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For 5 days, an endangered seal became a celebrity on an Israeli beach. Locals want her back.
JAFFA, Israel (JTA) — For most of the past week, Israel’s latest unlikely celebrity lounged on the Jaffa beach, drawing throngs of onlookers, constant media attention and round-the-clock protection from the government as she sunbathed and slept the day away.
Then early on Tuesday afternoon, the unwitting star named Yulia — a rare 6-foot species of seal weighing hundreds of pounds who has traveled the eastern Mediterranean — waded into the water and swam away. She left no sign of whether she would ever return.
Her departure has left some local residents bereft and others hopeful that she may find a safer home than a bare beach with little shelter, other animals and litter. News of her departure spread quickly through the area’s social media and WhatsApp groups, one of which had even changed its name from “Friends of Jaffa” to “Friends of Yulia.”
“Of course I know she’s not smiling, but her lips are formed in a way that makes her look like she is. She’s so utterly calm — even while a million people are watching her,” said Jaffa resident Aya Zaken, who added that she was “deeply sad” that Yulia had returned to sea.
Seeing the mammal for the first time was a “much more moving” experience than she had expected, Zaken said — partly because of the seal’s size but also because of the effect she had on onlookers.
“When faced with her, I felt an overwhelming sense of calm, like a deep meditation,” Zaken said. “The feeling that this is so much bigger than me or my troubles.”
Yulia, who was given her name by a local boy who first discovered her, arrived on Jaffa’s beach on Friday. She had since been the subject of 24-hour surveillance both by the press and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, which had sent volunteers to keep watch and ensure that the crowds of people who have gathered since her arrival didn’t disturb her.
Yulia is a Mediterranean monk seal, one of roughly 600-700 left in the world, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, though other estimates put the number even lower. The species is classified as endangered.
Yulia was listless and shaking when she first arrived on Israeli shores, and experts were worried that she was ill. But when Turkish researchers at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, received images of Yulia, they recognized her as a monk seal they had already seen, named Tugra, who is known to have a penchant for both swimming great lengths and napping for extraordinarily long stretches of time. She is over 20 years old and has a reputation for traveling, having been spotted as far off as Greece and Turkey.
“On the one hand, I’m on such a high, I haven’t slept in days,” said Mia Elasar, who has been researching monk seals for 30 years. “As a child I heard that there were once far more seals here; and now, to see one in real life, it’s a legend that has come alive.”
Elasar is the founder of the Delphis Association, an Israeli nonprofit for marine mammals that has partnered with the IUCN on a joint project for the protection of monk seals. She said Yulia’s (or Tugra’s) globetrotting isn’t the only reason for her extreme fatigue. When she arrived in Jaffa, she was spotted with large bite marks in two areas of her body. According to Elasar’s Turkish colleagues, those marks were not present at her last sighting in 2019, off the coast of Lebanon. She was also shedding her fur, a process that requires a lot of energy.
“I worry for her here,” Elasar said. “It makes more sense for her to go back.”
Onlookers view Yulia from a distance. (Deborah Danan)
Some Jaffa residents agreed that the beach — with its crowds, dogs and considerable volume of garbage — wasn’t the best place for their beloved guest. Elasar added that Israel lacks the resources to give Yulia the protection she needs. To provide a more permanent home for her and her fellow seals, she said, authorities would need to build caves along the shoreline where the marine animals could rest.
“I think it is for the best,” said Dan, a resident of Jaffa who declined to give his last name. “It was probably a matter of time until someone would potentially harm her or ‘adopt’ her to live in a bath or aquarium, or even try to eat her.”
In the end, Yulia apparently felt the same way. After 48 hours of sleeping following her arrival, she finally went back to sea. Over the ensuing two days, she was in and out of the water, until, on Tuesday, she left for the longest stretch yet. She was spotted swimming opposite the nearby Jaffa port on Wednesday morning, which gives optimists reason to believe that she will yet return.
“I very much want her to come back,” said Arnon Pinchuk, 14, who came with some of his classmates to see Yulia on Wednesday morning, only to learn that she had left.
Pinchuk was one of only 18 students from the Kehila Democratic School in Jaffa to take the trip. Asked why the rest of his 103-student class did not come along for the adventure, Pinchuk answered, “Because they’re losers who prefer being on their phones.”
Jaffa has a diverse population of Jews, Christians and Muslims and, for many of the residents, Yulia’s arrival was a unifying event. That was especially the case amid recent events in the country, which range from civil strife over a proposed overhaul of Israel’s judiciary to the recent five-day conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Yulia got to Jaffa near the end of that round of fighting.
“She came at a time when people need quiet and solidarity and unity and happiness,” Zaken said. “I hope she gathers her strength and comes back and tells us all how awesome we are.”
Along with locals, Yulia attracted a gaggle of photographers who have spent hours training their lenses on her. Yehiel Lamesh, an amateur photographer, traveled from the southern port city of Ashdod to visit Yulia, and said, “I would go around the world to see such a creature, so of course I would come here.”
To Ziv Binunski, a cameraman for Israel’s Channel 12 News, Yulia’s sojourn was a welcome respite from his other assignments, which include capturing rocket fire over the Gaza border, as well as the anti-government protests roiling the country.
On Wednesday morning, he stood on the beach, hoping to catch her return.
“It’s such a different experience, being connected to the sea and to nature,” he said, “and to be dependent on the whims of animals, and not humans.”
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Boston-area Jewish day school to close after 25 years, saying its model is ‘no longer sustainable’
(JTA) — For two decades, MetroWest Jewish Day School eked out an existence in the suburbs of Boston, providing what parents say was a warm and nurturing Jewish education to just dozens of children.
Now, the school says it simply cannot go on. MetroWest will shutter at the end of the academic year, officials announced last week.
“Despite extensive and sustained efforts by our Board, school leadership, faculty, staff, and committed community members to identify a viable path forward, we have concluded that our model of highly individualized Jewish day school education is no longer sustainable in the Metrowest area of Boston,” wrote board chair Steven Finn and head of school Brian Cohen wrote. “This decision was made with great care and reflection.”
Located in Framingham, Massachusetts, MetroWest Jewish Day opened in 2003 and enrolls students in pre-K through eighth grade. In its closure announcement, the school said it has served more than 300 students from over 30 towns in the greater Boston area over 25 years. According to social media posts, graduating eighth grade classes are typically between five and 10 students.
Currently, there are only about 20 students enrolled across all grades, school officials said. The school’s website shows 15 faculty and staff members.
“It’s a well-respected school,” Cohen told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “But in the end, if there’s not a demand for the product, the quality of the product doesn’t necessarily matter, because you don’t have customers wishing to participate.”
The closure follows a spate of recent closures of small Conservative or pluralistic Jewish day schools across the country, including in New Jersey, New York City and Arizona. Many of the schools had seen enrollment dwindle sharply. (Orthodox schools are faring better.)
Prizmah, the nonprofit network supporting Jewish schools, said it believed interest in day school enrollment had risen in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, as families gained new appreciation for Jewish community. But Cohen said there had been no “surge” at MetroWest, which already suffered during the Covid era.
“A lot of schools have substantially lower enrollment now than they did at the same time 10 or 20 years ago,” Cohen added. “We just are the one that is in the most critical condition right now.”
Now, MetroWest’s families must find other schools for next year. The school says founders Steven and Renée Finn “have generously committed to providing tuition scholarship support for current students who continue their Jewish day school education through eighth grade.”
Where the students might land is an open question. The Boston area is home to 13 other day schools, according to Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the city’s Jewish federation. (A “diasporic” day school that does not support Israel as a Jewish state is also in development; its founder has declined to speak with JTA but has said she believes there is adequate demand for such a school.)
MetroWest is about 15 miles from its most similar alternative, another pluralistic primary school called Jewish Community Day School of Boston. Commuting in the city’s notorious traffic could take up to an hour.
“The end of the MetroWest Jewish Day School leaves a huge hole for the local community,” said Paul Bernstein, CEO of Prizmah. “Steven and Renee Finn, working with Brian Cohen and so many others, created a wonderful school and built a proud 25-year legacy for the students and families whose lives it enriched.”
For now, the school is being mourned by the families that used it. Aviva Fellman, a rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel in Worcester, Massachusetts, is a parent of four. Her children attended MetroWest for eight years, commuting about 60 miles roundtrip.
Last year, after her oldest daughter graduated the family opted to put all of the children in schools closer to their home.
“They are still close to the friends that they made there, and we are grateful to the school for the education and social-emotional support that they received as they are all thriving and able to self-advocate and stay on top of their schooling through these changes,” Fellman said. “We also continue to be impressed with how each of our children are critical thinkers, enthusiastic learners, kind to others, and feel strongly and proudly Jewish and we thank the school for supporting and being part of all of that.”
The post Boston-area Jewish day school to close after 25 years, saying its model is ‘no longer sustainable’ appeared first on The Forward.
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France issues arrest warrants against 2 right-wing French-Israeli activists for ‘complicity in genocide’
(JTA) — France has issued arrest warrants for two French-Israeli activists for “complicity in genocide,” a charge that stemmed from the pair allegedly blocking humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip.
The arrest warrants were issued in July against Nili Kupfer-Naouri, the president of the organization Israel Is Forever, and Rachel Touitou, an activist with the organization Tsav 9, a right-wing Israeli group that was sanctioned by the United States in June 2024 for destroying humanitarian aid for Gaza.
The two have been charged with “complicity in genocide” and “public and direct incitement to genocide,” the French newspaper Le Monde reported on Monday. They are accused of trying to block humanitarian aid trucks from entering Gaza between January and November 2024 and in May 2025.
An array of activists, including military reservists and family members of some hostages, sought to block the aid trucks from entering Gaza on the theory that helping Gazans would alleviate pressure on Hamas.
In an interview with i24News, Kupfer-Naouri said, “I blocked trucks that were supplying Hamas. If I had to do it again, I would do it again.” (Israel accused Hamas of stealing aid shipments to Gaza during the conflict.)
The warrants are notable because they represent a success by advocacy organizations seeking to hold Israelis responsible for what they say are war crimes. The warrants stemmed from a complaint made last year by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the groups Al-Mezan and Al-Haq, which were all sanctioned by the United States in September for having “directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent.”
In a joint statement with the French Jewish Union for Peace, which joined the complaint, the groups called the arrest warrant against Kupfer-Naouri “a historic step forward in the fight against impunity.”
The warrants call for Kupfer-Naouri and Touitou, who were both born in France and live in Israel, to appear before an investigating judge, but not for their detention, according to the French news agency AFP.
Touitou condemned the arrest warrant in a post on X Monday.
“If peacefully demonstrating with an Israeli flag against a terrorist organization seizing humanitarian aid, diverting it, and reselling it at exorbitant prices to Gazans is a crime—then there’s no need to look down on the Mullahs, France is just like Iran!,” she wrote. “I will always fight to defend the truth, my people, and my country 🇮🇱.”
In an interview posted on X last month, Kupfer-Naouri called the investigation an “antisemitic delusion,” adding, “I will no longer be able to set foot in France because I have no intention of going to French jails, neither in police custody, nor anything else.”
Kupfer-Naouri said the investigation could set a “very dangerous precedent” for French-Israeli soldiers in the Israeli military who return home to France.
Some Israeli soldiers traveling abroad have faced war crime inquiries for their actions in Gaza. Over the summer, some Canadian IDF soldiers also reported that they feared returning home after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced it had opened an investigation into crimes committed by Canadians during the war in Gaza.
The post France issues arrest warrants against 2 right-wing French-Israeli activists for ‘complicity in genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Islamic State Terrorist Attack on Niger Airport Potentially More Deadly Than Government Revealed
Members of the Nigerien army walk near the motorcycles seized from the attackers, following an attack on Niamey International Airport, in Niamey, Niger, Jan. 29, 2026, in this screengrab from a video. Photo: ORTN/Reuters TV/Handout via REUTERSISIS
Islamic State’s attack on the airport in Niger‘s capital Niamey last week may have been more severe than the Nigerien government claimed, according to recent reports and a video released by a media outlet affiliated with the terrorist group.
More than 30 members of the Islamic State branch in the Sahel region targeted the Diori Hamani International Airport and Air Base 101 shortly after midnight on Thursday using guns, drones, and explosives. The jihadist group on Friday took credit for the assault in a short statement released online through its propaganda outlet, Amaq News Agency.
US forces had previously used the air base in Niamey — located six miles from the presidential palace — for maintaining drones until withdrawing in 2024 following the previous year’s coup d’état orchestrated by former Presidential Guard commander General Abdourahamane Tchiani, who now serves as the landlocked country’s 11th president.
Niger’s military and Russia’s Africa Corps mercenary group, which was also stationed at the base, said they combated the attack. Niger has so far reported four of its troops suffered injuries and there was little damage. The government said it killed 20 attackers and captured 11, at least one of whom was a French national, leading Nigerien authorities to blame France and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for the attack.
“We remind the sponsors of those mercenaries, who are Emmanuel Macron [president of France], Patrice Talon [president of Benin], and Alassane Ouattara [president of the Ivory Coast], we have sufficiently heard them bark, and they should now in turn be prepared to hear us roar,” Tchiani said in a statement on national television.
While the government’s reason for ignoring Islamic State was not immediately clear, Niger has previously blamed its neighbors and former colonial ruler France for internal instability.
However, following its initial claim of responsibility, Islamic State published a 90-secoind video of the attack through Amaq News Agency, depicting far more damage than what Nigerien authorities claimed.
The video showed that some attackers came in on motorcycles and attacked aircraft hangars in Air Base 101, burning and shooting the planes. The video also presented a burning helicopter, and an additional statement from the terrorist group claimed the torching of a drone.
Local reports and accounts circulated on social media aligned with Islamic State’s account of greater damage, describing hits on civilian aircraft and a destroyed ammunition depot.
The base is a key military hub in the region, reportedly hosting a contested stockpile of uranium and the headquarters for the Niger-Burkina Faso-Mali Joint Force.
Caleb Weiss, an analyst who focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa, reported in the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Long War Journal that unconfirmed social media reports reveal “a much higher death toll for both local Nigerien security forces and men from Russia’s Africa Corps who were also stationed at the airbase” — specifically, at least 24 Nigerien soldiers and three Russian mercenaries.
At the same time as the Niger attack, Islamic State’s West Africa Province perpetrated a similar strike in Nigeria’s Sabon Gari army base in Borno, leaving at least nine dead and more wounded.
The assaults came amid a surge of Islamic State terrorist activity across Africa, including the Sahel region, which stretches from the Horn of Africa to the Atlantic Ocean, just under the Sahara Desert. The Islamic State regional affiliate there has killed more than 120 people in the Tillabéri territory in September and also kidnapped an American in October.
“From Somalia to Nigeria, the problem set is connected. So, we’re trying to take it apart and then provide partners with the information they need,” the deputy commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), Lt. General John Brennan, said in January.
Terrorism in western Africa has exploded in recent years following three coups which have led their military leaders to create a confederacy aligned with Russia. Niger has joined with Burkina Faso and Mali to create the Association of Sahel States (AES), as an alternative to the ECOWAS. Reports have emerged of alleged atrocities committed by Russian mercenaries in Mali.
A November report from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point revealed that Africa had become the global hot spot for terrorist killings. Analysts explained that “where once the global terror threat was concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa, today it is centered in the Sahel, specifically in the tri-border region between Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.”
The data showed that 86 percent of deaths caused by terrorism happened in 10 countries with 7 in Africa and 5 in the Sahel.