Belzer Chusid Sees Off His daughter that Enlisted

 

In a scene that is capturing widespread attention across Israeli social media, a brief nine-second video has ignited powerful emotion and debate. The clip shows Ba’ash Indursky, a young woman from the Belz Hasidic community, stepping forward to enlist in the Israel Border Police — with her traditionally observant father, Shlomo Indursky, at her side.

Indursky, a senior administrative director at the Belz headquarters in Jerusalem, is seen wrapping his daughter in a long, heartfelt embrace before she enters the enlistment base. Family members surround the pair, offering support in what has become an unusually public moment of unity from a sector where military enlistment, especially for women, remains exceedingly rare.

The video, published by media figure Yossi Reiner, has sparked a wave of reactions online. Many viewers praised the father’s unwavering love and the daughter’s determination; others highlighted the cultural significance of a Hasidic woman enlisting with her family’s full support.

In just seconds, the clip captures a striking intersection of faith, family, and national service — a moment that continues to echo across the public conversation in Israel.

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The Rise and Fall of the Gaza Converts

 

In the months after October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel and the war in Gaza began, a wave of young Americans—mostly progressive women—embraced Islam.

 Taking to TikTok and Instagram, they called themselves “reverts,” the Muslim term for converts who have returned to the faith of humanity’s origin. For a generation raised on social media activism, the apparent religious conviction of Gazans under bombardment looked like the purest form of authenticity.

Two years later, many of those same converts are quiet on the subject of Gaza—and, facing pushback from within the Muslim community, many have gone quiet on social media altogether. 

The enthusiasm that once filled TikTok with teary testimonies, hijab tutorials, and verses from the Qur’an has ebbed. The algorithm has moved on, and the women who found God through Gaza have had to learn what faith looks like when the cameras turn elsewhere. The fervor has thinned into a few scattered believers contending with backlash, burnout, and the realities of a faith that doesn’t behave like an online fandom.

Like many converts, these young women were initially full of zeal and excited to share it. But the “reverts” of TikTok have learned the downside of posting through their faith journeys.

New York Magazine’s glosses over Miss Palestine’s terror ties in glowing profile

 A glowing piece by a New York Magazine site highlighting Miss Palestine Nadeen Ayoub’s life and background claiming she’s “seen some things” made a glaring omission —never mentioning her marriage and child with the son of a convicted terrorist who Hamas wants released from Israeli prison.

Ayoub, who competed in the Miss Universe pageant on Friday, was featured in a glam article by The Cut for being the first-ever woman to hold the Miss Palestine title, heralding her for her dedication to humanitarian work — painting her as a voice for unity, hope, and a people “more than their suffering.”

But the glossed-up, glowing profile titled “The First Miss Palestine Has Seen Some Things” glaringly left out a segment of her life — anything that happened between graduating college and 2022.

It was during that time that she married Sharaf Barghouti — the son of the infamous Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti serving five life sentences in Israel for orchestrating terror attacks that killed five people in 2001 and 2002 — and later had a son they named after the convicted terrorist, according to an exhaustive investigation by The Post.

Old social-media snapshots and rambling family posts — many of when have since been scrubbed from the internet — show Ayoub calling Sharaf her “fiance” ahead of their 2016 wedding.

In posts from 2019, family members congratulated she and her husband on the birth of their son, wishing he would grow up to be like his terrorist grandfather.

“May he be raised with your dignity my dears and hopefully he will be like Mr. Marwan the great,” one person wrote.

She also taught fitness classes at a gym in Ramallah called “IQ Fitness,” owned by another of Marwan Barghouti’s sons. In at least one Instagram post, the gym referred to her as “Nadeen Barghouti.”

But none of that made it into the glowing profile, which instead the glamor of her pageant participation — noting the “30 gowns she brought for the competition”; her garnering of support from celebrity Bella Hadid and sponsors like Huda Beauty and behind-the-scenes gossip about other beauty queens.

“Miss Canada and Miss Kyrgyzstan want her to win for Palestine. But sometimes it’s like “Mean Girls, Ayoub says” the outlet wrote. “Miss Iraq keeps stirring the pot, trying to get Ayoub to sympathize with Shiraz. ‘Like, hello, you’re Iraq,’ Ayoub says. ‘Do you not remember what happened to you?’”

It also throws under the bus Miss Israel Melanie Shiraz, who received death threats after Ayoub posted an unofficial video that appeared to have been edited to make a momentary glance in Miss Palestine’s direction look as if the woman representing the Jewish state as a look of disgust at the controversial beauty queen.

The Viral ‘Prison Rape’ That Never Happened

 

On July 29, 2024, a Military Police team raided the Sde Teiman holding facility, where fighters from Hamas’ elite Nukhba unit—which spearheaded the Oct. 7 massacres—were being held. Their targets were not the terrorists.

 Instead, they had arrived to arrest a group of IDF reservists serving there on guard duty. Their faces covered in masks, 40 Israeli Military Police officers disarmed and arrested 10 members of Force 100, which was in charge of security incidents at the jail.

The raid quickly got out of hand. 

When other members of Force 100 learned of the arrest of their colleagues, they confronted the arresting officers—compelling them to use force. The whole strange affair was recorded on multiple cellphones and posted in real time on social media. By nightfall of the same day, the press in Israel and around the world would learn the cause of the raid: The arrested reservists were suspected—falsely, it would turn out—of raping a detained Palestinian terrorist.

Thus began a public scandal that would become one of the major stains on Israel’s reputation worldwide. Where the United Nations, foreign-funded information operations, and the biases of the international press may have all been to blame for weaponizing a series of medieval libels against Israel during the Gaza war—like Israeli snipers supposedly targeting babies or starving children or using the “cover” of war against Hamas to commit “genocide” or targeting Christians by “burning a church” in the West Bank (a grass fire outside an ancient archeological site) or “deliberately targeting” a Catholic church in Gaza whose outer courtyard wall was struck by an errant tank shell—the source for this fake atrocity story was different: The IDF itself.

The story about R' Chaim Kanievski that Charedim Hide

 According to this account, R’ Chaim z”l was linked to a tragic outcome involving four children.

A woman from Bnei Brak struggled for years to conceive. After much hardship, tears, and medical intervention, she finally became pregnant with quadruplets. The doctors advised her to reduce the pregnancy by aborting one fetus, explaining that this would strengthen the chances of survival for the remaining three.

The woman recalls seeking guidance from Rav Chaim, who told her not to proceed with the abortion, assuring her that all four would be born healthy. Sadly, the opposite occurred: all four babies died, leaving her childless for the rest of her life.

Stories like this are rarely publicized; instead, the community tends to highlight only the successful outcomes.

The lesson is clear: people should place their trust in the Creator, rather than in human figures who, despite their stature, are fallible and limited in knowledge.

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Suspect Who Shouted “Allahu Akbar” While Shooting National Guardsmen Identified

Suspect Who Shouted “Allahu Akbar” While Shooting National Guardsmen Identified as Illegal Migrant,

 Rahmanullah Lakanwal

Officials say Lakanwal entered the United States in 2021 during the Biden administration. Multiple reports indicate he arrived under “Operation Allies Welcome,” the federal resettlement program established after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. He was reportedly permitted entry on a visa and is believed to have overstayed that visa.

Journalist Julio Rojas reports that witnesses heard Lakanwal yell “Allahu akbar!” moments before he opened fire with a revolver at National Guard personnel stationed in the area, critically injuring two Guardsmen. Both victims remain hospitalized and are fighting for their lives.

Marc Klein Wins $10,000.00 a Week for life and the Schnorrers are Already Lining Up at his door

 

Jerusalem Municipality Tells Charedim "No Tickee No Washiee"

 The Jerusalem Municipality said Wednesday it will withdraw funding from a planned Hanukkah concert for the haredi community at the International Convention Center after organizers decided to eliminate the women’s section and make the event men-only, according to Arutz 7.

Council Member Julie Menin May be the next NYC Council Speaker

 Council Member Julie Menin said Wednesday she has locked down 36 commitments to become the next New York City Council speaker — well above the 26 needed when the Council convenes on Jan. 7.

 Menin, a longtime city official and a Jewish resident of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, would be the first Jewish woman to lead the Council.

 She represents a faction of Democrats that strongly opposed Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s rise, and pointedly did not endorse him, even after he won the primary.

IDF Honors David Ben-Gurion on 52nd Anniversary of His Passing

 

At a memorial marking 52 years since David Ben-Gurion’s passing, the IDF Chief of Staff called for courageous leadership that confronts failure, rebuilds strength, and carries the nation forward without excuses or evasions.

He praised the IDF as a “human mosaic” that draws its power from the people, pledging to keep fighting, improving, and leading the next generation with responsibility at the core.

AI opens a vast trove of medieval Jewish records from the Cairo Geniza

 Researchers in Israel are hoping to make new discoveries about Jewish history by loading a digital database of manuscripts stretching back a thousand years into a new transcription tool that uses artificial intelligence.

The Cairo Geniza, the biggest collection of medieval Jewish documents in the world, has been the object of countless hours of study by scholars for more than a century, but only a fraction of its over 400,000 documents have been thoroughly researched.

Although the entire collection has already been digitized and is available online in the form of images, most of its items have not been cataloged, many are disordered fragments from longer documents, and only around a tenth have transcriptions.

AI can help researchers access, analyze collection more quickly

By training an AI model to read and transcribe the old texts, researchers will now be able to access and analyze the whole collection far more quickly, cross-referencing names or words and assembling fragments into fuller documents.

"We are constantly trying to improve the abilities of the machine to decipher ancient scripts," said Daniel Stokl Ben Ezra of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, one of the principal researchers in the MiDRASH transcription project.

The project has already made significant progress and could open up the documents - written in Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, and Yiddish in a wide variety of handwritten scripts - to many different researchers, Stokl Ben Ezra added.

Transcriptions from more difficult manuscripts are reviewed by researchers for accuracy, helping to improve the AI training.

"The modern translation possibilities are incredibly advanced now, and interlacing all this becomes much more feasible, much more accessible to the normal and not scientific reader," he said.

Funded by the European Research Council, the project is based on the National Library of Israel's digital database of the Cairo Geniza documents and brings together researchers from several universities and other institutes.

One document transcribed by the project is a 16th-century letter in Yiddish from Rachel, a widow from Jerusalem, to her son in Egypt, with his reply written in the margins telling of his efforts to survive a plague sweeping through Cairo.

A Geniza is a synagogue's repository for significant documents that are ultimately intended for ritual burial, and the one found in the Ben Ezra synagogue in historic Cairo had a dry atmosphere ideal for the preservation of old paper.

Cairo surpassed Damascus and Baghdad in the Middle Ages as the greatest city of the Middle East, a center of global trade, learning, and science, and home to a thriving Jewish community, later expanded by refugees fleeing newly Christian Spain.

The great Jewish philosopher Maimonides, who was physician to the family of Saladin, the famous Muslim sultan who ousted the crusaders from Jerusalem, worshipped at the Ben Ezra synagogue while living in Cairo.

As dynasties and empires rose and fell, the community quietly went about its daily life, its religious authorities filling the Geniza with the rabbinical arguments, civic records, and other detritus of administrative and intellectual business.

The Geniza's astonishing haul of records and papers, including some written by Maimonides himself, was discovered by scholars in the late 19th century, but, although it has been studied ever since, its enormous size means huge gaps remain.

"The possibility to reconstruct, to make a kind of Facebook of the Middle Ages, is just before our eyes," Stokl Ben Ezra said.

Self-Hating Jew Peter Beinart Speaking in Israel gets Wacked by the Right as well as the left!

Progressive Jewish author Peter Beinart drew a volley of criticism on Tuesday from the boycott Israel movement as well as a right-wing Israeli group over an appearance at Tel Aviv University.

Beinart, who is an outspoken critic of Israel and a journalism professor at the City University of New York, spoke Tuesday evening in Tel Aviv with Yoav Fromer, a senior faculty member at TAU’s English department, in an event titled “Trump, Israel and the Future of American Democracy.”

A founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, publicly called on Beinart to cancel his visit after saying it had privately urged him to do so. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel is the BDS movement’s cultural arm and a leading advocate for boycotts of Israeli academic institutions.

“Palestinians condemn Peter Beinart’s event at complicit Tel Aviv University in the midst of Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” PACBI said in a post on X. “Whitewashing genocide can never be reconciled with any claim to humanism or moral consistency.”

In a press release, PACBI accused the university of being “deeply complicit in enabling and trying to whitewash Israel’s US-armed and funded genocide as well as its decades old regime of settler-colonialism, military occupation and apartheid.”                                                                                                                                                                                                         Beinart declined to comment to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. But he responded to the criticism on social media, where said he supports a boycott of Israeli academic institutions as well as a right of return for Palestinians and an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank — all principles of the BDS movement to which he has long subscribed.

At the same time, he said, while he supports “many forms of boycott, divestment and sanction against Israel and Israeli institutions,” he believes there is “value in speaking to Israelis about Israel’s crimes” by speaking at universities.

Trump needs to hit the reset button if the GOP wants to win the 2026 midterms

 by Michael Goodwin NYP

As far as President Trump is concerned, T.S. Eliot got it all wrong.

April is not the cruelest month, November is. 

As he barrels toward the end of his first year back in the White House, the president is beset by slumping poll numbers and a pileup of problems, some of which are self-inflicted. 

Even a gaggle of normally obedient Republicans in Congress are growing restless, and his call for gerrymandering House district lines in red states to pad the GOP advantage in the midterms is in danger of producing the opposite outcome. 

The sheer volume of mounting trouble reflects Trump’s supreme self-confidence, grand vision and his “let’s do it now” management style.

On any given day, the combination results in too many balls in the air competing for his attention. 

The big picture suggests he needs a reset, and maybe a rest.

Armed Robbery Thwarted by Smoke Defense System in Ofakim Jewelry Store

 

Masked burglars tried to rob a jewelry store in Ofakim today, smashing the front windows and breaking display glass with an iron rod, but staff immediately activated the fogging system, filling the store with thick smoke and blinding the intruders, who fled empty-handed within seconds.

A gang of at least four masked men armed with crowbars attempted to rob a newly opened jewelry store in Ofakim on Tuesday, but were forced to flee empty-handed after an employee triggered a defensive gas and smoke system that blinded the intruders.

Security video shows the robbers smashing through the store’s front glass door and forcing their way inside. Two employees were present at the time. One escaped to a side room, while the other stayed in the store and ran to the cash register to press a panic button. Within seconds, the store filled with thick smoke and gas, rendering the assailants unable to see the jewelry display cases they had begun striking.

Disoriented and unable to continue the robbery, the masked attackers fled to a waiting getaway vehicle and sped off. Police have not confirmed whether arrests have been made.

This failed heist is the third robbery attempt in the same commercial center in just two months, according to local journalist and Ofakim resident Simi Spolter, raising growing concerns among business owners and residents about deteriorating security in the area.

MK Almog Cohen, a resident of Ofakim and a member of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s party, sharply condemned the situation following the incident.

“Zero governance, zero fear. There is no police in Israel! This situation cannot continue!” he said.

The robbery attempt comes amid nationwide complaints about police staffing shortages and a rise in organized theft targeting businesses.

Last of the ‘Bnei Menashe’ to be brought to Israel within five years

 

The government approved on Sunday a plan to bring the last 6,000 members of the so-called “lost tribe” of Menashe to Israel within five years.

While about 5,000 of the Bnei (sons of) Menashe currently live in Israel, having trickled in over the last 20 years, they have had great trouble bringing in the rest of their community, which is based in the northeastern Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur.

The decision will enable some 1,200 immigrants to hopefully arrive by the end of 2026, with an Israeli delegation leaving to start processing their immigration applications by next week.

The rest are expected to come by 2030, which will finally reunite all families who have been apart for years.

According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who submitted the proposal with Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer, the Bnei Menashe will be settled in areas that were hit hard by the war in northern Israel.

“This is an important and Zionist decision that will also bring strengthening to the North and the Galilee,” he said.

There are already concentrations of Bnei Menashe in northern towns such as Maalot and Carmiel as well as in Sderot in the south and in villages in Judea and Samaria.

The cost of the project is estimated at NIS90 million, which will include immigration rights, housing costs, Hebrew instruction (ulpan), and an Orthodox conversion.

All Bnei Menashe who come to Israel must undergo conversion because the community was only recognized in 2005 as being “of Jewish descent” by Israel’s chief rabbinate.

They were mostly practicing Christians until late into the twentieth century, even if several of their ancient rites had some semblance to Judaism.

The group began keeping Jewish law and establishing synagogues and ritual baths after learning from Orthodox groups such as Shavei Israel, which supports Aliyah by descendants of lost tribes and took the group under its wing.

The community traces its ancestry to Menashe, the son of Jacob, believing that the tribe made its way to India after the Assyrian dispersion of the Ten Tribes prior to the destruction of the First Temple.

The Bnei Menashe are “passionate Zionists and care deeply about the State of Israel, its citizens and their security,” Shavei Israel chairman Michael Freund told The Jerusalem Post last year at the height of the War of Revival in the Gaza Strip.

More than 200 of its men were in the IDF fighting both Hamas and Hezbollah, the organization said, and Freund noted that “since the outbreak of the war, we have received hundreds of requests from young community members in northeastern India who wish to immigrate to Israel and enlist immediately in the IDF to fight shoulder to shoulder with their brothers and sisters.”

Speaking outside Auschwitz, Polish MP says Jews have no place in the country

 

By World Israel News Staff

A Polish lawmaker sparked controversy over the weekend when he declared Jews have no place in Poland and condemned Warsaw for backing a comprehensive plan for combating antisemitism.

On Saturday, MP Grzegorz Braun, chief of the ultra-nationalist Confederation of the Polish Crown party, held a press conference in Oświęcim, near the Auschwitz death camp, castigating the Polish government’s decision to adopt a new five-year plan aimed at curbing anti-Jewish bigotry.

Braun argued that non-Poles have no place in the Polish Republic, urging Jews and others to go to “their own countries.”

“Poland is for Poles. Other nations have their own countries, including the Jews,” Braun said, warning that any measures facilitating a Jewish presence in the country were akin to “inviting Hannibal Lecter to move in next door.”

He vowed that if his party gained power, it would “scatter the International Auschwitz Council to the four winds.”

“The area of the German Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau is de facto an extraterritorial zone. It is no longer Polish territory.”

The far-right lawmaker then accused Jews of seeking special treatment by Poland, with the goal of dominating the country.

“Jews want to be super-humans in Poland, entitled to a better status, and the Polish police dance to their tune,” Braun continued.

Polish Justice Minister Waldemar Zurek, who also serves as prosecutor general, blasted Braun’s comments as “shameful” antisemitism.

“I will not leave this without a response,” said Zurek. “There is no place for antisemitism in Poland, and such statements cause significant damage to the Polish state internationally and within our country.”

“We will not allow anyone to express such views with impunity. We will pursue them resolutely. It is truly shameful for Poles that someone like this, in the 21st century, after what happened in Poland during World War II, is turning this place [Auschwitz] into some hideous political game.”

On Monday, Braun derided criticism of his comments as a “festival of ritual outrage and condemnation from politically correct press and party officials.”

Candace Owens: Macron hired Israeli assassin to kill me

 

By World Israel News Staff

Right-wing podcaster and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens has accused French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, of putting together a hit team to assassinate the 36-year-old American influencer.

In a post to her X account over the weekend, Owens claimed she had received a warning from a “high-ranking employee” of the French government that the French first couple had arranged for her assassination.

“URGENT Two days ago I was contacted by a high-ranking employee of the French Government,” Owens wrote.

“After determining this person’s position and proximity to the French couple, I have deemed the information they gave me to be credible enough to share publicly in the event that something happens.”

“In short, this person claims that the Macrons have executed upon and paid for my assassination. Yes, you read that correctly.”

Trump signs watered-down Muslim Brotherhood ban, drawing fire from allies

 

By World Israel News Staff

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday targeting the Muslim Brotherhood movement, instructing Cabinet members to investigate branches of the radical Sunni movement ahead of a possible terror blacklisting.

The measure tasks the State Department and the Treasury Department with gathering information on various branches of the Muslim Brotherhood to assess whether they should be designated as either Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) or Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs).

Under Trump’s order, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will have 30 days to file a report summarizing the joint investigation.

If the report determines that any Muslim Brotherhood chapters should be blacklisted as FTOs or SDGTs, the respective departments will be required to impose relevant sanctions within 45 days.

“The order’s ultimate aim is to eliminate the designated chapters’ capabilities and operations, deprive them of resources, and end any threat such chapters pose to US nationals and the national security of the United States,” the White House said.

The executive order said the Muslim Brotherhood chapters in Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan would all be scrutinized, while the chapters in Turkey and Qatar – both key American allies with powerful influence inside the Trump administration – were noticeably absent from the list.

Some right-wing allies of the president expressed disappointment at Monday’s order, claiming it did little in practice and appeared to shield Qatari support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Today, the United States was Hoodwinked by Qatar,” right-wing activist and Trump booster Laura Loomer wrote on X Tuesday morning.

“United States of Qatar. Jihad is our way.”

“The Muslim Brotherhood designation signed by President Trump today doesn’t have any teeth, as it doesn’t include the Muslim Brotherhood in Qatar, Turkey, or Syria, which are the most aggressive ‘chapters’ of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Loomer noted that in two of the three countries listed in the order, the Muslim Brotherhood is already banned.

In what most people say is a tragic Joke Satmar Rebbe Of Kiryas Yoel makes "choizik" and Gives $5 Million In Eretz Yisroel To Mosdos Who Don’t Take Money From Israel

 

DIN: For comparison, the March 2025 Zionist state budget allocated approximately 1.27 billion NIS for Yeshivas, 75 million NIS for Seminaries, and 60 million NIS for Yeshivas for overseas students.

In addition his statement that they don't take from the "Medina" is an out and out lie! They use the parks, they use the hospitals and they use the fire fighters, they use the subsidized transportation, they use the sidewalks, they use street lighting,...they are a bunch of liars! 

A "major" distribution of five million dollars will take place this coming week for Chinuch institutions in Israel that do not receive any government funding. The funds are being allocated through Keren Hatzalah, the philanthropic organization established decades ago by the Satmar Rebbe, Rav Yoel Teitelbaum Zatzal.

The distribution will be held at the offices of the Badatz Eidah HaChareidis in Kikar Zupnik, Jerusalem.

Bichadrei reports that four million dollars of the current sum were donated by prominent Satmar (Reb Zalman Leib) philanthropists:
R’ Chaim Pesach Goldstein, one of the senior members of the fund’s leadership;
R’ Berel Weiss of Los Angeles;
R’ Yechezkel Schwimmer of Williamsburg;
R’ Yoeli Landau of Williamsburg;
R’ Mordechai Kahn of Montreal;
R’ Avraham Yirmiyash of Kiryas Yoel.

An additional one million dollars was delivered last night (Sunday) by the Satmar Rebbe, who personally handed a check to Badatz member HaRav Avraham Yitzchok Ullman during a ceremony of Hafrashas Terumos U’Maasros in Or HaGanuz.

This portion of the donation was contributed by Satmar (Reb Aron) philanthropists R’ Menachem Gershon Leibowitz, R’ Yechezkel Berkowitz, and R’ Shalom Yakubovitz of Williamsburg.

Keren Hatzalah, founded by the Satmar Rebbe Zatzal, is dedicated to raising and distributing funds exclusively to Chinuch institutions in Eretz Yisroel that refuse all Israeli government funding, and is jointly supported by both Satmar courts.

At the center of the Satmar Rebbe’s uplifting visit to the community of Or HaGanuz, near Meron — where he arrived to perform Hafrashas Terumos U’Maasros on the past year’s local wine — an unexpected and emotional moment unfolded.

During the visit, the Rebbe met with members of the Badatz of the Eidah HaChareidis. As the gathering reached its peak, and with all eyes on him, the Rebbe suddenly drew a sealed envelope from his pocket. Inside was a check for an "astounding" one million dollars.

He handed the check to Rav Ullman, directing that the full amount be distributed to “mosdos al taharas hakodesh in Eretz Yisroel,” institutions that steadfastly refuse any funding from the Zionist government.

This remarkable step (?) was carried out with complete discretion. Even the Rebbe’s closest confidants were unaware of his intention. He made the decision on his own — after already having left Jerusalem — to give the enormous sum quietly, without publicity, without any requests for honor, and without the usual ceremonies that typically accompany donations of this magnitude.

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Ponovezh Yeshiva asks the Zionist Secular Court to Confirm Arbitration Ruling

 

The long-running Ponovezh machlokes took a dramatic step forward this week. Following last week’s arbitration decision issued by retired judge David Cheshin, representatives of Ponovezh Yeshiva (the “Sonim” faction) submitted a request today to the Tel Aviv District Court asking that the ruling be formally confirmed as a binding court judgment.

The arbitration verdict granted exclusive ownership of the entire yeshiva campus to the Nasi, HaRav Eliezer Kahaneman. It further ordered HaRav Shmuel Markovitz (of the “Mechablim” faction) and his yeshiva “Masores HaTorah” to vacate the Ponovezh campus no later than the end of the current yeshiva year in Av. The ruling also obligated Rav Markovitz and his yeshiva to pay 10 million shekels to Ponovezh, controlled by Rav Kahaneman.

Although impactful, the filing itself is a routine legal step. Israeli arbitration law allows a party to petition the court to confirm an arbitration decision, thereby granting it the force of an enforceable court judgment. The request was submitted on behalf of Ponovezh by attorneys Ehud Arzi, Ran Feldman, and Rivka Ariel.

With the motion now filed, Rav Markovitz and Masores HaTorah have 15 days to respond. They may oppose the request, file a motion to cancel the arbitration ruling, or inform the court that they accept the decision. The next two weeks will clarify whether Rav Markovitz intends to pursue a legal challenge.

Legal precedent makes it extraordinarily difficult to overturn an arbitration decision. Courts generally intervene only in rare and extreme circumstances, and only when a deep and fundamental flaw is proven in the arbitration process itself.