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‘Hebrew in the huddle’: American football kicks off another season in Israel
(JTA) — The year was 1999, and Jonathan Hauser was working as a concierge at the famous King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
At the time, Hauser was playing for the Jerusalem Lions flag football team, a part of the American Football in Israel organization. The league was 10 years old at the time but lacked adequate playing fields. One day, he spotted a face he knew from TV in the hotel lobby: New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
Hauser told Kraft about American Football in Israel (AFI) — which Kraft, despite being a regular Israel visitor, did not know existed — and connected him with Steve Leibowitz, a veteran journalist who moved to Israel in 1974 and had been leading the development of the sport in Israel.
Just a year later, Kraft inaugurated the small Kraft Family Stadium in Jerusalem, with a field only 80 yards long (instead of the regulation 100-yard length in the NFL). The AFI — which started with touch football and later expanded to flag football and adult tackle football — had found a field.
On Saturday night, the AFI kicks off its season in Bet Shemesh with a matchup between the Bet Shemesh Rebels and the Jerusalem Lions, in front of a sold-out crowd of 400. Around 2,000 players, coaches and referees are now involved in the league throughout the country. The adult tackle league features eight teams from different cities who compete in an eight-game regular season, followed by playoffs that culminate in the Israel Bowl championship game in the spring. Other programs for men, women and children of all ages are offered in cities across Israel.
“The dream of building football in the country is due to the partnership and friendship and help of Robert Kraft, without any question, and his family,” said Leibowitz, a New York City native and longtime Giants fan.
Leibowitz had the dream since the 1980s, when he and a group of journalists put together a sports club to watch American football by pirating the signal from the Armed Forces Network. That inspired them to start the league.
In 2017, Kraft donated $6 million to open the Kraft Family Sports Campus in Jerusalem, which Leibowitz said is home to the only regulation-size American football field in the Middle East, plus facilities for soccer, basketball and more.
“My late, darling wife Myra always used to tell me that until I start building football in Israel, I would not win anything with [the] Patriots,” Kraft said at the 2017 dedication. “That happened in late 1999, and we won our first Super Bowl in 2001. Now we have five championships, and I can’t ignore the connection between our continuing to support development in Israel and our great accomplishments.”
New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft at the Kraft Family Sports Campus in Jerusalem. (Courtesy American Football in Israel)
Players from AFI have gone on to play college ball in the United States, most notably Yonatan Marmour, who in 2021 became the first Israeli to play Division I football. Bet Shemesh coach Charlie Cohen, a yeshiva teacher and salesman who moved to Israel from Massachusetts in 2000, added that some athletes play in Israel during a gap year before trying to make the jump to Division II.
In the early years of football in Israel, Leibowitz said the players were mostly American immigrants or children of immigrants. But now, he says there is mostly “Hebrew in the huddle”: Nearly every team outside Jerusalem is entirely Hebrew-speaking. Some cities have Arab players, plus immigrants from Ethiopia and Russia.
Leibowitz is proud of one notable AFI alum: American-born Ron Dermer, Israel’s new minister of strategic affairs and a former Israeli ambassador to the United States. Leibowitz called Dermer, who played flag football, a “celebrity” in Israel’s football community.
Leibowitz, who serves as president of AFI, acknowledged that the sport will never surpass the popularity of soccer or basketball in Israel. But the strides the league has made are undeniable, and the AFI hopes to build three more football stadiums, with plans in motion for regulation-size fields in Haifa, outside Tel Aviv and in Beersheva.
In another sign of development on the world stage, Israel also hosted the 2019 European Flag Football Championship and the 2021 Flag Football World Championship. In July, Leibowitz said, the AFI has been invited to bring a national team of top players to play in Fez, Morocco. He said it’s the first time an Israeli team will play a Moroccan team in Morocco, likely in any sport.
And with the 2028 Olympics in the not-too-distant future, Leibowitz said the AFI is working on a squad that could qualify for the soon-to-be-announced flag football competition.
Leibowitz added that the league honors the late Myra Kraft, who was also very involved in the sport’s development, by stitching her initials onto the Israeli players’ jerseys when they play abroad.
For coach Charlie Cohen, football is at the center of his Jewish practice — and helped inspire him to become a rabbi.
“Without sports, there is no Jewish identity for me,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Cohen, 53, said he was kicked out of Hebrew school as a child and had all but walked away from his Judaism when he was coaching Pop Warner football in Sharon, Massachusetts. His winless team squared off against a powerhouse squad from nearby North Attleboro and won, 13-12.
“That was a really watershed moment for me,” Cohen said. “I took that to heart, as a person, and as a Jew.”
He explained: “Here it is, you’re a football coach, and you’re demanding that your team has character. Your team shows up for each other. If you have a loss, come fight for your guys, don’t quit… I said to myself, if I were to demand my little peewee football team turns it around, well, I’m going to turn it around, too.”
He reengaged with Judaism and ultimately immigrated to Israel, where he became a rabbi.
Cohen began as Bet Shemesh’s offensive line coach, then became head coach last season, leading the Rebels to the semifinals, where they lost by four points.
And no, Cohen is not over the loss: “We had the ball with two minutes to go. Should’ve called a timeout and calmed them down. You live and you learn.”
A Tel Aviv Pioneer player hurdles an opponent in an American Football in Israel game. (Doron Dotan)
One of Cohen’s players is 22-year-old yeshiva student Aviad Ohayon, who said he tried football for the first time in high school in Kfar Saba, at the behest of a friend. He didn’t know what football was at the time.
“The information that I had about football was like a bunch of guys with helmets fighting with a strange ball, in the shape of an egg,” Ohayon told JTA, not inaccurately. “He really wanted me to come, so I was like, okay, why not? I came to one practice and you can say I fell in love with the sport.”
Ohayon — who plays running back, linebacker and kicker — said he has played basketball, soccer and karate in the past, but football was special.
“I really loved sports, but something with football, the training and all the practices, was very different to me,” he said. “The spirit, the brotherhood, everything was way more unique than I saw in the other sports.”
Leibowitz, now 71, calls himself the “grandfather” of the sport in Israel.
“The craziness was sticking with it all these years, for over 30 years, and making it into a life ambition to establish the sport in Israel, because I think it’s a good sport. I think it has a place in this country,” he said. “I think we’ve proven that. And together with that we’ve created a community. So at this point, I can’t even leave if I wanted to.”
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The post ‘Hebrew in the huddle’: American football kicks off another season in Israel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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UK Approves US Use of British Bases to Strike Iran Missile Sites Targeting Ships
People use their cameras as a USAF B-1 bomber approaches to land at RAF Fairford airbase, used by United States Air Force (USAF) personnel, amid the US–Israeli conflict with Iran, in Fairford, Gloucestershire, Britain, March 17, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Toby Melville
The British government gave authorization on Friday for the US to use military bases in Britain to carry out strikes on Iranian missile sites that are attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
British ministers met on Friday to discuss the war with Iran and Iran‘s blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, according to a Downing Street statement.
“They confirmed that the agreement for the US to use UK bases in the collective self-defence of the region includes US defensive operations to degrade the missile sites and capabilities being used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz,” the statement said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said in a post on X that Starmer was “putting British lives in danger by allowing UK bases to be used for aggression against Iran,” adding “Iran will exercise its right to self-defense.”
Starmer said this week Britain would not be drawn into a war over Iran. He initially rejected a US request to use British bases for the strikes on Iran, saying he needed to be satisfied that any military action was legal.
But the prime minister modified his stance after Iran conducted strikes on British allies across the Middle East, saying that the United States could use RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia, a joint US-UK base in the Indian Ocean.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked Starmer since the conflict started, complaining he was not doing enough to help him.
On Monday, Trump said there were “some countries that greatly disappointed me” before he singled out Britain, which he said had once been considered “the Rolls-Royce of allies.”
The Downing Street statement on Friday called for “urgent de-escalation and a swift resolution to the war.”
Opinion polls in Britain suggest widespread skepticism about the war, with 59% of those surveyed by YouGov saying that they were opposed to the US-Israeli attacks.
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French Appeals Court Rules Vandalism of Memorial for Murdered Jew Not Antisemitic
A crowd gathers at the Jardin Ilan Halimi in Paris on Feb. 14, 2021, to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Halimi’s kidnapping and murder. Photo: Reuters/Xose Bouzas/Hans Lucas
A French appeals court has acquitted Tunisian twin brothers of antisemitism charges after they cut down an olive tree planted to honor Ilan Halimi, a young French Jewish man tortured to death two decades ago, in what appears to be yet another instance of France’s legal system brushing aside antisemitism as a potential motive for crime.
On Wednesday, the Paris Court of Appeal upheld the decision from the initial trial in October to dismiss the charge that the crime was motivated by antisemitism, which would have increased the punishments for the two brothers. The judges found no evidence that the assailants knew of Halimi’s identity or history or acted with the intent to target his memory because of his religious affiliation.
The court’s ruling this week upheld the original convictions, sentencing both men to eight months in prison — one with a suspended sentence, meaning he will only serve time if he reoffends or violates certain conditions, and who has since been deported to Tunisia. Both men are also barred from entering France for five years.
The two 19-year-old undocumented men with prior convictions for theft and violence were arrested in August for vandalizing Halimi’s memorial in the northern Paris suburb of Épinay-sur-Seine.
During the initial trial in Bobigny, in northeastern France, the brothers faced charges of “aggravated destruction of property” and “desecration of a monument dedicated to the memory of the dead on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion,” offenses carrying sentences of up to two years in prison.
The court acquitted them of committing an antisemitic hate crime, ruling that they were unaware they had desecrated Halimi’s memorial.
Even though they admitted to being in the garden on the night of the incident, the brothers denied cutting down the tree and claimed they were unaware of Halimi’s story, leading the court to rule that the act was not antisemitic in nature.
Halimi was abducted, held captive, and tortured in January 2006 by a gang of about 20 people in a low-income housing estate in the Paris suburb of Bagneux.
Three weeks later, Halimi was found in Essonne, south of Paris, naked, gagged, and handcuffed, with clear signs of torture and burns. The 23-year-old died on the way to the hospital.
In 2011, an olive tree was planted in Halimi’s memory. Last year, in one of the latest attacks on his memory, the memorial in the northern Paris suburb of Épinay-sur-Seine was found felled — probably with a chainsaw.
Since the attack, French authorities have been working to replant olive trees to honor Halimi’s memory.
This latest case is by no means the first in France to raise alarm bells among the Jewish community, as courts have repeatedly overturned or reduced sentences for individuals accused of antisemitic crimes, fueling public outrage over what many see as excessive leniency.
In February, a French court tossed out antisemitic-motivated charges against a 55-year-old man convicted of murdering his 89-year-old Jewish neighbor in 2022.
According to French media, the magistrate of the public prosecutor’s office refused to consider the defendant’s prior antisemitic behavior, including online posts spreading hateful content and promoting conspiracy theories about Jews and Israelis, arguing that it was not directly related to the incident itself.
In May 2022, Rachid Kheniche threw his neighbor, René Hadjadj, from the 17th floor of his building, an act to which he later admitted.
At the time, Kheniche told investigators that while having a discussion, he tried to strangle Hadjadj without realizing what he was doing, as he was experiencing a paranoid episode caused by prior drug use.
After several psychiatric evaluations, the court concluded that the defendant was mentally impaired at the time of the crime, reducing his criminal responsibility and lowering the maximum sentence for murder to 20 years.
Kheniche was ultimately sentenced to 18 years in prison and six years of “socio-judicial monitoring.”
Last year, the public prosecutor’s office in Nanterre, just west of Paris, appealed a criminal court ruling that cleared a nanny of antisemitism-aggravated charges after she poisoned the food and drinks of the Jewish family she worked for.
Residing illegally in France, the nanny had worked as a live-in caregiver for the family and their three children — aged two, five, and seven — since November 2023.
The 42-year-old Algerian woman was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for “administering a harmful substance that caused incapacitation for more than eight days.”
Even though the nanny initially denied the charges against her, she later confessed to police that she had poured a soapy lotion into the family’’ food as a warning because “they were disrespecting her.”
“They have money and power, so I should never have worked for a Jewish woman — it only brought me trouble,” the nanny told the police. “I knew I could hurt them, but not enough to kill them.”
The French court declined to uphold any antisemitism charges against the defendant, noting that her incriminating statements were made several weeks after the incident and recorded by a police officer without a lawyer present
In another shocking case last year, a local court in France dramatically reduced the sentence of one of the two teenagers convicted of the brutal gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl, citing his “need to prepare for future reintegration.”
More than a year after the attack, the Versailles Court of Appeal retried one of the convicted boys — the only one to challenge his sentence — behind closed doors, ultimately reducing his term from nine to seven years and imposing an educational measure.
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US Sending Marines and Amphibious Assault Ship to Middle East, Officials Say
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth holds a briefing with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, US, March 19, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Evan Vucci
The US military is deploying thousands more Marines to the Middle East, officials told Reuters on Friday, as President Donald Trump accused NATO allies of cowardice over their reluctance to send forces to help open the Strait of Hormuz.
The narrow waterway, conduit for around a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, has been effectively closed to most shipping since the United States and Israel launched the war against Iran almost three weeks ago.
Vital energy infrastructure in both Iran and neighboring Gulf states has also been attacked, and oil prices have jumped about 50% since the start of the war on Feb. 28, threatening a global economic shock.
More than 2,000 people have been killed, mostly in Iran and Lebanon, while Americans, facing sharply higher prices, appear increasingly concerned at signs the war could expand further.
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed almost two-thirds of Americans believe Trump will order troops into a large-scale ground war, with only 7% supporting such a move.
On Friday, Israel’s military said it carried out two large waves of air strikes on Tehran and central Iran, targeting weapons production facilities and sites storing ballistic missile launchers and components. Israel faced multiple waves of missile attacks from Iran, according to the Israeli military, triggering air raid sirens in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where explosions from interceptions were heard.
Fragments from an Iranian missile struck Jerusalem on Friday, landing just outside the Old City, which is sacred to Christians, Jews, and Muslims, according to a photograph released by the police. There were no reports of injuries or casualties.
Kuwait’s state oil firm said its Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery had suffered multiple drone attacks that set some units alight, the latest energy facility hit by Iran in recent days.
TROOPS DEPLOY
Three US officials told Reuters that 2,500 Marines, along with the USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship, and accompanying warships would deploy to the region, although they did not say what their role would be.
Two officials said there had been no decision on whether to send troops into Iran itself. Sources have earlier told Reuters that possible targets could include Iran‘s coast or Kharg Island oil export hub.
Trump said the United States was close to reaching its goals in the war, which include degrading Iran‘s military and preventing it from developing a nuclear weapon, and may wind down its military effort.
Trump also called US allies “cowards” for declining to help open the Strait of Hormuz while fighting continued in a conflict they were not consulted about beforehand.
Several allies have pledged to join “appropriate efforts” to ensure safe passage through the strait, but Germany and France have both said fighting must stop first. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he would speak to Trump this weekend.
The UK government authorized the US to use its bases in Britain to strike Iranian missile sites that are targeting ships in the strait.
END OF RAMADAN AND PERSIAN NEW YEAR
As Muslims around the region tried to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, which ends the fasting month of Ramadan, and Iranians marked Nowruz, the Persian New Year, new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei issued a message of defiance.
Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since the Israeli attack that killed his father and predecessor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the war’s first day, said Iranians had responded with unity and resistance and “dealt a disorienting blow to the enemy.”
US and Israeli officials say Iran can still hit back, even though weeks of bombing have severely weakened the government and depleted its stock of missiles and drones.
Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards said they had attacked Haifa and Tel Aviv with multi-warhead missiles and used drones to attack weapons stocks at US bases, including Sheikh Isa air base in Bahrain. No comment was immediately available from US forces.
The semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim said intelligence minister Esmail Ahmadi was killed, the latest of dozens of leading figures assassinated by Israel.
“We have nobody to talk to,” Trump said. “And you know what? We like it that way.”
FUEL PRICES CLIMB AHEAD OF US ELECTIONS
Soaring US diesel and gasoline prices may hurt Trump’s core political support as his Republicans prepare to defend slim majorities in November’s congressional elections.
On Friday, the benchmark price of Brent crude oil was up slightly, near $110, after surging the day before on growing fears that the largest ever disruption to world energy supplies would trigger a global economic shock.
Flows of crude and petroleum have dropped by about 12 million barrels per day – roughly 12% of global demand – due to output cuts and export halts by Gulf producers.
Those barrels cannot easily be replaced by the industries that rely on them, and will be felt for months or even years.
A major Qatari gas field was disrupted by an Iranian strike, and Iraq on Friday declared force majeure on all oilfields developed by foreign oil companies.