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German Chancellor: Israel’s Actions In Gaza Do Not Amount To Genocide

Matzav - Thu, 09/18/2025 - 21:45

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Thursday that his government will settle on its stance toward potential European Union sanctions against Israel before EU leaders gather in Copenhagen this October, according to a Reuters report.

During a joint appearance in Madrid with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Merz criticized Israel’s campaign in Gaza, saying it was “not proportional to its stated goals.” At the same time, he stressed that Germany “did not share the view that the actions amounted to genocide.”

He also reiterated that Germany is not considering recognition of a Palestinian state at this stage.

His remarks followed the European Commission’s move a day earlier to suggest freezing a trade pact with Israel that involves about 5.8 billion euros in exports. The initiative, however, does not yet have enough backing among EU governments to advance.

Merz explained on Thursday, “We will reach a final opinion of the German government on these questions, which now need to be answered at the European level, in the coming days.”

He continued, “We will discuss these issues again next week at the federal cabinet level. I assume that we will then have a position at the informal council meeting on October 1 in Copenhagen that will also be supported by the entire German government.”

{Matzav.com Israel}

IDF Recommends Halting Jordan-Gaza Aid Convoys After Allenby Crossing Attack Kills 2 Israelis

Yeshiva World News - Thu, 09/18/2025 - 21:30

The IDF recommended Thursday that humanitarian aid shipments from Jordan to Gaza be suspended after a deadly terror attack at the Allenby Bridge crossing. The attack was carried out by a Jordanian truck driver transporting humanitarian supplies bound for Gaza. The assailant plowed into Israeli personnel and opened fire, killing two IDF Soldiers before being neutralized, in what officials are calling a “grave security failure.” Following urgent consultations, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir advised the political echelon to halt all aid shipments coming through the Allenby route until a full investigation is completed and new screening protocols for Jordanian drivers are put in place. The recommendation was made in coordination with COGAT chief Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian and Central Command commander Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth. “Aid from Jordan will not resume until we are confident that the screening process prevents terrorists from exploiting humanitarian convoys,” a senior military official said. According to COGAT, nearly 10,000 trucks carrying more than 144,000 tons of humanitarian goods have entered Gaza from Jordan since the start of the war, representing about 7% of all aid deliveries. Military officials stressed that shipments through other corridors into Gaza will continue. The suspension marks a setback to international efforts to keep humanitarian assistance flowing into the Strip, even as Israel faces intensifying pressure over the war. Officials in Jerusalem, however, framed the decision as a matter of basic security. “This incident proves that Hamas and its allies will stop at nothing — even exploiting aid trucks meant for civilians — to carry out terror attacks,” an IDF spokesperson said. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

NISSIM IN DEAL, NJ: Bochurim From Skverer Mesivta of New Square Miraculously Rescued After Being Swept Into Ocean

Yeshiva World News - Thu, 09/18/2025 - 21:15

What could have ended in unspeakable tragedy turned into open nissim Thursday morning in Deal, NJ, after four bochurim from the Skverer Mesivta of New Square were swept into the raging ocean by powerful waves. The group, totaling ten people—including nine bochurim and a staff member—had gone to the shore at sunrise. Without warning, a massive wave dragged four of the bochurim into the water. The current was so strong that they were unable to swim back, desperately gasping for air and literally fighting for their lives as they were pummeled by crashing waves. Jersey Shore Hatzalah, Deal Police, and Fire Rescue rushed to the scene within moments. In a dramatic rescue, emergency crews pulled the boys from the water just as the situation turned critical. Two of the bochurim were transported to Monmouth Medical Center in stable condition, while a firefighter who assisted in the rescue was also taken for evaluation. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Mass Protest in Yerushalayim Against Yeshiva Students’ Arrests

Matzav - Thu, 09/18/2025 - 21:15

Thousands filled Kikar HaShabbos in Yerushalayim on Thursday night, rallying against the ongoing arrests of yeshiva students and kollel avreichim who are being held in Israeli military prison for refusing conscription.

The massive protest was led by rabbonim of the Old Yishuv, who decried what they described as persecution of Torah learners and defenders of mesorah.

The rally drew a large cross-section of the chareidi community, who gathered to express outrage over what they called a campaign against those standing firm in their religious principles. Leaders declared the struggle a matter of “yehareg ve’al yaavor,” a cause worth the ultimate sacrifice.

Among the rabbonim who addressed the crowd were Rav Yehoshua Dovid Turchin; Rav Yehuda Fischer, a member of the Badatz of the Eidah HaChareidis; the Mishkenos HaRoim Rebbe, and other chassidishe rabbonim. Their speeches emphasized the community’s anguish over the arrests and their determination to resist what they view as decrees against the sanctity of Torah life.

The highlight of the evening came with the arrival of Rav Yaakov Meir Schechter, senior Breslover rov. Greeted with reverence by the assembled throngs, he led kabbolas ohl Malchus Shomayim.

As the protest continued, tension escalated. After nearly an hour of restrained protest, clashes broke out when police units entered the crowd with mounted officers and water cannons. Some responded by setting garbage bins ablaze and blocking key roads in the capital, causing widespread traffic disruptions.

Police confirmed that multiple arrests were made during the confrontation. In a statement, authorities described the gathering as “an illegal assembly that disrupted public order and endangered road users,” adding that officers acted firmly to restore order and reopen the blocked streets.

The protest also caused delays to the Yerushalayim light rail, and major thoroughfares were shut down as the situation unfolded.

מחאת הקנאים בעיה”ק ירושלים (צילום: דוד ארזני)

{Matzav.com Israel}

Cows in Stripes, Pizza-Loving Lizards, and Drunken Bats: Ig Nobel Prizes Celebrate Quirky Science

Yeshiva World News - Thu, 09/18/2025 - 21:00

A team of researchers from Japan wondered if painting cows with zebra-like stripes would prevent flies from biting them. Another group from Africa and Europe pondered the types of pizza lizards preferred to eat. Those researchers were honored Thursday in Boston with an Ig Nobel, the prize for comical scientific achievement. “When I did this experiment, I hoped that I would win the Ig Nobel. It’s my dream. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable,” said Tomoki Kojima, whose team put tape on Japanese beef cows and then spray painted them with white stripes. As a result, fewer flies were attracted to the cows and they seemed less bothered by the flies. Despite the findings, Kojima admitted it might be a challenge to apply this approach on a large-scale. The year’s winners, honored in 10 categories, also include a group from Europe that found drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak a foreign language and a researcher who studied fingernail growth for decades. “Every great discovery ever, at first glance seemed screwy and laughable,” Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the magazine, said in an e-mail interview ahead of the awards ceremony. “The same is true of every worthless discovery. The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate ALL these discoveries, because at the very first glance, who really knows?” The 35th annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony is organized by the Annals of Improbable Research, a digital magazine that highlights research that makes people laugh and then think. It’s usually held weeks before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced. A ceremony to celebrate the winners was planned for Thursday night at Boston University where winners were expected to be pelted with paper airplanes and feted by actual Nobel laureates including Esther Duflo and Eric Maskin. Duflo won the Nobel Prize for her experimental approach to alleviating global poverty and Maskin for laying the foundations of mechanism design theory. A mini-opera about gastroenterologists and their patients, inspired by this year’s theme which is digestion, was also planned. Other winners this year included a group from India which studied whether foul-smelling shoes influenced someone’s experience using a shoe rack and researchers from the United States and Israel who explored whether eating Teflon is a good way to increase food volume. There was an award for a dead researcher who spent 35 years studying fingernail growth and a winning study from a team of international scientists that looked at whether giving alcohol to bats impaired their ability to fly. “It’s a great honor for us,” said Francisco Sanchez, one of the researchers from Colombia who studied the drunken bats. “It’s really good. You can see that scientists are not really square and super serious and can have some fun while showing interesting science.” Sanchez said their research found that the bats weren’t fans of rotten fruit, which often has higher concentrations of alcohol. Maybe for good reason. When they were forced to eat it, their flying and echolocation suffered, he said. “They actually got drunk similar to what happens to us,” Sanchez said. “When you take some ethanol, you move slower and your speech is impaired.” (AP)

Only 10 residences. One of them could be yours

Yeshiva World News - Thu, 09/18/2025 - 21:00

Only 10 residences. One of them could be yours In the heart of the German Colony, tucked among tree-lined streets and red-tiled roofs, a unique project is quietly taking shape. CONTECT US HERE 15 Hildesheimer is a boutique development of just ten luxury residences. Each home is crafted with reverence – from hand-numbered Jerusalem stone to imported finishes and private outdoor spaces that include rooftop pools and sukkah balconies. Steps from Emek Refaim. A short walk to the Kotel, Mamilla, the Jerusalem Theatre, and the Israel Museum. Surrounded by the very best of Jerusalem – yet somehow, impossibly, private. This is not just where you stay in Jerusalem. It’s where you come home. Anyone can buy a place in Jerusalem. CONTECT US HERE Only 10 residences. One of them could be yours In the heart of the German Colony, tucked among tree-lined streets and red-tiled roofs, a unique project is quietly taking shape. CONTECT US HERE 15 Hildesheimer is a boutique development of just ten luxury residences. Each home is crafted with reverence – from hand-numbered Jerusalem stone to imported finishes and private outdoor spaces that include rooftop pools and sukkah balconies. Steps from Emek Refaim. A short walk to the Kotel, Mamilla, the Jerusalem Theatre, and the Israel Museum. Surrounded by the very best of Jerusalem – yet somehow, impossibly, private. This is not just where you stay in Jerusalem. It’s where you come home. Anyone can buy a place in Jerusalem. CONTECT US HERE

Al Gore: Trump’s ‘Jihad Against Sustainability Transition’ Creates U.S. ‘Distortion Field’

Matzav - Thu, 09/18/2025 - 20:45

Al Gore, the former vice president, argued that while the worldwide embrace of renewable energy is accelerating, political resistance in the United States—led by President Donald Trump—is skewing the debate and creating what he described as a “distortion field.”

Speaking with Axios, Gore reflected on a new study from his Generation Investment Management firm that evaluates the expansion of low-carbon technologies across the globe and the hurdles facing the clean-energy movement. The findings suggest that although the pace has been slowed, opponents will not be able to block progress entirely. Gore highlighted that much of the growth in renewable power and emissions is happening outside of America, citing China’s simultaneous surge in clean power and coal development.

“If you look at it on a global basis, we get a distortion field here in the U.S. now with Trump’s jihad against the sustainability transition,” Gore told Axios. He remarked that Trump appeared “more loaded for bear this time around” but insisted that plummeting costs for renewable energy and batteries, along with international momentum, were still pushing the transition forward.

Axios also referenced a separate J.P. Morgan analysis predicting a “new energy security age,” shaped by heightened competition over resources, rising protectionism around infrastructure, and shifting geopolitical alignments. Derek Chollet, who leads the JPMorganChase Center for Geopolitics, said in a statement that governments’ prospects will increasingly hinge on how they utilize their natural resource strengths during times of global turbulence.

In January 2023, Gore told the World Economic Forum that greenhouse gas emissions were “boiling the oceans,” producing “rain bombs,” and could lead to as many as one billion people being displaced this century. By November 2024, he declared that efforts to cut emissions would persist “despite” Trump’s return to power, stressing that market trends were the driving force behind renewable energy adoption.

For years, Gore has linked climate change to broader global crises. In 2020, he contended that fossil fuel emissions worsened underlying vulnerabilities connected to COVID-19. He has also frequently insisted that people must stop treating “the sky as an open sewer.” In addition, he has attacked social media algorithms, calling them the “digital equivalent of AR-15s” and warning they weaken democratic institutions.

Though widely known for winning an Oscar and Nobel Prize for his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Gore has drawn criticism for his business dealings. His London-based Generation Investment Management, launched with David Blood, oversees tens of billions of dollars. Investigative writer Peter Schweizer has alleged the fund has backed industries responsible for significant emissions, accusing Gore of profiting from the very sectors he condemns.

Gore has not shied from combative rhetoric in the policy arena. In 2015, he said climate “deniers” should face punishment, and he has thrown his support behind Democrats aligned with his priorities, such as Vice President Kamala Harris during her 2024 presidential bid, whom he hailed as a “climate champion.”

The Axios analysis further noted that armed conflicts, trade tensions, and surging electricity demand from artificial intelligence are all straining the clean-energy shift. Even with those pressures, Gore expressed confidence in the outcome. “The risk is not that the transition won’t succeed,” he said. “We are going to prevail in this. The risk is the slowdown that enables even more harm from climate change.”

{Matzav.com}

Kennedy’s Panel Votes To Limit M.M.R.V. Vaccine For Children Under 4

Matzav - Thu, 09/18/2025 - 20:45

On Thursday, federal vaccine advisers approved a change to how one of the nation’s main childhood immunizations is administered, marking another stage in Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s overhaul of U.S. vaccine policy.

The advisory body, which sets recommendations for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, decided that parents should no longer be permitted to give their children the combined measles-mumps-rubella-varicella shot before the age of four.

Under the new plan, children will instead receive two separate injections—one for measles-mumps-rubella and another for varicella.

This was the first set of votes taken by Kennedy’s newly appointed 12-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which includes several individuals who have long opposed vaccines. Five of the members were appointed just this week.

Kennedy, who has spent decades campaigning against vaccinations, is aggressively moving to implement a series of sweeping changes to national vaccine guidelines. These include narrowing access to COVID-19 shots, removing the government’s top public health leader, and boosting federal backing for states that want to broaden vaccine exemptions.

He has argued that such steps are necessary “to restore trust in U.S. public health agencies.”

The committee postponed until Friday a decision on whether the hepatitis B vaccine should be delayed until a baby is at least one month old, unless the mother tests positive for the virus.

A representative for Merck, the manufacturer of the combination MMRV vaccine, criticized the vote, saying the recommendation and the discussion “occurred in the absence of new scientific data and in contrast to years of evidence affirming the current immunization schedule.”

The decision was based in part on research indicating that children younger than four face a higher likelihood of seizures when given the combined MMRV dose compared to receiving the measles-mumps-rubella and varicella shots separately.

CDC guidelines had already leaned toward the separate vaccines for younger children, with the combined version only permitted if specifically requested by parents.

The all-day meeting was often disorganized, as the new group of advisers struggled with the rules and how their votes would affect health insurance coverage.

Uncertainty over how the Vaccines for Children program would handle coverage left the panel seeking clarification multiple times, and one member ultimately abstained because the issue remained unclear.

The outcome seemed to preserve free access to the combined shot for children enrolled in the Vaccines for Children program, but it may restrict availability of the MMRV vaccine for those not covered.

The Merck representative called the vote on the federal children’s vaccine program unprecedented and said the company was still trying to determine what it would mean for access.

“It’s confusing. They’re going to need to clarify this,” said Dr. Norman Baylor, who previously directed the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review and has served as a liaison to the advisory panel.

“I’m just amazed that nobody stepped up to say, take a step back,” said Dr. Bruce Gellin, who once worked as HHS deputy assistant secretary for Health and directed the National Vaccine Program Office. “If this is going to invoke trust, we’ve got a long way to go.”

Throughout the session, several committee members raised concerns over the lack of participation from doctors’ groups and vaccine administrators, as well as deviations from the traditional process of evaluating evidence before casting votes.

Professional organizations were excluded from the work groups where such discussions usually take place, and no work group was convened to study the data on the MMRV or hepatitis B vaccines.

Dr. Aaron Milstone, pediatric director of Infection Prevention at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, later warned that the move would restrict access to vaccines and deprive parents of the option to choose fewer shots for their children.

On Friday, the committee is slated to decide on updated recommendations for who should be eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

{Matzav.com}

Appalling Security Failure: 3 Illegal Palestinians Arrested Near MK Smotrich During Speech

Yeshiva World News - Thu, 09/18/2025 - 20:15

Three Palestinians from the Chevron area who were working in Israel illegally were arrested on Wednesday a few meters from Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich. Smotrich was speaking at an urban renewal conference at the InterContinental David Hotel in Tel Aviv—and according to a report on Channel 12 News, the discovery of the infiltrators and their arrest unfolded during his speech. As Smotrich was talking, police officers assisting the Magen Unit (responsible for ministers’ security) in securing the event entered the hall and spotted the three Arabs, standing and talking in Arabic in close proximity to Smotrich. Their presence aroused the officers’ suspicion, and upon questioning them, they discovered they were in Israel illegally. An initial investigation revealed that the three Arabs, employed by an event management company that set up the stage for the event, succeeded in bypassing all of the Magen Unit’s security layers on the way to the stage. The police confirmed the security failure on Thursday, with a statement from the police spokesperson stating that “during officers’ preparations to secure an event that took place in a hotel in the center of Tel Aviv, the police officers noticed the three suspects who were present in the hall and aroused their suspicion.” “During questioning, they claimed to be residents of Yaffo, but it turned out that they were residents of Chevron and Beit Awwa and were in Israel illegally. “During a quick investigation at the scene, the police officers located their employer—a 27-year-old resident of Kafr Qassem—who is suspected of employing them through an external company in the hotel industry.” The three Palestinians were imprisoned at the end of their investigation. They were brought to the Magistrate’s Court in Tel Aviv on Thursday, and the judge agreed to the police’s request to extend their arrest. (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

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