Uncategorized
A group of Israeli emissaries toured a Palestinian museum in DC, and came away with questions
WASHINGTON (JTA) — For Rotem Yerushalmi, a professional campus pro-Israel advocate, what stood out during a recent visit to the Museum of the Palestinian People was an exhibit showcasing different villages’ ceremonial dress.
She strolled past references to the Nakba, which means “catastrophe” and denotes the dispersion of Palestinians during Israel’s War of Independence. And she gazed upon a photograph of an elderly man clutching the key to the dwelling his family left amid that year’s Arab-Israeli war. None of those surprised her.
“The references to the key, the Nakba, were very familiar,” Yerushalmi said. “But the garb! I didn’t know they had different dresses for different areas.”
Yerushalmi was part of a delegation of about 20 Israeli emissaries stationed at U.S. universities that visited the museum late last month. It was the first-ever tour the museum had organized for a group of Israelis.
Like most Jews in Israel, many of them had relatively few interactions with Arabs inside the country, and learned little about Palestinian culture and history in school. But here at the Washington museum, located just a mile from Yerushalmi’s post at Georgetown University, they got a view into a society that is both largely off-limits to them and entwined with their country’s future.
“It’s important because it humanizes each other, I think, for Israelis to hear the Palestinian perspective,” said Bshara Nassar, a Palestinian from Bethlehem who founded the one-room museum in 2019. “Actually having a wall that separates Palestinians from Israelis — there is no way, there is no place to interact.”
The tour was the brainchild of Jonathan Kessler, the former longtime head of student affairs at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby. He now helms Heart of a Nation, which organizes people-to-people encounters between young Israelis, Palestinians and Americans — and which marks a turn away from the pro-Israel advocacy he once championed.
“For the first time, maybe in my lifetime, you’ve got young people from all three societies who simultaneously recognize that their politics is stuck and they desperately want to push forward into a better place,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
He worries that unless they move beyond their “narrow communal silos,” young Jews in the United States “will further distance themselves from Israel, young Israelis will turn their back on the pursuit of peace with the Palestinians, and young Palestinians will give up on coexistence with Israel.”
Recommending a tour of the museum, he said, was a way to make that happen. The Jewish Agency for Israel’s Campus Israel Fellows, which brought the emissaries to Washington, D.C., asked him to recommend museum tours for the group, and he suggested the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the National Museum of African American History and this tiny, barely known institution.
Mohammed El-Khatib, a docent at the Museum of the Palestinian People, leads a group of Jewish Agency emissaries through the museum in Washington, D.C., March 22, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
For at least some of the emissaries, the visit had Kessler’s intended effect. Mohammed El-Khatib, the group’s docent, described his experience as a Lebanese-born Palestinian refugee, and told of his family’s flight from their ancestral village during Israel’s War of Independence.
“It opens our mind to hear his perspective, to hear him say that he’s Palestinian, but he’s never been to Palestine, he was born in Lebanon, but he identifies as a Palestinian,” said Lielle Ziv, who works at Cleveland Hillel. “He told a story, and not like, right or wrong, it’s not a black-and-white situation. We can both be right,”
The museum is nestled in a townhouse adjacent to a pet care outlet, a Middle East bookstore and a chocolatier. A similar and larger museum in the Palestinian West Bank city of Birzeit, called the Palestinian Museum, is in territory that is off-limits to Israelis.
At the Washington museum, there was a lot of common ground: A Kurdish Israeli emissary said the keffiyeh in one exhibit reminded him of pictures of his male relatives, who wore similar headdresses before they left Iraq for Israel. El-Khatib was pleased to learn that the Arabic name for Hebron, Al Khalil, has the same meaning as the city’s Hebrew name — a “friend of God.”
One of the Israelis recognized the British Mandate passport on display, which once belonged to a Palestinian woman. His grandmother had one that was identical, he said.
When El-Khatib greeted the group, he said “Marhaba, Shalom,” respectively the more formal Arabic and Hebrew terms of welcome, and the group spontaneously answered with “Ahalan,” a less formal Arabic greeting that is commonplace among Israelis. That delighted El-Khatib.
The group was similarly pleased when he showed off some Hebrew phrases in a pitch perfect Israeli accent, which he said he learned from an Israeli ex-boyfriend. The group then pushed him to spill more details about his ex.
“In campus encounters we’re always kind of on duty,” said Nati Szczupak, the director of the Campus Israel Fellows program. “They’re on duty, right? They’re pro-Palestine. We’re pro-Israel. And it’s very rare that you can just talk and get to those moments of like, ‘Hey, I used to wear that hat too, when I was little.’”
She was referring to an exhibit on different types of Palestinian headwear that included a fez, or traditional Moroccan hat, which elicited a squeal of delight from a Moroccan Jewish emissary who said she had a photo of herself as a toddler sporting one of her ancestors’ fezzes.
“It’s not about facts,” Szczupak said. “We know the facts. What about the narrative? What is your story? We’re not arguing about the facts, but how we experienced them.”
The museum’s exhibits include photographs of Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and in exile, and are marked by contrasts: images of resistance — of a small boy throwing stones — and of the mundane — of young men playing soccer. Arrays of black-and-white photos from the late 19th and 20th centuries feature celebrations juxtaposed with resettlement in refugee camps.
A case includes Palestinian glassware, pottery and headwear throughout the ages. There was a temporary exhibit of line drawings by a contemporary Palestinian artist, and a wall titled “Making their mark” of prominent Palestinians — including Rashida Tlaib, the Democratic congresswoman from Michigan; the late Edward Said, the literary critic and scholar; the sisters Gigi and Bella Hadid, who are models; and DJ Khaled, the rapper.
The museum does not hold back from addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conflict’s most vexing issue — each side’s fear that the other side wants to replace it — was most evident in the museum’s maps: One depicted the scattering of the Palestinians throughout the Diaspora, and others showed how Israel expanded its territory from the land it was given in the 1947 United Nations partition plan.
Outside the museum, while the Israelis were waiting for the tour to start, a pair of the Israel fellows examined a poster for an exhibit, “The Art of Weeping, by a Palestinian artist, Mary Hazboun. The line drawing of a Palestinian mother in a traditional dress, carrying her babies, evoked the map of the entirety of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank — and then some.
“The proportions are interesting,” one said to the other, in Hebrew. “It includes not just Israel and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but the Golan Heights and a part of Jordan.”
Ziv said the tour made her think that she “would like more connections” with Palestinians — and it was clear that it was easier to make those connections in Washington than it would be in Tel Aviv or Jenin. El-Khatib said he had never met an Israeli before he moved to the United States.
“When we have Palestinian visitors coming to the museum, they quickly doze off — I mean, to them, it’s more about the achievement of the space,” El-Khatib said. “But when this group came in, I really felt that they were very attentive and hanging on to every word that I said, which was wonderful.”
—
The post A group of Israeli emissaries toured a Palestinian museum in DC, and came away with questions appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Israel Continues to Kill Key Iranian Officials as Netanyahu Says Iran Can No Longer Build Missiles, Enrich Uranium
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference, amid the US-Israel conflict with Iran, in Jerusalem, March 19, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/Pool
Israel continued its efforts to kill key Iranian officials and destabilize the regime on Friday, one day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised what he described as the military’s unprecedented achievements three weeks into the war.
The Israeli military said on Friday it killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) spokesperson Ali Mohammad Naini in an overnight airstrike against regime targets across the Iranian capital of Tehran.
“Naini disseminated the regime’s terrorist propaganda to its proxies across the Middle East,” the military said, describing him as a central figure in messaging tied to attacks against Israel.
Kasra Aarabi, director of IRGC research at United Against Nuclear Iran, described Naini’s death as “a significant blow to the regime’s psychological warfare and propaganda operations — an increasingly central pillar of the IRGC’s current war strategy.”
Iranian state media had reported his death earlier in the day.
The Israeli military also announced on Friday that, two days ago, it killed a key, senior commander in Iran’s intelligence ministry, Mahdi Rostami Shamastan, in an airstrike in Tehran following a joint operation involving Israel’s Military Intelligence, Mossad, and Shin Bet.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also said on Friday that it killed the Basij militia’s intelligence chief, Esmail Ahmadi, in a strike in central Tehran.
ELIMINATED: Esmail Ahmadi, Head of the Intelligence Division of the Basij Force, as well as several other senior commanders in a strike on the senior leadership of the Basij Force in the heart of Tehran.
Ahmadi played a central role in advancing and executing terror attacks… pic.twitter.com/M9mwVmlvH7
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) March 20, 2026
The Iranian regime uses the Basij paramilitary force, which is affiliated with the IRGC, to violently suppress protests and crush political opposition across the country.
“Ahmadi played a central role in advancing and executing terror attacks carried out by Basij Forces,” the IDF posted on social media. “He was also responsible for enforcing public order and the regime’s values on behalf of the IRGC and leading major suppression operations during the recent internal protests in Iran.”
Ahmadi was killed earlier this week in the strikes that targeted and successfully eliminated other senior Basij militia members, including top commander Gholam Reza Soleimani and his deputy, Seyyed Karishi.
The IDF’s announcements came after Netanyahu on Thursday vowed the campaign against Iran will continue “as long as necessary” until all objectives are met.
Speaking at a press conference, Netanyahu reiterated the war’s three main objectives, emphasizing the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, the destruction of its ballistic missile capabilities, and the creation of conditions for the Iranian people to determine their own future.
“Today, after 20 days [of conflict], I can tell you: Iran does not have the ability to enrich uranium … and it does not have the ability to produce ballistic missiles,” the Israeli leader said. “Not only did we destroy the existing missiles [and nuclear components], but we seriously damaged the industries that make it possible to produce them.”
He also stressed that Israel is operating on all fronts — by air, on land, underground, and across the Caspian Sea — where, this week, Israeli forces launched their first attack on Iranian Navy targets since the outbreak of the war.
“A revolution cannot be made from the air; there are also ground-based options,” Netanyahu said.
“We have eliminated the political and military top command, the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and the Basij,” he continued.
On Tuesday night, the IDF killed Iranian Intelligence Minister Ismail Khatib in Tehran during a precision airstrike carried out with a narrow window of real-time intelligence.
Appointed in 2021, Khatib led Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, a central pillar of the regime’s repression apparatus, overseeing espionage, covert operations, and intelligence activities targeting both domestic dissent and foreign adversaries, including Israeli and US targets.
He also played a central role during the regime’s brutal crackdown on internal opposition, including the latest nationwide anti-government protests, which security forces violently crushed, with thousands of demonstrators tortured and killed.
Khatib’s assassination was part of an ongoing wave of targeted killings of senior Iranian officials in recent days, further weakening the regime’s leadership and operational networks.
During Thursday’s press conference, Netanyahu praised Israel’s recent military and strategic successes, presenting them as a defining moment for the country’s strength and influence in the region.
“I promised that we would change the Middle East — and we have changed it beyond recognition. The State of Israel is stronger than ever and Iran is weaker than ever,” he said.
“We have turned Israel into a regional power, and some would say … into a global power,” he continued. “The relationship between me and my friend [US President Donald Trump] is unprecedented, and together we are leading the fight of the free world against the forces of evil.”
Earlier this week, the Israeli Air Force also killed Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, in what was the most significant assassination since the killing of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the campaign on Feb. 28. Larijani was widely believed to be running the country following Khamenei’s death.
With the military campaign escalating, Israeli forces have now been authorized to carry out targeted assassinations of senior Iranian officials without requiring approval from higher command.
Netanyahu also said he had instructed intelligence officers to “act so that the Revolutionary Guards’ killers know we will hunt them down in the cities as well.”
“It’s too early to say whether the Iranian people will take advantage of the conditions we are creating to take to the streets,” the Israeli leader said. “I hope so — but it will depend only on them.”
“I see this war ending much faster than people think,” he continued. The Islamist regime’s collapse “will not happen in one day, but we can already see the cracks.”
According to a recent intelligence assessment, the Iranian regime shows no signs of surrender and remains far from collapse, and Israeli officials have been warned that the war could continue for weeks, the Israeli news outlet N12 reported.
Even though there have been demonstrations in Iran in recent days, this latest assessment shows that they have been limited to a few locations with relatively small numbers of participants, and that the regime’s brutal repression continues to instill fear.
However, a senior Israeli source also told the outlet that the regime is in a state of “complete chaos,” with Jerusalem seeing increasing signs of a breakdown in the regime’s systems in Tehran.
“There is no one there at the moment who is taking the orders, and the government vacuum is deepening,” the official said, adding that Israel is “working to create a breaking point” for the regime.
“The goal is for the Iranian public to understand for itself, through the reality on the ground, that this regime has reached a ‘game over.’ We want to create the conditions in which the Iranian people feel they have an opportunity to take their fate into their own hands and take to the streets,” the source reportedly said.
Israel’s campaign is increasingly focused on dismantling Iran’s internal repression systems, aiming to create a leadership vacuum and logistical breakdown that could hinder the regime’s ability to respond if mass protests erupt again.
Israeli forces have carried out targeted strikes on senior Basij and IRGC officers, destroyed infrastructure used to suppress protests, and launched cyber operations to disrupt internal security communications and coordination, crippling the regime’s ability to redeploy its forces effectively.
So far, Israel says it has dropped some 10,000 munitions on targets linked to the IRGC, Basij, and other internal security forces, delivering a devastating blow to the regime’s security apparatus.
Late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning alone, around 300 Basij commanders and field officials were killed in a wave of strikes on key command and operational centers, according to Iran International.
During Thursday’s press conference, Netanyahu expressed pride in the Israeli people for their steadfast stand, praising their resilience and unity in the face of ongoing conflict.
“I know how difficult it is to stay in the security rooms and showers, and I understand the challenges with studies, businesses, and reservist duties. Your patience gives us the strength to keep fighting until we achieve the campaign’s objectives,” he said.
“Continue to stand tall, continue to stand with us, and with God’s help, together, we will stand and together we will win.”
Uncategorized
Israel Ranks 8th in World Happiness Report as ‘Extraordinary’ Resilience Masks War Toll
An Israeli flag waves as Israeli Air Force planes fly in formation over the Mediterranean Sea during an aerial show on Israel’s 74th Independence Day on May 5, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Amir Cohen
Israel held on to its spot in the world’s 10 happiest countries, placing eighth in the World Happiness Report published Thursday, even as the country continues to grapple with war, instability, and trauma.
A key takeaway from this year’s data is the performance of younger Israelis. Those under 25 stand out not just domestically but globally, placing third worldwide and emerging as the most content group in the country. That contrasts sharply with peer countries, where younger cohorts are faring far worse. In the US, for example, they sit at 60th.
Across Israel’s population more broadly, other age groups also post strong results, averaging around 11th place.
In the overall country rankings, Finland secured the top spot once again, marking nine consecutive years in first place. The US ranked 23rd, while the UK and France came in at 29th and 35th, respectively.
The UN-backed World Happiness Report tracks how people rate their lives overall, not how they feel in a given moment, so extreme turmoil such as war may not be accurately reflected. Its scores draw on a three-year average and factors such as income, health, social support, and generosity, which can mute the immediate effect of shocks such as war.
The report’s emotional data is less reassuring. Measures of worry, sadness, and anger show Israel climbing from 119th before the war to 39th, while trust in public institutions has kept weakening. On perceived corruption, Israel now ranks 107th.
One of Israel’s leading demographers, Sergio DellaPergola of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, also noted the findings should be read with some caution because they reflect an average from 2023 through 2025, rather than a snapshot of current conditions. Still, he said, that period itself was marked by “war, disturbances, and great sorrow,” making Israel’s high ranking “quite extraordinary.”
“We see many countries in the West much more developed economically than Israel with much lower rates of optimism,” he told The Algemeiner. “The explanation must come not so much from the contingencies of the situation, but from deeper social forces that exist in Israeli society.”
DellaPergola pointed to what he described as a deeply rooted culture of solidarity. “The feeling of togetherness is what keeps morale high,” he said. “We are all on the same boat. We have first of all to survive, but also we have to win.”
He described how that dynamic plays out in daily life under fire. “You rush to the shelter, and the atmosphere is paradoxically happy,” he said. “People circulate jokes, encouragement, funny comments.” In his own building, he added, “there is a sense of mutual help, like an extended family.”
“This is one of the secrets of the extraordinary resilience of the Israelis under these deplorable and very sad circumstances,” DellaPergola said.
That cohesion, he said, is reinforced by demographic patterns that distinguish Israel from much of the West. “The nuclear family has kept a role which has been lost quite completely in Western Europe,” he said. “There is still a belief that there is a future for your children.”
Even within Israel’s relatively strong showing, DellaPergola noted important internal differences. “Paradoxically, perhaps the most optimistic are also the most religious,” he said, pointing to surveys showing a clear link between religiosity and optimism despite lower average income levels. “Among the younger, the proportion of religious [people] is higher, and so the level of optimism increases.”
“Whatever it is,” he added, “Israel remains, even under pressure, a very exceptional case.”
Anat Fanti, a happiness policy researcher at Bar-Ilan University, said the results should not be read as evidence that the war has had limited impact.
“Israel’s result in this year’s World Happiness Report does not erase the psychological and social cost of the war,” she said. “On the contrary, it highlights the gap between the resilience of Israeli society and the difficult emotional reality of daily life.”
“The fact that Israel is still ranked 8th in the world, and that young Israelis in particular are ranked 3rd, points to the strengths of Israel’s population in comparison to other countries,” she added. “At the same time, the rise in worry, sadness, and anger, together with the erosion of public trust, makes clear that resilience is not immunity.”
Uncategorized
Algemeiner Unveils 12th Annual ‘J100’ List at Gala Featuring Javier Milei, David Draiman
Argentine President Javier Milei speaks at the 12th annual Algemeiner J100 Gala on March 9, 2026, in New York City.
The Algemeiner on Monday, March 9, unveiled its 12th annual “J100” list at a gala in New York City, honoring a diverse group of individuals who have positively influenced Jewish life in 2025.
Opening the evening, Algemeiner chairman Simon Jacobson framed the event as both a celebration and a response to a moment of profound upheaval.
“We are living in historic times, and this is a historic evening,” Jacobson said. “As we speak, battles are raging in the Middle East, impacting our dear brothers and sisters in the Holy Land and good and innocent people all over the world. We are here to declare that there is no challenge that is too great, and we have a response: The Algemeiner Journal was founded over 50 years ago. Its mission is quite simple: that in an age of misinformation, propaganda travels faster than facts. Where the war is being fought on the landscape of ideas, of narratives, The Algemeiner is an unwavering and courageous voice of truth and integrity in journalism.”
Jacobson’s remarks set the tone for an evening centered on moral clarity, Jewish resilience, and the defense of truth at a time of rising global antisemitism and continued efforts to isolate and demonize Israel in the public square.
He also emphasized that Argentine President Javier Milei is a leader for these times, a theme that featured prominently throughout the gala.
Milei addressed the gala after accepting the Warrior for Truth award, which recognized him for being an ardent supporter of the Jewish community and the State of Israel.
His wide-ranging speech drew on biblical wisdom, economic theory, and moral clarity, while focusing on the idea that morality in statecraft is not weakness, but courage.
“Morality as state policy is, above all, courage,” Milei said. “It is doing good, even when it seems costly, even when it seems to cost friendships or relationships … morality as state policy means facing the uncertainty of the future with courage, without sacrificing the core of our identity which is our values.”
Focusing on the intersection of religiously grounded morality and geopolitics, Milei argued that moral clarity in public life need not come at the expense of strength. Rather, he suggested, it is precisely such clarity that allows nations to defend themselves and their principles in moments of uncertainty and danger.
He went on to warn that the West’s foundational values are under threat, casting the defense of Israel, Argentina, and the United States as part of a broader struggle to preserve a shared civilizational inheritance.
“Today, our moral sense tells us something with absolute certainty: The West is in danger,” Milei said. “The values that made this era of prosperity and common freedom possible are being eroded from the ground up. Today our morals give us a mandate. We must fight to defend our legacy, which is our societies … from those who want to take it away from us, from those who want to make us believe that … we are evil.”
“We cannot fail in this mandate,” he added. “We cannot fail in Argentina, nor in Israel, nor less in the United States which is the last great guardian of our civilizational legacy.”
Also honored at the gala was David Draiman, the heavy metal singer who has become one of Israel’s most outspoken supporters in the music industry. Over the past year, Draiman has used his massive public platform to amplify pro-Israel messages relentlessly, emerging as a prominent voice against antisemitism and against efforts to silence public support for the Jewish state.
Draiman struck a defiant but reassuring tone in his remarks, addressing the gap between the hostility amplified online and the reality on the ground.
“I’m here to tell you that despite all of the bark that you hear online, and there is a lot of it, the loudest voices are the most extreme voices, and they echo incessantly in their own echo chambers,” he said. “But the beautiful reality of it is that the bark is nowhere near what the bite actually is.”
His remarks resonated strongly with attendees and underscored one of the evening’s broader messages: that while anti-Israel incitement and antisemitism have become impossible to ignore, Jewish pride, solidarity, and moral confidence remain more powerful than the noise surrounding them.
The annual J100 list recognizes individuals from across politics, culture, business, media, and public life who have had a positive impact on the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Over the years, the list and gala have become signature expressions of The Algemeiner‘s mission to spotlight moral leadership and Jewish achievement in the international arena.
Past Algemeiner gala honorees and participants have included prominent political leaders, writers, entertainers, and advocates from around the world. Founded in 1972, The Algemeiner is a New York-based news organization covering Israel, the Jewish world, and the Middle East.