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In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, residents volunteer and keep kids at home as streets and supermarket shelves empty out
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Al Hambra Deli, a neighborhood cafe and wine bar in Jaffa, would usually expect to be bustling on this Thursday night, the beginning of the Israeli weekend. Located on Jerusalem Boulevard., one of the city’s main arteries, it’s right on the path of Tel Aviv’s recently opened light-rail system, and not far from a soccer stadium.
But this week, its doors have been shuttered. A sign greets passersby: “Beloved neighborhood, half of us are in the army and half are protecting our homes. We love you and are waiting to return, Staff.”
It’s a mood felt throughout the city and others in Israel’s crowded central region: Five days after an attack by Hamas killed and wounded thousands in the country’s south, streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are chillingly quiet aside from sirens warning of incoming rockets. Schools are closed and residents are yearning for ways to help as they cope with the physical and emotional fallout of the massacre and the war Israel is now fighting against Hamas in Gaza.
Earlier this week, supermarket shelves emptied out as authorities recommended that Israelis stock up on three days’ worth of food. Shufersal, the country’s largest grocery chain, set limits on purchases of bread, bottled water, milk and eggs.
Details of the atrocities in the south continue to emerge, and 300,000 Israelis have been called up for reserve duty. Rockets continue to target Israeli cities, and Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza, as the country girds for what will likely be a prolonged conflict.
“We live in a permanent state of fear,” said Inès Forman, 29, a French-Israeli writer, describing the last week in Tel Aviv. “I feel anxiety and fear in my body every second that I am awake.”
Forman has committed herself to spreading news on social media about Saturday’s massacre. Many of the Instagram posts on her profile are about art or literature, but the images she’s shared over the past 24 hours are of a different kind: widely circulated clips of reporters describing the scenes they’ve encountered in towns on the Gaza border, and photos and video condemning Hamas and its supporters.
“We are working on fighting fake news… basically all day” she says of her new routine, keeping a schedule that involves waking up and starting at “five or six until very late at night. Yesterday, I finished at around one” in the morning.
On Thursday, Forman attended the afternoon funeral of her friend’s younger sister, Shira Eylon, 23, who was presumed captured until her body was discovered in the woods on Wednesday amongst those who were murdered at the massacre at the music festival outside Kibbutz Re’im.
“My beautiful and pure fairy — today you received wings. I love you forever,” her older sister wrote on Instagram, announcing her death.
“There is not anyone who doesn’t have a loved one who’s either been killed, someone who they know, a friend or a loved one, or injured, or taken captive” said Melanie Landau, a 50-year-old Australian-Israeli therapist living in the Baqa neighborhood of Jerusalem. “So many people are on the front line and just worried about their loved ones.”
Many residents have left Tel Aviv, traveling abroad or to an area of Israel farther from Gaza, and have listed their apartments on spreadsheets coordinating housing for refugees from areas in Israel’s north and south that have been evacuated. Several people described the normally crowded city as a “ghost town.”
Some Tel Aviv residents have relocated within the city. Lotte Beilin, a 30-year old British-Israeli news producer, is staying in a friend’s apartment because her own building is older and doesn’t have a bomb shelter. The city streets are “so quiet you can hear a pin drop.”
There are more “uplifting” moments too, Landau said, adding that “the sort of resilience and strength of the human spirit” has been on display this week.
Throughout the country, many efforts are underway to collect needed supplies for the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who arrived at their bases lacking some critical resources.
Lee Mangoli, a 32-year-old Canadian-Israeli yoga teacher in Tel Aviv, recalled that “on Sunday we started to come out of shock and I realized I needed to take action to help myself.” She met with a friend and started collecting food and other “basic amenities” like shampoo and socks for soldiers.
Very quickly, she says that their small project “exploded with money coming in from abroad… and we are dealing with a lot of requests from a lot of different bases that cost money.”
While there have not been any issues raising funds, her group has run into difficulties sourcing the supplies. “We are not finding the goods anymore. UPS and Fedex are not delivering to Israel” and certain much-requested items like Leatherman utility knives have been nearly impossible to locate. “I could buy 200 and have soldiers to give them to but nobody has them,” she said.
For others such as Becky Schneck, 36, a physical therapist and mother of four young children, the burden of her husband’s call-up to reserve duty on Saturday, in addition to the closure of schools until further notice, has been too overwhelming to consider volunteering for the war effort.
“I am so busy, I don’t even want to think about it too much,” she said. “I do not have the emotional capacity to deal with everything going on in my house and also everything going on in the country.” Neighbors in her community of Tzur Hadassah, outside Jerusalem, have stepped up to deliver food to families like hers.
While Masa Israel, an umbrella group for gap year programs, said shortly after the massacre that none of its 5,700 fellows were harmed, at least one program has closed — the Yahel Social Change Fellowship, which engages its participants in social action and volunteering across Israel.
“With a heavy heart, the Yahel board and staff have made the difficult decision to temporarily suspend the Yahel Social Change Fellowship until things calm down here,” announced Yahel’s executive director, Dana Talmi.
Others are pressing on. At the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, staff “are doing the best we can… [going] into overdrive to support our students as much as humanly possibly,” said Meesh Hammer-Kossoy, the dean of students. “Pardes is pretty serious about running” in spite of the war. Of the approximately 80 students studying year-long, 18 have joined classes via Zoom from abroad.
“We are resolutely gathering for regular prayer and trying to study as best as we can,” she said.
Landau said that many Israelis are engaged in “a battle of consciousness.”
“There are a lot of people getting overexposed to a lot of the imagery and I think that is part of the battle,” she said. “Not to lose faith in humanity and not to be pulled in by that.”
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Iran Rejects US Nuclear Proposal, Says ‘Counteroffer’ Coming as Talks Stall Over Uranium Enrichment, Sanctions
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, May 20, 2025. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iran has denounced the latest nuclear proposal from the United States as “unprofessional and untechnical,” reaffirming the country’s right to enrich uranium and announcing plans to present a counteroffer in the coming days.
“After receiving the American proposal regarding the Iranian nuclear program, we are now preparing a counteroffer,” Ali Shamkhnai, political adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in an interview on Wednesday.
Shamkhani criticized the White House draft proposal as “not well thought out,” emphasizing its alleged failure to address sanction relief — a key demand for Tehran under any deal with Washington.
“There is no mention whatsoever of lifting sanctions in the latest American proposal, even though the issue of sanctions is a fundamental matter for Iran,” Shamkhnai said.
The Iranian official also warned that Tehran will not allow the US to dismantle its “peaceful nuclear program” or force uranium enrichment down to zero.
“Iran will never relinquish its natural rights,” Shamkhani said.
Washington’s draft proposal for a new nuclear deal was delivered by Omani officials — who have been mediating negotiations between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff — during last month’s talks in Rome.
On Wednesday, Khamenei dismissed such an offer, saying it “contradicts our nation’s belief in self-reliance” and runs counter to Iran’s key objectives.
“The proposal that the Americans have presented is 100 percent against our interests,” the Iranian leader said during a televised speech.
“The rude and arrogant leaders of America repeatedly demand that we should not have a nuclear program. Who are you to decide whether Iran should have enrichment?” Khamenei continued.
After five rounds of talks, diplomatic efforts have yet to yield results as both adversaries clash over Iran’s demand to maintain its domestic uranium enrichment program — a condition the White House has firmly rejected.
In April, Tehran and Washington held their first official nuclear negotiation since the US withdrew from a now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal that had imposed temporary limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanction relief.
Since taking office, US President Donald Trump has sought to curtail Tehran’s potential to develop a nuclear weapon that could spark a regional arms race and pose a threat to Israel.
Meanwhile, Iran seeks to have Western sanctions on its oil-dependent economy lifted, while maintaining its nuclear enrichment program — which the country insists is solely for civilian purposes.
As part of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran — which aims to cut the country’s crude exports to zero and prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon — Washington has been targeting Tehran’s oil industry with mounting sanctions.
Amid the ongoing diplomatic deadlock, Israel has declared it will never allow the Islamist regime to acquire nuclear weapons, as the country views Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to uphold any agreement that prevents Tehran from enriching uranium.
“But in any case, Israel maintains the right to defend itself from a regime that is threatening to annihilate it,” Netanyahu said in a press conference last month, following reports that Jerusalem could strike Iranian nuclear sites if ongoing negotiations between Washington and Tehran fail.
The post Iran Rejects US Nuclear Proposal, Says ‘Counteroffer’ Coming as Talks Stall Over Uranium Enrichment, Sanctions first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Day After Colorado Attack, Founder of Anti-Israel Group Chides Activists Who Are Insufficiently ‘Pro-Resistance’
Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of WithinOurLifetime (WOL), leading a pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City on Aug. 14, 2024. Photo: Michael Nigro via Reuters Connect
Nerdeen Kiswani, the founder of the radical anti-Israel organization Within Our Lifetime, chastised those within the pro-Palestinian movement who only support “resistance” in the abstract but not in practice following Sunday’s antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colorado.
“A lot of people who call themselves anti-Zionist or pro-resistance don’t actually understand what resistance is,” Kiswani posted on X/Twitter on Monday. “They support it in theory, but when it shows up in practice, they hesitate, distance themselves, or shift the conversation entirely.”
She continued, “And it makes it even harder for those of us who are principled to take public stances. We’re already marginalized, already painted as extreme or dangerous and that isolation only deepens when others in the movement won’t stand firm when it counts.”
Kiswani’s comments came the day after a man threw Molotov cocktails at a Boulder gathering where participants were rallying in support of the Israeli hostages who remain in captivity in Gaza — which resulted in 15 injuries, including some critically, in what US authorities called a targeted terrorist attack. Her tweets also came less than two weeks after a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they were leaving an at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by the American Jewish Committee. In both attacks, the perpetrator yelled “Free Palestine” as they targeted innocent civilians, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
After Kiswani’s social media posts sparked some backlash among pro-Israel users on X, she provided limited pushback on the idea that it was an expression of support for the prior day’s attack in Colorado.
“Zionists are freaking out in the QTs about this, insisting it’s about Colorado,” she wrote. “Newsflash: the world doesn’t revolve around you. Resistance hasn’t stopped in Gaza, look at what just happened in Jabalia [where three IDF soldiers were killed] for instance. The perpetual victimhood is getting old.”
However, Kiswani did not say her comment had no connection to the attack in Colorado, and she did not say that she opposed the firebombing.
Kiswani and her group, Within Our Lifetime (WOL), have been at the forefront of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas activism since Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists killed 1,200 people and abducted 251 hostages during their invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, a massacre that started the war in Gaza.
On Oct. 8, 2023, one day after the biggest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, WOL organized a protest to celebrate the prior day’s attack, which it described as an effort to “defend the heroic Palestinian resistance.” Kiswani notably refused to condemn Hamas and the Oct. 7 massacre following the atrocities.
Then, in Apil 2024, Kiswani refused to condemn the chant “Death to America” and organized a mass demonstration to block the “arteries of capitalism” by staging a blockade of commercial shipping ports across the world in protest of Western support for the Jewish state. That same month, she was banned from Columbia University’s campus in New York City after leading chants calling for an “intifada,” or violent uprising.
The following month, Kiswani led a demonstration in Brooklyn, New York in which she lambasted the local police department, claimed then-US President Joe Biden will soon die, and called for the destruction of Israel.
That proceeded the activist saying she does not want Zionists “anywhere” in the world while speaking in defense of a person who called for “Zionists” to leave a crowded subway car in New York City.
WOL, which planned a protest last year to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre, was also behind demonstrations at the Nova Music Festival exhibit, which commemorated the more than 300 civilians slaughtered by Hamas while at a music festival.
The latter protest prompted widespread condemnation, including from Biden and even progressive members of the US Congress who are outspoken against Israel.
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), for example, posted on social media that the “callousness, dehumanization, and targeting of Jews on display at last night’s protest outside the Nova Festival exhibit was atrocious antisemitism – plain and simple.”
The post Day After Colorado Attack, Founder of Anti-Israel Group Chides Activists Who Are Insufficiently ‘Pro-Resistance’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel’s Defense Exports Hit Record $15 Billion in 2024 Despite European Pressure, Calls for Arms Embargo
Israeli troops on the ground in Gaza. Photo: IDF via Reuters
Israel reached a new all-time high in defense exports in 2024, nearing $15 billion — the fourth consecutive year of record-breaking sales — despite mounting international criticism over the war in Gaza and growing pressure from European countries to suspend arms deals.
In a press release on Wednesday, Israel’s Defense Ministry announced that defense exports reached over $14.7 billion last year — a 13 percent increase from 2023 — with more than half of the deals valued at over $100 million.
According to the ministry, Israel’s military exports have more than doubled over the past five years, highlighting the industry’s rapid expansion and growing global demand.
“This tremendous achievement is a direct result of the successes of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and defense industries against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the Ayatollah regime in Iran, and in additional arenas where we operate against Israel’s enemies,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.
“The world sees Israeli strength and seeks to be a partner in it. We will continue strengthening the IDF and the Israeli economy through security innovation to ensure clear superiority against any threat – anywhere and anytime,” Katz continued.
In 2024, over half of the Jewish state’s defense contracts were with European countries — up from 35 percent the previous year — as many in the region have increased their defense spending following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Despite increasing pressure and widespread anti-Israel sentiment among European governments amid the current conflict in Gaza, this latest data seems to contradict recent calls by European leaders to impose an arms embargo on the Jewish state over its defensive campaign in Gaza against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
On Wednesday, Germany reversed its earlier threat to halt arms deliveries to Israel, reaffirming its commitment to continue cooperation and maintain defense contracts with Jerusalem.
“Germany will continue to support the State of Israel, including with arms deliveries,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told lawmakers in parliament.
Last week, Berlin warned it would take unspecified measures against Israel if it continued its military campaign in Gaza, citing concerns that exported weapons were being used in violation of humanitarian law.
“Our full support for the right to exist and the security of the State of Israel must not be instrumentalized for the conflict and the warfare currently being waged in the Gaza Strip,” Wadephul said in a statement.
Germany would be “examining whether what is happening in the Gaza Strip is compatible with international humanitarian law,” he continued. “Further arms deliveries will be authorized based on the outcome of that review.”
Spain and Ireland are among the countries in Europe that have threatened or taken steps to limit arms deals with Israel, while others such as France have threatened unspecified harsh measures against the Jewish state.
According to the Israeli defense ministry’s report, since the outbreak of war on Oct. 7, 2023, after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, the operational successes and proven battlefield performance of Israeli systems have fueled strong international demand for Israel’s defense technology.
Last year, the export of missiles, rockets, and air defense systems reached a new high, making up 48 percent of the total deal volume — up from 36 percent in 2023.
Similarly, satellite and space systems exports surged, accounting for 8 percent of total deals in 2024 — quadrupling their share from 2 percent in 2023.
While Europe dominated Israel’s defense export market in 2024, significant portions also went to other regions. Asia and the Pacific made up 23 percent of total sales — slightly lower than in previous years, when the region approached 30 percent.
Exports to Abraham Accords countries fell to 12 percent, down from 23 percent in 2022, while North America remained stable at around 9 percent.
The post Israel’s Defense Exports Hit Record $15 Billion in 2024 Despite European Pressure, Calls for Arms Embargo first appeared on Algemeiner.com.