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These Holocaust survivors were once classmates in a DP camp. They just reunited after 76 years.
(New York Jewish Week) — The last time Michael Epstein, 87, and Abe Rosenberg, 83, were in the same room, they were in Germany, studying in a classroom in a displaced person’s camp in Bavaria after the Holocaust.
On Sunday, March 19, the two men — along with Rosenberg’s older sister, Ada Gracin, who was also in the DP camp — reunited after 76 years. This time around, it was in the social hall of Young Israel of New Hyde Park, New York, where the pair embraced, said the Shehecheyanu prayer to mark their reunion and shared their survival stories with an in-person audience of about 100.
The reunion came together quickly, just a few weeks after the two men learned they lived less than 40 miles from one another — Rosenberg in New Hyde Park, on the eastern border of Queens, and Epstein in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Originally intended to be an intimate meeting between the two families, the reunion soon broadened to a festive brunch and celebration open to the public.
“The Torah says it’s a mitzvah to relate what happened to us,” Rosenberg said. “Hitler’s goal was to destroy Yiddishkeit, Judaism. When we gather here, we are involved in a victory over him.”
Michael Epstein, Abe Rosenberg and Ada Gracin, left to right, stand together for the first time in 76 years after meeting as children living in a displaced person’s camp after the Holocaust. (Julia Gergely)
The two were brought together by a sharp-eyed videographer. In February, Epstein participated in an interview at a Jewish day school in Edison, New Jersey as part of the “Names Not Numbers” oral history project, which is dedicated to preserving the memories of Holocaust survivors and ensuring their legacies live on in future generations. As part of the project, high school students interview survivors about their experiences, which are filmed and made into mini-documentaries.
During the interview, Epstein presented a photograph of himself as a 7-year-old in “cheder” or elementary school at Feldafing, an all-Jewish displaced person’s camp near Munich, where he lived from 1945 to 1949.
As it happens, the videographer that day recognized the photograph. He had seen the same one during an interview he had filmed the prior year with another survivor — Rosenberg — who was living in Queens. When Epstein and his two daughters learned this, they knew they had to arrange a meeting.
“This is the first time I know of a reunion happening between survivors as a result of our program,” Daniel Mayer, a Names Not Numbers board member, told the New York Jewish Week.
As for Rosenberg, when he got the call from Epstein, “it just concretized the fact that the whole experience [of Feldafing] wasn’t a dream,” he said.
Though the two men did not specifically remember each other — Rosenberg was 8 and Epstein and Gracin were 11 at the time of the picture, taken in 1947 — at the event, they acutely recalled their lives at the DP camp.
Rosenberg and Epstein point themselves out in the picture of their childhood classroom, taken in 1947. (Julia Gergely)
Rosenberg, for example, remembers living in Barrack Nine with his sister and parents. During the war, the Nazis used Feldafing as a training ground for Hitler Youth. In Feldafing, like at other Jewish DP camps, survivors waiting for a country that would taken them in opened Jewish schools, started newspapers, composed music and began to rebuild their identities.
“We were hoping to go to Palestine, to Eretz Yisroel — that was our dream,” Rosenberg said. “It was not available to us” under the British Mandate. “Unfortunately, the doors of the whole world were closed to us.”
“So what did we do?” he continued. “We started to build on Jewish life again.”
On Sunday, as the assembled crowd noshed on bagels, lox and egg salad — and other participants joined via Zoom from California, Florida, New Jersey and Canada — Epstein, Rosenberg and Gracin shared their experiences with those in attendance.
First to speak was Epstein, who brought with him a scrapbook of pictures from his childhood. Epstein was born in Łódź, Poland, in 1935, which his family was forced to flee when Germany invaded in 1939. They went to Bialystok, which soon fell under the control of the Russians, who transported Poles and Jews to labor camps in Siberia via cattle cars. After spending time at a gulag camp in Siberia, Epstein and his family were moved to another in Uzbekistan.
When the war ended, Epstein and his parents returned to Łódź, only to find that their entire extended family had been killed and a Polish family was living in their apartment. With nothing left for them in Poland, they left for Feldafing. They lived there until they could find a way to get to the United States, where they eventually arrived in 1945.
Epstein, who is known as Zayde to his 11 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren — many of whom were in the room — left the crowd with a message to invest in Jewish education, and to work to uphold democracy. “We live in ‘di Goldene Medine’ (the Golden Land),” he said. “We thought, in Europe, that meant there was gold on the street. There’s no gold on the street but there is gold on paper in our Constitution, and in our Constitution there is still mining to do. There is still work to be done to make our Constitution’s morals realistic.”
The family of Michael Epstein gathered from New York and New Jersey to celebrate his life story. Epstein, second from the right in the front row, is holding one of his five great-grandchildren. (Julia Gergely)
Rosenberg and Gracin, who spoke next, were also from Łódź. Gracin, born Ada Rosen in 1935, recalled wearing the mandated yellow Jewish star patch on her clothing as a 4-year-old. Her mother was pregnant with her brother when they left Poland for Soviet Georgia, a journey she said was “fraught with peril,” as they were stopped multiple times by the Gestapo. The family lived in Georgia for six years and “fear was a constant.”
When the war ended, the family also returned to Łódź to look for surviving family members — there were none. They connected with the Jewish Agency and HIAS, which helped them get to Feldafing in 1945.
There, “we were referred to as ‘she’arit hapletah,’ the surviving remnants,” Gracin said. “I refer to this period in my life as ‘life reborn,’ as I lost my childhood prior to this. Although we lacked many things, I never felt deprived. The survivors cherished each child as if it were their own. We were precious jewels to them, as they had lost their own children.”
“For the first time in my life, I went to school, made friends, played and laughed,” she added. “I was a happy 9 year old.”
Gracin, her brother and her parents arrived in New York Harbor on April 6, 1949. “At last we were free of fear, free to live and practice our religion and thrive,” she said. “I feel blessed to have been given this chapter in my life and my revenge to Hitler is that I was blessed with three children and six grandchildren.” Two of Gracin’s children and four of her grandchildren were at the event.
In his remarks, Rosenberg recalled the heroism of the parents, teachers and rabbis in Feldafing, many of whom had lost their entire families but made it their mission to educate the few children who made it to the camp. “They were the heroes,” Rosenberg said. “They deserve the accolades — we were kids.” It is in their honor and memory that Rosenberg continued to share his story throughout his life, he said.
Though Epstein and Rosenberg did not stay in touch upon their respective arrivals to the United States, their lives continued to follow similar paths. Both went on to study engineering at the City College of New York and for a time both worked at Bendix Corporation, though in different departments — Epstein in the space program and Rosenberg on the supersonic transport team.
Congregants and community members brunched on bagels and listened to the survival stories in the social hall of Young Israel of New Hyde Park. (Julia Gergely)
Chuck Waxman, a docent at the Museum of Jewish Heritage who moderated the discussion, told the New York Jewish Week he was “blown away” by the event — he said he expected less than half the room to be filled.
But full it was, with family, friends, community members and other survivors who wanted to be a part of the miracle — both the miracle that happened in Feldafing and the miracle of the reunion in Queens.
The event also included speeches from Mayer Waxman, executive director of Queens JCC and Torah commentaries from Lawrence Teitelman, the rabbi of Young Israel of New Hyde Park, where Rosenberg is a member, and Benjamin Yudin, the rabbi of Congregation Shomrei Torah in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where Epstein is a member.
At the close of the event, the lyrics of “Zog nit keynmol,” the “Song of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising” — which was sung by Jewish partisan groups around Eastern Europe — were passed in sheets around the room. Rosenberg heartily led everyone in Yiddish.
“We plan to meet again in another 76 years,” Rosenberg joked to the New York Jewish Week. “Everyone is invited.”
—
The post These Holocaust survivors were once classmates in a DP camp. They just reunited after 76 years. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Doxing Jewish and Pro-Israel Organizations Helps Antisemites Hunt Jews
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow speaks to reporters in Toronto, March 8, 2025. Photo: Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press via ZUMA Press via Reuters Connect
Lists of Jews and Jewish businesses have a grim history, particularly in Europe.
Following pressure from organizations combating antisemitism, last week, French-based mapping platform GoGoCarto removed a map cataloging more than 150 Jewish and Israeli-linked businesses in Catalonia, Spain.
Maps of Jews aren’t merely encyclopedic exercises; they are invitations to violence.
An anonymous group compiled what it called a “collaborative map of the Zionist economy in Barcelona.” The list featured kosher restaurants, a Jewish school, and multinational companies linked to Israel, such as Airbus, Microsoft, and Siemens.
Organizations fighting antisemitism warned GoGoCarto that the map violates French laws against incitement to hatred and discrimination.
Combat Antisemitism Movement’s director of European affairs argued that the map “echoes some of the darkest chapters in history, including the prelude to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.” But one needn’t look to the Nazis to realize the danger of tracking Jews.
Just last month, ISIS supporters gunned down 15 people — including a 10-year-old girl — who were attending a large Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. Organizers advertised the annual celebration publicly, including the event’s location. The Bondi terrorists used this information to kill Jews.
The threat of violence is why Jewish and pro-Israel events often refrain from publicly posting the location of their gatherings. It is also why most synagogues and Jewish schools have armed security to protect attendees. Wherever Jews gather, they are targets.
And the number of Jews that have been killed worldwide since Oct. 7, 2023, would be much higher if all the thwarted attacks had not been stopped.
For example, shortly after the Bondi massacre, Canadian authorities announced that they had arrested three individuals from Toronto for trying to kidnap women and Jews. Months earlier, in June, Canada extradited to the United States Pakistani citizen Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, after he “attempted to enter the United States to carry out a deadly terrorist attack on a Jewish center in New York City” using “semiautomatic weapons.”
But Khan didn’t have to cross the border to kill Jews and supporters of Israel. And he didn’t even have to compile a list of targets. Canadian editor of the online publication The Maple, Davide Mastracci, who has claimed that “Zionism has a stranglehold on our political system,” has already done that.
In March 2025, Mastracci created “Find IDF Soldiers,” a website dedicated to cataloging Canadians fighting in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). In December, he released a follow-up, “GTA to IDF,” which lists seven schools, synagogues, and summer camps in the Greater Toronto Area that have had members serve in the IDF.
Mastracci explains that he is compiling this information because, “Canadians deserve to know who they [Canadians who have served in the IDF] are, the networks they’re a part of that may have influenced their decision to join the military and what they’ve done since returning to Canada.”
Mastracci claimed that the “information isn’t being collected and republished here to encourage any harassment of the institutions named.”
It seems that Mastracci doth protest too much.
A joint report from the Jewish Agency for Israel and the World Zionist Organization found a 340 percent increase in antisemitic incidents in 2024 compared to 2022. This has included violent attacks, overnight shootings at Jewish schools, vandalized synagogues, and discrimination.
Given the explosion of antisemitism in Canada since October 2023, publishing lists of Jews and Jewish organizations associated with alleged Israeli crimes is hardly an exercise in informing the public. It’s more like throwing a lighter to an arsonist.
Even the BDS Movement, the official organization spearheading the campaign to boycott and eliminate Israel, seemed to recognize this in 2022. When activists in the Boston area launched The Mapping Project to depict “local institutional support for the colonization of Palestine,” the BDS Movement disassociated itself with the endeavor, noting the devastating effect it had on the “Palestine solidarity movement.”
Doxing Jewish and Israel-related organizations will make Jews unsafe and will link pro-Palestinian activism to Nazi tactics of the 1930s. Mastracci’s projects may not meet the threshold for criminal incitement to violence in Canada, but they are certainly tools that will help antisemites hunt Jews.
David May is a research manager and senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). For more analysis from the author and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow David on X @DavidSamuelMay. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
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The History of the Jews of South Florida: Antisemitism, Resilience, and Hope (PART TWO)
Congregants attend a service at Congregation B’Nai Israel in Boca Raton, Florida on October 10, 2023. Photo: GREG LOVETT/USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
Part One of this article appeared here.
Miami Beach: Shtetl by the Sea
Despite its reputation for antisemitism in the early 1900s, Jews started coming to Miami Beach hoping to benefit from the prosperity the city had become known for.
In the 1930s, restrictive barriers to Jewish land ownership began to be removed. As a result, large numbers of Jews purchased properties from debt-ridden owners desperate to sell them. The Miami Beach Art Deco buildings of the 1930s and 1940s — many designed, built, and operated by Jews — are architectural treasures.
In 1949, the Florida Legislature passed a law ending discrimination in real estate and hotels, and the Jewish community’s development bloomed. By the 1970s, almost 80 percent of the population of Miami Beach was Jewish!
The Jewish influence on Miami Beach was tremendous. Jews were and are involved politically and in developing the tourist industry. Almost all the museums and arts organizations were started by Jews. Miami Beach has had at least 16 Jewish mayors, including the father and brother of the former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer.
Thanks to its beautiful weather, Miami Beach became a popular Jewish winter vacation spot, earning it the nickname “Shtetl by the Sea.”
Yet, in 1980, Miami Beach began to change, with rising prices and changing demographics. This led many Jews to move north to Broward and Palm Beach counties, and in particular, Boca Raton.
Today, Miami Beach’s Jewish community has been bolstered by Jewish immigrants from Latin America, Russia, and Israel, as well as Orthodox Jews from the Northeast.
Surfside, which borders on Miami Beach, is currently the area’s most Jewish neighborhood. In fact, of its 6,000 residents, almost half are Orthodox Jews.
Miami in the 1930s.
Broward County: The Little-Known Story of Sam Horvitz
By 1910, five years before Broward became a county, a Jew named Louis Brown arrived in Dania, the county’s first city. By 1923, seven Jewish families were living in Fort Lauderdale, and after a few more families moved there, the first Jewish service in Broward County was held on September 17, 1926.
The building boom in the area went bust in 1926, but the small Jewish community remained. By the second half of the 1930s, the area began to recover. The Jewish community also grew, and by 1940, there were 1,000 Jews in Broward County. Today, the city of Hollywood, in Broward County, has a robust Jewish community.
Few know the fascinating background: a Jewish family is largely responsible for the city’s growth.
In the 1920s, Sam Horvitz, a high school dropout from Cleveland, entered a contract to build sidewalks and streets for Hollywood. In the building bust of the late 1920’s, Sam purchased and eventually owned more than half the vacant land in the city. As the owner of over 25,000 lots, Horvitz began building and selling single-family homes.
When Sam Horvitz died, his son William took the reins of Hollywood Inc. and continued to build on his father’s vision. The company began extending the city westward, with carefully controlled development adhering to the concept of quality communities. Hollywood Inc. built Orangebrook Golf Estates, Hollywood Hills, Emerald Hills, Lakes of Emerald Hills, Hollywood Mall (the first enclosed mall in Florida), the Bank of Hollywood Hills, the Post Haste Shopping Center, Sheridan Mall, and the Executive Plaza of Emerald Hills.
In 1966, Maynard Abrams became Broward’s first Jewish mayor for the City of Hollywood. He was followed by many dozens of Jewish mayors, state legislators, and US Congressional representatives in Broward County.
In the 1970s, Jewish retirees began choosing Broward as their new home, and moved to retirement communities in west Broward, such as Century Village in Pembroke Pines. The large Jewish population in Broward fostered a strong sense of community and Jewish identity. Multiple synagogues opened there. In 1970, there were 40,000 Jews, and in 1990, the Jewish community of Broward peaked at 275,000.
Today, Broward County has many thriving Jewish communities, including Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Cooper City, Deerfield Beach, Hallandale Beach, Pompano Beach, Tamarac, and Weston, with over 235,000 Jews.
Palm Beach County’s Boca Raton: From One Family to Half the Population
The first known Jewish residents of Boca Raton, Florence, and Harry Brown, arrived in 1931 from St. Louis.
Restrictive and antisemitic real estate practices kept the Jewish community small during the first decades of the 1900s. By the 1960s, the Jewish population began to grow, and in 1979, the Jewish population of Boca Raton, Highland Beach, and Delray Beach was estimated at 37,000.
The opening of Interstate 95 through Boca Raton in the 1970s eased the path for Jews from the Northeast to move to South Palm Beach County. Additionally, Jews from Miami and Broward County began moving to Boca Raton in the 1970’s, a trend that continued for the next thirty years.
Today, Boca Raton’s Jewish community, which started with a single family in 1931, has grown to almost half the city’s population. There are approximately 230,000 Jews in Palm Beach County, with very large communities in Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and Boynton Beach.
One of Miami’s distinctive communities is that of Cuban Jews. With the rise of Fidel Castro in 1959, approximately 10,000 Cuban Jews came to South Florida. The foundation they laid would help Jewish immigrants who followed them integrate into the South Florida Jewish community.
The Miami area currently has the highest proportion of foreign-born Jews of any area in the United States. Jews from Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil have settled in the Miami area. There are also almost 10,000 Israelis in the Miami and Hollywood areas.
The Growth of the Orthodox Community
Recently, there has been an explosive growth of South Florida’s Orthodox Jewish Community.
South Florida is blessed with hundreds of Orthodox shuls and Chabad centers, and dozens of Orthodox schools, and yeshivas. Over 8,000 children in Orthodox schools benefit from Florida’s school voucher system. There are advanced learning Kollels, Jewish outreach centers, and numerous kosher restaurants. In the winter, Chassidim from New York, including prominent rebbes and tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn, Lakewood, and Chicago, visit South Florida for days or weeks.
Many residents and visitors take for granted the thriving Jewish communities and infrastructure already in place to benefit them.
The truth is that they owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Rabbi Alexander S. Gross (1917 – March 10, 1980), who played a central role in establishing Jewish life and Torah education in South Florida.
Rabbi Gross was an American Orthodox rabbi who established the Hebrew Academy of Greater Miami, the first Orthodox Jewish day school south of Baltimore, Maryland. He began the school in a storefront with just six students in 1947.
He was a graduate of Yeshiva Torah Vodaas and a close student of the great Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, the founder of Torah U’Mesorah. Rabbi Gross believed that by giving children a strong Jewish education, he would raise the level of observance and knowledge among adults as well, thereby building vibrant, knowledgeable Jewish communities.
Rabbi Gross’ devotion was legendary. He would drive all around South Florida to bring Jewish children to Hebrew Academy, literally driving carpool for multiple families, to help ensure they received the vital Jewish education.
In time, the results of his efforts would be clear, as the following vignette demonstrates.
In 1959, due to severe financial strain, the Hebrew Academy of Miami Board of Directors had to institute an austere tuition policy. If parents didn’t pay tuition, their child would no longer be able to attend the school. One of the affected families, which was in any case not overly enthusiastic about their son attending the Jewish school, told their son, Billy, that he would no longer be able to attend Hebrew Academy.
Billy was devastated. He loved the Torah studies and the school. Sadly but gratefully, he wrote a handwritten letter to Rabbi Alexander Gross, letting him know how much he appreciated what the Hebrew Academy did for him and that he had no hard feelings towards anyone at the school.
After reading the letter, Rabbi Gross personally paid his tuition, and Billy stayed in the school. He thrived and graduated eighth grade as class valedictorian. He continued his studies in the renowned Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland and became an accomplished Torah scholar. He returned to Florida as a rabbi and built up the North Miami Beach community. Rabbi Zev (Billy) Leff is today the rabbi of Moshav Mattisyahu in Israel and a renowned lecturer and author.
After Rabbi Gross passed away, his family was clearing out his desk and found a folder that had “my children” written outside in Yiddish. It was a list of children he personally paid tuition for, so they could stay in the Hebrew Academy and not attend public school.
After building the Hebrew Academy, Rabbi Gross looked to raise the level of Torah learning and scholarship in South Florida. Until that point, he had sent his best students out of town to study in the larger yeshivas of the Northeast. In 1974, the Talmudic College of Florida was started with the support of Miami Beach philanthropist Moshe Chaim Berkowitz. He brought Rabbi Yochanan Zweig to serve as the esteemed Rosh Yeshiva, and as a result of this step, other yeshivas, Bais Yaakovs, and Kollelim would come to be built in multiple South Florida communities.
Rabbi Alexander S. Gross, like Moses Elias Levy 130 years earlier, had a Jewish vision for Florida. Both of their visions have come true.
Rabbi Menachem Levine is the CEO of JDBY-YTT, the largest Jewish school in the Midwest. He served as Rabbi of Congregation Am Echad in San Jose, CA, from 2007 to 2020. He is a popular speaker and writes for numerous publications on Torah, Jewish History, and Contemporary Jewish Topics. Rabbi Levine’s personal website is https://thinktorah.org
A version of this article was originally published at Aish.
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Ceasefires in Name Only: How the Media Ignores Hamas and Hezbollah Violations
A Palestinian man points a weapon in the air after it was announced that Israel and Hamas agreed on the first phase of a Gaza ceasefire, in the central Gaza Strip, October 9. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Ceasefires are meant to bring relative quiet to the parties that have agreed to them. Unfortunately, Israel knows all too well that when dealing with terrorist organizations, quiet is rarely guaranteed, even after the signing of a ceasefire agreement.
It should be abundantly clear to the media that terrorist organizations are not interested in peace because this contradicts their very modus operandi. Yet the media has consistently omitted the ceasefire violations being committed by terrorist organizations, and instead has been shifting the responsibility for the lack of stability and peace onto Israel alone.
Israel has adhered to the agreements it signed with both Hamas and Hezbollah. Consistent violations by both of these terrorist organizations have resulted in Israel taking military action in Gaza and Lebanon to ensure the safety of its citizens and the security of the state. Only when the terrorist organizations have not upheld their end of the agreement as required has Israel taken action.
Graph based on data from The Long War Journal.
Graph based on data from The Long War Journal.
As of this time of writing, the body of one hostage, Ran Gvili, is still being held by terrorist organizations in Gaza. It is perhaps one of the most explicit violations of the agreement, which called for all hostages to be released within 72 hours of Israel’s withdrawal from certain areas in the Gaza Strip. While the media might be moving on to Stage 2 of the ceasefire agreement, Israel can only do so once Gvili’s body is returned.
Why not, “New blow to Gaza peace deal as Hamas still hasn’t returned the body of hostage Ran Gvili,” @IrishTimes?
Hamas hasn’t fulfilled its obligations under the ceasefire agreement. How about holding the terrorist org accountable instead of solely blaming Israel? pic.twitter.com/aHCCd666T6
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 7, 2026
Beyond the mishandling of hostages, Hamas has also violated the ceasefire by attacking the IDF 13 times, which involved sniper or RPG attacks, ambushes, detonations, storing weapons, and individual terrorist leaders advancing plots against the IDF in Gaza. Some of these violations have resulted in the deaths of IDF soldiers, underscoring that this is not a technical breach but a premeditated continuation of warfare. Terrorists have also breached the ceasefire using tunnels on five separate occasions, emerging from the underground system as an attempt to commit one of the above attacks.
Another 50 ceasefire violations come from terrorists crossing the yellow line into an area controlled by Israel, as agreed upon in stage 1. These incursions are not incidental, as many of the unauthorized crossings of the yellow line also involve terrorists seeking to ambush Israeli troops, plant explosive devices, or commit other hostile activities that pose an immediate threat to the IDF.
“Israeli fire kills three people in Gaza,” writes @Reuters.
Omitted: they were terrorists who crossed the yellow line, breaking the ceasefire.
Once again, Reuters hides the terrorism – but never misses a chance to blame Israel. pic.twitter.com/4n8oICokfm
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) November 4, 2025
When such violations are ignored or stripped of context, Israel’s defensive responses are falsely framed as escalations rather than obligations to protect its forces and population. Yet in reporting on the yellow line and Israel’s inevitable countermeasures, the media has more often than not omitted these critical facts and, in doing so, has distorted the reality of who is violating the ceasefire and at whose expense.
The breaking of the ceasefire is not only a danger to Israel, but also to Palestinians living in Gaza. Hamas has turned its violence inward, targeting Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel on at least two occasions. Additionally, Hamas has loaded or launched rockets on two different occasions. Most recently, the launch failed and fell inside Gaza near a hospital. These actions expose the central truth often missing from media coverage that Hamas’ refusal to disarm is not symbolic or political. It is an ongoing, tangible threat, and yet this continued militarization and the civilian danger it creates are routinely omitted from reporting.
Israel-Hezbollah Ceasefire
Graph based on data from Doron Kadosh.
While there is less information about each specific violation by Hezbollah, it is evident that the terrorist organization has no intention of abiding by the agreement by disarming and remaining beyond the Litani River. From January 2 until January 11, the IDF X account has reported seven different responses to Hezbollah violations. This includes the targeting of terrorist infrastructure, including weapons facilities and training compounds currently being used by terrorists, launch sites, and terrorists working to advance attacks or rebuild infrastructure.
Despite the glaringly obvious violations, the media has still worked tirelessly to turn a blind eye to Hezbollah’s consistent violations – reported to average seven per day in July 2025 – and the terrorist organization’s persistence in its goal of rearming, rebuilding its infrastructure, and destroying Israel has not withered.
“Israel hasn’t upheld their end of the ceasefire agreement,” according to @SkyNews‘s @YousraElbagir.
No mention whatsoever of Hezbollah’s failure to disarm or its efforts to rebuild and reassert itself in southern Lebanon in breach of the ceasefire agreement. https://t.co/0htPoft5NB pic.twitter.com/Vk0A3Hvb62
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 29, 2025
The ceasefire agreement explicitly states that Israel is allowed to practice its “inherent right of self-defense” while adhering to international law. With Hezbollah’s refusal to disarm and move beyond the Litani River as required by this agreement, Israel has every right to exercise acts of self-defense to ensure there will no longer be a threat on the northern border.
Except Hezbollah hasn’t ceased, and that’s why Israel is firing.
Not firing rockets into Israel is only a small part of Hezbollah’s ceasefire obligations. Rebuilding its forces in southern Lebanon is a violation.@CNN‘s @bencnn won’t give you the full picture. pic.twitter.com/71hEHsJcQf
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) November 30, 2025
Because Hezbollah is a multifaceted hybrid, deeply embedded within Lebanese society, the media’s reporting frequently minimizes or obscures the extent to which it is classified as a terrorist organization. In doing so, Hezbollah is implicitly absolved of its requirement to uphold the agreement.
Terrorist groups, @AP.
That’s the term you’re looking for. pic.twitter.com/V1WxWZYWM2— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 8, 2026
Despite the ceasefires with Hezbollah and Hamas, the threat of both terrorist groups looms as they refuse to abide by the deal, most crucially by declining to give up their power and disarm. As a result, Israel has had to take action against both terrorist organizations to restrain them and ensure the security of the state.
For the past two and a half years of war, the Western media has found any excuse to shift the blame onto Israel, and the aftermath of the ceasefires is no different. The context of terrorist groups refusing to adhere to the agreement is frequently missing from reporting. Any article that mentions the fragility of the ceasefires must include the violations by the terrorist organizations or otherwise risk obscuring the truth on the ground and covering for terrorists.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.