BREAKING: NPR reports that President Trump shed tears following the latest video Hamas released about the captive Evyatar David.
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) August 2, 2025
He was furious at Hamas and sent a message to Israel to immediately start carrying out the hostage deal and then take revenge.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir led a minyan for Mincha on Har HaBayis today, marking the first time a sitting Israeli minister has been seen publicly davening at the site.
Ben Gvir was filmed leading the minyan on Har Habayis plaza — a site where the Beis HaMikdash once stood, and which remains, according to halacha, the holiest place on Earth.
While acts of private Jewish prayer have become increasingly visible in recent years on the Har HaBayis, Ben Gvir’s action is unprecedented in its official capacity and public visibility. Police reportedly detained an Arab man who shouted at the group during the tefillah, according to Arutz Sheva.
Speaking from the site, Ben Gvir declared:
“The horrific Hamas videos are aimed at one thing – pressuring the State of Israel. And I say this specifically from Har HaBayis, the place where we proved that sovereignty and governance are possible. From here we must send a clear message — conquer the entire Gaza Strip, declare sovereignty over all of Gaza, eliminate every Hamas terrorist, and encourage voluntary emigration. Only in this way will we bring the hostages home and win this war.”
Despite the minister’s actions and rhetoric, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement shortly after: “Israel’s policy of maintaining the status quo on the Temple Mount has not changed and will remain unchanged.”
Saudi Arabia released a sharp rebuke, saying it “condemns in the strongest terms the repeated provocative practices by officials of the Israeli occupation authorities against Al-Aqsa Mosque,” warning that such actions “fuel the conflict in the region.”
The toddler was the third child to have died in the attack, in which Russia launched more than 300 drones and eight missiles in the early hours of Thursday morning. The other two underage victims were six and 17 years old, the head of Ukrainian presidential office Andriy Yermak said.
The rescue service said 16 of the injured were children, the largest number of children hurt in a single attack on Ukraine’s capital since Russia started its full-scale invasion almost 3-1/2 years ago.
City authorities declared Friday a day of mourning as rescue operations continued.
“This morning, the body of a 2-year-old child was pulled from the rubble, bringing the total dead to 28, of which 3 are children,” Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on X, adding that over 150 people had been wounded
“The world possesses every instrument required to ensure Russia is brought to justice. What is lacking is not power — but will,” Svyrydenko said.
U.S. President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, sharply criticized Russia’s “disgusting” behavior against Ukraine but said he was not sure whether sanctions would deter Russia.
He has given Russian President Vladimir Putin until August 8 to make a deal or else he will respond with economic pressure.
“Deflection,” “Distraction” and “Dishonest” are just some of the accusations leveled at President Trump recently for saying he’d like to look into past Democrat conspiracies against him.
The president’s critics have claimed he is simply trying to push attention away from the Jeffrey Epstein story.
Even some of the president’s defenders have sighed that surely he should focus on moving forward and not get distracted by these past problems.
But putting aside for a moment the fact that Trump has shown himself able to do more than one thing at a time, he is right to bring up the Russia collusion hoax and more.
The Hillary Clinton campaign and the entirety of the Democratic court media spent four years exciting themselves and boring the American public with their claims.
Sometimes it feels as though every Israeli and his wife are convinced that they could have brought all the hostages safely home and defeated the Hamas more than a year ago. Everyone has his and her perfect plan.
The overwhelming majority of Israelis have the integrity to keep the debate within Israel.
But on 29th July, a minuscule coterie of Israelis saw fit to smash all acceptable boundaries:
In a letter to the Israel-bashing Guardian, 31 self-proclaimed “Israelis dedicated to a peaceful future for our country and our Palestinian neighbours”, claimed that “Our country is starving the people of Gaza to death and contemplating the forced removal of millions of Palestinians from the Strip.”
Their solution to this alleged atrocity?
“The international community must impose crippling sanctions on Israel until it ends this brutal campaign and implements a permanent ceasefire”.
It is perfectly acceptable to oppose the government’s policies, even in time of war.
But what these 31 signatories have done has been to use one of the most viciously anti-Israel newspapers in the Western world as a platform to defame Israel. The Guardian doesn’t even pretend to be a neutral platform: its hostility to Israel is relentless.
Their outrageous demand is for the world to declare economic warfare on Israel to force it to surrender to the Hamas. This is to say: In time of war, as Israel fights for its very survival, they turn to the global community in the hope of enlisting international support for the Hamas and its war of attempted genocide against Israel.
There is a word for people who attempt to enlist foreign aid against their own country in time of war. Not a pleasant word, but in these circumstances the words “traitor” and “treason” become unavoidable.
They proclaim themselves to be “dedicated to a peaceful future for our country”. Leave aside the deliberate implication that the overwhelming majority of Israelis do not want a peaceful future for our country, their deliberate libelling Israel in this most virulently anti-Israel publication.
The hypocrisy of their self-righteous assertion that they, and they alone, yearn for peace stinks to the very heavens.
Their appeal to notorious anti-Semites recalls the lines from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, maybe the most famous work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the most influential German-language writer ever:
“Die ich rief, die Geister, / Werd’ ich nun nicht los”: “The spirits that I summoned / I am unable to rid myself of them again”.
This phrase has become almost a cliché, typifying how people turn to perceived allies in the hope that such allies will help them - only to lose control over them, and to be defeated by those spirits whom they summoned.
These “peaceniks” turn to hostile foreign media, seeking allies among the most vicious Israel-haters and indeed Jew-haters in the world. By calling for Israel to capitulate to the Hamas, they inevitably make common cause with some of the vilest anti-Semites who pollute G-d’s earth, whether the Hamas and other Islamists, or neo-Nazis, or the European fanatical left, or any other motley rabble of genocidal psychopaths.
They glibly summon these evil spirits, hoping to defeat Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Right - horribly ignorant that their allies want to destroy them along with all other Jews.
They sanctimoniously announce that they “write this with grave shame, in rage and in agony”. Maybe.
But the sole reason that The Guardian gives its column inches to these misfits of Israeli society is that they direct their rage against their fellow-Jews.
Today they hope for “crippling sanctions” against Israel, no doubt feeling secure in their delusions of having allies in other countries. Yet if - G-d forbid - any of them will ever be forced to relocate because of these crippling sanctions, they will inexorably discover that treason carries no rewards: they will still be Jews, Israelis, and Zionists in the eyes of these spirits whom they have summoned as their allies.
A Delta Air Lines flight from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam that was hit by serious turbulence Wednesday, sending 25 people on board to hospitals and forcing the flight to divert to Minnesota, highlighted the dangers of flying through unstable air
Several turbulence-impacted flights have been reported this year.
While turbulence-related fatalities are quite rare, the tally of injuries has grown over the years. Some meteorologists and aviation analysts note that reports of turbulence encounters also have been increasing and point to what climate change may be doing to flying conditions.
Planes hitting bumpy air is mostly minor, however, and airlines have tried to improve safety. Experts advise travelers to stay vigilant, stressing wearing a seat belt whenever possible.
What causes turbulence
Turbulence is essentially unstable air that moves in a non-predictable fashion. Most people associate it with heavy storms. But the most dangerous is clear-air turbulence, which often occurs with no visible warning.
Clear-air turbulence happens most often in or near the high-altitude rivers of air called jet streams. The culprit is wind shear, which is when two huge air masses close to each other move at different speeds. If the difference in speed is big enough, the atmosphere can’t handle the strain, and it breaks into turbulent patterns like eddies in water.
Recent flights shaken by turbulence
In June, five people were taken to a North Carolina hospital for evaluation after an American Airlines flight from Miami hit turbulence on its way to Raleigh-Durham International Airport. The plane landed safely.
Earlier that month, severe storms in southern Germany forced a Ryanair flight to make an emergency landing after violent turbulence injured nine people, German police said. The flight was traveling from Berlin to Milan with 179 passengers and six crew members. Eight passengers and one crew member were hurt.
In March, a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Singapore experienced severe turbulence over the Philippines. The plane was carrying 174 passengers and 14 crew members. Five people were injured and the plane landed safely in Singapore.
Several flights were diverted to Waco, Texas, on March 3, because of turbulence. Five people were injured aboard a United Express plane flying from Springfield, Missouri, to Houston.
Last year, Italian authorities launched an investigation after two easyJet flight attendants were injured when their flight from Corfu to London’s Gatwick Airport was buffeted by turbulence. The pilot made an unscheduled landing in Rome.
In May 2024, a 73-year-old British man died and dozens of people were injured aboard a Singapore Airlines flight that hit severe turbulence. His death was under investigation. Authorities said he may have had a heart attack.
It’s unclear how common injuries are
Tracking the number of turbulence-related injuries worldwide is difficult. But some countries publish national data.
Most reports of in-flight turbulence from 2009 through 2018 resulted in one or more serious injuries and no damage to the plane, the National Transportation Safety Board reported.
The court on Thursday cleared for publication that Tamar Gershoni, a Tel Aviv resident and left-wing activist, is the woman indicted for plotting the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Gershoni was formally charged last week with attempted conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism and aggravated murder.
According to the indictment, Gershoni, recently diagnosed with a serious illness, decided to kill the Prime Minister in what she viewed as a self-sacrificial act for the sake of opposing the government, believing that such a move would help “save the State of Israel.”
Prosecutors allege that in late June, Gershoni met with a fellow protester at her home, shared her plan, and requested his assistance. He refused and tried to dissuade her, asking for time in order to delay the plan’s execution.
In a subsequent meeting, she allegedly asked him to help her procure an RPG for the assassination and gather intelligence on the Prime Minister’s movements and security detail. During these meetings, Gershoni made sure that phones were not brought into the room.
The activist, unable to deter her, contacted an attorney who then alerted security authorities. An investigation was opened, ultimately leading to the indictment.
Alongside the indictment, the prosecution requested that Gershoni remain under full house arrest until the end of legal proceedings.
In the motion, the prosecution cited her expressed willingness to die as a “female shahid” and sacrifice herself for the cause. “Tragically, the illness that led her to devise this plan to kill the Prime Minister and thus end her life, similar to, 'let me die with the Philistines,' still exists, and therefore the risk of her again attempting to carry out the plan against the Prime Minister or other government officials remains real and indicates a high level of danger,” the motion concluded.
Zohran Mamdani leads among Jewish voters by a 17-point margin in the race to become New York’s next mayor, according to a new poll.
The survey from Zenith Research and Public Progress Solutions predicted that Mamdani would dominate all four of his opponents combined, with 50% of the vote. The Democratic nominee shifted the landscape of New York politics with his primary victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month.
The poll found that 43% of Jewish voters said they would vote for Mamdani, including 67% of Jewish voters aged 18 to 44. Cuomo trailed with 26% of Jewish voters, followed by Mayor Eric Adams with 15%.
The poll is the latest in a series to project a Mamdani win but the first to assess the attitudes of Jewish voters specifically ahead of the general election. A poll before the Democratic primary found that Mamdani was the second choice of Jewish voters at the time, behind Cuomo.
Mamdani’s vocal criticism of Israel has raised questions about his support among New York’s Jewish population, the largest outside of Israel. During the race, Mamdani has alleged that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, affirmed his support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, and said that he would arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visited New York, citing the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant.
This poll suggests that many younger, less observant Jews are not deterred by his views from planning to vote for Mamdani. Another survey released this week found that Mamdani’s pro-Palestinian advocacy motivated a majority of his primary voters, including 83% of new voters.
The Zenith Research and Public Progress Solutions poll surveyed 1,453 New Yorkers from July 16-24, noting a 2.9% margin of error among registered voters and a slightly higher margin among Jewish voters, due to sample size. Public Progress Solutions, which commissioned the poll, is led by Mamdani ally Amit Singh Bagga.
The poll found that Jews over 45 and more observant Jews constituted some of the largest blocs for Cuomo and Adams — but that neither candidate could prevail in a head-to-head match against Mamdani.
Several Jewish real estate tycoons and hedge funders are forming super PACs to defeat Mamdani, who says he will raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations to fund social services. Jewish hedge funder Ricky Sandler has pledged $500,000 to tank Mamdani; Jewish billionaire Bill Ackman said he will give “hundreds of millions of dollars” to a competitor.
Many of these donors plan to consolidate funding around “anybody but Mamdani,” said Marty Burger, the Jewish chief executive of Infinite Global Real Estate Partners, in an email seen by The New York Times. Other rank-and-file Jewish New Yorkers have formed WhatsApp groups in hopes of organizing against the candidate. But even if all Mamdani’s rivals but Cuomo dropped out, the new poll still forecasted Mamdani to win 52% to 40% in a direct matchup, with 8% undecided.
But the list of administration officials who have drawn Loomer’s ire and swiftly thereafter gotten the axe from Trump has been growing.
Among the latest is Dr. Vinay Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration’s polarizing vaccine chief, who announced this week he was leaving the agency after a brief tenure that drew the ire of biotech executives, patient groups and conservative allies of Trump. Prasad had recently become a target of right-wing activists, including Loomer, who flagged Prasad’s past statements criticizing Trump and praising liberal independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.
On Wednesday, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll directed the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to remove Jen Easterly, a newly announced hire who led the nation’s cybersecurity agency under President Joe Biden, shortly after Loomer criticized her.
Loomer, who has publicly encouraged Trump to purge aides who she believes are insufficiently loyal to the “Make America Great Again” agenda, has taken credit for some of the ousters, tearing into some of Trump’s allies and advisers and calling out what she calls a “vetting crisis” within the White House. Trump, meanwhile, has long praised Loomer while distancing himself at times from her most controversial comments and downplaying her direct impact on his choices.
Here’s a rundown on connections between Loomer’s criticism and Trump administration departures:
Vocal opposition to Health and Human Services appointees
Two people familiar with the situation told The Associated Press that Prasad was ousted following several recent controversies. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel matters.
Last week, Loomer posted on X of Prasad, “How did this Trump-hating Bernie Bro get into the Trump admin???”
At the anti-draft meeting of Gedolim held Wednesday night in Ma’ale HaHamisha, Rabbi Yitzchak Zilberstein, a member of the Council of Torah Sages of the “Degel HaTorah” party, quoted a halachic ruling in the name of his teacher, Rabbi Yechezkel Abramski Zts’l:
“If it is impossible to (obtain an exemption) from the army, then there is a mitzvah for every person to leave the Land of Israel and make every effort not to live here.”
He continued with a shocking statement:
“I said to my rabbi, ‘I’m horrified to hear that.’
But he responded, ‘You haven’t heard everything yet. Listen to what I’m saying: desecrate the Sabbath and flee the country.’
I asked again, ‘Rabbi, can such things really be said in public?’
And he said, ‘If you won’t say it, I will.’
And indeed, he went and said it publicly. “If there’s someone among us being forced into the army, and there’s a concern he might stray from the religious path, I command him to desecrate the Sabbath.”
Two weeks ago, Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of the Shas party, launched a sharp attack on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and MK Yuli Edelstein. The reason: Netanyahu’s claim that a charedi youth can serve in the army while maintaining a religious lifestyle.
Rabbi Yosef lashed out:
“The Prime Minister said that one can join a charedi unit and stay charedi—why are you lying?! What brazenness!” He then escalated: “Maran (referring to his late father, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef) said he [Netanyahu] is a blind goat, and I say he’s a blind fox, not a goat.You’re lying like that? No one leaves the army the same. Anyone who enlists becomes corrupted—there’s no doubt.”
This rhetoric reflects the deepening opposition within the charedi leadership to any form of military conscription, and signals the growing tension between the charedi public and the Israeli government, particularly as the issue of mandatory enlistment returns to the political and legal forefront.
During the Global Parliamentary Summit today (Wednesday), hosted at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), Speaker of the Knesset Amir Ohana addressed dozens of parliamentary leaders from around the world. The Iranian, Yemeni, and Palestinian Authority stormed out of the summit when Ohana got up to speak.
Ohana harshly criticized Western recognition of a Palestinian state, saying: “Rewarding Hamas with statehood will not bring stability, partnership, or peace. It will only lead to more bloodshed of Israelis and Jews. If you want to establish what you call a Palestinian state - establish it in London, Paris, in your own countries, which are increasingly resembling the Middle East.”
At the height of his speech, Ohana displayed an iPad and screened footage from a session of the Iranian Parliament held this past June, in which members were seen chanting “Death to Israel, death to America.”
“This is not some underground terrorist cell. This is the official parliament of the Islamic Republic of Iran - a full member of this forum - openly calling for the annihilation of two sovereign nations. Sadly, too many remain silent in the face of such threatening rhetoric, just as they did eighty years ago,” Ohana said.
Ohana also condemned Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who moments earlier had presented a photo from the New York Times of a “starving” child in Gaza.
He responded: “This claim is false. The child suffers from cerebral palsy. Even the New York Times admitted that today. But Ghalibaf will use any blood libel the fake news media offers him. Shame on that newspaper. Shame on that chairman. Shame on both of you!”
He continued: “We have learned from our history the cost of ignoring threats of annihilation. Today, Khamenei knows the price of threatening Israel. Since October 7th, Israel has risen from the depths to new heights - reaching control over Iranian skies.”
Addressing the issue of the hostages still held by Hamas, Ohana stated: “As we speak, fifty of our innocent brothers and sisters are held hostage by Hamas. They are starving. They are tortured. They are terrified. And they are alone, in the dark tunnels of Gaza. Not one Gazan has lifted a finger to help bring them home. We will bring them back.”
The volume of Ohana's microphone was lowered as he began to speak about the hostages.
Earlier in the day, Speaker Ohana met with Dr. Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi, Chairman of the Security and Foreign Relations Committee of the UAE. This meeting was part of a series of diplomatic engagements, including talks with the heads of parliament from Chile, Brazil, Belgium, and expected meetings with over 20 more, including Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the UK, Slovakia, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Ghana, Nepal, and Congo.
The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) is an international organization representing the world’s parliaments. It includes 193 member states, among them Iran and numerous Arab countries.
US Sen. Tom Cotton pointed out the “unique standards” that the world imposes on Israel, demanding that it provide during a war to the very enemy that provoked the war.
Speaking on the Hugh Hewitt show, Cotton said, “I just want to point out to you what an unusual, I would say singular, standard that the world seems to impose on Israel yet again. Israel was viciously attacked on October 7, without provocation. People were slaughtered, children were killed, women were raped, and yet the world expects Israel to provide food to the people from the land that launched that attack.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t remember food aid going from the United States to Germany and Japan in World War II. Sure, there’s a lot of aid after the fact to help those countries rebuild and keep out Russian communism, but in the middle of a war, a war of aggression that was launched against Israel, Israel really has no responsibility whatsoever to provide any kind of aid to Gaza. And the fact that they’re doing so just proves they always go the extra mile because they always face unique standards in the world.”
Cotton posted the interview on his X account, writing, “Israel has no responsibility to provide any kind of aid to Gaza. They are repeatedly held to a different standard than the rest of the world.”
A leaked email is just one more piece of evidence of how the UK’s BBC has constantly distorted events related to Gaza since the October 7 massacre.
British journalist Jonathan Sacerdoti wrote in a recent article in The Spectator that the memo, entitled “Covering the food crisis in Gaza,” acts as “a top-down editorial diktat that discards impartiality.”
The memo, sent to BBC staff on Friday, July 25, states that “the argument over how much aid has crossed into Gaza is irrelevant.” Instead, “we [staff] should say” that the current distribution system ‘doesn’t work.'”
The distribution system it is referring to is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which succeeded in distributing aid without allowing Hamas terrorists to commandeer it. It’s “intriguing” how the BBC prefers the UN distribution system, with the aid falling into the hands of Hamas.
Sacerdoti wrote, “The closer the GHF and Israeli army get to finally defeating the terrorists, the more shrill the BBC’s insistence that the Jewish state is deliberately starving children.”
Of course, the leaked memo is only one of millions of incidents that prove the BBC’s antisemitic and anti-Israel slant over the years, including the photo of an emaciated child it published as proof of the “starvation” in Gaza despite being fully aware the child’s emaciation is caused by multiple illnesses, including a genetic disorder and cerebral palsy.
Journalist David Collier said that he watched BBB broadcasters openly lie on a live broadcast when they interviewed the ill child’s mother. She spoke about the child’s cerebral palsy and the physiotherapy he received for it. BBC ignored her and reported that Mohammed’s curved spine is a result of famine.
Made of clay, the bulla was found intact, and after research by project scholars Dr. Anat Mendel-Geberovich and Zachi Dvira, all the letters were deciphered except one, which was suggested to be the letter Ayin.
The full inscription proposed by the researchers is: “Yeda‘yah (son of) Asayahu”. Based on markings on the back of the object, it appears to have been used to seal a sack or another storage vessel. A fingerprint, likely of the seal’s owner, is also visible on the side of the artifact. Based on the script style, the seal impression is dated to the late First Temple period (second half of the 7th century BCE to the early 6th century BCE).
A haunting photo of an emaciated toddler cradled by his mother dominated the front page of Friday’s Lying New York Times, quickly becoming a symbol of the hunger crisis in Gaza. Now, the newspaper has amended some aspects of his story amid criticism.
“Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, about 18 months, with his mother, Hedaya al-Mutawaq, who said he was born healthy but was recently diagnosed with severe malnutrition,” the original caption said.
But over the weekend, skeptics about the scope of the hunger crisis in Gaza — and especially about whether Israel is to blame — cried foul over the image and its use. They charged the newspaper with perpetrating a “blood libel” against Israel
On Tuesday night, the newspaper announced that it had revised the story, saying that it had learned that the child had underlying medical issues that affected his muscle development. The revision removed the mother’s quote from the story saying that Mohammed had been born healthy and added context from his doctor, though it did not back away from the other reporting in the story, “Gazans Are Dying of Starvation,” including its claim that the child was suffering from malnutrition due to food shortages.
“This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of his condition,” the newspaper said in a statement about an editor’s note appended to the story.
The editors’ note followed days of criticism of the newspaper and other outlets for running photographs that the critics said exaggerate the extent of hunger in Gaza and lay blame for any crisis solely at Israel’s feet.
“Muhammad is not simply a victim of starvation. His condition stems from a health disorder, not from a lack of food caused by Israel,” the pro-Israel media watchdog Honest Reporting wrote in a report issued Sunday titled “Another Photo. Another Lie.”
While Honest Reporting acknowledged that there is “suffering in Gaza,” it claimed that the blame lies with Hamas, which it accused of looting aid intended for civilians and disrupting Gaza’s medical system with its attack on Israel and continued hostage-holding.
“He is a sick child in need of medical care and specialized nutrition. Care that was once available, and could be again,” its report said.
Honest Reporting and other pro-Israel voices, including the Israeli government, have long accused various media organizations of distorting their presentation of the Israel-Hamas war to paint Israel in the harshest light possible.
