Nukhba jihadists must face charges for their sexual violence crimes

Sharon Zaghagi Pinhas reminds everyone that the sexual violence committed by Hamas/Nukhba jihadists in Gaza during October 7, 2023 cannot be forgotten:

One central question has not been addressed: whether the Nukhba terrorists will be prosecuted for the sex crimes committed on October 7 and in captivity. Despite repeated attempts around the world to silence and deny them, there is no doubt: grave sex crimes were committed strategically, systematically and on a large scale throughout the attack and in captivity. Many of the female and male victims were murdered, whether during the attack or afterward, and many of the crimes were committed deliberately in full view of others in order to sow terror. All publicly accessible sources clearly indicate that the Nukhba terrorists were driven by an extremist ideology rooted in an explicit intent to commit genocide and in the total denial of the humanity of Israel's population.

Since October 7, I have taken part, together with my colleagues in the Dinah Project at the Rackman Center at Bar-Ilan University, in a difficult and exhausting struggle in which the State of Israel and many civil society organizations joined forces to bring recognition and justice for the female and male victims. [...]

After all this, it is inconceivable that the indictments against the Nukhba terrorists will not include charges over sex crimes. Yet for now, all official bodies are silent whenever the question of filing indictments over the sex crimes is raised.

This silence is deeply troubling.

The sex crimes were committed as part of a mass assault by Nukhba terrorists, aimed at dehumanization and genocide. The terrorists operated inside an inconceivable "vacuum" in which everything was "permitted," murder, massacre and sex crimes alike.

Legally, in such a case, all the terrorists who chose to take part in the mass assault can be held jointly responsible for all the crimes committed during the attack, including the sex crimes, even if they did not physically commit them themselves.

And all those guilty must definitely must be held responsible, and severely punished for their repulsive crimes.

Anyway, it's good to inform that the Knesset approved a law to prosecute the monsters:

The Knesset plenum approved the second and third readings of the bill to prosecute the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre on Monday evening.

The law, which passed with a rare consensus of 93 supporters, establishes the legal infrastructure to try Hamas terrorists and their accomplices for the most heinous crimes committed during the murderous attack. The legislation sets the maximum penalty at death.

Furthermore, a dramatic reservation proposed by MKs Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionist Party) and Yulia Malinovsky (Yisrael Beytenu) was approved, stipulating that terrorists tried under this framework will never be released from prison, even as part of future prisoner exchange deals.

Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister Yariv Levin welcomed the approval, stating, "This law ensures that the terrorists and their accomplices will stand trial and face justice, including the imposition of death sentences. From the depths of the horrific massacre we have risen - for the memory of the murdered, for their families, for those wounded in body and soul, for those who were taken hostage, and for the entire nation - to fulfill our supreme moral obligation: to bring the perpetrators of this ghastly slaughter to justice. I thank Constitution Committee chairman MK Simcha Rothman, MK Yulia Malinovsky, and all those involved in the vital work of advancing this legislation."

The news about the investigation into the Hamas' sexual violence, interestingly enough, has been covered by CNN for starters, although not without certain PC dictations in descriptions of the monsters:

Hamas militants and their allies raped, assaulted and sexually tortured their victims during and after the October 7, 2023 terror attack on southern Israel “to maximize pain and suffering,” a landmark new report has concluded.

Shared first with CNN, the report presents the most comprehensive body of evidence yet of sexual and gender-based violence against women, men and children, which it describes as “systematic, widespread, and integral to” the assault.

“The most important finding is the fact that the sexual violence on October 7 and against hostages in captivity has been a calculated strategy by Hamas,” lead author and human rights expert Cochav Elkayam-Levy told CNN.

Notice how they stick solidly with the PC term "militants" rather than "terrorists". It shouldn't have to take a genius to make clear that kind of restriction is unacceptable.

The news was also covered by the Toronto Globe and Mail, i24news, the Jerusalem Post, and here's more from them, along with an op-ed that makes clear the racist denialism must end:

With the release of this irrefutable proof, let this be the final day of October 7 denialism. For months, the world has watched as high-profile figures used their massive platforms to cast doubt on the suffering of Israeli women. Former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters has been among the most vocal, publicly claiming there is “no evidence” of Hamas rapes and dismissing the testimonies of survivors and first responders as “filthy, disgusting lies.”

Similarly, activists like Samantha Pearson, a former director of a Canadian sexual assault center, and Canadian politician Sarah Jama signed a letter dismissing reports of sexual violence as “unverified accusations.”

Even entertainment industry figures, such as Susan Sarandon, have contributed to the skepticism by attempting to “contextualize” the events in ways that effectively minimize the crimes. When global feminist organizations and UN bodies waited months to even acknowledge these atrocities, they provided a shield for Hamas and signaled worldwide that the slogan “Believe Women” has a geographic and political limit.

This report removes that shield once and for all. It demands that the world stop asking for “more evidence” when the archives are already overflowing with it.

There is, however, a profound note of hope within these harrowing pages. The report’s extensive legal analysis provides a clear evidentiary basis for the investigation and prosecution of these acts as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocidal acts under international law.

Waters is one of the most stunningly repugnant figures in the entertainment industry, and no sane person should buy his music albums. And as for Sarandon, it's about time she retired from acting. And anybody who's going to deny serious crimes cannot work at a center for treating rape victims.

Update: here's more from Breitbart.

John Daniel Davidson is wrong to use Spain's 15th century expulsion of Jews as an analogy

Well, it looks like Federalist editor Davidson's crossed the line big time, and demonstrated why his news site has to be taken with a serious grain of salt. Case in point: he's taking issue with SCOTUS justice Neil Gorsuch in relation to topics like immigration, and along the way, he employs a horrific analogy with Jews as a subject:

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has done a series of interviews this week to promote his new children’s book about the Declaration of Independence and very clearly has a set of talking points, including a familiar liberal trope that’s no less false and incoherent for being familiar. America, says Gorsuch, is a “creedal nation,” essentially a set of ideas that anyone can subscribe to and become an American. What’s more, Gorsuch claims America was founded as a creedal nation — a creed that enshrines the three ideals of equality, inalienable rights, and the right of self-government.

“What unites us is not a religion, it’s not a race, it’s a belief in those three ideals,” Gorsuch told NRO in a recent podcast. To Nick Gillespie of Reason he said, “Our nation is not founded on a religion. It’s not based on a common culture even, or heritage. It’s based on those ideas. We’re a creedal nation.”

For conservative-minded Americans of a certain age, repeating this mantra that we’re a creedal nation, not a blood-and-soil nation like bad old Europe, has become something of a reflex — a defensive posture meant to deflect charges of racism and xenophobia from the left.

But it’s obviously false. One way you can tell it’s false is that no one who espouses this America-as-creed idea would ever follow through on its implications. If we were really a creedal nation, and in order to be fully American you had to believe and live by a certain civic creed derived from the Declaration and the Constitution, enshrining those three ideals Gorsuch mentions, then millions of our fellow citizens today would not be considered true Americans — to say nothing of the millions of recent immigrants who have never even heard of the ideals supposedly at the heart of our creed.

If we’re a creedal nation, such people cannot be our countrymen. If we were serious about our creed, we would denaturalize and deport them. We would expel heretics and unbelievers as readily as King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled all unconverted Jews from their kingdoms in 1492. That’s what creedal nations do.

Wow. If he'd made a case why Moslems need to integrate and assimilate or leave, that would've been impressive. Instead, Dumberson - as perhaps his nickname should be - chose to fall back on classic antisemitic allegories, and fail to make any distinctions between good and bad religions, if anything. If he doesn't think the USA should be founded solely on Judaism, that's one thing. But to say it was literally justified for Spain's monarchy to expel the community that founded the religion in remote times goes way too far, and I couldn't find anything about Islam in the "op-ed" Dumberson wrote. Suggesting that perhaps he really is that kind of a coward that he can't bring himself to research and point out anything disturbing about the koran's contents, and then, he even has the gall to say:

It’s telling that those most likely to invoke this notion of a creedal nation are the least likely to support something like mass deportation and denaturalization. They will declare that we’re a creedal nation but recoil if you suggest we should act like one. That’s because they either don’t understand what they’re arguing or don’t really believe it, and instead believe America isn’t a nation at all but an economic opportunity zone where anyone from anywhere can, with enough determination and skill, strike it rich.

Alas, based on what he previously told, that's why Dumberson's argument here falls flat, because he doesn't seem to either, and let's not forget his unwillingness to support a ground raid in Iran. And if he won't take an objective view of Islam, then it's hard to buy he's a devout Christian any more than the very pope he chose to whitewash. Does Dumberson also believe Jews/Israelis only came to the USA to "strike it rich"? That sounds eerily reminiscent of socialist cliches.

Amazingly, unlike Dumberson, another Federalist writer, Chris Bray, did show the courage to bring up the issue of Islamofascism while discussing Britain's election where Nigel Farage made significant gains. But it doesn't excuse the harm Dumberson's causing with his loathsome lectures, and if their staff is smart, they'll do what they can to give him the pink slip. He's as awful as Tucker Carlson, and clearly comes from almost the same school of thought.

Nigel Farage's Reform UK party finds considerable victory in British election

It looks like Reform UK scored a formidable rise in this year's parliamentary and local elections, while the leftists suffered defeats:

Yesterday was election day in the United Kingdom for local councils nationwide. It wasn’t a national election for Parliament, which determines who will be Prime Minister, but the results have still sent a shockwave through Parliament and Whitehall (Britain’s equivalent of the Swamp).

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party did spectacularly well at the expense of both the Labour Party (hard left) and the Conservative Party (soft left). The reprehensible Green Party also got a few Labour votes, but it’s Reform UK’s surge that matters, especially in England’s North, a one-time Labour stronghold. Starmer is still in charge, but he’s already facing challenges from within his own party.

Yes, there are calls for him to resign, and considering the Islamofascist disaster he's done nothing to quell, that's one more reason why he'd do well to step down already from a job he doesn't deserve.

The north, perhaps not coincidentally, has the largest Muslim immigrant populations in the UK outside of London. In past elections, Muslims did well with “get out the vote” initiatives. Maybe the British people have finally figured out that they also need to vote. [...]

I’m one of those who think that immigration, combined with complicit hard and soft left governments, has so empowered Islam in the UK that there’s no turning back. It’s heartening to see that sizable numbers of the British population don’t agree with me. I hope they’re right and I’m wrong.

I'd say the same for France and Holland. We have to hope they too can stand up to the horror story the communist establishment set in motion decades ago.

California considers recognizing Muslim holidays

California provides one more reason why I'd rather not visit there today: they're willing to recognize Muslim holidays:

Wednesday on “The Alex Marlow Show,” Frank Gaffney, President of the Institute for the American Future and Host of “Securing America” on One America’s Voice talked about California.

Gaffney said, “This is submission. And the way you can tell is the object of these holy days is celebrating glorious conquests by Islam.”

I guess that's the only thing for which they're willing to abandon the LGBT ideology they've upheld till now. Governor Gavin Newsom continues to lead the state toward collapse, and this is one of the worst things they're willing to consider. It wouldn't be shocking if communist holidays come next.

The LGBT/palestinian war on reality

Therapist Daniel Winston writes about the similarities between the transsexual ideology movement and the fabrication of an Arab/Islamic state called "palestine", the latter word which was coined by the Roman empire and put to use by anti-Israelists in over 50 years for delegitimazation purposes:

One of the defining absurdities of the modern West is not that human beings imagine things. Human beings have always imagined tribes, roles, myths, masks, costumes, and symbolic identities. The deeper absurdity is that entire political and moral systems are now expected to reorganize reality around subjective feeling and declaration.

If enough of the “right" kind of people assert something loudly enough, emotionally enough, and long enough, the claim is no longer treated as a claim. It becomes an identity. Then it becomes sacred. Then questioning it becomes “violence."

This is the twisted age of imagined identity.

The pattern is visible in the most radical corners of transgenderism. Human gender is not assigned by mood, costume, declaration, or bureaucratic intimidation. In ordinary human development, XX chromosomes are associated with female development and XY chromosomes with male development, with the Y chromosome and SRY region typically directing male development. Yes, differences of gender development exist. Medicine recognizes chromosomal and anatomical variations. But those conditions prove that biology is real, not that sex is an inner feeling detached from the body.

The existence of medical exceptions does not abolish the biological categories by which the exceptions are understood. This is not an attack on people who suffer from gender dysphoria. Serious people can recognize real distress without cruelty or mockery. But compassion for suffering is not the same as surrendering reality to the tyranny of personal or group fantasy.

Yet the new doctrine demands more than kindness. It demands metaphysical obedience. A man becomes a woman because he says so. A woman becomes a man because she feels so. Some now float identities so untethered from biological reality that the self becomes an act of private invention, while the rest of society is commanded to applaud.

This same civilizational pattern helps explain another modern invention: the myth of an ancient “Palestinian Arab people."

Arabs lived in the Land of Israel. Families, clans, villages, Muslims, Christians, and others lived there. That is not the issue. The issue is whether there existed, before the modern war against Zionism, a distinct ancient Palestinian Arab nation with its own sovereign history, language, kings, institutions, literature, currency, religion, or national consciousness.

There did not.

Even Arab and pro-Arab sources repeatedly said so both before and after the mythology hardened into international theology.

-In 1919, the General Syrian Congress told the King-Crane Commission that there should be “no separation" of “the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine," from Syria.

-In 1946, Lebanese-American historian Philip Hitti testified that there was “no such thing as Palestine in history."

-In 1977, senior PLO official Zuhair Mohsen told the Dutch newspaper Trouw that “the Palestinian people does not exist" and that a separate Palestinian identity was maintained “for political reasons."

-More recently, Hamas official Fathi Hammad acknowledged that many 'Palestinian' Arabs trace their origins to Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

These are not “Zionist extremists" denying Arab humanity. They are Arab and pro-Arab voices acknowledging what history shows: “Palestinian" was long a geographic and political label before it was retrofitted into an imaginary ancient nationality. The books Phantom Nation by Shai ben Tekoa and From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters document this reality exceptionally well.

Under the British Mandate, Jews were called Palestinians and Arabs most expressly were not. The Jerusalem Post was originally the Palestine Post. The Palestine Symphony Orchestra was Jewish. “Palestine" was a place-name used by foreign rulers, not the name of an ancient Arab nation. The term itself was imposed by Rome after the Bar Kokhba revolt as part of an effort to erase Judea from the map using the name of the Jews ancient enemies, the Philistines, to further the humiliation of the conquered Jews.

Read it all, and see how disgraceful it is that this warping of reality continues, right down to how LGBT practitioners are perfectly willing to ally themselves with the Religion of Peace, because for both antisemitism trumps all.

The man who attacked a French Catholic nun in Jerusalem has only added fuel to a sick fire

Recently, another hoodlum, presumably cut from the same cloth as Haredi extremists, attacked a French Catholic nun in Jerusalem, and its sadly revealed a serious and growing problem that not enough may have taken notice of:

Footage of an attack on a Catholic nun in Jerusalem shocked the world when it went viral last week, but for worshipers attending Sunday mass at Saint Stephen’s Basilica, it was just the latest example of mounting religious hostility.

The attack on Tuesday was captured by CCTV and shared widely, showing a Jewish extremist shoving the nun to the ground and leaving, before returning to resume his attack on her, at which point by-passers intervened.

As the congregation poured out of the Sunday service, the story was still on everyone’s lips, as many offered words and tokens of support for the French nun, who was not in attendance.

“She still has pains,” but she is “surrounded by support,” said the priest who led the service, Olivier Catel.

When Catel arrived in Jerusalem over a decade ago, such incidents were rare. Roughly once a year, he said, “when I went out in my habit, people — usually ultra-Orthodox Jews — would spit behind our back.”

“We never paid attention because they were isolated incidents,” he said. But for the past three or four years, it has become something of a daily occurrence.

“When we go out, people spit next to us.”

The Rossing Center, a Jerusalem-based association for interreligious dialogue, has documented “growing harassment” of Christians in Israel and East Jerusalem, according to a study released in March.

Throughout 2025, it recorded 61 physical attacks, including spitting, the use of pepper spray, and blows. It also recorded 28 cases of verbal harassment and 52 cases of defacement of church property.

A British priest who preferred to remain anonymous confirmed that such incidents occurred daily.

He never went out without his black robes and was invariably met with spitting or shouts of “Go home!” in his direction.

‘He should be killed’

“Everyone said this would happen someday,” said Pierre, a 30-year-old parishioner, who was “not surprised” by the incident and in fact expected things to escalate to a possible death if there were no intervention.

The day of the attack on the nun, a priest he knew was in the supermarket when a man stopped before him.

“He told his son, in Hebrew, ‘He should be killed,'” said Pierre. “If nothing is done… someone will take that step.”

That's definitely repulsive, and regardless of what anybody thinks of how Christianity's managed past and present, this cannot go unopposed. Most telling is how the same Haredi extremists who led to this never seem to say the same things about Islam, and one could validly wonder if it's because they actually do consider the Religion of Peace legitimate.

What makes incidents like this additionally repulsive is that it gives the MSM an excuse to do writeups that take attention away from more pressing issues like Islamofascism, and the worst part is that the hoodlums - Haredi or otherwise - who're harrassing Christians, are quite possibly doing it deliberately in order to harm Israel's image all the more. For all we know, that was probably why the IDF soldier who wrecked a Jesus statue in Lebanon pulled his atrocious act. Let's also note a lot of these same ultra-Orthodox also despise the Israeli flag, and that's telling too.

Columnist Nadav Shragai had the following to tell:

Sadly, this assault is not an isolated incident. It joins dozens of incidents over the past two years in which Christians in Jerusalem have been targeted on religious and racist grounds. They are allegedly carried out in the name of Judaism, but they have absolutely nothing to do with Judaism.

When incidents like this happen in Israel or abroad and Jews, usually visibly ultra-Orthodox, are the ones attacked, we rightly raise an outcry and define them as "antisemitic" and as "racially motivated terrorism." That is the case in Stamford Hill in London, in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York, and in Antwerp, Belgium.

In Israel, by contrast, similar incidents, even if they are on a far smaller scale and carried out only by a small handful of people, take place in the capital and elsewhere in the country and are met with horrifying media silence.

Almost no response

Among our rabbis, too, the overwhelming majority of them, and among our politicians, also the overwhelming majority, the attack on the nun in Jerusalem, which received wide coverage in many foreign media outlets and blackened our image in public, passed almost without response.

This was not only a vile act and an assault on a cleric and on a person created in the image of God. It was also a public desecration of God's name and of Judaism. Such an incident also plays into the hands of our enemies, direct and indirect, who challenge our sovereignty and our right to govern Jerusalem. It weakens our claim to freedom of religion in Jerusalem. It even weakens the just demand of Jews who seek to visit and pray on the Temple Mount without harassment and acts of violence.

For some reason, those attackers believe they are sanctifying God's name, or "settling accounts over Christianity's many sins against us throughout the generations." Is there no chief rabbi, city rabbi or neighborhood rabbi whose voice will be heard publicly, who will set them straight, denounce them, call for them to be cast out from our midst, and explain that historical reckonings of this kind are not the business of individuals, but belong in theological dialogue between religious leaders?

The story of the attack on the nun and other incidents like it must transcend political camps, Right and Left, religious and secular. It is foreign to us as Jews. We must make it not only illegitimate, but utterly repugnant. Such incidents have no connection whatsoever to even the fiercest struggle against terrorism, nor to collective punishment of an environment that supports terrorism. This is religious racism, pure and simple, which we Jews have suffered from and continue to suffer from across generations.

Of course it's repulsive, and if the response to this has been muted in comparison with the incident in Lebanon, which was possibly carried out by a Haredi soldier, that's very bad too. The mayor should reach out to the nun and the church she works at, and invite them to city hall to make some points clear about why this incident is entirely unacceptable to Judaism.

A commentor stated:

I agree with this writer. I'm sure that there are aspects of 'Ultra Orthodoxy' which may be laudable, but similarly, there are other aspects of their ideology which are lementable, - this certainly being one such example. They seem to live such 'a narrow existence', that they are oblivious to the damage that they are doing to the rest of Israeli and in fact Jewish society. To add 'insult to injury', as a section of the population that avoids serving, it is left to others to make amends for their egregious behaviour. To be sure, I am not a 'supporter' of the Catholic, and some other Christian sects, however, this is not the way to register one's opinion of the myriad of outrages perpetrated against the Jews in the past and in fact currently. This 'man', needs to be prosecuted and needs to be 'seen' to be prosecuted.

Clearly, there's others who realize the Haredis set this kind of behavior in motion, and their leaderships too are going to have to address this and above all, meet with the nun and her other church staff to apologize. But what if they don't? If not, that'll just make clear what continues to be wrong with the Haredi community.

Update: in similar news, a cafe in Ramat Gan that was open on Shabbat was torched by an arsonist, quite possibly, again, an ultra-Orthodox criminal:

An unknown individual set fire to a new cafe in Ramat Gan over the fact that the cafe is open on Saturdays, according to an N12 News report on Tuesday.

According to N12, the owner of the cafe received multiple threats regarding the cafe’s business hours since it opened.

The arson, which took place over the weekend, caused heavy damage to the building.

Tel Aviv District Police have initiated an investigation into the incident, launching a manhunt to find the suspected arsonist, who was captured on video setting the fire.

Ramat Gan mayor condemns fire, calls for community to support cafe

Ramat Gan Mayor Carmel Shama-Hacohen condemned the arson, stating that it was not only an attack on the cafe, but a direct attack on “the character of Ramat Gan as a city of liberty for everyone.”

"We will not allow any criminal to light a fire of hatred in the heart of Ramat Gan,” Shama-Hacohen asserted. "Anyone who thinks of setting up 'religious guards' in the city and burning down places that are open on Shabbat will quickly discover that they have achieved the opposite.”

He also encouraged the local community to support the cafe as a show of his city’s strength.

According to N12, Shama-Hacohen also called for the cafe to be supplied with double the number of tables and chairs it had before the fire to accommodate new customers who visit to support the business.

So here we have another monster on the loose who, it could be said, violated the 10 Commandments section that says, "Thou shalt not use God's name in vain", and definitely committed a serious offense that could've resulted in lives lost if there were people in the building at the time. One of the worst things about cases like these is that the Haredi extremists who did this undoubtably are hoping to tarnish Judaism and Israel's good name, and bolster leftists who want to stick it to the right. After all, the Haredi MO draws from socialist tactics like living on welfare, so it's not like there's that much difference between leftists and Haredi zealots when it comes to topics like those.

Synagogue in London that was sold to Muslim mosque falls victim to arson

In the past month, a synagogue was sold in London to a Muslim group, or was going to be. Now, it looks like that same synagogue was set on fire:

Counter-terrorism police are investigating a suspected arson attack at a former synagogue.

The fire was reported at 05:16 BST on Tuesday at the former East London Central Synagogue building in Whitechapel.

The Met said initial CCTV footage indicated the fire was started deliberately.

The suspected arson follows a series of attacks and attempted attacks on the Jewish community in recent weeks. [...]

Hamzah, who lives near the former synagogue - which he believes is being turned into a mosque - said: "I came out this morning and saw it was all blocked off... I heard there was a firebomb on the synagogue."

He added that he did not know why someone would do that. [...]

The former synagogue was due to be sold at auction earlier this year, with a separate bid by a Muslim group to buy the building and convert it into a mosque and community centre.

If it was torched by Muslim arsonists, that's definitely quite an irony. As noted here, the former synagogue is on Nelson Street, so it looks like the same one fell victim to the Religion of Peace its former management was going to sell to, in a pure act of dhimmitude. While it's definitely bad it was torched, I still can't comprehend why it was going to be sold to a mosque movement but not to a Hindu temple movement, in example. Seriously, just because Hinduism and Shintoism may not be monotheistic religions, does that make it wrong to sell to them? Of course not. Now, an oxymoron took place, and the sadness is only furthered.

Turkey now has missiles that can reach long ranges

It turns out that Iran's not the only Islamic regime that's had ballistic missiles being built. Turkey's also building them, and put an ICBM on display just recently:

Turkey's Ministry of National Defense research and development center unveiled the Yildirimhan intercontinental ballistic missile at the SAHA 2026 (Turkey's international defense and aerospace exhibition) expo, marking a public debut for one of Ankara's most advanced long-range missile systems.

According to the defense ministry, the missile can reach Mach 25 and has a declared range of 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles). It uses liquid nitrogen tetroxide as fuel and is powered by four rocket propulsion engines.

It's entirely possible such devices could reach north America as much as Europe and Israel, if nothing's done about it. So we have to hope Donald Trump makes this an issue. Also, during Trump's first term of office, Turkey was misbehaving already.

Haredi extremists in Tzfat cause anger by demanding local mall remove bikini ads

In the nothern city of Tzfat, another outrage was caused when the wife of a local Haredi rabbi did exactly what her ultra-Orthodox overlords would want, promoting anti-sex hysteria in the post-October 7, 2023 era:

Haredi leaders in Tiberias are calling for a boycott of the city’s mall over large ads that show women wearing immodest clothing such as bikinis, the latest such controversy to erupt in a city with a growing ultra-Orthodox population.

That demand has led to backlash from the northern city’s deputy mayor, and has sparked a threat from secular residents of the city to stop patronizing the mall, called Big Fashion Danilof, if it caves to the Haredi leaders’ demands.

In a video that has circulated online, Leah Kook, wife of one of the city’s most prominent spiritual leaders, Rabbi Dov Kook, called the ads an insult to the city’s majority religious population.

The ultra-Orthodox population in Tiberias has increased to about 25 percent of the city in recent years, raising tensions over its character and way of life, according to the Walla outlet.

“They enter the mall, they see naked women as big as screens,” she said in a pained voice. She claimed that after speaking to a manager at the mall, nine of 12 such ads were taken down, but three remained, including one belonging to the clothing chain Castro.

Photos of the Castro store published in Hebrew media show a floor-to-ceiling ad displaying a woman wearing a bikini.

Kook called on residents to boycott the store.

“My loves, we’re boycotting them,” she said. “Don’t go into the mall.”

I think it'd be far better they don't. But that said, if she's going to be that disgustingly hysterical to cause a moral panic, then SHE should wear a bikini. No kidding. A woman who even has the gall to cover her hair as though she's to blame if men she's not married to would ask her out on a date.

Ultra-Orthodox parties are part of the municipal coalition led by Mayor Yossi Naba’a, who was elected in 2024 with their backing. A former mayor, Ron Cobi, who had run unsuccessfully to regain the position, had warned of the rising influence of the ultra-Orthodox over the city.

“Unless I’m elected, Tiberias will become the next Bnei Brak,” Cobi told The Times of Israel in 2023, referring to the heavily Haredi Tel Aviv suburb.

Following the call for a boycott, Deputy Mayor Aviv Yitzhak and another member of his party condemned the call and urged the public to continue visiting the mall.

“Especially these days, when business owners are struggling to survive after a prolonged period of war and we public officials are working to assist them, it is unacceptable to issue a statement that causes direct harm to the livelihoods of so many business owners and families,” their party said in a statement.

According to a Facebook page that carries local Tiberias news, secular residents of the city are threatening to boycott the mall if the ads are taken down.

This is not the first time Haredi and secular Israelis have clashed over a local mall. In the southern city of Arad earlier this year, a pair of Gur Hasidic businessmen bought the city’s mall, and there were claims that shop owners were pressured to take down pictures of women, and to have mannequins wear only modest clothing. The city government threatened to close down the mall over the new requirements.

If the Haredis have such a problem with women's sexuality, they should build their own mall. And all concerned should send an additional message by wearing skimpy clothes to the mall, and store managers who recognize why this is wrong should put similar imagery on their stores. And that's no joke.

It's also disgusting the rabbi's wife made what's basically a false statement about women in ads being "naked", when they were far from it, and bikinis don't literally expose genitals. Let's be clear. Of course nudity itself isn't always a good example. But to exaggerate it that much, and perpetuate the reduction of women to sex objects, that's utterly offensive, and it's exactly what the wife of the rabbi is doing, with the irony being she's possibly doing this on commercial video servers, where there could be lots more bikinis to see.

And again, this all desecrates the memory of October 7, 2023 victims. The Kook couple should both be asked to no longer enter the mall at all, nor any of their flock. It'd be better to go bankrupt than service their ilk, who likely did nothing to help in the war effort against Hamas. Must I point out that what Kook did was exactly what the Hamas/Islamofascists would want? And that her whole rant actually mirrors left-wing feminist blabber, including the whole ludicrous notion a woman should be ashamed of her body?

Update: since we're on the subject, here's also a troubling report about a Haredi beauty salon owner who implied she'd rather her son die than become secular:

Throughout the conversation, Blau emphasized that she loves her children and would accept them regardless of their path. However, she also described the emotional distress she would feel if they chose to leave religious observance, saying, “if one of them becomes secular, every day, every moment, every hour, it would burn in my soul."

The exchange reached its most controversial point when Sherki suggested that the loss of a child would be more painful than their living a non-religious lifestyle. Blau responded, “I’m not sure."

Her remarks quickly circulated on social media, prompting strong and divided reactions from the public.

Later, Blau appeared on the Channel 12 studio broadcast, where her comments drew sharp criticism from journalist Josh Breiner, who described her statement as “outrageous" and said it was “impossible to even conduct a discussion about such a claim."

This chillingly echoes a case from earlier this year where some Haredi parents made it sound like they were okay with their child dying, rather than have him or her in a non-Haredi daycare center. As a result, one must wonder if some ultra-Orthodox really do care about life, and whether they're proud of being Jewish/Israeli or not.

The PLO still poses a very severe threat

News recently published and brought before the Knesset reveals the PLO's built up a very large military that can pose a severe threat to Israeli citizens:

Since the October 7th Massacre, many have been warning of a much worse scenario in Judea and Samaria, with battalions of armed Palestinian Authority terrorists storming not only the communities in the area, but also towns and cities on the seam line and beyond.

A study by the Regavim movement examined the nature of the PA's armed forces based on the types of armament and training they receive. As expected, they are far beyond being a police force, but an army in every sense.

Moriah Michaeli, the director of the movement's research department, explains the findings in an interview with Arutz Sheva-Israel National News. She stresses that the reality in communities such as Ofra and Beit El is no more dangerous than that in Kfar Saba or Be'er Sheva, and even vice versa, for if we just listen to remarks made by Palestinian Arabs, we will discover that their calls are to return to Acre, Haifa, and Ashdod.

"Part of the study was to listen to what they say, and they say that they want to reach Haifa and Acre. The PA forces publish songs every Friday, and every Friday they are dedicated to one of the cities. They aren't about Ariel or Ma'ale Adumim, but rather Jaffa, Acre, Haifa, Be'er Sheva, and Jerusalem. They plan to get there. That's what they will do on D-day. They aim to reach Tel Aviv," she says, and notes that that is the reason the forces practice diving. There is no sea in Judea and Samaria, and the only reason for such exercises is their aspiration to reach the coastal cities.

Michaeli also shares that recently, PA security force members were caught attempting to smuggle weapons and ammunition between two police stations in Jenin, and diving bags were found on them. "What does Jenin have to do with diving bags? The answer is not that they plan on diving in the sewers to get between communities... but rather, they eye Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa, and Acre."

Regarding the armed Palestinian Authority forces training, Michaeli notes the numerical data revealed in the study, according to which approximately 65,000 individuals are on the payroll, "Between 45,000 and 60,000 are armed operatives in the PA police, but this is not a police force, because the ratio of police is different. In the State of Israel, there is a ratio of three police officers for every thousand people. However, in the PA, there are between 13 and 24 officers per 1000 people. These are not police numbers; these are not forces to protect offices or to defend the Mukataa (PA headquarters) and direct traffic. These are military numbers."

More at the main article. Obviously, this is a serious issue, and dangerous. We must definitely hope security forces are on the alert, ready and willing to deal with this. The PLO's dictatorship should not have had to be established in the first place in the 1990s, and must be dismantled in order to prevent more tragedies from happening.

Iran still trying to attack gulf states with drones

Iran's Islamofascist tyrants are violating the alleged ceasefire by launching drones at the UAE, if anywhere:

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates' Fujairah ‌said on Monday that a fire broke out at the ⁠Fujairah Oil Industry Zone following what they described as a drone attack originating from Iran.

Civil defence teams ‌were ⁠deployed immediately to contain the blaze, Fujairah Media office ⁠said in a statement.

There was no immediate ⁠comment from Iran.

Of course not. But this makes clear they're still not willing to surrender voluntarily, and the worst part is that they'll probably start firing missiles again sooner or later.