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Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu intensified his messaging Thursday night regarding the emerging draft-law proposal, using a new interview to sharpen his appeal to the chareidi public and to launch a fierce critique at the opposition.

Speaking to the Telegram channel “Abu Ali Express,” Netanyahu described the legislation as a historic breakthrough that would fundamentally reshape the integration of chareidim into military service.

“I hope to be the first prime minister in the history of Israel who actually passes a draft law,” Netanyahu said. “This law will bring 17,000 chareidim into the Israel Defense Forces within three years.”

He accused the opposition of working to sabotage the effort. “They defame the law, they’re trying to stop it. What have they done? They haven’t done anything. Seventeen thousand people — that’s a division and more.”

Netanyahu also directed part of his message inward, toward the chareidi community and its rabbinic leadership. “I expect the chareidi public to join this. I want the rabbanim to allow supporting it. This will be a major test.”

He dismissed claims circulating in some circles that the proposal is intended to preserve exemptions or prevent chareidim from serving.

“This is not a law to block service. This is a law that will bring thousands into the army in a very short time. How can anyone oppose that?”

{Matzav.com}

The Movement for Quality Government has called on Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to open disciplinary proceedings against Chaya Mashan, the senior official overseeing post-primary chareidi girls’ education in the Yerushalayim municipality, following the exposure of documents containing racist and degrading classifications of students.

In a letter sent today to the attorney general, the organization demanded an immediate investigation into Mashan’s reinstatement as coordinator of upper-secondary education for Yerushalayim’s Education Department, a role that includes responsibility for placement in the city’s chareidi seminaries.

“The subject of this request is the recent publication announcing the return of Ms. Chaya Mashan to her position as coordinator of upper-secondary education in the Yerushalayim municipality,” the group wrote.

The watchdog noted that in July 2024, Haaretz revealed Excel documents from the municipality that included detailed—and unauthorized—notations about students: parents’ marital status, the girl’s physical appearance, disabilities, health conditions of both the student and her family, and even the family’s connections to influential figures within the chareidi community.

Last Thursday, journalist Yoeli Brim exposed additional documents stored on municipal servers that used racial and humiliating labels such as: “kushim,” “large and fat,” “short mother and father,” “heavy Sephardi,” and “complex home, baalei teshuva, unmarried sisters.”

The municipality issued a response at the time, saying: “A clarifying conversation was held with the employee by the head of the department. During the meeting, procedures were reviewed in depth, and the employee was made aware of her mistake. Significant changes were also made in the department’s workflow. The spreadsheet in question, which was prepared in the past, was created privately and without the knowledge of her supervisors.”

In its letter, the Movement for Quality Government stressed that “given the severity of the findings and the sensitive position held by Ms. Chaya Mashan—who is responsible for the placement of thousands of girls into post-primary institutions—there is a heightened obligation to immediately open disciplinary proceedings under the Civil Service Disciplinary Law and fully investigate all circumstances of the affair, including the extent of her personal responsibility for the failures uncovered.”

The group also noted that “although the affair was exposed already in July 2024, the municipality’s stance—according to which Ms. Mashan should be returned to her position—raises questions about the authority’s willingness to conduct a thorough review of the failures, learn lessons, and act accordingly.”

The organization requested that the attorney general act under Section 11 of the Civil Service Disciplinary Law and file a formal complaint with the disciplinary court.

{Matzav.com}

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According to the NYP, senior U.S. officials have confirmed a 28-point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine. Kyiv has already met with Washington and signaled agreement to most of the blueprint, which includes territorial freezes, troop limits, Ukraine’s neutrality, and a U.S.-led peace council. In exchange, the U.S. promises security guarantees, coordination of […]

The DOJ has sued California Gov. Gavin Newsom over a state measure giving illegal immigrants access to in-state tuition benefits, arguing it violates federal law by forcing out-of-state U.S. citizens to pay more, calling it “unequal treatment.” The DOJ has filed similar lawsuits in other states, including Minnesota, where the case was delayed during the […]

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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}

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York took to the Senate floor today to criticize Republicans for what he called a dangerous refusal to condemn antisemitic rhetoric, following white nationalist Nick Fuentes’s interview with Tucker Carlson and Fuentes’s growing public platform. BELOW ARE HIS REMARKS: Jewish Americans are facing threats, harassment, and violence at […]

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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}