A reserve officer in the Military Rabbinate Corps who serves as a battalion rabbi was seriously injured on Monday in an explosion in the buffer zone in southern Syria He was evacuated by helicopter to Rambam Hospital in Haifa. The wounded officer is a Chabad shliach on a Jerusalem campus who has served many reserve rotations since the outbreak of the war and also fought in Gaza. The IDF is investigating the circumstances of the incident. The initial assessment is that the explosion was caused by an old Syrian mine but military sources said that other options are being investigated as well. According to reports, the officer was preparing the outpost for Yom Kippur and he apparently jumped from a tank that was parked near the outpost, unwittingly activating an old mine. The officer was scheduled to finish his reserve duty on Tuesday and return home. The public is asked to daven for a refuah sheleimah for Liraz Tzvi Halevi ben Sora Yehudis b’toch sha’ar cholei Yisrael. (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
Democratic and Republican congressional leaders are heading to the White House for a meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday in a late effort to avoid a government shutdown, but both sides have shown hardly any willingness to budge from their entrenched positions. If government funding legislation isn’t passed by Congress and signed by Trump on Tuesday night, many government offices across the nation will be temporarily shuttered and nonexempt federal employees will be furloughed, adding to the strain on workers and the nation’s economy. Republicans are daring Democrats to vote against legislation that would keep government funding mostly at current levels, but Democrats have held firm. They’re using one of their few points of leverage to demand Congress take up legislation to extend health care benefits. “The meeting is a first step, but only a first step. We need a serious negotiation,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Trump has shown little interest in entertaining Democrats’ demands on health care, even as he agreed to hold a sit-down meeting Monday with Schumer, along with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. The Republican president has said repeatedly he fully expects the government to enter a shutdown this week. “If it has to shut down, it’ll have to shut down,” Trump said Friday. “But they’re the ones that are shutting down government.” The Trump administration has tried to pressure Democratic lawmakers into backing away from their demands, warning that federal employees could be permanently laid off in a funding lapse. “Chuck Schumer said a few months ago that a government shutdown would be chaotic, harmful and painful. He’s right, and that’s why we shouldn’t do it,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said Sunday on “Meet the Press.” Still, Democrats argued Trump’s agreement to hold a meeting shows he’s feeling the pressure to negotiate. They say that because Republicans control the White House and Congress, Americans will mostly blame them for any government shutdown. But to hold on to their negotiating leverage, Senate Democrats will likely have to vote against a bill to temporarily extend government funding on Tuesday, just hours before a shutdown — an uncomfortable position for a party that has long denounced shutdowns as pointless and destructive. The bill has already passed the Republican-controlled House and would keep the government funded for seven more weeks while Congress works on annual spending legislation. Any legislation to fund the government will need support from at least 60 senators. That means that at least eight Democrats would have to vote for the short-term funding bill, because Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is expected to vote against it. During the last potential government shutdown in March, Schumer and nine other Democrats voted to break a filibuster and allow a Republican-led funding bill to advance to a final vote. The New York Democrat faced fierce backlash from many in his own party for that decision, with some even calling for him to step down as Democratic leader. This time, Schumer appears resolute. “We’re hearing from the American people that they need help on health care and as for these massive layoffs, guess what? Simple one-sentence answer: They’re doing it anyway,” he said. Democrats are pushing for an extension […]
An IDF officer harshly criticized the army in front of the top command during his parting speech at a change of command ceremony on Monday. Maj. Gen. Nimrod Aloni, the outgoing commander of the Depth Corps and former commander of the Gaza Division, issued a scathing indictment of the IDF leadership, saying: “I’m leaving an army in which the concept of responsibility has been trampled and desecrated and which has lost the confidence to put its failures on the table.” Aloni, who commanded the Gaza Division about a year before the October 7 massacre, spoke about the period leading up to the disaster: “Two years ago, we tried to contain our enemies to the south and north, believing that time would work in our favor, that it would better the economy, and that we could maintain the status quo for the long term. We were wrong—all of us.” He continued: “We are now in the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a time more than any other for teshuvah. In my cheshbon hanefesh, I will carry four burdens: my failure to prevent the murder of the Fogel family; my decision, at the request of the Southern Command chief, to drive to the command headquarters on October 7 instead of to the embattled kibbutzim on the Gaza border; my failure to actualize the intended role of the Depth Corps headquarters; and my soldiers who fell under my command.” IDF Chief of Staff Zamir spoke after Aloni but chose not to address the harsh criticism aimed at him and other senior officials, instead praising Aloni for his service. (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
Moldovans gave the country’s pro-Western governing party a clear parliamentary majority in a weekend election, defeating pro-Russian groups in a vote widely viewed as a stark choice between East and West. European leaders on Monday hailed Moldovans for re-affirming their commitment to a Western path and future membership in the European Union in the face of alleged Russian interference. The county is small in size and population but with outsized geopolitical importance. “You made your choice clear: Europe. Democracy. Freedom,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a post on X. “No attempt to sow fear or division could break your resolve.” Landlocked between war-torn Ukraine and EU and NATO member Romania, Moldova was a Soviet republic until it proclaimed independence in 1991. In recent years it has taken a clear Westward path, turning the country into a geopolitical battleground between Russia and Europe. The outcome of Sunday’s high-stakes ballot was noteworthy considering Moldovan authorities’ repeated claims that Russia was conducting a vast “hybrid war” to try to sway the outcome and seize power in Chisinau. Moldova applied to join the EU in 2022 in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and was granted candidate status that year. Brussels agreed to open accession negotiations last year. The election results With nearly all polling station reports counted on Monday, electoral data showed the pro-EU Party of Action and Solidarity, or PAS, securing 50.1% of the vote, while the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc won 24.2%. The Russia-friendly Alternativa Bloc came third, followed by the populist Our Party. The right-wing Democracy at Home party also won enough votes to enter parliament. The tense ballot Sunday pitted the governing PAS against several Russia-friendly opponents but no viable pro-European partners. Electoral data indicate the party will hold a clear majority of about 55 of the 101 seats in the legislature. At the PAS campaign headquarters on Monday morning in the capital Chisinau, party leader Igor Grosu described the election as another battle against “enemies of our country that once seemed impossible to defeat,” saying the race was a “final battle for the future.” “It was not only PAS that won these elections, it was the people who won,” he said. “The Russian Federation threw into battle everything it had that was most vile — mountains of money, mountains of lies, mountains of illegalities. It used criminals to try to turn our entire country into a haven for crime. It filled everything with hatred.” Building a new government After a legislative election, Moldova’s president nominates a prime minister, generally from the leading party or bloc, which can then try to form a new government. A proposed government then needs parliamentary approval. It is considered likely that President Maia Sandu, who founded PAS in 2016, will opt for some continuity by once again nominating pro-Western Prime Minister Dorin Recean, an economist who has steered Moldova’s government through multiple crises since 2023. Recean has also previously served as Sandu’s defense and security adviser. Speaking to reporters at the PAS campaign building, Recean said Moldovans “demonstrated that their freedom is priceless and their freedom cannot be bought, their freedom cannot be influenced by Russia’s propaganda and scaremongering.” “The major task right now is to bring back the society together, because what Russia achieved, is to produce a lot of tension and division in society,” […]
Iran said Monday it hanged a man accused of spying for Israel, the latest as Tehran carries out its largest wave of executions in decades. Iran identified the executed man as Bahman Choobiasl, whose case wasn’t immediately known in Iranian media reports or to activists monitoring the death penalty in the Islamic Republic. However, the execution came after Iran vowed to confront its enemies after the United Nations reimposed sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program this weekend. Iran accused Choobiasl of meeting with officials from the Israeli spy agency Mossad. Iran’s Mizan news agency, which is the judiciary’s official mouthpiece, said Choobiasl worked on “sensitive telecommunications projects“ and reported about the “paths of importing electronic devices.” Iran is known to have hanged nine people for espionage since its June war with Israel. Earlier this month, Iran executed Babak Shahbazi, who it alleged spied for Israel. Activists disputed that, saying Shahbazi was tortured into a false confession after writing a letter to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offering to fight for Kyiv. Iran has faced multiple nationwide protests in recent years, fueled by anger over the economy, demands for women’s rights and calls for the country’s theocracy to change. In response to those protests and the June war, Iran has been putting prisoners to death at a pace unseen since 1988, when it executed thousands at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights and the Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran put the number of people executed in 2025 at over 1,000, noting the number could be higher as Iran does not report on each execution. (AP)
Female lookouts from the Paran Brigade who have been stationed along the Egyptian border for over a year, said that they still have no personal weapons despite promises from IDF leadership in the wake of the October 7 massacre, Channel 12 News reported. The soldiers emphasized that they have no means of defending themselves despite being positioned just a few meters from the border. “Right now we are simply helpless,” one told Channel 12. A year and two months after the war in Gaza began, the IDF’s Ground Forces Command released an official operational review pledging to arm all lookouts in border areas. But, nearly two years since the massacre, the promise remains unfulfilled. “After October 7, we were promised weapons the moment we arrived at our post,” one lookout said. “We’ve been here for months, but we still haven’t received them—only strange excuses like there’s no ‘empty chamber indicator’ available in the brigade. (An empty chamber indicator is a small plastic safety device inserted into a weapon’s chamber to show it is unloaded and prevent accidental discharge.) We’ve tried repeatedly to appeal through every channel, to no avail. We had no choice but to go public in order to protect ourselves and ensure history doesn’t repeat itself.” Another look described the situation as dangerous and absurd: “One commander with a weapon in the operations room can’t defend an entire command center in the case of an attack. Our living quarters are at the entrance to the outpost, so anyone outside the operations room has no way to protect herself.” The IDF spokesperson stated in response to the report, “All command staff at the outpost carry personal weapons, and a commander in the operations room is armed at all times. Next month, company-level training exercises will begin, during which the lookouts will undergo certification and firing range training. At the conclusion of this process, they will be eligible to sign out personal weapons. The next cycle of lookouts will be issued weapons immediately upon completing their training.” (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
Electronic Arts, maker of video games like “Madden NFL” and “The Sims,” is being acquired for $55 billion, the most expensive acquisition of a public company to be taken private in history. Under the terms of the deal announced Monday, the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, PIF and Affinity Partners will pay EA’s stockholders $210 per share. The deal was anticipated, with leaks of discussions coming out at the end of last week in a report by The Wall Street Journal. The total value of the deal eclipses the $32 billion price paid to take Texas utility TXU private in 2007. (AP)
Staff Sgt. Inbar Avraham Kav, H’yd, 20, of the Paratroopers Brigade’s 890th Battalion, was killed Sunday afternoon during a terror attack in the Shomron. According to an IDF investigation, Kav was traveling with another soldier in a military jeep on Route 60 near Kedumim when they suspected that a Palestinian truck driver behind them was attempting to ram their vehicle. The soldiers stopped at the Jit junction, where the terrorist accelerated and struck Kav. The terrorist then exited the truck and approached the soldiers. The second soldier opened fire, killing the terrorist but also critically wounding Kav. A bus driver who was passing by also opened fire at the terrorist. Kav was evacuated in critical condition to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, where he later succumbed to his wounds. The terrorist was identified as Mahmoud al-Akkad, 24, from Shechem. A knife was found in his truck, and the IDF determined that the incident was a premeditated attack. IDF forces from the Shomron Brigade launched searches in the area, blocking entrances to Shechem, Qalqilya, and villages along Route 55. The incident remains under investigation. (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
New research has shed light on one of the most haunting and widely recognized photographs of the Holocaust known as “The Last Jew of Vinnytsia,” Ynet reported. German historian Jürgen Matthäus, who carried out the research, revealed that the photo was not taken in Vinnitsa, Ukraine itself, as long believed, but in nearby Berditchev (Berdychiv) in July 1941. The black and white photo captures the moment before the execution of a Jewish man kneeling at the edge of a mass grave. Behind him stands an SS officer, pistol drawn, preparing to shoot him in the neck, while other SS soldiers and officers apathetically watch the scene. The Jews were forced to dig their own mass grave and a small mound of earth can be seen along with dozens of Jewish bodies already lying in the grave can be seen (in the full photo). Although the photo has been published thousands of times in books, magazines, and online, no details were known about it until now, including the identities of the Nazi killer, Jewish victim, the precise location, nor even the date. Matthäus, who served as the head of research at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., until March of this year, has now uncovered most of these details. His study revealed that the horrifying image was captured at a fortress near Berditchev in the early afternoon of July 28, 1941—three weeks after the Germans captured the city and just days before its Jews were forced into a ghetto. The Nazi executioner was Jakobus Onnen, born in 1906 in a small village near the Dutch border. Before the war, he was a teacher of English, French, and physical education. He joined the Nazi SA, the Nazi paramilitary organization, two years before Hitler rose to power and later enlisted in the SS. Deployed to Poland at the outbreak of World War II, Onnen was already actively involved in mass killings of Jews a month before the infamous photo was taken. His Einsatzgruppe D unit, numbering about 700 men, was part of the mobile death squads tasked with “cleansing the Reich’s rear areas of ‘dangerous elements’” while the main army advanced into the Soviet Union. Onnen’s unit was notorious for its “efficiency”: by the fall of 1942 it had murdered over 100,000 civilians—men, women, and children, the vast majority of whom were Jews. Hitler himself visited Berdychiv in early August 1941 to commend the unit’s “efficiency.” By the time the Red Army liberated the city in January 1944, only 15 Jews out of the pre-war population of 20,000 remained alive. Onnen was killed in combat in 1943. The photo first gained international attention during the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961, when it was presented by Ed Moss, a Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor who had emigrated to Chicago. He had obtained the image from an American soldier in Munich in 1945. Over the years, it became known by different titles, including “The Last Jew of Vinnitsa” and “Seventy Jews and One Aryan.” Matthäus was not able to determine who took the photo but believes it was likely a Wehrmacht soldier. Matthäus discovered a negative of the photograph in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum archives, inside the diary of Austrian Wehrmacht officer Walter Materna. A bank clerk by profession and a a […]
Tomorrow, Monday, September 29th at 1:00 p.m., Misaskim will hold its 30th annual Aseres Yemei Teshuva asifa, a global gathering of tens of thousands of children davening on behalf of Klal Yisroel—an initiative founded by the legendary askan R’ Yanky Meyer zt”l. For the first time in three decades, the main event has been moved from the Bobover beis medrash to the new Belzer Cheder on 37th Street, with an even greater number of mosdos participating this year through both in-person tefillos and worldwide hookups, continuing R’ Yanky’s legacy of achdus and tefillah at this special eis ratzon.
An aerial photo shows the aftermath of the fire at The Church in Grand Blanc, Michigan, where a gunman opened fire, leaving several people dead and others injured.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance said today on Fox News that the Trump administration is seriously weighing the sale of BGM-109 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, with a range of up to 1,500 miles, along with other advanced weapons to Europe for Ukraine, though he noted that the “final determination” rests with President Trump.
The State of Oregon and the City of Portland have filed an emergency injunction against Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s order to forcibly federalize between 200 and 2,000 members of the Oregon National Guard, removing them from the governor’s authority.
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said authorities are considering changes to air safety laws that would permit the armed forces to shoot down suspicious drones, following a series of unidentified drone sightings and disruptions near airports and military bases in Germany, Denmark, and Norway over the past week.
ELIMINATED: Another Hamas terrorist, Sari Idris Muhammad al-Aqrab, who took part in the October 7 invasion of Israel, was killed in the same strike that eliminated Muhammad al-Jamal.
The IDF confirmed that it carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon earlier today, targeting Hezbollah weapon depots that the military said were being used to support attacks against Israel.
The IDF and Shin Bet announced that Hassan Mahmoud Hassan Hussein, a Hamas Nukhba Force commander who led the killing and kidnapping of Israelis from a roadside bomb shelter near Kibbutz Re’im on October 7, was killed in a recent airstrike in the Gaza Strip; he served as a company commander in Hamas’s Bureij Battalion.
During a visit to the military’s main visual intelligence unit, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir says the Intelligence Directorate is undergoing major changes following lessons learned from the October 7 onslaught. “The Intelligence Directorate is undergoing a significant transformation, mainly based on the lessons of October 7,” Zamir says at the directorate’s Unit 9900.
