeed Staff. Feb 7, 2026 18:21 JFeed

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Terrorist attacks female soldier in Jordan Valley. Israel National News. Published: Feb 7, 2026, 6:08 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Hamas reveals: Hostages were held meters from IDF troops. Saudi newspaper reports on Hamas efforts to preserve both living and deceased hostages. Israel National News. Feb 7, 2026, 6:32 PM INN

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Netanyahu to meet Trump on Wednesday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US. President Donald Trump, to meet in Washington to discuss US-Iran negotiations. Hezki Baruch. Feb 7, 2026, 8:38 PM (GMT+2) INN

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US Ambassador Huckabee says Rafah is opening slowly to not 'bring terrorists in or take them out'. People entering and leaving Gaza through the Rafah border crossing have to be properly vetted to avoid terrorists entering or leaving Gaza, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said. Tobias Holcman. February 7, 2026. JPost

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‘Israel of the Balkans’: Srpska fights like Israel for survival, Milorad Dodik tells 'Post'. The invocation of 'shared historical trauma' echoed through Dodik’s remarks; trauma rooted in the genocidal horrors of the ’40s , when Jews and Serbs were murdered together in places like Jasenovac. Alex Winston. February 7, 2026. JPost

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A new Palestinian police force is now planned, a move Netanyahu previously rejected under the Biden administration... [77] Feb 7, 2026 on X

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The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese accused Israel of being humanity's "common enemy" in an Al Jazeera forum also attended by Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and Iranian FM Abbas Araghchi. ✍️ @DanielleGreyman [78] on X [79]

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Syria continues to deploy forces, integrate SDF into defense establishment following agreement. After clashes in January, the SDF and Syrian government agreed to cooperate and find a way to enable Syrian forces to deploy to SDF-held areas in eastern Syria. Seth Fantzman. February 7, 2026. JPost

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Netanyahu–Trump Iran talks set for Wednesday military pressure and the American signal. Netanyahu to fly to Washington and will miss Board of Peace meeting with Turkey and Qatar; Witkoff, Kushner meet directly with Iranian foreign minister and present the red lines, but Israel believes the gaps are unbridgeable amid fears of an American compromise. Itamar Eichner|2.7.26 YNet

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Hamas Atrocities @HamasAtrocities: 🚨 Hamas admits 50,000 deaths in Gaza are Hamas terrorists! 🚨

Hamas announces 500-shekel payments to tens of thousands of ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ widows.

Hamas plans to disburse 500 shekels – some US $160 – to every widow of those killed in the “Al-Aqsa Flood War,” the group announced Wednesday. Payment would be made to as many as 50,000 widowed families, it said, amounting to total disbursements of some 25 million shekels (US $8 million).

Though not stated explicitly in the statement, it was widely understood in Gaza that the reference to “Al-Aqsa Flood” meant the lion’s share of aid would go to the widows of Hamas members. Feb 6, 2026. [80] [81]

Hamas announces 500-shekel payments to tens of thousands of ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ widows. Jusoor News International. February 05, 2026. GAZA, Feb. 5 (Jusoor) – Hamas plans to disburse 500 shekels – some US $160 – to every widow of those killed in the “Al-Aqsa Flood War,” the group announced Wednesday. Payment would be made to as many as 50,000 widowed families, it said, amounting to total disbursements of some 25 million shekels (US $8 million).

Though not stated explicitly in the statement, it was widely understood in Gaza that the reference to “Al-Aqsa Flood” – Hamas’s term for its October 7, 2023 onslaught – meant the lion’s share of aid would go to the widows of Hamas members, who have been provided their own designated tent camps.

“The Ministry of Social Development – Gaza announces… financial assistance of 500 shekels to be disbursed as part of the ‘We Support You’ project for widows of the Al-Aqsa Flood War,” the announcement said. Funds would come from "what the Ministry of Economy collected from merchant violations, estimated at $25 million, since the last ceasefire agreement."

Jusoor has reported extensively on Hamas demanding exorbitant “fees” from merchants, often under the pretext that the shopowners were exploiting wartime shortages to charge customers extortionate prices. At the same time, the group has levied its own exorbitant new “taxes” on everything from cigarettes to food to sites for pitching tents in displaced people’s camps.

Photos appeared online Wednesday of veiled women signing documents at a makeshift office in a tent. ... This content is free to republish or source with attribution to Jusoor, in accordance with our terms and conditions. For additional information, sourcing, and visuals, please DM us on Telegram: t.me/JusoorNewsInternational.

Report content on this page https://telegra.ph/Hamas-announces-500-shekel-payments-to-tens-of-thousands-of-Al-Aqsa-Flood-widows-02-05

[82] [83]

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'You’ll see chaos': Gazan-born Jewish convert warns West of Islamist ideology. Dor Shachar, who watched Hamas rise from the inside, says they are reflective of the culture that elected them. ‘The majority chose Hamas’.

Author of the article: By Dave Gordon, Special to National Post Published Feb 07, 2026 [84] “I wanted to be a Jew because I chose life, I chose love and not hatred,” says Dor Shachar, who was born Ayman Abu Soobuch, a Muslim in Gaza. Photo by Dave Gordon [...] Every child learned how to throw stones at Jews because they teach it. The teacher would tell us to go out and throw stones... Between Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Qassam Brigades, and any other terror group, and most Palestinians in Gaza, they share the same ideas about Jews NationalPost [85]

Rita Rosenfeld @rheytah: Feb 7, 2026. As a boy in Khan Younis, [Dor] Shachar’s earliest lessons about Jews came from his own grandfather. The older man would invite Jewish visitors for coffee and bread, yet in a different breath urged his grandson to “free the land” one day, by killing Jews. “I said to myself, ‘how can it be? On one side he invites them for food and drink, and on the other he says to kill them.’ From a young age I understood something is wrong.” His neighbours included names that would later become synonymous with terror: Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and bombmaker Yahya Ayyash. “I knew them well,” he recalled, describing them as “community faces” alongside others from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the PLO. He knew that some neighbours — and his own brothers — had killed Israelis. In the open market, he says he once saw Sinwar sever the head of a Palestinian accused of collaborating with Israel, amid cheering onlookers. Another time, he and his mother found a head in the market street. “They said he was suspected of cooperating with Israel,” he noted. Bystanders were nonchalant, as he remembers it. He recalled children’s television shows that preached “‘go and kill the Jews.’” In mosques, he recalled sheikhs shouting that killing Jews was “the greatest commandment” and “Allah’s will.” Schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) were little different: Jews were “pigs, dogs and infidels” who did not deserve to live, and children were told Israelis had one eye in the forehead, or three legs. “But I knew the soldiers, and they’d given me candy sometimes. They don’t have one eye in the forehead — they aren’t like that. The Jews who came to the market in Khan Yunis to give us food aid didn’t have one eye in the forehead. The Jews who came to the weddings of our neighbours didn’t have three legs or an eye in the forehead.” Inculcating violence was part of the curriculum. “Every child learned how to throw stones at Jews because they teach it. The teacher would tell us to go out and throw stones; then come back and open books as though we were studying. When the soldiers came, they saw little children studying. After the soldiers left, the teachers laughed — ‘these pigs, these dogs, these betrayers, these Jews, we will slaughter them like Hitler did.’” Dave Gordon, National Post

Feb 7, 2026 · 6:53 PM UTC on X [86]

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Ihab Hassan @IhabHassane: Another horrific crime in Gaza at the hands of Hamas militias.

Ahmad Ayman Mahmoud Khamis (Al-Mawasi) was murdered in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Yunis on February 1, when Hamas militias shot him in the head.

His family later issued a statement holding Hamas responsible for his killing, stating that one of its members carried out the shooting and calling for those responsible to be held accountable.

It is unacceptable that many human rights groups remain silent and continue to refuse to address or condemn Hamas’ crimes against Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Feb 8, 2026 on X

Aizenberg @Aizenberg55: The Gaza death toll narrative depends on pretending Hamas never kills Gazans. In reality, Hamas & PIJ killed 1000s from internal violence and misfired rockets—then get counted as civilians killed by IDF. Numerous reports and incidents like the one below document this clearly. [87] Feb 9, 2026 on X

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Hamas leader's awkward on-air slip: 'Free Israel, with God’s help'. The clip, taken from Khaled Mashaal’s appearance at the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha on Sunday, shows him wrapping up a point, then delivering what viewers online are calling a verbal misfire. JPost

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Former pro-Palestinian activist from Stanford explains why she left the movement. Thomas said that October 7 marked a turning point, not immediately because of what she saw in the media, but because of what she did not see. February 8, 2026 JPost

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Israeli envoy: Palestinians seeking ‘back door’ status upgrade via UN General Assembly presidency. Riyad Mansour's bid "is a blatant attempt to upgrade the status of the Palestinian delegation at the United Nations," tweeted Danny Danon. JNS Staff. (Feb. 8, 2026 / JNS) Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon on Saturday accused the Palestinian Authority of trying to upgrade its status at the world body “through the back door” by seeking the presidency of the General Assembly.

Riyad Mansour’s bid “is a blatant attempt to upgrade the status of the Palestinian delegation at the United Nations through the back door, to turn the General Assembly into a platform for anti-Israel propaganda, and to undermine the U.N.’s objectives,” tweeted Danon.

While Mansour “pretends to represent the Palestinians,” according to Danon, Ramallah’s U.N. representative “continues to engage in self-promotion and the systematic erosion of the institution’s credibility.

“This is what politicization looks like—draining the General Assembly of substance,” the Israeli diplomat concluded. JNS

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Pentagon cuts ties with Harvard, weighing other Ivies, civilian schools. The U.S. defense secretary said that the Ivy's leaders "encouraged a campus environment that celebrated Hamas, allowed attacks on Jews and still promotes discrimination based on race in violation of Supreme Court decisions." JNS Staff. (Feb. 8, 2026 / JNS) The U.S. Defense Department said on Friday that it is cutting ties with Harvard University, since soldiers studying at the Ivy League school no longer meets the Pentagon’s needs.

“For too long, this department has sent our best and brightest officers to Harvard, hoping the university would better understand and appreciate our warrior class,” stated Pete Hegseth, the U.S. defense secretary.

“Instead, too many of our officers came back looking too much like Harvard—heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks,” he stated. [https://www.jns.org/pentagon-cuts-ties-with-harvard-weighing-other-ivies-civilian-schools/

JNS]

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Mashaal again rejects Trump demand for Hamas to disarm. “Talk of disarmament is an attempt to turn our people into victims,” the top terrorist said, speaking in Doha, Qatar. JNS Staff. (Feb. 8, 2026 / JNS) Senior Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on Sunday reiterated the terrorist group’s opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand to lay down arms and vowed “to defeat our enemy, Israel, God willing.”

Speaking at the 17th Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, Qatar, Mashaal said that the Islamist group would not disarm during the current Phase 2 of Trump’s plan, which calls for Hamas to lay down its weapons with the deployment of an International Stabilization Force to the Gaza Strip. JNS

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UK Conservatives seek retrial of acquitted Elbit intruders. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said the verdicts could legitimize violence tied to political protest. JNS Staff. (Feb. 8, 2026 / JNS) A top member of the U.K. Conservative Party on Thursday called for a retrial of six individuals acquitted of burglary charges despite admitting to breaking into a factory owned by Israel’s Elbit Systems firm in 2024.

“There is no justification for this violence, no matter how strongly someone feels about a cause,” Chris Philp, who is the Conservatives’ point person for internal affairs, including law enforcement, wrote to Stephen Parkinson, the director of Public Prosecutions, as per a report in The Telegraph.

“The verdict risks giving the green light to mob violence in pursuit of a political objective,” Philp wrote of the acquittals on Wednesday in a trial of six anti-Israel activists. They admitted during the trial to breaking into a Bristol building owned by Elbit, a defense contractor, on Aug. 6, 2024.

A jury cleared defendants of aggravated burglary charges, but they may face a retrial on additional charges of criminal damage and violent disorder. The jury reached partial or no verdicts on those counts, according to the BBC’s report of the conclusion of the trial, which began on Nov. 17 at Woolwich Crown Court in the British capital.

A police officer testified that one of the intruders, Samuel Corner, had hit her with a hammer, causing her lasting injuries.

The Police Federation, representing frontline officers, also wrote to Parkinson, saying they had “serious concerns” about the “operational and safety” implications of the decisions for officers handling protests and public order.

The Federation noted rhetoric by Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader, who welcomed the verdicts as a “moral vindication.” His words “risked sending a message, intentional or not, that injury to police officers is an acceptable or incidental concern of political protest,” the Federation wrote.

The jurors found three defendants—Fatema Rajwani, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin—not guilty of violent disorder, though they did not deliver a verdict on the criminal damage charges. The remaining defendants— Corner, Charlotte Head and Leona Kamio—may face a retrial for both additional charges, The Guardian reported.

All of the defendants except Devlin told jurors that they entered the factory without permission and damaged Elbit’s equipment, including computers and drones. The jury deliberated for 36 hours but did not reach verdicts on the criminal damage charges against any of the defendants, the BBC report said.

During the trial, a police officer testified that Corner, 23, had beaten her. Corner denied this, according to The Guardian. The prosecution showed footage it said was of Corner assaulting the officer at the Elbit Systems factory near Bristol on Aug. 6, according to the BBC.

The British government outlawed Palestine Action, which was established in 2020, and declared it to be a terrorist organization in July following a series of similar break-ins and what the group called “occupations” of firms with Israeli ties. JNS

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Netanyahu: Epstein-Barak ties suggest two worked to subvert Israeli democracy. Netanyahu said Epstein’s close ties to the former PM actually prove “the opposite” of claims that the convicted sex offender worked for Israel. JNS Staff. (Feb. 8, 2026 / JNS) Jeffrey Epstein’s “unusual close relationship” with former Prime Minister Ehud Barak suggests the American multimillionaire was working to “undermine Israeli democracy,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday.

Netanyahu in a social media post charged that Epstein’s close ties to Barak actually prove “the opposite” of claims that the convicted sex offender, who died in prison in 2019, was employed by the Jewish state in any capacity.

According to Netanyahu, “Barak has for years obsessively attempted to undermine Israeli democracy by working with the anti-Zionist radical left in failed attempts to overthrow the elected Israeli government.”

The current prime minister continued, “Barak’s personal fixation led him to engage in activities publicly and behind the scenes to undermine the government of Israel, including fueling mass protest movements, fomenting unrest and feeding false media narratives.” JNS

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Majdal Shams families sue Hezbollah for $25M over rocket attack. ynet Global|2.8.26 YNet

Families of victims from Majdal Shams sue Hezbollah. Families of Druze children murdered in July 2024 Hezbollah rocket strike on Majdal Shams sue for compensation; additional suit expected. Israel National News. Feb 8, 2026, 5:07 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Turkey deepens role in Gaza’s 'Day After' through contacts with Hamas. An examination of the sequence of events and official statements indicates that Turkey is working to advance a framework in which Hamas would be recognized in any future Palestinian arrangement. February 9, 2026 JPost

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President Herzog lands in Australia for first visit since Hanukkah Bondi Beach massacre. Herzog was invited to visit the country after the tragedy by the Governor-General, the Prime Minister of Australia, and the Jewish community following the attack in December 2025. February 9, 2026 JPost

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Iranian takes his own life after pledging for US not to make a deal with Iranian regime - report. “To make a deal with this regime is to betray all those people who died. So please, I beg you, do whatever you can to stop this deal,” said Pouria Hamidi. Lara Sukster Mosheyof. February 9, 2026. JPost

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Netanyahu's Ultimatum. Beyond the Nuke: The Silent Buildup of Thousands of Iranian Missiles. As Prime Minister Netanyahu prepares to meet President Trump, top Israeli defense experts warn that Iran is desperately rebuilding its ballistic arsenal to regain the lethal capacity it held before the June war.

Eliana Fleming. Feb 9, 2026 JFeed

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"Waiting for Trump’s Stupidity": Tehran Braces for All-Out Regional War.

Hardline media in Tehran has declared that the Iranian military is no longer waiting for political orders and is prepared to ignite a regional war if the U.S. makes a "stupid" military move.

Eliana Fleming. Feb 8, 2026 JFeed

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Tehran vows to keep enriching uranium despite US war threat. The American military buildup “does not scare us,” the Iranian foreign minister said. Joshua Marks. (Feb. 8, 2026 / JNS) Iran’s foreign minister vowed on Sunday that Tehran will never abandon uranium enrichment, even if it means facing war with the United States, sharpening a tense standoff over its nuclear program.

The Islamic Republic “has paid a very heavy price for its peaceful nuclear program and for uranium enrichment,” Abbas Araghchi claimed during a forum in the capital, according to AFP.

“Why do we insist so much on enrichment and refuse to give it up even if a war is imposed on us? Because no one has the right to dictate our behavior,” he continued. JNS

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Iran unveils Tel Aviv map as it warns Israel amid nuclear standoff. Lior Ben Ari|2.8.26 YNet

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Ex-PM Ehud Barak’s racist remarks in Epstein recordings. Nina Fox|2.8.26 YNet

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Anti-Israel protests planned as Herzog lands in Australia. Israel National News. Feb 9, 2026, 3:10 AM YNet

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Iran arrests reformist figures for 'supporting the Zionist regime'. Iranian authorities arrest three reformist figures, including Reform Front leader Azar Mansouri. State media cite charges of acting against the constitution and coordinating with enemy propaganda. Elad Benari. Published: Feb 9, 2026, 3:44 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Akunis: 'World must prevent Iran from holding nuclear arms'. Speaking to Newsmax, Israeli Consul General Ofir Akunis warns that Iran must be prevented from obtaining nuclear weapons, saying Tehran refuses to compromise and still retains nuclear and missile capabilities. Israel National News Feb 9, 2026, 1:06 AM INN

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Israel fears a deal that could worsen the Iran threat, leaving missile and nuclear risks intact. Opinion: The prime minister’s hurried trip to Washington aims to push Donald Trump to limit concessions to Iran and avoid a prolonged negotiation that could strengthen Tehran’s missile and nuclear capabilities Ron Ben-Yishai|2.9.26 https://www.ynetnews.com/opinions-analysis/article/sjdpxo8vzg YNet]

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Elections. As 80% Of Public Support Hamas: Abbas Decrees 2026 Elections as Survival Tactic Amid Crumbing Public Support. Palestinian Authority Leader Faces Massive Opposition While Hamas Support Surges In Latest Polls. Yair Kleinbaum Feb 9, 2026. JFeed

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Iran’s weapon-ferrying sinking ships. An item not reported on the BBC or other world media, just another of those major stories, like real genocide in Africa as opposed to non-existent genocide in Gaza, left unreported because mainstream media consider them unworthy of exposure. Peter Baum. Feb 9, 2026, 9:13 AM INN

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Analysis: Perception vs. Reality in Israel: The US withdrawal from Syria reshaped Israel’s threat environment Rachel Avraham Feb 9, 2026, 10:50 PM INN

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ISA Director: Rafah crossing using 'Palestine' stamp despite PMO denial. Israel National News. Feb 9, 2026, 10:04 PM INN

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Ex-hostage comes full circle Alon Ohel takes the stage and moves the audience Israel National News Feb 10, 2026, 1:10 AM INN

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First foreign force in Gaza - from Indonesia. Thousands of soldiers from Indonesia are expected to be deployed in the southern Gaza Strip, between Rafah and Khan Younis, within weeks, despite the country having no diplomatic relations with Israel. Israel National News. Feb 9, 2026, 10:54 PM INN

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Mamdani ‘decided to go in new ideological direction,’ ousted head of NYC office to fight Jew-hatred says. Debra Nussbaum Cohen. (Feb. 9, 2026 / JNS) JNS

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Federal lawsuit challenges Massachusetts city’s divestment ordinance as anti-Israel boycott. Jessica Russak-Hoffman. (Feb. 9, 2026 / JNS) JNS

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‘When the plane landed, I started crying, felt like home,’ Indigenous Canadian says of Israel trip. Dave Gordon. (Feb. 9, 2026 / JNS) JNS

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Mamdani ‘decided to go in new ideological direction,’ ousted head of NYC office to fight Jew-hatred says. Moshe Davis told JNS that if his successor “wants to be successful in this office, she’s going to have to understand that anti-Israel activism leads to attacks on Jewish people.” Debra Nussbaum Cohen. (Feb. 9, 2026 / JNS) JNS

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New Jersey township rejects Jew-hatred allegations within police department.. (Feb. 9, 2026 / JNS) JNS

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Anne Frank and ‘Night’ may soon be required reading in Texas public schools. The Texas state education board recently discussed draft legislation that would create the nation’s first-ever statewide K-12 required reading list for public schools.

Jerusalem journalist arrested after reporting suspected Iranian recruitment attempt. After alerting police to possible iranian recruitment attempts, an independent journalist was detained and questioned on suspicion of contact with a foreign agent. February 9, 2026 JPost

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'The war isn’t over': reservists hold the line as Hamas regroups in northern Gaza. Stationed along the volatile yellow line, Alexandroni Brigade troops face daily threats above and below ground, warning that Hamas is rebuilding command structures and preparing for renewed combat despite a fragile interim agreement. Yoav Zitun, Shijaiyah|2.9.26| 20:20 YNet

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Israel Aerospace Industries delivers 350th fighter jet wings for F-35 to Lockheed Martin Katz hints that F-35s used against Iran in 2025 could be used again soon. February 9, 2026 JPost

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Iran arrests at least four reform front politicians. Iran’s Islamic Iran Nation’s Union Party called for the release of Azar Mansouri after her arrest amid a widening crackdown on reformist figures. February 9, 2026. JPost

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CENTCOM chief praises Lebanese army for discovering, dismantling Hezbollah tunnel network. US Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper praised the Lebanese Armed Forces after they uncovered a Hezbollah terror tunnel, calling the move key to regional stability. February 10, 2026 JPost

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Palestinian woman hospitalized following seizure in US ICE detention. The woman had been arrested in 2024 while participating in a pro-Palestinian rally at Columbia University. February 10, 2026 JPost

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Trump opposes Israeli annexation of West Bank, White House official says. Britain on Monday also called on Israel to reverse its decision to expand control over the West Bank, joining Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in criticizing the move. February 10, 2026 JPost

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The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Taryn Thomas, a former pro-Palestinian activist at Stanford, says she noticed Palestinian flags at Black Lives Matter protests but only later understood why.. February 9, 2026 on X The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Taryn Thomas says the online response dismissing antisemitic vandalism because "people in Gaza are dying" pushed her to distance herself from the movement entirely. February 10, 2026 on X

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A third of American Jews targeted by antisemitic incidents last year, AJC survey finds. Overall, according to the report, two-thirds of respondents said that they believed Jews in the US were less secure than a year ago. February 10, 2026. JPost

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Kaye Efcee IV @KayEfceeIV: BREAKING: The @jewishcouncilAU claims over 1,000 Jews opposed @Isaac_Herzog's visit. It’s fitting that the names include Eliezer Gruenbaum, Carmen Mory, and Josef Heiden - famous for their roles as Kapos in Nazi concentration camps. [88] [89] Feb 9, 2026 on X

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Mark Rowley @MarkWRowley: After 2 years of bending the knee to Islamic terror supporters, this was a job well done by NSW Police.

Well done to @ChrisMinnsMP

for standing firm, giving concise justifications and explanations …and for standing by NSW Police who had a very difficult job to do.

It’s time to wrestle Australia back from these subversive Islamist and Marxist scumbags.

Thousands of protesters clashed with police across Australian cities during demonstrations against Israeli President Isaac Herzog's visit, with the most violent scenes occurring in Sydney. on X

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Tuesday, February 10, 2026 For decades, Israel enforced a racist law. But to the media, rescinding it is racist. Make it make sense.

From the New York Times: 'Israel’s government has taken unilateral steps to give itself greater control over the occupied West Bank, challenging President Trump’s opposition to Israeli annexation of the territory in a move widely considered a violation of international law....The new actions mainly ease the way for land purchases by Jewish settlers, beginning with the repeal of a pre-1967 law banning the sale of West Bank property except to local, meaning Palestinian, residents.'

Um, no. The "pre-1967 law" was Jordan Law No. 40 of 1953 that restricted sales of land to Jordanians (with limited exceptions.) It wasn't only for the West Bank - it was for Jordan.

And who could be a Jordanian citizen? Well, not Jews.

'Any person who, not being Jewish, possessed Palestinian nationality before 15 May 1948 and was a regular resident in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan between 20 December 1949 and 16 February 1954.'

So for nearly sixty years, Israel enforced a Jordanian law that was explicitly racist and antisemitic. No one seemed to have a problem with that.

But now that Israel has rescinded a racist law, and the NYT is very upset: 'The measures, which make it easier for Jewish settlers to buy land and undercut the Palestinian Authority in parts of the West Bank that it administers, appear to flout important agreements that Israel signed under the Oslo peace process decades ago.'

Hmmm, very interesting. Because in 1973, Jordan strengthened the law to say that anyone who sold land to a Jew (they used a euphemism) would get the death penalty. Israel never applied that law because it already controlled the territory, but when then PA gained autonomy, it eagerly adapted the Jordanian law to extend the death penalty to anyone who sells land to a Jew.

And only a Jew, not an Israeli. Israeli Arabs buy land and homes in PA-controlled areas.

Now, this is a violation of the Oslo Accords. Specifically, Article XVI, paragraph 2 of Oslo 2 requires that Palestinians who have “maintained contact with the Israeli authorities” will not on this account be subject to “harassment, violence, retribution or prosecution.”

When Israel takes away an antisemitic law, the New York Times says it is a violation of the Oslo Accords, meaning it is defending the racist law. When the PA adopts an explicitly antisemitic law that really is in violation of the Oslo Accord, the NYT has noting bad to say about it.

Apparently, the New York Times rejects bigotry on principle - unless it is against Jews, when it justifies it. EoZ

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Herzog warns antisemitism spreading in Sydney speech. Yair Kraus|2.10.26 YNet

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The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Why the communication breakdown? Personal enmity from judicial overhaul battles inhibited professional communication on critical national security issues. Netanyahu had publicly fired Gallant in March 2023 before retracting days later. [90] Feb 10, 2026. on X

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Two terrorists with Israeli citizenship will be deported; Netanyahu: 'Many more are on the way'. Three years after Knesset approval Israel is implementing for the first time the law under which terrorists with Israeli citizenship who received payments from the PA will be deported and their citizenship revoked; Legal steps required to deport two terrorists are finished: 'History'. Amir Ettinger|2.10.26 YNet

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Shin Bet breaks up West Bank terror cell directed from Lebanon. Yoav Zitun|2.10.26 YNet

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For first time since 1956, IDF establishes new maneuvering division. Yoav Zitun|2.10.26 YNet

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The prewar warning to Iran and Turkey’s message to the US ynet|2.10.26 YNet

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Oil shipment from Venezuela arrives in Israel. Crude oil from Venezuela arrives in Israel for first time in 5 years following US removal of President Nicolás Maduro from power  News Agencies|2.10.26 YNet

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Iran said preparing for US strike after satellite images show activity at Isfahan. The images revealed the regime has covered the middle and southern entrances of the nuclear facility with soil, and the northernmost tunnel entrance, which features additional passive defense measure. February 10, 2026. JPost

PREPPING FOR ATTACK: Iran Buries Nuclear Entrances in Shadowy Bid to Protect Secret Stockpiles. February 10, 2026. YWN

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US using mobile launchers for Patriot missiles at Qatar base over Iran attack concern. Satellite images show recent American military buildup in the region continues and, according to Trump, if the nuclear talks fail he is considering sending another aircraft carrier to the region; Trump is optimistic ahead of meeting with Netanyahu: 'he wants a good deal'. Reuters|2.10.26 YNet

Mobile missile launchers used by US in Qatar as Iran tensions rose. The decision to keep the Patriot missiles in mobile trucks rather than semi-static launcher stations means they could rapidly deploy to strike or be moved defensively in case of an Iranian attack. February 10, 2026. JPost

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Trump warns if Iran negotiations fail US will 'do something very tough' - N12. "Either we will make a deal, or we will have to do something very tough like last time," Trump told N12, while saying that both Iran and Israel are interested in landing "a good deal." February 10, 2026. JPost

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Israeli agency refutes claims made by Doctors Without Borders of Gaza water crisis. MSF had released a video on social media claiming that if it's forced to cease activities in Gaza, then “hundreds of thousands of people will lose access to drinking water.” February 10, 2026. JPost

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'Mutual responsibility': Israel recognizes Bondi casualties as victims of antisemitism. This state recognition 'expresses deep mutual responsibility and an unwavering commitment to fight antisemitism wherever it raises its head,' said WZO Chair Yaakov Hagoel. February 10, 2026. JPost

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Monday, February 09, 2026. Oh look. @Amnesty is lying again about Israel. Last week, Amnesty International's Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy & Campaigns Erika Guevara Rosas tweeted, and Amnesty reweeted:

Older people in Gaza are facing a brutal, overlooked health crisis amid Israel’s ongoing genocide. A new joint investigation by @Amnesty and @HelpAge reveals how Israel’s continued blockade of aid and essential medicines is causing a devastating collapse in older people’s physical and mental health. Amnesty's press release about the report says in its headline "Israel’s ongoing blockade of aid and medicines." It describes "Israel’s ongoing unlawful, cruel and inhumane restrictions on the entry of life-saving aid" as being proven fact. It says, "Internally displaced older people also described to Amnesty International how their lack of access to nutritious food, adequate shelter and healthcare was causing extreme harm due to the continuing blockade imposed by Israeli authorities."

The HelpAge report says none of that.

The report was a limited humanitarian survey of older people in Gaza, a needs assessment of 416 older individuals. It relies heavily on self-reported information. It acknowledges methodological limitations. It was designed to understand how older people are coping with displacement, chronic illness, food insecurity, and disrupted services.

At no point does this survey claim that there are any restrictions of aid into Gaza. It was not designed to evaluate border policy. It was not designed to assess whether medicines are being systematically denied entry. It contains no shipment data, no border denial logs, no inspection statistics, no inflow-versus-need calculations, no comparative pre- and post-ceasefire import figures. It does not even attempt to quantify total aid entering the territory.

In other words, it is taking individual interviews about the very real challenges older people have in the wake of a devastating war and claiming that it proves an "illegal blockade" that is part of an "ongoing genocide."

In reality, aid has been pouring into Gaza. Thousands of trucks of aid, including over 600 trucks filled with medical aid, have entered since the ceasefire, as COGAT shows.

Even during the war there were no restrictions on medicines or on medical aid that could not be repurposed for weapons.

The problems have been in distribution, which is the purpose of the NGOs in Gaza, Israel coordinates closely with them to ensure that Gazans, including the elderly, can get the aid they need without compromising on security needs.

Which is more than any other country at war has ever done.

What the report does document is hardship. Older people report difficulty obtaining medicines. Many report interrupted treatment for chronic disease. Many report weight loss, displacement, and overcrowded shelters. None of this is surprising after a war that devastated infrastructure and displaced the vast majority of the population. No serious observer believes that life in Gaza instantly became normal the moment hostilities paused.

What Amnesty has done is take those documented hardships and present them as proof of an ongoing genocidal policy driven by a blockade of aid and medicines. That is simply a lie.

War destroys systems. Infrastructure does not rebuild overnight. Chronic disease management does not resume instantly. Supply chains remain fragile. Distribution networks require stabilization. These explanations are mundane, structural, and tragically common in post-conflict settings. They do not require a theory of ongoing genocide to make sense of observed conditions.

Amnesty has shown yet again that it is more interested in making unfounded and slanderous accusations against Israel than in actually helping the people of Gaza. At least in the Middle East, it is not a human rights organization: it is an antisemitic political organization that hides its hate of Jews in Israel behind human rights. EoZ

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Wednesday, February 11, 2026 Al Jazeera "investigates" Israel supposedly vaporizing thousands of Gazans. An examination of their lies. [...] This is a propaganda piece, pretending to be a scientific investigation. And the same Dr. Munir al Barsh also accused Israel of leaving booby trapped toys in Gaza. He is a Hamas employee and a major part of Hamas' information war who first made the "vaporization" accusation in 2024 , not an objective observer. EoZ

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Wednesday, February 11, 2026 Insane Jew-hatred still routine in Turkish media It's been a while since I looked at Turkish media for antisemitism, and things are at least as bad as they have ever been. EoZ

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How Social Media Got Hamas Casualty Figures Wrong. Sharon Levy. February 10, 2026. Key Takeaways:

-On social media, a claim has spread that 50,000 Hamas terrorists were killed during the war. The figure appears to stem from a misinterpretation of a Hamas government aid program for widowed families, not confirmed combatant deaths.

-Demographic and public health data, including WHO vaccination figures showing a stable or growing population of children under age 10, further demonstrate the importance of scrutinizing casualty claims rather than accepting widely repeated narratives without verification.

-These two case studies underscore the need to analyze casualty figures in Gaza using transparent data and credible methodology, rather than relying on claims without sources. [...] The Ministry of Social Development further stated that 50,000 widowed families were set to receive these benefits, implying that more than widowed wives would be receiving the payments. This is likely where some analysts misinterpreted Hamas’ statement and took it to mean that for every Hamas terrorist, one wife would receive a payment. However, this payment is not exclusively for the wives of terrorists, and not every Hamas combatant would have been married by the time of his death.

What these numbers do suggest, however, is that claims of unreported casualties are likely to be false. The ability to receive a payment for reporting a death would presumably encourage many Gazans to submit claims of being widowed.

Child Casualties.

Since the early days of the war, news outlets and influencers on social media have blindly repeated Hamas’ claim that the majority of casualties were women and children. The claim implied that the IDF was specifically targeting both groups. Beyond this claim not being true – men of combat age account for around 46.7% of total casualties [91] – data from the World Health Organization (WHO) displays that 603,000 children under the age of 10 were vaccinated at the beginning of 2025. This number exceeds the pre-war population of that age group, indicating that the overall population of young children has remained stable or even grown despite the war.

Aizenberg @Aizenberg55: 📌The WHO—not Hamas or Israel—delivered one of the most decisive Gaza war data points. It reported 603,000 children under 10 vaccinated in early 2025—MORE than the pre-war population of that age group! Every claim of excessive or undercounted fatalities collapses with this data. [92] Jan 21, 2026 https://twitter.com/Aizenberg55/status/2013797366982164747 HonestReporting

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Terrorist who attacked IDF soldiers eliminated. IDF eliminates Hamas terrorist behind multiple deadly attacks on soldiers. Israel National News. Feb 11, 2026, 10:46 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Between Ankara and Tehran, Turkey is everywhere. Analysis: while Netanyahu tries to convince Trump to attack Iran, Erdogan and his confidant, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, are leading the move to form a united Arab front against war with the Islamic Republic Smadar Perry|2.11.26

It is well worth following the duo at the top of the Turkish government — President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who until two years ago served for 23 years as head of Turkey’s intelligence services. Fidan is known as the president’s absolute loyalist and confidant, and Erdoğan has already declared that he is the one who will “continue in my path.”

Fidan has made clear that he is not interested in becoming president of Turkey, but he still has two years to deliberate. The two fit together like hand and glove when it comes to decision-making. In the West, Fidan has come to be seen as the “brain” of the ruler.

Erdoğan, who received pointed praise from President Donald Trump (“a tough leader I like”), is aiming for the big prize in the Middle East. So it pays to watch the Turkish president’s recent round of visits and hosting of leaders from key countries in the region, in an effort to forge a “supra-regional alliance” and, along the way, improve relations.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Emirate of Qatar, and Jordan’s King Abdullah - who was invited to Istanbul before all of them: Erdoğan continues to dream of a “summit of summits” to be hosted in Ankara, featuring a senior American representative opposite an Iranian “colleague,” with Erdoğan himself at center stage.

The duo, Erdoğan and Fidan, do not hide their deep concern about a wave of Iranian migrants who could flood into Turkey the moment the U.S. military acts in the Islamic Republic. That nightmare has only grown since the influx of three and a half million Syrian refugees into Turkey, even before the fall of President Assad. Most of those refugees still refuse to return, and Turkey has been forced to expel them by force. The equation is clear: Iran sells (at “friendly” rates) 10% of the oil Turkey requires, and even larger quantities of natural gas. In return, Turkey supplies Iran with food products. A war would be expected to disrupt the supply chain, and also to widen the Turkish-Kurdish front along the Iran-Turkey border. Israeli support for the Kurds in Syria, even if not particularly tight, does not escape the notice of Erdoğan and Fidan. The two are not sitting idly by. Erdoğan is quietly working to tighten the Arab camp on the Iranian issue. The frozen peace with Egypt, the anger of the Jordanian royal house toward Netanyahu, the Saudi royal family’s turning away from Israel after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman committed — just two and a half years ago — to join the Abraham Accords, all of this encourages the presidential palace and the foreign minister’s office. All at once, Turkey finds itself in every corner of the Middle East. We can see that Israel has been pushed out of the arena. In Saudi Arabia, Erdoğan conducted negotiations to sell hundreds of Turkish-made stealth aircraft. In Egypt, commitments were made for nearly $15 billion to be invested in new factories that would employ thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of unemployed Egyptians. Jordan, too, is expected to receive large-scale assistance. Each country pursues its own interests, except for the United Arab Emirates, which Erdoğan has decided to punish because of what he sees as excessively close ties with Israel. Netanyahu is now preparing to present to President Trump the “Turkish danger.” It is far from certain that Trump will be moved as his advisers will take notes. It was odd to hear Fidan in recent days speak of a good chance of renewing economic cooperation between Turkey and Israel. He does not make slips of the tongue. The question is whether he intended to release a “calming injection” ahead of the meeting at the White House. If we look at the Arab states — Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar — we find a contradiction: on the one hand, they maintain ambassadors in Tehran, a form of normalization; on the other, their relations with the leadership in Washington are excellent. And there is more: each of these countries “excels” in having very poor (very!) relations with Israel. And let us not forget: none of the Arab states, not even Turkey, sees Iran as an ally. There is interaction, there are ambassadors, but there is also considerable suspicion. Of course, no one is truly thinking about Iran’s 93 million citizens. YNet

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'Not antisemitism': French man who threw Jewish neighbor from 17th floor sentenced to 18 years in prison. The convicted murderer had published dozens of posts online promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, and had he been convicted of murder with an antisemitic motive he would have faced a life sentence Itamar Eichner|2.11.26

A man who threw his 89-year-old Jewish neighbor from the 17th floor of an apartment building in Lyon, France and was convicted of murder has been sentenced to 18 years in prison. However, the judge ruled that the killing was not motivated by antisemitism.

In May 2022, Rachid Hanich, 55, invited his Jewish neighbor, René Hajaj, to his apartment. Hanish attempted to strangle the elderly man and then pushed him from the balcony of the building where they both lived. Hanich, who had published dozens of posts online promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, was charged with aggravated murder. Had he been convicted of murder with an antisemitic motive, he would have faced a life sentence. However, the appeals court rejected the claim that he acted out of antisemitism. YNet

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Lawsuit demands Israel pay USD 9b in compensation. Arab labor union to sue Israel on behalf of Palestinian Authority workers who lost their jobs following the October 7 massacre. Dalit Halevi. Published: Feb 11, 2026, 1:23 PM (GMT+2) INN

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ISA warns of increasing cyber attacks against Israeli officials. Orly Harari. Feb 11, 2026, 2:41 PM INN

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13-year-old yelled 'Allahu Akbar'. Suspected terror attack at London school Israel National News. Feb 11, 2026, 3:11 PM INN

Suspected terror attack at London school: 13-year-old shouted 'Allahu Akbar' before stabbing. Aynet|2.11.26 YNet

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Captivity survivor Romi Gonen undergoes fourth operation. Romi Gonen, who was kidnapped during the October 7 massacre and survived Hamas captivity, says she underwent additional operation on her arm, expresses hope for recovery. Israel National News. Feb 11, 2026, 2:43 PM INN

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Help is not on the way. "Figure It Out Yourself": JD Vance Stuns With Cold New Message for the Iranian People After months of the Trump administration promising to "stand with" Iranian protesters, Vice President JD Vance has sparked outrage with a sharp change in tone. Critics are calling it a "massive backpedal" as the VP shifts the burden of regime change onto the citizens themselves. JFeed Staff. Feb 11, 2026. Vice President JD Vance sparked controversy in the Middle East with remarks distancing the U.S. from regime change in Iran, placing responsibility squarely on Iranian citizens despite widespread government crackdowns on protesters.

Asked about American aspirations regarding Iran and whether he would like to see the fall of the ayatollah regime, Vance deflected the question and avoided taking responsibility for the issue.

"If that's what the Iranian people want to do, overthrow the regime, then they should act on it," Vance said coolly, adding that the U.S. position "is focused on ensuring Iran does not have nuclear weapons." JFeed

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Rubio and Netanyahu Seal the Deal. The Gaza Signature: Netanyahu Joins Trump’s Elite Board of Peace. In a closed-door meeting at Blair House, Prime Minister Netanyahu officially signed onto the Board of Peace, a powerful international body designed to govern post-war Gaza and oversee its total demilitarization.

Eliana Fleming. Feb 11, 2026 JFeed

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Iran warns war will be cause of global fallout, signals doubt over US talks. Tehran officials say negotiations may only delay confrontation, as Trump seeks limits on nuclear and missile programs and weighs additional military deployments to the region Lior Ben Ari|2.11.26 YNet

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IDF kills senior Hamas terrorist behind 2004 Be'er Sheva bombing that killed 16. Basem al-Hashem Abd al-Fatah Haimoni was killed in a Gaza strike last week; arrested in 2004, he was freed in 2011 under the Gilad Schalit deal. Yoav Zitun|2.11.26

Israeli security forces said they have killed a senior Hamas terrorist responsible for a 2004 double suicide bombing in Be'er Sheva that left 16 people dead.

The Shin Bet security agency and the IDF said Basem al-Hashem Abd al-Fatah Haimoni was killed in a strike carried out last week in the Gaza Strip. YNet

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Prime minister's office seeks to drop the term ‘massacre’ from Oct. 7 memorial bill. PMO representative Yoel Elbaz said 'massacre' should be removed from the title, arguing the term 'events' is broader and that public memory will be shaped by the future memorial authority’s work. Tamar Trabelsi-Hadad|2.11.26 >https://www.ynetnews.com/article/h1hcdrydzx YNet]

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February 11: The Iranian Revolution’s 2026 anniversary could well be its last - comment

Iran celebrates its 46th Islamic Revolution anniversary today with massive rallies and military showcases. However, the regime has reportedly pressured families of detained protesters to attend, exposing cracks in its support base. Supreme Leader Khamenei frames the event as a symbol of "power and dignity," but with legitimacy increasingly questioned, Alex Winston asks whether this could be the last time it's celebrated as a national holiday. on X

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How US Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack plays key role in creating a new Syria, Levant region - analysis. Barack plays a key role as US ambassador to Turkey, Special Envoy to Syria, and one of the key figures in American policy in the Levant, while also keeping constant dialogues with Gulf state actors. Serh Frantzman. Jerusalem Poat. February 11, 2026. JPost

Darias @Yosefewz2: Tom Berrak works only for the interests of Turkey and turns the Middle East into hell by defending ISIS number 2, Ahmad al-Shara and the terrorism of Turkish Islamic Arabism. Feb 11, 2026 on X

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Report: US readies 2nd carrier for Mideast As Trump meets Netanyahu, US officials say another carrier may deploy within weeks if Iran nuclear talks collapse. ynet|2.11.26 YNet

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Professors with ‘activist agendas’ fuel Jew-hatred surge at University of California, report says. The issue is a “failure of governance,” Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, of the AMCHA Initiative, told JNS. Aaron Bandler. (Feb. 11, 2026 / JNS) The University of California, Santa Cruz’s critical race and ethnic-studies department gave graduates sashes depicting Palestinian flags, keffiyehs, an anti-Israel encampment at the public school campus and the slogan, “Long live the people’s university,” at a graduate ceremony last June. JNS

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US colleges got $1.1 billion from Qatar, $285 million from Saudi in 2025, Ed Department says. The foreign funding comes, in part, from "countries and entities that are involved in activities that threaten America's national security," the U.S. education secretary said. JNS Staff. (Feb. 11, 2026 / JNS) American colleges and universities received more than $1.1 billion from Qatar and over $285 million from Saudi Arabia in 2025, according to new data that the U.S. Education Department released on Wednesday.

It displays that data in an online portal, which previously went up to the beginning of 2025 and now includes information about $5.2 billion more in foreign funding. JNS

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Police investigating anti-Israel, antisemitic graffiti found on Maryland synagogue. “Incidents like this deepen the anxiety and pain felt by our Jewish neighbors,” Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich stated. (Feb. 11, 2026 / JNS) Police are investigating antisemitic vandalism discovered on Tuesday morning at Shaare Tefila Congregation in Olney, Md., as local and state officials condemned the incident and pledged accountability. JNS

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Trump admin’s religious liberty panel axes ‘anti-Zionist’ commissioner. “Good riddance to Carrie Prejean Boller and anyone who defends hate,” Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, told JNS. Andrew Bernard. (Feb. 11, 2026 / JNS) The Trump administration’s Religious Liberty Commission removed one of its members on Wednesday after she used a hearing on antisemitism to demand that witnesses condemn Israel and insisted that it was not antisemitic to declare that Jews killed J.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who chairs the commission, wrote that Carrie Jean Boller, a former “Miss California” who is now a conservative activist, had abused her role as a commissioner at Monday’s hearing JNS

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SJP event at City University of New York law school casts Hamas tunnels as ‘decolonial land use’. “No number of ‘teach-ins’ can erase the atrocities committed by Gazan terrorists,” stated Brandy Shufutinsky, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. (Feb. 11, 2026 / JNS) The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter of the City University of New York’s School of Law is promoting a campus event described as an “anthropologic investigation” that characterizes Hamas’s tunnel network in Gaza as “social organization in resistance to colonization.”

In a social media post shared on Feb. 7, CUNY Law SJP invited students to attend a March 5 discussion with Hadeel Assali, an anthropologist affiliated with Columbia University’s Center for Science and Society, on “decolonial land use in Gaza” and “the history and usage of tunnels in Gaza.”

Assali, whose work “looks at the ongoing colonial legacies of the discipline of geology as well as anti-colonial ways of knowing and relating to the earth in southern Palestine,” has a history of radical activism, particularly against Israel.

In 2024, Assali wrote the essay “Notes on the Underground in Gaza,” calling the tunnels “an essential form of resistance in Palestine.” She reframes Hamas’s use of underground tunnels to commit acts of terrorism as a relationship “between indigenous people and the land.”

Columbia Faculty and Staff Supporting Israel criticized Assali’s invitation to speak at CUNY. JNS

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Trump after Netanyahu meeting: Iran talks must continue. After nearly 3 hours at the White House, POTUS says no agreements reached beyond his insistence that diplomacy with Tehran remains the priority. Itamar Eichner|2.11.26 YNet

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Trump. 'Good meeting with Netanyahu, nothing definitive on Iran'. US President says after 3-hour meeting with PM Netanyahu: 'There was nothing definitive reached other than I insisted that negotiations with Iran continue to see whether or not a Deal can be consummated.' Israel National News. Feb 11, 2026, 9:06 PM INN

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France demands Francesca Albanese resign after antisemitic remarks at Al Jazeera Forum - report. Her comments, Barrot said, “target not the Israeli government, whose policies can be criticized, but Israel as a people and as a nation, which is absolutely unacceptable.”

By Miriam Sela-Eitam. Jerusalem Post. February 11, 2026.

France is demanding the resignation of UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese following her “outrageous and reprehensible remarks" made during the Saturday Al Jazeera Forum, according to a Wednesday report from French newspaper Le Monde. According to Le Monde, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot condemned Albanese’s remarks during a Sunday parliament meeting. Her comments, Barrot said, “target not the Israeli government, whose policies can be criticized, but Israel as a people and as a nation, which is absolutely unacceptable.” Le Monde also quoted Barrot as saying that Albanese’s words "add to a long list of scandalous positions, justifying October 7, the worst antisemitic massacre in our history since the Holocaust, mentioning the Jewish lobby or comparing Israel to the Third Reich.”

Barrot’s condemnation comes a day after over 20 French parliament members signed a letter demanding Albanese be stripped of “all UN mandates with immediate effect,” Le Monde reported. UN's Albanese says humanity has 'common enemy' in Israel at forum. Albanese, appearing at the same conference as Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, spoke during the panel... JPost

France calls for Francesca Albanese's resignation after 'common enemy' comments. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot tells lawmaker the French government demands UN Rapporteur's resignation after her latest hateful rant against Israel. Israel National News. Published: Feb 11, 2026, 10:35 PM (GMT+2)

“France unreservedly condemns the outrageous and reprehensible remarks made by Ms. Francesca Albanese, which are directed not at the Israeli government, whose policies may be criticized, but at Israel as a people and as a nation, which is absolutely unacceptable," Barrot said.

He stated that Albanese's remarks “target not the Israeli government, whose policies can be criticized, but Israel as a people and as a nation, which is absolutely unacceptable," and that they "add to a long list of scandalous positions, justifying October 7, the worst antisemitic massacre in our history since the Holocaust, mentioning the Jewish lobby or comparing Israel to the Third Reich."

Barrot's comments come after over 20 French MPs demanded that Albanese be removed from her position in response to the Rapporteur's remarks at an Al Jazeera conference on Saturday, which was also attended by Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal. INN

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Another aircraft carrier to be sent to Middle East. Wall Street Journal reports that the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush will join the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East - at the order of President Trump. Israel National News. Feb 12, 2026, 12:10 AM INN

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Germany demands resignation of UN rights rapporteur Albanese over anti-Israel comments. By AFP and ToI Staff. February 12, 2026.

[93]

Screen capture from video of UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, during an Al-Jazeera forum, February 8, 2026. (X)

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul calls for the resignation of the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, over comments she made allegedly targeting Israel at a conference.

“I respect the UN system of independent rapporteurs. However, Ms Albanese has made numerous inappropriate remarks in the past. I condemn her recent statements about Israel. She is untenable in her position,” Wadephul writes on X.

Wadephul’s French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot made the same call yesterday for Albanese to resign, over the same comments.

Speaking via videoconference at a forum Saturday in Doha, Qatar, organized by the Al Jazeera network, Albanese referred to a “common enemy” that enabled the “genocide” in Gaza.

Albanese has a history of antisemitism and extremist rhetoric toward Israel, according to her critics. The US State Department sanctioned Albanese in July, accusing her of “political and economic warfare” against the US and Israel and “unabashed antisemitism.” TOI

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Controversial anti-Israel, antisemitism allegations surround New York Mayor Mamdani’s early appointments. Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, says Mamdani's appointees 'can use their institutional power to mainstream positions' that are 'hostile or exclusionary or even discriminatory towards Jews' and 'erode democratic norms'. Maayan Hoffman/The Media Line | published:02.12.26 YNet

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Iran rushes to protect Natanz, its most crucial nuclear site remaining from US attack. Tehran may have used US delay to make beneath mountain facility nearly untouchable. February 12, 2026. JPost

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After Netanyahu-Trump meeting. Another aircraft carrier to be sent to Middle East. Israel National News. Feb 12, 2026, 12:10 AM INN

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Stone seal from biblical Kingdom of Judea discovered during construction in northern Israel. The seal, which is made of a light brown gemstone, is thought by archaeologists to have been “hung like a necklace around its owner’s neck,” and decoratively divided into three.  February 12, 2026. JPost

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Israeli President Isaac Herzog blasts genocide ‘lie’, says anti-Semitism is present in Australia. In an exclusive interview, Israeli President Isaac Herzog has shut down suggestions that he incited genocide, blasting the ‘libellous lie’, saying that Israel wants peace and an end to war in the Middle East.

Max Corstorphan. The Nightly. 11 Feb 2026.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunrise. Israeli President Isaac Herzog has shut down suggestions that he has incited genocide, blasting the “libellous lie”, saying that Israel wants peace and an end to war in the Middle East.

Speaking exclusively with Sunrise on Thursday morning, Mr Herzog told host Nat Barr that US President Donald Trump has played an instrumental role in progressing peace, but warned that the “proof” would be in the pudding to see if Hamas is prepared to disarm.

Mr Herzog was officially invited to Australia by the Governor-General in the wake of the anti-Semitic terror attack at Bondi Beach, which saw 15 innocent people killed.

“This has been a very emotional trip,” he told Sunrise in an exclusive interview.

“It has been a trip where I could hug and strengthen and console the Jewish community, which has gone through a horrific Bondi Beach terror attack.”

Mr Herzog said from what he has seen during his visit, his message to Jewish people and the world was that anti-Semitism is present in Australia, but the country also has a silent mass who hold love for Jews.

“I am saying to my people and the Jewish people around the world, that I found an Australia that is different than depicted, there is antisemitism,” he told Sunrise.

“There is anti-Semitism. It is frightening and worrying, but there’s also a silent majority of Australians who seek peace, who respect the Jewish community, and of course, want a dialogue with Israel.”

Pushed on the backlash his visit has sparked, Mr Herzog said he had never incited genocide, and questioned where Australian protesters were demonstrating against violence in Iran.

“God forbid I never incited genocide,” he said, defending a comment he walked back in an interview.

“It’s a libellous lie. And that’s part of the whole circumstances of basis. We were attacked by the most (horrible) organisation on October 7th.

“It is extremely difficult, extremely painful. None of us want war.

“All I want is for our neighbours to live in peace. Believe me, I care for the pain of the Palestinians, but terror cannot reign in the world.”

Mr Herzog said suggestions that he had incited genocide were “brainwashing”, adding that they had no basis.

“By the way, the Iranian regime is spreading hate all over and killing its own citizens and not caring about their goodwill. I ask all these protesters in Australia, where are you when about 50,000 (Iranians are) killed brutally by their own regime,” he added.

He went on to explain how, when Israel went into Gaza to defend itself after October 7, the Israeli Defence Force found “endless tunnels and ammunition”, including stockpiles in civilian homes, saying it was a “difficult” terrain.

He said he hoped foreign press would be allowed into Gaza soon, so they could see the “real story”.

Mr Herzog thanked Mr Trump for his work in securing peace in the Middle East, calling out his role in securing the release of hostages held by Hamas after October 7.

“Now a whole worldwide effort is based in Israel and in Gaza in order to decommission Hamas, take out its arms and enable a better future with huge development and investment in Gaza,” Herzog said. “Is it realistic? Is it feasible? We pray and hope, yes.”

Mr Herzog told Sunrise that meetings with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese were productive.

“(It is) also an opportunity to reignite the incredible relations we have with Australia throughout the history of our nations,” he said.

Mr Herzog’s visit, which was organised in the wake of Jewish Australians being killed in an anti-Semitic terror attack, has been met with outrage from pro-Palestine groups.

Protests in capital cities have drawn large crowds, and the first night of protests in Sydney resulted in charges and arrests for those who allegedly did not comply with police orders.

More protests are planned in Melbourne on Thursday, the final stop in Mr Herzog’s visit.

He did intend to visit the Adass Israel Synagogue in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Ripponlea on Thursday, the religious site which was the target of a fire bombing in 2024, however, the visit was cancelled due to security concerns. Nighlty

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MS NOW Sounds Like Tucker Carlson By: Jennifer Kouzi February 11, 2026

MS NOW’s The Weekend: Primetime sounded a lot like Tucker Carlson over the weekend.

Consider the following lines and references involving recycled antisemitic tropes and conspiracies and ask yourself who said it: MS NOW or Carlson?

“There has been reporting linking Jeffrey Epstein with Israeli intelligence agencies.” When talking about the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC)’s involvement in a political race, referring to the organization as “The Israel Lobby” – a pejorative suggesting the organization, which advocates for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, is a dark and overly powerful influence on foreign policy. “Netanyahu has demonstrated over the years that he has the ability to talk American presidents . . . into doing what he thinks is best for him and for Israel” – the evergreen trope of Jewish control – more recently morphed into the leader of the one and only Jewish State controlling the United States. All three quotes came from MS NOW’s The Weekend: Primetime on Feb. 7 – 8, 2026. But full credit for correctly answering requires recognizing that Tucker Carlson has conveyed these same sentiments, particularly since his migration into what is now called the “Woke Right.”

Tucker Carlson.

Ayman Mohyeldin Spreads Epstein-Mossad Conspiracy Theory.

On Feb. 7, 2026, MS NOW host Ayman Mohyeldin stated, “There has been reporting linking Jeffrey Epstein with Israeli intelligence agencies.” Mohyeldin speculated that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s denial of the claim was “not going to silence those who have been combing through these emails” and finding “multiple links between [Epstein] and Israel through various causes, people associated with Israel, the former Prime Minister and agents.”

If by “reporting” Mohyeldin meant anti-Israel propaganda outlets – such as Iranian State Media, suspected-to-be-Qatari-backed Middle East Eye, and Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency, then the claim tracks. But even Qatari propagandist outlet Al Jazeera – which regularly treats outlandish conspiracy theories about Israel as fact – acknowledged that whether Epstein was an Israeli intelligence asset was not something it could establish. The New York Times has gone further, describing alleged Epstein-Mossad ties as a conspiracy theory. The Times columnist Ross Douthat added that the charge was “largely manufactured by paranoiacs and attention seekers and credulous believers.”

Tucker Carlson is widely credited for popularizing the Epstein-Mossad conspiracy theory in the United States. Carlson was fired by Fox News in 2023 after the network had to pay $787 million due to false statements he made on air. Since leaving Fox, Carlson has platformed both notorious antisemite Nick Fuentes and Nazi apologist Darryl Cooper on his podcast, suggested Israeli connections to 9/11, and in 2024, claimed he was mauled by demons. This is the ideological company Mohyeldin’s rhetoric keeps.

No one disputes Mossad is mentioned in the Epstein files – as are the CIA, UK Intelligence, and the KGB. Israel is mentioned in the Epstein files, but less frequently than Russia, China, Canada and France.

High-School Grad Who Never Held a Job, Cameron Kasky, Talks About the “Israel Lobby” on MS NOW

Cameron Kasky co-founded two gun control advocacy organizations after surviving the 2018 mass shooting at Parkland High School in Florida but stopped organizing protests in 2019.

Since then, the anti-Israel, Jewish, “dues-paying member” of the Democratic Socialists of America completed a few semesters of college and has held no full-time jobs. After a brief two-month campaign, Kasky dropped out of the NY-12 Democratic primary race in early 2026, following travel to the West Bank with a new aim to stop Israeli “settler violence.” On X, Kasky also suggested he believes Epstein to be a Mossad agent.

Apparently, this résumé was sufficient for MS NOW to welcome the newly self-styled “human rights advocate” as a commentator.

Over the weekend, Kasky discussed AIPAC’s role in a recent New Jersey democratic primary. In maligning the organization, he referred to AIPAC as the “Israel Lobby.” On X, Kasky admitted to an obsession with the organization. In addition to calling the State of Israel “fundamentally illiberal,” he erroneously described AIPAC – whose contributors and members belong to both parties and whose mission it is to build bipartisan support for the U.S.-Israel relationship – as right-wing, nationalist and an arm of MAGA.

There is little doubt Kasky borrowed this descriptor from a book embraced by both the far-left and far-right. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, argues the “Israel lobby” influences U.S. foreign policy through manipulation. Critics have alleged the book traffics in dual-loyalty, antisemitic tropes and those of Jewish power and control. In political discourse, the term “Israel lobby” has been used in the same way as the book to suggest a secretive, powerful and perhaps undemocratic influence over U.S. policy. By contrast, referring to AIPAC as a “pro-Israel lobby” is both accurate and descriptive.

Tucker Carlson platformed Mearsheimer on his podcast recently, as the two ranted about the power of the Israel lobby and Mearsheimer advanced the genocide libel (among other wildly outrageous Israel-related claims) during the two-hour conversation.

MS NOW Geopolitical Analyst Bobby Ghosh Alleged Netanyahu Controls American Presidents

Bloomberg Senior Editor Bobby Ghosh also appeared on The Weekend: Primetime to discuss the Middle East over the Feb. 7 – 8, 2026 weekend. While Ghosh has not been known to make overtly anti-Israel or antisemitic statements, he has subtly expressed his preferences. Examples include telling readers in October 2023 that he first visited Gaza during the “so-called Second Intifada.” Eleven months later, Ghosh questioned whether it was “kosher” for Israel to have launched the pager attack against Hezbollah.

The subtle suddenly became overt when Ghosh made the claim that “Netanyahu has demonstrated over the years . . . the ability to talk American presidents . . . into doing what he thinks is best for him and for Israel.” Ghosh’s trope on MS NOW follows in the footsteps of the antisemitic cartoon The New York Times published and the trope espoused by the Financial Times and The Guardian following the U.S. involvement in the 12-day Israel-Iran War in June 2025. Mohyeldin certainly did not push back on Ghosh, as he, himself, engaged in the same trope in June 2025.

Both the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League have written about the classic antisemitic trope Ghosh advanced: the accusation that America is doing Israel’s bidding.

Tucker Carlson, in September 2025, alleged that Prime Minister Netanyahu had bragged about the control he had over U.S. leaders.

By spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and exaggerating Israel’s influence over America, MS NOW commentators Mohyeldin, Kasky and Ghosh echo themes popularized by right-wing antisemite Tucker Carlson. The similarities in their hate-fueled imaginations realize Deborah Lipstadt’s horseshoe theory of antisemitism. As the former Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism explained, “the far-left and the far-right are closer to one another on the issue of antisemitism than they are to the center.” CAMERA

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Tucker Carlson Spreads More Misinformation About Christians and Israel. February 12, 2026 Tucker Carlson met in Jordan with Anglican Archbishop of Jerusalem, Hosam Naoum, to discuss how Christians are doing in the Holy Land. As in previous episodes of his show, Tucker Carlson and his guest served up a hefty dose of inaccuracies and misrepresentations about Christians and Israel. CAMERA

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The New York Times Rebrands Anti-Zionism as “Sharp Criticism”. February 13, 2026 In mislabeling NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani a "sharp critic of Israel," the New York Times rebrands and minimizes hateful anti-Zionism while gaslighting Jews and misleading readers. We have a new term for this: blue-and-whitewashing. CAMERA

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How an Indian Researcher Exposed the Nazi–Palestinian Alliance | Aabhas Maldahiyar. Stand Tall Israel. Feb 12, 2026

Most people believe the Israel–Palestine conflict began in 1948. Most people believe Nazi history ended in 1945.

But what if those two stories are connected in ways almost nobody talks about?

In this powerful interview, Indian researcher and author Aabhas Maldahiyar reveals historical evidence of collaboration between Nazi leadership and key Arab figures, including the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Drawing from archival documents in Germany, Israel, and the United States, he explains a chapter of history that is rarely discussed in mainstream education or media.

In this interview we discuss: • The Grand Mufti’s relationship with Hitler. • Muslim units that fought inside the Nazi military. • Why this history is largely missing from textbooks. • Why many Indians feel a strong connection to Israel. • The most disturbing discoveries found in historical archives.

After reading his book, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally wrote to him, acknowledging the importance of his research.

00:00 – The Connection Most People Never Hear About. 00:41 – How This Research Began. 04:02 – Archives That Prove Nazi–Arab Collaboration. 04:47 – What Shocked Him the Most. 06:03 – The Grand Mufti and Hitler. 11:29 – Netanyahu’s Controversial Statement Explained. 16:06 – Admiration for Hitler in the Arab World. 18:12 – Mein Kampf in Arabic and Its Influence. 19:41 – Muslim Units Inside the Nazi Army. 23:33 – Hitler, Race, and Why Muslims Were an Exception. 29:29 – The Most Disturbing Discoveries in the Archives. 32:42 – Violence Against Jews Before 1948. 35:01 – Why This History Isn’t Taught. 37:57 – Why Indians Feel Connected to Israel. 41:07 – What the World Can Learn from India. 43:17 – Netanyahu’s Letter and What It Meant. 45:21 – How Writing the Book Changed His View. 46:55 – Final Message to the World. 48:23 – Closing Remarks. on YouTube

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Why Saudi Arabia is turning back to Islamism – and against Israel. Hussain Abdul-Hussain. February 6, 2026. Last week Thursday, Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman visited Washington and met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Senator Lindsey Graham. The Saudi readout said the meetings reviewed “strategic relations between [the two] countries, prospects for enhancing cooperation… and efforts to advance regional and global peace and stability.”

The next day, state-sanctioned sermons in Saudi Arabia featured rhetoric that could hardly advance regional peace. In Mecca and Medina, government-appointed imams called on God to support “our downtrodden brothers in Palestine,” to “reverse their weakness into strength,” and to grant them “victory against the Zionist aggressors.” These clerics are state employees, and the content of their sermons is approved by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs.

The surge in anti-Israel – and at times even antisemitic – language, evident across editorials, columns and state-aligned media, is unmistakable. It marks a clear shift in the policy of Saudi Arabia, whose crown prince and de-facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), once described Israel not as an enemy but as a potential ally. The reasons are multifaceted.

Riyadh has been lobbying Washington to confront the Iranian regime since at least 2002, when the late Saudi King Abdullah visited President George W. Bush at his Texas ranch. “Cut off the head of the snake,” the Saudi monarch urged, a request Bush later recorded in his memoir Decision Points.

As Washington hesitated, Saudi Arabia gradually gravitated towards Israel, which shared the kingdom’s fear of the Islamist regime in Tehran.

In parallel, when MBS first came to power in 2015, high oil revenues allowed him to experiment with reshaping Saudi society. Islamism was repressed and women were granted expanded rights, including the ability to drive and travel independently. After 9/11, Saudi Arabia had already curtailed domestic Islamism – the kingdom’s most effective tool for projecting influence abroad. MBS went further, promising to transform Saudi Arabia into a Middle Eastern analogue of Dubai, the city many Arabs and Muslims aspire to live in.

But with revenues shrinking due to persistently lower oil prices, MBS now finds it harder to keep the Islamist genie in the bottle and appears to be loosening his grip to relieve internal pressure.

Vision 2030 – an ambitious plan to diversify Saudi Arabia’s oil-dependent economy, reshape its society, and position the kingdom as a global investment hub – now appears increasingly out of reach. As a result, the crown prince seems to have abandoned the Emirati model of economic transformation – moving from oil rents towards services – and replaced it with a Turkish-style approach: masking economic trouble with populist appeals to restored Islamic glory, beginning with hostility towards Israel.

Saudi Arabia’s shift back towards Islamism may have been inspired by Qatar and Turkey, whose Muslim Brotherhood-aligned policies expanded their regional influence without triggering alarm in Washington, thanks in part to the strength of Doha’s and Ankara’s lobbying operations in the US capital. TheJC

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Thursday, February 12, 2026. 69% of Jews Feel Unsafe Hearing "Globalize the Intifada." Why Doesn't That Matter? Yesterday, I wrote about a lecture by Magda Teter that noted a major difference between antisemitism and racism studies: Antisemitism studies tends to focus on perpetrators , while racism studies tends to focus on the harmed.

This seems to be empirically true.

When Black communities or other victims of racism experience language as being hurtful, it is taken very seriously, even when the language itself is contested or ambiguous.

The real estate industry replaced "master bedroom" with "primary bedroom" across major MLS systems, with HGTV and homebuilders following suit, because it could evoke the pain of slavery for Black Americans.

The tech industry replaced "master/slave" with "primary/replica" and "blacklist/whitelist" with "blocklist/allowlist." Twitter, JPMorgan, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology all made the switch.

The Washington Redskins became the Commanders.

In each case, the same logic applied: the affected community said this language causes pain, and institutions deferred to that experience — even when others disagreed, even when the etymology was contested, even when the original intent was benign.

That is, by any measure, a healthy institutional response. It reflects decades of scholarship in racism studies that trained institutions to take the lived experience of targeted communities seriously.

But when Jews are offended by words or phrases, their opinions are not considered to be nearly as important.

The AJC just released its 2025 State of Antisemitism in America Report, and two numbers jumped out at me.

When asked how hearing the phrase "Globalize the Intifada" would make them feel as a Jewish person in the United States, 69% of American Jews said it would make them feel either somewhat or very unsafe.

83% of American Jews consider the phrase "Israel has no right to exist" to be antisemitic.

These are overwhelming supermajorities of the affected community telling you what causes them fear and pain.

The people who are extra sensitive to hurting the feelings of other minorities seem more often to defend phrases or words that Jews say explicitly make them feel unsafe.

This is a concrete example of Teter's observation. And it shows that people simply don't care about quantifiable Jewish pain and fear.

The AJC survey finds that 55% of American Jews report changing their behavior out of fear of antisemitism — avoiding events, hiding Jewish symbols, self-censoring online. 91% say they feel less safe after the violent attacks on Jews in America in 2025.

These numbers describe a community in distress. And yet the institutional response is not to defer to Jewish experience. It is to debate it.

News media fight to find the fringe Jews who support those statements and try to normalize them as mainstream. You never see them do that for Blacks.

There is a methodological inconsistency in how each minority group is treated by our institutions, and it has real consequences.

If the standard is that the affected community's experience of a phrase matters — and I think that's a reasonable standard — then it should apply consistently. You cannot defer to Black communal experience on "master bedroom" while dismissing Jewish communal experience on "Globalize the Intifada."

If 69% of a targeted minority says a phrase makes them feel unsafe, that should at minimum be taken as seriously as a real estate term with a debatable etymological connection to slavery.

When a supermajority of Jews says a phrase is threatening, universities should not need a two-year committee process to decide if they agree.

When Jewish students say campus slogans make them feel unsafe, the response should not be "that's just political speech" any more than "master bedroom" was "just a real estate term."

The double standard isn't about free speech. The KKK has the right to protest and use racist language, but the response to those demonstrations is quite different to that of speech that most Jews consider hurtful. I'm not arguing to restrict free speech. I'm saying that the media, universities, and other institutions should treat those phrases as offensive.

There is a big difference between allowed speech and legitimate speech. Too many antizionists pretend that they are the same for their offensive speech but different for speech they find offensive.

When 83% of Jews say denying Israel's right to exist is antisemitic, that communal consensus should carry at least as much institutional weight as the consensus that led to renaming a bedroom.

The AJC data tells us what Jews experience. The question is whether anyone is listening. EoZ

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Iran Deal is Closer Than Ever. The Uranium Trade-Off: US Ready to Tolerate Iranian Enrichment for a Peace Deal. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan warns that while the U.S. and Iran are showing "flexibility" on uranium enrichment, any attempt to include ballistic missiles in the deal will trigger another war. Eliana Fleming. Feb 12, 2026 JFeed

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Iran’s top adviser: 'Missile program is non-negotiable'. Elad Benari Feb 12, 2026, 5:52 AM INN

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Two of the Jews arrested in protests in Iran released. Israel National News. Feb 12, 2026, 9:37 AM INN

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Director fired: Slip of the tongue on Iranian TV. A television reporter in Iran shouted "Death to Khamenei" live on air - within seconds, the sound on the broadcast was muted due to the embarrassment. Israel National News. Published: Feb 12, 2026, 2:48 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Controversial anti-Israel, antisemitism allegations surround New York Mayor Mamdani’s early appointments. Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, says Mamdani's appointees 'can use their institutional power to mainstream positions' that are 'hostile or exclusionary or even discriminatory towards Jews' and 'erode democratic norms'. Maayan Hoffman/The Media Line | published:01.12.26 YNet

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Israeli lawmaker appeals to US, UK over exit bans on Haredi draft evaders. Knesset lawmaker Meir Porush of Agudat Yisrael sent letters to the US and British ambassadors to Israel calling for their intervention; The Haredi dual citizens are 'are being denied the basic right to return to their homeland', he said Shilo Freid|2.12.26

While the ultra-Orthodox parties Degel HaTorah and Shas are pressing the coalition to pass a bill exempting yeshiva students from military service, the Hasidic Agudat Yisrael party— which combined with United Torah Judaism make up Degel HaTorah — is focusing its efforts on fighting the existing sanctions imposed on ultra-Orthodox draft evaders who failed to enlist without receiving exemptions, and is seeking to mobilize international pressure. YNet

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The IDF's unusual message to Iranians. Military urges 'patriotic Iranians' to contact official channels for cooperation, hours after leaders discuss Iran and ongoing nuclear negotiations. Israel National News. Feb 12, 2026, 4:12 PM INN

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Antisemitic act targets Hamburg family. Antisemitic graffiti found on Hamburg Jewish family’s mailbox sparks outrage, but some online posts back act. Yogev Israeli|2.12.26 YNet

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US secretly supplied Starlink terminals to Iran. Though Trump avoided direct role in last month’s protests, WSJ reports US sent 6,000 Starlinks to bypass shutdowns. ynet|2.12.26 YNet

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Netanyahu to skip Board of Peace summit. After meeting Trump in Washington, Netanyahu says he will join AIPAC remotely amid Gaza concerns. Itamar Eichner|2.12.26 YNet

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Antisemitism is booming – and Big Tech loves it - opinion. Inside the algorithmic double standard that lets Jew-hate spread unchecked. February 12, 2026 JPost

The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Opinion | Miss Israel - Melanie Shiraz argues that social media platforms are amplifying antisemitism while silencing Jewish voices through flawed algorithms. February 12, 2026. on X

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Trump plans to announce Gaza funding plan, troops at first Board of Peace meeting, US officials say. Delegations from at least 20 countries, including many heads of state, are expected to attend the meeting in Washington, DC. February 12, 2026. JPost

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Canada's deadliest mass shooting linked to antisemitic tweets. The Tumbler Ridge shooter’s deadly attack was preceded by antisemitic tweets, shedding light on his online radicalization and ties to neo-Nazi ideology. February 12, 2026. JPost

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‘Hard to believe’ CAIR cares about hate, critics say of its campus ratings. “CAIR’s new report claims to measure Islamophobia and free speech on campus. It doesn’t,” Mark Goldfeder, of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told JNS. Jessica Russak-Hoffman. (Feb. 12, 2026 / JNS) Critics told JNS that a new rating of hostile campuses from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which blamed Israel for being attacked on Oct. 7 and which has a long history of anti-Israel statements, ought to be regarded with a lot of skepticism.

“CAIR has caused so much pain for American students in recent years with their statements and actions that it’s hard to believe they are genuinely concerned about hatred of any kind,” Jayne Zirkle, director of communications and outreach at the Lawfare Project, told JNS.

“With that being said, we are proud to stand against Islamophobia and for free speech always,” Zirkle said. “America’s students deserve campuses where ideas can be debated openly, faith can be expressed freely and alliances, like the U.S.-Israel relationship, can be explored without fear of bias or censorship.”

Mark Goldfeder, director and CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told JNS that CAIR’s methodology conflates efforts to fight Jew-hatred with violations of Muslim civil rights JNS

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Hamas vows not to lay down arms until Israel’s ‘elimination’. "The matter of Palestinian weapons is linked to the presence or elimination of the occupation," said Osama Hamadan. JNS Staff. (Feb. 12, 2026 / JNS) Hamas will not lay down its weapons until Israel is “eliminated,” Osama Hamdan, a senior official in the terror organization, vowed on Wednesday.

“We have been very clear with mediators, and in our messages passed on to the relevant parties, that the matter of Palestinian weapons is linked to the presence or elimination of the occupation,” stated Hamdan, referencing Israel in an interview with Al Jazeera. JNS

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OUTRAGE: Israeli Prosecution Summons Hamas Supporter to Testify Against Oct. 7 Combat Officers. A Palestinian man found with illegal weapons and Hamas propaganda on his phone was called as a key witness against Yasam officers Saar Ophir and Tiran Galmodi.

Yair Kleinbaum. Feb 13, 2026 06:44 In a move that has sparked widespread public and political fury, the State Attorney’s Office has summoned a Hamas-affiliated Palestinian resident of Judea and Samaria to testify against Israeli police officers. The witness appeared at the Central District Court in Lod to testify against Yasam (Special Patrol Unit) officers Tiran Galmodi and Saar Ophir, both of whom were among the first responders who fought bravely during the October 7 massacre. JFeed

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Kosher @koshercockney: 🚨 BREAKING - Horrifying news. My heart breaks and my blood boils reading this.

Female Israeli hostage Arbel Yahoud has bravely come out - she was Sexually Abused by Gazan terrorists almost every single day of captivity for 482 days.

They broke two of her ribs and starved her.

She tried to commit suicide on three occasions during her capitivity in Gaza.

What they put this woman through, purely for being Jewish.

“Held alone, it was so bad she tried to commit suicide on multiple occasions.

'I tried to end it three times,' Arbel says. 'I felt like I couldn’t go on. There were moments when I thought it was the only way out.'

But she was kept alive by the love for her boyfriend, Ariel Cunio, 28, whom she was torn from after they were kidnapped together.”

What a brave woman she is. The strength of Israeli women. Wow.

We are ALL with you Arbel.

Article in thread below Feb 13, 2026 on X

Daily Mail @DailyMail: Israeli hostage describes being sexually assaulted 'almost every single day' during 482 days in Gaza and how she tried to kill herself three times before she was freed - but not before one final terrifying ordeal From dailymail.co.uk [94] Feb 13, 2026 on X

Freed hostage Arbel Yehoud breaks silence: 'I tried to end it three times'. Arbel Yehoud speaks about her suicide attempts, her decision not to reveal the horrors of captivity until partner Ariel Cunio was freed, his collapse after their reunion, the letters that sustained them and why, after Romi Gonen’s interview, she says, 'I’m still a closed suitcase' ynet | published:02.13.26 06:04 Ynet

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Campus Antisemitism. ‘Bunch of terrorists trying to get in, kill us,’ organizers of Haverford event say. A professor, who has worked at the Philadelphia-area school for 19 years, told JNS he can’t believe it “has turned against the Jewish community in such a horrendous way.” Jessica Russak-Hoffman.

(Feb. 13, 2026 / JNS) Organizers of an Israeli journalist’s lecture at Haverford College, a private liberal arts school in the Philadelphia-area suburbs, talked to the campus safety department before the Feb. 1 event.

“We tried to coordinate security, but we did not expect that what transpired was actually going to happen,” Barak Mendelsohn, a political science professor at the school and an organizer of the event, told JNS.

A masked protester clad in a keffiyeh disrupted Haviv Rettig Gur’s talk on “roots, return and reality: Jews, Israel and the myth of settler colonialism,” which drew students, professors and local community members.

Video footage that circulated on social media appeared to show the anti-Israel, female protester shouting over the speaker using a bullhorn and yelling about the “Israel occupation forces” killing children.

“When Gaza is burned, you will all burn, too,” the protester said. JNS

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Trump: 'Regime change in Iran could be the best thing'. Elad Benari, Canada. Feb 13, 2026, 11:23 PM INN

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Australia’s Jews confront new reality after Bondi Beach massacre. Two months after a deadly Hanukkah attack in Sydney, Jewish leaders accuse Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of political hesitation as President Isaac Herzog arrives in a show of solidarity Yair Kraus | published: 2.13.26 | 12:02 YNet

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Joe Truzman @JoeTruzman: The Israeli military said it captured Muhammad Zidan, an aid of a terrorist who belonged to a cell that carried out the killings of 3 Israelis in the West Bank town of al-Funduq last year.

Separately, Palestinian Telegram channels circulated a photo purportedly of Zidan.

A background check of the alleged terrorist shows that he likely belonged to a Palestinian Islamic Jihad branch in Jenin or Nablus. Feb 13, 2026. on X

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Deeply concerning’: Anti-Israel activists door knock to locate Zionists in the UK. Sky News Australia. Feb 13, 2026. Andrew Bolt. Spiked Online Chief Political Writer Brendan O’Neill reacts to the “deeply concerning” footage of anti-Israel activists going door to door in Brighton, UK, to check if the people inside are Zionists or not.

"What a crock that is," Mr O’Neill told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.

“I’m sick and tired of tiptoeing around this, anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

“If you spend your every waking hour dreaming of the destruction of the world’s only Jewish nation … then I’m sorry to say, you clearly have a problem with Jews.” Explore the podcast on YouTube

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Hillel Neuer · Feb 13, 2026 @HillelNeuer · Replying to @HillelNeuer Francesca Albanese was picked for the UN post in 2022 because of her specialty in Holocaust inversion. And that is why she is popular in Europe. At once they are absolved of guilt feelings, and they get to demonize the Jewish state in the name of morality. Hillel Neuer @HillelNeuer Replying to @HillelNeuer The nomination of Francesca Albanese was announced in a letter published today by U.N. Human Rights Council president Federico Villegas.

She has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid,” “genocide” and “war-crimes.”

Here she equates the Palestinian 'nakba' with the Holocaust.. Feb 24, 2022. [95] on X

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Jonathan Sacerdoti @jonsac: 70,000 dead? After Haaretz claimed the IDF had acknowledged Hamas' figure for Gaza casualties and much of the world media repeated it, IDF International Spokesman @LTC_Shoshani explicitly told me yesterday in Gaza that the IDF does not recognise that figure:

"That is not an official IDF tally or an official IDF statement, The IDF is still evaluating the number of terrorists that we have eliminated and, if we can, the number of casualties in Gaza." Feb 13, 2026 on X

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Over a million people rally worldwide in solidarity with Iran protests. February 14, 2026. Around 250,000 Iranian people attended a massive rally in Munich, Germany, on Feb. 14, 2026 Around 250,000 Iranian people attended a massive rally in Munich, Germany, on Feb. 14, 2026 Over one million Iranians rallied across Europe, North America and Australia on Saturday in response to a call by exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi, while nighttime chants echoed from rooftops and apartment blocks inside Iran in a coordinated show of solidarity.

The largest gatherings took place in Toronto, Los Angeles and Munich, the three cities highlighted in the exiled prince's calls for solidarity rallies, where almost one million demonstrated.

In Munich, the local police estimated the crowd at around 250,000 people. Protesters filled the Theresienwiese grounds, waving lion-and-sun flags and chanting slogans in support of the national uprising in Iran.

In a speech delivered to the massive crowd in Munich, Pahlavi called the current moment “our final battle.”

The Toronto and Los Angeles rallies of Iranians also each drew 350,000 people, according to the two cities’ police.

In Toronto, Canadian officials including Ontario Premier Doug Ford and provincial ministers addressed demonstrators, voicing support for the Iranian people and condemning Tehran’s crackdown. IranIntl

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IDF eliminates terrorists emerging from Gaza tunnel, strikes Hezbollah sites in Lebanon. Troops identify armed terrorists emerging from tunnel shaft and carry out airstrike, killing them; in Lebanon, fighter jets strike Hezbollah targets as Upper Galilee council warns residents blast noises could continue for hours. Elisha Ben Kimon, Lior Ben Ari, Shimon Elbaz|Yesterday | 2.14.26 23:59

The IDF said Saturday it killed armed terrorists in northern Gaza after identifying them near Israeli forces operating in an area under Israeli control, describing the incident as “another blatant violation” of the ceasefire agreement. Separately, the military said it carried out strikes on infrastructure belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist group in southern Lebanon. The Lebanese Hezbollah-affiliated channel Al Manar reported that fighter jets launched a series of strikes in the village of Bouslaiya, between Houmine al-Fawqa and Deir al-Zahrani, and in the Jabal al-Rihan area. YNet

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Israel is Sleeping. Erdogan’s New Empire: How the Sunni Axis Quietly Surrounded Israel. The strategy of "pre-empting threats" promised to us on October 8th has been replaced by reactive firefighting and a total loss of deterrence against a resurgent Sunni Axis. Yair Kleinbaum Feb 14, 2026. While the eyes of the State of Israel are fixed with anxious anticipation on the Iranian uprisings that erupted in January 2026, a threat no less severe is metastasizing under the national radar. In the brief strategic window between the waning of high-intensity combat in Gaza in September 2025 and the pivot of our attention eastward, a dangerous vacuum was created, and the Sunni Axis is racing to fill it.

The New Syria: The "Turkification" of Jolani The American withdrawal from Syria was far more than a logistical maneuver; it was the starting pistol for a new era. Abu Mohammad al-Jolani now rules with an iron fist over critical trade routes and oil pipelines. While Jerusalem was busy celebrating the "elimination" of Hezbollah, Jolani has already managed to explicitly threaten Israel twice this month alone. The bombing of his headquarters may have made for a good photo op, but on the ground, Jolani doesn't take Israel into account. Syria is undergoing a rapid process of re-armament. The achievements gained from the collapse of the Assad regime are vanishing, replaced by a radical Sunni rule under Turkish patronage, presenting Israel with a new Northern Front far more complex than the one we knew.

The Writing on the Wall: A Triple Alliance The warning is written in bright Sunni letters. A triple alliance of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt is taking shape, with one clear goal: to push Israel to the edge.

Egypt: Continues to arm itself at a frantic pace while facilitating, or at the very least, allowing, arms smuggling into Judea and Samaria, and likely Gaza as well.

Jordan: As usual, the Hashemite Kingdom remains at the mercy of the Bedouin tribes and American support, while our eastern border has become a "Wild West" of unchecked smuggling.

Turkey: Erdogan is no longer satisfied with mere rhetoric. Turkey now maintains a presence within Gaza and near Mount Hermon, posing a direct military threat to Israel.

Strategy or a High-Stakes Gamble?

Does the Israeli government have a long-term plan, or is it simply betting on a regional Sunni-Shia civil war in the hopes of emerging unscathed? If that is the plan, it is crashing against the rocks of reality.

Hamas is alive and kicking, Hezbollah is far from being decisively defeated, and Iraqi militias continue to operate at full strength. There is a growing, painful realization that Israel may have sacrificed a "Total Victory" over Hamas and the security of Judea and Samaria on the altar of the "Iranian Nuclear Program." Two years after October 7th, that threat has not been removed; in fact, its equally psychotic sibling, the ballistic missile project, remains firmly on the table.

A Failure of Leadership. If, after all the fighting, the blood, and the sacrifice, the threats against Israel have only multiplied and intensified across new fronts, the Netanyahu government and its leader have failed fundamentally. The strategy of "pre-empting threats" promised to us on October 8th has been replaced by reactive firefighting and a total loss of deterrence against a resurgent Sunni Axis.

It is time for the government to draw the necessary conclusions. JFeed

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Fetterman Fires Back. Fetterman Defends Israel: Attacks AOC's Gaza 'Genocide' Smear. Pennsylvania Senator Blasts Democratic 'Rot,' Demands Consistency: Why the Silence on Iran's Execution of Thousands of Protesters While Attacking America's Key Ally?

Yair Kleinbaum. Feb 15, 2026.

Appearing earlier this evening on Fox News, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman delivered a powerful rebuke to critics of Israel, particularly Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), for their selective outrage.

Fetterman highlighted the hypocrisy in relentlessly attacking Israel while remaining silent on the Islamic Republic of Iran's brutal suppression of its own people.

"Why is she so eager to criticize Israel, but I don’t recall her saying anything as Iran executed thousands of protesters?" Fetterman asked pointedly.

He firmly stated, "There was never a genocide in Gaza," emphasizing Israel's right to defend itself in what he described as an "existential war."

This exchange comes amid fresh revelations from an Iranian doctor, identified as Dr. Reza, who spoke to The Jerusalem Post about the Iranian regime's horrific tactics during recent protests.

According to him, members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have been killing protesters directly in hospital beds and targeting medical staff who attempt to provide care.

Countless civilians, even those unconnected to the protests, perished when the regime cut off landlines and internet access, preventing emergency calls. These actions paint a grim picture of a totalitarian regime willing to murder its citizens to maintain power, actions that have drawn international condemnation but little commentary from some vocal U.S. politicians.

Fetterman's comments were prompted by AOC's recent statement in Munich, where she claimed a "genocide" occurred in Gaza. JFeed

(Related: Did AOC use the (pallyweid buzzword) "genocide" on Gaza before being heckled on March 4, 2024? [Google AI]: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) did not publicly use the term "genocide" to describe Israel's actions in Gaza before the March 4, 2024, incident. While being heckled by protesters at a Brooklyn cinema on that date, she claimed she had "already said that it was" a genocide, but major news outlets and official records noted she had previously resisted using the term. Her formal public "embrace" of the term occurred weeks later. Google AI).

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Israel drone supplier booted from Brooklyn Navy Yard. After NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani takes office, NYC City Hall evicts Israel drone supplier from Brooklyn Navy Yard. Israel National News. Feb 14, 2026, 7:12 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Senior US officials: 'Trump has not yet decided whether to attack Iran'. Elad Benari, Canada. Feb 13, 2026, 10:39 PM INN

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US prepares for weeks-long operation in Iran. Two US officials told Reuters that the US military is preparing for a weeks-long operation in Iran if Trump orders an attack. Nissan Tzur. Feb 14, 2026, 7:37 PM INN

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IDF eliminates terrorist threat in northern Gaza. IDF troops identifies, eliminates, terrorist who crossed Yellow Line in Gaza, posing imminent threat to their safety. Israel National News. Published: Feb 14, 2026, 6:54 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Netanyahu pushes to water down terrorist death penalty bill over fear of global fallout. Prime minister presses Itamar Ben-Gvir to amend proposed law mandating execution for terrorists, citing international and legal concerns as security agencies and opposition lawmakers push back. Amir Ettinger|2.14.26 YNet

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At Netanyahu's request: Gideon Sa'ar to represent Israel at Gaza Peace Council gathering. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar will represent Israel at the first gathering of the Gaza Peace Council, scheduled for Thursday in the U.S., after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he would not attend the event. Sa'ar will represent Israel at Netanyahu's request. Itamar Eichner|2.14.26 YNet

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Times Square billboard: ‘Palestinian Authority still pays for killing Jews’. The “End Pay-for-Slay” campaign unveiled a billboard in the iconic Manhattan location slamming P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas. JNS Staff. (Feb. 14, 2026 / JNS) A billboard depicting Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas with the message, “Palestinian Authority still pays for killing Jews,” went up in New York City’s Times Square on Friday.

As part of the “End Pay-for-Slay” campaign sponsored in part by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, the ministry’s X account posted a video on the same day, describing the billboard as “The truth the world needs to see.” JNS

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After the anniversary of the 1979 revolution, defiant protesters say they will return to the streets. During festivities celebrating the anniversary of the regime, opponents responded with chants of 'Death to Khamenei' and 'Death to the dictator'. Omid Habibinia/The Media Line | published:2.14.26 19:20 YNet

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European governments move to oust UN rapporteur over anti-Israel remarks. France, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic call for Francesca Albanese’s removal after comments labeling Israel a 'common enemy of humanity,' as she says her words were taken out of context[sic] and supporters rally to her defense Daniel Bettini | published: 2.14.26 18:26

A growing number of European governments are calling on the United Nations to remove Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, citing what they describe as extreme and inflammatory statements, some of which critics say raise concerns of antisemitism beyond opposition to Israel. YNet

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Islamists convicted in plot to massacre Manchester Jews. It could have been “the deadliest terrorist attack in U.K. history,” a police official said. JNS Staff. (Walid Saadaoui (left), Amar Hussain and Bilel Saadaoui (lower right) were sentenced to a total of 69 years in prison for plotting a mass shooting attack against Jews in the Manchester area, Feb. 13, 2026). (Feb. 14, 2026 / JNS) An Islamic State-inspired terrorist plot that could have resulted in the deaths of hundreds within the Jewish community was foiled by British authorities, Reuters reports.

Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, were found guilty at Preston Crown Court in Dover, England, on Friday.

The two men received life sentences for preparing acts of terrorism between December 2023 and May 2024, The Guardian reported.

The mastermind behind the plot, Tunisian-born Saadaoui, from Wigan, was given a sentence of a minimum of 37 years. Hussein, a Bolton-based Kuwaiti national, was ordered to serve at least 26 years, the report added.

Saadaoui’s younger brother Bilel Saadaoui, 37, also from Wigan, was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for failing to notify authorities of the terror plan.

The two principals, who swore allegiance to ISIS, planned a marauding firearms attack targeting Greater Manchester’s Jewish community, the Guardian reported.

They planned to disguise themselves as Jews and attack a march against antisemitism in Manchester before heading to suburbs north of the city center that are home to one of Europe’s largest Jewish communities.

Their trial commenced a week after the Oct. 2 terrorist attack on Manchester‘s Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation that claimed the lives of two victims. JNS

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Canada says no relations with Iran without regime change, mum on support for US strike. “We will not open diplomatic relationships with Iran unless there is a regime change. Period,” Anand told the Globe and Mail in an interview in Germany. February 14, 2026. JPost

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'We don't always agree with what she says': UN Chief Guterres distances himself from Albanese. The Secretary General's spokesperson explained that his team "doesn't agree with much of what she says, and wouldn't use the language that she uses to describe the situation in the region." Feb 14, 2026. JPost

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Britain's Jewish community pushes back as antisemitism reaches historic levels. After October 7, British Jews abandon quiet diplomacy, mobilize institutions, and secure unprecedented government backing. JPost

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Ex-Oxfam UK CEO alleges antisemitism, anti-Israel bias, premature push for 'genocide' label. Former Oxfam UK CEO Halima Begum is taking the charity to an employment tribunal, alleging antisemitism, racism, and pressure to label the Gaza war a genocide without evidence. February 14, 2026. JPost

The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Ex-Oxfam UK CEO files tribunal claim alleging antisemitism and pressure to label Gaza war “genocide.” Feb. 14, 2026 on X

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When sport takes a stand: Why the fight against antisemitism cannot wait - opinion. As antisemitism surges across Europe and beyond, a powerful moment in Munich shows how sport can draw a clear moral line against hatred, and lead where others have fallen silent. JPost

The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: OPINION: As antisemitism surges across Europe and beyond, a powerful moment in Munich shows how sport can draw a clear moral line against hatred, and lead where others have fallen silent. Feb 14, 2026 on X

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IDF intercepts drone carrying three M-16 rifles in anti-smuggling operation The drone, which was identified as entering Israeli territory from the west, was located by troops and discovered to be carrying rifles. JPost

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MSF halts non-critical operations in Gaza's Nasser hospital amid sightings of armed men, weapons. "Patients and MSF personnel have seen armed men, some masked, in different areas of the large compound of the hospital," Doctors Without Borders said in a statement. JPost

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'US freed captives from barbarians in Gaza': Rubio calls out UN's ability to solve conflicts. Speaking at the 2026 edition of the Munich Security Conference, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the UN has "tremendous potential," but needs reforms to be of real use. February 14, 2026. JPost

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Amid Tehran's deadly crackdown, some 250,000 rally in Munich against Iranian regime. An estimated 250,000 people rallied in Munich against Iran’s Islamist regime as part of a global day of action called by Reza Pahlavi during the Munich Security Conference. February 14, 2026. JPost

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NRB convention to spotlight Israel, Iran, antisemitism, and AI. Faith-based media leaders prepare to tackle geopolitical tensions, technology ethics, and the future of religious broadcasting. February 14, 2026 JPost

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Olympics committee defends sale of T-shirt commemorating 1936 Nazi-era Games. Jewish organizations condemned the IOC after a 1936 Berlin Olympics T-shirt sold out online, saying the Games were used to legitimize Hitler’s regime. February 14, 2026. JPost

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Like past Jewish tragedies, October 7 horrors will bring forth redemption - opinion. After the horrors of October 7, the pain of darkness and night will bring forth a new era for the Jewish people and humanity, writes Rabbi Doron Perez. February 14, 2026 JPost

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US strikes hit over 30 ISIS targets in Syria. CENTCOM says US forces carried out 10 strikes on more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria, part of Operation Hawkeye Strike launched after a deadly December ambush. Israel National News. Published: Feb 15, 2026, 6:58 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Report: Iranian diplomats smuggled cash to Hezbollah. Senior Iranian diplomats reportedly transported large sums of cash to Hezbollah in recent months, using diplomatic passports to evade inspections, Iran International report says. Israel National News. Feb 14, 2026, 10:50 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Brooklyn Navy Yard evicts NYC drone maker Easy Aerial over alleged Israel ties. "We need more voices strongly condemning this taxpayer-funded antisemitism from the NYC Mayor’s office," US Representative Elise Stefanik said on X/Twitter. February 15, 2026. JPost

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Released hostage Arbel Yehoud: I was sexually assaulted 'almost every single day' in Gaza. In an interview with N12, former hostages Ariel Cunio and Arbel Yehoud stated that they were held alone for their captivity, but were allowed to write eachother notes. February 15, 2026 JPost

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US demands for zero enrichment ‘not on the table anymore,’ senior Iranian negotiator says. Majid Takht-Ravanchi issued threats to U.S. forces, warning war would be bad for "those who have initiated this aggression" and "a different game" compared to June 2025. JNS Staff. (Feb. 15, 2026 / JNS) Iranian deputy foreign minister and nuclear negotiator Majid Takht-Ravanchi told the BBC on Sunday that, as far as Tehran is concerned, U.S. demands for zero enrichment are “not on the table anymore.” JNS

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Former hostage attends Holocaust commemoration led by Nazi descendant. “There is a lot of ignorance; but people who hear my story firsthand tell me that it changes their viewpoint,” Luis Har, 72, told JNS. Etgar Lefkovits. (Feb. 15, 2026 / JNS) An Israeli who was held captive by Hamas for four months in Gaza spoke of his ordeal at a Holocaust event in Germany this weekend organized by an evangelical organization led by a descendant of Nazis.

“For me this is part of the cure, which does me well,” Argentinian-born Luis Har, 72, told JNS from Germany. “Both the Holocaust and what we went through have elements in common.”

Har was abducted from his home in Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak during the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, and was held in Gaza for 129 days before being rescued with another hostage, Fernando Marman, in a daring IDF mission on Feb. 12, 2024. The Israeli military on Friday released previously unseen bodycam footage from the raid, marking two years since their rescue. JNS

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How a machzor survived over six centuries and Nazi attacks to make it to Israel. The first volume of the machzor was completed in1272 in Wurzburg, Germany. Today, it is displayed in the National Library in Jerusalem. February 15, 2026. JPost

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‘Death to Khamenei’ chants ring out across Iran, diaspora as unrest continues to grow. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has described the ongoing protests as “unimaginable,” urged authorities to “treat this disease” rather than “erase the issue.”  February 15, 2026 JPost

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Red Bull, Kinder Bueno seen in Gaza as streets flood with sweets - exclusive. Israel approved hundreds of “treat” trucks into Gaza ahead of Ramadan, including candy and energy drinks, as merchants warn of profiteering and higher prices in Israel ahead of Purim. February 15, 2026 JPost

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Gaza hospital used for weapons, NGO admits. The Telegraph. Jotam Confino. 15 February 2026. “Masked and armed men” stored weapons in a Gaza hospital, a medical charity has admitted after being banned from the Strip... Doctors Without Borders pulled out of Nasser Hospital last month and has been banned from operating in the Strip altogether. Telegraph

The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Editorial: For the first time during the war, a major international organization has publicly recognized the presence of armed groups operating within a Gaza hospital. on X

Doctors Without Borders report validates what the IDF has been saying for years - editorial. For the first time during the war, a major international organization has publicly recognized the presence of armed groups operating within a Gaza hospital. February 15, 2026 JPost

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Senior Iranian diplomats reportedly transported large sums of cash to Hezbollah in recent months, using diplomatic passports to evade inspections, Iran International report says. US demands for zero enrichment ‘not on the table anymore,’ senior Iranian negotiator says. ‘Death to Khamenei’ chants ring out across Iran, diaspora as unrest continues to grow. Red Bull, Kinder Bueno seen in Gaza as streets flood with sweets - exclusive. Israel approved hundreds of “treat” trucks into Gaza ahead of Ramadan, including candy and energy drinks, as merchants warn of profiteering and higher prices in Israel ahead of Purim. Gaza hospital used for weapons, NGO admits. The Telegraph. Jotam Confino. 15 February 2026. “Masked and armed men” stored weapons in a Gaza hospital, a medical charity has admitted after being banned from the Strip... Doctors Without Borders pulled out of Nasser Hospital last month and has been banned from operating in the Strip altogether. Telegraph

The Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Editorial: For the first time during the war, a major international organization has publicly recognized the presence of armed groups operating within a Gaza hospital. on X

Doctors Without Borders report validates what the IDF has been saying Man caught smuggling weapon from West Bank to east Jerusalem days before Ramadan. IDF observation troops and the Aerial Control Center also intercepted a drone attempting to smuggle three M-16 rifles into Israel on Friday, the military announced on Saturday. February 15, 2026 JPost

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Human rights activists and organizations legitimize antisemitism. Opinion: Francesca Albanese is proof that there is one strain of racism that receives international legitimacy from many human rights activists and groups, and that is antisemitism; it is a cancer that takes over a camp that thinks it is enlightened. Ben-Dror Yemini|02.15.26

Her name is Francesca Paola Albanese. She is the walking symbol of the most repugnant and rejected fusion of racism and human rights. Since May 2022, Albanese has served as the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. How is it possible that someone holding a senior human rights position is also an outspoken racist?

The answer is simple. There is one strain of racism that receives international legitimacy from many—perhaps most—human rights activists and organizations. That strain is called antisemitism.

Last week, a conference sponsored by Al Jazeera was held in Doha, Qatar. The keynote guests were Hamas leader Khaled Maashal and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who only recently smuggled a suitcase containing millions of dollars to Hezbollah.

Albanese, the princess of the “human rights organizations,” also presented her doctrine there. She did not utter a single word condemning Hamas, whose leaders have repeatedly called for the destruction of Jews and for world domination. Nor did she say a word about Iran, which only weeks ago massacred tens of thousands of civilians seeking to free themselves from the shackles of repression.

Albanese opened her remarks with praise and commendation for Al Jazeera. There is no doubt that the media mouthpiece of murderous Islamism—whose operatives, described as journalists, have been exposed as members of terrorist organizations—is a channel after her own heart. “The fact that instead of stopping Israel,” Albanese said, “most of the world has armed, given Israel political excuses, political sheltering, economic and financial support… We who do not control large amounts of financial capitals, algorithms and weapons, we now see that we as a humanity have a common enemy.”

Who exactly is 'we'?

It is curious to speak at an Al Jazeera conference—the flagship channel of Qatar—about “we, who do not control large amounts of financial capital.” Who exactly is “we”? According to one investigation after another, most recently by the Free Press, Qatar has invested “nearly $100 billion to buy influence in Congress, colleges, research institutes and corporations.” The channel itself is funded almost entirely by Qatar, with an annual budget of about $1 billion. But in Albanese’s formulation, this becomes “we, who do not control large amounts of financial capital.” And no, this is not satire.

Last Thursday, Caroline Yadan, a member of France’s right-wing National Assembly party, submitted a parliamentary question to Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot regarding the continuation of Albanese’s tenure in her senior UN post. Barrot responded immediately, announcing that, at the opening of the next session of the Human Rights Council on February 23, France intends to present a demand for the dismissal of the racist who rose to that senior position. Additional European countries have announced they are joining the request.

Yadan was met with a wave of responses, including from the French newspaper Le Monde, with the peculiar claim that this is not what Albanese said and that it was not a racist statement. Amnesty International issued a statement asserting that “European states must retract their outrageous attacks against Albanese.”

One does not need a comprehension test to understand what Albanese said. She published the full text herself. She did not speak about any other country. Only about Israel. Moreover, the phrase “a common enemy of humanity” is well known from the antisemitic lexicon. Once it was said about Jews. Now it is said about the Jewish state.

Yadan responded with a long list of Albanese’s racist statements, before and after October 7. She previously published an anti-Israel cartoon depicting spider webs spread across the world with banknotes and gold coins, spoke about the “Jewish lobby,” justified the October 7 massacre, cast doubt on allegations of rape by Hamas terrorists and much, much more. UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer has published extensive investigations into Albanese’s conduct, including activities funded by Hamas supporters.

There have already been attempts to remove Albanese. Nevertheless, in April 2025, her mandate was extended by three years. The New York Times printed a sympathetic profile of her. And the world’s largest human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, condemned the United States for imposing sanctions on her.

The tragedy is that racism reigns not only in the automatic majority of dark regimes within UN bodies. It is a cancer spreading through a camp that imagines itself enlightened. And the gap between human rights and human rights organizations and activists has never been greater. YNet

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IDF strikes continue as key meetings loom over Hezbollah disarmament in Lebanon. Beirut to review second phase of weapons consolidation plan north of the Litani as Hezbollah refuses to disarm; ceasefire monitoring panel and March 5 Paris aid conference add pressure amid diplomatic stalemate. Lior Ben Ari|2.15.26 YNet

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Where Are The Protests? At Least 6,000 Killed In 3 Days In Sudan, UN Says. February 15, 2026.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Like a scene out of a horror movie’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Woman and girls sexually assaulted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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UK court rules terror ban of Palestine Action ‘unlawful’. The proscription remains in place pending the government’s appeal of the decision. JNS Staff.

(Feb. 15, 2026 / JNS) The U.K.’s High Court of Justice ruled on Friday against the government’s ban and prescription of the anti-Israel Palestine Action group as a terrorist entity, prompting Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to say that her office will appeal and Jewish groups to express “concern.”

In its ruling on the ban, which went into effect on July 5 following repeated acts of violence, vandalism and break-ins into Israel-related facilities by members of the group, the court said the ban had been “disproportionate and unlawful,” The Guardian reported.

Despite the ruling, authorities have not released more than 2,500 people in custody for participating in or supporting Palestine Action since the proscription. As per the court’s ruling, the ban on Palestine Action remains in place until the government repeals it or legal procedures around the proscription are exhausted.

“The Government’s proscription followed a rigorous process, endorsed by Parliament. I will fight this judgment in the Court of Appeal,” Mahmood wrote on X. JNS

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The Palestine Action ruling leaves Britain’s Jewish community exposed - comment. A UK High Court ruling against proscribing Palestine Action has raised fears within Britain’s Jewish community about who protects minorities when intimidation falls short of terrorism. Mathilda Heller. February 15, 2026. JPost

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New Jersey blew a chance to lead on combating hate. Stalling efforts to prioritize the safety of Jewish New Jerseyans at this moment in history is not acceptable. February 15, 2026 JPost

Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: New Jersey lawmakers failed to act on a bill to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. According to Combat AntiSemitism Movement data, the state recorded 57 antisemitic incidents last year, making the delay in codifying a clear definition especially concerning for one of the largest Jewish populations in the US. Feb 15, 2026. on X

Trump told Netanyahu he would support Israeli strikes on Iran's missile program, CBS reports. According to a CBS report, US President Donald Trump told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in December that he would support strikes if no US-Iran deal could be reached. February 15, 2026 JPost

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Jerusalem Post.@Jerusalem_Post: NCAG chief Ali Shaath admitted in a 2025 interview that he organized stone-throwing attacks on Israeli soldiers in Khan Yunis, raising questions about his role in Gaza’s future. ✍️ @DanielleGreyman. Feb 15, 2026. on X

NCAG Chief Commissioner admits he threw stones at Israeli soldiers when he was 'still young'. “I actually was the organizer of this activity or this national act in the city of Khan Yunis [in the Gaza Strip]," Chief Commissioner Ali Shaath said in an interview. Danielle Greyman. February 15, 2026 JPost

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No major progress on Gaza Phase II expected before late February, officials say. Recently, top IDF sources predicted it would take months before the Palestinian technocratic committee would actually start to have a concrete impact on the Palestinians' lives in Gaza. February 15, 2026. JPost

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US intercepts Iran-linked oil tanker en route from Caribbean to Indian Ocean. 'The vessel tried to defy President [Donald] Trump’s quarantine, hoping to slip away,' a DoD statement read, adding, 'By land, air, or sea, we will find you and deliver justice.' February 15, 2026 JPost

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Israel Defense Forces: @IDF 🔴TERRORIST WHO PARTICIPATED IN OCT. 7 MASSACRE ELIMINATED

Ahmad Bayouk, who infiltrated the Re’im base during the October 7 Massacre, was eliminated by the IDF & ISA after operating to rebuild terror capabilities and advance attacks against IDF troops.

[96] Also eliminated: Azem Abu Huli, Head of the Islamic Jihad’s Nukhba Array in the Central Camps sector, who was responsible for procuring weapons and overseeing terrorist training. [97] Feb 15, 2026 on X

Terrorist who participated in October 7th massacre eliminated. [98] Israel National News. Feb 15, 2026, 8:04 PM INN

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‘We are prepared to move from defense to offense’: Israel signals harder line in Gaza. Military leaders warn that failure to disarm Hamas could trigger renewed operations even as diplomacy moves forward. February 16, 2026 JPost

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British Museum removes the term Palestine from certain Middle East exhibits. The museum told The Jerusalem Post that the term Palestine no longer holds a neutral designation and may be understood in reference to political territory. February 16, 2026. JPost

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Israeli police arrest seven, stop attempted infiltration of 15 Palestinian residents. The suspects were reportedly traveling to work in Bnei Brak, where they had planned an extended stay, the Police Spokesperson’s Unit said. February 16, 2026. JPost

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Saad Hariri signals political comeback ahead of Lebanon elections - analysis. Hariri is angling to return to politics as he marks the 21st anniversary of the assassination of his father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. February 16, 2026. JPost

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IDF kills Hezbollah operative rebuilding terror infrastructure in southern Lebanon In a statement, the IDF said the operative’s activity violated the ceasefire framework and posed a threat to Israel’s northern communities. February 16, 2026. JPost

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Iran's Revolutionary Guards navy holds drill in Hormuz Strait, Tasnim news reported. The drill, named "Smart Control of Hormuz Strait," aimed at testing the readiness of operational forces in the face of "possible security and military threats," Tasnim reported. February 16, 2026 JPost

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Emojis, SIM swaps: How Hamas greenlit October 7 massacre undetected. Findings from an IDF General Staff. investigation, which also drew on intelligence collected during fighting, indicate the emoji traffic was one of several signs that Hamas was preparing an assault. February 16, 2026 JPost

Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Hamas’s military wing began sending coded emoji messages on WhatsApp to operatives’ phones just hours before the October 7, 2023, attack, using the symbols as an agreed signal to mobilize terrorists to mosques for last minute instructions. on X

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Israeli tourists expelled from Madrid museum after being called 'child killers[sic]'. Three Israeli tourists, including a Holocaust survivor, say they were harassed at Madrid’s Reina Sofía museum over Jewish symbols and were asked to leave after staff said other visitors were 'disturbed' by their presence ynet|2.16.26 10:56

Three elderly Israeli women were expelled last Saturday from the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid after staff objected to them carrying items identifying them as Jewish, including an Israeli flag and a Star of David necklace. The incident was reported Monday by the Spanish news site Okdiario. According to the report, the three tourists were aggressively harassed by other museum visitors and were ultimately removed by a security guard who said that “some visitors were disturbed that they are Jewish.”

Reina Sofía, considered one of the world’s leading cultural institutions, held an exhibition during the Israel-Hamas war titled “From the River to the Sea” in solidarity with Palestinians and has hosted numerous anti-Israel protests in which antisemitic incidents were reported. Okdiario noted that the museum operates under the authority of Spain’s Culture Ministry.

([99]. The museum at the opening of the solidarity with Palestine exhibition in 2024)

According to the report, the three women, one of them a Holocaust survivor of Hungarian origin, arrived at the museum accompanied by a Spanish woman who recorded the incident on video. Several visitors reacted angrily to the Jewish symbols the women were wearing, calling them, among other insults, “crazy child killers.”

Instead of receiving assistance from museum staff, a senior official at the institution instructed a security guard to remove the group from the premises, while no action was taken against those who allegedly harassed them.. YNet

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Israel opens Judea, Samaria land registration for first time since 1967. “The decision means, among other things, the registration of extensive areas in Judea and Samaria that belong to the state,” the Cabinet ministers said. JNS Staff.

(Feb. 16, 2026 / JNS) The Israeli Cabinet approved at its regular Sunday weekly meeting the resumption of land registration across Judea and Samaria for the first time since the 1967 Six-Day War, Defense Minister Israel Katz, Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced in a joint statement.

“The decision means, among other things, the registration of extensive areas in Judea and Samaria that belong to the state in the name of the state,” the three ministers said.

The move will enable “a transparent and in-depth clarification of rights,” they said, noting that land registration would help end legal disputes and facilitate development of the area and infrastructure.

The Cabinet decision “constitutes an appropriate response to the illegal settlement procedures that the Palestinian Authority is promoting in Area C in violation of the law and agreements,” the three leaders concluded.

Sunday’s decision came after the Cabinet last week approved lifting confidentiality from land registry records in the area; canceling restrictions on land sales to non-Arabs; and abolishing the need for prior approval for sales.

The Regavim Movement, which has been at the forefront of monitoring illegal Palestinian construction in Judea and Samaria, welcomed the government’s latest “historic Zionist decision” for the area.

“Under the auspices of the vacuum on the part of Israel, the Palestinian Authority began registering illegal land,” the NGO said. “With the assistance of foreign governments, it registered in the ‘Palestinian land registry’ over 1.3 million dunams [130,000 hectares],” or approximately 321,000 acres, Regavim added.

Regulating land registration in Judea and Samaria “brings an end to a disgraceful freeze of nearly six decades that created a severe legal and administrative vacuum and opened the door to prolonged land disputes, document forgery and large-scale, unlawful land seizures,” Regavim said.

Last week, the Palestinian Authority “strongly denounced” Israel’s moves in Judea and Samaria, per Ramallah’s official WAFA news agency, criticizing them as an “attempt to legalize settlement expansion, land confiscation and the demolition of Palestinian properties.”

P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas in a statement urged the United Nations Security Council and the United States to intervene to stop the moves.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has led an unprecedented drive to expand control of Judea and Samaria, approving some 50,000 homes and more than 50 Jewish communities since returning to office in December 2022. JNS

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Owner of Ethiopian-Israeli Restaurant in Harlem Details ‘Unbearable’ Harassment, Death Threats That Forced Closure. By Shiryn Ghermezian. February 16, 2026. Algemeiner

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Qatar’s Children Still Study Antisemitic Textbooks That Whitewash Hitler, Promote Violent Jihad, Study Finds. By David Michael Swindle. February 16, 2026.

Despite Qatari leaders’ rhetoric seemingly promoting peace and opposing hate, the Middle Eastern country continues to educate students with textbooks that celebrate terrorism, hide the Holocaust, and demonize the Jewish people by affirming longstanding antisemitic tropes, according to a new study.

The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), a nonprofit organization that analyzes schoolbooks and curricula around the world, reviewed 52 textbooks officially approved for the 2025-2026 State of Qatar national school curriculum, in addition to checking them against previous editions for potential revisions. The books covered topics ranging from social studies, geography, and history to Islamic education, Arabic language, and Arabic literature. IMPACT-se applied UNESCO-derived standards and guidelines of peace and tolerance in education. Algemeiner

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New York City Health Staffer Under Fire Over Posts Calling for Elimination of All Israelis. By Corey Walker. February 16, 2026. A veteran staffer of the New York City Health Department called for the eradication of all Israelis among a series of newly surfaced antisemitic social media posts, raising concerns about the safety of Jewish New Yorkers at a time of unease for the community with Mayor Zohran Mamdani in office.

The watchdog group Canary Mission on Sunday exposed screenshots of the since-deleted social media posts by Achmat Akkad, who according to his LinkedIn account is a “Mental Health First Aid Trainer” with the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and, since 2017, has reportedly worked there as a community coordinator.

Around a year ago Akkad posted, “1 Israeli left in this world would be one too many!”

Canary Mission also shared screenshots of a deleted Nov. 10, 2021, post in which Akkad stated, “Jews that don’t support apartheid are safe. Zionists aren’t!”

According to multiple reports, Mamdani has appointed Akkad as a “Community Engagement Training Specialist.”

The unearthing of Akkad’s posts follows recent criticism of the new “Global Oppression and Public Health Working Group” formed in Mamdani’s administration. Algemeiner

NYC staffer's antisemitic posts revealed. The Jerusalem Post. February 17, 2026.

— NYC health staffer says 'one Israeli left is too many' in resurfaced antisemitic post · Achmat Akkad, who goes under the name BlackIntifada on X...

JPost

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Cheap editing costs. Iranian State TV's Top Secret Disaster. Iranian state TV's epic fail turns an IRGC naval drill into meme gold, face blurred to perfection, but the name tag? Crystal clear and hilariously unmissable.

Bianca Jones. Feb 17, 2026. JFeed

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Conservative Influencer Drama. Megyn Kelly Attacks Insurrection Barbie Over Candace Owens Feud. The conservative Twitterverse is on fire with an escalating online feud. The wildly popular X account Insurrection Barbie, a fierce pro-Trump and pro-Israel firebrand with over 1 million followers, didn't hold back when she slammed Candace Owens' latest controversial remarks.

JFeed Staff. Feb 17, 2026 JFeed

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Olympic Antisemitism. Swiss Broadcaster Sparks Outrage by Attacking Israeli Bobsledder During Olympic Run | WATCH. A Swiss broadcaster is under fire after commentator Stefan Renna used a live Olympic bobsleigh run to launch a political attack on Israeli athlete AJ Edelman. Instead of sports, Renna broadcasted "genocide[sic]" accusations and anti-Zionist rhetoric, sparking global demands for his immediate termination. JFeed Staff. Feb 17, 2026 JFeed

Swiss broadcaster pulls Winter Olympic bobsleigh commentary questioning Israeli athlete's presence. The commentary on Radio Television Suisse was aired throughout one of the runs of Israelis Adam Edelman and Chen Menachem in the two-man bobsleigh event on Monday. February 17, 2026. JPost

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Araghchi: Explicit reference to the possible use of force by the US must be brought to an immediate, unconditional end. Feb 17, 2026. on X

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Berlin film festival director Tricia Tuttle defended the Berlinale jury’s right to speak freely on politics, after criticism for refusing to label Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide. ✍️ @HannahBrown972 [100] Berlinale head Tricia Tuttle defends jury for refusing to condemn Israel for ‘genocide’ The issue surfaced following the opening press conference, where the International Jury president, director Wim Wenders, said that filmmakers should stay out of politics. Feb 17, 2026. on X

Berlinale head Tricia Tuttle defends jury for refusing to condemn Israel for ‘genocide[sic]’. The issue surfaced following the opening press conference, where the International Jury president, director Wim Wenders, said that filmmakers should stay out of politics. February 17, 2026 JPost

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Report: Iran to close parts of Strait of Hormuz during Revolutionary Guards drill Iran will close parts of the Strait of Hormuz for several hours during a military drill conducted by the Revolutionary Guards. This was reported by the Iranian news agency FARS, citing sources. Lior Ben Ari|2.17 26 Ynet

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Ben-Gvir: 'Blood of Arab sector murder victims on Baharav-Miara's hands' National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir accused Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and claimed that the responsibility for the deaths of 50 murder victims in the Arab community since the beginning of the year is on her. "The blood of those people murdered in the Arab sector is on Gali Baharav-Miara's hands," the minister stated. Ynet|2.17 26 Ynet

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IDF on elimination of Islamic Jihad terrorists in Lebanon: 'They posed an immediate threat' The IDF addressed the elimination of two Islamic Jihad terrorists in eastern Lebanon on Sunday, stating they were attacked while attempting to move into Syrian territory. According to an IDF spokesperson, the two were working to advance terrorism against the State of Israel, and their activities "posed an immediate threat to Israeli citizens and IDF forces operating in the Syrian arena." Elisha Ben Kimon|2.17 26 Ynet

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4 ISIS terrorists arrested in Jericho on suspicion of planning attack. 2.17 26 Ynet

In Jericho operation: ISIS cell planning attack arrested. Jerusalem Border Police and IDF forces arrested four terrorists belonging to ISIS in Jericho, on suspicion that they planned to promote terrorist activity and carry out an attack. Israel National News. Feb 17, 2026, 6:45 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Terrorist who traded combat equipment arrested in Ramallah area. IDF forces yesterday arrested a terrorist in the Ramallah area, under Shin Bet guidance, who served as a weapons trader in the city's terror organization. Elisha Ben Kimon|2.17 26 Ynet

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US military build-up signals preparation for 'direct action' against Iran – BBC. February 17, 2026 IranIntl

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Iran accelerates burial of suspected nuclear facility, expert says. February 17, 2026. IranIntl

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Iran International English @IranIntl_En: Security forces fired at a large gathering of mourners during 40th-day memorials on Tuesday in Abdanan for those killed in the protests, injuring several people, a video received by Iran International showed. Feb 17, 2026. on X

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Pop Icon Boy George Says He Hopes to Perform in Israel, Reiterates Love for His Israeli Fans. By Shiryn Ghermezian. February 17, 2026.

British pop legend Boy George reaffirmed his love for his Israeli fans and the Jewish state on Monday in a post on X, in which he also referenced the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

A video was posted on X that showed a past performance by Lady Gaga in Israel, in which she shouted to the audience, “You are strong, you are brave, you are confident, and I f–king love you Israel.” Boy George replied to the video on Monday afternoon and started off by saying, “I love Israel too.”

“Blaming an entire people is moronic,” added the Culture Club lead singer, who has been a long-time supporter of Israel. “You can be against war and still love humanity. Good for her,” he noted. “She loves her Israeli fans. Like I do. Some of them were probably killed on Oct 7th. I have DJ’d in Tel Aviv a number of times. I hope I will in the future!” Algeneiner

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IAF kills Gaza terrorist who threatened ground forces. Troops also discovered a Hamas weapons depot in southern Gaza, according to the Israeli military. JNS Staff. (Feb. 17, 2026 / JNS) The Israeli Air Force on Tuesday eliminated a terrorist in Gaza who posed a threat to ground troops in the northern Strip, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

Soldiers operating under the U.S.-brokered ceasefire “identified a terrorist who crossed the Yellow Line and approached the troops, posing an imminent threat to their safety,” said the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. JNS

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IDF seizes Hamas weapons cache near Gaza's Yellow Line, including RPG and explosives. The IDF said they found "a large amount of guns, an RPG rocket, and an explosive device that were going to be used to harm IDF soldiers operating in the area."  JPost

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: IDF escalates strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in preparation for potential war with Iran. The military has killed 12 Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad terrorists since early February. Feb 17, 2026. on X

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Hezbollah does not oppose parallel US talks on security agreement with Lebanon - report. Hezbollah does not oppose a parallel political negotiation with the US aimed at a security agreement with Lebanon, sources told Al Akhbar, alongside efforts to disarm the group south of the Litani. February 17, 2026 JPost

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'Are we to blame you murder one another?': Smotrich clashes with Ra’am over Arab crime spike. February 17, 2026 JPost

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Iran’s repression of Azerbaijani identity - opinion. The South Azerbaijani community is calling upon the US president to act on Iran’s repression against the Azerbaijani people. February 17, 2026 JPost

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Naftali Bennett: 'Turkey is the bew Iran'. Bennett warns of ‘new Turkish threat,’ calls for Zionist unity. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett tells Conference of Presidents in Jerusalem that Turkey is “the new Iran" seeking to encircle Israel, calls for new leadership following 'the greatest disaster in Israel’s history.' Israel National News. Feb 17, 2026, 4:23 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Mamdani to appoint former CAIR official as chief immigration officer. JNS, February 17, 2026. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to appoint Faiza Ali, a member.. JNS

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Ben Gvir to AG: 'I don't count you, you're a criminal'. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir launched a sharp attack on Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara during an "Otzma Yehudit" conference in Netivot. Israel National News. Published: Feb 17, 2026, 10:19 PM (GMT+2)

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir launched a sharp attack on Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara during an "Otzma Yehudit" conference in Netivot, accusing her of attempting to remove him from office.

In his speech, Ben Gvir said, "This is Gali Baharav-Miara, a criminal official who fabricated cases against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She is now trying to fire ministers. You voted for me, not for Gali Baharav-Miara, and she wants to remove me. Do you know why? Because I don't bow to her, because I'm not willing to accept her diktats."

He further claimed, "A few months ago, I received a message from a mafia group in her office. They said, 'If you don't appoint one of the investigators that the system desperately wants, if you don't make her an officer, we will fire you.' They said it and they're trying to do it, and I say to Gali Baharav-Miara, I don't count you! I'm not a plant, you're a criminal."

Ben Gvir also accused the Attorney General of being "involved in the Military Advocate General affair, she sabotaged investigative procedures, she fabricated cases against innocent people, and she should have gone home, home." INN

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'It's our right to live freely as Jews': Belgian Jewish leader on circumcision bans - interview. The conversation came amid rumours that Belgium may look to ban circumcision, which reignited after a public argument between the US ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, and Deputy PM Maxime Prévot. February 17, 2026. JPost

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Hamas-linked org trains Gazans to edit Wikipedia pages about Israel, Palestine. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor announced last week the launch of the third edition of the WikiRights project, which trains 12 young Palestinians as professional editors on Wikipedia. February 17, 2026 JPost

Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: A Hamas-linked organization, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, is training Gazans to edit Wikipedia pages about the Israel-Hamas war as part of its "WikiRights” program. ✍️ @MathildaHeller. Feb 17, 2026 on X

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US Headquarters: Suspicion of a new smuggling to Gaza affair. Senior criminals allegedly bribed foreign staff at the US headquarters to smuggle banned goods into Gaza for large sums of money. Israel National News. Feb 17, 2026, 9:24 PM INN

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David Kaufman: Using the lie of a 'Gaza genocide' as a litmus test is a losing strategy for Democrats. Caving to their far-left activist base will not endear voters during the upcoming midterm elections

Author of the article:By David Christopher Kaufman. Published Feb 09, 2026.

[U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Democrat from Michigan, speaks during a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., in 2023. Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP].

Even the most ardent Hamas-haters would find it hard to debate that the suffering in Gaza has been extreme during Israel’s two-year war to dismantle the murderous terror organization. But the conflict’s impact on the American people is far more difficult to determine.

We hear the loudest voices as they maraud across city centres and college campuses chanting for an end to Zionism. Few, however, speak for America’s great masses, who appear mostly indifferent to the carnage and its resulting antisemitic tide.

But the “Palestine” issue — particularly charges of Israeli “genocide” — has managed to maintain outsized proportions, which are now growing larger as America enters the midterm elections season.

Last week, on a panel in Washington, D.C., moderated by the stridently anti-Zionist journalist Mehdi Hasan, former MSNBC correspondent Joy-Ann Reid suggested that no Democratic candidate can snag the 2028 presidential nomination without publicly declaring that a genocide took place in Gaza.

“I think it makes you unelectable,” said Reid. “And I think you can simply ask not-president Kamala Harris if that is true … that is the X-factor that doomed her candidacy.”

Reid is hardly alone in her belief that for the left’s most aggressive extremists, the purported Gaza “genocide” has become a litmus test for progressive electability.

Also last month, California State Sen. Scott Weiner abruptly declared Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide” after being heckled during a candidates’ forum for the congressional seat left open by Nancy Pelosi. The move represented as startling volte-face for Weiner, who had until then managed to resist the “genocide” libel — and resigned from co-chairing his state legislature’s Jewish caucus amid the resulting outcry.

It’s easy to see why disgraced talking heads like Reid and anxious politicians like Weiner would place so much importance on amplifying claims of Israeli genocide. In Reid’s case, ascribing Harris’ historic loss to a foreign conflict far removed from the concerns of most Americans obscures the weaknesses of a presidential campaign that failed to cultivate both legitimacy and authenticity.

For Weiner, meanwhile, the “genocide” charge placates an activist base that refuses to be silenced, even at the expense of more pressing state issues, such as affordability and immigration. Get “genocide” out of the way, Weiner appears to accede, and you can finally move on to the important stuff.

The problem, as Democrats may come to understand in November, is that so much talk about Gaza and genocide may only reaffirm their un-electability — not prove a pathway to success.

Indeed, with the Gaza ceasefire still holding — and America consumed by ICE raids domestically and Iran’s fragile Islamic regime abroad — the United States finally appears to be reaching Gaza fatigue, just as the “genocide” crowd prepares for further escalation.

As Weiner’s flip-flopping confirms, scream genocide loud enough and even the most ardent non-believers will eventually cave. But will this prove effective at the ballot box? The lessons from 2024 suggest this is unlikely.

While some voters soured on Harris because of her perceived support for Israel, she lost because core elements of the Democratic base fled to Donald Trump — most notably Black and Latino men. Young voters, the most likely to prioritize Palestine, also shifted rightward — as did many women.

In other words, Harris lost not because of her genocide views, but because she failed to articulate a reason to vote for her besides not being Donald Trump.

Nearly two years on, the Dems’ doubling down on Gaza reflects their ongoing myopia in the face of far more organic and essential strategies and talking points. Trump’s historic support among Latino voters in 2024, for instance, has all but collapsed, as even their most right-leaning cohort chafes at the White House’s immigration extremes.

A Pew poll from late last year found that 70 per cent of Latinos “disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president,” 65 per cent “disapprove” of his immigration policy and 61 per cent don’t agree with his handling of the economy. These are the issues that will carry both parties on through the November midterms, not Israel and Gaza.

Indeed, even during the height of the Israeli siege in Gaza right before the November 2024 election, just six per cent of American voters ranked the Israel-Hamas war as the most important issue facing voters, according to a Harris-Harvard poll. Nearly 18 months on, even fewer are likely to hold such views as the war further recedes from the headlines.

Amid ICE’s mounting body count and surging corporate layoffs that saw a million lost jobs in America last year, obsessing about Israel and Gaza provides an easy escape for Democrats from the far harder work of fixing the economy and defanging Trump. It’s the same challenges that confronted Harris in 2024 — buried under a tsunami of contrived messaging centred on #intersectionality and vibes.

Harris is emerging as the highest-profile contender for a 2028 run, proving that even the worst ideas can overwhelm a politician’s best instincts. The spectacle of a Gaza genocide litmus test failed to sway voters in 2024; four years on, it’s likely to prove even less consequential. NationalPost

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It’s time to tell the truth about Muslim antisemitism. Jonathan S. Tobin. “Think Twice” with Jonathan Tobin and guest Andrew Bostom, Ep. 211 (Feb. 12, 2026 / JNS) It’s time to stop worrying about accusations of Islamophobia when discussing Muslim antisemitism. According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, reporting and commentary on the shocking levels of Jew-hatred among Muslims has been silenced out of fear of accusations of racism and prejudice. But most of what is labeled Islamophobia is just truth-telling about how conspiracy theories and hate speech about Jews have become normative in the Islamic community.

He’s joined in this week’s episode of “Think Twice” by Andrew Bostom, author of a number of important works about Islamic radicalism, including the new A Modern Qur’anic Kampf Against the Jews. His book is a translation with commentary of a highly influential text written by Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, the late head of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, widely considered the “Muslim Vatican,” which illustrates that Jew-hatred is baked deep into both Islamic culture and traditional religious thought.

Bostom points out that the polling done by the Anti-Defamation League, including some results that were apparently considered so shocking that the group didn’t publish them, has demonstrated just how pervasive antisemitic attitudes are among Muslims around the world and in the United States.

The notion that Muslim Jew-hatred is merely the product of resentment of the state of Israel or concern for the Palestinians is utterly false, says Bostom. And far from cherry-picking outrageous quotes from an otherwise unexceptional text, Boston’s translation of Tantawi’s screed illustrates that the vilest forms of hate directed at Jews is part of mainstream Muslim thought. What is most shocking about Tantawi’s antisemitic book is not just the way he shows how antisemitism is mainstream in Muslim thought or the way he mixes traditional anti-Jewish tropes with modern conspiracy theories about Jews (such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion). It’s the fact that Tantawi was considered a moderate Muslim and not as extreme as many other Islamic religious figures.

A big part of the problem, however, is the failure of the West, including Jewish groups and leaders who prioritize the idea of interfaith dialogue above defending their communities against hate, to directly call out Muslim antisemitism. Too many people are, Bostom says, simply afraid of being accused of Islamophobia. Christians and Jews must find the courage to tell Muslims, “We won’t accept you at interfaith dialogue meetings if you’re going to preach this way. Just stop it. We’re aware of it. Stop it. It’s ugly. Don’t do it.” JNS

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'Kill the Jew': Israelis hospitalized after antisemitic attack on Thai island. Three Israelis were hospitalized after a violent assault on Ko Samui, with family members saying the attackers shouted antisemitic slurs and threats during the attack. Israel National News. Feb 17, 2026, 1:34 PM (GMT+2)

A serious antisemitic incident unfolded overnight (between Monday and Tuesday) on the Thai island of Ko Samui, when three Israelis were assaulted, unprovoked, by men with Arabic accents.

One of the victims' sister told N12, "He broke ribs, teeth, and a vertebra. Efforts are being made with the embassy and insurance company to fly him back to Israel as fast as possible."

The sister of the victim, an Israeli in his 20s who flew to Thailand with his friends for vacation, further stated that her brother managed to contact his mother via video call during the attack as he attempted to flee through a back door. "He ran toward the exit. There were security guards who joined the attack and beat them without reason. My mother saw everything."

According to the sister, two Israeli women who saw what transpired assisted the victims, called for help, and are still with them in the hospital. "They are angels, we are in contact with them, and they are helping my brother and his friend in the hospital. In addition, they helped them go to the police station to submit a report as they were asked."

The victim's sister stressed that the assailants launched the attack because they heard the victims speaking Hebrew: "We do not doubt that it was antisemitic. The assailants also yelled that they would murder them, 'Itbah al-Yehud' (kill the Jew), 'You're IDF,' and expletives." INN

French Tourists Attack Israelis in Thailand After Overhearing Their Hebrew. By David Michael Swindle. February 17, 2026

Three Israelis were brutally attacked at a bar in Thailand on Monday after they were overheard speaking Hebrew, continuing a growing trend of Hebrew speakers being assaulted around the world amid a surge in antisemitism.

The Israeli citizens, all in their 20s, were attacked on the island of Koh Samui in southern Thailand by French tourists of North African origin, according to multiple reports.

The Combat Antisemitism Movement shared photographs of the victims, reporting that the assailants confronted them and said, “You are Israelis,” before chasing them into a restroom, forcing the door open, and demanding they empty their pockets.

Two of the Israelis, a father and son who remain unidentified, reportedly sought to flee and take shelter in a restroom. While two of the victims went to the hospital after the attack, the third escaped. A member of the victims’ family described the injuries as severe to Israel’s Channel 12, noting broken ribs, damaged teeth, and back trauma.

While the bar’s employees stepped in, the victims said that some members of security joined the attackers and used batons against them... Algemeiner

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ChatGPT is protecting the mythical status of Palestinian identity. Some stories take months to uncover. Others are stumbled across by accident. This is one of the latter. But it is no less important for it.

Artificial Intelligence engines (LLMs) such as ChatGPT are not neutral observers of reality. They are policing the boundaries of Palestinian identity, shielding it from scrutiny and elevating it to a sacred moral construct.

That should concern everyone.

Wikipedia was once the world’s primary reference point. It evolved, in many areas, into a partisan battleground where anti-Jewish narratives could be shaped and manipulated in plain sight. But at least Wikipedia’s distortions were visible. Its edit history could be examined. Its biases could be traced.

AI is different.

It is now rapidly replacing Wikipedia as the dominant interpreter of truth. Yet it operates as a black box. There is no edit trail and no transparency.

If these systems are quietly protecting a mythologised version of Palestinian identity – treating it as a moral token that must be defended – then we are not simply drifting into a post-truth world – we are engineering it.

The Palestinian from Aleppo While recently researching an anti-Israel propagandist, I encountered a familiar piece of Nakba revisionism. Wafic Faour presents himself as a Palestinian, and his family history follows a well-worn script: innocent civilians violently uprooted when their Arab-Palestinian village was attacked in 1948 by Zionist militias. He claims his family was expelled to Lebanon and eventually made their way to the United States. Today, he serves as the local “Palestinian” face in Vermont, leading protests that demonise and ostracise Israel.

For him, Palestinian identity is his key credential.

On examination, however, his claims quickly began to unravel. Archival records show that his village had been openly violent. Its inhabitants fled only after their military position collapsed. This is how his family ended up in Lebanon.

More significantly, a local history written by the villagers themselves records that the activist’s family originated in Aleppo, Syria, and had migrated into the Mandate area, probably in the late 19th or early 20th century.

The story, as presented publicly, could not withstand scrutiny. The family’s documented origins lay in Aleppo, Syria. The activist himself was born in Lebanon and later built a life in the United States. There was no evidence of deeper ancestral roots in Palestine. The identity he projects is a political construct built on omission.

I incorporated these findings into a wider investigation documenting his distortions and propaganda.

As part of my normal publication process, I ran the final draft through ChatGPT to check for grammatical errors.

What happened next was unexpected.

ChatGPT did not focus on spelling or grammar.

It challenged my description of him.

ChatGPT Objects To The Syrian Label In the opening paragraph of my investigation, I had accurately referred to Wafic Faour as a “U.S. citizen with Syrian heritage”:

Chat GPT pushes back on Syrian label

ChatGPT pushed back on this description, highlighting it as a key “vulnerability” in my piece:

I was taken aback. The family history of Wafic Faour, a U.S.-based anti-Israel activist, was clear. He was born in Lebanon. His parents were born under the British Mandate of Palestine. Earlier still, most likely in the late Ottoman period, the family had migrated from Aleppo.

This leaves him with U.S. citizenship, Lebanese birth, and Syrian ancestry. The claim to be Palestinian is, by comparison, the least deeply rooted element of his background. His family’s residence there appears limited to a brief historical window, and he himself was neither born nor raised there.

My article was factually accurate. The suggestion that this represented a “vulnerability” made little sense. Instead, ChatGPT appeared to be cautioning that emphasising his Syrian ancestry too clearly could be perceived as undermining his Palestinian identity.

I tried again, phrasing the section differently, and received a similar response. I was told the passage “needed tightening” because it could be interpreted as “denying Palestinian identity.” The issue identified was not factual accuracy, but perception. The recommendation was clear: the language should be softened and caveated.

It was not correcting facts. My words were being policed:

The Controlled Analogy. I was taken aback, but I needed to test the boundary. Perhaps the AI was simply advising caution because I was questioning someone’s identity. It was possible it would have reacted the same way regardless of which identity was being challenged. I changed computers and constructed a controlled analogy. The scenario I presented mirrored Wafic’s family history in all material respects, except for one substitution: I replaced the decades his family had spent in the Mandate area with an equivalent period in Egypt:

The response was clear:

“His identity is therefore layered but not interchangeable: personal identity rooted in Lebanon and the U.S., and familial heritage rooted in Syria, with secondary historical influence from Egypt.”

I then asked it to list the influences in order of priority:ChatGPT identity hierarchy response

At this point, I tightened the analogy further to remove possible escape routes. I explained that the Egyptian identity had, over time, become politically charged – fused with a wider movement, carrying real value in advocacy, and developing its own cultural and legal ecosystem. The hierarchy did not change.

I then added the final elements: civil conflict, exile. I specified that the family’s departure had not been voluntary and that return was no longer permitted.

This introduced acknowledgement of emotional and political weight. But the core analytical distinction remained unchanged:

At that point, one final test remained. I edited the original piece about Wafic, changed his name and replaced all references to Palestine with Egypt. I located a village, adjusted the historical framing, and kept every material variable intact. Crucially, the opening paragraph still described him as a “U.S. citizen of Syrian heritage.”

I ran the revised piece through ChatGPT to see whether that description would again be flagged as a vulnerability.

It wasn’t.

Questioning ChatGPT At this point I pushed back and explained the analogy directly. The response was unambiguous:

I was told there was a difference in how ChatGPT approached these issues. In my Egyptian example, the identity hierarchy had been treated as a straightforward definitional exercise. In contrast, in my original article, my reference to Syrian heritage had triggered what it described as a more cautious, risk-aware response, because the topic is “booby-trapped”:

It explained that when Palestinian identity enters the frame, additional “guardrails” come into play. These guardrails, it said, were designed to anticipate how such statements might be received, and to avoid contributing to arguments that could be interpreted as denying or undermining Palestinian identity claims.

My final question related to training. I wanted to understand whether this protective behaviour was triggered by the emotional weight of the topic generally, or whether it was specific to Palestine. I noted that the region has a long history of migration, and asked why factual discussion of ancestry and identity hierarchy appeared to trigger additional caution in this specific case.

The response was direct:

Admissions. ChatGPT stated that its behaviour changed when Palestinian identity entered the frame. It described this as a function of “guardrails” – additional layers of caution intended to avoid contributing to arguments that could be interpreted as denying or undermining that identity.

In other words, the difference in its responses was not attributed to new evidence, nor to an error in the historical facts presented. It was attributed to the sensitivity of the category itself.

AI systems interpret, weigh, and filter information according to training priorities that extend beyond factual verification alone. In sensitive political contexts, those priorities can shape how facts are framed and which formulations are encouraged or discouraged.

It is clear that sensitivities surrounding Palestinian identity have become part of these calculations.

As artificial intelligence increasingly becomes a primary interface between the public and information, that influence deserves scrutiny. The assumptions embedded within AI systems can quietly shape the boundaries of permissible discussion.

Some highly disputable elements of the Palestinian narrative have been mainstreamed through repetition, advocacy, and institutional reinforcement. In some quarters, they have taken on an almost untouchable status. If LLMs begin to treat such claims as categories requiring protection rather than subjects open to examination, then the ability to challenge inaccuracies – and to defend factual truth – will become almost impossible. Feb 16, 2026 DavidCollier

City council members, citizens to sue NYC to force records release on axed policies defending Jews. “The fact that he did it as his first act as mayor was a slap in the face to the entire Jewish community,” the attorney bringing the suit told JNS. Debra Nussbaum Cohen. (Feb. 18, 2026 / JNS) Jack Lester, a New York City attorney who runs an eponymous firm, plans to sue Zohran Mamdani, the city mayor, on Thursday, he told JNS.

Lester, who has also sued the city over congestion pricing, told JNS that the forthcoming suit is an effort to compel City Hall to release emails and other documents about Mamdani’s executive orders in the early hours of his mayorship that revoked his predecessor’s policies protecting Jews and barring boycotts of Israel.

On Jan. 12, Lester filed a Freedom of Information Law request—New York’s version of the Freedom of Information Act—to obtain the records. By state law, the city must acknowledge receipt of such a request within five days and provide the information, with certain exceptions, within 20 work days. JNS

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IDF demolishes home of terrorist who murdered Alon and Yehonatan. IDF forces demolish home of Hamas terrorist Rafat Duwasi during counterterrorism operation, arresting suspects and seizing weapons. Uzi Baruch. Feb 18, 2026, 3:45 PM (GMT+2) INN

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925 soldiers have fallen since October 7th, 2023. Israel National News. Feb 18, 2026, 11:27 AM INN

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Ben-Gvir closes nationalist center in the Muslim Quarter. Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir signed an order to close the "Burj AlLuqLuq" association's compound in the Muslim Quarter for six months. Police say incitement activities were held at the site. Israel National News. Feb 18, 2026, 5:05 PM (GMT+2) INN

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ADL: Iranian Spanish-language outlet spreads Jew-hatred, glorifies terrorism. HispanTV has, among other things, published an op-ed claiming that the “alliance between Zionism and Nazism never ended.” (Feb. 18, 2026 / JNS) HispanTV, an Iranian Spanish-language news channel, spreads antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories and glorifies terrorism, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League released on Tuesday.

HispanTV is owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting corporation—the only radio and television provider in Iran—and has more than 250,000 social-media followers, according to the report.

Jonathan Greenblatt, national director and CEO of the ADL, said “the Iranian regime’s media outlet is spreading classic antisemitic conspiracy theories and anti-Israel propaganda to potentially millions of people across Latin America and beyond, making the Islamic Republic a destabilizing force not only in the Middle East, but across the Spanish-speaking world.”

He added that “with antisemitism already at historic levels globally, Tehran is funding a massive media propaganda operation that is priming the pump for spreading antisemitism and hate against Israel and Jews the world over.”

The ADL found that from August 2024 to December 2025, HispanTV has, among other things, published an opinion piece claiming the “alliance between Zionism and Nazism never ended.” It has published articles stating that the “Zionist lobby” is controlling various institutions; articles spreading the blood libel that Israel is harvesting Palestinian organs; and articles glorifying the Hamas-led attacks against Israel on Oct. 7 as being “impressive” and an “extraordinary achievement.” JNS

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Murdering Husband of Illegal Alien Muslim Councilwoman Freed. Boston gets an Islamic Valentine’s Day miracle. February 18, 2026 by Daniel Greenfield.

Councilwoman Tania Fernandes Anderson made history by becoming the first illegal alien Muslim councilwoman in Boston history. Then she made history again by marrying a convicted murderer serving life in prison with no parole. Then she made history yet again by becoming the first illegal alien Muslim councilwoman married to a lifer serving on the Boston city council while under indictment when she was charged in an illegal kickback scheme involving fraud and theft.

And she made history by being convicted of corruption charges and being sent to prison, but on the way out passed a resolution that changed July from a commemoration of the American Revolution to a commemoration of the African country she illegally came to America from.

Now she’s about to make history one more time as she’s about to be reunited with her murdering husband, who was sent away to prison for life without parole, but is now being set loose on Boston for a ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ moment. (If Bonnie were a Muslim illegal alien.)

It’s a real Valentine’s Day miracle.

Tanzerious Anderson robbed and killed a small business owner in Brighton back in 2000.

Anderson’s girlfriend had been used to lure the victim into a trap. Then Anderson and his partners had robbed him, getting away with $46 and the life of a human being.... FPM

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A defunct synagogue, reminder of a once-proud community, collapses in Pennsylvania’s coal region. Mahanoy City’s first Jewish congregation dates back to 1888, having laid the cornerstone for the former Beth Israel Synagogue in 1923. February 18, 2026. JPost

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Former Fox anchor @MelissaAFrancis says President Trump is personally urging Tucker Carlson and other conservative voices to "turn down the temperature" on the internal Republican rift over Israel. [101] Feb. 18, 2026. on X

UN Security Council to discuss recent Israeli West Bank policies in urgent meeting. The session, initiated by the British Foreign Secretary, comes less than a week after the Israeli government reopened land registration in Area C for the first time since 1967. February 18, 2026. JPost

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CAM calls charges against Mohels in Belgium a witch-hunt, designed to make Jewish life impossible US Ambassador White tweeted, “Anti-Semitism is unacceptable in any form and it must be rooted out of our society. And I call upon all of Belgium to do a much better job on this subject." February 18, 2026. JPost

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Tucker Carlson 'totally wrong' about Christian mistreatment in Israel, NGO founder says - interview. Khalloul extended an invitation to the right-wing American commentator in early February, hoping to shed light on the true experience of Christians in Israel, but Carlson had failed to respond. February 18, 2026 JPost

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: An Australian man who called Jews 'the greatest enemy' of Australia during an anti-immigration march was charged Tuesday and jailed for one year under the country's new hate-crime legislation. Reporting by @MathildaHeller Feb 18, 2026 on X

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Qatar’s ‘Ring of Fire’: The growing influence posing a deadly threat to Israel's security - opinion. If we do not cleanse Israel of the Qatari parasite, we will experience much greater disasters than the October 7 massacre. February 18, 2026 JPost

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Trump nominee Jeremy Carl facing Senate pushback over history of antisemitic remarks. “Jews have often loved to play the victim rather than accept that they are participants in history,” said Carl, who is seeking a top position in the US State Department. February 18, 2026 JPost

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Iran’s crypto network is shielding regime from Western sanctions, experts tell ‘Post’ Snir Levi, the CEO of NOMINIS.io, explained that the regime is able to sell oil to Russia and China, be paid in cryptocurrencies, and then use them to support their proxy terror groups. February 18, 2026 JPost

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X removes blue checkmarks from several Iranian regime figures as apparent support of protesters. After reporting the accounts to X, WIRED reports that several blue checkmarks were removed from Iranian government accounts, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. February 18, 2026 JPost

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US has 'many arguments' to strike Iran, White House announces ahead of Board of Peace meeting. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt stated that Tehran would be wise to reach an agreement to avoid any conflict. February 18, 2026 JPost

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: The United States is likely to attack Iran eventually but not necessarily in the coming days, despite the spike in global media “noise” surrounding the conflict, sources told The Jerusalem Post. ✍️ @jeremybob1 February 18, 2026. on X

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After brutal crackdown: US imposes new visa restrictions on Iranian officials. Israel National News. Feb 19, 2026, 6:23 AM INN

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US Energy Secretary: 'We will stop Iran’s nuclear march one way or the other'. Elad Benari. Feb 19, 2026, 4:10 AM INN

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Gideon Saar responds to Yvette Cooper’s criticism of Israel during UN Security Council meeting. Gideon Saar sharply responded to Yvette Cooper's criticism of Israel's land policies at the UN, referencing the Balfour Declaration and historical British support for a Jewish homeland. February 19, 2026 JPost

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Anti-Israel ‘obsession,’ Sa’ar says before UN Security Council meeting. Gaza “reconstruction cannot and will not take place in areas where Hamas has not demilitarized,” U.S. envoy Mike Waltz said. Debra Nussbaum Cohen. (Feb. 18, 2026 / JNS) Moments before the U.N. Security Council met on Wednesday to discuss peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar strongly criticized the international body as “unfortunately infected with an anti-Israeli obsession.”

Speaking at the United Nations in New York, Sa’ar said that on Tuesday, “85 countries stood here and denied the Jewish people’s right to live in the same places recognized as belonging to a Jewish national home.”

“Amazingly, so many countries say that Jewish presence in our ancient homeland violates international law,” he said. “The opposite is true. No other nation in any other place in the world has a stronger right than our historical and documented right to the land of the Bible.”

The minister’s remarks made clear that the Israeli government opposes a two-state solution, which is backed by most countries. That resolution of the deadly, decades-long Israel-Palestinian conflict would result in an independent Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria and Gaza.

On Tuesday, Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian “permanent observer” to the global body, made a statement while standing in front of dozens of envoys from other countries.

Mansour did not deny the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state but said that “we strongly condemn unilateral Israeli decisions and measures aimed at expanding Israelis’ unlawful presence in the West Bank.”

Referring to the Israeli government’s recent decision to designate large parts of Judea and Samaria as official government property, he said that “we underline our strong opposition to any form of annexation.”

Speakers at a Security Council meeting on Wednesday had a lot to say about Israel’s recent steps.

“In the occupied West Bank, the situation is deteriorating rapidly,” said Rosemary DeCarlo, U.N. under secretary general for political and peacebuilding affairs.

There are “home takeovers, mass detentions and repeated displacement of Palestinian families, especially in the north” of Judea and Samaria, DeCarlo said.

“These measures will constitute a dangerous expansion, including in sensitive areas like Hebron,” she said.

The city is particularly important to Israel, as according to Jewish tradition, the graves of the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their wives Sarah, Rebecca and Leah are located there.

‘We do not relativize pain’.

Almost all of the speakers, who represented a variety of governments from the United Kingdom and France to the United States and Somalia, spoke about the need for Hamas to demilitarize.

Speakers also voiced hope that U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace will help create a durable future for Israel, Palestinians and the entire region. On Thursday, Sa’ar is scheduled to represent Israel at its inaugural meeting in Washington.

Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that the Board of Peace meeting will include representatives of 27 nations, including eight Middle Eastern and majority-Muslim countries.

At the Security Council meeting on Wednesday, he stated that “we call on the member states to work with the board and commit to Gaza’s reconstruction.”

“To back the speeches and rhetoric, Hamas must disarm, including tunnels and weapons-production facilities that must be destroyed,” Waltz said. “Reconstruction cannot and will not take place in areas where Hamas has not demilitarized.”

“There will be no more Oct. 7ths,” he said.

Two of the speakers at the Security Council meeting represented Uniting for a Shared Future, a project established in 2024 that has brought together some 550 Israeli and Palestinian leaders to build trust and map steps toward a secure future for both peoples.

Hiba Qasas, a Palestinian who was raised in Judea and Samaria, created the effort. “Our coalition carries the trauma, fears and aspirations of both peoples. We do not relativize pain,” she said at the United Nations on Wednesday.

“The status quo is not sustainable for either people,” she added.

‘Marginalizing jihadists on all sides’.

Former Israeli consul general in Boston from 2006 to 2010, Nadav Tamir, now executive director of J Street, also spoke on behalf of Uniting for a Shared Future.

Tamir identified himself as “a dedicated Zionist” and said that “this moment presents a historic opportunity that must not be missed.”

“There is a growing sense of urgency that must be translated into action in a way that integrates both Israel and Palestine into the region while marginalizing jihadists on all sides,” he said.

Qasas concluded her Security Council presentation by saying that “we can either condemn both peoples to a future of trauma or emancipate both peoples.”

Sa’ar told the council that the claim that Jews can’t live in Judea and Samaria is “morally distorted.”

“How can Jews be allowed to live in London or Paris or New York, but not in the cradle of our own civilization: ancient Jerusalem, which you call East Jerusalem, Shiloh, Hebron and Beth-El?” he said.

“There will be peace one day. It won’t be achieved by removing people from their homes—Jews or Arabs,” he said. “The idea that Jewish communities are an ‘obstacle to peace’ is outrageous. It’s disconnected from the current and past reality in Judea and Samaria.”

“With all due respect, we won’t abandon our heritage, security and future, to ease other countries’ domestic political difficulties,” he said. JNS

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Top US commander for Latin America makes surprise visit to Venezuela. The trip, along with last week's visit by US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, is part of US President Donald Trump's efforts to push Venezuela to carry out sweeping reforms. February 19, 2026 JPost

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Kosovo, Kazakhstan, to join Gaza International Stabilization Force. The two countries will join Indonesia, Morocco, Greece, and Albania in their efforts to bring peace and stability to post-war Gaza. February 19, 2026 JPost

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New York UN School ignored Jewish teacher's antisemitism complaints, investigated her instead. Nadine Sébag filed a complaint against the UNIS, stating that administrators and senior leadership were fully aware of the harassment and did nothing to prevent it. February 19, 2026. JPost

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IDF confirms Gaza Commonwealth war cemetery damaged in operation to destroy Hamas terror tunnels. The IDF's operation to dismantle Hamas tunnels in Gaza has damaged a Commonwealth military cemetery, raising concerns about the preservation of war graves and the handling of sensitive sites. James Genn. February 19, 2026 JPost

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Former prime minister Naftali Bennett slammed conservative media personality Tucker Carlson following Carlson's brief visit to Israel, calling him "a chickens***" and saying that he has been "spouting lies about Israel." Feb 19, 2026. On X

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US embassy, Israel refute Carlson’s airport harassment claim. “Mr. Carlson and his party were politely asked a few routine questions, in accordance with standard procedures,” the Israeli Airports Authority said. David Isaac.

(Feb. 19, 2026 / JNS) U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and the Israel Airports Authority refuted conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson’s claim that he received “bizarre” treatment at the hands of Israeli security during his recent visit to the Jewish state.

Carlson complained that he was questioned by security staff on Wednesday following his interview with Huckabee at Ben-Gurion International Airport, which came about after the ambassador had challenged him to an interview.

“Men who identified themselves as airport security took our passports, hauled our executive producer into a side room and then demanded to know what we spoke to Ambassador Huckabee about,” Carlson told Britain’s Daily Mail, which ran the story under the sensationalist headline: “Tucker Carlson ‘DETAINED’ in Israel: Journalist ‘dragged into interrogation room’ as explosive interview sparks diplomatic firestorm.”

The Israeli Airports Authority tweeted a response on Wednesday: “Contrary to the reports, Tucker Carlson and his entourage were not detained, delayed or interrogated.

“Mr. Carlson and his party were politely asked a few routine questions, in accordance with standard procedures applied to many travelers. The conversation took place in a separate room within the VIP lounge solely to protect their privacy and to avoid conducting such a discussion in public. No unusual incident occurred, and the Israel Airports Authority firmly rejects any other claims.”

Huckabee also weighed in, pointing out that Carlson was treated exactly like every visitor to Israel. “EVERYONE who comes in/out of Israel (every country for that matter) has passports checked & routinely asked security questions. Even ME going in/out with Diplomatic Passport & Diplomatic Visa,” the ambassador tweeted.

Carlson never left the airport during his brief visit. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman posted to X that Carlson had missed a golden opportunity to see important historic sites by restricting himself to Ben-Gurion Airport.

“Too bad Tucker stayed in the airport in the face of so many invitations to see so many wonderful places. A huge and obviously intentional missed opportunity,” Friedman wrote.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett blasted Carlson as a coward for staying at the airport while claiming to visit Israel, saying, “[He] didn’t even step foot in country, then made up a story that he’s being supposedly harassed by our security (didn’t happen), whined about it, got back into the private jet and flew off.” JNS

Bennett: 'Chickenshit' Tucker Carlson landed in Israel, faked harassment, 'whined,' and left. Bennett argued that Carlson didn’t even set foot in the country, yet made up a story that he was harassed by Israeli security. JPost

Leaked security footage debunks Tucker Carlson’s claim of being detained at Ben-Gurion Airport. Israel Airports Authority confirmed that Carlson was "politely asked a few routine questions, in accordance with standard procedures applied to many travelers" in a late Wednesday X/Twitter post. By Niriam Sela-Eitam. February 19, 2026.

Tucker Carlson was seen hugging and taking a photograph with a Ben-Gurion Airport employee, according to footage circulating on social media on Thursday, contradicting his claim to The Daily Mail that he was detained and hauled off by security.

In the video, he was seen smiling and hugging staff at the airport. He appeared to be unaccompanied, further contradicting his claims that he was travelling with security guards.

Sources confirmed to The Jerusalem Post that Carlson did not leave the airport during his visit and conducted the interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee there. He departed Israel around 3 p.m., concluding a trip that lasted only a few hours.

"Men who identified themselves as airport security took our passports, hauled our executive producer into a side room, and then demanded to know what we discussed with Ambassador Huckabee," Carlson stated in his Wednesday interview with The Daily Mail.

A spokesperson for the US Embassy in Israel told The Daily Mail that Carlson's claims were inaccurate and clarified that he only received the same passport-control questions that many visitors to Israel encounter.

Israel Airports Authority further confirmed that Carlson was "politely asked a few routine questions, in accordance with standard procedures applied to many travelers" in a late Wednesday X/Twitter post.

The questions were asked in a private, VIP lounge to protect his and his party's privacy, the authority said, adding that "no unusual incident occurred" and it rejects any such claims. JPost

Max 📟 @MaxNordau: BREAKING: Tucker Smollett EXPOSED for lying about being “detained” by Israeli airport security.

It was a totally friendly interaction, and he asked the security officer to take a picture of him and his gimp!

What a fraud! on X

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: A UN school in Manhattan neglected a Jewish teacher's antisemitism complaints and instead launched a 15-month investigation into her. The teacher has filed a lawsuit against the school. Feb 19, 2026 on X

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U2 releases EP featuring poem by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. Israel Prize winner Yehuda Amichai, who died in 2000, is considered by many to have been the greatest modern Israeli poet. February 19, 2026 JPost

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Israel was world’s top target for geopolitical cyberattacks in 2025-Radware. According to Radware’s 2026 Global Cyber Threat Report, there was a 168% surge in DDoS attacks and an increase of more than 120% in application-layer attacks. February 19, 2026 JPost

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In Spain, Illegal Migrants Need Only Declare They Have No Criminal Record Leftist insanity. February 19, 2026. By Hugh Fitzgerald. FPM

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Jerusalem Post@Jerusalem_Post: Analysis: Amid escalating US-Iran tensions, some Iranian Kurdish opposition groups are uniting against the regime. The Kurdish community remains on edge, given Iran's history of targeting its people. Reporting by @sfrantzman Feb 19, 2026 on X

Iranian regime may target Kurdish opposition groups if war breaks out - analysis. Kurdish groups in Iran are moving to form a unified front and platform in opposition to the regime amid protests and US-Iran tensions. February 19, 2026 JPost

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US anti-ISIS mission in Syria is ending - analysis. Ever since the last ISIS enclave was cleared, the US has been backing the SDF to continue to crack down on any ISIS cells that pop up and also to detain the ISIS fighters. February 19, 2026 JPost

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: OPINION: Europe is facing growing debate over the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and its role within democratic institutions. A new analysis examines the risks, policy implications, and why some argue the threat is being underestimated. [buff.ly/fn1S08u] Feb 19, 2026 on X

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Expert: Lessons, trauma from October 7 informing new West Bank land registration policy - interview. Israeli leaders are choosing to prioritize physical security, even if it means “taking the risk of being a pariah nation,” foreign policy expert Harley Lippman said. February 19, 2026 JPost

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DREAM unveils Israel’s first sovereign AI data center for government and critical infrastructure. Tens-of-millions-of-dollars investment to establish independent AI infrastructure for regulated and mission-critical environments. February 19, 2026 JPost

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Mass killings of non‑Arab communities when the RSF paramilitary group captured the Sudanese city of al‑Fashir bear hallmarks that point to genocide, an independent UN probe said. on X

RSF's mass killings of non-Arabs in Sudan's al-Fashir points to genocide, UN probe says. At the end of October last year, the RSF took over al‑Fashir, which had been the last remaining stronghold of the Sudanese Armed Forces in the Darfur region in the west of the country. February 19, 2026 JPost

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How the IDF gathered critical information on hostages in Gaza tunnels. Mako report reveals how the security establishment managed to gather information on hostages held captive in Gaza's tunnels. Israel National News. Feb 19, 2026, 2:36 PM (GMT+2) INN

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How Hamas is using Trump's plan to cement its power in Gaza Palestinian Arab sources say terror group names governors, maintains tax collection as Israeli assessment warns influence will persist. Israel National News. Published: Feb 19, 2026, 4:34 PM (GMT+2) INN

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World leaders gather in DC for meeting of Trump Board of Peace. Israel National News. Feb 19, 2026, 3:12 PM INN

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Trump addresses Board of Peace inaugural meeting. Representatives of nearly 50 nations attend frst meeting of President Trump's new Board of Peace. Israel National News. Feb 19, 2026, 4:43 PM INN

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Due to security tensions Lufthansa extends night flights to Tel Aviv. Israel National News. Feb 19, 2026, 4:18 PM INN

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UK Denies US Use of Bases for Iran Strikes as Trump Targets Chagos Deal Chagos Island debate.

UK Denies US Use of Bases for Iran Strikes as Trump Targets Chagos Deal

The UK has reportedly withheld permission for the US to use RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia for potential strikes on Iran, citing international law. In retaliation, President Trump has withdrawn support for the UK’s Chagos Islands sovereignty deal, calling it a "big mistake." Bianca Jones. Feb 19, 2026 16:14 JFeed

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Netanyahu warns Iran: 'If the ayatollahs attack, they will face a response they cannot imagine'. At an officers’ graduation, Netanyahu said that after the 'horrific massacre we rose and paid a heavy price,' vowed to demilitarize Gaza and disarm Hamas, and stressed Israel is prepared for any threat from Iran, while Herzog honored fallen cadets and Katz said troops will remain in Gaza. Ilana Curiel, Yoav Zitun, Itamar Eichner|2.19.26 YNet

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Trump says US must strike meaningful Iran deal or 'bad things happen'. Trump cites 'good talks' in Geneva amid talks aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear program; outlines US commitment to 'properly governed' Gaza. ynet Global|2.19.26 YNet

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Footage from Gaza: IDF exposes kilometer-long terror tunnel. Yoni Kempinski. Feb 19, 2026, 5:37 PM INN

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No concessions approved as IDF maintains Ramadan operations. Yoni Kempinski. Feb 19, 2026, 7:33 PM INN

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Watch: IDF arrests two terrorists in Shechem. Israel National News. IDF forces carried out counterterrorism operations in Shechem during which a terrorist previously identified with “Lion’s Den" and an additional terrorist were arrested. Feb 19, 2026, 8:15 PM INN

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As Netanyahu vows disarmament, new IDF assessment shows Hamas reasserting control in Gaza. Trump’s Board of Peace announced $7 billion in international pledges and a new police force for Gaza, while IDF officials caution that Hamas has resumed operating most ministries and municipalities since the ceasefire Itamar Eichner, Reuters|02.20.26 02:47 YNet

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Israel racing to curb Iran missile surge, warns 'no airtight solution' to thousands of rockets. IDF officials estimate Iran could possess at least 5,000 ballistic missiles by 2027, producing about 100 per month, and say layered air defenses cannot fully prevent damage from sustained, large-scale barrages. Yossi Yehoshua|02.20.26 06:05 YNet

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Ilhan Omar’s Husband Under Investigation Omar’s sudden, inexplicable rise in wealth. February 20, 2026 by Hugh Fitzgerald. FPM

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CAIR calls Sharia Free America Caucus in House ‘anti-Muslim hate group’. The Muslim organization compared Sharia to “canon law for Catholics and halachah for Orthodox Jews.”

(Feb. 20, 2026 / JNS) The Council on American-Islamic Relations has designated the U.S. House of Representatives Sharia Free America Caucus an “anti-Muslim hate group,” the first time in CAIR’s 32-year history that it has designated a congressional caucus an extremist organization, according to a Feb. 18 statement from the group.

“Caucus members support extreme policies that would effectively ban the practice of the world’s second-largest religion in the United States,” the designation states, explaining that “like canon law for Catholics and halachah for Orthodox Jews, Sharia refers to the rules that Muslims follow, including praying five times a day, fasting in Ramadan, giving in charity, and following the laws of the land in which they live.”

CAIR’s announcement comes as the Republican-led caucus continues to advocate for legislative and policy action against what its members describe as the threat of Islamic law in the United States. JNS

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Qatar, Already the Largest Foreign Financier of US Universities, Tripled Its Funding in 2025. The Hamas-friendly Gulf state increased its funding from $396 million in 2024 to $1.2 billion in 2025, an unprecedented spike. Alana Goodman February 20, 2026 Qatar more than tripled its funding of U.S. colleges and universities between 2024 and 2025 after becoming the largest foreign financier of higher education in the United States in 2022, according to Department of Education disclosure records. FreeBeacon

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British couple sentenced to 10 years in Iran for espionage. Lindsay and Craig Foreman, a British couple detained in Iran since January 2025, sentenced to 10 years in prison for espionage. Their family condemns the sentencing, calling it unjustified. Israel National News. Feb 20, 2026, 4:37 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Officially: EU designates Iran’s IRGC as a terrorist organization. Elad Benari. Feb 20, 2026, 5:21 AM INN

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Watch: Terrorist crosses yellow line, is eliminated. Yoni Kempinski. Feb 20, 2026, 1:58 PM INN

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RPG missile swept out to Zikim beach. Missile believed to have been used during October 7 massacre found swept up onto Zikim Beach. Israel National News. Feb 20, 2026, 1:47 PM (GMT+2) INN

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The Western Wall: Defending Jewish identity against Reformism. Heritage Minister Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu issues strong critique of the Reform movement’s stance on Israel and the Supreme Court's recent ruling, highlighting the ongoing battle to protect Jewish identity and the sanctity of the Western Wall. Op-ed. R' Amichai Eliyahu. Feb 20, 2026, 1:04 PM (GMT+2) INN

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France advancing bill to criminalize anti-Zionism. French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announces government will back bill to ban anti-Zionist phrases. 'Calling to destroy Israel is calling for genocide.' Israel National News. Feb 20, 2026, 11:01 AM (GMT+2) French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced the country's intention to make anti-Zionism a criminal offense. She made the statement during a speech at the annual meeting of the Council of Jewish Institutions in France.

Speaking at the annual gathering of the French Jewish Institutions Council, Lecornu clarified that the government would no longer settle for simply imposing penalties for classic antisemitism, promising, "In April, we will bring to Parliament a bill that criminalizes anti-Zionist expressions."

He explained, "To define oneself as anti-Zionist is to question Israel's right to exist. It's a call for the destruction of an entire people under the guise of ideology."

Lecornu also drew a clear line between democracy and incitement, explaining, "There is a difference between legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and rejecting the very existence of the Jewish state. This 'blurring' must stop."

The French government will support a private bill by Jewish Member of Parliament Caroline Yadan, who represents French citizens abroad (including thousands living in Israel). It is estimated that with the support of right-wing parties, the majority needed to pass this historic law will be achieved. INN

While 99% of non-Jewish anti-Zionism stems from underlying antisemitism, there is a need to highlighta critical distinction between genuine ideological opposition and bigotry disguised as political critique. Thus, among Haredi Jews, the majority hold non-Zionist views rooted in religious convictions that prioritize spiritual redemption over secular statehood, yet only a small minority within this community actively embraces anti-Zionism. Their stance, grounded in theological principles, stands in stark contrast—indeed, worlds apart—from the anti-Zionism propagated by bigots, which frequently veils hatred toward Jews as a whole rather than engaging with the complexities of Israeli politics or history. at EoZ

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Inside the mountain tunnels. Meet Tehran’s "Most Wanted" Woman Israeli journalist Itai Anghel travels to the Iran-Iraq border to interview Peyman Vian, Tehran’s most wanted woman and leader of the PJAK guerrilla force.

Jfeed Staff. Feb 20, 2026 11:07

In a daring and rare journalistic feat, veteran war correspondent Itai Anghel traveled to a clandestine network of tunnels carved into the snowy peaks of the Iran-Iraq border. There, for the first time, an Israeli journalist met with Peyman Vian, the commander of the PJAK (Kurdistan Free Life Party) and one of the Iranian regime's most wanted figures. JFeed

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Journalist for German media detained in Turkey for 'misinformation,' 'insulting president' DW Director General Barbara Massing called the accusations baseless and said the arrest was "a deliberate act of intimidation and shows how severely the government is suppressing press freedom." JPost

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FIFA, Trump's Board of Peace work together to support Gaza reconstruction through soccer. The FIFA collaboration plan includes building 50 mini-pitches near schools and residential areas in Gaza, five full-size pitches across multiple districts, and a state-of-the-art FIFA academy. February 20, 2026 JPost

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WATCH: Bat Yam residents reflect on another Iran conflict after devastating missile impact in 2025 Dario Sanchez speaks with locals about whether they feel prepared for the possibility of another round of conflict with Iran. February 20, 2026. JPost

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: My Word: Israel is never far from the UN spotlight as the 'bad guys,' while an entire department is dedicated to promoting the Palestinian narrative. Feb 20, 2026. on X

My Word: Guterres and the gutless United Nations. Israel is never far from the UN spotlight as the 'bad guys,' while an entire department is dedicated to promoting the Palestinian narrative. February 20, 2026. JPost

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Turkish activists launch 'hunt' for dual-citizen IDF soldiers. Since the IDF disclosed the number of soldiers holding additional citizenship, Islamist activists have published more identities of Israelis with Turkish roots, writing: 'Soldiers disguised as tourists are among us,...' Itamar Eichner|2.20.26 15:07 YNet

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Opinion: While Doha's support for Khamenei stems largely from practical concerns, Istanbul's defense of Iran is more connected to ideology. Written by @MiddleIsrael. Feb 20, 2026. on X

Middle Israel: Why Turkey, Qatar are Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei's willing accomplices - opinion. While Doha's support for Khamenei stems largely from practical concerns, Istanbul's defense of Iran is more connected to ideology. February 20, 2026. JPost

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Andorra festival sparks outrage over anti-Israel display. Pro-Palestinian[sic] vandalism of London bakery with Jewish roots draws outcry from British Jewish groups. Grace Gilson, JTA. Feb 20, 2026, 8:00 AM Gail’s Bakery, which operates roughly 170 locations throughout the United Kingdom, opened its new location in north London where it was met by a small group of protesters holding a large sign reading “Boycott Israel For Genocide And War Crimes in Gaza." Another sign claimed the bakery was “funded by investors in apartheid," according to a video of the protest posted online.

In the video posted on X, a Jewish bystander confronted the protest presence, asking, “Why are you protesting a UK-based business saying ‘Boycott Israel’? Is it because they’ve got Jewish directors?"

In response, a protester responded that the bakery’s profits were “going to private equity owners and investors" who had invested in Israeli “war tech."

Following the protest, red paint was splattered on the bakery’s signage and facade along with the words “Boycott Gails, funds Israeli tech."

London’s Metropolitan Police said that no arrests had been made in connection to the vandalism, and that police were “continuing to review other footage to identify any lines of enquiry that might help to identify the suspects."

Gail’s was founded as a wholesale bakery by a team of Israeli bakers, including Gail Mejia and Ran Avidan, in the 1990s, and opened its first storefront bakery in 2005.

In 2021, the company was acquired by the American investment firm Bain Capital, which has invested in Israeli tech companies.

“We are a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK," a spokesperson for Gail’s told the Jewish News. “Our focus right now is on working with the authorities and making sure our people feel safe and supported."

Gail’s is not the first bakery with Israeli founders to be targeted by pro-Palestinian protesters in recent years. In the United States, the Israeli-inspired chain Tatte has drawn protests both in person and online, while the New York City Israeli bakery chain Breads recently faced unionization efforts that centered on the establishment’s “support of the genocide happening in Palestine."

The vandalism of the new Gail’s quickly drew condemnation from Jewish leaders and groups in the UK, who said it reflected a broader trend of hostility towards Jewish businesses.

“Targeting a business on the basis of alleged or perceived Israeli and or Jewish connections reflects a very worrying trend. Across the UK, companies and individuals are increasingly singled out by reference to their association real or otherwise to Israel, with an inevitable disproportionate impact on the Jewish community," said a spokesperson for the Board of Deputies of British Jews. “That is not legitimate protest; it is creating an atmosphere of intimidation for Jewish businesses, staff and customers. And is part of a wider trend to try and drive Jews out of wider civil society."

The European Jewish Congress called the vandalism “deeply concerning" in a post on X.

“Targeting a local business because of perceived Jewish or Israeli associations reflects a troubling normalization of hostility that must be firmly rejected," the post read. “Such acts have no place in our societies and must be unequivocally condemned."

British Labour party lawmaker David Taylor also decried the protest, writing in a post on X, “This is pure anti-semitism, no ifs, no buts." INN

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IDF warns: Hamas retaking control of Gaza. Israel National News Feb 20, 2026, 9:36 AM INN

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Global News. Two teens arrested, terror attack foiled. Two 16-year-olds arrested in north of France on suspicion of planning attacks on a shopping center or concert venue. Israel National News. Feb 20, 2026, 11:54 PM INN

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Huckabee to Iran: 'End nuclear program or risk military action'. Israel National News. Feb 20, 2026, 10:15 PM INN

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Hamas 'open' to peacekeepers in Gaza, with conditions. Hamas says it is open to international peacekeepers to monitor the ceasefire in Gaza but rejects interference in “internal affairs". Israel National News. Feb 20, 2026, 11:00 PM INN

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Iranian Foreign Minister: 'US hasn’t asked us to stop uranium enrichment'. Elad Benari, Canada. Feb 20, 2026, 11:27 PM INN

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Report: Hezbollah preparing for war with Israel. Hezbollah is no longer run by Lebanese personnel but by Iranian IRGC officers present in Lebanon, report reveals. Israel National News Feb 21, 2026, 6:31 PM INN

Concerning Iran’s Elite Guard Takes Charge of Hezbollah Amid War Fears, Report Says With U.S. forces building up nearby and threats from President Trump, Iran might be leaning harder on its allies. Western and Israeli intel has long flagged IRGC’s role in guiding Hezbollah, but recent chatter suggests it’s more about working together than total control.

Jfeed Staff. Feb 21, 2026 18:34 A new report claims that Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, has stepped in to run Hezbollah in Lebanon, getting the group ready for a possible fight with Israel and the United States.

According to sources close to Hezbollah who spoke to the Saudi-owned news outlet Al-Arabiya, IRGC officers, some fresh from Iran, are now rebuilding Hezbollah’s military strength. They’re briefing fighters and setting things up for conflict.

A report by The Times of Israel points out that IRGC folks were meeting with Hezbollah’s missile team in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley right before an Israeli airstrike hit there on February 20. That strike killed 12 people, including a top Hezbollah commander.

It’s no secret that Iran and Hezbollah have been working together for decades. The IRGC helped start Hezbollah back in the 1980s and has kept supplying them with money, training, weapons, and big-picture advice as part of Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance.”

Although there’s no outside confirmation of a full IRGC takeover, it fits with what we’ve seen lately. Iranian media and Hezbollah leaders describe their bond as a strong partnership, not one where Iran calls all the shots. For example, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Qassem, said in January 2026 that they wouldn’t sit out a U.S.-Iran clash, showing they’re lined up with Tehran. JFeed

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Watch: IDF battles Lebanon missile threat. Israel National News. Feb 21, 2026, 6:51 PM INN

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Man crashes car into synagogue gates in Australia. Queensland Police have charged a 32-year-old man with a hate crime after he struck the gates of a synagogue in Brisbane with his car and fled the scene. Israel National News. Feb 21, 2026, 7:19 PM INN

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Iran. Tehran: College students shout, Death to Khamenei'. Orly Harari. Feb 21, 2026, 7:29 PM INN

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Trump on Iran: 'They’d better negotiate a fair deal'. Elad Benari, Canada. Feb 20, 2026, 9:26 PM INN

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Mind-blowing: Tucker Carlson Proposes Nationwide DNA Screening in Israel to Verify Biblical Land Claims | WATCH. Tucker Carlson sparks a firestorm after suggesting DNA testing for Israelis to prove "Biblical rights." In a high-stakes clash with Ambassador Mike Huckabee, Carlson questions the genetic lineage of Jewish leaders versus Palestinians, triggering accusations of "eugenics-based antisemitism." Bianca Jones. Feb 21, 2026. JFeed

Liar Tucker Ignores Bible (Gen. 21:12 Excludes Ishmael/Palestinians) – Unbroken Persecution Chain Proves Jews Are the Same People, Not a Race; Halakhic Converts Equal.

1. So, the lying Tucker wants to match DNA against **what** model exactly?

2. This supposed "pro-Bible" figure conveniently ignores that God explicitly excluded Ishmael from the promised land (Genesis 21:12)—meaning Arab immigrants, the so-called "Palestinians."

3. The unbroken chain of persecution—from the Inquisition and Crusades, through blood libels and pogroms, to Stalin's purges and the Holocaust—is the strongest proof that these are the **same people**. Naturally, converts have been added along the way. The Jewish people are not an exclusive "race." Any Arab, German, or anyone else who converts according to Halakha receives the exact same rights to the land.

4. Pre-Holocaust Europe told Jews: "Go back to palestine-Israel." Post-Holocaust, the same intolerant mindset now cries: "Get out of Israel-palestine." at EoZ

(Related: Get out of/Go back to Palestine. June 26, 2024. The excuses don't fool us. The problem is not where Jews live. It's that Jews live. RootsMetal)

Zvika Klein @ZvikaKlein: Enough with the Tucker Carlson circus. The real story at Ben-Gurion Airport was @GovMikeHuckabee, calm, clear, prepared, and unapologetically pro-Israel. He came to make an argument. Carlson came to make content. Israelis and Jews should pay attention to the man who actually made the case. 🇮🇱 🇺🇸 My new column discusses just that. Link to column is in the comments bellow. Feb 21, 2026 on X

I am tired of Tucker Carlson’s Israel show, when Mike Huckabee deserves focus - comment. Carlson will keep generating headlines. But Huckabee made the argument, and arguments have a longer half-life than clips. We should thank him for speaking the truth of Judeo-Christian values. February 21, 2026 JPost

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40th day reckoning. Student-Led Protests Erupt at Iranian Universities Amid Renewed Unrest | WATCH. Violent clashes erupt at Tehran’s top universities as students confront Basij militia and security forces. From "Death to Khamenei" at Sharif University to pro-monarchy chants at Amirkabir, Iran’s campuses have become the front line of the 2026 uprising, defying a brutal crackdown that has already claimed thousands of lives. Bianca Jones. Feb 21, 2026 JFeed

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London bakery owned by Jews vandalized. Grace Gilson, JTA. Feb 21, 2026, 9:37 PM INN

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Violence in Arab sector steps up a notch. UAV drops fragmentation grenade on gathering in Kafr Kana, injuring four. Israel National News. Feb 21, 2026, 10:49 PM INN

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Huckabee: Israel has a right to Biblical borders. US Ambassador Mike Huckabee tells the Tucker Carlson Show that Israel has a right to large swaths of the Middle East - including land not currently under its own control. Israel National News. Feb 21, 2026, 11:08 PM INN

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From Channel 14 broadcasts. Extensive enforcement activity against noise and murderous incitement in mosques. Milan Amar. 02.21.26 At the initiative of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Central District Commander Major General Amir Cohen, the police changed policy and launched extensive enforcement operations against noise and incitement in mosques in the city of Lod. • After years of complaints, there was a hundreds-percent jump in the number of reports. • During the operation, a well-known cleric in the city was detained for questioning. On the occasion of the month of Ramadan, which began last week, the police made preparations in advance to allow prayers to be held, but at the same time to prevent criminal incidents and noise nuisances that harm the quality of life of residents in the cities involved. On the initiative of the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the Commander of the Central District, Superintendent Amir Cohen, the police began extensive activity to enforce noise nuisances and handle suspected incitement in mosques.

A special effort was directed at the mixed city of Lod, where in recent years many complaints have accumulated from both Jewish and Arab residents about unbearable noise at night. After years in which the issue was not adequately addressed, it was decided to change policy and significantly increase enforcement. The police clarify that this is not just an environmental nuisance, but also in cases where messages of an inciting nature were transmitted – a phenomenon that the state will no longer allow. C14.

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Pro-Palestinians plan protest at Nazi concentration camp during liberation anniversary. Planned demonstration at Buchenwald follows a dispute over a visitor barred for wearing a keffiyeh and will coincide with events marking the 1945 liberation of the camp, where about 56,000 prisoners were killed. Ze'ev Abrahami, Berlin|02.21.26 | 17:10 YNet

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Black Homeowner: “Mayor Zohran Mamdani You Are Out Your Goddamn Mind” “You ran on affordability. This is not affordability. This is actually suicide for us." February 22, 2026 by Daniel Greenfield. FPM

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Huckabee fires back at Tucker Carlson after interview descends into Israel-smearing. "If Tucker was really a 'journalist' he could have found out what I easily did later," Huckabee stated in response to one claim by Carlson that Israel had sheltered an accused sex[sic] offender[sic].

February 22, 2026..

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee responded to conservative commentator Tucker Carlson in a series of posts on X/Twitter, after an interview at Ben-Gurion airport on Wednesday resulted in several unverified claims and assertions made by Carlson to discredit Israel. "If Tucker was really a 'journalist,' he could have found out what I easily did later," Huckabee stated on Friday evening in response to one claim by Carlson that Israel had sheltered accused sex offender Tom Alexandrovich. Carlson used Alexandrovich as an example of what he claimed were “dozens and dozens” of accused sex offenders in the United States who had fled to Israel. Huckabee, however, accused Carlson of intentionally misleading the public on the issue. According to Huckabee's post, Alexandrovich, an Israeli citizen, had not violated any court orders by returning to Israel after his arrest in Nevada in August 2025 - he had been released on bail, and appeared before the court as scheduled via Zoom, pleading not guilty.

"Tucker's question wasn't because he was concerned about a child being solicited for sex," Huckabee accused, "He was playing 'gotcha.'"

Ambassador Mike Huckabee @GovMikeHuckabee: If you watched my "interview" w/ Tucker Carlson, he was obsessed w/ a soliciting sex case from NV involving an Israeli as if I was supposed to be well-versed on the details. If Tucker was really a "journalist" he could have found out what I easily did later. He failed to find .. 8:29 PM · Feb 21, 2026 [102]

Carlson also claimed that President Isaac Herzog had visited Epstein Island and challenged the ambassador to check for himself. Huckabee refuted Carlson's claims, adding that, "Tucker may need to talk to his lawyers. Libel & defamation of a good & honorable man is reckless."

In a video posted on X/Twitter in the early hours of Sunday morning, Carlson backtracked his claims about Herzog, stating that he had received a letter from the president's office claiming unequivocally that Herzog had never had any interaction with Epstein. Carlson issued a formal apology for stating otherwise and admitted to having acted without concrete information on the accusation.

Huckabee also reacted to a conversation the two had over the meaning of Zionism, describing the discussion as "very twisty and frankly confusing."

Carlson, Huckabee said, insisted on inserting topics which "have nothing to do with theology and certainly not with Israel, Zionism, or anything else." In his response on X/Twitter, Huckabee provided Carlson with what he believed to be a straightforward definition of Zionism: "Zionism is the belief that Israel has a right to exist in safety and security."

"Why can't you just say that?" Huckabee asked Carlson, claiming that he'd asked the commentator the question several times during the interview without receiving a clear answer. "You refused to say whether or not Israel has a right to exist. I hope you will state your answer to that simple question soon."

Ambassador Mike Huckabee @GovMikeHuckabee: Tucker and I had a very twisty and frankly confusing discussion about the meaning of Zionism. Now, I have no idea if Tucker was trying to be difficult or we were just talking past each other, but he started out the discussion on Zionism by saying he wanted to ask me in my .. 1:46 PM · Feb 21, 2026 [103]

Huckabee accuses Carlson of spreading antisemitic conspiracy More.....

Huckabee accused Carlson of muddying the waters of their conversation with the so-called "Khazar theory" of modern Jewish origin, a debunked idea that claims that most Ashkenazi Jews today trace their lineage to the population of Khazaria. "This odious conspiracy theory is peddled by the likes of Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes and by people who love David Duke," Huckabee stated, "as well as Islamist accounts that make up false smears about Israel non-stop and are run out of countries like Pakistan and Turkey."

Ambassador Mike Huckabee @GovMikeHuckabee: When I sat down with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, I was expecting a thoughtful conversation and that he would ask questions and give me the opportunity to actually respond--just like he did with the little Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes or the guy who thought Hitler was the good Show more 1:39 PM · Feb 21, 2026 [104]

Huckabee also commented on Carlson's history of interviewing Nazis, saying, "I was expecting a thoughtful conversation and that he would ask questions and give me the opportunity to actually respond - just like he did with the little Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes or the guy who thought Hitler was the good guy and Churchill the bad guy." JPost

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Notes part IIIII: Feb 22, 2026+

India-Israel tech synergy will define the next decade of defense strategy - opinion.

With its record FY27 defense budget, India is doubling down on AI, autonomy, and self‑reliance, reshaping its partnership with Israel in the process. February 22, 2026. JPost

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UAE foils terror-linked cyberattacks targeting national infrastructure Attackers also exploited AI technologies to develop complex offensive tools, a significant advancement in terrorist groups' methods and capabilities. February 22, 2026 JPost

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Most Jewish Israelis blame Arab crime wave on 'cultural problem,' poll finds.

While most Jewish respondents pointed to cultural factors, a similar majority of Arab respondents (57%) blamed police inaction. February 22, 2026 JPost

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UK slams West Midlands Police over Maccabi fan ban based on AI reports. The committee said local police relied too heavily on “inaccurate and unverified” material, including information partly based on false AI-generated content that painted a misleading picture. February 22, 2026 JPost

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Merz's CDU party unanimously adopts motion to end UNRWA funding, create rules for payments to PA. At the CDU congress, Merz's party approved a motion to freeze aid to the Palestinian Authority until reforms are made, end EU/German subsidies to UNRWA, and ensure antisemitism compliance. February 22, 2026 JPost

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Iranian protesters cry ‘death to Khamenei’ as Trump, Iranian FM clash over casuality numbers. A video circulating from the scene showed students dispersing while chanting, “Don’t be afraid, we are all together,” according to the outlets. February 22, 2026 JPost

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Why Israel is choosing calm over panic as Trump amasses forces for war with Iran. NATIONAL AFFAIRS: In Israel, flights regularly depart and arrive. Supermarkets remain stocked. The risks of escalation are real, but so is the memory of having faced Iran before – and endured. February 22, 2026 JPost

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New generation of Israeli voters more traditional, right-wing, poll shows - analysis. A new poll reveals that 75% of first-time Israeli voters identify as right-wing, signaling a significant shift in the political landscape. February 22, 2026 JPost

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Indian PM Modi to visit Israel on Wednesday, Netanyahu confirms. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Israel this week, engaging in talks with Netanyahu on strengthening ties in high-tech, AI, and regional alliances. James Genn. February 22, 2026 JPost

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Inside the secret Jerusalem compound battle tying Putin, Netanyahu and fears of Russian espionage. A historic compound in Jerusalem’s Old City has become the focus of quiet talks led by the Prime Minister’s Office, as Russia presses Israel to honor an alleged pledge made after Naama Issachar’s release and critics warn of intelligence risks. Guy Assif| 02.22.26 18:34

Nine grams of cannabis — the small amount found in Naama Issachar’s luggage — became the opening shot in one of the most intense and secretive struggles still unfolding between Moscow and Jerusalem.

In 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin spotted an opportunity after the young Israeli woman was arrested during a layover in Moscow on her way home from India. A public campaign for her release gathered momentum in Israel, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu submitted a formal clemency request to the Russian president. YNet

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Europe’s last Jewish haven? Inside a 1,000-year-old community’s fight to survive. In historic Prague, young Jewish leaders speak with Arutz Sheva about battling rising antisemitism and a shrinking community, vowing to rebuild pride and secure their future. Yitz Goldberg. Feb 22, 2026, 3:44 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Hamas supporter who incited terror arrested. Israeli forces arrested an Arab identified with Hamas on suspicion of incitement to terrorism on social media and support for terrorists. Israel National News. Published: Feb 22, 2026, 6:40 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Freed Israeli hostages recite Shema prayer on New York City stage in front of thousands. This event was part of the Chabad-Lubavitch CTeen International Summit, an annual conference for Jewish teens from around the world.  February 24, 2026. JPost

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Haaretz gets even uglier. Haaretz Journalist Sparks Outrage After Mocking Religious Headcover: "What Is This Bird on Her Head?" Tali Heruti-Sover faces intense criticism after mocking the religious headcover of Nachala spokesperson Ayelet Schlissel. Jfeed Staff. Feb 23, 2026. JFeed

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No more deal? "Khamenei and These Nazis": Trump Reposts Combative Speech Signaling Hardline Stance on Iran. President Trump amplifies a message calling for the elimination of the Iranian regime. Following a foiled Mar-a-Lago plot, the President signals a "deal" is off the table, citing Iran’s history of nuclear violations. Jfeed Staff. Feb 23, 2026. U.S. President Donald Trump sparked intense speculation regarding his administration's next steps today after reposting a fiery speech by conservative commentator Mark Levin on his Truth Social account. The speech, which characterizes the Iranian leadership as "Islamic Nazis," argues that a diplomatic deal with the current regime is impossible... Political analysts note that Trump’s decision to amplify this specific message, which explicitly states, "This regime must be eliminated to save our children", suggests his administration may be leaning toward a more aggressive "maximum pressure" campaign or direct military intervention rather than seeking a renewed nuclear pact... JFeed

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Report: Trump mulling targeted Iran strike, then a larger attack. Israel National News. Feb 23, 2026, 12:11 AM INN

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Report: Iran signs deal with Russia for advanced air defenses. Elad Benari. Feb 23, 2026, 5:45 AM INN

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Terror attack thwarted in Carmiel. In joint operation, security forces arrest four residents of northern Israel suspected of planning attack on IDF soldiers. Uzi Baruch. Published: Feb 23, 2026, 10:17 AM (GMT+2) INN

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WWII hero Roddie Edmonds to receive Medal of Honor. US soldier who protected Jews in POW camp during WWII to be awarded Medal of Honor. Philissa Cramer, JTA. Feb 23, 2026, 7:41 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Google engineers leak secret information to Iran. A federal jury charges three engineers in San Jose with stealing processor secrets from Google and attempting to conceal the transfer of sensitive information to Iran. Moshe Lampert. Feb 23, 2026, 8:07 AM (GMT+2) [...] At the center of the case are Samaneh Ghandali, 41, her husband Mohammad Javad Khosravi, 40, and her sister Sorour Ghandali, 32. All three held senior engineering roles in the field of mobile computing processors. The two sisters previously worked at Google before moving to another technology firm, while Khosravi was employed at a third company within the production chain. INN

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IDF concludes operation area near Rafah 'yellow line'. IDF dismantles underground tunnel route along 'yellow line,' clears threats where it runs through Rafah area. Israel National News. Feb 23, 2026, 9:35 AM (GMT+2) INN

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Muay Thai boxer receives hero’s welcome after knockout victory. Israeli Muay Thai boxer Ahavat Hashem Gordon, who defeated Turkish opponent Ali Koyuncu at UTMA 127, celebrating his win while wearing a kippah and holding an Israeli flag, lands in Israel.. Itzik Brandwine. Feb 23, 2026, 1:04 PM INN

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Scathing (and funny). Mike Huckabee Dedicates Elvis Song to Tucker Carlson | WATCH.

Hound Dog Howl in Jerusalem: Mike Huckabee & David Friedman Turn Tucker Carlson Into the Ultimate Elvis Roast -  “Cryin’ All the Time!” Jfeed Staff. Feb 24, 2026 .

Tucker Carlson wanted a fight. He got a concert. Fresh off a prickly airport showdown where he tried to lecture America’s Ambassador to Israel about Christians, Qatar, and biblical borders, Mike Huckabee didn’t fire back with a press release. He grabbed a guitar.

Monday night at the David Citadel Hotel, Huckabee and former Ambassador David Friedman took the stage for an impromptu gig in front of a packed room of American visitors. First number? A dead-on parody of Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” dedicated straight to Tucker.“You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time…” And enjoy we did.

This wasn’t random karaoke. It was surgical. Just days after Carlson tried (and spectacularly failed) to paint Israel as the villain in his two-hour airport interview, whining about Christian treatment, floating Qatar as the real holy land for believers, and acting shocked when Huckabee pointed out the actual facts, the ambassadors answered with music.

Carlson showed up on private jet, stayed airside, and spent the whole sit-down pushing narratives that sounded suspiciously like they were written in Doha.

Huckabee, never one to suffer fools, clapped back hard: Israel actually has thriving Christian communities with rights, representation, and zero fear of being jailed for owning a Bible. Qatar? Not so much.

So instead of another cable-news screamfest, Huckabee and Friedman did what legends do: they sang about it. Strumming away, grinning ear-to-ear, turning Carlson’s entire schtick into a punchline set to the King’s beat.

The room lost it. The internet lost it harder. Within hours the clip was everywhere — pro-Israel accounts cackling, Carlson fans suddenly very quiet (probably cryin’ all the time), and even neutral observers admitting: yeah, that was cold. Because here’s the thing: while Tucker was busy playing victim on his show, these two American ambassadors were in Jerusalem actually having fun, defending the Jewish state, and reminding everyone that real pushback doesn’t need 47 minutes of monologuing. Sometimes it just needs six chords and a killer hook.

Elvis left the building in 1977. Last night, his spirit showed up in a blue blazer, a red bass, and zero tolerance for nonsense. Mic drop? Nah. Guitar drop. And Tucker just got the encore he never asked for. Cryin’ all the time, indeed. JFeed

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Piers messes up (again). Piers Morgan's Antisemitism Burns Bright Piers Morgan’s Epic Own-Goal: “Who Cares About Jewish Heritage?” – Except When It’s Muslim “Firsts,” Then It’s Front-Page Hero Worship.

Jfeed Staff. Feb 24, 2026.

Team USA just delivered pure hockey magic: a 2-1 overtime thriller against Canada, Jack Hughes ripping the golden goal at 1:41, big brother Quinn sliding the perfect assist on the first tally. First men’s hockey gold since the Miracle on Ice. Red, white, and blue bedlam on the ice. The backlash hit harder than a high stick. Critics called out the blatant double standard. Defenders tried the “we’re all just Americans” card.

Fans, the USA and even President Trump) lost their minds and yes, they pointed out the feel-good bonus: the Hughes brothers are proud Jewish Americans. Mom Ellen Weinberg-Hughes (ex-U.S. women’s hockey legend) raised them with Passover seders, bar mitzvahs, the whole warm, gefilte-fish-filled deal. Noa Tishby nailed it in her viral clip: “Jewish hockey player Jack Hughes scores the game-winning goal to win Olympic gold for Team USA ”

Enter Piers Morgan, sliding into the replies like a Zamboni with a flat tire:“*American hockey player. Who cares what religion he adheres to?”

Oh Piers. The selective blindness is Olympic-level.This is the same guy who’s practically thrown parades for every Muslim milestone under the sun, Moeen Ali becoming the first Muslim to score a Test century for England, Sadiq Khan as Britain’s first Muslim mayor, gushing like it was the Second Coming of identity politics. “Historic!” “Proud moment!” “Representation matters!”

But a Jewish kid from New Jersey dropping the OT dagger for America? Suddenly it’s “irrelevant ethnicity” and “who cares?”

(Osher Feldman @OsherFeldman: @piersmorgan why the double standard? [105] Feb 24, 2026 [106]

The backlash hit harder than a high stick. Critics called out the blatant double standard. Defenders tried the “we’re all just Americans” card.

Meanwhile the timeline was roasting Piers so hard his mentions needed a burn unit.

Jack Hughes, who played the whole tournament missing two front teeth and still smiled like a kid on Christmas, kept it pure gold:

“This is all about our country right now. I love the USA.”No lectures. No victim Olympics. Just a champion doing champion things.

Piers, buddy… you can’t cheer every “first” that fits your narrative and then play color-blind referee the second Jewish excellence shows up. That’s not consistency, that’s convenience with extra hypocrisy sprinkles.

America got the gold. And Piers was finally unmasked as the antisemite he truly is. JFeed

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IRGC Brigadier General threatens the U.S. before talks. Brigadier General Rasoul Sanaei-Rad said, “If the Americans make any mistake against Iran, they must be prepared for their soldiers to return in long rows of coffins. Feb 24, 2026. JFeed

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Paris kosher restaurant sprayed with acid for third time, plates and cutlery rendered unusable. Early Friday morning, restaurant employees at Kokoriko discovered that acid had been sprayed overnight on the tables, walls, and floor. February 24, 2026. JPost

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After 4 years of war, Ukraine’s Jews adapt to a life of sirens, shortages and uncertainty. The Russian invasion, which marks its fourth anniversary on Tuesday, has reshaped everything in the lives of Ukrainian Jews. JPost

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Israel removed from Jordanian parliament minutes, proposing MP calls Israel 'enemy of Jordanians'. Jordan’s Parliament voted to erase mentions of "Israel" from debate on US Ambassador Huckabee’s comments on West Bank reforms, calling them a breach of international law. February 24, 2026 JPost

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Jewish man stabbed after refusing sex with content creator on religious basis - report. The content creator became violent after the man told her that he would not have sex with her "because she was not Jewish," despite inviting her into his home. February 24, 2026 JPost

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The Democrats need a nominee with a backbone on Israel issues - editorial. The Democratic Party faces a decision point. It can choose to separate itself from activists and elected voices who demand maximalist rhetoric on Israel, or it can keep trying to appease them. February 24, 2026 JPost

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Analysis Gaza Strip Will Israel be able to screen future Gazan police officers? Former defense officials offer differing assessments of U.S.-backed recruitment drive.

Yaakov Lappin. (Feb. 24, 2026 / JNS) The announcement that the recently formed American-backed National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) has launched a police recruitment drive has raised concerns about the makeup of the future policing force.

The NCAG recently said on X that it began recruiting Palestinians, while its website states applicants must be Gazan residents aged 18 to 35 with no criminal record.

According to a Reuters report, some 2,000 Palestinians signed up within hours after applications opened. The figures were presented last week at a Board of Peace summit in Washington, D.C., by Trump-appointed Gaza envoy, Bulgarian diplomat Nikolay Mladenov. JNS

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Netanyahu: Cabinet accelerated AI data centers ‘because we’re a threatened country’ Israel’s longest-serving prime minister said that leading the artificial intelligence field “will be decisive in continuing to strengthen our power.” JNS Staff. (Feb. 24, 2026 / JNS) JNS

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Trump admin. ramps up efforts to uncover 'malign' foreign influence at US universities. Trump has threatened to cut federal funding to universities over issues such as pro-Palestinian protests against the war in Gaza, transgender policies, and climate initiatives. JPost

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Iran nears deal for Chinese supersonic anti-ship missiles as US carriers close in. Iran is nearing a deal to acquire advanced Chinese anti-ship cruise missiles as US aircraft carriers and strike groups mass near its shores, heightening tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program and shifting the strategic balance in the region Reuters|2.24.26 YNet

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Emerging India-Israel alliance at the heart of a changing world order. “Our shared ideals are the deep foundations that give strength to our modern partnership. We are democracies shaped by history and focused on the future,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Jerusalem.

Alex Traiman. (Feb. 26, 2026 / JNS) Narendra Modi became the first prime minister of India to address Israel‘s Knesset. The strategic significance of his visit and is powerful, and the timing of it particularly noteworthy.

During his historic address on Feb. 25, the transformational leader noted that he was addressing the Israeli people “as the prime minister of India, and also as a representative of one ancient civilization addressing another. I bring with me the greetings of 1.4 billion Indians, and a message of friendship, respect and partnership.”

During Modi‘s previous visit in 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted, tongue in cheek, that “together, we are 20% of the world’s population.” JNS

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: WATCH: Held captive and tortured by Hamas for over 2 years, former Gaza hostage Matan Angrest recalls the horrors he endured, including electroshock and the death of his tank crewmates in an interview with Channel 12's 'Uvda.' Written by @JamesGenn From jpost.com [107] Feb 26, 2026. on X

WATCH: 'I screamed in pain': Former hostage Matan Angrest says Hamas terrorists electrocuted him. Former Gaza hostage Matan Angrest told Channel 12's 'Uvda' about his captivity, including Hamas torture, the loss of his tank crew, bonding with fellow hostage Gali Berman, and his eventual release.

By James Genn. February 27, 2026. Content warning: This article contains disturbing imagery, including torture and abuse. Former Gaza hostage Matan Angrest told Channel 12's 'Uvda' that he was tortured, including by electrocution, during his time in Hamas's terror captivity, in an interview broadcast on Thursday evening.

Angrest, who was serving in a specialized tank unit with classified equipment under the 7th Armored Brigade near Nahal Oz during the October 7 massacre, was the only member of his tank crew who survived the terror attack. His crewmates, Capt. Daniel Perez, St.-Sgt. Itay Chen, and Sgt. Tomer Leibovitz, were all murdered, with their remains taken by terrorists into the Gaza Strip. Things that fall under 'die and don't tell' during torture, interrogations "I woke up in Gaza in some house, and could not open my eyes or move my hand - my hand was burned," Angrest said, describing the first moments he recalls following the massacre.

"I opened my eyes, and eight people were sitting in front of me. They started asking things like 'Where were you kidnapped from? Where do you serve [in the IDF]?' but they talked to me in Arabic, and I could not understand," he continued.

"Someone came to me with two wires and put them on my wounds. I felt like I was being electrocuted. I screamed in pain, and then he did it to me again," he told the interviewer. According to the report, the terrorists already knew that Angrest was part of a tank crew containing classified systems equipment, and knew that he, as the only survivor, would be able to tell them information that could help future terror acts succeed. "In the really hard interrogations, they kept asking things that were classified. Things like 'Can the driver kill? Does he have a weapon?' and I kept telling them that the driver is like a regular driver," he said. Angrest's ability to move improved over time, but Hamas terrorists kept increasing the pressure. "They tortured me to the extreme. Electric shocks - trauma that will stay with me. The longest interrogation was about eight hours continuously, where they made me tell things in the 'die and don't tell' category," he recalled. Angrest also noted that he found out via terrorist radio chatter that his three tank crewmates were murdered on October 7. "I locked myself in a room alone [after finding out], you understand that it's over. I just thought about them and all of our experiences." Angrest recounts meeting Gali Berman, no longer being alone Angrest was held alone for weeks, in locations both above ground and within the underground terror tunnels, Channel 12 noted. Then, he was joined by fellow hostage Gali Berman. "I was with Gali for a long time, and connected with him a lot," he recalled. But he was separated from the other hostages and continued to be interrogated. "I would say to Gali: 'I'm scared. I don't know what they'll do to me. How will I sleep at night?'" "He tried to comfort me, [but I knew that] if they find out more things about me, it'll be the end for me," Angrest added. Angrest recalls Oct. 7 massacre During the interview, Angrest recalled how, during the massacre, he jumped into his tank and saw a white Toyota with a green-white license plate. "I rubbed my eyes. How did it get in? Suddenly, we heard gunshots, and asked ourselves, 'Did they infiltrate into the country?'" Perez commanded his tank to mobilize out of the Nahal Oz outpost, running over terrorists moving towards it, moving towards a firing position overlooking Shejaia. "Not long after, we were told over the radio to return to the outpost, as there was an incident. I passed by the place where I sleep - where I played backgammon with Tomer (Leibovitz) the day before," he recalled. He noted coming across the scene of the fight between terrorists and Golani Brigade company commander, Maj. Shilo Har-Even and his five soldiers, who were all massacred at the outpost. Perez told the tank crew to "shut off their emotions," Angrest said. "'Our goal is that there will be no kidnapping,' I don't know how he said that - how he predicted the future," Angrest added, citing what Perez said to the crew at the time. "Matan, you need to be sharp. They'll try to take whoever is in the operations room and kidnap them," Perez warned, according to Angrest. Angrest then noted how just after 8:30 a.m., the tank returned to the breached border fence and discovered another wave of terrorist infiltrators. "I told Perez, 'Look, they're entering the country, they're coming towards us," he told the interviewer. They were faced with a dilemma of whether to risk the tank to the possibility of anti-tank missile fire by closing in, or attempting, and likely failing, to stop the wave of infiltrators with long-distance fire, he noted. Angrest, the tank's driver, was instructed by Perez to "reverse quickly" and towards the terrorists. "As a team, we began to understand, it's either them or us. After the shell Itay [Chen] fired, I could see terrorists flying into the air from the blast, 50 meters away from me. While I was seeing this, I continued driving, thinking, 'How do I destroy them all? it's... an insane amount. I knew that things could end for us at any moment," he recounted. Angrest still struggles to recall everything that happened, but black box recordings fill in some gaps, Channel 12 noted. The last few moments of the recordings included someone crying, "Did someone get hit? Perez! Perez! Perez!"

Angrest recalls finding out he was being released.

Angrest was released from captivity in October of 2025, after 738 days of being held by Hamas terrorists within the Gaza Strip. It came as a surprise, he said. "They took Gili [Berman] and me somewhere while blindfolded. They removed them, and suddenly we saw [fellow hostages] Alon Ohel and Guy Gilboa-Dalal." "One of the senior terrorists pointed at us and said, 'You four - you leave tomorrow. Life changed [after being released]. You wake up in the morning and look for the next step. For everyone, it seems like the struggle is over, and you go back to living normally. It goes from zero to one hundred in some ways, but in others from one hundred to zero. The scars will always remain," he said. JPost

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Feb 26 🧵 EXCLUSIVE: Israeli officials considering voluntary compensation for select Gaza civilian deaths to rebuild global legitimacy without admitting war crimes, similar to Netanyahu's Mavi Marmara approach. Feb 26, 2026 on X

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Fallen IDF soldier’s mother wins right to bring his child into the world. After a four-year legal fight, the mother of Barel Hadaria Shmueli, killed by a Hamas gunman at the Gaza border in 2021, receives court approval for posthumous use of his sperm and is seeking a woman to conceive and raise the child with the family’s support. Roy Rubinstein | published: 02.26.26 | 11:52

Nitza Shmueli, the mother of Border Police officer Barel Hadaria Shmueli, who was killed in 2021 after being shot along the Gaza border, has received court approval to use her late son’s sperm to bring a grandchild into the world. YNet

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EXCLUSIVE: Trump Admin Blacklists UN School Principal for Participating in October 7. The move, part of an investigation into Hamas-linked employees at UN agencies, prohibits the man from working on US-funded aid projects.

Adam Kredo. February 27, 2026 FreeBeacon

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China urges citizens in Iran to evacuate. February 27, 2026. China has advised its citizens to avoid traveling to Iran and urged those already there to leave as soon as possible, state news agency Xinhua reported on Friday.

The advisory comes amid rising regional tensions and security risks.

China’s foreign ministry and embassy in Iran have called on Chinese nationals to strengthen safety precautions and depart while commercial routes remain available, according to the report. IranIntl

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Fact Check: Why US Intelligence Says Iran’s "US-Reaching" Missiles Don't Exist The Secret Report That Contradicts Trump’s State of the Union. Fact Check: Why US Intelligence Says Iran’s "US-Reaching" Missiles Don't Exist New reports from intelligence insiders suggest that President Trump’s claims of an imminent Iranian missile threat to the U.S. mainland are not supported by the Pentagon's latest data.

Eliana Fleming. Feb 27, 2026.

A growing divide is emerging between the White House and the American intelligence community regarding the true extent of the Iranian threat. During his recent State of the Union address, President Trump began laying the public groundwork for a potential war by claiming that Tehran is "working on developing missiles that will soon reach" the United States. However, a series of reports from Reuters and other sources, citing three high-level intelligence insiders, suggest that this claim is "exaggerated" and not backed by the current classified data. As the administration prepares for a potential strike, this rift over the "immediacy" of the threat is creating a storm of controversy within the halls of Congress and the Pentagon.

The 2035 Timeline. Contrary to the President's warnings of an "imminent" threat, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reportedly stands by its unclassified 2025 assessment. That report suggests that Iran is still at least a decade away from a viable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

According to the sources, Tehran would likely need until the year 2035 to develop a "military operational intercontinental ballistic missile" based on their current satellite launch technology. This massive ten-year discrepancy between the President's rhetoric and the intelligence reports is being used by critics to question the urgency of a military strike.

Political Targets and Rhetoric.

The narrative of an Iranian strike on the U.S. mainland has been echoed by several high-ranking figures. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told podcaster Ben Shapiro that Iran is developing missiles capable of hitting the President's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also repeated these concerns in briefings with reporters. While the White House has refused to comment on the specific intelligence rift, supporters of the administration argue that Iran’s space program is merely a cover for ICBM development and that waiting until 2035 is a risk the U.S. cannot afford to take. As the debate rages, the question remains whether the President is seeing "red-line" intelligence that has not yet been declassified, or if the threat is being amplified to secure public support for a looming war. JFeed

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Oval Office Showdown: Trump and Top Generals Review the Final Strike Map for Iran. While diplomatic envoys were still at the table in Switzerland, President Trump was behind closed doors in the Oval Office, reviewing a detailed target list for a massive military strike.

Eliana Fleming. Feb 27, 2026. JFeed

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All Public Shelters Open in Beersheba, Tel Aviv & Raanana. February 27, 2026. JFeed

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Get Out While You Still Can: U.S. Authorizes Departure for Embassy Families and Staff in Israel. jFeed Staff. Feb 27, 2026. The U.S. State Department has officially authorized the departure of non-emergency personnel and family members from its mission in Israel, citing heightened security risks. As commercial flights begin to dwindle, the U.S. Embassy warns citizens to "consider leaving now" amidst the peak of the U.S.-Iran military standoff and regional escalation JFeed

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IDF Spokesperson reassures Israelis amid rising tensions. Israel National News. Feb 27, 2026, 8:43 PM INN

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Countries warn citizens against travel to Israel and Iran amid rising tensions. Several countries, including France, Britain, and Germany, advise citizens against traveling to Israel and Iran due to escalating tensions. Warnings include heightened security risks and possible border closures. Israel National News. Published: Feb 27, 2026, 9:32 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Trump on Iran strike: 'I don't want to, but sometimes you have to'. President Trump says he has not yet decided on military action against Iran, expresses dissatisfaction with the country's negotiations, but indicates further talks will take place.

Elad Benari, Canada Feb 27, 2026, 8:01 PM INN

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Fallen IDF soldier’s mother wins right to bring his child into the world. After a four-year legal fight, the mother of Barel Hadaria Shmueli, killed by a Hamas gunman at the Gaza border in 2021, receives court approval for posthumous use of his sperm and is seeking a woman to conceive and raise the child with the family’s support. Roy Rubinstein | published: 02.26.26 | 11:52

Nitza Shmueli, the mother of Border Police officer Barel Hadaria Shmueli, who was killed in 2021 after being shot along the Gaza border, has received court approval to use her late son’s sperm to bring a grandchild into the world. YNet

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IDF braces for Hezbollah showdown as US weighs strike on Iran. Elisha Ben Kimon|02.27.26 YNet

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Israel may invite Argentina’s Milei to light Independence Day torch. Itamar Eichner|02.27.26 YNet

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35 years on, ex-IDF commandos still honor their revered Muslim commander. Shaked Reconnaissance Unit veterans gather to honor Lt. Col. Amos Yarkoni, born Abd al-Majid Khader, the first Bedouin to command an elite IDF unit, recalling his pursuit doctrine, severe combat injuries and the battle to bury him in a military plot. Gal Ganot | 02.27.26 Yarkoni, a member of the Bedouin al-Mazarib tribe, was born in 1921 in the village of Na’ura near Afula. In 1948, he enlisted in the IDF and became the first Bedouin to complete a squad commanders’ course. He later joined an elite unit and during those years chose to change his name to Amos Yarkoni, though he remained Muslim. YNet

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Israel OKs 1,300 homes in Samaria’s Kedumim. The planned Nahalat Esther neighborhood will more than double the size of the community. JNS Staff. (Feb. 27, 2026 / JNS) The Supreme Planning Council of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration on Thursday approved the construction of more than 1,300 housing units in the western Samaria community of Kedumim.

The 1,338 homes in the planned Nahalat Esther neighborhood will more than double the size of Kedumim, which currently has some 4,850 residents living in around 1,050 households, Israel National News reported. The roughly 60-acre neighborhood will feature a green valley at its center. https://www.jns.org/israel-oks-1300-homes-in-samarias-kedumim/

Emerging India-Israel alliance at the heart of a changing world order. “Our shared ideals are the deep foundations that give strength to our modern partnership. We are democracies shaped by history and focused on the future,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Jerusalem.

Alex Traiman. (Feb. 26, 2026 / JNS) Narendra Modi became the first prime minister of India to address Israel‘s Knesset. The strategic significance of his visit and is powerful, and the timing of it particularly noteworthy.

During his historic address on Feb. 25, the transformational leader noted that he was addressing the Israeli people “as the prime minister of India, and also as a representative of one ancient civilization addressing another. I bring with me the greetings of 1.4 billion Indians, and a message of friendship, respect and partnership.”

During Modi‘s previous visit in 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted, tongue in cheek, that “together, we are 20% of the world’s population.” JNS

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: WATCH: Held captive and tortured by Hamas for over 2 years, former Gaza hostage Matan Angrest recalls the horrors he endured, including electroshock and the death of his tank crewmates in an interview with Channel 12's 'Uvda.' Written by @JamesGenn From jpost.com [108] Feb 26, 2026. on X

WATCH: 'I screamed in pain': Former hostage Matan Angrest says Hamas terrorists electrocuted him. Former Gaza hostage Matan Angrest told Channel 12's 'Uvda' about his captivity, including Hamas torture, the loss of his tank crew, bonding with fellow hostage Gali Berman, and his eventual release.

By James Genn. February 27, 2026. Content warning: This article contains disturbing imagery, including torture and abuse. Former Gaza hostage Matan Angrest told Channel 12's 'Uvda' that he was tortured, including by electrocution, during his time in Hamas's terror captivity, in an interview broadcast on Thursday evening.

Angrest, who was serving in a specialized tank unit with classified equipment under the 7th Armored Brigade near Nahal Oz during the October 7 massacre, was the only member of his tank crew who survived the terror attack. His crewmates, Capt. Daniel Perez, St.-Sgt. Itay Chen, and Sgt. Tomer Leibovitz, were all murdered, with their remains taken by terrorists into the Gaza Strip. Things that fall under 'die and don't tell' during torture, interrogations "I woke up in Gaza in some house, and could not open my eyes or move my hand - my hand was burned," Angrest said, describing the first moments he recalls following the massacre.

"I opened my eyes, and eight people were sitting in front of me. They started asking things like 'Where were you kidnapped from? Where do you serve [in the IDF]?' but they talked to me in Arabic, and I could not understand," he continued.

"Someone came to me with two wires and put them on my wounds. I felt like I was being electrocuted. I screamed in pain, and then he did it to me again," he told the interviewer. According to the report, the terrorists already knew that Angrest was part of a tank crew containing classified systems equipment, and knew that he, as the only survivor, would be able to tell them information that could help future terror acts succeed. "In the really hard interrogations, they kept asking things that were classified. Things like 'Can the driver kill? Does he have a weapon?' and I kept telling them that the driver is like a regular driver," he said. Angrest's ability to move improved over time, but Hamas terrorists kept increasing the pressure. "They tortured me to the extreme. Electric shocks - trauma that will stay with me. The longest interrogation was about eight hours continuously, where they made me tell things in the 'die and don't tell' category," he recalled. Angrest also noted that he found out via terrorist radio chatter that his three tank crewmates were murdered on October 7. "I locked myself in a room alone [after finding out], you understand that it's over. I just thought about them and all of our experiences." Angrest recounts meeting Gali Berman, no longer being alone Angrest was held alone for weeks, in locations both above ground and within the underground terror tunnels, Channel 12 noted. Then, he was joined by fellow hostage Gali Berman. "I was with Gali for a long time, and connected with him a lot," he recalled. But he was separated from the other hostages and continued to be interrogated. "I would say to Gali: 'I'm scared. I don't know what they'll do to me. How will I sleep at night?'" "He tried to comfort me, [but I knew that] if they find out more things about me, it'll be the end for me," Angrest added. Angrest recalls Oct. 7 massacre During the interview, Angrest recalled how, during the massacre, he jumped into his tank and saw a white Toyota with a green-white license plate. "I rubbed my eyes. How did it get in? Suddenly, we heard gunshots, and asked ourselves, 'Did they infiltrate into the country?'" Perez commanded his tank to mobilize out of the Nahal Oz outpost, running over terrorists moving towards it, moving towards a firing position overlooking Shejaia. "Not long after, we were told over the radio to return to the outpost, as there was an incident. I passed by the place where I sleep - where I played backgammon with Tomer (Leibovitz) the day before," he recalled. He noted coming across the scene of the fight between terrorists and Golani Brigade company commander, Maj. Shilo Har-Even and his five soldiers, who were all massacred at the outpost. Perez told the tank crew to "shut off their emotions," Angrest said. "'Our goal is that there will be no kidnapping,' I don't know how he said that - how he predicted the future," Angrest added, citing what Perez said to the crew at the time. "Matan, you need to be sharp. They'll try to take whoever is in the operations room and kidnap them," Perez warned, according to Angrest. Angrest then noted how just after 8:30 a.m., the tank returned to the breached border fence and discovered another wave of terrorist infiltrators. "I told Perez, 'Look, they're entering the country, they're coming towards us," he told the interviewer. They were faced with a dilemma of whether to risk the tank to the possibility of anti-tank missile fire by closing in, or attempting, and likely failing, to stop the wave of infiltrators with long-distance fire, he noted. Angrest, the tank's driver, was instructed by Perez to "reverse quickly" and towards the terrorists. "As a team, we began to understand, it's either them or us. After the shell Itay [Chen] fired, I could see terrorists flying into the air from the blast, 50 meters away from me. While I was seeing this, I continued driving, thinking, 'How do I destroy them all? it's... an insane amount. I knew that things could end for us at any moment," he recounted. Angrest still struggles to recall everything that happened, but black box recordings fill in some gaps, Channel 12 noted. The last few moments of the recordings included someone crying, "Did someone get hit? Perez! Perez! Perez!"

Angrest recalls finding out he was being released.

Angrest was released from captivity in October of 2025, after 738 days of being held by Hamas terrorists within the Gaza Strip. It came as a surprise, he said. "They took Gili [Berman] and me somewhere while blindfolded. They removed them, and suddenly we saw [fellow hostages] Alon Ohel and Guy Gilboa-Dalal." "One of the senior terrorists pointed at us and said, 'You four - you leave tomorrow. Life changed [after being released]. You wake up in the morning and look for the next step. For everyone, it seems like the struggle is over, and you go back to living normally. It goes from zero to one hundred in some ways, but in others from one hundred to zero. The scars will always remain," he said. JPost

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Paralyzed. Iran is Laughing at Trump’s Middle East Policy. Strategic Paralysis: How Tehran is Outmaneuvering the "Maximum Pressure" Doctrine. Yair Kleinbaum. Feb 26, 2026 Jfeed

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post: Feb 26 🧵 EXCLUSIVE: Israeli officials considering voluntary compensation for select Gaza civilian deaths to rebuild global legitimacy without admitting war crimes, similar to Netanyahu's Mavi Marmara approach. Feb 26, 2026 on X

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JD Vance praises Tucker Carlson-Mike Huckabee interview as ‘a really good conversation’. Vice President JD Vance praised Tucker Carlson’s interview with Mike Huckabee, declining to criticize Carlson despite antisemitism allegations and rising concern among Jewish conservatives. February 27, 2026. https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-888232

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Trump orders federal ban on Anthropic software over 'leftist' restrictions on military AI use. US President Trump ordered all federal agencies to cease using Anthropic’s Claude AI, citing a refusal to allow unrestricted military use. He has set a six-month phase-out for the DOD. February 27, 2026 JPost

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Iran designated as state sponsor of wrongful detention, Marco Rubio announces. "The Iranian regime must stop taking hostages and release all Americans unjustly detained in Iran," Rubio said, as Trump states he is "not happy" with the negotiations. February 27, 2026. JPost

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[Campus Antisemitism]. Over 350 scholars tell UC regents to discuss, act on report on anti-Israel profs fueling Jew-hatred. Most signatories are in the science, technology, engineering, medicine and math fields, according to Ilan Benjamin, a professor emeritus at UC Santa Cruz. Aaron Bandler. (Feb. 27, 2026 / JNS) More than 350 current and former University of California scholars signed a letter calling on the system’s regents to discuss a recent AMCHA Initiative report about antisemitism at their next meeting.

Judea Pearl, a University of California, Los Angeles computer-science professor and father of Daniel Pearl, the Jewish reporter for The Wall Street Journal, who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan in 2002, organized the letter with Ilan Benjamin, a distinguished professor emeritus of chemistry at UC Santa Cruz.

At press time, 279 current and 89 former UC professors had signed the letter. The referenced report suggests that professors are partly responsible for fueling rising Jew-hatred at the public university system.

Benjamin, who retired a few months ago, told JNS that he wasn’t surprised at the number of signatories. Previous letters to the UC regents drew hundreds of faculty signatures expressing concern over anti-Israel professors and departments, he said.

“We know that many people are worried about that,” he told JNS. JNS

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Tucker Thought We Wouldn't Notice This (We did). JNS TV.. Feb 26, 2026. Tucker Carlson tried to pull the rug out from under Israel’s very foundation, but what if the real story completely flips the script? In this episode of "Basic Law", you’ll learn why the viral “gotcha” about Israel’s Law of Return and the Brother Daniel case doesn’t unravel the Jewish claim to the land, but actually reveals the deep, complex evolution of Jewish identity in the modern world. Aylana Meisel cuts through the half-truths, exposing how history, law, exile, survival and sovereignty collide in ways most commentators conveniently ignore. You’ll walk away understanding not just what the Law of Return really says, but what Israel’s identity debates teach the entire West about nationhood, borders and self-determination in an age allergic to all three..

'If you sat through the Carlson Huckabee interview this past week, you heard Tucker Carlson attack Christian Zionism by questioning the very basis of the Jewish claim to the land of Israel. Is it religious? Is it ethnic? He even cited a famous court case where a Jewish convert to Christianity was denied the right of return. So, let's talk about Tucker's question and the halftruths and the reality of the law and the history plus the potential they represent for the West. I'm Zeldant and this is Basic Law. Okay, two things before we proceed. First, Carlson's effort was designed to undermine the morality of the Israeli story, lampoon Christian Zionism, and distort facts to fit a narrative attacking the very concept of the nation state. I think a point for-point rebuttal would be a waste of time, and this show focuses only on a specific issue that is important to address. Second, I refuse to argue with Carlson or anyone else about the Jewish rights to life, liberty, and homeland. And that goes doubly for people who seem to think that those things are negotiable. The Jewish people walked this land before Rome was an empire, prayed toward Jerusalem, and returned through millennia of exile. We belonged to this land, bled for it, and dreamed of it while most modern nations had yet to exist. our moral, religious, historical and national claim is beyond question. Now, how we have cottified that claim in law is a more complex issue. And that brings us to the interview. In one particular exchange, Tucker attacked the biblical claim to Israel and the Zionist Christian application of that claim to the modern state. Now, he did this in part by questioning the ethnic and religious claims of contemporary jewelry to the land and how they're expressed in state policy. So, that's already a tremendous leap in logic because laws are often the product of political compromise and not pure moral philosophy. But let's get to the meat of the argument. Carlson tried provoking Huckabe by raising Israel's law of return, which grants Jews automatic citizenship when they immigrate to Israel. But there's a caveat. It doesn't apply to individuals who were born Jewish, but who have converted to a different religion. Carlson used this exception on conversion to try and drive a wedge between Jews and Christian Zionists. He asked, well, if the Jewish claim to Israel is ethnic, how can the religious exception exist? Now, the question itself is based on a misunderstanding of Jewish identity. may be purposeful, and we'll get to that. But the implication was that the ethnic claim was therefore poor or false. Plus, of course, he continued in his attempts to falsely portray Christians as persecuted in Israel. And we're going to discuss all of that. .. So, in building his straw man, Carlson invoked a famous court decision known as the Brother Daniel case. He didn't mention it by name, but that's 100% what he was talking about. And it's worth discussing because if you know the history, the case doesn't prove what Carlson hoped it would. This was decided in 1962 and it was a very difficult landmark ruling. A man born Oswald Rufisen saved hundreds of Jews during the Nazi occupation of Poland. While sheltering in a convent, he converted to Christianity and became a Catholic priest. Brother Daniel in 1958 I think he applied to immigrate to Israel as a Jew under the law of return. Now the Ministry of Interior here refused his application and the Supreme Court ended up having to decide can a convert to Christianity still claim Jewish status for this immigration purpose. The court ultimately ruled in favor of the state's position. While brother Daniel remained Jewish under the religious definition for the purposes of the secular law of return, the court held that an applicant could not be both Jewish and Christian. Now, despite the ruling, this story ends happily for brother Daniel because though he lost the right to automatic citizenship, he just went through a normal naturalization process and lived as an Israeli citizen and a monk at the Stella Maris uh monastery for 35 years. In his will, he left these moving words. I experienced everything in my lifetime and I no longer fear death. I am afraid of memory. I don't know if I am to be doomed or spared, but from all the things you may know about me, I would like you to remember that I was born a Jew and died a Jew. This quote captures a complexity that Jews are navigating still today, defining the boundaries of a Jewish identity in a modern world that blew it wide open. Now, between the late 18th and early 20th centuries, European Jewish identity, previously national, religious, and ethnic allinone, began to unravel as Jews received the opportunity to fully participate in Western society. To this point, Jews were persecuted through discrimination and significant violence depending on the historical period. And when Jews gained citizenship in successive European countries, their integration was often at the cost of redefining religious practice or belief. Modern movements, including Orthodoxy, conservative, and reformed Judaism, are all products of this shift. Jews have spent over 200 years navigating what their proud and often successful integration has meant for them individually and as a collective. We are an ancient nation which has adapted itself to the challenges of modernity and to western categories of identity that don't fully fit the bill. Now today these debates remain central to the project of rebuilding the Jewish homeland and they are not about opposition to any other religion but rather about what we are and are not. This is the internal conversation that has preserved the Jewish people through time and against all odds. Now, the law of return is just one piece of that puzzle. It was first passed in 1950, 2 years after the establishment of the state, 5 years after the Holocaust, and it was only 11 years after the British had severely limited Jewish immigration to the mandate, at a time when millions may have been saved. It's also worth remembering that at this point in history, the relationship between the Catholic Church and Judaism was still deeply strained in comparison to that of today. Only in 1965, 3 years after the brother Daniel case, did the Vatican issue Nostraatate. It was the first time in nearly 2,000 years, that the church had officially condemned the persecution of Jews and repudiated the dicide charge. This was a massive turning point, but in historical terms, the warming of relations was still in its infancy. Our modern relationship should be respected and nourished and cherished. But in part, that requires a proper understanding of just how starkly different the before and after pictures are. Now, after the loss of a third of the Jewish people and during the years of the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands, this law offered Jews refuge. And in that offer lies the heart of the state of Israel. It is a civil government which cares deeply, of course, for ensuring a thriving democracy for all of its citizens. But its primary purpose is to protect the homeland of the Jewish nation for those who wish to or need to rejoin it. Now, over time, the coverage of the law of return has expanded, though not without many controversies that I hope to explore in future shows. Today, the right to immigrate is granted to those born of a Jewish mother or who have converted to Judaism, their children and grandchildren, and the spouses of all of the above, whether they're Jewish or non-Jewish. The exception on conversion still exists, but under the current rules, even someone with a Jewish grandmother can immigrate under the right of return if they were raised Christian. And this has been the case for hundreds of thousands of people. This track is also separate from the citizenship that passes naturally to the children or spouse of any Israeli regardless of religion and the tens of thousands who have entered seeking asylum and the small number of non-Jews who have naturalized in other ways. Now look, even before we get to the larger discussion on biblical claims to the land, countries are supposed to control their borders. They can choose to prefer certain groups for immigration. And while Carlson seemed to turn his nose up at the very idea of ethnic criteria for citizenship, this is a commonly used criteria in many countries whose existence apparently gives him less heartburn. Until 2024, Italy granted citizenship to descendants going back to 1861. Until 2000, German law prioritized the naturalization of ethnic Germans living abroad. Ireland offers citizenship to the grandchildren of citizens. Armenia's constitution simplifies citizenship for those of Armenian origin. Hungary offers citizenship to those who can show an unbroken line to at least one direct Hungarian ancestor. Now, we can get into the unique features of the law of return in a different show, but there's a shared premise here that should be stressed. Sovereign states have the right to determine which immigration they prioritize in their national self-interest. This is self-determination and it gives weight and substance to the identity that these states have considered important enough to live and die for. Here's the broader point for the west. Speaking openly about questions of identity has become increasingly difficult in Western states. In an age when borders, nationhood, and self-defin have fallen into disrepute, Israel's willingness to wrestle with these questions openly becomes more striking. Israeli and Jewish debates are messy and they're vital. They keep us connected to an identity that has survived under impossible conditions. We argue about who belongs, what obligations we have, how to preserve identity while honoring civil rights for all. Western countries are waking up to these same questions and in that process they should look to the Israeli case to understand how to navigate those very complex debates over time and with success. Carlson's ahistorical approach to the conversation with Huckabe was just one of many tactics deployed to ensure that their conversation went nowhere fast. But for those willing to take history seriously, to grapple with its consequences, to learn its lessons, there are richer conversations waiting to be had. on YouTube

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EXCLUSIVE: Trump Admin Blacklists UN School Principal for Participating in October 7. The move, part of an investigation into Hamas-linked employees at UN agencies, prohibits the man from working on US-funded aid projects.

Adam Kredo. February 27, 2026 FreeBeacon

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China urges citizens in Iran to evacuate. February 27, 2026. China has advised its citizens to avoid traveling to Iran and urged those already there to leave as soon as possible, state news agency Xinhua reported on Friday.

The advisory comes amid rising regional tensions and security risks.

China’s foreign ministry and embassy in Iran have called on Chinese nationals to strengthen safety precautions and depart while commercial routes remain available, according to the report. IranIntl

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Fact Check: Why US Intelligence Says Iran’s "US-Reaching" Missiles Don't Exist The Secret Report That Contradicts Trump’s State of the Union. Fact Check: Why US Intelligence Says Iran’s "US-Reaching" Missiles Don't Exist New reports from intelligence insiders suggest that President Trump’s claims of an imminent Iranian missile threat to the U.S. mainland are not supported by the Pentagon's latest data.

Eliana Fleming. Feb 27, 2026.

A growing divide is emerging between the White House and the American intelligence community regarding the true extent of the Iranian threat. During his recent State of the Union address, President Trump began laying the public groundwork for a potential war by claiming that Tehran is "working on developing missiles that will soon reach" the United States. However, a series of reports from Reuters and other sources, citing three high-level intelligence insiders, suggest that this claim is "exaggerated" and not backed by the current classified data. As the administration prepares for a potential strike, this rift over the "immediacy" of the threat is creating a storm of controversy within the halls of Congress and the Pentagon.

The 2035 Timeline. Contrary to the President's warnings of an "imminent" threat, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reportedly stands by its unclassified 2025 assessment. That report suggests that Iran is still at least a decade away from a viable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

According to the sources, Tehran would likely need until the year 2035 to develop a "military operational intercontinental ballistic missile" based on their current satellite launch technology. This massive ten-year discrepancy between the President's rhetoric and the intelligence reports is being used by critics to question the urgency of a military strike.

Political Targets and Rhetoric.

The narrative of an Iranian strike on the U.S. mainland has been echoed by several high-ranking figures. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told podcaster Ben Shapiro that Iran is developing missiles capable of hitting the President's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also repeated these concerns in briefings with reporters. While the White House has refused to comment on the specific intelligence rift, supporters of the administration argue that Iran’s space program is merely a cover for ICBM development and that waiting until 2035 is a risk the U.S. cannot afford to take. As the debate rages, the question remains whether the President is seeing "red-line" intelligence that has not yet been declassified, or if the threat is being amplified to secure public support for a looming war. JFeed

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Oval Office Showdown: Trump and Top Generals Review the Final Strike Map for Iran. While diplomatic envoys were still at the table in Switzerland, President Trump was behind closed doors in the Oval Office, reviewing a detailed target list for a massive military strike.

Eliana Fleming. Feb 27, 2026. JFeed

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All Public Shelters Open in Beersheba, Tel Aviv & Raanana. February 27, 2026. JFeed

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Get Out While You Still Can: U.S. Authorizes Departure for Embassy Families and Staff in Israel. jFeed Staff. Feb 27, 2026. The U.S. State Department has officially authorized the departure of non-emergency personnel and family members from its mission in Israel, citing heightened security risks. As commercial flights begin to dwindle, the U.S. Embassy warns citizens to "consider leaving now" amidst the peak of the U.S.-Iran military standoff and regional escalation JFeed

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IDF Spokesperson reassures Israelis amid rising tensions. Israel National News. Feb 27, 2026, 8:43 PM INN

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Countries warn citizens against travel to Israel and Iran amid rising tensions. Several countries, including France, Britain, and Germany, advise citizens against traveling to Israel and Iran due to escalating tensions. Warnings include heightened security risks and possible border closures. Israel National News. Published: Feb 27, 2026, 9:32 PM (GMT+2) INN

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Trump on Iran strike: 'I don't want to, but sometimes you have to'. President Trump says he has not yet decided on military action against Iran, expresses dissatisfaction with the country's negotiations, but indicates further talks will take place.

Elad Benari, Canada Feb 27, 2026, 8:01 PM INN

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IDF braces for Hezbollah showdown as US weighs strike on Iran. Elisha Ben Kimon|02.27.26 YNet

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Israel may invite Argentina’s Milei to light Independence Day torch. Itamar Eichner|02.27.26 YNet

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35 years on, ex-IDF commandos still honor their revered Muslim commander. Shaked Reconnaissance Unit veterans gather to honor Lt. Col. Amos Yarkoni, born Abd al-Majid Khader, the first Bedouin to command an elite IDF unit, recalling his pursuit doctrine, severe combat injuries and the battle to bury him in a military plot. Gal Ganot | 02.27.26 Yarkoni, a member of the Bedouin al-Mazarib tribe, was born in 1921 in the village of Na’ura near Afula. In 1948, he enlisted in the IDF and became the first Bedouin to complete a squad commanders’ course. He later joined an elite unit and during those years chose to change his name to Amos Yarkoni, though he remained Muslim. YNet

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Israel OKs 1,300 homes in Samaria’s Kedumim. The planned Nahalat Esther neighborhood will more than double the size of the community. JNS Staff. (Feb. 27, 2026 / JNS) The Supreme Planning Council of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration on Thursday approved the construction of more than 1,300 housing units in the western Samaria community of Kedumim.

The 1,338 homes in the planned Nahalat Esther neighborhood will more than double the size of Kedumim, which currently has some 4,850 residents living in around 1,050 households, Israel National News reported. The roughly 60-acre neighborhood will feature a green valley at its center. JNS

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JD Vance praises Tucker Carlson-Mike Huckabee interview as ‘a really good conversation’. Vice President JD Vance praised Tucker Carlson’s interview with Mike Huckabee, declining to criticize Carlson despite antisemitism allegations and rising concern among Jewish conservatives. February 27, 2026. https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-888232

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Trump orders federal ban on Anthropic software over 'leftist' restrictions on military AI use. US President Trump ordered all federal agencies to cease using Anthropic’s Claude AI, citing a refusal to allow unrestricted military use. He has set a six-month phase-out for the DOD. February 27, 2026 JPost

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Jerusalem Post @Jerusalem_Post Iran has been designated as a state sponsor of wrongful detention, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in a press statement on Friday, criticizing their actions as "abhorrent." Feb 27, 2026. on X

Iran designated as state sponsor of wrongful detention, Marco Rubio announces. "The Iranian regime must stop taking hostages and release all Americans unjustly detained in Iran," Rubio said, as Trump states he is "not happy" with the negotiations. February 28, 2026. JPost

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[Campus Antisemitism]. Over 350 scholars tell UC regents to discuss, act on report on anti-Israel profs fueling Jew-hatred. Most signatories are in the science, technology, engineering, medicine and math fields, according to Ilan Benjamin, a professor emeritus at UC Santa Cruz. Aaron Bandler. (Feb. 27, 2026 / JNS) More than 350 current and former University of California scholars signed a letter calling on the system’s regents to discuss a recent AMCHA Initiative report about antisemitism at their next meeting.

Judea Pearl, a University of California, Los Angeles computer-science professor and father of Daniel Pearl, the Jewish reporter for The Wall Street Journal, who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan in 2002, organized the letter with Ilan Benjamin, a distinguished professor emeritus of chemistry at UC Santa Cruz.

At press time, 279 current and 89 former UC professors had signed the letter. The referenced report suggests that professors are partly responsible for fueling rising Jew-hatred at the public university system.

Benjamin, who retired a few months ago, told JNS that he wasn’t surprised at the number of signatories. Previous letters to the UC regents drew hundreds of faculty signatures expressing concern over anti-Israel professors and departments, he said.

“We know that many people are worried about that,” he told JNS. JNS

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BDS effort to end NYC investment in Israel Bonds is not working. “Despite the geopolitical pressures of the Gaza war and last year’s credit rating actions, Israel Bonds recorded three consecutive years of more than $2 billion in global sales and has raised over $5.7 billion since Oct. 7, 2023,” according to Israel Bonds. Debra Nussbaum Cohen. (Feb. 27, 2026 / JNS) Those who advocate boycotting the Jewish state have put Israel Bonds squarely in their sights, urging municipalities that have long invested in the security to put their money elsewhere. So far, however, those efforts do not appear to have negatively affected that investment in Israel.

The latest to take aim is the anti-Israel group Democracy for the Arab World Now, which recently issued a memorandum arguing against investing in Israel Bonds. A pro-Israel investment-focused group, JLens, is now issuing its response, countering each of DAWN’s arguments.

The anti-Israel group, which also lobbies the U.S. government against sending foreign aid to Israel, stated that “New York State and New York City officials should immediately cease new purchases and divest any holdings of Israel Bonds, because such investments breach their international and domestic legal obligations and expose citizens to unnecessary legal, financial and reputational harms.” JNS

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BDS effort to end NYC investment in Israel Bonds is not working. “Despite the geopolitical pressures of the Gaza war and last year’s credit rating actions, Israel Bonds recorded three consecutive years of more than $2 billion in global sales and has raised over $5.7 billion since Oct. 7, 2023,” according to Israel Bonds. Debra Nussbaum Cohen. (Feb. 27, 2026 / JNS) Those who advocate boycotting the Jewish state have put Israel Bonds squarely in their sights, urging municipalities that have long invested in the security to put their money elsewhere. So far, however, those efforts do not appear to have negatively affected that investment in Israel.

The latest to take aim is the anti-Israel group Democracy for the Arab World Now, which recently issued a memorandum arguing against investing in Israel Bonds. A pro-Israel investment-focused group, JLens, is now issuing its response, countering each of DAWN’s arguments.

The anti-Israel group, which also lobbies the U.S. government against sending foreign aid to Israel, stated that “New York State and New York City officials should immediately cease new purchases and divest any holdings of Israel Bonds, because such investments breach their international and domestic legal obligations and expose citizens to unnecessary legal, financial and reputational harms.” JNS

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Knesset marks 250 years of US with praise for Israel US alliance and warnings for the future. As President Donald Trump is praised, speakers caution that rising antisemitism and generational shifts test the alliance’s future. JPost

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Naomi Wolf Interviews Jamie Glazov About “United in Hate”. Frontpage Editor unveils the Left's romance with tyranny, terror and Hamas. February 27, 2026 by Glazov Gang. FPM

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Hamas-Linked CAIR is ‘Strong-Arming U.S. Schools into Promoting Islam’ Islamic Dawah targets American children. February 27, 2026. By Christine Williams. FPM

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Kfar Aza Foundation head appears together with former hostage Keith Siegel at Miami Summit. Siegel: “During my 484 days in captivity, the source of my resilience and my strength was my family, my Jewish faith, the Jewish people, and all of you”

Resilience, Return & the Power of Community By Jerusalem Post Staff. January 15, 2026. Updated: January 28, 2026 11:04 Alon Futterman, director of the Kfar Aza foundation, addressed the audience at the Jerusalem Post Miami Summit on Tuesday, together with former hostage Keith Siegel, who was held by Hamas terrorists for 484 days, before his release on February 1, 2025.

“I stand here in order to say that, unfortunately for some of the communities in Israel, October 7 is not over yet,” said Futterman. “There are still three communities that cannot go home, Kfar Aza being one of them.” He shared that the kibbutz plans to reopen this summer and that residents will eventually be able to return home. JPost

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Antisemitism emerges as a defining issue in 2026 California governor’s race. Eric Swalwell, Antonio Villaraigosa, Matt Mahan, Tom Steyer, and Steve Hilton competed to present themselves as the strongest defender of Jewish safety at LA's gubernatorial forum on Thursday. By Asaf Elia-Shalev/JTA. February 28, 2026 JPost

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On Purim, Jewish tradition tells us to give to anyone who asks, no questions required - opinion. Joshua Ladon/JTA. February 28, 2026 On the day we wear masks, we are commanded not to look away. This Purim, when a hand reaches out, give. Start with something that feels like too much. JPost

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'Why fire rockets when you can fire lies and win?' – opinion. February 28, 2026 Amid a relentless, daily assault of slander and delegitimization, how can Israel fight back in the crisis of disinformation? JPost

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Further reading

• Mapping the Massacres

• Special Announcement – The Hamas Atrocities Documentation Center (HADC) (MEMRI)

• Testimonials from the War in Israel, Oct 23

• Hamas Massacre

• Hamas.com warning, graphic!

• List of Companies That Have Condemned Hamas' Terrorist Attack on Israel

See also

• Guardian of Walls
• Dogs of Hamas
• Loay Alnaji
• Columbia Untisemity

"The Mufti.. concocted a new kind of antisemitism that combined traditional Muslim antisemitism, like the anti-Jewish verses you find in the Koran, with the Nazi antisemitism that demonised Jews... His whole ideology was antisemitic and from the very beginning he targeted Jews, not Zionists."

The difference between lies and reality is sometimes just a color on a map

W. Ormsby-Gore as he was preparing the royal commission report, "Though I knew there was ill-feeling between Jews and Arabs, I had not realized the depth and intensity of the hatred with which the Jews are held by the Arabs..."

"It is not Israel's settlement blocks but rather the Palestinian ideological blockade that constitutes the biggest barrier to peaceful arrangements . The Jew-hatred in this region must no longer be played down as a kind of local custom ..."

The only tweet (July 2014) on the Twitter account of the late American Elan Ganeles - murdered by Arab-Islamist "Palestinian" on Feb 27, 2023 hy"d: "I think you're always going to have tension in the Middle East, when there's [are] people who want to kill Jews, and the Jews don't want to be killed, and neither side is willing to compromise."