Alive! Out Now! Watch as Shloime Daskal’s unmatched energy and talent meets Yehuda Langer’s skill and expertise to make this dance truly come ALIVE. Hits and classics fuse with the energy that only a camp can provide to bring you a medley unlike any other. Joined by the incredible Yedidim Choir, this dynamic dance set is truly unforgettable. Recorded live at Camp Degel Hatorah in Durham, CT.
The IDF carried out a demolition of the residence belonging to a Palestinian suspect believed to be involved in a fatal terror shooting incident in the in the Shomron last May. The attack, which resulted in the death of a pregnant woman and her unborn child, prompted the military action. The incident took place on May 14 near the Palestinian village of Bruqin and the settlement of Bruchin. During the attack, a Palestinian terrorist opened fire from the roadside at Israeli drivers, killing 30-year-old Tzeela Gez A”H and injuring her husband. Gez was en route to the hospital to give birth at the time. Her baby, Ravid Chaim, was delivered via emergency C-section at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva but passed away 15 days later. The shooter, Naael Samarah, identified as a Hamas terrorist, was shot and killed by IDF forces four days after the attack. Subsequently, three additional Hamas terrorists were detained over their suspected involvement. One of those detained was Jamil Samarah. According to military sources, IDF troops operated earlier today in the West Bank town of Bruqin to demolish Jamil Samarah’s residence. Notably, Naael Samarah’s home was demolished in September. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
For the first time, Evyatar David has spoken publicly about the horrific Hamas video showing him, gaunt and frail, being forced to dig his own grave. “I didn’t dig it fully,” he said. “But I did dig it, so it did take a lot of energy out of me, and it was very hard.” “But I always believed that I was going to get out eventually. Maybe I looked very bad in the video—very skinny and weak—but I always had a lot of inner hope. I always thought about my family and my friends and my home—I knew I would go back. I had to believe.” (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
POTUS: “This is going to be probably the finest ballroom ever built — and we’re doing it NO COST to the country… in order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure.”
PHOTOS: Chesed Shel Emes welcomed its fifth emergency services and recovery truck, generously donated by the Saada family in memory of their loved ones who tragically lost their lives in the horrific March accident on Ocean Parkway in Flatbush; the new truck will be stationed in Boro Park to assist with emergency and recovery operations.
New Hampshire Republican John E. Sununu announced a campaign for U.S. Senate on Wednesday, hoping to reclaim a seat he lost nearly two decades ago and boosting the GOP’s chances of regaining a foothold in a region overwhelmingly represented by Democrats. Sununu, 61, is seeking the Republican nomination for the seat being vacated by U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat who ousted him in 2008. His decision sets up a primary featuring two former senators: Republican Scott Brown, who represented Massachusetts before moving to New Hampshire and losing to Shaheen in 2014, has been running since June. “Maybe you’re surprised to hear that I’m running for the Senate again. I’m a bit surprised myself,” Sununu said in a video announcement. “Why would anyone subject themselves to everything going on there right now? Well, somebody has to step up and lower the temperature. Somebody has to get things done.” National Republicans consider Sununu a strong candidate and one who allows them to go on the offensive as they look to hold their majority in the chamber next year. In statements, the Republican National Committee said Sununu’s entrance creates “a formidable Republican field poised to make this seat competitive in 2026.” The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC linked to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, said they were “excited” about Sununu’s bid and that it “expands the Senate map and puts the Granite State in play for Republicans.” Senate Republicans, who hold a 53-47 advantage, are defending seats in Ohio, Maine and North Carolina against a slate of high-profile Democratic candidates. But Republicans are also on the offensive in places like Michigan, Georgia and now, increasingly, New Hampshire — and if they flip one of those seats it will likely put the chamber out of reach for Democrats until at least 2028. Sununu must first win the primary though, and his past opposition to President Donald Trump could be problematic. While Brown has aligned himself closely with Trump and served as his U.S. ambassador to New Zealand, Sununu backed Nikki Haley in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, writing an op-ed calling Trump a “loser.” Trump went on to win New Hampshire’s leadoff primary, but the state’s voters rejected him for a third time in the general election. And while Republicans control the Statehouse and governor’s office, Democrats have held all four of New Hampshire’s congressional seats since 2017. Sununu has been in contact with the White House about the Senate campaign, according to a senior White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity and was not authorized to discuss private conversations. His primary opponent, Brown, posted on X that he looks forward to highlighting “clear distinctions” between himself and Sununu “and letting the people of New Hampshire — not Washington, D.C. — decide” who will win the nomination. Sununu served three terms in the U.S. House before being elected to the Senate at age 38. He was the chamber’s youngest member throughout his term, a fact he emphasized in a 2008 campaign ad that showed him sprinting up a steep mountain path. “He’s younger, faster, quicker,” a deep-voiced (and somewhat redundant) narrator intones. “Inexhaustible. Tireless. Energetic.” He is now the same age Shaheen was when she defeated him and is 16 years older than U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas, the front-runner for […]
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion sang at the chuppah at his daughter’s chasunah on Tuesday at the David Citadel hotel in Jerusalem. His daughter Shirel married Noam Moskowitz, the son of the head of the Tzur Hadassah Council. The medader kiddushin was the chassan’s Rav, Rabbi Re’em Cohen, the Rav of Otniel and the Rosh Yeshivah of Yeshivat Otniel. Arutz Sheva captured the moving moments: (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
Sec. Scott Bessent: “President Putin has not come to the table in an honest and forthright manner, as we’d hoped… we are going to be announcing a substantial increase in Russia sanctions… one of the largest sanctions that we have done against the Russian Federation.”
Israeli hostage Segev Kalfon, who was abducted by Hamas terrorists from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, has described in harrowing detail the 738 days he spent in captivity — a period marked by brutal beatings, forced labor, and life in underground tunnels under constant threat of death. In his first public interview since being freed earlier this month, Kalfon, 27, told Ynet and Yediot Acharonot – captured as he tried to flee the Nova festival massacre – Kalfon said he was bound, blindfolded, and beaten with rifle butts. “They hit me in the knees, the stomach, the head, from every side,” he recalled. “After a few minutes, you stop feeling the blows — only silence, a minute before life ends.” He said Hamas fighters assaulted him repeatedly after he refused to change his name, which they mocked because it resembled an Arabic word. “They didn’t believe me and started beating me,” he said. “When they began calling me ‘Steve,’ I stopped correcting them. That’s when I realized I was a prisoner.” Kalfon said that upon being dragged into Gaza, he was thrown into what he believed was a mosque. “Someone pressed a knife to my neck and asked my name. I said ‘Segev.’ He pressed harder. Every time I said it, I was beaten again.” Kalfon said he was moved between safe houses as Israeli forces bombarded Gaza before being confined for nearly a year in a tunnel alongside several other hostages — Ohad Ben Ami, Elkana Bohbot, Yosef Chaim Ohana, Maxim Harkin, and Bar Kuperstein. For long stretches, he was kept in isolation. “We dug a pit for a toilet — for us and for them — because they called us ‘worthless Jews,’” he said. “We dug tunnels. They forced us to work. When you go down into a tunnel, you become a rat. The life you had above ground no longer exists.” He said the hostages’ treatment worsened whenever their captors saw Israeli officials on television. “Whenever they saw Itamar Ben-Gvir, we knew the light at the end of the tunnel meant beatings were coming,” he said. Conditions underground, he said, were “unbearable.” Hostages slept on uneven floors and thin mattresses. “I made a pillow from scraps of mattress,” Kalfon said. “The little water we had, I filtered through gauze. A bottle of water was like gold.” Kalfon said he refused Hamas’s demands to appear in propaganda videos, despite knowing the risks. “I thought about my parents and my family,” he said. “I didn’t want to say I was suffering or starving, even though every day there was danger to your life. Every minute you survived was a miracle.” He described moments when bombings were so close that he and two other hostages said their final goodbyes. “We said to each other, ‘If something happens, know that I love you, that you’re my brothers.’ After that day they took us down into the tunnel.” “Death becomes your best friend,” he said. “You talk to death all the time. Nothing is certain. You have no food, no communication, and they do everything to make you suffer.” Kalfon said that after more than two years underground, survival itself feels miraculous. “Today, nothing is taken for granted,” he said. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy says Trump’s White House renovation is “absolutely illegal.” “That visual is powerful because you are essentially watching the destruction of the rule of law.”
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met in Abu Dhabi with Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed to discuss the Gaza ceasefire and U.S. efforts to promote regional stability, according to Emirati state media.
The U.S. military launched its eighth strike against an alleged drug-carrying vessel, killing two people in the waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday, marking an expansion of the Trump administration’s campaign against drug trafficking in South America. The attack Tuesday night was a departure from the seven previous U.S. strikes that had targeted vessels in the Caribbean. Hegseth said on social media that the latest strike killed two people, bringing the death toll to at least 34 from attacks that began last month. The strike marks an expansion of the military’s targeting area in South American waters as well as a shift to Colombia, where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producer is smuggled. Hegseth’s post also draws a direct comparison between the war on terrorism that the U.S. declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Trump administration’s crackdown. “Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people,” Hegseth said, adding “there will be no refuge or forgiveness — only justice.” Republican President Donald Trump has justified the strikes by asserting that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and proclaiming the criminal organizations as unlawful combatants, relying on the same legal authority used by President George W. Bush’s administration when it declared a war on terrorism. In a brief video Hegseth posted Wednesday, a small boat, half-filled with brown packages, is seen moving along the water. Several seconds into the video, the boat explodes and is seen floating motionless on the water in flames. The administration has sidestepped prosecuting any of the occupants of the alleged drug-running vessels after returning two survivors of an earlier strike to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia. Ecuadorian officials later said they released the man that was returned to their country, saying that they had no evidence he committed a crime in their country. The U.S. military has built up an unusually large force in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off the coast of Venezuela since this summer, raising speculation that Trump could try to topple raising Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He faces charges of narcoterrorism in the U.S. The bulk of American overdose deaths are from fentanyl, which is transported by land from Mexico. While Venezuela is a major drug transit zone, about 75% of the cocaine produced in Colombia is smuggled through the eastern Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean. (AP)
Tzvika Mor, the father of released hostage Eitan Mor, told Channel 12 News that Eitan learned to speak and read Arabic during his two years in Hamas captivity, which he spent in Gaza City. “We’re absolutely amazed by his level in Arabic,” he said. “He writes Arabic like I write Hebrew. He reads books and newspapers in Arabic. He essentially dedicated those two years to learning Arabic.” “Eitan simply took a Hamasnik and asked him to teach him the Arabic alphabet. He gradually began learning letters and words—from conversations between the captors, from watching Al Jazeera that sometimes played nearby, and from other sources.” Tzvika added that Eitan said that to pass the time in captivity, he cooked and also taught the terrorists how to cook. “Eitan had worked in the culinary field and knew how to cook professionally,” he explained. Eitan also endured brutal treatment at the hands of his captors and at times, was provided with just a few spoonfuls of rice a day. (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday directed drills of the country’s strategic nuclear forces that featured practice missile launches, an exercise that came as his planned summit on Ukraine with U.S. President Donald Trump was put on hold. The Kremlin said that as part of the maneuvers involving all parts of Moscow’s nuclear triad, a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile was test-fired from the Plesetsk launch facility in northwestern Russia, and a Sineva ICBM was launched by a submarine in the Barents Sea. The drills also involved Tu-95 strategic bombers firing long-range cruise missiles. The exercise tested the skills of military command structures, the Kremlin said in a statement. The chief of the military’s General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, reported to Putin via video link that the drills were intended to “practice procedures for authorizing the use of nuclear weapons.” Putin, sitting alone at a round white table, faced big screens showing Gerasimov and Defense Minister Andrei Belousov. All three men would be involved in launching nuclear weapons in case of conflict. While Putin emphasized that the maneuvers had been planned in advance, they came hours after President Donald Trump said Tuesday his plan for a swift meeting with Putin in Budapest was on hold because he didn’t want it to be a “waste of time.” The decision about the meeting in Budapest, Hungary, which Trump had announced last week, was made following a call Monday between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Lavrov made clear in comments Tuesday that Russia is opposed to an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine. Trump, meanwhile, has been shifting his stance all year on key issues in the conflict, including whether a ceasefire should come before longer-term peace talks, and whether Ukraine could win back land seized by Russia during almost four years of fighting. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday emphasized that the planned Putin-Trump summit needs to be thoroughly prepared. “No one wants to waste time: neither President Trump nor President Putin,” Peskov told reporters. “These are the two presidents who are accustomed to working efficiently with high productivity. But effectiveness always requires preparation.” (AP)
Retired Deputy Commander Tzachi Havkin, a former Lahav 433 investigator and member of the teams that handled Prime Minister Netanyahu’s cases, testified Wednesday in Netanyahu’s ongoing trial. Havkin was summoned to the witness stand following the testimony of former Police Internal Investigations Department (PID) investigator Dubi Shertzer, who revealed that Havkin was the police officer who had approached him in real time to report illegal and improper actions that took place during the Netanyahu investigations. During his testimony, Havkin described a deep sense of frustration with then–Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, admitting that the investigation exceeded the scope of what had been officially authorized. “In 2016, when I headed a division in Lahav 433, I was upset about the very limited approval we received. It felt like we were being sent to chase things that had no substance, so we started asking broader questions than we were permitted to.” Havkin also criticized the interrogation methods used against state witness Nir Hefetz: “Bringing in someone unrelated to the case just to pressure a suspect—that’s improper.” Another striking moment in his testimony concerned the questioning of Ilan Yeshua. Netanyahu’s attorney, Amid Hadad, asked why Yeshua, who had allegedly been part of the wrongdoing, was not interrogated as a suspect under caution. Havkin replied, “That bothered me too. I remember exactly where I was and who was with me when it happened. A person admits to being part of an offense and is questioned in an open interview—that troubled me. I even told my superior, Yoram Naaman, about it at the time.” He noted that in a previous case, he had been criticized by the court for conducting an open interview under similar circumstances. Havkin further testified that investigators knew there was an issue with the date of the so-called “guidance meeting”—where Netanyahu allegedly instructed Shlomo Filber to favor Bezeq—but that the matter was never examined. Before Havkin’s appearance, the prosecution tried to block his testimony, claiming it had been caught off guard by Shertzer’s revelations. Prosecutors requested to pause the proceedings for consultation and even considered asking for a supplemental investigation. However, the court rejected the request, and the testimony proceeded as planned. Shertzer’s statements appear to confirm multiple claims of improprieties made in recent years about Netanyahu’s cases, but previously vehemently denied by officials in the State Attorney’s Office. During court hearings, the trumped-up claims against Netanyahu have fallen apart, with multiple claims disproven or withdrawn. MK Moshe Saada, former deputy and acting head of the PID, responded to the report by stating, “What just happened in the courtroom where the prime minister’s trial is being held is nothing short of an earthquake. During my tenure, a senior source—a former head of the Netanyahu investigations team—approached me, offering shocking information about crimes committed by police investigators in the Netanyahu cases.” “When I sought to open an investigation into the investigators and verify the information, the prosecution prevented me from doing so, refused to grant immunity to the source, and after the affair became public, even claimed that no such source existed—that it was all a lie. Today, the truth has come to light.” “In court, the identity of the source—whom the prosecution claimed did not exist—was exposed. Havkin will testify about the crimes of the investigators, the crimes of the prosecution, and […]
MOVING: Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion sang at the chuppah at his daughter’s chasunah on Tuesday at the David Citadel hotel in Jerusalem. His daughter Shirel married Noam Moskowitz, the son of the head of the Tzur Hadassah Council. The medader kiddushin was the chassan’s Rav, Rabbi Re’em Cohen, the Rav of Otniel and the Rosh Yeshivah of Yeshivat Otniel. VIDEO VIA ARUTZ 7
