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NASA Launches GHOST Sounding Rocket from Norway
USCGC Stone Seizes Record 49,000 Pounds of Cocaine in Eastern Pacific
Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick Calls $5M FEMA Case Against Her Politically Motivated
FAA: Shutdown Left 10,000 Controllers Unpaid; Few Qualify for Attendance Bonus
U.S. Officials Confirm 28-Point Ukraine Peace Plan; Kyiv Signals Support
DOJ Sues California Over In-State Tuition for Illegal Immigrants
Fire in Capitol Tunnel System Sends Two for Medical Treatment
More Than 7 Kilometers and Nearly 80 Rooms: IDF Uncovered the Tunnel Where Hadar Goldin Hy”d Was Held
In a major operation in southern Rafah, IDF forces uncovered the vast underground tunnel network where kidnapped soldier Hadar Goldin Hy”d had been held in recent years. Goldin fell in battle during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, and until now, the full scope of the location where his body was concealed had remained unknown.
The discovery was made during a Southern Command mission involving the elite Yahalom engineering unit together with Shayetet 13 naval commandos. According to the army, the tunnel system was one of the most significant and complex underground routes exposed in Gaza to date.
Military footage showed the extensive subterranean passage, stretching more than seven kilometers at a depth of approximately 25 meters below ground. The tunnel ran beneath a densely populated residential neighborhood near the Philadelphi Corridor and extended beneath sensitive civilian areas, including a United Nations Relief and Works Agency compound, several mosques, medical clinics, kindergartens, and schools.
Inside the underground route, soldiers found roughly 80 rooms. These included command centers used by senior Hamas officials to store weapons, operate for extended periods, and plan terror attacks against IDF forces. Among the high-ranking commanders who used the complex was the Rafah Brigade commander, terrorist Muhammad Shabana.
IDF officials emphasized that the tunnel system demonstrated once again how Hamas embedded military infrastructure underneath civilian neighborhoods and humanitarian sites, endangering the local population while using them as shields.
{Matzav.com}WATCH: Schumer Introduces Resolution Condemning Antisemitism After Nick Fuentes–Tucker Carlson Interview
Catskills Hatzalah Holds Annual Appreciation Dinner with Regional Leaders
Rabbi Margeratten Attends White House Meeting with Israeli Hostages
Trump Gives Presidential Challenge Coin to Freed Israeli Hostages
Pelosi: Trump Is Worst President for American Children
Trump Plans Major Offshore Drilling Expansion off California and Alaska
Thanksgiving Dinner Costs Drop 5%, Farm Bureau Says Food Prices Still Strain Families
Dramatic Meeting in Bnei Brak: Rav Moshe Hillel Hirsch Visits Rav Meir Tzvi Bergman Over the Draft Law
A highly charged meeting took place Thursday evening in Bnei Brak, as Rav Moshe Hillel Hirsch, rosh yeshiva of Slabodka, arrived at the home of Rashbi rosh yeshiva Rav Meir Tzvi Bergman.
The discussion, which lasted about 45 minutes, focused entirely on the draft-law proposal that has dominated the public arena in recent days.
The meeting came just three days after the publication of a recording in which Rav Bergman sharply criticized the proposed legislation, using unusually forceful language.
Yesterday, Rav Hirsch—together with Slabodka rosh yeshiva Rav Dovid Landau—gave the coalition official approval to begin advancing the draft bill in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. That green light followed weeks of deliberations among the leadership and was seen as a decisive turning point enabling the legislative process to move forward.
However, the release this week of recordings of Rav Bergman changed the tenor of the conversation. In the recording, the rosh yeshiva rejects the draft-law outline promoted by committee chairman MK Boaz Bismuth, denouncing it in stark terms.
In excerpts aired by Channel 13 News, Rav Bergman is heard declaring: “I don’t understand how one can even begin to think about this. What are we, owners over the Torah? Will we be afraid that there won’t be money? ‘Mine is the silver and Mine is the gold,’ says HaKadosh Baruch Hu. How can anyone even think of this? We are not going along with it at all! One cannot agree to such a thing! It is both foolishness and wickedness!”
The rosh yeshiva continues in the same vein: “They can do whatever they want, but we cannot agree to it. Not at 50 percent, not at one percent! How can anyone say that a bochur should go to the army? Whoever goes there only deteriorates further and further. It means handing falsehood to our children! We scream that this is ‘shmad’ and that one must give up one’s life, and suddenly we support it? What they want to accomplish in five years is like jumping off the roof!”
Against this dramatic backdrop, Thursday night’s meeting between Rav Hirsch and Rav Bergman was convened in an effort to clarify the direction of the Degel leadership. Details of the meeting have not yet been released.
{Matzav.com}
Israeli Defense Firm Unveils Backpack-Sized “Kamikaze Drone” That Lets Infantry Commanders Launch Their Own Airstrikes
Turmoil in Ger: Are the Chassidus’s Deepest Secrets at Risk of Being Exposed?
A dramatic crisis has erupted within Ger amid growing fears that highly personal and sensitive conversations of tens of thousands of chassidim may have been recorded — and could, in the worst-case scenario, become public.
According to a report published this morning in Haaretz, the alarm was triggered during a private din Torah in Bnei Brak, when a relative of Rav Yitzchok Broide — the Gerer Rebbe’s close personal secretary — suddenly produced an audio recording of a private conversation taken from the chassidus’s internal hotline.
That hotline is a dedicated phone line through which Gerer chassidim leave voice messages for Rav Broide, who then conveys the questions to the Rebbe. For years, this system has been relied upon by tens of thousands of families to discuss their most delicate and confidential matters, trusting that the information remained between them, Rav Broide, and the Rebbe.
According to the report, the recording was produced only after that family member lost the initial stage of the din Torah. He then hired new representatives, who claimed to possess new evidence that could overturn the ruling — the recording from the hotline. This immediately led to a terrifying possibility: that not only that one conversation was captured, but potentially every single message ever left on the hotline.
Even after an appeal, the dayanim upheld their original decision. But the revelation sent shockwaves through the chassidus, as chassidim grasped that it may be possible that all their confidential messages — matters involving family struggles, shidduchim, medical issues, and other deeply private concerns — may have been preserved somewhere without their knowledge.
Attorney Shlomo Elbaum, a member of the Bnei Brak city council, told Haaretz: “I heard about what happened in the beis din. I looked into it with reliable sources and I heard that everything is true.”
Elbaum added that, as someone who was once part of Ger and used the hotline himself for personal matters, he is deeply worried that everything may have been saved and could one day be misused. “This is a massive breach of public trust, and everyone should be shaken by it, especially since we have no idea who is the responsible party holding the recordings.”
A current Ger chossid expressed his own sense of betrayal, saying: “I feel exposed and betrayed. It shook me to my core. Rav Broide was supposed to be the greatest guardian of our secrets. We all trusted him and saw him as a faithful messenger. I hope it stays that way.”
Rav Broide himself responded that he has no knowledge of any recordings being stored:
“I don’t know anything about recordings being kept. I’m not involved in the business dealings of my relatives or what they say in beis din. Someone mentioned it to me, but I’m not involved.”
Regarding responsibility for the hotline, he said: “I am not the owner of the phone line. They gave me a phone number, and that is what I work with. I don’t know anything beyond that. In any case, no one discusses truly personal matters here — only surgeries, shidduchim, things like that. Who is responsible for the line? I have no idea. This is the first time I’m hearing that the calls may have been recorded.”
Ger’s official statement to Haaretz denied any possibility that the hotline can be recorded:
“From our internal review, there is no ability to record calls on the line in question.”
{Matzav.com}
Bar Kuperstein to CNN: “I Thank Hashem Every Day. He Gave Me the Strength.”
Just hours before he was scheduled to meet President Donald Trump at the White House, former hostage Bar Kuperstein sat down with CNN for an emotional interview, recounting the horrors he endured in captivity and the long journey back to himself since his release.
“It was Gehinnom,” he said, describing the nearly two years he spent underground, “but I try to laugh, be happy with my family, and look forward.”
Kuperstein had been freed only a month and a week earlier, yet every mundane moment still felt miraculous. “Every morning was emotional,” he said. “Just being here, breathing, and not down in the tunnels — it was a feeling of gratitude to Hashem.” Still, he admitted that the joy was mixed with lingering trauma. “There were nights I couldn’t fall asleep, hard thoughts, a sense of disconnection. I surrounded myself with people who support me — and I believed I would heal.”
On the day of his abduction, Kuperstein was working as a security guard at the Nova festival site. “I was responsible for safety,” he said. “If I had run, I could never have forgiven myself. People told me I was a hero, but I just did my job.”
He spent 738 days in captivity — “in a tiny cell,” as he put it. “At first my eyes were covered, and I wasn’t allowed to speak. I counted days — that was the only activity I had. Days turned into weeks, into months, and into two years.”
He described repeated threats of execution, starvation, beatings, verbal abuse, and being stripped of any basic human dignity. “They said it was because of Ben Gvir and the government,” he recalled. He also referenced the video in which he and Maxim Herkin were seen alive. “All I wanted was for my family to know I was alive. I didn’t care what they told me to say — I just wanted them to see me.”
The 23-year-old said that his faith deepened precisely in captivity. “Hashem gave me strength. From the first day I felt I would come out whole. I wasn’t very religious before — just traditional — but there I spoke to Hashem. He saved me. Every day I stayed alive was a miracle.”
He even managed to listen to radio broadcasts from the depths of the tunnels. “Imagine that — thirty meters underground, and you’re hearing the radio. I heard about the protests, about the birthday my mother organized for me in the Hostages Square. They even gave me a picture of my father standing at a protest on his feet, despite his disability.”
He said the hardest moments came each time rumors of a release deal collapsed. “Every time we thought — again it won’t happen. Even when I was already on the way home, I didn’t believe it was real.”
Now, together with sixteen other survivors, Kuperstein was heading toward a historic meeting in the Oval Office. Of Trump, he said: “He is a messenger of Hashem. Hashem wanted us to come out — and Trump fulfilled His role.”
{Matzav.com}