Matzav

Iran’s attack on the Jewish state and Israel’s forthcoming response were among the topics that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant discussed in a meeting in Tel Aviv on Tuesday afternoon.

“In their discussion about Iranian aggression and its terrorist activities via proxies spread across the Middle East, the minister highlighted the importance of the U.S. standing with Israel following Israel’s attack on Iran,” according to an Israeli readout of the meeting. “This will strengthen regional deterrence and weaken the ‘axis of evil.’”

Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Department spokesman, said the two officials “discussed ongoing efforts to deter further regional aggression from Iran and its proxies,” and that Blinken “reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s security, including in response to Iran’s unprecedented ballistic missile attack.”

The two officials also talked about securing the release of the hostages in Gaza and ending the conflict in the Strip “in a way that provides lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” according to Miller.

Blinken reiterated the urgency “to increase the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza to address severe food insecurity and meet basic needs,” he added, and “emphasized the United States’ support for a diplomatic solution to the conflict across the Blue Line that fully implements U.N. Security Resolution 1701.”

According to the Israeli readout of the meeting, Gallant and Blinken, joined by their staffs, also addressed the progress that the Israel Defense Forces have made in the various arenas. Gallant emphasized “the obligation to ensure the return of hostages still held in Gaza and to promote the replacement of Hamas as a governing authority, by other regional and local entities.”

Gallant also told Blinken about “the progress made in Israel’s mission to destroy Hezbollah’s attack infrastructure in the border region.”

He added that “Israel will continue striking the terrorist organization’s infrastructure even once the targeted operations are complete.”

That will continue “systematically,” the Israeli minister told Blinken, “until it is possible to ensure the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes and the withdrawal of Hezbollah forces from Southern Lebanon,” per the Israeli readout.

Israel is expected to retaliate against Iran after the Islamic Republic attacked the Jewish state with as many as 200 ballistic missiles on Oct. 1.

(JNS)

The Israel Defense Forces announced on Tuesday that it killed a group of Hezbollah commanders, including Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s chief executive council.

“The terrorists were eliminated in a strike carried out approximately three weeks ago in the area of Dahiyeh, a key Hezbollah terrorist stronghold in Beirut,” the IDF stated. “The Israeli Air Force conducted a precise, intelligence-based strike on Hezbollah’s main intelligence headquarters, deliberately located underground beneath the civilian population in the Dahiyeh.”

The strike killed 25 Hezbollah terrorists, including Safieddine and Ali Hussein Hazima, the commander of Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters, per the IDF.

Safieddine was a first cousin of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in September. The IDF said that Safieddine frequently served as acting secretary-general of Hezbollah when Nasrallah was outside Lebanon.

Hashem Safieddine’s brother, Abdullah Safieddine, is the terror group’s representative in Tehran. Hashem’s eldest son, Reza, is married to a daughter of former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, whom the United States killed in a 2020 airstrike in Iraq.

The confirmation of Hashem Safieddine’s death, which Israeli leaders first said was “likely” on Oct. 8, is the latest Israeli-delivered blow to Hezbollah’s leadership cadre.

In September, more than 3,000 Hezbollah operatives were wounded when their pagers and walkie-talkies exploded. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for that operation, although Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the day after the mass beeper explosions that Israel’s security services have achieved “very impressive” results.

On Sept. 27, Israel killed Nasrallah in an airstrike on Hezbollah’s underground headquarters in Dahiyeh, on the same day that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Hashem Safieddine was believed to be a potential successor to Nasrallah. With his killing, Gallant said on Oct. 8 that Hezbollah has “no one to make decisions, no one to act.”

“The actions we are taking are being observed all over the Middle East,” Gallant said. “When the smoke in Lebanon clears, they will realize in Iran that they have lost their most valuable asset, which is Hezbollah.”

(JNS)

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Diplomatic tensions between the Biden administration and Yerushalayim over the ongoing war, as well as leaked classified documents regarding reported IAF preparations for a strike on Iran, have placed Washington’s stance on Israel’s military actions in the spotlight once again.

The upcoming elections in the United States are amplifying a tendency in Washington to attempt to rein in Israeli military actions, particularly against Iran, Professor Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israeli relations at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan and a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told JNS on Sunday.

The current U.S. response to Israel’s military actions is heavily influenced by the presidential election campaign, as Democrats and Republicans are locked in a statistical tie in the swing states, and “everything they [the administration] does now, including [President Joe] Biden’s actions, which are meant to assist [Vice President Kamala] Harris, is related to the election,” Gilboa said.

In addition, “The U.S. is most motivated by a concern about a regional war, and they view that [possibility] as a complete failure on their part,” he said, highlighting that preventing a wider conflict remains Washington’s top priority.

This underlying fear, according to Gilboa, which preceded the elections season, is also driving U.S. efforts to restrain Israel from actions that could lead to direct confrontations with Iran. “They see all of the targeting killings, particularly of Hezbollah’s [Hassan] Nasrallah, as something that could ignite a regional war.”

As such, Gilboa said, “The elections, in my opinion, are simply intensifying a stance that has been there almost from the beginning of the war.”

Meanwhile, revelations have surfaced in recent days stemming from leaked documents, detailing Israeli preparations for an attack on Iran. The documents, apparently from the U.S. Department of Defense, were published by a pro-Iran outlet.

The fact that classified documents from the Pentagon containing such sensitive material reached a pro-Iran site “is simply unbelievable,” Gilboa said, highlighting the gravity of the situation. He further pointed out that this isn’t the first time that sensitive information such as this has been leaked, but this time, “it creates a real dilemma for Israel.”

On the one hand, the U.S. continues to provide Israel with crucial defense support, yet on the other, “they [the U.S.] want details of what we are going to do, and they tell us through the media what they don’t want us to do, like targeting oil and nuclear facilities,” the professor said.

Restoring bipartisan support is vital for Israel’s long-term strategic relationship with the U.S., but this is becoming increasingly difficult due to the current political dynamics in both countries, Gilboa argued​.

Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, stressed the broader implications of such leaks for U.S. security. “The leak itself and the potential for more leaks yet to come is a national security crisis for the United States,” Goldberg told JNS on Monday.

“We don’t yet have confirmation of who leaked this and why, but the event needs to force a systemic review of who has access to intelligence and how we protect against political and ideological radicalization among those with access to top secret information,” he said.

Goldberg further cautioned that “pro-Hamas and pro-Iran propaganda, amplified by President Biden, Vice President Harris and certain white nationalist influencers, can have consequences in radicalizing elements of our society against Israel and Jews.”

The leaked documents reportedly revealed Israel’s preparations for a strike on Iran, with specific details on Israeli Air Force exercises and drone deployments. On Oct. 19, Ynet reported that the documents—marked “Top Secret”—included reported long-range strike rehearsals by the IAF.

Diplomatic tension between the U.S. and Israel regarding Iran was further underscored by Biden’s comments on Oct. 18, when he said the administration knows how and when Israel will respond to the Oct. 1 Iranian mass ballistic missile attack, adding that the U.S. has been working to manage the situation in a way that ends the conflict.

These remarks were interpreted by several experts, including Gilboa, as a signal that the U.S. is attempting to pressure Israel into minimizing or refraining from military action against Iran, favoring diplomatic solutions instead.

However, Israel remains focused on neutralizing Iranian threats, and Israel’s defense establishment appears to be focused on planning the timing and scope of its response, in line with directives from the Cabinet, following Iran’s attack on Oct. 1.

(JNS)

Honda is recalling about 720,000 vehicles in the United States over concerns that a cracked component can leak fuel, increasing the risk of a fire, according to safety regulators.

The recall affects 2025 Honda Civics, 2025 Honda Civic Hybrids, 2023 and 2024 Honda Accords, and Honda CR-V Hybrids from 2023 through 2025. During a fuel pump leak, drivers may smell fuel when the car is idling or driving, said the National Highway Traffic Administration.

Investigators traced the problem to cracks caused by manufacturing problems with a high-pressure fuel pump made by Hitachi Astemo, one of Honda’s suppliers.

“During vehicle operation, the high-pressure fuel pump can cause the unpenetrated and penetrated cracks to grow and allow fuel to leak,” NHTSA warned in a recall document.

Honda received its first warranty claim over the issue in February 2023. It stopped shipping the affected vehicles in September 2024, shortly before announcing its recall.

The company said it has not received any reports of crashes of injuries related to this issue, which is thought to affect about 1 percent of the recalled vehicles. It was scheduled to start notifying dealers of the problem as of Oct. 15, and start contacting car-owners on Dec. 4. Dealers will inspect and replace the fuel pump free of charge, NHTSA said.

This is the second Honda recall involving fuel pumps in less than a year, and the third since 2021. The company in December recalled 2.6 million vehicles from model years 2017 through 2020, over concerns related to improperly molded impellers in fuel pumps. That same problem led to a 2021 recall of 620,000 vehicles.

Honda earlier this month recalled 1.7 million vehicles from model years 2023 through 2025, citing steering problems.

(c) Washington Post

The US is in talks with several Southeast Asian nations about deploying small modular nuclear reactors, as global interest in the low-carbon energy source increases.

American officials have discussed the matter with their Philippine, Singaporean, and Thai counterparts, said Andrew Light, assistant secretary of energy for international affairs at the Department of Energy. The US can “provide a government-to-government discussion on what is the current array” of SMRs, he told reporters at the Singapore International Energy Week conference on Tuesday.

Southeast Asia, home to more than half a billion people, is looking at nuclear power as a way to meet rapidly growing energy needs, while also reducing reliance on fossil fuels. The Philippines aims to have its first nuclear power plant by 2032, while Vietnam and Indonesia are also considering adopting the technology.

Unlike traditional nuclear reactors, which are enormous facilities that take years to construct, SMRs are much smaller and can be built at factories, delivered by truck or train, then assembled on-site, saving time and money. While several US companies are developing the technology, it hasn’t yet been deployed at scale, commercially.

Light said he had discussions with officials in Singapore, which is considering building a modular reactor. Officials also met with peers from Thailand, which is in the process of renewing its agreement with the US to share non-weapon nuclear equipment, he said.

(JNS)

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Some impatient passengers may be in for a rude awakening the next time they try to line up early to get on a plane.

American Airlines has been piloting a system in recent weeks to flag when people attempt to board before their group has been called. Experts in human behavior say travelers who mass at the gate ahead of their turn do so out of a tendency to conform – and out of a sense of competition. Airline employees often refer to those passengers as “gate lice.”

American said that when someone tries to board with the wrong group, its software gives an “audible signal” and shows the gate agent a message with the correct group.

“We are in the early phase of testing new technology used during the boarding process,” American said in a statement provided to The Washington Post. “The new technology is designed to ensure customers receive the benefits of priority boarding with ease and helps improve the boarding experience by providing greater visibility into boarding progress for our team.”

The airline has tested the technology at the Albuquerque and Tucson airports and – pleased so far with the results – will expand soon to other locations, including Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C.

Delta Air Lines does not use any boarding enforcement technology, but said it switched its system earlier this year to board by numbered zones “to bring more clarity” to the process. United Airlines said, “Our gate agents monitor the boarding process.”

American Airlines’ boarding process largely prioritizes travelers with status or those who have paid for front-of-plane seats. Those who pay for priority boarding are called in Group 4. Main cabin passengers board in groups 7 and 8, while the lowest-priced basic economy group goes last.

News of the American Airlines test has bubbled up on Reddit, where one poster deemed it “awesome,” and in travel blogs.

Gary Leff wrote about the topic last week for his site, View From the Wing, after a reader alerted him to the new system. He wrote that passengers who crowd the gate and get in line before their turn create a “more chaotic process.”

“Gate agents are busy and don’t always look at boarding groups when people scan their boarding passes,” he wrote. “This is simple, yet genius.”

In an interview with The Post, Leff said the airline sets its boarding process to encourage behaviors like signing up for its credit card or earning frequent-flier status. Readers were generally in favor of the stepped-up enforcement, he said.

“There’s very little pushback to the idea that people ought to board in their assigned order,” Leff said. “There is frustration from passengers when others don’t follow that norm.”

(c) Washington Post

The IRS on Tuesday announced new inflation-adjusted tax brackets for the coming year, setting the standard deduction for a single filer at $15,000 and for a married couple at $30,000 for the first time.

The new tax brackets, standard deduction and other policies will apply to income earned in the year 2025, which Americans will report on their tax returns in 2026.

The change does not affect the marginal rates of the tax brackets, but it does change the dollar value at which those rates kick in. The top marginal rate of 37 percent next year will apply to income above $626,350 for an individual or $751,600 for a couple, an increase of about 2.8 percent from 2024.

That is significantly smaller than the 5.4 percent adjustment for the 2024 rates and the 7 percent adjustment for 2023. High inflation in recent years resulted in a sharp increase in how much income Americans could shield from taxes; cooling inflation this year means a smaller adjustment.

The IRS on Tuesday also announced increases in the earned-income tax credit, adoption credit and health savings account limits for 2025. Taxpayers will be allowed to make nontaxable gifts of $19,000 in 2025, an increase of $1,000 from this year.

Tuesday’s announcement covers the last year of the tax brackets set by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. If Congress does not act, the 2026 marginal tax rates will revert to the earlier rates, including a top marginal tax rate of 39.6 percent.

Former president Donald Trump has vowed to extend the costly tax cuts – which were a signature achievement of his first presidential term – if he returns to the White House. Vice President Kamala Harris has said she would let some of the tax cuts expire, while vowing not to raise taxes on households with annual income below $400,000.

– – –

(c) Washington Post

On Tuesday, the Binyamin Regional Council announced that Major (Res.) Rabbi Aviram Hariv fell in battle in southern Lebanon.

Rabbi Aviram was a resident of Dolev, a community north of Yerushalayim in the Binyamin region, and a Rav at the Dolev girls’ high school.

He is survived by his wife and six children: Achinoam (18), Ziv (15), Shachar (11), Ori (9), Amit (7), and Avri (4).

Rabbi Aviram, age 43, served as a reserve deputy battalion commander.

Yisrael Ganz, the head of the Binyamin Regional Council said: “The people of Israel lost a great educator who took the values he taught to the battlefield. A man of the book and sword. We embrace his dear wife Ayelet and his six beloved children. Rabbi Aviram leaves us with a great loss and a great legacy – to continue the victory for Israel’s resurrection.”

{Matzav.com}

Fifty-nine people—28 Israeli civilians and 29 IDF soldiers, as well as a Thai citizen and an Indian national—have been killed by Hezbollah fire since the terror group opened a front against Israel the day after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of some 1,200 people, according to the Prime Minister’s Office in Yerushalayim.

Some 570 additional people have been wounded in Israel, including about 340 civilians.

Last week, Hezbollah introduced changes to its war against the Jewish state that include using precision-guided missiles to target IDF troops.

The Iranian terrorist proxy in Lebanon announced the “transition to a new and escalatory phase in the confrontation with the Israeli enemy.”

Hezbollah has attacked Israel nearly daily for over 12 months, firing some 10,000 rockets, missiles and drones. Jerusalem has escalated attacks on Hezbollah since adding the return home of its displaced citizens in northern Israel to its official war goals on Sept. 17, 2024.

(JNS)

Several Israeli Cabinet ministers and lawmakers attended a conference Monday aimed at encouraging the resettlement of Gaza with Jewish Israelis.

The event, organized by the Nachala nonprofit, was held near Kibbutz Be’eri, roughly two miles from the border with the Gaza Strip. It was attended by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, along with 10 other Cabinet ministers, Channel 11 reported.

Reestablishing Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip is necessary because “firstly it’s part of the land of Israel, and secondly, without settlement, there will be no security,” Smotrich wrote in a long statement on X about the event.

Smotrich went on to describe a correlation between civilian Jewish presence in parts of Yehuda and Shomron and Israel’s ability to limit terrorist activity there. He contrasted this with Israel’s failure to contain terrorism in Gaza, where Jewish towns were uprooted during the 2005 disengagement.

“There eventually will be Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, just as it was clear to me that in the years following the expulsion from Gush Katif that, before long, we’d need to reconquer Gaza,” Smotrich added.

He stressed that resettling the Strip “is not part of the war’s objectives, defined by the Cabinet,” and that the discussion about it “concerns the day after the war.”

Cabinet Minister Miki Zohar and Mai Golan of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud party also attended.

At the conference, Ben-Gvir recommended encouraging the emigration of Palestinians from Gaza in conjunction with strengthening Jewish presence.

Daniela Weiss, the head of Nachala, said her group has paid for 40 structures it intends to “go into Gaza and set up.” She added: “Those who started this war will pay. No Gazan will stay in Gaza, without exception.” Cabinet minister Yitzhak Goldknopf of the Charedi United Torah Judaism Party also attended.

Goldknopf, whose party has a complicated relationship with Zionism, congratulated Nachala on the “important event for the revival of the Jewish people in the land of Israel,” he wrote on X. The Nachala event featured several sukkot.

Many on the left, which supports limiting or removing Jewish presence in Yehuda and Shomron, also vehemently object to the prospect of re-establishing a Jewish presence in Gaza.

Avivit John, a member of Kibbutz Be’eri, where right-wing parties received only 5% of the vote in the 2022 elections and 21% voted for the far-left Meretz party, disputed the prospect’s importance to security and the ties of the Jewish people to Gaza.

Palestinians began firing rockets into Israel before the 2005 pullout, she noted in an interview with Channel 11. She added that “there were no borders 2,000 years ago, and with every piece of land these groups [like Nachala] remember that this is ours, and this is ours, too.”

Jewish presence in Gaza would “limit the Palestinians into a much more crowded area, and it will be a ticking time bomb that will explode on us even more forcefully than on Oct. 7,” she said.

(JNS)

Palestinian civilians trying to evacuate intense fighting in the northern Gaza Strip are being shot by Hamas terrorists trying to prevent them from leaving, an Israel Defense Forces medic said on Monday.

Cpl. Shai Gilboa, a medic in the IDF’s 9th Battalion, who was photographed in Jabaliya tending to a Gazan woman with a facial injury, told Israel’s Channel 12 in an interview that Hamas is now resorting to gunfire to prevent Palestinian civilians from heeding Israeli orders to evacuate to designated safe zones during the renewed fighting.

“Our battalion went into action to exert as much military pressure as possible on Hamas terrorists, who held the civilian population in the area and forbade them from evacuating to a safe area,” Gilboa said.

During the clashes, she noted, terrorists in the area opened fire and wounded some of the Gazans who were trying to flee.

“The wounded came to us and we provided them with first aid in the field, which mostly entailed stopping the bleeding,” she said.

The injured civilians were then evacuated from the area and directed toward “local medical forces” for further treatment.

In the interview, Gilboa said that the language barrier was one of several reasons that interactions between Israeli troops and the local population was limited.

“But they smile at us; they wave at us,” she said, “and they curse Hamas in front of us. Not only are they not afraid of us, but many of them are on our side.”

The IDF said that thousands of Palestinian civilians have adhered to the military’s calls to evacuate Jabaliya amid a renewed military offensive aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping in the area.

The evacuations were taking place despite the Hamas-run Interior Ministry ordering civilians earlier this month to ignore the instructions to relocate to other safer areas in the Strip.

Hamas routinely uses civilians as human shields.

Last week, the Israeli military said that Hamas terrorists were preventing Palestinian civilians in Jabaliya from evacuating to humanitarian zones amid the military operation in the area, and released a recording with a local resident who reported that the terror group was beating those who tried to leave.

“The problem is that when we follow the army’s instructions and try to go, there are people who come out against us and start hitting us with sticks, telling us ‘Go back, go back,’” the Gaza resident said in the recording.

Thousands of Hamas members are believed to be hiding among tens of thousands of residents in the area.

(JNS)

Israel Defense Forces Staff Sgt. Yishai Mann, 21, a soldier from the Nachal Infantry Brigade’s 50th Battalion, died in an operational accident near the border with the Gaza Strip, the army said on Tuesday.

Mann, a resident of Mitzpe Yericho in the Binyamin region of southern Samaria, died in a car accident, the military said.

He is survived by his parents, Michael and Dina, and siblings Avigail, Moriah and Akiva, the Binyamin Regional Council said in a message to residents.

“We bow our heads for the great loss and embrace the dear parents and siblings,” council head Israel Ganz said. “We feel the great and difficult price of the revival of the State of Israel. We will not weaken. We will continue with our heads held high for a full victory thanks to Yishai and his friends, and thanks to the Mann family and other heroic families.”

In addition, a soldier from Battalion 9203 of the 3rd “Alexandroni” Brigade, a reserve infantry unit, was seriously wounded while fighting Hezbollah terrorists in Southern Lebanon on Tuesday morning, the IDF said.

The wounded soldier was evacuated to a hospital and his family was informed of the incident, the military statement added.

The death toll among Israel Defense Forces troops since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre now stands at 750, according to official figures.

Additionally, Ch. Insp. Arnon Zamora, a member of the Border Police’s Yamam National Counter-Terrorism Unit, was fatally wounded during a hostage-rescue mission in the Gaza Strip in June, and civilian defense contractor Liron Yitzchak was mortally wounded in the enclave in May.

On Sunday, IDF Col. Ehsan Daksa, 41, the commander of the ]401st Armored Brigade, was killed in action in the northern Gaza Strip.

A member of the Jewish state’s Druze minority, Daksa was the highest-ranking officer to be killed since the start of the Gaza campaign on Oct. 27, along with Col. Itzhak Ben Basat, head of the Golani Brigade chief’s forward command team, who was killed in an ambush on Dec. 12.

Daksa was fatally wounded when an explosive device was detonated after he exited a tank in Jabaliya, where IDF soldiers have been operating since Oct. 6 to thwart a Hamas resurgence in the city. JNS

{Matzav.com Israel}

“How can you not be antisemitic when you see the damage done by the Israeli army? Look at Gaza, it’s a field of murder and disaster. Families are breaking up,” former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner declared on Sunday.

He spoke in an interview on with Paris Jewish radio station Radio J.

He added, “of course there were Hamas attacks on October 7. And God knows that revolted me. But to take revenge with 40,000 dead, if the figure is true,” before being interrupted by the journalist, Frédéric Haziza.

“You’re saying with what’s happening in Gaza, it’s normal to be antisemitic?” Haziza asked him.

“It’s not normal, but the reaction can be that,” answered Kouchner, who was foreign minister from 2007 to 2010 under President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“Antisemitism is the science of fools. It’s a very deep-seated evil. France has always been antisemitic,” he added.

Criticizing Israel’s’ “disproportionate war” in Gaza, Kouchner said that as a former humanitarian physician (he co-founded Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and founded Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World), he could not help but feel indignant. “A lot of people have been massacred. It’s a murderous reaction. I’m not satisfied with that,” he said. “I’ve spent my life caring for people.”

Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rebuked French President Emmanuel Macron for calling for a partial arms embargo on Israel.

“I have a message for President Macron. Today, Israel is defending itself on seven fronts against the enemies of civilization,” said Netanyahu. “All civilized countries should be standing firmly by Israel’s side. Yet President Macron and some other Western leaders are now calling for an arms embargo against Israel. Shame on them,” he said, adding: “What a disgrace.”

Israel, Netanyahu said, will “win with or without their support, but their shame will continue long after the war is won.”

The rebuke is part of a deterioration in relations between Israel and France. Macron, a centrist, is under a fierce attack by the left-wing over his country’s relations with Israel and his administration’s attempts to limit anti-Israel rioting.

Macron called for sanctions on Israel in an interview aired with the France Inter radio station on Oct. 5. “I think that today, the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza. France is not delivering any,” he said.

After the Hamas invasion of Israel, antisemitic acts in France jumped by 1,000% in the last quarter of 2023. Since the start of 2024, they have almost tripled, with “887 acts” recorded in the first half of the year, according to figures from the French ministry of interior.

Kouchner was born in Avignon in 1939, to a Jewish father and a Protestant mother. His paternal grandparents were Russian-born Jews who immigrated to France and died later in Auschwitz.

(JNS)

The antisemitism watchdog group Cyberwell released a report on the evolutions of online hate both before and after the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The organization’s research suggests that in the 11 months after the atrocities committed by Hamas, the antisemitic content tracked by its technology rose 36.6% with an 86% spike in the first three weeks. Cyberwell explains that its monitoring programs flagged 135,556 posts that were likely antisemitic in the 11 months before Oct. 7; in the 11 months that followed, it captured 185,229.

Cyberwell found that narratives demonizing Jews shifted after the attacks. In the 11 months before then, the claim that Jews dominated or controlled the world increased the most in antisemitic social-media discourse with 33% of posts. In the 11 months after, that trope fell to 13.8% while “Jews are evil” rose from 16.3% to 21.5%, and “Jews are an enemy” increased from 15.9% to 29.2%.

Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, CyberWell founder and executive director, said Hamas “hijacked our favorite social-media platforms leveraging gaps in existing policies and moderation efforts to turn these apps into weapons of mass psychological warfare and to normalize hate against Jews worldwide.”

She added that “it is clear that the challenge of online antisemitism has taken a dark turn and must be addressed. Our latest report underscores not only the urgency of the situation but also the necessity for continued vigilance and proactive measures in countering hate speech.”

Calling it “critical” for online platforms to “be held accountable,” Montemayor urged for companies to “implement robust strategies to counteract the spread of hate. While we’ve seen progress in the removal rates of antisemitic content, there remains much work to be done.”

(JNS)

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), ranking member of the House Rules Committee and co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Committee, and 64 Democratic colleagues penned a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling for Washington to pressure Israel to allow journalists more access to Gaza.

The 65 members of Congress expressed “deep concern” about “ongoing restrictions on media access in Gaza, which have persisted since the outbreak of hostilities one year ago.”

“It is imperative that the United States urge Israel to allow independent access for U.S. and international journalists, in the interest of transparency, accountability and the fundamental principle of press freedom,” they added. They accused Israel of placing an “overwhelming burden” on local journalists, who “are documenting the war they are living through.”

The members of Congress who signed the letter—including the anti-Israel lawmakers Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Cori Bush (Mo.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.)—did not mention Hamas or the hostages that the U.S. designated terror group continues to hold in Gaza.

Israel has accused several Gaza reporters, including those who work for major news organizations, of having direct ties to Palestinian terror organizations.

According to the 65 members of Congress, Israel’s actions “undermine the very foundation of press freedom and democratic accountability.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who is Jewish, also signed the letter.

(JNS)

Wally Adeyemo, the deputy U.S. secretary of the treasury, spoke on Monday with Mohammad Mustafa, the Palestinian Authority prime minister, per a U.S. readout.

The U.S. and Palestinian officials addressed “security and economic stability in the West Bank, as well as the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to improve its anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism regime,” per the U.S. readout. (The Biden administration and others refer to Yehuda and Shomron as the West Bank.)

Adeyemo “stressed the importance of preventing terrorists and violent extremists from raising, using and moving funds in the West Bank,” according to the Treasury Department. He also noted the authority’s “progress on strengthening its countering the financing of terrorism regime,” including “completing key milestones” in assessing “risks within its jurisdiction and bolstering effective compliance with international standards,” according to the readout.

The U.S. official also “commended the Palestinian Authority for completing a risk assessment of their financial system” and for scheduling an evaluation of its banking system.

“These are both critical steps for ensuring financial linkages between the Palestinian territories and the international financial system continue,” the Treasury Department added. “They discussed the importance of the correspondent banking relationships between Israeli and Palestinian banks to the security and economic stability of the region.”

According to a 2024 U.S. State Department report, the “Palestinian public views favoritism (locally known as wasta) and nepotism as the most common forms of corruption according to a September 2022 poll by the Coalition for Integrity and Accountability, the Palestinian chapter of Transparency International.”

“The majority of the interviewed citizens believe that the sectors most susceptible to corruption are the government institutions, especially the senior employees in the executive public sector institutions (ministries, security services, local authorities),” according to the report. “The service delivery ministries (finance, health, social development, security institutions, education) are the most susceptible to corruption from the citizens’ perspective. However, corruption in the form of bribes is low.”

(JNS)

The drone attack launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon on Oct. 19 targeting Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s private residence in Caesarea scored a direct hit on the home, the military censor cleared for publication on Tuesday.

Following the attempted assassination, security measures for government ministers and other officials have been “significantly” reinforced.

“Iran tried to eliminate the prime minister of Israel. It will not escape responsibility,” a senior Israeli government official told Ynet.

According to reports, the assault included three drones, one of which scored a direct hit on a bedroom window at the Caesarea residence. Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, were not home at the time.

“The attempt by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah to assassinate me and my wife today was a grave mistake,” the prime minister said in a statement on Saturday. “This will not deter me or the State of Israel from continuing our just war against our enemies in order to secure our future.

“I say to Iran and its proxies in its axis of evil: Anyone who tries to harm Israel’s citizens will pay a heavy price,” Netanyahu warned.

Hezbollah media chief Mohammed Afif during a press conference in Beirut on Tuesday declared the Iranian-backed terrorist organization’s “full, complete and exclusive responsibility for the Caesarea operation.”

The Lebanese terrorist spokesman also warned, “If we did not reach you this time, then we will reach you the next time. Between us lie the days, nights and the battlefield.”

The Saudi state-owned Al-Hadath television news channel reported earlier on Tuesday that diplomatic officials at the Iranian embassy in Lebanon were directly involved in the attempt on Netanyahu’s life.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Saturday that he was relieved Netanyahu was “safe after the attack that reportedly targeted his home in Caesarea this morning,” Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said on Saturday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, former President Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also condemned the attack on Netanyahu, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement on Monday.

(JNS)

Two simultaneous initiatives are underway as Israel seeks to secure an agreement with Hamas for the release of hostages being held in Gaza, according to statements from Israeli authorities.

Mossad Chief David Barnea is advocating for a comprehensive deal that would not only end the war in Gaza but also halt the ongoing IDF operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon. This agreement would also result in the release of all Israeli hostages, an Israeli official shared with The Times of Israel.

In a separate effort, ministers attending a security cabinet meeting on Sunday were briefed on another proposal. This plan involves offering Hamas a temporary ceasefire lasting two weeks in exchange for the release of five hostages, as reported by the Ynet news outlet.

Earlier on Sunday, Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar reportedly discussed this more limited plan during a meeting with Egyptian officials in Cairo, according to the Israeli official.

The cabinet meeting came just days after IDF forces eliminated Yahya Sinwar, a senior Hamas leader, in Rafah. Both Israeli and US officials had previously identified Sinwar as a key figure impeding negotiations.

“He blocks everything or doesn’t respond,” an Israeli official said in an interview with The Times of Israel before Sinwar was killed on October 16.

Following Sinwar’s death, the same official noted on Sunday evening that it was “still too early” to determine whether his removal had led to any real advancement in negotiations.

“We are definitely trying to instigate the conversation around another hostage deal,” the official added.

This week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to visit Israel and other Middle Eastern countries in an effort to facilitate both the release of hostages and an end to the ongoing conflict. American officials have characterized Sinwar’s death as a potential “opportunity” to negotiate a ceasefire and secure a deal for the hostages.

Blinken is scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu on Tuesday around midday, according to Netanyahu’s office.

Despite the growing push from both Israeli and international officials to strike a deal, Israeli negotiators informed ministers during the extended six-hour cabinet meeting that Hamas’s demands remained unchanged, even after the death of Sinwar, according to Army Radio.

However, there is speculation that these demands might shift once Hamas’s new leadership is in place.

The security cabinet also spent considerable time discussing Israel’s expected retaliation for the Iranian ballistic missile attack that occurred on October 1.

“We are operating under the assumption that this will be part of an ongoing series of retaliatory strikes between Israel and Iran,” explained the first Israeli official.

Contrary to expectations, the cabinet did not hold a vote on granting Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant the authority to determine the timing of a retaliatory strike on Iran, Yedioth Achronoth reported.

Netanyahu and Gallant reportedly aim to delay final approval of a counterstrike until the last possible moment, as they did with the operation that resulted in the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in late September, the report noted.

Votes of this nature can be conducted quickly, even by phone, within minutes.

Additionally, Yedioth reported that some ministers expressed dissatisfaction with what they perceived as a “weak response” to the recent drone attack on Netanyahu’s residence in Caesarea, which they believe had the backing of Iran. Security personnel responded that they act strictly according to directives issued by the political leadership.

The first Israeli official clarified that while the drone attack will not influence Israel’s forthcoming strike on Iran, a significant response to the incident is planned.

Army Radio also reported that the cabinet discussed the provision of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, especially in light of a recent letter from US officials warning that delays in aid could disrupt certain arms deliveries to Israel.

US Secretary of State Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin cautioned Gallant and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer last week that Israel must significantly improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza within one month or risk jeopardizing ongoing weapons supplies from the US.

The US is advocating for a large increase in aid shipments, pushing for hundreds of trucks of supplies to enter Gaza daily. American officials are also concerned about Israeli legislation that could prevent UNRWA from operating in the region.

Back in July, the Knesset passed the first reading of a series of bills designed to dismantle the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and eliminate its operations for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

According to Ynet, the Foreign Ministry warned of potential risks if the legislation targeting UNRWA is passed. One concern is that Israel could be seen as violating the UN charter, which might even lead to its expulsion.

Some ministers voiced frustration that these dangers were not clearly communicated before the legislative process began in the Knesset.

{Matzav.com Israel}