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A man who has publicly styled himself as the chief rabbi of Saudi Arabia said this week that he was turned away at the kingdom’s border, even though he held a valid visa and has spent years traveling in and out of the country.

Rav Yaakov Yisroel Herzog announced the incident Monday in a post on X, writing: “With profound regret, I announce that I was barred from entering the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia upon arrival, despite holding a valid entry visa, and despite having spent a significant portion of the past years living and serving in this blessed Kingdom.”

Herzog has in recent years presented himself as a religious point person for Jewish visitors and residents in Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that the kingdom has no officially recognized Jewish community and enforces strict limits on public expressions of non-Islamic faiths. His high-profile approach has reportedly clashed with the preference of other Jews in the country to maintain a low profile.

In a follow-up statement, Herzog described the personal impact of the refusal. “This incident has left me — against my will — distant from the Jewish community that I serve with love within the Kingdom, a community that has lived under the spirit of peace and goodwill embodied by the Saudi royal system and the great Saudi people,” he wrote.

Saudi Arabia generally bars entry to holders of Israeli passports, but Herzog, who was born in New York and holds both US and Israeli citizenship, has previously been able to travel between Jerusalem and the kingdom. That apparent flexibility, however, did not extend to his most recent attempt to enter the country.

The denial comes at a time of heightened regional tension. Relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel have cooled amid the fragile ceasefire involving Israel and Hamas. At the same time, Donald Trump has repeatedly urged Riyadh to formalize relations with Israel, an effort Saudi leaders have resisted.

Saudi officials have continued to emphasize that any normalization would depend on progress toward Palestinian statehood. “Saudi Arabia is not considering a normalization deal with Israel. Should Israel become a normal country with normal acceptance of international law, then Saudi Arabia will consider normalization,” former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal said Sunday in comments to The Times of Israel.

Herzog said he was given no explanation at the airport or by the Interior Ministry for the decision to bar his entry. Still, he insisted that responsibility did not lie with the country’s top leadership, saying he was “convinced that this measure did not emanate from the Royal Court or from the Saudi government itself.”

He added: “Despite my complete trust in the integrity of Saudi institutions and the sound intentions of its leadership, I cannot ignore the possibility of the existence of dark forces seeking to obstruct the path of reform, openness, and tolerance that the Kingdom is pursuing with determination.”

The Saudi Ministry of Interior did not respond to requests for comment from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Herzog has previously promoted kosher food availability in Saudi grocery stores and advertises services such as ritual circumcision on his website. Those activities exist alongside Saudi law, which prohibits the public practice of religions other than Islam.

The incident follows another episode highlighting religious sensitivity in the kingdom. In March 2024, a US government delegation focused on international religious freedom cut short its visit to Saudi Arabia after a rabbi traveling with the group was instructed to remove his yarmulka while in public.

{Matzav.com}

Israel has accused the United Nations of running a vast, taxpayer-funded campaign that singles out the Jewish state, alleging that roughly $100 million a year is spent on UN reports, debates, committees, and special mechanisms aimed almost exclusively at targeting Israel. The claim was laid out this week by Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United […]

In a rare moment of global recognition for a branding and marketing agency rooted in the Orthodox Jewish business world, M/OTG, with offices in Brooklyn NY and Israel, has been ranked #3 in DIELINE’s “10 Best Redesigns of 2025” for its rebrand and packaging redesign of Flaum, the century-old Brooklyn kosher deli brand. Flaum’s redesign […]

More than eighty years after he was killed in combat, a Jewish American pilot who fought in World War II has finally been laid to rest, following the identification of his remains and a burial ceremony in South Carolina, according to the US Department of War, the Times of Israel reports.

The aviator, Lt. Morton Sher, was 22 years old when he died on Aug. 20, 1943, during an Allied air operation over China. Flying a P-40 Warhawk fighter-bomber as part of the China-Burma theater, Sher’s aircraft went down in Hunan province after a mission against Japanese forces. His plane crashed into a rice paddy in Xin Bai Village and burned, leading officials at the time to believe that no remains could be recovered.

In the aftermath of the crash, Sher’s squadron erected a memorial stone near the site, and a postwar Army review conducted in 1947 formally classified him as unrecoverable. That same year, his mother, Celia Sher, was presented with his Purple Heart, and for decades the family’s connection to him consisted only of letters, photographs, and memories preserved from the war years.

Sher had been born on December 14, 1920, in Baltimore, Maryland. His family later relocated to Greenville, South Carolina, where they were active members of Congregation Beth Israel. As a teenager, he helped found a local chapter of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization’s Aleph Zadik Aleph fraternity. He later attended the University of Alabama, joining the Kappa Nu fraternity, managing the school’s basketball team, and participating in ROTC before entering the Air Force to pursue aviation.

Assigned to the 76th Fighter Squadron of the 23rd Fighter Group in the 14th Air Force, Sher flew escort and combat missions over China. An Air Force historian cited by the Department of War noted that he had already achieved three aerial victories by the time of his death. In 1942, after his aircraft was hit by seven Japanese fighters following a successful raid on Hong Kong, Sher sustained a minor head injury but chose to return to combat rather than seek reassignment.

Letters sent home and interviews published during the war reflected Sher’s strong attachment to his mission and to the people he was helping defend. The Department of War reported that after making an emergency landing in a Chinese village in October 1942 due to engine trouble, Sher was welcomed by residents with food and celebrations. He later described singing American songs for villagers and being escorted back to base through mountain towns.

A renewed effort to locate his remains began in 2012, when a private citizen contacted the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency after discovering a photograph of the memorial stone placed by Chinese villagers at the crash site. Initial searches did not yield results, but a more extensive recovery mission in 2024 uncovered aircraft debris and human remains in Xin Bai Village near Hengyang. Subsequent DNA analysis confirmed that the remains belonged to Sher.

Sher was finally buried on December 14 — his birthday — in Greenville, where a headstone bearing his name and a Star of David had stood in anticipation for decades. During the burial, relatives and friends placed soil from Israel onto his grave.

At the memorial service, Sher’s nephew, Bruce Fine, reflected on his uncle’s life and choices. “He filled his pages of life with meaning,” Fine said, according to the Department of War.

Fine also recounted a letter Sher had written the day before he was killed, explaining that he had declined a safer assignment as an instructor because he found combat “too exciting” to leave.

“Our family tree produced a real hero,” Fine said. “The kind you read about and see on the big screen, except he was real. We hope his bravery and his courage will inspire the family members who follow us to believe that anything you can dream can be truly possible if you’re willing to commit to it and work hard to achieve it.”

{Matzav.com}

North Korea on Thursday displayed apparent progress in the construction of a nuclear-powered submarine, with state media photos showing a largely completed hull, as leader Kim Jong Un condemned rival South Korea’s push to acquire the technology. North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Kim visited a shipyard to inspect the construction of what the […]

  What happens when a group of chareidi real estate professionals encounter a large-scale coastal development originally planned for a secular audience—and see the opportunity to rethink it entirely? That question led to the emergence of BlueCliff Netanya, a residential project now taking shape along the city’s coastline, just beyond Kiryat Sanz. The development reimagines […]

A government-backed bill granting the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet continued authority to secretly access civilian security camera systems cleared its final Knesset reading Wednesday night, passing unanimously by a 10-0 vote.

The legislation extends for another year an emergency measure first approved after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, allowing security agencies to covertly penetrate camera systems under certain conditions.

When the measure was initially enacted, it limited such intrusions to situations in which visual data posed a direct threat to national security or to IDF operations tied to the war in Gaza, and only during a period defined as “significant military operations.” The new extension removes that linkage, enabling the authority to continue even without an active wartime designation.

The explanatory notes accompanying the bill argue that ongoing dangers justify the expansion, stating that “the severity of the latest cyber threats and the risks posed by them…the need for additional tools to properly deal with enemy elements’ access to visual information produced by stationary cameras remains.” The rationale has gained renewed attention following the recent hacking of former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s Telegram account by Iranian actors.

Despite this justification, the law has triggered strong opposition from legal scholars and civil rights organizations, particularly given the ceasefire in Gaza. Critics argue that the measure undermines basic legal safeguards and intrudes deeply into personal privacy.

“This is very troubling legislation that, for the first time, grants the IDF authority to operate within civilian property and civilian space,” said Adv. Haim Ravia, a leading authority on privacy and cyber law, in comments to The Times of Israel.

“It is hard to understand why…this cannot be done by means of a judicial warrant. It is also difficult to understand how the Knesset extended such a draconian provision without taking into account that the explanatory notes justify extending it indefinitely,” he added, describing the law as a “severe infringement” of privacy rights.

Ravia further warned that the law’s scope is extraordinarily broad. “Under the law, the cameras can observe any area, including private ones. It would have been possible to give citizens retroactive notice of the intrusion into their computers, but even that was not done. Together with a number of experts, we submitted reservations to the law, but they were not addressed.”

Adv. Amit Ashkenazi, a cyber law and policy specialist and former legal adviser to the Israel National Cyber Directorate, also criticized the legislation in a phone interview with The Times of Israel, calling it flawed on multiple levels.

He noted that Israeli law, like that of other Western democracies, generally prohibits unauthorized computer access and requires judicial approval. Existing procedures are “meant to protect you and the computer,” he said, but the current law bypasses those safeguards.

Ashkenazi outlined three core problems: the transfer of authority over civilian systems to the military, the fact that it “doesn’t require the authorities to go to a judge” to confirm justification and prevent “abuse of power,” and that affected individuals “do not receive any notification from the state at any point.”

“Today the army has no authority vis-à-vis civilians, and this law breaks that principle,” he said. “This isn’t dependent on a judicial warrant.”

To illustrate the concern, Ashkenazi offered a concrete scenario. “Imagine this happening to you. You put a camera outside your yard to protect yourself from thieves and you didn’t do the job properly. As a result, Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran hacks into the camera and uses it to see what’s happening along the border. Now this law allows the army—or the Shin Bet to hack into your camera themselves and disconnect it from the network. When the risk ends, they’re supposed to restore things to how they were, but at no point does it say they must notify you.”

Even if the security need is accepted, Ashkenazi said the way the law is implemented reflects a deeper problem. Its approach is “paternalistic,” he argued. “I’m talking about the method, because in a democratic state what matters, among other things, is the method by which we ensure that the authority we agree to grant to address a problem we’ve agreed exists is exercised in a way that also protects rights.”

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel echoed those concerns, stating that while “at the outset of the war there was a proper purpose or a security justification that led to authorizing the IDF and the Shin Bet to penetrate computer material without the need for a judicial warrant,” that justification no longer holds.

Following the war, the group said, it was “no longer possible to justify extending the temporary provision.”

“The provision allows intrusion into private cameras that document intimate and sensitive situations and into personal information stored on the computers of citizens and residents, on the basis of broad and vague grounds, and raises serious concern about misuse of the information,” a spokesperson said.

“Extending the provision, while severing the connection between these intrusive powers and the state of hostilities, disproportionately violates human rights, first and foremost the right to privacy.”

{Matzav.com}

Talks between Israel and Syria on a potential security agreement have reportedly made significant progress in recent weeks and could soon lead to a deal according to reports. The momentum is said to be linked to strong U.S. involvement by President Trump, with a possible signing at a high-level meeting in Europe. The Syrian source […]

Rabbi Yaakov Herzog, the self-appointed “chief rabbi of Saudi Arabia,” announced that he was denied entry to the Kingdom, despite holding a valid visa and having spent years traveling in and out of the country. “With profound regret, I announce that I was barred from entering the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia upon arrival,” Herzog wrote […]

For the second day in a row, Jordanian warplanes struck the Suwayda countryside, hitting several drug and weapons smuggling sites, according to Syrian media.

After heavy rainfall in the area, a man was filmed riding a kneeboard that was tied to the back of a pickup truck, sliding through muddy water along Bear Valley Road in Hesperia, California.

The Israeli man suspected of photographing former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s home on behalf of Iran was employed as a maintenance contractor at the Kirya military complex in Tel Aviv, Kan News reported on Thursday. The suspect, Vadim Kupriyanov, worked for the past three years as a maintenance contractor at the Kirya. On the day […]

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan held talks in Ankara on Wednesday with members of Hamas’s political bureau, focusing on the Gaza ceasefire and efforts to move the agreement into its second phase, according to a source in Turkey’s foreign ministry.

During the meeting, Hamas representatives told Fidan that they had met their obligations under the ceasefire framework, but argued that Israel’s continued “targeting” of Gaza was intended to block progress to the next stage of the deal. Since the ceasefire began, Israel has carried out strikes against individuals it identified as terror operatives who had entered areas under Israeli control.

Hamas officials also complained that the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza was inadequate, saying there was an urgent need for supplies including medicine, housing equipment, and fuel, the source said.

The meeting highlighted Ankara’s ongoing engagement with Hamas. Since the war erupted on October 7, 2023, Turkey has emerged as one of the group’s most outspoken supporters on the global stage.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly described Hamas as a “resistance movement,” accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, and taken steps to downgrade relations with Jerusalem, including halting trade and limiting Israeli access to Turkish airspace.

The disclosure of Fidan’s meeting came as pro-government Turkish media intensified their attacks on Israel, casting it as a major strategic danger to Turkey.

On Wednesday, Yeni Şafak, a daily closely aligned with Erdogan, ran a front-page headline declaring that “Israel is now the number one threat,” asserting that Turkish state bodies now view Israel as their foremost security concern. The paper claimed that the defense ministry, foreign ministry, and MIT intelligence service had all placed Israel at the top of their priority lists.

The report also accused Israel of involvement in recent unrest in northern Syria, alleging — without providing evidence — that Jerusalem encouraged Kurdish groups linked to the Syrian Democratic Forces to escalate clashes in Aleppo in an effort to undermine Turkey. Ankara designates the SDF as a terrorist organization due to its connections to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

Yeni Şafak said the timing of the developments was notable, pointing to their overlap with a trilateral summit involving Israel, Greece, and Cyprus, which Turkey has characterized as a hostile initiative against its interests in the eastern Mediterranean.

The paper further highlighted that the summit coincided with a working visit to Damascus by Fidan, Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler, and MIT chief Ibrahim Kalin, a convergence it described as suspicious.

Earlier in the week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hosted Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides in Jerusalem, where the leaders agreed to expand security cooperation. During that meeting, Netanyahu issued what was widely seen as a pointed warning to Ankara, saying that “those who fantasize they can reestablish their empires and their dominion over our lands” should “forget it.”

Netanyahu followed up with another message aimed at Turkey on Wednesday, telling graduates at an Israeli Air Force pilots’ ceremony that Israel would continue equipping its pilots with “the best instruments” and would “prevent whoever must be prevented from receiving these instruments,” an apparent reference to Turkey’s efforts to obtain F-35 fighter jets from the United States.

{Matzav.com}

A class-action lawsuit has been filed against the California DMV on behalf of nearly 20,000 immigrant commercial drivers, after the state notified them that their CDLs would be canceled starting Jan. 5, 2026, due to expiration-date issues tied to work-authorization documents. The lawsuit claims the DMV violated state procedures, failed to provide a way to […]

Support for a full investigation into the expanding Qatargate affair continued to grow Thursday, as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich issued some of the strongest remarks yet from within the coalition.

Speaking at a conference hosted by the Makor Rishon newspaper, Smotrich said the matter must be thoroughly examined by the Shin Bet, echoing comments made a day earlier by Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, who became the first minister in Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s government to publicly endorse the ongoing probe.

Smotrich said that if staff members in the Prime Minister’s Office were found to have acted on behalf of Qatar during wartime, the response should be uncompromising. “If there are corrupt people within the Prime Minister’s Office who, amid a war, worked for Qatar, they need to be pilloried and sit behind bars for many years,” he said.

At the same time, Smotrich stressed that Netanyahu himself has conducted himself properly throughout the conflict. He said the prime minister made decisions based solely on “relevant considerations,” adding that any penetration of the Prime Minister’s Office by outside actors would represent an extremely grave failure. If “questionable figures” succeeded in “infiltrate” the office, “it’s very serious,” he said.

Underscoring the severity of the allegations, Smotrich added, “Someone who was working for an enemy state in a time of war — I don’t have words to describe how despicable and serious it is.”

The finance minister also said that over the course of the two years of war, he never met Eli Feldstein, a central suspect in the Qatargate scandal.

Feldstein, together with senior Netanyahu adviser Jonathan Urich, is alleged to have carried out work for Qatar while employed by Netanyahu, through the Perception PR firm run by Yisrael Einhorn, the prime minister’s former campaign manager. According to the allegations, Einhorn and Perception promoted Qatar’s image in Israel and internationally, including in connection with Doha’s role as a mediator in hostage negotiations.

In a lengthy interview this week with Kan public broadcaster, Feldstein claimed that Netanyahu was responsible for leaking classified intelligence to the German newspaper Bild last year in an effort to influence Israeli public opinion regarding the hostage talks. Feldstein was indicted last year in the separate Bild leak affair.

During that interview, Feldstein also alleged that Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, learned of the secret investigation into the leak months before it became public and reassured him that the probe could be shut down, along with a possible investigation into IDF information security, if necessary.

Asked whether it would be problematic if Netanyahu was unaware of the alleged activities, Smotrich responded Thursday that “it’s a problem,” while adding that he could not assess the extent of the issue.

He reiterated his view of Netanyahu’s conduct, saying the prime minister acted only “with a higher purpose, 100% only with relevant considerations, 100% for the good of the State of Israel and its security and future and existence.”

The Prime Minister’s Office and Braverman have both rejected Feldstein’s claims and accused him of lying. Netanyahu has likewise dismissed the allegations involving Urich.

Although opposition figures have long called for a full investigation into the various scandals, the past two days have seen additional coalition figures publicly back the probe, including Chikli and Likud MK Eli Dallal.

{Matzav.com}

Like many retirement communities, The Terraces serves as a tranquil refuge for a nucleus of older people who no longer can travel to faraway places or engaging in bold adventures. But they can still be thrust back to their days of wanderlust and thrill-seeking whenever caretakers at the community in Los Gatos, California, schedule a […]

The IDF will now refer to the ongoing conflict exclusively as the “War of Revival,” following a new directive issued Thursday by Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir.

Under the instruction, all official IDF usage—including speeches, ceremonies, formal documents, and internal correspondence—must use the newly approved name and abandon any previous terminology.

The move comes after the government formally authorized the change, a step advanced by Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and subsequently implemented within the military framework.

As a result, the designation “Swords of Iron,” which has been used since fighting began in October 2023, is being fully phased out. The IDF will replace it with “War of Revival” across all operational, media, and internal platforms.

Explaining the decision, Zamir said, “This policy is intended to ensure linguistic consistency and the implementation of the decision regarding the name of the war.”

{Matzav.com}

An IDF soldier died on Thursday after being shot inside a military base in northern Israel, marking another fatal incident within IDF facilities in recent days.

Following the shooting, the soldier was evacuated in critical condition to a hospital, where medical teams later pronounced him dead despite efforts to save his life.

The IDF announced that the Military Police Investigation Unit has launched a formal probe into the circumstances surrounding the incident, and that its conclusions will be forwarded to the military prosecution for further examination.

The death comes amid a troubling pattern. Just nine days earlier, on December 16, another IDF soldier was fatally wounded by gunfire inside a northern base. That soldier was also rushed to the hospital in critical condition and later died from his injuries.

Earlier this month, the IDF publicized the conclusions of an expert committee that examined the March 2025 death of Sergeant Yosef Haim Tzvi Serlin, a trainee in Unit 504 who was killed during a military exercise.

According to the committee’s findings, Serlin sustained his injuries during a “corridor” hand-to-hand combat drill, an exercise not included in the unit’s standard training regimen. The drill involved soldiers moving one by one through a confined passage while being physically assaulted by fellow trainees, with the intention of testing their defensive reactions.

The investigation concluded that the exercise was carried out in violation of standing orders and safety guidelines and lacked appropriate oversight. In response, the Head of the Infantry and Paratroopers Corps ordered the immediate and total cancellation of the corridor drill throughout all IDF units.

The recommendations of the committee were accepted by the Head of Military Intelligence, Major General Shlomi Binder, who directed a series of disciplinary measures. These included a formal reprimand for the commander of Unit 504, Brigadier General D., a six-year demotion for the unit’s combat commander, Lieutenant Colonel Y., and the dismissal of three additional officers from the unit.

{Matzav.com}