Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Aug. 10, 2025. Photo: ABIR SULTAN/Pool via REUTERS

i24 News – During an appeal hearing at the District Court over the decision not to extend restrictions in the classified documents case, police revealed new correspondence between Yonatan Urich and Eli Feldstein.

The messages suggest that Feldstein, an advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was aware of the secret document and its potential leak.

Feldstein was also summoned for further questioning at Lahav 433 amid suspicions of obstruction during a late-night meeting in a parking lot.

The correspondence, dated October 13, 2024, was exchanged on the encrypted messaging app Signal. Feldstein reportedly wrote to Urich that he was considering taking advantage of a visiting Bild reporter to discuss the document. Urich responded: “Let Hasid handle it, why waste your time on it,” referring to the reporter as a “nuisance.”

Police stated that the messages contradict Urich’s previous claims that he had never seen or heard of the secret document, showing that he was not only aware of it but also discussed its publication with Feldstein.

Last Thursday, the court rejected a request to remove Urich from the Prime Minister’s Office and denied lifting restrictions on Chief of Staff Tzachi Braverman and Omer Mansour. Judge Menachem Mizrahi wrote that the requests lacked “evidentiary, substantive, proportionate, or purposeful justification,” and saw no reason to extend prohibitions on contact or work for the respondents.

The new revelations are likely to intensify scrutiny of the roles of senior aides in the handling of classified material within the Prime Minister’s Office.

Swiss flags flutter on the Swiss Parliament Building (Bundeshaus), after the weekly governmental meeting in Bern, Switzerland, Jan. 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

i24 News – A senior Iranian diplomat posted to the United Nations’ European headquarters in Geneva has reportedly defected and applied for political asylum in Switzerland, according to diplomatic sources cited on Sunday by the Iranian opposition outlet Iran International.

The diplomat, Alireza Jiranieh Hokambad, served as a minister-counselor, the second-highest-ranking position in Iran’s UN delegation in Geneva.

According to the report, he left his post and submitted an asylum request for himself and his family, citing fears of persecution should he return to Iran.

Sources said Hokambad’s decision was driven by concerns over the ongoing political and social unrest in Iran, as well as doubts about the stability of the Islamic Republic’s governing structure. Swiss authorities have not yet issued an official response to the asylum application.

Hokambad joined Iran’s Geneva delegation in 2017 and represented Tehran in several UN-affiliated economic bodies, including forums focused on trade, development, and investment.

Diplomatic sources noted that increasing international support for protesters in Iran, coupled with strong criticism from European leaders, has heightened unease among Iranian diplomats stationed across Europe.

According to the report, several other Iranian diplomats have discreetly contacted European authorities in recent weeks to explore the possibility of seeking asylum.

European sources added that some governments are considering easing asylum procedures for Iranian diplomats, even in cases where applicants are unable to demonstrate an immediate and direct threat to their lives.

Defections by Iranian diplomats during periods of domestic unrest are not without precedent. In the aftermath of Iran’s 2009 “Green Movement” protests, a number of senior diplomats posted in countries including Norway, Finland, Italy, and Belgium resigned and sought asylum, publicly condemning the Tehran government’s violent crackdown.

From the beginning of the biographical documentary The First Lady, Efrat Tilma makes it clear she has mixed feelings about the film, which details how she became the first trans woman to volunteer in Israel’s police department. When asked why she wanted to make the movie, she tells one of the directors, “I didn’t want to. You asked me.” This prickly demeanor persists throughout the film, although she later acknowledges that she wants “to show people that a trans woman is just like any other woman, like any other person.”

Tilma starts her story in 1964, the year she first tried living as a woman. Using archival footage, animation, and present-day interviews, directors Udi Nir and Sagi Bornstein present a moving portrait of Tilma’s life, unveiling how the burdens of her past have followed her into the present.

When Tilma was 14, she often wandered the streets of Tel Aviv to escape her abusive father. There she met another trans woman, Gila Goldstein, who introduced her to a whole network of trans women who taught Tilma about hormones and gender reassignment surgery. That same year, a man held her hostage in his apartment for a day and a half and sexually assaulted her. Not long afterwards, she says, an Israeli police officer threatened to kill her for dressing as a woman.

These experiences made her determined to carve her own path in spite of obstacles or the opinions of others, including the film directors. In one scene, as the team records her coming out of her apartment building, she strikes several poses.

“Natural, Efrat. We said natural!” a director reminds her.

“Kiss my ass!” Tilma responds, before strutting away.

But behind all the bravado is a vulnerable human being, who spends her first moment in the film nervously rehearsing the speech she is going to give at a 2023 Pride celebration in Israel. Tilma acknowledges that she’s not sure she’s been able to process her trauma and still carries it with her.

After leaving Israel in 1967, Tilma spent nearly four decades living in Europe, where she created a new life for herself as a woman. She performed in nightclubs, worked as an airline stewardess, got sex reassignment surgery in Morocco, married a man, and, nearly two decades later, divorced him. In 2005, she finally moved back to Israel and, on a whim, began volunteering with the Israel Police.

She wasn’t open about her gender identity at first, given the negative way she saw her colleagues treat trans women on the street. But when the police captain eventually discovered she was trans, the result ended up being positive: She began leading workshops on approaching the trans community with empathy and respect.

The film jumps between Tilma’s past and the present, as she reacts to Netanyahu’s 2022 re-election and the creation of a far-right coalition in Israel. Convinced that the world is reverting to the hateful days of her youth, Tilma leaves the police force and plans how she’ll kill herself if the government attempts to round up trans people. As protests start to sweep the country, however, she decides to channel her fear into activism. Shots of her among the protesters are mixed with recollections of her 1971 sex reassignment surgery and abuse she faced from a doctor in 1973.

Respecting Tilma’s boundaries while encouraging her to share her life story, the filmmakers capture both Tilma’s toughness and sensitivity, giving the film the honesty and heart that make The First Lady feel so intimate. They get Tilma to open doors into her life — literally.

Several times, the directors try to convince Tilma to bring the film crew into her apartment, where she says that no one else has been for a decade. When she finally lets them inside, they encounter piles of clothing, discarded plastic bottles, and other hoarded objects. The filmmakers tell her that the film crew will help her reorganize the apartment bit by bit, in much the same way they piece together her story: bit by bit.

Even if she approaches the whole process with a bit of attitude, Tilma remains determined to never give up fighting for a better life — or a better apartment.

The First Lady will screen at the New York Jewish Film Festival on Jan. 20.

The post How the Israeli police’s first trans volunteer fought bigotry on the force appeared first on The Forward.