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Israelis are going forward with their weddings despite war and loss in their own families
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Doron Perez thought he would be supporting his son Yonatan under the huppah at Yonatan’s wedding last week. Instead, it was Yonatan holding him up — and defying all odds to do so.
Yonatan Perez had been shot in a battle with terrorists on Oct. 7. His brother Daniel Perez was missing in action, and Daniel’s tankmates were dead and abducted. Their country had been plunged into despair.
And yet the family went on with the wedding on the date set months prior, despite the pain they all felt.
“We couldn’t really think about [the wedding] for the first few days, and with Yonatan injured, we didn’t quite know what to do,” Doron Perez, a rabbi and executive chairman of the Mizrachi World Movement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
But five days after the attack, when Daniel was officially declared missing and it became clear that Yonatan would recover enough to return to his unit, the path forward became clear. Yonatan and Galya Landau, whose family had been evacuated from their kibbutz, wed at Yad Binyamin, where the Perez family lives, on Oct. 17.
Yonatan Perez and Galya Landau are wed at Yad Binyamin in Israel on Oct. 20, 2023. Perez was wounded in the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 and his brother was declared missing. (Courtesy Perez family)
“It wasn’t a difficult decision but it was difficult to go through the experience of the decision,” Perez said. The wedding itself, he said, was “a happy event” despite the circumstances.
“It just felt holy,” he said. “It felt like we’re living in a special time of big things happening … and even though the price has already been so difficult, the overriding feeling was one of happiness, one of just celebration.”
The family’s experience was an extreme version of what many couples in Israel are going through, as they decide whether and how to follow through with their weddings despite the pain and upheaval instigated by Hamas’ attack on Israel.
Some are downsizing their celebrations because family and friends from abroad are unable to come. Many also want to ensure that guests can get to bomb shelters if needed. Others are seeing the guest list grow as bringing joy to brides and grooms has joined the tasks for which Israelis are volunteering in droves.
Some couples are rushing their nuptials in advance of grooms heading to the reserves. And a few have gotten married on the front lines, their parents and fellow soldiers the only guests at ceremonies in the shadow of war.
Reuven Lebetkin, 25, and Shirel Tayeb, 23, were supposed to get married on Monday with many of their family members in attendance from overseas. Both moved to Israel with their families as children, Lebetkin from Miami and Tayeb from France. Instead, they had an intimate wedding at Israel’s northern border, where threats from Hezbollah in Lebanon loomed.
“That’s the date that we decided beforehand. We don’t believe that it’s good luck to push it off,” Lebetkin said. “Also, if we do it means that we give into the terrorism.”
The couple had chosen a song by Israeli musician Noam Banai to play during the veiling ceremony, called a bedeken. They were shocked to see Banai himself at the wedding, in a surprise organized by his friends. Banai ended up playing for the entire ceremony.
Other prominent Israeli musicians have made appearances at wartime weddings. The religious pop star Ishay Ribo played at a backyard wedding where the groom was on a 24-hour leave, according to a report in the Times of Israel, and Ivri Lider sang his hit “I was Fortunate to Love” at a wedding that was downsized from a 400-person hall to an apartment balcony. (Lider also sang the song at the funeral of a soldier who had planned to have it played at his wedding on Oct. 20.)
Hanan Ben Ari surprised another couple, Nadav and Noam, at their ceremony on a military base. Eden Hasson sang for a couple after encountering their wedding while visiting a military base to cheer up soldiers. And the singer Ariel Zilber posted a video of himself performing at a different wedding in the north on Thursday, a red carpet laid down next to a military truck, the bride wearing military attire along with a veil and flowers.
The weddings frequently go viral on social media, in an indication of how deeply the traumatized nation is craving signs of joy and hope.
For the Perez family, just being able to hold the wedding at all was a triumph. It was Yonatan who had alerted his father that Daniel’s tank was missing from their base near Kibbutz Nahal Oz — a fact they found reassuring. “It was a good sign,” Perez said, pointing to the tank’s indestructibility.
But Yonatan, who was shot in the leg during a five-hour gun battle in the Gaza envelope, painted a dire picture of the base, which was overrun by terrorists. “There was death and destruction all around. RPGs everywhere. Every army vehicle had been destroyed,” Perez said, citing Yonatan.
One of the soldiers from Daniel’s tank, Tomer Liebowitz, was found dead. Another, Itay Chen, was confirmed captured. Chen’s father, Ruby, last week also celebrated a lifecycle event — a bar mitzvah — in the absence of his older son, telling JTA that his youngest son “deserved to have a happy bar mitzvah.” Then he flew to the United States to lobby at the United Nations and in Washington, D.C., on behalf of his son and the more than 220 other Israelis taken hostage.
Daniel’s absence was palpable at Yonatan and Galya’s wedding. “When the rabbi mentioned him, it was very, very hard and I broke down,” Perez said. “I had my son holding me up, instead of me holding him up.”
His daughter, meanwhile, said the hardest part of the wedding was being pictured with all her siblings — minus one. “It was a moment that was hard, and we acknowledged that and validated it.”
But, Perez continued, even though Daniel’s “presence, or lack thereof, permeated the whole wedding, it didn’t set the tone.”
Jewish weddings have a built-in acknowledgment of catastrophe amid joy, in the breaking of the glass that takes place at the end of the ceremony. Jewish tradition also holds that weddings should go on as planned whenever possible, no matter the circumstances.
Perez said he had gained a new appreciation for those ideas, in an acutely personal way.
“Unfortunately, I’ve had to learn that it somehow is possible to live with such conflicting, contradictory feelings as deep pain, worry, dread, fear… and at the same time to marry off a son,” he said. “I have learned that it’s possible to do both. To sort of compartmentalize, and I think I did that at the wedding.”
He said he knows his family isn’t the first to forge forward in moments of crisis.
“I’ve also drawn a lot of strength that throughout the most challenging times, Jewish people got married and had families,” he said, citing the Holocaust as an example. “We are part of a people that sanctifies life. It’ll be a new dawn and a much better time for the Jewish people going forward.”
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The post Israelis are going forward with their weddings despite war and loss in their own families appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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California Superintendent Vetoes Measure to Fly Israeli Flag at Schools
Illustrative: An Israeli flag and an American flag fly at an airport. Photo: Christoper Pike via Reuters Connect
A California superintendent has nixed plans to display the Israeli flag on the grounds of campuses administered by the Beverly Hills Unified School District, overruling a decision reached by the local school board because he said the gesture may provoke a security threat.
“In light of heightened safety concerns around the displaying of flags on our campuses I have made the decision to take immediate action for the safety and security of our students,” BHUSD superintendent Alex Cherniss, a Republican, said in a statement. “Until further notice, no flags will be displayed on our campuses other than the flag of the United States of America and the flag of the State of California.”
As first reported by The Los Angeles Times, the move exercised Cherniss’s veto power over measures approved by the Beverly Hills Board of Education at a time when its voting to fly the Israeli flag prompted a bitter dispute that became an extension of a larger dialogue about the war in Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Times added that the board intended for the flag to fly as a symbol of solidarity with the Jewish community at a time of rising antisemitism in K-12 schools.
Another outlet, the Beverly Hills Courier, reported that the resolution which included the measure also established observance of Jewish Heritage Month in May and adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is used by governments and organizations across the world. Local leaders, some of whom are Jewish, told the paper that flying the flag constituted a gratuitous partisan action that undermined the spirit of their intentions.
“Just about two months ago, we spoke about how partisan materials — as an example, a Greek flag — would not be allowed,” Board of Education member Amanda Stern, who voted against the resolution because of the flag provision, told the Courier. “We really need to look at that so there is not preferential treatment for one group over another.
Rachelle Marcus, who is president of the board and joined Stern in opposing the resolution, told the Courier, “I don’t want to put something on the front of the school that will make us targets of any kind, especially with the students in our school.” However, others hold conflicting opinions, including board member Russell Stuart downplayed the significance of the symbolism of the Israeli flag, arguing that it “is not a direct endorsement of the Israeli government” or a “direct endorsement of any geopolitical topic.”
“It is support for our Jewish students and the Jewish community,” he added.
Antisemitism in K-12 schools is receiving increased attention, notably in California, after years of falling under the radar.
Last month, The Algemeiner reported that the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD), which stands accused of refusing to address antisemitism, ruled that a teacher who allegedly showed her students antisemitic, discriminatory, and biased content violated policy when she screened an offensive video about the Holocaust in her classroom.
The move came without the prompting of the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, with which two Jewish civil rights groups, StandWithUs (SWU) and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition (BAJC), filed a complaint against the district in April.
Among other things, SWU and BAJC alleged that an SCUSD employee, Wilcox High School teacher Kauser Adenwala, screened a documentary produced in Turkey which compared the war in Gaza to the Holocaust. The graphic film at one point “displays a picture of a young Jewish child who was branded with a number by the Nazis during World War II and then suddenly shows an untraceable image of children with Arabic writing on their arms,” according to the complaint, which alleged the teacher’s conduct violated numerous district policies and potentially state law. However, she remains employed by the district to this day.
The district subsequently investigated the incident and said in an official letter that was just sent to BAJC on July 25 and obtained by The Algemeiner that Adenwala breached the Governing Board’s policies.
In April, a civil rights complaint filed by StandWithUs and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition alleged that the SCUSD allows Jewish students to be subjected to unconscionable levels of antisemitic bullying in and outside of the classroom.
The 27-page complaint, filed with the US Education Department, described a slew of incidents that allegedly fostered a hostile environment for Jewish students after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities set off a wave of anti-Jewish hatred across the US. SCUSD students, the complaint said, graffitied antisemitic hate speech in the bathrooms, vandalized Jewish-themed posters displayed in schools, and distributed stickers which said, “F—k Zionism.” All the while, district officials enabled the behavior by refusing to investigate it and blaming victims who came forward to report their experiences, according to the complaint.
“SCUSD has allowed an egregiously hostile environment to fester for its Jewish and Israeli students in violation of its federal obligations and ethical responsibility to create a safe educational space for all students,” Jenna Statfeld Harris, senior counsel and K-12 specialist at StandWithUs Saidoff Legal, said in a statement at the time. “SCUSD leadership repeatedly disregards the rights of their Jewish and Israeli students. We implore the Office for Civil Rights to step in and uphold the right of these students to an inclusive education free from hostility toward their protected identity.”
In August, the Education Department promptly opened an investigation into allegations of antisemitism in Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS) following the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) filing a complaint regarding the matter.
Jewish students allegedly experienced relentless bullying in BCPS, where students pantomimed Nazi salutes, treated campuses as a canvas for Nazi-inspired and antisemitic graffiti, and sent text messages threatening that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas will be summoned to kill Jewish students the bullies do not like, the ADL complaint said, noting that teachers behaved even worse than students. At Bard High School, an English teacher performed the Nazi salute three times and later admitted to administrative officials that he did so intentionally to harm “the sole Jewish student” enrolled in his class. Following the incident, he suggested that the student unregister for his class because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be discussed in it.
“The allegations that Baltimore City Public Schools tolerate virulent Nazi-inspired antisemitic harassment of its Jewish students is at once appalling and infuriating. When a teacher allegedly directs a Nazi salute toward a Jewish student, or non-Jewish students harass their Jewish contemporaries by saying ‘all Jews should die,’ we are not simply talking about contemptible bullying; we are talking about a shocking abdication of educator responsibility that constitutes unlawful antisemitic harassment under Title VI,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement announcing the action.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Rashida Tlaib Slams US for Enabling ‘Gaza Genocide’ at Pro-Hamas Conference in Detroit
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) speaking at a press conference at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, March 11, 2025. Photo: Michael Brochstein/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) lambasted the US government for supporting Israel’s war effort in Gaza and predicted that the pro-Palestinian movement would continue to grow as a political force while speaking at an extremist-linked gathering over the weekend.
Tlaib made the comments during her appearance at the second annual People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit on Sunday. Donning a keffiyeh draped around her shoulders, the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress angrily accused the US government of helping facilitate a so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
“They thought they could kill us, rape us, imprison us, violently uproot us from our olive tree farms, starve our children to death, and we would disappear. Well, guess what? Now we’re in Congress, and we’re in every corner of the United States,” said Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress.
“Every genocide enabler, look at this room, motherf—kers we ain’t going anywhere. We are just growing and growing and growing,” Tlaib continued.
Tlaib dismissed the US federal government as being “the decaying halls of the empire” and argued that the Palestinian cause has won the broader cultural narrative regarding the war in Gaza.
“Outside of the decaying halls of the empire in Washington, DC, we are winning. They are scared,” Tlaib added.
Tlaib, one of the fiercest critics of Israel in Congress, encouraged the audience to continue their anti-Israel activism, arguing that federal lawmakers will not change the status quo in the Middle East. She claimed that lawmakers are “scared” of anti-Israel protesters and suggested without evidence that they are taking cues from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a lobbying group that seeks to foster bipartisan support for the US-Israel alliance, instead of listening to their constituents.
“Change doesn’t come from the cowards and warmongers in Congress. It comes from the streets. It comes from all of us mobilizing and seizing the power to resist and fight back,” she said.
Tlaib also appeared at last year’s conference. Her presence sparked immense backlash, with many pointing out the event’s platforming and veneration of terrorists.
Last year’s event featured speakers from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization.
Beyond Tlaib, the conference featured a litany of speakers who demonized Israel and venerated Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades and started the current war with its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of the Jewish state.
Eduardo Martinez, the progressive mayor of Richmond, California, refused to explicitly condemn Hamas and received a round of applause after he compared the terrorist group to small children defending themselves from a school yard bully.
“If Palestine were a schoolyard playground, I would be a Palestinian. And that part of me that couldn’t endure the abuse anymore would be Hamas,” he said.
Martinez framed the Oct. 7 atrocities, during which Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating rampant sexual violence, as an act of self-defense.
“We don’t know who we are until circumstances push us beyond our limits,” he said.
Jenan Awaida, an activist affiliated with the radical Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) organization, said the conflict against Israel is part of a broader effort to dismantle Western institutions.
“We are dealing with a world system that facilitates genocide through the role of governments, corporations, media institutions, a system manufactured by greedy corporations and billionaires,” she said.
Omar Suleiman, a controversial imam and Islamic activist, issued a strong defense of the Holy Land Five — a group of leaders of the controversial Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), once the largest Muslim charity in the US. The US government shut down the HLF in 2001, accusing it of funneling money to Hamas, which is designated by the US (and several other countries) as a terrorist organization.
Suleiman said that the men were imprisoned “for the crime of feeding Palestinian children.”
Nidal Jboor, a medical doctor and political activist, encouraged the audience to “neutralize” political leaders in Israel, the United States, and Europe.
“We all know who they are, whether they are in Israel, Tel Aviv, in Washington, in Germany, in Europe. They need to be locked up. They need to be taken out. They need to be neutralized to save children, to save humanity,” Jboor said.
“Speaking up alone is not enough,” he said. “Now it’s time to escalate and to act.”
Abubaker Abed, a self-described “journalist” operating in Gaza, lavished praise on the Hamas terrorist group and suggested that every civilian in Gaza is assisting Hamas.
“Every single one in Gaza is a resistance fighter in their own way,” he said.
Abed celebrated the Oct. 7 slaughters on social media. In a January 2025 post, he showered praise on long-time Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, saying that the terrorist’s “love of resistance and land is seen very clearly.” In a March 2025 post, Abubaker posted that international supporters of the Palestinian cause should “attack your governments.” He also defended Hamas’s murdering of dissidents, saying that the victims were “collaborating” with Israel.
Cori Bush, a former Democratic representative from Missouri, was slated to speak at the event. However, Bush quietly dropped out of the conference without providing an explanation.
During her tenure in Congress, Bush established herself as one of the most vocal critics of Israel. Bush repeatedly condemned Israel as a “genocidal” country and was one of the first members of Congress to call or a “ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas.
The event offered several panels, touching on subjects such as US military aid, legal accountability, and grassroots organizing, all presented through an anti-Israel lens, according to the event website.
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Storm Stops Gaza-Bound Flotilla With Greta Thunberg, ‘Games of Thrones’ Actor,, and Terror Group ‘Coordinator’
Brazilian activist Thiago Avila speaks to Swedish activist Greta Thunberg during a press conference before the departure of the Global Sumud Flotilla, a humanitarian expedition to Gaza, at the port of Barcelona, Spain, Aug. 31, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eva Manez
A flotilla of 20 boats which included participants from 44 countries, climate advocate Greta Thunberg, “Game of Thrones” actor Liam Cunningham, and a member of Samidoun (designated by the US and Canada as a “sham charity” for a terrorist group) left port in Barcelona on Sunday for Gaza only to return back within hours due to winds of approximately 35 miles per hour.
The anti-Israel assemblage of activists sought to break Israel’s naval blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza to deliver aid, an effort previously pursued with Thunberg in June, and notably first attempted in May 2010 by the Free Gaza Movement which resulted in 10 deaths and dozens of injuries.
Global Sumud Flotilla Mission says it has mounted the largest effort to date to try penetrating the Israeli naval defenses and released a statement about the decision to delay the voyage’s launch, saying “we conducted a sea trial and then returned to port to allow the storm to pass. This meant delaying our departure to avoid risking complications with the smaller boats.”
Israel had reportedly already prepared to intercept the boats and then planned to administer “terrorist-level” detention conditions to the celebrity activists and the group of international participants.
One factor potentially fueling such firm punition for the flotilla’s passengers could be the presence of Jaldia Abubakra, a co-founder of Masar Badil Palestinian Revolutionary Path and the coordinator for the Madrid branch of Samidoun, an organization birthed through 2011 hunger strikes fomented by prisoners in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group.
Masar Badil confirmed Abubakra’s presence in the flotilla on Friday.
Samidoun, which identifies itself as a “Palestinian prisoner solidarity network,” is a radical anti-Israel advocacy organization that has taken part in pro-Hamas protests across the West, including in the US, Canada, and countries in Europe.
Germany banned Samidoun, whose demonstrations in Berlin have featured cries of “Death to the Jews,” in the days following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Samidoun previously described the Oct. 7 atrocities as an act of “heroic Palestinian resistance” and hosted a webinar for a Hamas official who pledged that the Palestinian terrorist organization will repeat its slaughter of Israelis “again and again” to bring about the Jewish state’s “annihilation.”
In October 2024, the US and Canada jointly imposed sanctions on Samidoun, explaining that the prominent anti-Israel group has been operating as a “sham charity” fundraising for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist group.
“Organizations like Samidoun masquerade as charitable actors that claim to provide humanitarian support to those in need, yet in reality divert funds for much-needed assistance to support terrorist groups,” Bradley Smith, acting US undersecretary of the treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said at the time.
Months earlier, in June, YouTube shut down the group’s channel as well as that of its International Coordinator Charlotte Kates. In May 2019, the payment platforms PayPal, DonorBox, and Plaid discontinued support for Samidoun due to its terrorist affiliations.
Abubakra founded Masar Badil in 2021 with Khaled Barakat, a Samidoun leader, also described by Fatah as a “member in the central committee of the PFLP.”
The US banned Barakat from entering the country in 2024 due to his terrorist affiliations. In March of that year he praised the use of airplane hijackings as “one of the most important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”
Barakat and Kates attended the funeral for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in February 2025.
“This is my journey to Palestine. I am returning with the Freedom Flotilla, together with all the free people who have decided to break the siege, support the steadfastness of our people, and expose the crimes of the occupation before the world,” Abubakra said in a statement.
“We must assume our responsibility in the diaspora toward our people in Gaza, the West Bank, and all of occupied Palestine, which I see as one land from the river to the sea. After all, we are one people, with one cause and one destiny, and our rights are indivisible,” he added.
Kates wrote on X on Aug. 24, 2024, “Hate to self-post, but back in 2006, some zionist posted this video on youtube which was supposed to ‘expose’ me (and our movement). Inspired tonight to repeat that call today, 18 yrs later — We stand with the Palestinian resistance, with Hezbollah, with the resistance and people in Iraq. These are our troops, our freedom fighters, and we support them! And we must still work to build our resistance here [sic].”
That month, Kates traveled to Iran to receive the “Eighth Annual Islamic Human Rights and Human Dignity Award.” Other honorees at the ceremony included Ziyad Nakhaleh, a leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader killed by Israel in July 2024.