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Israel’s High Court of Justice on Thursday unanimously struck down the government’s decision to close Galei Tzahal, or IDF Radio, finding that the move was improperly driven by officials’ objections to the station’s broadcasts rather than legitimate considerations regarding its continued operation.

In its ruling, the court concluded that “the decision was based on an extraneous and improper consideration.”

The justices said the government’s decision had to be nullified “because the decision was made on the basis of an extraneous and improper consideration: the dissatisfaction of the decision-makers with the fact that the broadcasts, in their view, ran counter to their positions. The Court was persuaded, as a matter of fact, that this was indeed the case, and further noted that after a conditional order was issued, the government did not act to prove otherwise. The Court held that the government had the authority to make a decision on the matter and rejected the argument that closing Galei Tzahal required primary legislation.”

At the same time, the court stressed that its ruling should not be interpreted as a determination that Galei Tzahal must remain open permanently. Rather, the justices said any future effort to close the military broadcaster would have to follow a lawful process and be based on legitimate considerations.

“All of the justices, each for his or her own reasons, made clear that they do not rule out the possibility of closing Galei Tzahal on its merits, had the decision on the matter been made lawfully and on the basis of relevant considerations, nor do they take a position regarding the content of the broadcasts.”

Justice Yechiel Kasher sharply criticized the reasoning behind the government’s action, arguing that public officials cannot use their governmental authority to silence broadcasters simply because they object to what is being aired.

“It cannot be accepted that a person vested with governmental authority may decide that because he does not like the statements made by a broadcaster, the broadcaster’s ‘microphone should be shut off.’

“A government that acts in this manner is acting in a clearly undemocratic fashion, since the cornerstone upon which every democratic government rests is the recognition that the government may not use its power to silence those whose views it finds objectionable.”

Justice Alex Stein, however, rejected a separate argument advanced by the petitioners that shutting down Galei Tzahal would inherently violate freedom of expression.

Stein reasoned that freedom of expression does not require the government to maintain and operate its own radio station as a vehicle for different opinions. He suggested that government-operated news and current-affairs programming could, under some circumstances, itself interfere with or distort public discourse.

Stein also addressed the unusual spectacle of uniformed Galei Tzahal soldiers interviewing political figures, describing the arrangement as a “distortion of the system of government.”

In his view, the IDF, “the army of everyone,” should have no part in the country’s political debate, “not even the role of interviewer and broadcaster.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir responded angrily to the decision, accusing the Supreme Court of overriding the authority of Israel’s elected government.

“The Supreme Court is carrying out a coup against democracy and stripping a democratically elected government of its lawful powers. If the judges at Givat Ram in Jerusalem want to make decisions in place of the government, they are welcome to establish a political party and run for election to the Knesset. The judges are acting with endless arrogance and, without authority, are overturning the decisions of the elected government.

“Otzma Yehudit’s condition for joining the next government is the passage of a full judicial reform: the establishment of a constitutional court and the immediate dismissal of the criminal Attorney General,” Ben-Gvir said.

{Matzav.com}

A sudden labor strike brought operations at Ben-Gurion Airport to a standstill Thursday afternoon, grounding flights, shutting down check-in counters and throwing the travel plans of tens of thousands of passengers into turmoil during one of the busiest periods of the summer.

The work stoppage ended at approximately 3 p.m., about an hour after employees closed all check-in counters and declared a “crisis” over severe operational problems, difficulties loading and unloading aircraft and a shortage of available parking stands.

The disruption was expected to have lingering consequences even after employees returned to work. According to N12 News, most flights scheduled to leave Ben-Gurion on Thursday were expected to depart without passengers’ luggage.

Flights had been grounded beginning at 2 p.m., with the Israel Airports Authority saying that union-ordered work disruptions had interfered with airport operations and services for travelers.

The timing of the shutdown was particularly disruptive, with approximately 100,000 passengers expected to travel through Ben-Gurion on Thursday. Compounding the airport’s logistical difficulties, more than 20 American refueling aircraft were occupying parking stands near Terminals 1 and 3.

The presence of the additional aircraft has increased the amount of time required to transport baggage between the terminals and planes. It has also complicated the movement of passengers who must be shuttled to and from aircraft parked away from jet bridges.

The Public Transport Authority said management had instructed workers to “immediately cease any action that harms regular work and to restore operations to full routine.

The Authority views with utmost severity any deliberate action liable to harm the traveling public and the proper functioning of Ben-Gurion Airport, especially during summer peak loads and high operational volumes.”

The labor action reportedly had been planned for a day earlier. According to N12, workers initially intended to stage the strike Wednesday in an effort to interfere with Transportation Minister Miri Regev’s scheduled flight to Morocco.

By later Thursday, the financial consequences of the disruption were already being calculated. The Finance Ministry estimated that the strike caused between NIS 25 million and NIS 30 million in damage, Ynet News reported.

That estimate included the economic value of passengers’ lost time, additional expenses incurred by airlines, revenue lost by the Israel Airports Authority, disruptions to cargo and supply chains and broader costs to the tourism industry.

Pinchas Idan, who led the labor action, blamed airport management for imposing intolerable conditions on employees.

“They give us such hard labor; management has no shame – they are torturing the employees of Ben-Gurion.”

Reports indicated that airport personnel may have employed what is commonly called an “Italian” strike — also known as a “work-to-rule” or “slowdown” action — in which employees remain technically on the job and adhere strictly to regulations while deliberately slowing operations to the point that normal activity becomes extremely difficult or impossible.

Such tactics are frequently associated with employees whose ability to conduct a conventional strike is legally restricted, including air traffic controllers, customs personnel, baggage handlers and workers in other essential transportation positions.

Senior Transportation Ministry officials warned that there would be serious consequences if an investigation determines that employees deliberately conducted an Italian-style strike at the height of the summer travel season, saying that “heads will roll and workers will go home.”

“We are investigating the incident; we are in a peak period with refuelers present, but if the investigation reveals an Italian strike, we will act with a very heavy hand against whoever is behind this,” they said.

Lakewood, NJ families are facing a staggering increase in school transportation costs just days before the start of the new school year, with the Lakewood Student Transportation Authority announcing that the cost of non-mandated busing will jump from $385 to a staggering $945 per child for the 2026-27 school year, Matzav.com has learned.

The dramatic $560-per-child increase was announced today in an urgent notice sent to families of Lakewood students who do not qualify for state-mandated transportation. The change represents an increase of approximately 145% over the $385 families had previously been asked to pay.

The LSTA says the sudden increase stems from significant cuts in state municipal aid to Lakewood Township, which led the Township to eliminate the subsidy that for the past decade helped cover transportation for thousands of children living within the state-mandated distance from their schools.

Under New Jersey rules, transportation funding continues to be provided for Lakewood students who qualify for mandated busing. An elementary school student is considered non-mandated if he or she lives two miles or less from school, while a high school student is considered non-mandated if the student lives 2.5 miles or less from school.

The new policy applies specifically to Lakewood residents and does not affect students living in Howell, Jackson or Toms River.

For approximately 10 years, Lakewood Township and the LSTA have been able to offer transportation to thousands of these non-mandated students at a heavily subsidized rate. Township funding, combined with the scale of Lakewood’s transportation network, kept the amount charged directly to families far below the actual cost of providing a bus seat.

That arrangement has now effectively collapsed.

According to the LSTA notice, New Jersey’s municipal aid allocation for Lakewood was significantly reduced for the upcoming 2026-27 school year. As a result, Lakewood Township eliminated the subsidy it had provided for the non-mandated transportation program.

Without that assistance, the LSTA says the full cost of providing a seat can reach as high as $1,177 per student.

The LSTA claims that it has nevertheless managed to bring the price families will actually pay down to $945 per child, a $232 reduction from the potential full cost. The agency emphasized that the reduction is not being funded by a continued Township subsidy, but instead results from efficiencies created by the enormous size and density of Lakewood’s transportation system and the purchasing power generated by its large number of routes.

For families with multiple children relying on non-mandated transportation, however, the financial impact could be enormous. A family with three affected children, for example, would now face a $2,835 annual transportation bill.

Adding to the frustration is the extraordinarily short notice being given to parents.

Families wishing to keep their children on buses must log into the LSTA family portal and opt in by Monday, August 24, at 11 p.m. Because bus routes are awarded based on both morning and afternoon seats, families cannot select transportation in only one direction. Opting in means accepting round-trip transportation.

Parents who already paid the original $385 charge will have that money credited toward the new $945 fee. They will therefore owe another $560 per student, which the LSTA says can be paid in three additional installments.

Families unwilling or unable to absorb the sharply higher cost can opt out of transportation and receive a refund of the $385 they previously paid.

But parents who do nothing by the Monday night deadline will automatically lose their children’s bus transportation.

“If no action is taken by 11:00 pm Monday, your child will be opted out, and the routes will be adjusted and consolidated accordingly,” the LSTA notice states.

The agency says the compressed deadline is necessary because it must rapidly redesign routes, comply with state requirements governing the awarding of transportation routes and give bus companies sufficient time to prepare for service beginning September 1.

Recognizing that some families may have difficulty navigating the last-minute process, the LSTA is making assistance available at opt-in kiosks at its office. The office will remain open Thursday, August 20, until 6 p.m.; Friday, August 21, from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m.; and Monday, August 24, from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m.

The LSTA acknowledged that the timing leaves families with little opportunity to prepare for a major new expense, saying it was itself only recently notified that the Township subsidy would end because of the Township’s budgeting schedule.

“Due to the Township’s budgeting schedule, the LSTA was only recently informed of the subsidy cessation. As this notice is coming very close to the start of the school year and will create an unexpected financial hardship for many families, we regret the timing and understand the difficulty this will present,” the authority said.

The agency also pointed to the decade during which the subsidized program allowed thousands of Lakewood children to receive transportation at a substantially reduced cost.

“We are grateful that together with the Township, the LSTA was able to provide this deeply subsidized benefit to thousands of Lakewood families for an entire decade. We appreciate your understanding as we work to keep transportation as accessible as possible under the current funding structure.”

The $945 figure applies to the 2026-27 school year only. The LSTA warned that there is no guarantee the amount will remain the same in subsequent years, with future rates to be determined by whatever funding and resources are available at the time.

For Lakewood parents, however, the immediate issue is far more pressing: after expecting to pay $385 for a child’s transportation, families now have only days to decide whether to come up with an additional $560 per child — or give up their children’s bus seats altogether.

{Matzav.com}

The biological mother of Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed spent five years working for an international relief organization that was later designated by the U.S. government over allegations that it helped finance Hamas, supported Taliban-linked activities and had connections to Osama bin Laden’s network, according to records highlighted this week, the Jerusalem Post report.

The connection involving El-Sayed’s mother, Fatten Fathy Elkomy, was first reported Tuesday by the Midwesterner and was independently verified by The Jerusalem Post.

El-Sayed was raised primarily by his Egyptian father, Mohamed El-Sayed, and his father’s second wife, Jacqueline. His biological mother has rarely figured prominently in his political biography. She remarried and moved back to the Middle East while El-Sayed was still young.

The Midwesterner, however, raised questions about whether Elkomy’s absence from her son’s public political story may have been deliberate.

Records show that Elkomy was employed from 1999 until 2004 by the Islamic American/African Relief Agency, known as IARA. Based in Khartoum, Sudan, the organization operated approximately 40 offices around the globe and presented its mission as humanitarian work assisting orphans, providing health care and helping disadvantaged populations in conflict zones.

But the U.S. Treasury Department painted a dramatically different picture of some of IARA’s activities when it announced sanctions against the organization on October 13, 2004. According to Treasury, IARA participated in a joint program with an institute involved in assisting Taliban fighters and transferred money into the Palestinian territories that was intended for terrorist activity. Treasury also said IARA functioned as a financial conduit for Hamas in a Western European country.

The federal government formally designated IARA that same day, along with five individuals associated with the organization.

Additional information subsequently released by the Treasury Department alleged that IARA had connections to Maktab Al-Khidamat, or MK, an organization co-founded and financed by Osama bin Laden that served as a predecessor to al Qaeda.

Treasury also said IARA’s international branches had directly provided financial assistance to bin Laden and that one of bin Laden’s previous lieutenants had served as the head of IARA’s operations in Afghanistan.

The organization’s legal problems escalated in March 2007, when the Justice Department brought a 33-count indictment against IARA-US involving the illegal movement of money to Iraq.

Federal prosecutors assembled an extensive documentary record in USA v. IARA, including 945 exhibits consisting of telephone records, faxes, bank statements, wire transfers, tax documents, emails and other material. In an exhibit list filed in May 2010 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Elkomy’s name appeared 14 times. Those references involved eight wire transfers, five recorded telephone conversations and an IARA request to transfer $24,607.34 to the organization’s office in Iraq.

Elkomy’s brother, Mohamed Elkomy — El-Sayed’s uncle — also appeared dozens of times in the evidence cited in the case.

Neither Fatten Elkomy nor Mohamed Elkomy was charged or named as a co-conspirator. Individuals associated with IARA were not prosecuted on terrorism charges. The organization itself, however, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate financial sanctions by sending money to Iraq. IARA ultimately dissolved in 2016.

Elkomy publicly rejected allegations connecting the relief organization to terrorism when she was interviewed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2004. She said she had “been working there serving orphans and children with at least one deceased parent, and it breaks my heart they’re not going to get any help.”

According to Elkomy’s LinkedIn profile, she has worked as a psychiatric nurse practitioner with Missouri Behavioral Health Services since July 2013.

El-Sayed, whose full name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, was born in Michigan in 1984 to Egyptian immigrant parents. He attended the University of Michigan before studying at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and later attending Columbia University, where he earned his medical degree. He also holds a doctorate in public health.

A victory would make El-Sayed the first Muslim elected to the United States Senate.

WASHINGTON — A sprawling series of fraud schemes involving relatives working together to siphon millions of dollars from federal programs has prompted Sen. Joni Ernst to push legislation aimed at preventing the families of convicted fraudsters from continuing to collect government money.

The Iowa Republican’s effort was fueled in part by the extraordinary case of a California family that stole $18 million in COVID-19 relief funds and used the proceeds to bankroll an extravagant lifestyle that included luxury real estate, diamonds and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

At the center of that operation were Richard Ayvazyan and his wife, Marietta Terabelian. After the pair were convicted on fraud charges, they removed their electronic monitoring bracelets, left their three children behind with a farewell note and fled the United States. Their run from authorities eventually ended when they were apprehended in Montenegro.

Federal authorities identified Ayvazyan as the leader of the massive COVID relief operation, while Terabelian was among the relatives who participated in the scheme.

The stunning case later caught the attention of Ernst, who has headed the Senate DOGE Caucus and is now seeking to shut off federal assistance to what she calls “fraud families.”

Her proposed No Cash for Cohabitating Kins of Crooks Act would prevent people residing with convicted criminals or fraudsters who have been barred from receiving certain federal funds from obtaining those benefits themselves. The restrictions would apply to federal grants, loans, subawards and reimbursements.

The proposal contains exceptions intended to protect spouses who maintain separate residences from the convicted individual, as well as victims of domestic abuse.

“Committing fraud is literally all relative for these families of felons,” Ernst told The Post. “My latest investigation found schemes sprouting from family trees across the country, with kin teaming up to rip off taxpayers to the tune of $50 million.”

Ernst, who is retiring from the Senate, spotlighted 15 families accused or convicted of participating in such schemes as part of her August Squeal Award, a monthly initiative she uses to call attention to government fraud, waste and abuse. She labeled the collection of alleged family scammers a “shady bunch.”

Heading Ernst’s compilation was the California COVID relief case involving Ayvazyan and his relatives.

Following their capture in Montenegro, Ayvazyan and Terabelian were returned to face their sentences. Ayvazyan is serving 17 years in prison, while Terabelian received a six-year term.

The husband-and-wife team did not act alone. Authorities said they worked with Tamara Dadyan, Ayvazyan’s sister-in-law and a onetime Los Angeles-area real estate broker, along with her husband, Artur Ayvazyan.

Prosecutors said members of the group used identities stolen from foreign exchange students, elderly individuals and people who had died to fraudulently obtain $18 million in pandemic relief money. The operation unraveled, and convictions followed in 2021.

During sentencing, the judge overseeing the case excoriated Ayvazyan as a “cold-hearted fraudster” who “views fraud as an achievement.”

Ernst’s examples extend well beyond California. She also pointed to convictions involving members of a Minnesota family tied to the notorious $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scandal. Gandi Yusuf Mohamed and five relatives were accused of stealing more than $10 million through the Federal Child Nutrition Program.

The federal money was supposed to provide food for 5 million children in need. The case also generated a political controversy after one member of the Mohamed family was revealed to have met with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, an encounter that subsequently drew attention from Republican members of Congress.

Another family featured in Ernst’s investigation was the Edwards family, which was living in Florida when members allegedly created a fraudulent family ministry and sought approximately $6 million through the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program during the COVID pandemic.

The application was allegedly approved by an elderly accountant who was said to be suffering from dementia. Instead of $6 million, the operation received roughly $8.4 million after the Edwards family claimed its organization employed more than 500 people. Most family members were never charged, including patriarch Evan Edwards, a pastor who was ultimately found incompetent to stand trial.

His son, Josh Edwards, did face punishment and was sentenced earlier this year to four years and three months in federal prison.

Ernst also drew attention to four sisters she branded “grifting grandmothers,” who obtained approximately $11.5 million from the Department of Agriculture by submitting roughly 200 fraudulent applications for agricultural assistance.

Authorities said the sisters spent their ill-gotten money on expensive vehicles, homes worth six figures and other purchases. Federal investigators later concluded that the women “in most cases, had not even attempted to farm.” Prosecutors subsequently brought approximately 115 fraud charges against them.

The senator’s investigation further included a Washington state case in which members of one family allegedly posed as caregivers and collected $1.1 million from a Department of Veterans Affairs program. At the heart of the fraud was Kelly Lee-Carroll, who represented herself as partially paralyzed and unable to walk while arranging for her sister and son to act as her caregivers.

The scheme eventually resulted in prison time. Lee-Carroll was sentenced to 17 months behind bars, while her son received a 14-month sentence.

Altogether, Ernst’s office says the 15 “fraudster families” highlighted in its investigation were responsible for approximately $50 million in stolen funds. The No Cash for Cohabitating Kins of Crooks Act is the latest measure the senator has introduced as part of her broader campaign against fraud, waste and abuse involving taxpayer money.

“Their next scam-ily reunion will be in the slammer,” Ernst further chided.