Secretary Rubio nukes ABC for asking about the “red carpet” for Putin: “You’re not going to end a war between Russia and Ukraine without dealing with Putin… [POTUS] is the only leader in the world that could get Putin to a meeting to talk about serious things.”
SHOCK FOOTAGE: An indictment has been filed against a chareidi worker in Beit Shemesh who last week assaulted another chareidi customer in front of his young son during an argument over a banana and an apple — attacking him with his hands, a knife, and a roll of plastic wrap.
SOUTH FALLSBURG: Catskills Hatzolah and other emergency personnel are at the scene of a three-car MVA at Route 42 and Gamble Road. Injuries were reported.
The Melbourne kehilla gathered on Sunday to celebrate the 105th birthday of the beloved Reb Berysz (Berish) Aurbach. Surrounded by mispallelim of the Caulfield bais medrash and many friends from across the community, the occasion was marked with a l’chaim and divrei chizuk from a Yid who has lived through one of the darkest chapters of Jewish history and continues to inspire others with his steadfast Yiddishkeit. At the gathering in his home, Reb Berish addressed the crowd, reminding them that there is no contradiction between living in the world and remaining wholly faithful to Torah and mitzvos. He shared that although he learns Sfas Emes every day, when people ask him for a vort, he prefers to encourage them to open the sefer themselves and learn the words of emes directly. Born on Gimmel Elul 5680 (1920) in Biala Podlaska, Poland—a town with deep ties to the Gerrer Chassidus—Reb Berish was raised in a home suffused with warmth, Torah, and mesorah. Together with his siblings—three older brothers, a sister, and a half-brother—he imbibed the spirit of chassidus and the foundation of Yiddishkeit that would carry him through the years ahead. He recalls learning as a child in the local Talmud Torah, vivid memories from a world that would soon be consumed by Churban Europe. In a miraculous neis, he was among the very last Yidden to be smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto before Pesach 5703 (1943), mere days before the uprising and the unspeakable destruction that followed. Tragically, with the exception of one sister who had reached Eretz Yisroel before the war, his entire family was murdered al kiddush Hashem. Left bereft of family and home, Reb Berish reached out across the seas to an uncle in Australia. That relative secured a visa, enabling him to come to Melbourne, where he would rebuild his life. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Baruch Yitzchakoff, a yeshivah bochur arrested together with his brother at their home in Tel Aviv 13 days ago for “draft-dodging,” was released from military prison on Sunday. He was greeted with singing and dancing outside the prison. He said about his experiences there: “Gedolei Yisrael danced and sang with us; they gave us life. We felt a great sense of hisrommemus and transcendence there, which not everyone gets to experience.” He said that one of the moments that most impressed and strengthened him in prison was the visit of HaGaon HaRav Moshe Hillel Hirsch. “HaRav Moshe Hillel Hirsch told me, ‘I want to remain here and sit with you in prison,’ but he was told that it wasn’t possible.” “We felt the noise of the Chassidish protest outside. It gave us a lot of chizzuk and raised our spirits. Now I will have more strength to learn—after I was elevated in prison.” His brother, Rafael Yitzchakoff, is scheduled to be released on Thursday. (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
Sec. Marco Rubio: “The best way to end this conflict is through a full peace deal. There’s no doubt about that… What we’re aiming for here is not a ceasefire — what we ultimately are aiming for is an end to this war.”
At the Alaska summit, U.S. reporter Brian Glenn—previously noted for asking Zelensky about his suit in February—received a bottle of Russian vodka from a Russian journalist.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be joined by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Ursula von der Leyen on his trip to Washington to meet President Trump tomorrow along with Emmanuel Macron, Giorgia Meloni, Friedrich Merz, Kier Starmer and Alexander Stubb.
DEVELOPING: Police have arrested 38 protesters across the country amid demonstrations demanding the release of Israeli hostages and an end to the war in Gaza. The bulk of detained demonstrators had been protesting on Begin Road and Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv. Seven others were arrested in Jerusalem for blocking roads during a march throughout the city.
An Israeli defense official said the Israeli Navy struck a power plant south of Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital, Sanaa, this morning, with local media reporting large explosions that knocked several generators out of service.
Channel 14 media personality Yinon Magal on Sunday slammed the conduct of the police and the police commissioner towards the left-wing protests across Israel and called it a “disgrace.” “The conduct of the police is, of course, a disgrace,” Magal wrote on his X account. “Because when Chareidi people block a road, the police step on them as if they were cockroaches and break their bones.” He added in a direct accusation against the police commissioner: “Except that with Police Commissioner Danny Levy, there are those who are allowed to block a road and those who are not allowed to. Shameful.” Despite the police announcement on Sunday morning that thousands of police officers would be deployed across the country beginning at 6:00 a.m., in practice a handful of demonstrators at each junction managed to block central traffic arteries with relative ease. The police refrained from clearing the protesters in the first hours of the protest and only began to arrest rioters toward noon, allowing highways to be blocked for several hours. (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
Three people were killed and eight others wounded when multiple gunmen opened fire inside a Brooklyn restaurant early Sunday morning. The incident occurred just before 3:30AM at Taste of the City Lounge, located at 903 Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said officers rushed to the scene after receiving reports of shots fired inside the establishment. The victims who were killed were identified as men ages 27, 35, and another whose age has not yet been confirmed. Eight additional victims were transported to nearby hospitals; their conditions have not yet been released. No arrests have been made, and police say the suspects remain at large. An investigation is ongoing.
Hundreds of chassidim from various kehillos, including Vizhnitz, Boyan, Gerrer, and others, held a protest outside the Beit Lid military prison on Motzei Shabbos to protest the continued detention of bnei yeshivos, including three avreichim and four bochurim. At the height of the protest, in a surprising move, Meir Yonah, the yeshivah bochur who was arrested on Erev Shabbos by the traffic police and transferred to military prison, was released. He was received with wild dancing by the crowd. The Chassidim dressed him in a shtreimel, and the Zidichover Rebbe danced with Yonah in the center of the circle. Afterward, Yonah described his arrest and the conditions in the military prison: “After I showed the officer my identification, he told me, ‘You’re a draft dodger from the army; you’re going to prison.'” “I responded, ‘Why prison?’ I’m a yeshivah bochur.’ The military police arrived, handcuffed me, and put me in prison without air conditioning, without water. You can’t breathe there; it was very difficult. I suffered, but I’ll stay strong.” (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group on Friday vowed not to disarm, saying last week’s decision by the national government to remove the Iran-backed group’s weapons by the end of the year serves Israel’s interests. Naim Kassem said the government’s decision to remove “the defensive weapons of the resistance, its people and Lebanon during an aggression” facilitates the killing of “resistance fighters and their families and evict them from their land and homes.” He said the government should have instead “spread its authority and evicted Israel from Lebanon.” Speaking in a televised speech to mark a Shiite religious event, he added “the government is serving the Israeli project.” Kassem added if the ongoing crisis leads to an internal conflict, the government is to blame. He noted that Hezbollah and its Shiite ally, the Amal movement, did not ask their supporters to protest in the streets to give way for more discussions. The Amal movement was one of the main armed groups in Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war and is now a powerful political party led by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. But, he said if a decision is taken to protest in the streets, protesters “will be all over Lebanon and head to the U.S. embassy.” He did not elaborate. Hezbollah’s weapons have been a major dividing point in Lebanon with some groups that are opposed to Hezbollah saying only the state should be allowed to have arms. The Lebanese government voted last week for a U.S.-backed plan to disarm Hezbollah by the end of the year and implement a ceasefire with Israel. The small Mediterranean country has been under international pressure to get Hezbollah to lay down its arms since the 14-month war with Israel that ended with a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in November. However, the Hezbollah leader said his group will only discuss a national defense strategy over its weapons once Israel withdraws from Lebanon and stops its almost daily airstrikes that have killed scores of Hezbollah terrorists since the war’s end. “The resistance will not hand over its weapons as the aggression continues and occupation remains,” Kassem said, adding that the group will fight a long battle if needed. The Israel-Hezbollah war weakened the Iran-backed group and left much of its military and political leadership dead. The war killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, displaced over 1 million and caused destruction that the World Bank said will cost $11 billion in reconstruction. After the war ended, Israeli forces stayed in five locations in Lebanon that provide vantage points or are located across from communities in northern Israel, where about 60,000 Israelis were displaced during the war. (AP)
Israeli leftists launched a general strike across the country early Sunday morning against the government’s plan to continue to fight Hamas in Gaza and not capitulate to the terror group’s demands to continue ruling Gaza and its plan to carry out another October 7-style massacre in Israel. In moves very similar to the pre-October 7 protests against the Netanyahu government and the judicial reform plan, protesters gathered in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv and later blocked major roads, including the Ayalon, Highway 1, Highway 6, and Highway 4. A number of relatives of hostages and bereaved families have spoken out against the protest, which was organized by left-wing groups, including the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum. Many politicians also slammed the protest as playing into enemy hands. Finance Bezalel Smotrich published a post on X in which he wrote, “The people of Israel are waking up this morning to a harmful campaign that plays into the hands of Hamas, buries the hostages in the tunnels, and tries to get the State of Israel to surrender to its enemies.” Finance Committee chairman Chanoch Milvitzky (Likud) wrote, “Pro-Hamas riots have begun. Jews, Israelis who are burning the country in an attempt to prevent the destruction of Hamas. There have already been such people in our nation throughout history—we overcame them, and so it will be this time as well.” Like the pre-October 7 protests, many groups, institutions, and businesses joined the strike, including the Medical Association, local authorities, universities, the high-tech headquarters, and the Manufacturers Association. Protests are scheduled to take place at junctions throughout the country. During the day, the main protest is taking place at Hostages Square until 8 p.m., when a mass protest is scheduled outside the Kirya IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv. (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
The Israeli Navy carried out an attack on a power station in Sanaa early Sunday morning, causing power outages in several areas of the Houthi-controlled capital. Yemeni media reported that there was “an attack in the area of the Haziz power station in the south of the city.” Shortly after reports of the attack, Israeli security officials confirmed that Israel was behind the attack. The Israeli Navy carried out an attack on the Houthi-controlled Hodeida port in Yemen in June. (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
According to Politico, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and/or NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte may accompany Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Washington on Monday for his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, amid European concerns that Trump might not extend Zelensky the same “hospitality” he showed Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.
