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Actor Kevin Spacey Visits Gaza Border Communities in Israel Devastated by Oct. 7 Hamas Attack
Kevin Spacey Nations awards 2024 Awarding Ceremony Antico Theatre Taormina (Messina), Italy 21st July 2024. Photo: SGP/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
American actor Kevin Spacey visited over the weekend areas near the Israel-Gaza border that were impacted by the Oct. 7 deadly Hamas terrorist attack last year, Israel’s ILTV News reported.
The former “House of Cards” star, along with pro-Israel British author and journalist Douglas Murray, toured the site of the Nova music festival massacre and communities such as Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where 62 people were murdered last Oct. 7 and 19 others were taken hostage by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists. Two hostages who were kidnapped from Kfar Aza on Oct. 7 — Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz — escaped their kidnappers in the Gaza Strip but were mistakenly killed by Israeli soldiers in December 2023.
Spacey was also photographed in Israel talking to Ayala Levinstein, a lone soldier from the US who is serving in the IDF’s combat intelligence unit. The two-time Academy Award winner is reportedly a close friend of Levinstein’s father.
Spacey is scheduled to leave Israel on Monday night.
Murray is in Israel for scheduled speaking events, including two at the Tel Aviv Culture Center on Wednesday. The New York Times best-selling author said in a post on X that 3,000 people attended an event he participated in with conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro in Jerusalem in mid-November.
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US Moves Patriot Missile Batteries from South Korea to Middle East
A Patriot missile battery. Photo: IDF.
i24 News – American Patriot missile defense batteries will be moved from South Korea to the Middle East, according to reports in Asian media on Friday, amid speculation over a potential military action against Iran’s nuclear program and escalating bombardments of Iran-backed jihadists in Yemen.
US President Donald Trump threatened Iran on Sunday with bombing and secondary tariffs if Tehran did not come to an agreement with Washington over its nuclear program, and the United States has moved additional warplanes into the region.
Washington and Seoul have reportedly recently agreed on the “monthslong” partial deployment of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3, in what is understood to be the first known case involving the relocation of United States Forces Korea (USFK) assets to the Middle East.
Iran in recent years has largely dropped the pretense of enriching uranium for a civilian atomic energy program, as it’s reportedly teetering on the nuclear precipice. Israel believes that a nuclear Iran represents a grave existential threat, consistent with the exterminationist antisemitism of the Islamic Republic’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
After the election of Trump, a known Iran hawk, the likelihood of an U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities has increased precipitously.
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Report: Iranian Plot to Assassinate Azerbaijani Rabbi Foiled
The Azerbaijani capital of Baku. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
i24 News – Iran enlisted the services of a Georgian drug trafficker to carry out an assassination of a prominent Azerbaijani rabbi, the Washington Post reported Saturday, citing security officials.
The plot to murder Rabbi Shneor Segal, foiled by the State Security Service of Azerbaijan in early January, also involved a plan to attack a Jewish education center, the officials said.
The plot was set in motion by an officer with Iran’s Quds Force, who met with Georgian criminal Agil Aslanov, handing him a photo of Segal and detailed instructions on how to murder him, the officials cited by WaPo said. Aslanov’s fee for the foiled hit was $200,000.
The State Security Service said the two men “worked to collect information about a member of a religious community, and sent the location of his residence and workplace to a representative of a foreign special service agency via the appropriate mobile phone application.”
Iran is known to be behind multiple plots against Israeli and Jewish targets, many of which have been foiled by Israeli and foreign security services.
However a recent plot saw three citizens of Uzbekistan murder an Israeli rabbi in the United Arab Emirates on Iranian orders. The three were sentenced to death earlier this week for the murder of Zvi Kogan in November.
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Netanyahu to Depart for Washington on Sunday Directly from Hungary to Meet with Trump
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Feb. 16, 2025. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will depart to Washington DC on Sunday directly from Hungary—where he is presently on an official visit—to meet with US President Donald Trump, i24NEWS learned on Saturday from an Israeli source.
The visit comes following a phone conversation between the leaders on Friday, and a call with State Secretary Marco Rubio a short while ago.
As a result, the planned visit to Washington of Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz will be postponed once again.
Topics of discussion between the two leaders are expected to include the possible military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Gaza war and the future of the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave, the US bombing campaign against Iran-backed Houthi jihadists in Yemen, and the recent imposition of tariffs on Israeli products.
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