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The man charged with murdering conservative activist Charlie Kirk appeared in person for the first time on Thursday, entering a Provo, Utah, courtroom with a relaxed demeanor as he quietly exchanged smiles with his attorneys. At the same time, Judge Tony Graf granted a major request from Kirk’s widow, naming Erika Kirk the official victim representative for the proceedings.

Before any substantive issues were addressed, defense attorneys for 22-year-old Tyler Robinson immediately pressed the court to restrict camera access. Clad in a blue button-down shirt with an argyle tie, Robinson listened as his lawyer, Staci Visser, argued that media coverage could derail the trial by inflaming public opinion and injecting unnecessary turmoil. “We don’t want the chaos that is out in the media in this courtroom,” Visser told the court.

The dispute over transparency didn’t end there. Judge Graf was also expected to determine whether a transcript of an October phone hearing—where it was decided Robinson could appear in court dressed in civilian clothing—should be opened to the public. After closing the courtroom for more than two hours to hear arguments privately, Graf opted to delay both decisions and set a new date of Dec. 29 to finalize his rulings. “I would rather do it right and take more time, than to be rash and miss the mark,” the judge said. “It is an important issue.”

As the hearing dragged on, Robinson’s legal team intensified its objections, accusing the court’s live video feed of inadvertently broadcasting private strategy, including their on-screen documents and whispered discussions. They also protested that the feed exposed Robinson’s shackles, which had been expressly ordered concealed. “We believe this threatened my client’s right to a fair trial,” Visser said. “That’s entirely inappropriate.” She pushed to shut cameras off entirely, though Judge Graf instead instructed that they simply be repositioned to avoid the defense table.

This was the first time the public saw Robinson physically present, as all earlier sessions had been held virtually. Despite the severity of the accusations, he appeared unshaken. Prosecutors say Robinson opened fire on the 31-year-old Kirk on September 10 during a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University, gunning him down in front of thousands.

Kirk, a father of two and a leading voice among young conservatives, was struck once in the neck and collapsed as horrified attendees watched. Videos from multiple angles spread online within minutes, sending shockwaves across the country and fueling public outcry.

The charges against Robinson are extensive: aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, obstruction of justice, two counts of witness tampering, and committing a violent offense in the presence of a child. Despite defense protests, Judge Graf insisted Robinson would remain restrained during court for safety reasons, though media were instructed not to photograph the shackles.

Robinson’s effort to keep cameras out has drawn backing from the Utah County Sheriff’s Office. But Erika Kirk—now officially recognized as her late husband’s representative—has forcefully advocated for full public visibility. “There were cameras all over my husband when he was murdered,” she said in an interview with Fox News’ Jesse Watters. “There have been cameras all over me, analyzing my every move, analyzing my every smile, my every tear. We deserve to have cameras in there.”

Regardless of the judge’s ultimate decision on courtroom recording, Erika Kirk will now have a formal role in the proceedings. Granting her request, Judge Graf concluded the hearing by stating, “This court will recognize Miss Erika Kirk as the designated victim representative in this case,” before adding, “Thank you.”

{Matzav.com}

Avi Marciano, the father of murdered IDF Cpl. Noa Marciano, delivered a harrowing account this week of how he learned the truth about his daughter’s final moments in Hamas captivity. In a video posted by Israeli activist Shai Deluca, Marciano said he discovered Noa’s fate not through military notification, but through a Telegram video showing […]

Forecasters say New York City may see 1 to 3 inches of snow from Motzei Shabbos into Sunday, potentially marking the first accumulating snowfall of the winter season.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at blocking states from crafting their own regulations for artificial intelligence, saying the burgeoning industry is at risk of being stifled by a patchwork of onerous rules while in a battle with Chinese competitors for supremacy. Members of Congress from both parties, as well as civil liberties and consumer […]

President Trump has officially pardoned Tina Peters for her actions tied to attempts to “expose voter fraud” following the 2020 election. Peters remains in the custody of the State of Colorado, and because her convictions involve state—not federal—charges, her release now depends on action by Colorado’s governor.

A new Channel 14 poll released Thursday night presents an updated snapshot of the Israeli political landscape, showing significant shifts across multiple blocs. While the Likud remains dominant, the survey indicates a sharp rise for Arab parties, continued stagnation for Yair Lapid, and an almost complete collapse for Benny Gantz.

According to the poll, if elections were held today, the Likud would retain its strength with 35 seats—unchanged from the previous survey. Naftali Bennett’s party gains one seat, rising to 13. Shas remains stable on 11 seats, followed by Yair Golan’s “Democrats,” which hold steady at 10.

Yisrael Beiteinu slips by one seat to 10, while United Torah Judaism remains unchanged with 8. Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party polls at 7 seats, matching the result for Otzma Yehudit. The Arab Islamist Ra’am party climbs to 6 seats, while Religious Zionism weakens, dropping to 4.

Hadash–Ta’al receives 5 seats. Yesh Atid continues to hover near the electoral threshold with only 4 seats. Blue and White polls at 1.2 seats and Balad at 2.5—both failing to cross the threshold.

Across political blocs, the right-wing camp reaches 65 seats, the left-wing bloc holds 44, and the Arab parties collectively climb to 11 seats.

In the head-to-head question of who is best suited to serve as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu leads decisively with 53% support. He is followed by Naftali Bennett at 22%. Gadi Eisenkot registers 10%, while Yair Lapid and Avigdor Liberman each receive 7%. Benny Gantz trails far behind, with just 1% backing him for the premiership.

{Matzav.com}

Intense search efforts are underway for a 19-year-old chareidi young man from central Israel who has been missing since yesterday, with authorities expressing serious concern for his safety.

According to the emergency response organization ZAKA, the teenager was last seen near the Yarkon Stream, raising the possibility that he may have been carried out toward the Mediterranean Sea.

Search teams have been operating for several hours after all contact with the young man was lost approximately a day earlier. Given the length of time he has been missing and the severe weather conditions, officials warn that the danger to his life is significant.

Following a request from the Israel Police, volunteers from ZAKA’s missing-persons unit in Tel Aviv—together with members of the organization’s special-operations team—began sweeping large sections of the coastline, nearby parks, and other areas where clues about his whereabouts were detected.

Stormy winds and rough water conditions have heightened fears and made the search more dangerous and difficult.

Yechiel Goldman, operations coordinator for ZAKA Tel Aviv, said: “Our volunteers have been working in the field for the past several hours with the goal of locating the missing young man as quickly as possible. The storm has made the conditions extremely challenging, and every moment may be critical.”

A joint command post has been set up at the National Park in collaboration with ZAKA Tel Aviv and Israel’s emergency and security services. From there, search sectors are being assigned and coordinated, with teams continuing to comb all relevant areas as the investigation continues.

{Matzav.com}

Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro erupted in fury after U.S. forces seized a massive oil tanker off the country’s coast, calling the operation an act of “piracy” and urging citizens to prepare to “kick in the teeth” of the United States. The dramatic raid, carried out by elite U.S. Coast Guard tactical teams, was captured on […]

Footage released by the IDF shows the moment two terrorists were shot in Chevron after attempting to ram IDF forces in the area a few days ago.

NYPD Det. First Grade Michael Greaney heroically saved a choking infant Wednesday morning on the Bronx River Parkway after spotting a car speeding on the shoulder. The frantic driver told him, “My baby’s choking,” prompting Greaney to grab the infant and perform back blows until her airway cleared.

A gas explosion set off a major fire in a San Francisco Bay Area neighborhood on Thursday after obliterating at least one home, blowing out windows and shaking nearby houses. Six people were taken to hospitals for injuries, fire officials said. Dramatic video footage showed a home in the Hayward area sitting under a blue […]

Chiddushim on Maseches Kesuvos regarding one who donates his wife’s earnings to hekdesh, in the handwriting of the Gaon Rabbi Akiva Eiger, Av Beis Din of Pozna.

Likud MK Avichai Boaron and the Lavi organization submitted an urgent petition to the Supreme Court on Thursday morning against Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and Police Chief Dani Levy, demanding the launch of a criminal investigation against Baharav-Miara on suspicions of fraud, breach of trust, and the obstruction of investigative procedures in the case of […]

Thousands of members of the Chassidishe community of London flooded the streets of the city in a large-scale protest against Israel’s proposed draft law. A broad coalition of Chassidic groups united publicly to oppose the legislation currently under debate in the Israeli Knesset.

The rally took place outside the Israeli Embassy and attracted participants from Satmar, Ger, Belz, Vizhnitz, Boyan, Bobov, Tchernobyl, and several other Chassidic communities.

Protesters filled both sides of the road while allowing traffic to continue moving, maintaining strict order throughout the event.

From the crowd rose a repeated chant in English: “Shame on you, Israeli government!”

The Stamford Hill neighborhood alone sent more than 70 buses, aside from those who arrived by train and other public transportation.

The event opened with remarks from Rabbi Yechezkel Weiss of Monsey, who traveled from the United States specifically to address the gathering.

He was followed by Rabbi Moshe Menachem Weiss, a Satmar leader in London, who shared a story from a recent visit to Israel. He described spending a weekend in Meron with his rebbe, during which local organizers arranged a driver for him. The driver, a chareidi man who is not currently studying in a yeshiva, revealed that he was officially considered absent without leave from the Israeli army. Rabbi Weiss told the crowd that he asked the driver why he refused to enlist if he was not engaged in full-time study. According to Rabbi Weiss, the driver told him: “I would rather be taken to prison than drafted into the army. I would not be able to keep my religious commitments the way I try to now. I know that if I go, I will come out spiritually destroyed.”

The driver went on to warn that the authorities were targeting the community’s most vulnerable young people, comparing it to going after “stragglers” and saying that even the youth who are struggling religiously must be protected.

Rabbi Leibus Padwa, son of London’s chief rabbinic authority for the chareidi community, led the assembled crowd in a recitation of Tehillim.

After him spoke Rabbi Baruch Nosson Halberstam of Satmar, followed by Rabbi Chaim Pinchos Miller of the Tchernobyl kehillah . Rabbi Marmerstein then addressed the crowd in English.

The demonstration concluded with kabbolas ohl malchus Shomayim led by the nearly 100-year-old dayan Rabbi Shalom Friedman, one of the most senior rabbonim in Europe.

At the end of the rally, Rabbi Yitzchok Meir Kopel read a formal statement calling for the draft legislation to be canceled entirely.

{Matzav.com}

Over ten thousand members of London’s chasidic kehillos gathered Thursday afternoon outside the Israeli Embassy to protest Israel’s proposed draft law currently under discussion in the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. The event brought together a broad coalition of kehillos, including Satmar, Ger, Belz, Vizhnitz, Boyan, Bobov, Chernobyl, and others. For many of these […]

A Hamas-aligned cyber-espionage group has dramatically expanded its intelligence-gathering campaign across the Middle East, deploying newly engineered malware and conducting hands-on intrusions inside government and diplomatic networks, according to new research from Palo Alto Networks. The group, known as Ashen Lepus, has operated since 2018 but intensified its activity throughout the Israel-Hamas war and continued […]

Wikipedia drew criticism from Jewish leaders after the site’s editors opted to freeze discussion about the title of a page that refers to Israel committing a “massacre” in June 2024.

The decision means that no one can even discuss changing the title of the page “Nuseirat rescue and massacre” until at least August 2026. The page refers to the Jewish state’s liberation of the four hostages—Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv—from Gaza.

Citing “Palestinian health officials,” the Wikipedia page claims that “at least” 276 Palestinians were killed during the operation. It also says that the Israeli military recorded fewer than 100 Palestinian deaths. The Israeli media article Wikipedia cites notes that there were terrorists among the Palestinian deaths, but the encyclopedia’s page doesn’t say that.

At least as of Oct. 2, the Wikipedia page calling it a “massacre” stated that it was redirected from a page called “2024 Nuseirat rescue operation,” per an archived version of the page. Wikipedia reportedly had that page and one on “Nuseirat refugee camp massacre” as of June 18, 2024.

After some efforts were made to change the title of the current page, Wikipedia editors proposed a moratorium on changes on July 26 and put the ban in place on Dec. 8, to last until Aug. 3.

“Wikipedia, once again, seems to be misleading its readers,” Daniel S. Mariaschin, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, told JNS.

“The Nuseirat matter tells us two things about the war in Gaza,” he said. “We learned, early on, that any figures issued by the Hamas-led ‘Gaza Health Ministry’ were always highly inflated and not credible.”

Mariaschin added that Israeli hostages “being held by Palestinian civilians in apartment buildings speaks clearly to Hamas’s policy of surrounding itself, or those connected to it, with human shields.”

“The real story here should be that kidnapped Israelis were being held hostage and were successfully rescued,” he told JNS.

Vlad Khaykin, executive vice president of social impact and North American partnerships at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told JNS that Wikipedia’s use of the word “massacre” in the title is “not a neutral descriptor.”

“It is a verdict—one that draws its authority from casualty figures and claims that remain deeply contested, often circulated by those intent on recasting Israel’s efforts at self-defense as acts of villainy,” he said.

“To enshrine such a term in a headline, absent the slow work of context and verification, is not an act of impartiality,” Khaykin told JNS. “It is the quiet rewriting of the story before the facts have even settled.”

‘Moratorium on truth’

Earlier this year, Wikipedia editors placed another moratorium on discussion on a different page—a dramatic measure that it tends to take rarely. It says that such a decision “should be used with caution,” since it runs “counter to the general practice on Wikipedia that any editor may initiate a discussion on any topic related to the operations of the encyclopedia at any time.”

On Feb. 21, editors reportedly placed a year-long ban on discussions to change the line “Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible” in the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia article on “Zionism.”

“Since when do relied-upon sources of information online place a moratorium on the truth?” Mariaschin told JNS. “The treatment of the story of the Jews’ return to their ancient homeland is not just given short shrift. It is given a fabricated treatment of history that is both biased and dangerous.”

“One can only imagine how many people searching for the facts will walk away with an intentionally false narrative,” he said.

Khaykin told JNS that the moratorium on the Zionism page “locked in a one-sided version of history.”

In January, Wikipedia’s arbitration committee banned eight editors from editing Arab-Israeli articles indefinitely. Six of the eight are anti-Israel. They can appeal their suspensions after one year.

“This is not a simple quarrel among volunteers,” Khaykin told JNS. “It is a case study in how determined actors can quietly seize the levers of an open system, rewriting reality while the world looks away.”

A JNS review found that moratoria have only been implemented a handful of times this year, including efforts to rename the article on the Gulf of Mexico, which U.S. President Donald Trump calls the “Gulf of America,” and discussions about the gender of an Algerian boxer. (JNS sought comment from the Wikimedia Foundation.)

In February 2024, a moratorium paused discussion for three months on efforts to rename an article then titled “Israel-Hamas war.” The title of the page was changed to “Gaza war” in January. A moratorium proposal to freeze discussion on changing the title of the “Gaza genocide” page failed in August 2024.

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating Wikipedia over concerns of “potentially systematic efforts to advance antisemitic and anti-Israel information in Wikipedia articles related to conflicts with the State of Israel.”

Holly Huffnagle, U.S. director of antisemitism policy for the American Jewish Committee, told JNS that “coordinated and manipulated Wikipedia editing campaigns are dangerous and something that the Wikimedia Foundation must take seriously.”

“These campaigns have the power to distort the public record, exploiting the trust people place in an open encyclopedia to push narratives crafted for hidden agendas,” she said. “Because Wikipedia is so widely cited, including by AI chatbots, even subtle, organized manipulations can change public opinion, shape news coverage and conceal the truth.”

“Procedures and policy must reflect and address these concerns,” she said.

Khaykin told JNS that Wikipedia “now serves as a foundational layer of the global information ecosystem.”

“Its content feeds directly into Google search results and informs Alexa and Siri responses,” he said. “Increasingly, it influences AI platforms like ChatGPT. When Wikipedia’s neutrality is compromised at the source, that distortion spreads.”

“Downstream tools then shape how students, journalists, policymakers and the public understand complex issues,” Khaykin told JNS.

Wikipedia “allows a small group to dictate what the world is permitted to know, then those who build our digital commons must ask themselves whether such a platform deserves its place of trust,” he added. “A source so easily captured should not be allowed to shape historical perspective or the truths we pass on to the next generation.” JNS

{Matzav.com}

When Yad L’Achim came to David Altshuler of the Jewish Ad Group (JAG) with a bold Chanukah raffle idea, nobody expected what happened next! The entire campaign sold out, every ticket, in under three days! This wasn’t luck. And it definitely wasn’t “just another raffle.” This was a full-throttle, all-systems-go campaign built, branded, and executed […]

Pomona College reached a settlement with the Anti-Defamation League, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Hillel International on Wednesday, following a complaint the trio filed with the U.S. Department of Education in April 2024.

The three groups alleged in the complaint that the private liberal arts school in southern California allowed “severe discrimination and harassment of Jewish students” to occur on campus. The Education Department said in August that it was probing the matter.

Under the new agreement, the highly-ranked school will recognize that the word “Zionist” tends to be used as a code for “Jew” and will use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred when investigating alleged antisemitism on campus.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the ADL, stated that the agreement is a “critical turning point for Pomona’s Jewish students, faculty and staff.”

“The comprehensive reforms negotiated with Pomona touch nearly every aspect of campus life, and we welcome the college’s significant, multi-faceted commitment to fighting antisemitism on its campus,” he said.

“With the reforms in this agreement, we expect meaningful and urgent strides toward Pomona’s promise of creating a safe and welcoming environment for its Jewish and Israeli students, faculty and staff,” he added.

The college commits to recognize that targeting Zionists can violate the school’s nondiscrimination policies if it’s “on the basis of their actual or perceived Jewish or Israeli shared ancestry” and that “Zionist” is “often used as a code word for ‘Jew,’” per the agreement.

The school must also appoint a coordinator to ensure compliance with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and Pomona’s website must include an option to report Title VI incidents. Students, faculty and staff will also be required to take Title VI training, according to the agreement, which is to begin in the spring.

G. Gabrielle Starr, president of Pomona, stated that “antisemitism has persisted for thousands of years, and this settlement is not a one-size-fits-all toolkit.”

“It’ll be up to our community to put it in place and to live it,” she said.

Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center and former U.S. assistant secretary of education for civil rights, stated that “the action steps outlined in this settlement will address the blatant and egregious antisemitism faced by Pomona’s students, therefore protecting students from facing similar treatment in the future.”

“We hope it encourages others to take legal action against those who violate our constitutional rights,” he said. JNS

{Matzav.com}

Tehran is demanding that the United Nations step in after what it describes as a “tightening of restrictions” on Iran’s diplomatic mission in New York, escalating a rapidly worsening standoff between Washington and the Islamic Republic. In a sharply worded statement Thursday, Iran’s foreign ministry condemned a U.S. decision to block three employees of its […]