31+ min ago (807+ words) ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 781 Police bodycam footage that was played Monday at the trial of six Palestine Action members who broke into a UK subsidiary of Israeli arms firm Elbit last year showed one of the intruders striking an officer on the back with a sledgehammer as she knelt on the floor during the break-in, fracturing her lumbar spine. "I had no idea what it was until I turned around and saw a male with a sledgehammer behind me," said the officer, Sgt. Kate Evans, at the trial of the proscribed anti-Israel group's members, according to Sky News. "I said something like "you have just hit me with a sledgehammer,' and he didn't recognize that at all. He just started telling me I'm complicit in genocide again." When other officers arrested the six intruders, Evans' alleged attacker, 23-year-old Samuel Corner,…...

1+ hour, 6+ min ago (793+ words) ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 781 Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard on Tuesday compared his treatment by US interrogators to that experienced by Hamas hostages held in Gaza, lobbing the explosive allegation that he was raped while in custody. "I know what it's like to be buried alive, I know what it's like to be brutally treated, including being raped, I understand that, under interrogation," Pollard said during an English-language interview with Kan's Reshet Bet radio station. Pressed by the interviewer if he was saying he was raped by his American interrogators after being arrested on espionage charges, Pollard said, "Absolutely. And I'm glad some of the hostages are talking about it now." In recent weeks, two released hostages, Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Rom Braslavski, spoke out during interviews about sexual abuse they experienced during captivity, the first male captives to publicly confirm violence…...

1+ hour, 22+ min ago (579+ words) ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 781 The White House on Monday expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself following an IDF strike a day earlier in Lebanon that killed Hezbollah's military chief of staff. Asked during a briefing outside the White House whether US President Donald Trump supports the targeted assassination of Haytham Ali Tabatabai, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she had not spoken to him specifically about the strike. "But of course, the president supports Israel's right to defend itself and to take out any terrorist threats in the region," Leavitt added. Channel 12 news reported on Sunday that the US had known for several days that Israel was planning to escalate its strikes in Lebanon, but was not alerted in advance about the specific strike on Tabatabai. The US State Department designated him as a terrorist and sanctioned…...

1+ hour, 59+ min ago (607+ words) ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 781 Thirty-nine percent of the food produced in Israel last year was dumped, sending 1.3% of the national GDP down the drain, according to the latest report by Leket Israel'the National Food Bank. The good news is that, per capita, Israelis last year wasted 13.3% less food than 10 years before, dropping from 300 to 260 kilograms (660 to 575 pounds) annually. BDO explained this by citing higher public awareness, replacing vats of food with individual plates in dining halls, a growth in online food orders (reducing surplus food grabbed along supermarket aisles), and technical improvements in food storage. However, these gains were offset by population growth and the rising costs of food, as reflected in the value of the waste. Over the past decade, the Israeli economy has lost food valued at a cumulative NIS 211 billion ($57 billion), the report said. The report noted…...

3+ hour, 51+ min ago (853+ words) ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 781 The rulings from US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie halt at least for now a pair of prosecutions that had targeted two of the president's most high-profile political opponents and amount to a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration's legal maneuvering to install an inexperienced and loyalist prosecutor willing to file the cases. The orders do not concern the substance of the allegations against Comey or James but instead deal with the unconventional manner in which the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, was named to her position as interim US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Defense lawyers said the Trump administration had no legal authority to make the appointment. In a pair of similar rulings, Currie agreed and said the invalid appointment required the dismissal of the cases. "All actions flowing from Ms. Halligan's defective appointment,…...

6+ hour, 21+ min ago (1121+ words) ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 781 Amy Spiro is a reporter and writer with The Times of Israel Oscar-winning filmmaker Richard Trank has been making documentaries about Israel for decades. Today, he finally lives here. "I wish I had made this decision earlier," Trank told The Times of Israel about his aliyah to Israel last month, after a lifetime living and working in Los Angeles. "But I can't change that." One of the first films Trank is working on under his brand-new production company, Sea Point Films and Media, aims to tell the story of Israelis recovering from the October 7 attacks and their rehabilitation journeys. "I started thinking about really a post-October 7 project, because we all know what happened on October 7. We've all heard the stories, and it's important to tell those stories," Trank said during a recent video interview from his…...

7+ hour, 53+ min ago (356+ words) ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 781 JTA " As voters in a small Namibian constituency head to the polls on Wednesday, they are expected to reelect a local politician with a striking name: Adolf Hitler Uunona. Uunona, 59, is a member of the South West Africa People's Organization, the country's left-leaning ruling party since it achieved independence from South Africa in 1990. He was first elected as councillor for the Ompundja constituency, which is located in the Oshana Region of Namibia, in 2004, and won reelection bids in 2015 and 2020. Following his election in 2020, which he won with 85% of the vote, Uunona told local outlet The Namibian distanced himself from his unfortunate namesake, saying he "didn't have a choice" in his name. "My father gave me this name Adolf Hitler, but it does not mean I have Adolf Hitler's character or resemble that of Adolf Hitler of…...

8+ hour, 3+ min ago (272+ words) ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 781 Ultra-Orthodox rioters threw stones at the vehicle of Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion as he paid a visit to the Haredi neighborhood of Mea Shearim on Monday, his office said. The rocks smashed Lion's rear windshield, but the mayor was not harmed, and the visit was able to proceed as planned, his office added. Police have launched an investigation into the incident, according to the mayor's office. It was not clear what set off the rioters, and there was no immediate footage available showing the damage to Lion's car. It was the latest attack on an elected official by ultra-Orthodox extremists in recent weeks. Last week, a group of Haredi extremists opposed to any conscription of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students demonstrated inside the apartment building where Shas MK Yinon Azoulay lives in the southern city of Ashdod. " " (@GLZRadio)…...

10+ hour, 6+ min ago (439+ words) ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 781 Reuters " Victims of Hamas" October 2023 attack on Israel sued Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao, accusing them of facilitating millions of dollars in payments to the group and other US-designated terrorist groups. According to a complaint made public on Monday, the world"s largest cryptocurrency exchange laundered money for Hamas even after pleading guilty in November 2023 and paying a $4.32 billion criminal penalty for violating federal anti-money-laundering and sanctions laws. The plaintiffs include 306 American victims of Hamas"s invasion and slaughter, including relatives of people killed, injured or taken hostage, and subsequent attacks by various groups. They accused Binance of knowingly enabling Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Iran"s Revolutionary Guard to move more than $1 billion through its platform, including more than $50 million after the October 7 onslaught. Zhao pleaded guilty to anti-money-laundering violations in connection with…...

10+ hour, 56+ min ago (353+ words) ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 781 A roughly meter-long (3.3 feet) dead squid, half buried in the sand, caught the eye of a marine expert Sunday as he walked along a northern Israeli beach. Bar Sternbach, who coordinates marine projects at the Society for the Protection of Nature " including its SeaWatch application " spotted what was later identified as a specimen of flying neon squid at the Kfar Galim beach near Haifa. Upon noticing something red in the sand, he approached and identified tentacles. "I started digging around it, and couldn't believe what appeared in front of me " the largest squid I've ever seen. It was about a meter long, lifeless, of course," he told Channel 12. The average length of a neon squid is closer to half a meter (1.6 feet). "As someone who spends a lot of time on beaches and in the sea,…...