Week of December 26, 2025
Week of December 26, 2025
(JNS) - The dozens of posters of hostages that once greeted arrivals and departures at Ben-Gurion International Airport have disappeared except for one of the last hostages whose body remains in Gaza, Israel Police officer Ran Gvili. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum on Tuesday shared a photo of Gvili's younger sister Shira, who stopped by the lone picture of the fallen hostage at the airport. "Until about two months ago, there were dozens of pictures of hostages there, and today a...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Dramatic video evidence has surfaced of two individuals physically engaging one of the two armed terrorists who carried out Sunday's Bondi Beach shooting, before being shot and killed themselves, according to The Guardian. Family members confirmed their identities as Boris Gurman, 69, and Sofia Gurman, 61, in a statement to The Sydney Morning Herald, stating that they were "heartbroken by the sudden and senseless loss." Relatives added that the two "had been married for...
(JNS) — Israeli President Isaac Herzog thanked Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on Wednesday for his role in advancing the recent U.N. Security Council resolution that codified U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan. “I want to thank you for supporting Israel at the United Nations with clear moral clarity,” Herzog told Waltz during their meeting in Jerusalem, according to a statement from the president’s office. Herzog emphasized the need to secure the release of the last hostage, Staff Sgt. Ran...
(JNS) - The surviving gunman in the Bondi Beach terrorist attack has been charged with 59 offenses, including 15 counts of murder and one count of committing a terrorist act, Australian authorities announced on Wednesday. Naveed Akram, 24, awoke from a medically induced coma on Tuesday and faced court via video conference from his hospital bed, where he remains under police guard after sustaining injuries during an exchange of gunfire with officers. Akram's father, Sajid, 50, the second...
(JNS) — If Hamas does not follow through with U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan that involves the terrorist group laying down arms, Israel “will have to deal with the problem,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said in an interview with the Saudi state-owned channel Al Arabiya English on Wednesday. Israel’s top diplomat said he hopes the Islamist organization adheres to the plan, which both Israel and Hamas’s leadership agreed to, but that “unfortunately,” senior Hamas officials have issued public declarations...
(JNS) — New South Wales Police identified 50-year-old Adam Smyth as the 14th victim of the Dec. 14 terror attack at Sydney’s Bondi Beach that killed 15 people during a Chanukah celebration. Smyth and his wife, Katrina, were walking near the beach when two gunmen opened fire on more than a thousand people gathered for the event, according to family statements released by police. He was not Jewish and was not attending the celebration. We mourn the loss of Adam Smyth who was walking with his wife Katrina along the Bondi Beach, a passerby to...
(JNS) - Four English-speaking Israeli writers convened in Jerusalem on Sunday night for a candid discussion on spirituality, creativity and resilience, reflecting on how Oct. 7, 2023, transformed their inner worlds and their work. The panel, one of several, was part of the first-ever "Book Shuk" at the Nefesh B'Nefesh Aliyah Campus in Cinema City, a literary fair featuring more than 50 "olim" (immigrant) authors who have written and published their own books since making aliyah, the majority...
(JNS) — A 1,300-year-old lead pendant decorated with a menorah was uncovered during an archaeological excavation beneath the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, north of the City of David, the Israel Antiquities Authority revealed on Monday. Only one other ancient lead pendant bearing the menorah symbol is known in the world, the government agency added. The personal necklace dates to the 6th to early 7th centuries in the Late Byzantine period and was recently discovered in a large-scale archaeological excavation in the...
Former Louisiana congressman with pro-Israel record sworn in as CDC deputy director Dr. Ralph Abraham was sworn in on Monday as principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention following his most recent post as surgeon general of the Louisiana Department of Health. Abraham, 71, a Republican whose grandparents immigrated from Lebanon, previously represented Louisiana’s fifth congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2015 to 2021. As a legislator, Abraham co-sponsored resolutions against the...
(JNS) - The National Library of Israel is displaying a rare 14th-century manuscript of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah for the first time as part of its permanent exhibition. The illuminated volume, copied in Provence between 1300 and 1350 C.E., represents one of Judaism's most significant legal texts. Italian artist Matteo di Ser Cambio later enhanced the manuscript in Spain with vivid illustrations, gold ornamentation and decorative motifs featuring figures, animals and plants. The manuscript...
New research is challenging long-held assumptions about how flight evolved in dinosaurs and birds, according to a study published on Tuesday in Communications Biology. Yosef Kiat of Tel Aviv University’s School of Zoology and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History led an international team that examined 160-million-year-old fossils and found that some feathered dinosaurs had lost the ability to fly—suggesting the path to flight was more complex than scientists believed. The research focused on nine exceptionally preserved fossils of...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Twelve days have passed since a father and son carried out a murderous terrorist attack at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, and murdered 15 Jews during the lighting of the first Chanukah candle. These are the stories and legacies of the victims. Sofia and Boris Gurman Russian immigrants Boris Gurman, 69, and his wife, Sofia Gurman, 61, shared 34 years of marriage before terrorists killed them. Their relatives described the couple as honest and industrious individuals who extended kindness to everyone they...
(JNS) — Community leaders, scholars and Jewish advocacy groups largely welcomed New York City’s announcement of a planned Holocaust memorial to be constructed at Queens Borough Hall. But some cautioned that remembrance alone is insufficient to confront contemporary Jew-hatred. Edward Rothstein, critic-at-large at the Wall Street Journal, told JNS that he doesn’t have specific knowledge of the particular memorial, which Mayor Eric Adams and Donovan Richards, the Queens Borough president, announced last month, but there “is no question...
Recently, CNN labeled a leader of the Hamas terrorist organization “a senior official.” This begs the question: When is a terrorist not a terrorist according to mainstream media? Far too often, news outlets like CNN apply titles and adjectives to terrorists or mention their profession as if these are the things that matter, rather than the fact that they belong to a group pledged to commit murder. This proclivity is not abstract or theoretical. It plays out in real time, in real headlines, from some of the most influential news...
One of my earliest memories is standing in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem at age 11, hearing how European Jews once believed that catastrophe could never touch them. They were successful, cultured, integrated—convinced that prosperity was protection. For me, the grandson of Holocaust survivors who lost more than 70 family members, that lesson was never theoretical. I grew up in a home shaped by my mother, Penina Waga, born in a Polish Displaced Persons camp before immigrating to Israel, who taught not only what the Nazis did, but what Jews did and...
(JNS) — For too many naive, ultra-liberal European elitists who have clung to the belief that Muslim minorities would assimilate and integrate into their cultural and social fabric, a colossal surprise awaits them. They have ignored the undisguised Muslim Brotherhood motto that clearly states: “Allah is our objective, the Prophet is our leader, the Koran is our constitution, Jihad is our way, dying is our highest hope.” European Jewish minorities relished the opportunity to integrate into European life at the beginning of the 19th...
Following a recent anti-Israel/antisemitic rally of blustering, keffiyeh-brandishing, placard-hoisting men and women outside a prominent synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan while an aliyah-supporting conference was taking place inside, New York City’s next mayor, Zohran Mamdani, according to his press secretary, “discouraged the language” — including shouted obscenities, and “Death to the IDF” — used by the protestors, who were brought together by the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation. Mamdani, his aide said,...
As a Jewish man, our tradition is that my job is to teach my children how to swim and a profession. We can explore what that means on a deeper rabbinic level, but simply to give my children the skills that they will be able to protect themselves from danger, and live and be productive self-sufficient members of society. Reading reports of the father-son duo, Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24, who perpetrated the antisemitic murder in Sydney, Australia on the first day of Chanukah, I was shocked to think that either the father had the evil...
I daily carry a Star of David metal keychain on my person made from a Qassam rocket. That rocket was once fired into Israel by Hamas. A piece of metal from a Qassam rocket artistically transformed into a Star of David keychain. No nation knows how to make lemonade out of lemons better than Israel! Hamas has been in the business of making and firing Qassam rockets into Israel for a quarter of a century. These deadly one-stage rockets are manufactured in underground factories, and in makeshift shops and garages. The Qassams are not particularly...
The Schvitz offered a kind of restoration that beats anything offered today. In the late 1960s and early '70s, when my sister, Vicky, or I came down with a bad cold, my father had an unconventional cure: He would drop us off at the, better known to Clevelanders as the Schvitz. It was a men-only institution every day of the week except Wednesday, which was Ladies' Night. Vicky and I checked in, stripped down, stowed our clothes in lockers, and wrapped ourselves in the signature Schvitz uniform:...
Wandering Jews we are. And with so many choices there’s bound to be a lot of meandering. Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist are the main four branches. Other movements: Humanistic, Chabad, New age… Given the variety of practices presented, we see a smorgasbord of choices. I wonder how many other Jews have been on a circuitous path such as I have traveled. My earliest memories — other than those of eating kosher lamb chops — are riding in a car to Jewish day school in...
When you experience a soft tissue injury like a sprain, strain, or pulled muscle, the first instinct is often to reach for ice or wrap the area. For decades, the standard recommendation was the RICE protocol: Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. However, recent insights into sports medicine and physical therapy have led many experts to shift their focus to a newer protocol: MEAT – Movement, Exercise, Analgesics, and Treatment. Let’s look at both approaches, when to use them, and how to transition from injury to recovery effectively. The...
