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Americans waiting to evacuate Israel by sea hope for safety and respite
HAIFA (JTA) — Before boarding a ship departing from Israel, Ariela Keshet explained that she has attended three funerals this week — two for soldiers killed in Israel’s war with Hamas, and one for a victim of the terror group’s massacre at an outdoor music festival.
Now, she is welcoming the chance to leave for Cyprus, where the family will take refuge before returning to their home in the Golan Heights, close to Israel’s borders with Syria and Lebanon.
“It has been stressful, especially for people who have lived here before with rockets,” she said, explaining that in 2006, during Israel’s war with Lebanon, she lived in Tzfat — another northern city close to the border. “It was traumatic — I’d rather not relive that,” she said.
But Keshet added that “within one family, you can have all of those different levels of concern” — and hers is no exception.
“I don’t want to go. I think it is wrong to leave our country and my brother agrees with me,” her daughter, Emunah, 14, protested as the family prepared to board.
The family was among hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian Americans, along with other U.S. citizens who happened to be in Israel when Hamas attacked, to wait in line for hours to board a boat evacuating U.S. citizens and their family members from the embattled country as it prepares to ramp up its war with Hamas in Gaza.
The U.S. embassy announced the rare step late of Saturday, instructing Americans to get to the Haifa port by 9 a.m. Monday with a maximum of one piece of luggage, a carry-on and no pets. Passengers had to promise to pay back the as-yet-undetermined cost of the trip and where they went from Cyprus after the roughly 12-hour journey would be up to them.
The boat left at 3 p.m., six hours after citizens were asked to arrive at the port.
In line at the Haifa port’s terminal, a mix of English, Hebrew, Arabic and Russian could be overheard. For Kristen, Sandy and Debby, three American Christians caught in Israel at the wrong time, the trip to Cyprus is an “unexpected adventure” to conclude an unforgettable vacation. “We are praying for peace and the safety for everyone living here,” said Kristen, who is from Arizona and declined to give her last name.
Roughly 500,000 American citizens live in Israel, and the crowd at the port represented only a tiny fraction of that. Many are choosing to stay and join in the effort to support the war and the people and communities affected by Hamas’ attack, which has transformed Israel into a country of volunteers.
Cheryl Rosenberg, 31, for example, told JTA that she did not consider leaving because she felt loyal to Israel during a time of crisis. (She also noted that the embassy didn’t say how much the trip would cost.) “This is our home and I don’t want to run away,” she said. “I want to do what I can to help.”
American citizens wait to evacuate Israel via the Haifa Port, Oct. 16, 2023. (Eliyahu Freedman)
Scott, a 25-year-old Christian Palestinian-American from Minnesota who also declined to share his last name, arrived at the Haifa port at 1 a.m. after abruptly leaving Bethlehem in the West Bank, where he has studied Arabic for the past few months.
“The streets are empty in Bethlehem and the main road is blocked off. The Arabic program moved online but most of the students left the program,” he said. “Everyone in the West Bank is treating it like the weather. If you are hit by a snowstorm, you go to the store and prepare for the worst, but nobody has control over the weather.”
While the United States has offered pathways for its citizens to leave Israel and Palestinian areas, and has sent aid to Israel, Scott said he thought Palestinians are not being sufficiently protected and criticized the United States’ approach to the conflict.
“They said they want to bring in these big boats to deter any violence,” he said, referring to aircraft carriers the United States has moved to the eastern Mediterranean as a warning to nearby countries not to get involved in the war. “But what about the violence in Gaza? Is one more important than the other?”
That criticism did not stop Scott from striking up a friendship with Tony Wolf, 30, an Israeli-American pharmacist from the central city of Kfar Saba who arrived an hour later than him.
“When a Palestinian and a Jewish person meet, we are friends with a similar culture. We have no problems when politics are aside,” Wolf said, adding that he needs “to clear out” his mind. He said he was traumatized by the death of “a lot of my friends who were killed in the army and party and rescue missions.”
For some passengers, the journey was fraught with emotional pain. Alan Cohen, a 56-year-old Israeli-American English teacher who grew up in Israel and served in its military, said the war was the last straw before making the painful decision to “leave behind all my possessions” and leave the country “heartbroken and regretting it.”
“Everything here [was] extremely difficult and frustrating” even prior to the war, Cohen said, adding, “If the war was not happening I would be leaving anyways.”
Cohen said that he has had difficulty obtaining a pension in Israel and plans to teach at a Hebrew school in Massachusetts, where he will “tell the truth about Israel” and the challenges new immigrants face.
“If anybody wants to make aliyah and come here, I say don’t,” he said, using the Hebrew term for Jewish immigration to Israel. “I really do not know if I will come back or not. Come back to what?”
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The post Americans waiting to evacuate Israel by sea hope for safety and respite appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘Totally Obliterated’: US Bombs Iran’s Nuclear Sites, Trump Declares Operation a Success
US President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation alongside US Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the White House in Washington, DC, US, June 21, 2025, following US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Pool
The United States launched a large-scale military strike against Iran early Saturday, destroying key nuclear enrichment facilities, including the heavily fortified Fordow site.
US President Donald Trump said in a public address that the operation had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities and urged Tehran to “make peace,” warning that any future aggression would be met with even greater force.
The multi-pronged strike combined stealth B‑2 Spirit bombers deploying bunker-buster bombs with Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from submarines. Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan — all central to the Iranian nuclear program — were targeted in a coordinated assault. US military officials said the campaign neutralized Iran’s main enrichment operations.
Trump praised Israel’s role in coordinating the response and hailed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a key partner, saying the two leaders worked “as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before.” Netanyahu, for his part, called the American action “unmatched” and said it signaled a shift toward restoring regional stability.
Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the operation as a breach of sovereignty and international law, vowing to respond with force. Hours after the strike, Iran retaliated by unleashing a salvo of roughly 30 ballistic and hypersonic missiles toward central Israel. Several missiles hit urban centers including Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Haifa, and surrounding areas, causing injuries to at least 25 civilians and extensive property damage. Israel closed its airspace and instructed residents in key regions to only venture out for essential activities. In response, Israeli jets struck military targets in Iran, including missile launch sites and rocket depots.
Domestically, Trump’s decision exposed sharp political divisions in Washington. Republican hawks applauded the move as decisive, while isolationists and some constitutional conservatives questioned the legality of bypassing Congress, demanding oversight before further military escalation. Meanwhile, the United Nations and key US allies, including Britain and France, urged caution and a swift return to diplomatic solutions.
Iranian state media reported that most nuclear material was evacuated from Fordow ahead of the strike, the Reuters news agency reported. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, said it detected no spike in off-site radiation.
According to Arab sources cited in The Wall Street Journal, the United States sent messages via regional intermediaries to reassure Tehran that the strike was a one-off and not part of a campaign to topple the regime. A senior US official confirmed that the administration clarified it had no intention of pursuing regime change and that the door remained open to renewed negotiations.
US Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), co-sponsors of a bipartisan resolution to block unauthorized military action in Iran, criticized Trump’s strike as unconstitutional. Massie called the move illegal, while Khanna urged Congress to immediately vote on their Iran War Powers Resolution “to prevent America from being dragged into another endless Middle East war.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), meanwhile, called for Trump’s ouster, claiming it violated the US Constitution and as such was an impeachable offense.
“The president’s disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers. He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations. It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment,” she said.
Arsen Ostrovsky, a leading human rights lawyer and CEO of the International Legal Forum, rejected the criticism. He said Trump was acting well within his powers under Article II of the Constitution, which grants the president authority as commander-in-chief to protect national security.
“This is not without precedent,” Ostrovsky told The Algemeiner, pointing to former President Barack Obama’s operation to kill Osama bin Laden and former President Joe Biden’s airstrikes on Iranian proxies in Syria.
“Trump did not need the authorization of Congress in order to initiate a military strike,” he said, adding that the action was also supported by the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and Article 51 of the UN Charter, which affirms a nation’s right to self-defense.
Ostrovsky also defended the legality of Israel’s involvement, saying its campaign was not a sudden act of aggression but a response to a protracted armed conflict initiated by Iran.
“Faced with an existential and imminent threat from a nuclear Iran, the Jewish state had no choice but to act before it was too late,” he said. He described the strikes as “lawful, necessary, and proportionate under the Laws of Armed Conflict against a genocidal regime that had vowed to destroy the world’s only Jewish state and stood on the cusp of acquiring the means to do so, had Israel not acted.”
“In striking Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Israel and the United States made the world a safer place. They did it not only in their own defense, but in defense of the free world,” he concluded.
The post ‘Totally Obliterated’: US Bombs Iran’s Nuclear Sites, Trump Declares Operation a Success first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Strike on Tehran Kills Bodyguard of Slain Hezbollah Chief
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi lays a wreath as he visits the burial site of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, on the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon, June 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A member of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was killed in an Israeli air strike on Tehran alongside a member of an Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group, a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters and the Iraqi group said on Saturday.
The source identified the Hezbollah member as Abu Ali Khalil, who had served as a bodyguard for Hezbollah’s slain chief Hassan Nasrallah. The source said Khalil had been on a religious pilgrimage to Iraq when he met up with a member of the Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada group.
They traveled together to Tehran and were both killed in an Israeli strike there, along with Khalil’s son, the senior security source said. Hezbollah has not joined in Iran’s air strikes against Israel from Lebanon.
Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada published a statement confirming that both the head of its security unit and Khalil had been killed in an Israeli strike.
Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli aerial attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs in September.
Israel and Iran have been trading strikes for nine consecutive days since Israel launched attacks on Iran, saying Tehran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran has said it does not seek nuclear weapons.
The post Israeli Strike on Tehran Kills Bodyguard of Slain Hezbollah Chief first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Financial Officer and Commander Eliminated by IDF in the Gaza Strip
Israeli soldiers operate during a ground operation in the southern Gaza Strip, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, July 3, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in cooperation with the General Security Service (Shin Bet), announced on Friday the killing of Ibrahim Abu Shamala, a senior financial official in Hamas’ military wing.
The operation took place on June 17th in the central Gaza Strip.
Abu Shamala held several key positions, including financial officer for Hamas’ military wing and assistant to Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’ military wing until his elimination in March 2024.
He was responsible for managing all the financial resources of Hamas’ military wing in Gaza, overseeing the planning and execution of the group’s war budget. This involved handling and smuggling millions of dollars into the Gaza Strip to fund Hamas’ military operations.
The post Hamas Financial Officer and Commander Eliminated by IDF in the Gaza Strip first appeared on Algemeiner.com.