Israeli officials said Sunday that the IDF is conducting a wide-ranging operation in northern Gaza aimed at locating the remains of Ran Gvili, with forces carrying out extensive searches at a cemetery based on intelligence assessments.
In a statement, the Prime Minister’s Office emphasized Israel’s commitment to returning Gvili for a proper Jewish burial and said his family is receiving ongoing updates about developments in the operation.
The Israeli announcement came after a Hamas spokesperson said the group had passed along all information it claims to possess regarding the whereabouts of the abducted and deceased Ran Gvili to mediators, describing the move as part of broader efforts to advance a ceasefire arrangement.
Hamas asserted that it acted with what it called full transparency in its handling of abductees and the deceased, claiming it transferred information and remains promptly and without delay. The group alleged this was done despite what it described as Israeli violations and Israel’s failure to honor commitments.
According to Hamas, attempts to recover bodies and abductees were carried out under extraordinarily harsh conditions, at times nearly impossible, and were undertaken with assistance from mediating parties.
The organization also urged mediators to apply pressure on Israel to fulfill its obligations under the agreement framework.
Hamas concluded its statement by saying the information it provided included all details it had regarding Gvili’s location, pointing to current IDF activity at one of the cited sites as proof of its claim.
The Hamas statement was released ahead of a cabinet meeting scheduled for later tonight, which is expected to focus, among other issues, on the possible reopening of the Rafah crossing in both directions.
At the same time, families who lost loved ones are pressing the prime minister to resist outside influence. Yehoshua Shani, the father of the late Ori Mordechai and head of the Gevurah Forum, cautioned that the involvement of advisers from Qatar and Turkey constitutes an unacceptable opening for terror elements and said Gaza must remain under full Israeli security control.
“Two years and four months have passed since the start of the war. We have paid an extremely heavy price – the entire people of Israel have paid,” Shani said. “These are days that demand courage, strength, and the ability to make the right decisions. Do not agree to the entry of Phase B before the complete disarmament of Hamas and before the return of Ran Gvili. Any attempt to whitewash reality through advisers – Qatari, Turkish, or otherwise – is unacceptable. Terror cannot be allowed to enter through the back door wearing suits and ties.”
He added, “Our sons who fell will not serve as a bargaining chip for the return of a terror regime in Gaza. The Gaza Strip must be under full Israeli security control, and we call on the government to stand firm on this with courage.”
{Matzav.com}
A senior US delegation headed by Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu focused on moving ahead with the next stage of President Trump’s 20-Point Plan for Gaza, including detailed coordination on how Phase 2 would be carried out. Joining Witkoff were Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor Aryeh Lightstone, and White House advisor Josh Gruenbaum, Arutz Sheva reports.
Following the meeting, Witkoff released a summary stating that the talks centered on “the continued progress and implementation planning for Phase 2 of President Trump’s 20-Point Plan for Gaza, which the United States and Israel are advancing together in close partnership,” along with discussions on wider regional developments.
In his remarks, Witkoff underscored the depth of cooperation between the two governments, noting that “the United States and Israel maintain a strong and longstanding relationship built on close coordination and shared priorities.” He described the conversation as “constructive and positive,” saying both sides shared a clear understanding of the next steps and the need for ongoing collaboration on key regional concerns.
Diplomatic officials familiar with the discussions assessed that Witkoff’s comments suggest progress toward an agreement on reopening the Rafah Crossing, even though Hamas has not yet returned the body of the final fallen hostage, Ran Gvili.
{Matzav.com}
Israeli journalist Rina Matzliach ignited a wave of backlash after remarks she made on an Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation–Kan Reshet Bet program, where she sharply criticized soccer players who recite Shema Yisrael as they enter the field, describing the practice as offensive.
During the broadcast, Matzliach expressed revulsion at the sight of players uttering the traditional declaration of faith before a match. “I see at soccer games, every player that takes the field goes ‘Shema Yisrael’… It’s disgusting. I mean, why ‘Shema Yisrael’ when you take the field? It’s disgusting, Akiva, disgusting. Go in, play, why ‘Shema Yisrael’ in the middle of a soccer game?” she said.
The comments quickly spread online, drawing intense criticism from many who accused her of disparaging Jewish religious expression. One social media user responded angrily: “Rina Matzliach said on the public broadcaster that soccer players reciting ‘Shema Yisrael’ is, and I quote: ‘Disgusting to me. And we’re paying for this.”
Others questioned whether her remarks reflected a double standard. Another user wrote: “Everyone has the right to their opinion. But would Mrs. Matzliah dare to say the same thing about Christian players who cross themselves or Muslims who bow after a goal? Or does only Judaism disgust her?”
Additional reactions accused the journalist of harboring hostility toward her own heritage. One commenter stated: “It’s infuriating that we pay for this. Another example of internalized antisemitism that does not surprise me.”
{Matzav.com}A sprawling winter storm blanketed much of the country today with snow, sleet and freezing rain, stretching from the South through New England and triggering brutal cold, extensive power outages and hazardous travel conditions.
Forecasters said icy precipitation would persist through Monday across many regions, followed by a deep freeze that would keep conditions dangerous for days. The National Weather Service warned that “dangerous travel and infrastructure impacts” were likely to continue well after the storm system moves on.
Meteorologists said heavy snow was likely from the Ohio Valley into the Northeast, while areas from the Lower Mississippi Valley through the Southeast and into the Mid-Atlantic faced the threat of “catastrophic ice accumulation.”
“It is a unique storm in the sense that it is so widespread,” National Weather Service meteorologist Allison Santorelli said during a phone interview. “It was affecting areas all the way from New Mexico, Texas, all the way into New England, so we’re talking like a 2,000 mile spread.”
Santorelli said roughly 213 million people were under some form of winter weather alert as of Sunday morning. At the same time, poweroutage.us reported that nearly 800,000 utility customers were without electricity, a figure that continued to climb.
Tennessee reported the most severe outages, with more than 250,000 customers in the dark. Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi each had outages exceeding 100,000 customers.
Air travel was also heavily disrupted. According to flight tracker flightaware.com, more than 10,000 flights were canceled by Sunday, with an additional 8,000 delayed. Major disruptions were reported at airports serving Philadelphia, Washington, Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina, as well as New York and New Jersey.
Santorelli cautioned that the hazards would not end once precipitation stops.
“Behind the storm it’s just going to get bitterly cold across basically the entirety of the eastern two-thirds of the nation, east of the Rockies,” she said. Prolonged cold temperatures, she added, will slow melting and complicate efforts to restore power and repair damaged infrastructure.
President Donald Trump approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday, with additional approvals expected. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the Federal Emergency Management Agency had already staged supplies, personnel, and search-and-rescue teams across multiple states.
In and around Nashville, ice accumulations reached half an inch or more, coating power lines and weighing down trees until branches snapped and crashed onto roads and utility equipment.
“We typically say that once you start seeing, you know, roughly a half an inch of ice, that’s when you’re going to start seeing the more widespread power outages,” Santorelli said.
In Oxford, Mississippi, police urged residents Sunday morning to remain indoors due to extreme danger outdoors. Utility crews were also ordered off the roads overnight as conditions worsened.
“Due to life-threatening conditions, Oxford Utilities has made the difficult decision to pull our crews off the road for the night,” the utility company wrote in an early Sunday Facebook post.
“The situation is currently too dangerous to continue,” the post said. “Trees are actively snapping and falling around our linemen while they are in the bucket trucks. We simply cannot clear the lines faster than the limbs are falling.”
Travel conditions were also treacherous in north Georgia, where ice coated roadways.
{Matzav.com}
New reporting citing Western media and alleged internal Iranian data suggests the death toll from Iran’s two-day crackdown on protests may be far higher than the government has acknowledged, potentially reaching into the tens of thousands.
The Jerusalem Post reported Sunday, referencing Time magazine and what it described as Iranian hospital records, that as many as 30,000 people may have been killed nationwide during the Jan. 8–9 suppression of demonstrations, a figure that dwarfs official statements from Tehran.
According to Time, two senior officials from Iran’s Health Ministry told the magazine that up to 30,000 people may have died during the crackdown. Time also said it reviewed a separate hospital-based tally listing 30,304 deaths as of Friday, Jan. 9.
The magazine cautioned that it was unable to independently confirm the figures.
Officials cited in the report said the volume of fatalities overwhelmed local systems, depleting body-bag supplies and forcing authorities to use semitrailer trucks to transport bodies.
The reporting described security forces deploying rooftop snipers and vehicles equipped with heavy machine guns after cutting communications. It also referenced an alleged broadcast on Iranian state television warning that anyone “entering the streets” should not complain if a bullet struck them.
Time said the hospital-based figures were compiled by Dr. Amir Parasta, identified as a German-Iranian ophthalmologist. Parasta told the magazine, “We are getting closer to reality,” while noting that the count likely omitted deaths from military hospitals and areas inaccessible to data collectors.
Public health experts quoted in the report urged caution in drawing firm conclusions from hospital data alone but said the internal figures pointed to a large-scale killing carried out over a very short period.
Iranian authorities have acknowledged a much smaller number of deaths.
State media reported on Jan. 21 that 3,117 people were killed during the unrest, citing a statement attributed to the Martyrs Foundation and carried by Press TV.
Other independent estimates differ sharply.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, or HRANA, said in a report posted Sunday that it had verified 5,459 deaths and was reviewing 17,031 additional cases.
Iran International, a London-based broadcaster, previously reported at least 12,000 deaths linked to the Jan. 8–9 events and on Sunday released a separate report claiming more than 36,500 killed, citing documents it said were reviewed by its editorial board.
International attention has also intensified in recent days.
In a media advisory issued Friday, the United Nations human rights office said the U.N. Human Rights Council had extended the mandate of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran for an additional two years and called for an urgent probe into alleged serious violations connected to protests that it said began on Dec. 28, 2025.
Time reported that if the internal estimates prove accurate, the episode would rank among the deadliest mass shootings over a comparable period in modern history, drawing a parallel to the Babyn Yar massacre in Nazi-occupied Ukraine, where the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says 33,771 Jews were killed over two days on Sept. 29–30, 1941.
{Matzav.com}
Dear Matzav Inbox,
In recent weeks, a glossy new effort has begun making the rounds, complete with polished language and lofty promises, all centered on one seductive phrase: helping bochurim “know Kol HaTorah Kulah” by learning Rambam. It sounds inspiring. It sounds ambitious. It sounds holy. And it is precisely because it sounds so good that it deserves to be challenged, forcefully and without apology.
A bochur is not supposed to be mastering Kol HaTorah Kulah. That may sound jarring to some ears in an age addicted to slogans and shortcuts, but it is a simple truth rooted in mesorah, experience, and common sense.
A bochur is supposed to be learning how to learn.
That is not a semantic distinction. It is the entire foundation of the yeshiva system.
The goal of the formative yeshiva years has never been encyclopedic knowledge. It has never been box-checking or coverage. It has never been about being able to say, “I finished X” or “I know Y.” The goal has always been something far deeper and far less flashy: acquiring the tools, discipline, patience, and intellectual honesty required to engage Torah seriously for a lifetime.
Learning how to learn means grappling with a sugya until it hurts. It means struggling through a Tosafos that refuses to cooperate. It means developing the ability to ask the right questions, to recognize when something does not yet make sense, and to sit with that discomfort rather than paper it over with summaries or surface-level clarity. It means learning a derech halimud, not collecting achievements.
And crucially, it means learning what one’s yeshiva tells him to learn.
The yeshiva system is not an accident. It is not a haphazard assembly of masechtos and meforshim. It is the result of generations of refinement by Torah giants who understood that Torah growth requires structure, restraint, and patience. Bochurim are not free agents building personal Torah portfolios. They are talmidim being shaped, carefully, by a framework designed to produce depth, not breadth.
When a yeshiva chooses a particular masechta, a particular approach, a particular emphasis, it is doing so with one goal in mind: building a ben Torah. Not a walking index. Not a marketing success story. A ben Torah.
The recent push to redirect bochurim toward mastering Rambam under the banner of “knowing Kol HaTorah Kulah” fundamentally misunderstands this. Limud of Rambam is, of course, sacred. Learning Rambam is invaluable. But when, how, and for whom matters. Not every good thing is good at every stage. Not every lofty goal is appropriate for every age. And not every powerful sefer belongs at the center of a bochur’s already demanding and carefully calibrated learning schedule.
What worries me most is not the Rambam itself, but the mindset behind the campaign.
We are increasingly uncomfortable with process. We crave outcomes. We want to be able to say that our bochurim are “doing something,” “finishing something,” “knowing something.” We want neat narratives and impressive claims. And so we invent new tracks, new initiatives, new frameworks, often without asking the most important question of all: Who asked for this?
Our bochurim are already under immense pressure. They are navigating demanding learning schedules, expectations from yeshivos, families, peers, and shidduch systems, all while trying to figure out who they are and how they fit into the world of Torah. The last thing they need is yet another external program whispering in their ear that what they are doing is not enough, that unless they are also “knowing Kol HaTorah Kulah,” they are somehow missing the boat.
That is not encouragement. That is distraction.
And distraction in the formative years is not benign. It pulls a bochur off track, not in dramatic rebellion, but in subtle misalignment. Focus becomes divided. Priorities blur. The message shifts from “immerse yourself fully in your yeshiva’s derech” to “add this on, just in case.” Over time, that erosion matters.
We should be deeply wary of new inventions in chinuch, especially those introduced from outside the yeshiva world and marketed directly to bochurim. Mesorah does not reject innovation out of fear; it rejects it out of responsibility. The burden of proof lies with those who want to change the system, not with those who are protecting it.
There will be a time—many times, in fact—when a Jew can and should broaden his horizons, build bekius, master Rambam, and aspire toward encompassing Torah knowledge. That time is not defined by a catchy campaign or an advertising push. It comes naturally, organically, after the foundations have been laid.
A bochur does not need to know Kol HaTorah Kulah.
He needs to know how to learn Torah.
He needs to know a derech halimud.
How to make a laining – or a “lainis‘ for the old timers – on a Gemara.
He needs to know how to stay on track even when shiny alternatives beckon.
Let us not confuse ambition with wisdom.
Let us not mistake slogans for substance.
And let us not pull our bochurim off the path that generations before us fought so hard to preserve.
Sometimes the most responsible thing we can say to a new idea—no matter how well-intentioned—is simply this: not now, and not for them.
A Simple Yid
The Tri-State
To submit a letter to appear on Matzav.com, email MatzavInbox@gmail.com
DON’T MISS OUT! Join the Matzav Status by CLICKING HERE. Join the Matzav WhatsApp Groups by CLICKING HERE.
The opinions expressed in letters on Matzav.com do not necessarily reflect the stance of the Matzav Media Network.
