A new Channel 14 poll released Thursday night presents an updated snapshot of the Israeli political landscape, showing significant shifts across multiple blocs. While the Likud remains dominant, the survey indicates a sharp rise for Arab parties, continued stagnation for Yair Lapid, and an almost complete collapse for Benny Gantz.
According to the poll, if elections were held today, the Likud would retain its strength with 35 seats—unchanged from the previous survey. Naftali Bennett’s party gains one seat, rising to 13. Shas remains stable on 11 seats, followed by Yair Golan’s “Democrats,” which hold steady at 10.
Yisrael Beiteinu slips by one seat to 10, while United Torah Judaism remains unchanged with 8. Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party polls at 7 seats, matching the result for Otzma Yehudit. The Arab Islamist Ra’am party climbs to 6 seats, while Religious Zionism weakens, dropping to 4.
Hadash–Ta’al receives 5 seats. Yesh Atid continues to hover near the electoral threshold with only 4 seats. Blue and White polls at 1.2 seats and Balad at 2.5—both failing to cross the threshold.
Across political blocs, the right-wing camp reaches 65 seats, the left-wing bloc holds 44, and the Arab parties collectively climb to 11 seats.
In the head-to-head question of who is best suited to serve as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu leads decisively with 53% support. He is followed by Naftali Bennett at 22%. Gadi Eisenkot registers 10%, while Yair Lapid and Avigdor Liberman each receive 7%. Benny Gantz trails far behind, with just 1% backing him for the premiership.
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Intense search efforts are underway for a 19-year-old chareidi young man from central Israel who has been missing since yesterday, with authorities expressing serious concern for his safety.
According to the emergency response organization ZAKA, the teenager was last seen near the Yarkon Stream, raising the possibility that he may have been carried out toward the Mediterranean Sea.
Search teams have been operating for several hours after all contact with the young man was lost approximately a day earlier. Given the length of time he has been missing and the severe weather conditions, officials warn that the danger to his life is significant.
Following a request from the Israel Police, volunteers from ZAKA’s missing-persons unit in Tel Aviv—together with members of the organization’s special-operations team—began sweeping large sections of the coastline, nearby parks, and other areas where clues about his whereabouts were detected.
Stormy winds and rough water conditions have heightened fears and made the search more dangerous and difficult.
Yechiel Goldman, operations coordinator for ZAKA Tel Aviv, said: “Our volunteers have been working in the field for the past several hours with the goal of locating the missing young man as quickly as possible. The storm has made the conditions extremely challenging, and every moment may be critical.”
A joint command post has been set up at the National Park in collaboration with ZAKA Tel Aviv and Israel’s emergency and security services. From there, search sectors are being assigned and coordinated, with teams continuing to comb all relevant areas as the investigation continues.
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Thousands of members of the Chassidishe community of London flooded the streets of the city in a large-scale protest against Israel’s proposed draft law. A broad coalition of Chassidic groups united publicly to oppose the legislation currently under debate in the Israeli Knesset.
The rally took place outside the Israeli Embassy and attracted participants from Satmar, Ger, Belz, Vizhnitz, Boyan, Bobov, Tchernobyl, and several other Chassidic communities.
Protesters filled both sides of the road while allowing traffic to continue moving, maintaining strict order throughout the event.
From the crowd rose a repeated chant in English: “Shame on you, Israeli government!”
The Stamford Hill neighborhood alone sent more than 70 buses, aside from those who arrived by train and other public transportation.
The event opened with remarks from Rabbi Yechezkel Weiss of Monsey, who traveled from the United States specifically to address the gathering.
He was followed by Rabbi Moshe Menachem Weiss, a Satmar leader in London, who shared a story from a recent visit to Israel. He described spending a weekend in Meron with his rebbe, during which local organizers arranged a driver for him. The driver, a chareidi man who is not currently studying in a yeshiva, revealed that he was officially considered absent without leave from the Israeli army. Rabbi Weiss told the crowd that he asked the driver why he refused to enlist if he was not engaged in full-time study. According to Rabbi Weiss, the driver told him: “I would rather be taken to prison than drafted into the army. I would not be able to keep my religious commitments the way I try to now. I know that if I go, I will come out spiritually destroyed.”
The driver went on to warn that the authorities were targeting the community’s most vulnerable young people, comparing it to going after “stragglers” and saying that even the youth who are struggling religiously must be protected.
Rabbi Leibus Padwa, son of London’s chief rabbinic authority for the chareidi community, led the assembled crowd in a recitation of Tehillim.
After him spoke Rabbi Baruch Nosson Halberstam of Satmar, followed by Rabbi Chaim Pinchos Miller of the Tchernobyl kehillah . Rabbi Marmerstein then addressed the crowd in English.
The demonstration concluded with kabbolas ohl malchus Shomayim led by the nearly 100-year-old dayan Rabbi Shalom Friedman, one of the most senior rabbonim in Europe.
At the end of the rally, Rabbi Yitzchok Meir Kopel read a formal statement calling for the draft legislation to be canceled entirely.
{Matzav.com}
Wikipedia drew criticism from Jewish leaders after the site’s editors opted to freeze discussion about the title of a page that refers to Israel committing a “massacre” in June 2024.
The decision means that no one can even discuss changing the title of the page “Nuseirat rescue and massacre” until at least August 2026. The page refers to the Jewish state’s liberation of the four hostages—Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv—from Gaza.
Citing “Palestinian health officials,” the Wikipedia page claims that “at least” 276 Palestinians were killed during the operation. It also says that the Israeli military recorded fewer than 100 Palestinian deaths. The Israeli media article Wikipedia cites notes that there were terrorists among the Palestinian deaths, but the encyclopedia’s page doesn’t say that.
At least as of Oct. 2, the Wikipedia page calling it a “massacre” stated that it was redirected from a page called “2024 Nuseirat rescue operation,” per an archived version of the page. Wikipedia reportedly had that page and one on “Nuseirat refugee camp massacre” as of June 18, 2024.
After some efforts were made to change the title of the current page, Wikipedia editors proposed a moratorium on changes on July 26 and put the ban in place on Dec. 8, to last until Aug. 3.
“Wikipedia, once again, seems to be misleading its readers,” Daniel S. Mariaschin, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, told JNS.
“The Nuseirat matter tells us two things about the war in Gaza,” he said. “We learned, early on, that any figures issued by the Hamas-led ‘Gaza Health Ministry’ were always highly inflated and not credible.”
Mariaschin added that Israeli hostages “being held by Palestinian civilians in apartment buildings speaks clearly to Hamas’s policy of surrounding itself, or those connected to it, with human shields.”
“The real story here should be that kidnapped Israelis were being held hostage and were successfully rescued,” he told JNS.
Vlad Khaykin, executive vice president of social impact and North American partnerships at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told JNS that Wikipedia’s use of the word “massacre” in the title is “not a neutral descriptor.”
“It is a verdict—one that draws its authority from casualty figures and claims that remain deeply contested, often circulated by those intent on recasting Israel’s efforts at self-defense as acts of villainy,” he said.
“To enshrine such a term in a headline, absent the slow work of context and verification, is not an act of impartiality,” Khaykin told JNS. “It is the quiet rewriting of the story before the facts have even settled.”
‘Moratorium on truth’
Earlier this year, Wikipedia editors placed another moratorium on discussion on a different page—a dramatic measure that it tends to take rarely. It says that such a decision “should be used with caution,” since it runs “counter to the general practice on Wikipedia that any editor may initiate a discussion on any topic related to the operations of the encyclopedia at any time.”
On Feb. 21, editors reportedly placed a year-long ban on discussions to change the line “Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible” in the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia article on “Zionism.”
“Since when do relied-upon sources of information online place a moratorium on the truth?” Mariaschin told JNS. “The treatment of the story of the Jews’ return to their ancient homeland is not just given short shrift. It is given a fabricated treatment of history that is both biased and dangerous.”
“One can only imagine how many people searching for the facts will walk away with an intentionally false narrative,” he said.
Khaykin told JNS that the moratorium on the Zionism page “locked in a one-sided version of history.”
In January, Wikipedia’s arbitration committee banned eight editors from editing Arab-Israeli articles indefinitely. Six of the eight are anti-Israel. They can appeal their suspensions after one year.
“This is not a simple quarrel among volunteers,” Khaykin told JNS. “It is a case study in how determined actors can quietly seize the levers of an open system, rewriting reality while the world looks away.”
A JNS review found that moratoria have only been implemented a handful of times this year, including efforts to rename the article on the Gulf of Mexico, which U.S. President Donald Trump calls the “Gulf of America,” and discussions about the gender of an Algerian boxer. (JNS sought comment from the Wikimedia Foundation.)
In February 2024, a moratorium paused discussion for three months on efforts to rename an article then titled “Israel-Hamas war.” The title of the page was changed to “Gaza war” in January. A moratorium proposal to freeze discussion on changing the title of the “Gaza genocide” page failed in August 2024.
The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating Wikipedia over concerns of “potentially systematic efforts to advance antisemitic and anti-Israel information in Wikipedia articles related to conflicts with the State of Israel.”
Holly Huffnagle, U.S. director of antisemitism policy for the American Jewish Committee, told JNS that “coordinated and manipulated Wikipedia editing campaigns are dangerous and something that the Wikimedia Foundation must take seriously.”
“These campaigns have the power to distort the public record, exploiting the trust people place in an open encyclopedia to push narratives crafted for hidden agendas,” she said. “Because Wikipedia is so widely cited, including by AI chatbots, even subtle, organized manipulations can change public opinion, shape news coverage and conceal the truth.”
“Procedures and policy must reflect and address these concerns,” she said.
Khaykin told JNS that Wikipedia “now serves as a foundational layer of the global information ecosystem.”
“Its content feeds directly into Google search results and informs Alexa and Siri responses,” he said. “Increasingly, it influences AI platforms like ChatGPT. When Wikipedia’s neutrality is compromised at the source, that distortion spreads.”
“Downstream tools then shape how students, journalists, policymakers and the public understand complex issues,” Khaykin told JNS.
Wikipedia “allows a small group to dictate what the world is permitted to know, then those who build our digital commons must ask themselves whether such a platform deserves its place of trust,” he added. “A source so easily captured should not be allowed to shape historical perspective or the truths we pass on to the next generation.” JNS
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Pomona College reached a settlement with the Anti-Defamation League, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Hillel International on Wednesday, following a complaint the trio filed with the U.S. Department of Education in April 2024.
The three groups alleged in the complaint that the private liberal arts school in southern California allowed “severe discrimination and harassment of Jewish students” to occur on campus. The Education Department said in August that it was probing the matter.
Under the new agreement, the highly-ranked school will recognize that the word “Zionist” tends to be used as a code for “Jew” and will use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred when investigating alleged antisemitism on campus.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the ADL, stated that the agreement is a “critical turning point for Pomona’s Jewish students, faculty and staff.”
“The comprehensive reforms negotiated with Pomona touch nearly every aspect of campus life, and we welcome the college’s significant, multi-faceted commitment to fighting antisemitism on its campus,” he said.
“With the reforms in this agreement, we expect meaningful and urgent strides toward Pomona’s promise of creating a safe and welcoming environment for its Jewish and Israeli students, faculty and staff,” he added.
The college commits to recognize that targeting Zionists can violate the school’s nondiscrimination policies if it’s “on the basis of their actual or perceived Jewish or Israeli shared ancestry” and that “Zionist” is “often used as a code word for ‘Jew,’” per the agreement.
The school must also appoint a coordinator to ensure compliance with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and Pomona’s website must include an option to report Title VI incidents. Students, faculty and staff will also be required to take Title VI training, according to the agreement, which is to begin in the spring.
G. Gabrielle Starr, president of Pomona, stated that “antisemitism has persisted for thousands of years, and this settlement is not a one-size-fits-all toolkit.”
“It’ll be up to our community to put it in place and to live it,” she said.
Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center and former U.S. assistant secretary of education for civil rights, stated that “the action steps outlined in this settlement will address the blatant and egregious antisemitism faced by Pomona’s students, therefore protecting students from facing similar treatment in the future.”
“We hope it encourages others to take legal action against those who violate our constitutional rights,” he said. JNS
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Israel will ban mobile phone use by children on elementary school grounds starting on Feb. 2, Education Minister Yoav Kish announced on Thursday.
The policy expands a 2019 ban that prohibited phones during classes. Under the new rules, students cannot use devices during breaks or before lessons. Phones will be allowed only in designated classes with staff approval for educational purposes.
The Education Ministry said the ban aims to help pupils develop social and emotional skills, improve school climate and enable better focus on learning. Officials cited studies on mobile phone impacts and global trends, including Australia’s recent ban on social media for users under 16.
The ministry will implement educational programs and work with parents to promote balanced phone use and reduce exposure to inappropriate content. JNS
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Israeli security services have uncovered new intelligence that may shed light on the burial site of Ran Gvili, according to a Channel 12 News report aired Thursday night. Officials have launched initial on-the-ground examinations over the past several days to assess the credibility of the information.
Investigators are now concentrating on a location associated with operatives from the Islamic Jihad terror organization, whose members carried out Ran Gvili’s abduction during the October 7 attack. In contrast to earlier assessments, Israeli officials now believe that the militants believed to have taken part in his burial are still alive.
Defense sources say that if Hamas demonstrates willingness, interrogating Islamic Jihad operatives could enable Israel to pinpoint the precise site where Gvili was buried. They note that cooperation on this matter is essential for any further progress in negotiations.
Channel 12 also reported that Israel has delivered a clear message in diplomatic channels: it will not advance to Phase 2 of the Trump ceasefire agreement until a resolution is reached regarding the repatriation of Ran Gvili’s body for burial in Israel.
{Matzav.com}
