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An Israeli flag football team forfeited a game on Shabbat. It won the European championship anyway.
(JTA) — Israel’s under-17 men’s flag football team won its first-ever gold medal at the 2023 International Federation of American Football’s European Junior Flag Football Championships hosted in Grosseto, Italy, this past weekend.
The Israeli team beat Serbia 34-14 in the championship game after defeating Italy in a close semifinal. Israel’s under-17 women’s team and under-15 coed team both finished fifth in their respective competitions.
“Our first gold after decades of trying,” Steve Leibowitz, president of American Football in Israel (AFI), told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Tough young Israeli players against the best young players in Europe. The moment the whistle blew… I knew we had finally arrived. Next thought, first we conquer Europe, the Worlds are next.”
Despite appeals from the Israeli players — a majority of whom are Orthodox, according to Leibowitz — Israel was scheduled to play games on Shabbat. All three teams had to forfeit, resulting in 35-0 losses.
Leibowitz said the under-17 men’s team had performed well enough to advance to the final four even with the forfeit, but that the under-17 women’s team would have needed a win in Saturday’s game in order to advance.
American football is on the rise in Israel, where approximately 2,000 players, coaches and referees are now involved in the league throughout the country. The sport has made notable strides among native-born Israelis, Leibowitz told JTA earlier this year. Israel hosted the 2019 European Flag Football Championship and the 2021 Flag Football World Championship.
Last month, Israel’s men’s national team won a bronze medal at the Flag Football European Championships in Limerick, Ireland.
Leibowitz — a journalist who moved from the United States to Israel in 1974 and has spearheaded the slow but steady growth of football there — said AFI has developed enough talent to send a team to the 2024 World Championship in Finland, where finishing in the top eight would earn qualification for the 2025 World Games in China. He said the organization’s ultimate goal is to qualify for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles — which might include flag football for the first time.
After this weekend’s win, Leibowitz thanked those who have financially supported the sport’s growth in Israel, namely New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft — who built Israel’s first football field in 2000 — as well as Minnesota Vikings owner Mark Wilf.
“With the help of the Kraft family we created a game plan and implementation is underway,” Leibowitz said. “It starts with great coaches, creating stiff competition to make the team, tough Israel league competition and as much international tournament experience as possible.”
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Israel Warns Hezbollah After Terror Group Defies Lebanon’s Calls to Stay Out of Iran War
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Friday warned the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah against joining Iran’s war on the Jewish state, after the Iranian proxy threatened to take action in support of Tehran’s campaign — defying the Lebanese government’s demands to keep the country out of the conflict.
“The Hezbollah Secretary-General [Sheikh Naim Qassem] has not learned the lessons of his predecessors and is threatening to act against Israel at the direction of the Iranian dictator,” Katz wrote in a post on X, referring to former leaders of the terrorist group who were killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during last year’s war.
“I advise the Lebanese proxy to be cautious and understand that Israel has lost patience with terrorists who threaten it. If there is terrorism — there will be no Hezbollah,” the Israeli defense chief wrote in a Hebrew post.
מזכ”ל החיזבאללה לא לומד לקח מקודמיו ומאיים לפעול נגד ישראל בהתאם להוראת הדיקטטור האיראני.
אני מציע לפרוקסי הלבנוני להיזהר ולהבין שישראל איבדה את הסבלנות כלפי טרוריסטים שמאיימים עליה.
אם יהיה טרור – לא יהיה חיזבאללה.
— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) June 20, 2025
Last fall, Israel decimated much of Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive, which ended with a ceasefire that concluded a year of fighting between the Jewish state and the Iran-backed terror group.
On Thursday, Qassem reaffirmed Hezbollah’s support for the Islamist regime in Iran in its war against Israel, following a week in which Iran suffered heavy losses from Israeli strikes. He also renewed accusations that the United States is complicit in facilitating the Israeli offensive.
Hezbollah is “not neutral, and therefore we express our position alongside Iran, its leadership and its people, and we will act as we see fit in confronting this brutal Israeli-American aggression,” the terror group’s leader said in a statement on Telegram.
“Tyrannical America and criminal Israel will not be able to subjugate the Iranian people and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” Qassem continued. Hezbollah has a duty “to stand by Iran and provide it with all forms of support that contribute to putting an end to this tyranny and oppression.”
Qassem’s latest remarks came just a week after the Iran-backed terror group announced it would refrain from launching retaliatory strikes against Israel in support of Tehran, following a warning from the Lebanese government not to drag the country into a broader conflict.
According to the Saudi news outlet Al-Arabiya, Lebanese authorities informed the Iranian terrorist proxy that it would not tolerate its involvement in Tehran’s response against Israel, warning it would bear responsibility for dragging the country into war.
“The time when the organization bypassed the state in deciding to go to war is over,” the terrorist group was told, according to the report. “The decision of war and peace is exclusively in the hands of the Lebanese state.”
Last week, Israel launched a broad preemptive attack on Iran — dubbed Operation Rising Lion — targeting military installations and nuclear sites across the country in what officials described as an effort to neutralize an imminent nuclear threat.
The ongoing Israeli strikes killed several of Iran’s top military commanders and nuclear scientists and dealt a major blow to the country’s retaliatory capabilities, destroying not only much of its ballistic missile stockpiles but also crippling its launch platforms.
Meanwhile, US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack, who is currently visiting Beirut, met with Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a close Hezbollah ally, and cautioned him against involving Lebanon in the escalating Israeli-Iranian conflict.
“I can say on behalf of President Trump … that would be a very, very, very bad decision,” Barrack said.
The post Israel Warns Hezbollah After Terror Group Defies Lebanon’s Calls to Stay Out of Iran War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iranian Missile Strikes Haifa Mosque, Injures Muslim Clerics While ‘Firing Indiscriminately at Civilians’
A man walks near broken windows at a mosque that was damaged following Iran’s missile strike on Israel, amid the Iran-Israel conflict, in Haifa, Israel, June 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Rami Shlush
A mosque in the Israeli city of Haifa was hit by a ballistic missile launched by Iran on Friday morning and Muslim clerics were among those injured in the attack.
Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar said Iran’s barrage of missiles targeting Haifa struck the Al-Jarina Mosque in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood and clerics inside the mosque sustained injuries. Haifa is a port city in the north that has a mixed Arab and Israeli population.
“The Iranian regime is targeting Muslim, Christian, and Jewish civilians, as well as civilian sites. These are war crimes,” said Sa’ar in a post on X. He also shared a video of the mosque that was hit in the missile attack.
The Iranian regime launched a missile attack on Haifa and struck the Al-Jarina Mosque in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood. The missile attack injured Muslim clerics who were in the mosque.
The Iranian regime is targeting Muslim, Christian, and Jewish civilians, as well as civilian… pic.twitter.com/aG9JRfyLP7— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) June 20, 2025
Sa’ar later arrived at the scene of the strike and gave a statement to the press.
Photos shared on social media show the mosque’s broken windows and other damage to the religious site, all as a result of the Iranian strike.
Haifa mosque was indeed hit in the last ballistic missile attack. pic.twitter.com/m0AUN8IPrY
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 20, 2025
“The Iranian regime is firing indiscriminately at civilians — with zero regard for who they hit,” read a post on Israel’s official X account about the missile attack in Haifa.
Iran launched around 20 to 25 ballistic missiles at Israel on Friday and at least 19 people were wounded from the strikes in Haifa, local authorities said.
A spokesperson for Israel’s national emergency response service, Magen David Adom (MDA), said its teams treated and evacuated injuries civilians that include a roughly 40-year-old man in serious condition, a 16-year-old boy in serious condition with shrapnel in his upper body, and a 54-year-old man in moderate condition with shrapnel in his lower limbs.
Friday marks one week since the start of the Israel-Iran war, which began with the Jewish state launching pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear and military targets in a campaign known as Operation Rising Lion. MDA said that since the war began on June 13, its paramedics and EMTs have treated at least 1,007 people, including 23 who have died.
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Europe Foreign Ministers See ‘Perilous’ Moment, Urge Iran to Talk to US
European foreign ministers talk over lunch at the offices of the honorary Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany in Geneva, Switzerland June 20, 2025, before meeting with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to discuss Iran’s nuclear program. Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/Pool via REUTERS
European foreign ministers urged Iran on Friday to engage with the United States over its nuclear program after high-level talks in Geneva aimed at opening negotiations for a new nuclear deal ended with little sign of progress.
The talks between the foreign ministers of Germany, Britain, France, and the EU with their Iranian counterpart sought to test Tehran’s readiness to negotiate despite there being scant prospect of Israel ceasing its attacks soon, diplomats said.
“The Iranian Foreign Minister has expressed his willingness to continue discussions on the nuclear program and more broadly on all issues, and we expect Iran to commit to the discussion, including with the United States, to reach a negotiated settlement,” said French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot.
Britain’s foreign minister David Lammy said the European countries were eager to continue talks with Iran.
“This is a perilous moment, and it is hugely important that we don’t see regional escalation of this conflict,” he said.
Tehran, under mounting pressure to agree tough curbs on its nuclear program to prevent the potential development of an atomic weapon, has repeatedly said it will not talk to the Trump administration until Israeli attacks end.
European ministers spoke ahead of their Geneva meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio who signaled that Washington was open to direct talks even as it considers joining Israeli strikes intended to smash Tehran’s nuclear capacity, diplomatic sources said.
Washington did not confirm that, though broadcaster CNN quoted a US official saying President Donald Trump supported diplomacy by allies that could bring Iran closer to a deal.
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