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Questions about the destination of billions of dollars in allegedly misused welfare funds in Minnesota are fueling a new legislative push in Congress, with one Republican lawmaker warning that some of the money may have crossed borders and ended up in the hands of extremists.

Speaking on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Brandon Gill said investigators are examining whether portions of the roughly $9 billion in suspected fraud could have been diverted overseas. Gill pointed specifically to the possibility that funds were routed to al-Shabaab operatives in Somalia.

“Well, there’s estimates now that this money could have been funneled to al-Shabaab terrorists in Somalia. I hope that Democrats jump on board and recognize what a severe problem this is for the American people. But, you know, welfare for Democrats is a way of taking American tax dollars, giving it to their political allies. It is a patronage system. It is you vote for me and I will take other people’s money and give it to you. And I don’t care if it’s fraudulent. I don’t care if you shouldn’t be getting it. As long as you vote for me, that’s the goal.”

Gill went on to criticize what he described as a lack of urgency from Democrats in Congress, arguing that the alleged abuses strike at the foundation of federal assistance programs and the broader economy.

“You know, I hope that Democrats recognize how unbelievably corrupt this is, how it undermines our entire social system, our entire economic system, and gets on board,” he continued. “But, you know, they’ve been pretty hesitant to do that so far. The Democrat playbook has been import as many unassimilable foreigners as they possibly can, get them on the dole, and ensure that these people vote Democrat for life. That’s what we’re up against here.”

The exchange followed a question from guest host Kellyanne Conway, who pressed Gill on whether outrage over the alleged misuse of funds would translate into bipartisan action on Capitol Hill.

“Do you sense, Congressman Gill, that any of your Democratic colleagues in Congress, in the House, are so outraged that they’ll actually join in the investigation or maybe try to give a little bit of credence to this bill?” Conway asked. “I mean, they they’ve got to feel outraged that billions of dollars meant to go and feed hungry people could have gone to Somalia — certainly went to fraud and waste and abuse and not to those truly in need.”

Gill’s comments come as he backs a bill introduced by Mariannette Miller-Meeks. The proposal, formally known as the Welfare Abuse and Laundering Zillions Act, or the “WALZ Act,” would mandate that the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General open probes into any federal program that experiences a 10 percent or greater jump in total payments over a six-month period within a single fiscal year.

WATCH:

Amid growing concern over a recent phenomenon in which yeshiva students from abroad who come to Israel are expressing interest in enlisting in the IDF — and in some cases have already done so — senior Torah figures addressed the issue this week at a special gathering for overseas bochurim.

According to a report by journalist Shilo Fried on Ynet, activists opposing the draft say the trend has accelerated during the prolonged war, as young chareidi men from the United States and other countries spent extended periods in Israel under rocket fire and amid fighting, leading some to feel drawn to participate in the national war effort. Data cited in the report indicated that in a recent intake to the Tomer Battalion of the Givati Brigade, nearly all of the chareidi recruits were from abroad, with only a small number coming from Israel itself. Similar patterns were reportedly identified in other IDF units.

In response, the organization Agudim, operating under the umbrella of Ezram U’Maginam, convened a conference this week aimed at establishing a framework to discourage overseas yeshiva students from enlisting.

Addressing hundreds of overseas students studying in Israeli yeshivos, Rav Yehoshua Eichenstein, rosh yeshiva of Yad Aharon, delivered a lengthy and pointed shmuess in which he contrasted American and Israeli culture and warned of what he described as a fundamental ideological agenda behind military conscription.

“The people here tonight,” Rav Eichenstein said, “come from Western culture and arrived here in Eretz Yisrael. Because you were raised in Western culture, you do not fully understand Israeli culture or what stands behind it. Let me give some background.” He cited the Torah’s description of Yaakov as an ish tam, explaining that innocence has limits. “When you are sitting next to a rasha, you are not allowed to be innocent,” he said. “We must understand this basic concept.”

Rav Eichenstein described American culture as inherently “innocent,” noting that religious freedom in the United States is rooted in the country’s founding by persecuted religious minorities who created a system based on separation of religion and state. “Everyone is religious in his own way,” he said, “and that is the foundation of American freedom of religion.”

“In this country,” he continued, “the situation is different. The state was founded on the religion of Zionism. There is no separation of religion and state. The state is religious at its core — but it is a Zionist religion.” He argued that Zionism sought to create a “new nation” through a “melting pot,” with the army serving as the central tool to shape this new identity. As part of this argument, he pointed to Israel’s mandatory conscription of women, stating that aside from Israel, North Korea is the only country in the world that drafts women.

Rav Eichenstein further warned that what he termed “naïve Americans” are susceptible to arguments about “sharing the burden,” without recognizing what he described as a deeper agenda. He alleged that senior military and state officials fear that in several decades the chareidi community will wield significant political power, and that the goal of conscription is to turn religious Jews into “dropouts.” He described the Supreme Court as a central stronghold of this effort.

He asserted that remaining religious after army service is extremely difficult, claiming that even within the religious-Zionist sector, large percentages abandon religious observance. He cited statements by rabbis associated with religious-Zionist institutions, saying they themselves acknowledge that many enter the army wearing a yarmulka and leave without one.

According to Rav Eichenstein, “The judicial system and the Left are using the army as a weapon against religion. They don’t want compromises — they want the surrender of the religious public.” While he acknowledged that there are individuals within the army who try to accommodate religious needs, he insisted that large segments of the military have an ideological goal of promoting secularization. He related, based on what he described as personal sources, incidents involving mixed-gender living arrangements during operations, which he said caused distress and protest among soldiers’ families.

{Matzav.com}

A stirring discovery has surfaced in the world of antiquities and Judaica: a personal financial document dating back some 250 years, bearing the handwritten signature of one of the greatest of the mekubalim, Rav Chaim Yosef Dovid Azulai, the Chida. The document—a bill of exchange equivalent to a modern-day check—was issued for the substantial sum of 3,000 British pounds and is currently being offered for sale.

While dozens of his seforim are preserved and disseminated worldwide, this is the first and only known instance in history of a littra di cambio—a bill of exchange—written and signed in his own hand, in Italian.

The rare document, now in the possession of the Zeidy Archives, is dated March 30, 1787 (11 Nissan 5547). It records the Chida’s commitment to transfer the sum of 3,000 sterling to a Mr. Shabtai Cohen of Marseille, France, within fifty days. Although the precise purpose of the transaction remains unknown, the document provides a vivid and tangible glimpse into the financial and communal activities of the Chida during his years in Italy, nearly two and a half centuries ago.

At the time, the littra di cambio was a commonly used and secure method for transferring funds between cities and countries, particularly in Italy. The Chida himself refers to such financial instruments in his travel diary Ma’agal Tov as well as in his correspondence. From the sixteenth century onward, several forms of these exchange notes were in circulation, and halachic authorities extensively debated their use, particularly with regard to issues of ribbis.

One of the towering figures in Jewish history, the Chida traveled extensively on sacred missions on behalf of the Jewish communities of Eretz Yisrael, raising funds to ease their financial hardship. Toward the end of the year 5538, he concluded his mission on behalf of the Jewish community of Chevron, settled in Livorno, and declined to assume any rabbinic post. Instead, he devoted himself almost entirely to writing, publishing, and distributing his works, from which he earned his livelihood.

Two and a half centuries later, the discovery of this single, fragile document offers a moving historical echo, shedding new light on the life, travels, and tireless efforts of a towering gaon and tzaddik, and on his enduring dedication to the welfare of the Jews of Eretz Yisrael.

{Matzav.com}

Former hostage Romi Gonen spoke publicly about the trauma she endured while held in Gaza in an interview that aired on Channel 12’s investigative program Uvda, sharing details she said she had been unable to reveal until now. Gonen said she was assaulted multiple times during her captivity, describing repeated abuse by several different men.

Gonen said the first assault occurred on the fourth day after her abduction, carried out by a man who presented himself as a doctor responsible for treating injuries she sustained during the Hamas-led October 7 attack.

“I was injured, I had no power, and I was in a situation in which I couldn’t do anything,” she said.

“He took everything from me,” she said. “Afterward, I had to continue living with him in the house.”

She said another attacker was a cameraman who filmed her for propaganda footage. Later, after being transferred to a different location, she was left alone with a man named Muhammad, who began touching her. Gonen said she told him to stop and moved to another room, but the following day he told her he would remain with her constantly. “And that’s how my ordeal in that house began,” she said.

According to Gonen, Muhammad and another man, Ibrahim, assaulted her repeatedly over a period of days.

“I’m sitting on the bed. Ibrahim comes and sits next to me, and harasses me. Everything happens in the room, in complete silence. I start crying insanely. Everything is quiet, and he says, ‘Be careful, if you don’t calm down, I’ll get angry.’ And that’s how the days pass: I go to the bathroom and Muhammad is with me, and he watches me…  Ibrahim keeps bothering me endlessly. …It went on for 16 days… Those were by far the worst 16 days of my captivity.”

Gonen said that the most severe single assault occurred later, in another house, when a different captor followed her into the bathroom and attacked her for about half an hour.

“I remember this one moment when I looked — there was a kind of window there, a small square like a picture frame — and I looked through the window and said to myself: ‘Wow. Blue skies, birds chirping, and this is the situation I’m in right now.’ The dissonance between life outside, the beautiful, normal, clean life, and the filth and brutality and utter disgust that’s happening here inside the bathroom — It’s a moment I will never forget in my life,” she said.

She said she cried throughout the assault.

After the attack, she said she felt completely disoriented. “All that went through my head was: ‘Romi, everyone in Israel thinks you’re dead, and you’re going to be a … slave in captivity.’”

She said the man later threatened her with a weapon. “Presses a gun to my head and tells me, ‘If you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you.’”

In the interview, Gonen also described the moments surrounding her abduction and the fear-filled phone calls she had with her mother as the attack unfolded. She said that now that all living hostages had returned, she finally felt able to disclose the full scope of what she experienced.

Gonen arrived at the music party near Re’im with her close friend Gaya Khalifa. As the massacre began, the two sent messages and shared their locations while family members desperately tried to help them escape. A friend of Khalifa’s, Ben Shimoni, eventually reached them by car. Gonen said she was the 13th person he managed to rescue that day. During their attempted escape, her mother, Merav, remained on the phone with her, determined that her daughter would not feel alone even as terrorists closed in on the vehicle. Merav said her sole aim was to ensure that Romi did not feel abandoned, even if her voice ended up being the last thing her daughter heard.

After the vehicle was ambushed, Gonen was taken to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Badly wounded and terrified, she said she believed she might wake up without an arm. Following surgery under heavy sedation, she was moved to an apartment, where she was held alone by several men.

{Matzav.com}

Senior rabbis from across Australia have issued an extraordinary public demand for the federal government to ban what they describe as “hate-fuelled” anti-Israel demonstrations and to establish a Federal Royal Commission into antisemitism, warning that Jewish communities are facing an unprecedented and escalating threat. In a letter sent to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday, […]

An Army Radio host on Wednesday lauded Arab-Israeli filmmaker Mohammad Bakri, the director of the libelous anti-Israel film “Jenin, Jenin,” who violated every journalistic ethic to produce the film. “During our broadcast, the beloved, amazing actor Mohammad Bakri passed away, someone who truly is among the greatest of the great,” the broadcaster said. “A huge, […]

Israel’s internal security agency declined to respond after a dramatic allegation raised in the Knesset cast fresh doubt on official explanations surrounding the intelligence failures before the October 7 massacre. While the claims have not been independently verified, their presentation from the Knesset floor is expected to intensify public and political demands for a State Commission of Inquiry.

Speaking during a debate in the Knesset, Deputy Minister Almog Cohen of the Otzma Yehudit asserted that Israeli security services were not entirely without human intelligence inside Gaza in the hours before the Hamas assault. Cohen said the Shin Bet maintained a high-level source operating within the Gaza Strip who issued a concrete warning shortly before the attack began.

According to Cohen, the source, identified by the codename “Green Sardine,” reported at around 3:30 a.m. that large numbers of Nukhba terrorists were assembling inside mosques across Gaza. He said this information was delivered live to the agent’s handler and should have been treated as a clear operational signal, noting that the gathering took place nearly two hours before the earliest Fajr prayer, a timing he described as a precise and unusual indicator of imminent action.

Cohen further alleged that although Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar convened senior division heads at roughly the same time, the intelligence about the mosque gatherings was not transmitted to the relevant command centers where preventative measures could have been initiated. He argued that this failure severed the chain between intelligence collection and operational response.

If Cohen’s account proves accurate, it would undermine the long-standing official position that Israel lacked actionable human intelligence from within Gaza during the critical pre-attack window. For more than a year, public briefings have maintained that Israeli agencies were largely unaware of specific Hamas movements until terrorists breached the border fence. Cohen’s statements sharpen the unresolved questions surrounding who possessed early warnings, how they were handled, and why they did not trigger an immediate military alert.

While the Shin Bet has refrained from commenting and the existence and reporting of the “Green Sardine” source remain unconfirmed, the disclosure has already reignited debate over accountability at the highest levels.

{Matzav.com}

A Gazan man who publicly boasted of armed attacks against Israel and prayed for the death of Jews has been released from prison in the United Kingdom after entering the country illegally earlier this year. The man, known online as Abu Wadei and identified as Mosab Abdulkarim al-Gassas, was freed despite a digital trail that […]

The Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn has made a historic real estate move in Jerusalem, purchasing two entire residential towers currently under construction near the Machane Yehuda shuk. The deal, valued at up to NIS 1 billion (approximately $270 million), is believed to be among the largest private real estate transactions ever completed in Israel. […]

The U.S. Navy has crossed a new threshold in its race to field low-cost strike weapons, successfully launching a one-way attack drone from a ship at sea for the first time. The test took place Dec. 16 in the Arabian Gulf, when the USS Santa Barbara, a littoral combat ship, launched a Low-cost Unmanned Combat […]

President Trump said tonight that American forces carried out a series of airstrikes against ISIS operatives in Nigeria, describing the operation as a direct response to ongoing attacks against Christian communities in the region.

In a statement posted on Truth Social, Trump said the action followed repeated warnings to the terror group and marked a decisive escalation. “I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was,” the president wrote. “The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing.”

Trump emphasized that the military action was conducted under his direct authority, saying the strikes were extensive and lethal. “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!” he wrote.

Concluding his message, Trump framed the operation as part of a broader effort to confront extremist violence and protect vulnerable populations, while offering holiday remarks. “Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper. May God Bless our Military, and [happy holiday] to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”

{Matzav.com}

Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet to voice concern over the continuing violence between Cambodia and Thailand and offer help to facilitate talks to support peace and stability between the two countries. He conveyed Trump’s call for peace and stressed the importance of fully implementing the Kuala Lumpur Peace […]

Record rainfall in Southern California caused flooding inside a Los Angeles parking garage.

Trump: Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!

Around 3:15 p.m. Thursday, the FDNY responded to a three-alarm fire at 21-07 147th Street in Queens. No injuries were reported, and more than 190 firefighters and EMS personnel were on the scene. Deputy Assistant Chief Joseph Schiralli said crews arrived within four minutes and believe the fire began in a trash can in an […]

Months after a Miami hotel was exposed for having Indian workers remotely handle front desk check-ins, an Atlanta-based security firm has now been caught relying on overseas Indian staff to operate security robot dogs.

Dan Hoffman: “Make no mistake—President Trump cares a lot more about the soldiers fighting and dying in that region than Vladimir Putin does. But in spite of all that, I just don’t think that Russia wants to make a deal.”

In China, a courier’s electric bicycle caught fire while he was riding, leaving him with burns over 90% of his body. He is currently hospitalized, and a faulty battery is believed to be the cause.

Syrian authorities announced that they have arrested Taha al Zoubi, a senior ISIS leader also known as Abu Omar Tabiya, in what officials described as a targeted counterterrorism operation near Damascus. According to the Syrian Interior Ministry, Zoubi was captured while wearing a suicide belt and carrying a weapon. Several ISIS associates were arrested alongside […]

A quick-hitting winter system is expected to sweep through the New York City region late Friday, bringing snow, slick roads, and travel disruptions as the season rush collides with deteriorating weather.

Meteorologists say snowfall should begin toward the end of the day Friday and intensify into the evening as temperatures dip into the upper 20s. Conditions are likely to worsen during the height of rush hour, with both roadways and airports facing delays.

“It looks like a 3- to 6-inch snowfall for the area coming probably very late tomorrow into tomorrow night,” AccuWeather senior meteorologist Tom Kines told The NY Post on Thursday.

Officials stress that while the storm is not expected to paralyze the city, it will still make getting around uncomfortable and slow. “I don’t envision this as a storm that’s going to shut the city down and all that, but it will be a pain in our butts in terms of travel,” Kines said.

The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm watch covering New York City, northeast New Jersey, Long Island, and the lower Hudson Valley. The watch goes into effect at 4 p.m. Friday and runs through 1 p.m. Shabbos.

Forecasters project snowfall totals of 4 to 8 inches across the metro area by early Shabbos afternoon. However, they caution that a “reasonable worst-case scenario” could push accumulations as high as 10 inches in some locations.

Snowfall rates may reach about an inch per hour at times, with forecasters noting a “low” possibility of bursts as heavy as 2 inches per hour if stronger snow bands develop.

Either way, “hazardous travel from snow-covered roads” is expected.

AccuWeather described the storm as “fast-moving” but impactful, saying it has a “high likelihood of producing enough snow to require shoveling and plowing in the New York City metro area.”

The company warned of “major slowdowns on roads and at airports,” with senior meteorologist Tyler Roys cautioning that the “fast-moving storm will pack a punch in the Northeast.”

Kines advised that daytime plans on Friday may proceed with minimal disruption, but conditions will decline later in the afternoon. “If you’ve got errands to do during the day – returning presents or whatever – or even traveling, I think for the most part you’re OK. After 3 or 4 p.m. tomorrow, that’s when you start worrying about some snow coming in.”

City agencies say they are preparing in advance. Acting Department of Sanitation Commissioner Javier Lojan told The NY Post that crews began planning “well in advance of this storm, and we are ready for whatever comes our way.”

The sanitation department also cautioned residents that Friday trash pickup may be affected, posting on X that delays “are to be expected as we work to pick up material and prepare vehicles for snow operations at the same time.”

{Matzav.com}