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Hezbollah Rocket Hits Haifa Synagogue an Hour After Prayers
Illustrative. Israel’s Haifa port. Credit: Zvi Roger – Haifa Municipality.
JNS.org – A Hezbollah rocket struck a synagogue in Haifa on Saturday, just one hour after the end of a prayer service.
The Avot Ubanim synagogue complex suffered major damage from the strike, but no one was hurt.
“This is divine providence,” Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav told Israel Hayom.
Five people were lightly injured on the way to shelters in various areas of Haifa during the barrage.
Hezbollah launched 10 rockets in the barrage, setting off sirens in the Haifa Bay area, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Only some of the projectiles were intercepted.
Multiple fires in Haifa and the surrounding area were reported after the attack, as well as widespread power outages in Carmel Center.
“All emergency organizations arrived quickly,” said Amir Herel, commander of the Haifa district in the Home Front Command, according to Israel Hayom.
“There were no people in the synagogue, but in the surrounding buildings there were people who experienced a significant blast,” he said. “But as I said, most of the damage is not physical. There’s damage in many apartments, mainly windows. Some vehicles were also burned.”
Hezbollah launched a total of 80 projectiles into Israeli territory on Saturday, according to the IDF.
On Sunday morning, 20 rockets were launched at the Haifa Bay and Western Galilee regions, some of which were intercepted and some of which impacted in open areas, the IDF said.
Sirens also sounded in Acre and the Upper Galilee during the morning hours.
Report: IDF removing roadblocks near northern border
The IDF is removing military roadblocks near the border with Lebanon, Army Radio reported on Sunday. The move is in preparation for the potential return of displaced residents to their homes, according to the report.
“The reality in the north has changed. There are no longer areas where travel is impossible. There’s no need for detour routes anymore—civilians can now drive on these roads. Traffic is unrestricted due to the IDF’s control within Lebanese territory,” military sources told the news outlet.
Meanwhile, the IDF on Saturday night declared the areas of Metula and Kfar Yuval in northern Israel closed military zones. Entry is prohibited for civilians until Sunday night.
The move comes amid IDF ground operations in Southern Lebanon that began in early October.
IAF strikes Hezbollah targets in Tyre, Beirut
The Israeli Air Force overnight Saturday struck Hezbollah targets in the Tyre area in Southern Lebanon and in the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahieh south of Beirut. The targets included command centers, weapons storage facilities and terror infrastructure sites, according to the IDF.
In Tyre, the strikes targeted several military assets belonging to Hezbollah’s “Aziz” Unit, which according to the Israeli military is responsible for carrying out attacks against Israel from southwestern Lebanon.
Fifty Hezbollah targets were hit in Dahieh over the past week, according to the IDF, and the strikes continued on Sunday morning.
The IDF emphasized that civilians were given advanced warning before the strikes and many steps were taken to minimize the harm to noncombatants. The Israeli military accused Hezbollah of “systematically” embedding its infrastructure into Lebanon’s civilian population.
“This is a further example of Hezbollah’s cynical abuse of civilian areas for military activities that deliberately endangers the lives of Lebanese civilians,” the IDF said.
Lebanese government reviewing US ceasefire proposal
Beirut is reviewing a draft proposal for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanese officials told AFP on Friday.
A senior Lebanese government official confirmed that US Ambassador Lisa Johnson had presented a 13-point proposal to Lebanese officials on Thursday.
Johnson delivered the document to Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, the head of the Hezbollah-aligned Amal movement, according to the report.
The proposal includes a 60-day truce, during which Lebanon would redeploy its troops along the border.
According to the official, Jerusalem has not responded to the plan.
Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer discussed the proposal with US President-elect Trump during a visit to his Florida estate on Nov. 10, The Washington Post reported on Nov. 13.
The discussions at Mar-a-Lago centered on a ceasefire that would involve Western and Russian cooperation, according to the Post. The proposal calls for Moscow to prevent Hezbollah from resupplying via Syrian land routes.
Following his meetings in Florida with Trump, Dermer headed to Washington to meet on Nov. 11 and 12 with Biden administration officials, including Amos Hochstein, the president’s special envoy to Lebanon.
According to Israeli officials, the plan also includes moving the Hezbollah terrorist group north of the Litani River. The Lebanese military would then take control of the border area, overseen by the United States and Britain.
A source close to the Iranian terrorist proxy told the Post that Hezbollah would be willing to withdraw its forces north of the Litani as part of a temporary ceasefire deal.
Hezbollah began launching thousands of rockets, missiles and drones at Israel the day after Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. More than 60,000 Israeli citizens remain internally displaced from their homes in the north due to the ongoing Hezbollah attacks.
Israel is closer to reaching a deal to stop the fighting with Hezbollah than it has been since the start of the war, but must retain the freedom to act in Lebanon should any deal be violated, Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said on Thursday.
“We will be less forgiving than in the past over attempts to create strongholds in territory near Israel,” Cohen told Reuters.
A senior Israeli diplomatic official told Israel Hayom last Saturday that there has been a significant breakthrough in efforts to achieve a diplomatic settlement.
One potential sticking point, however, is the ability of Israeli forces to reenter Lebanese territory if Hezbollah attempts to rearm and reestablish itself.
The official emphasized that the IDF will retain operational freedom to respond to any security threats from across the northern border, regardless of any diplomatic arrangements.
However, a source close to Hezbollah told the Post that the group’s “condition for progress remains clear: Israel must be prohibited from conducting operations within Lebanese territory.”
Ali Larijani, senior adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said on Nov. 15 that Tehran would support a decision by the Lebanese government and the country’s “resistance” to halt the war.
“We are not looking to sabotage anything. We are after a solution to the problems,” Larijani said after meeting with Berri and Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
If the ceasefire efforts fail, an Israeli military official told the Post that there are plans in the works to expand ground operations in Lebanon.
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US Imposes New Sanctions on Houthis After Redesignating Iran-Backed Rebels in Yemen as Terror Group
A Houthi fighter mans a machine gun mounted on a truck during a parade for people who attended Houthi military training as part of a mobilization campaign, in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
The United States has imposed sanctions on seven senior members of the Houthis, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday, one day after the Trump administration officially redesignated the Iran-backed rebels in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO).
The newly sanctioned individuals smuggled military-grade items and weapon systems into Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and negotiated buying weapons from Russia, according to the Treasury Department. Abdulwali Abdoh Hasan Al-Jabri and his company, Al-Jabri General Trading and Investment Co, were also designated for recruiting Yemenis to fight in Ukraine on behalf of Russia and raised money to support Houthi military operations.
“The US government is committed to holding the Houthis accountable for acquiring weapons and weapons components from suppliers in Russia, China, and Iran to threaten Red Sea security,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The latest sanctions came after the US State Department on Tuesday officially redesignated the Yemeni rebels as an FTO, following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump shortly after he took office.
Trump’s executive order in late January followed repeated attacks by the Houthis, also known as Ansarallah, against Israel since October 2023, including the launch of over 200 missiles and 170 attack drones.
“The Houthis’ activities threaten the security of American civilians and personnel in the Middle East, the safety of our closest regional partners, and the stability of global maritime trade,” the executive order reads.
The United States formally designates Ansarallah, commonly referred to as the Houthis, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization pic.twitter.com/jsmNw6k1ew
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 4, 2025
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Washington’s redesignation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization in a post on X, urging for the eradication of terrorism.
“The Houthis, an Iranian proxy, unprovokedly launched hundreds of missile and drone attacks at Israeli citizens and communities, disrupted international shipping routes and upended global stability,” Sa’ar wrote.
I commend the decision by @POTUS and @SecRubio to designate the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The Houthis, an Iranian proxy, unprovokedly launched hundreds of missile and drone attacks at Israeli citizens and communities, disrupted international shipping routes… pic.twitter.com/Oxrs8FwqoT— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) March 4, 2025
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday announced the department’s official designation, which restores sanctions that legally prevent American individuals and organizations from providing “material support” to the Yemeni terrorist group.
Trump’s order also calls for the destruction of the Houthis’ military capabilities and for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to inspect all partners and programs in Yemen to ensure funds do not reach the terrorist group.
Additionally, the US announced a reward offer of up to $15 million and possible re-location for information leading to the disruption of the Yemeni group’s financial mechanisms.
“Since 2023, the Houthis have launched hundreds of attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, as well as US service members defending freedom of navigation and our regional partners,” Rubio said in a statement. “Most recently, the Houthis spared Chinese-flagged ships while targeting American and allied vessels.”
The FTO designation makes non-citizen members and representatives of the Houthis eligible for deportation and requires any US financial institution with ties to the group to report to the Office of Foreign Assets Control in the US Treasury Department.
Since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023, the Houthis — whose slogan is “death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam” — have targeted over 100 merchant vessels in the Red Sea. They asserted that these attacks and disruption of global trade were a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza following Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In January, the group signaled it would limit its attacks in the Red Sea corridor to only Israeli-affiliated ships after a ceasefire began in the Gaza Strip but warned that broader assaults could resume if necessary. Reports have indicated that the Houthis used Iranian-supplied ballistic and cruise missiles to carry out these attacks.
In 2021, the Biden administration reversed Trump’s previous decision to designate the Houthis as an FTO, citing a desire to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Yemen.
In his statement, Rubio stated that this concern over humanitarian aid is no longer an issue, saying that the US would no longer “tolerate any country engaging with terrorist organizations like the Houthis in the name of practicing legitimate international business.”
Several countries — including Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Israel — currently designate the Houthis as terrorists.
Last month, the United Nations announced it suspended its humanitarian operations in areas controlled by Houthi rebels, after they detained dozens of UN staffers, who remain unreleased.
The Houthis have been waging an insurgency in Yemen for two decades in a bid to overthrow the Yemeni government. They have controlled a significant portion of the country’s land in the north and along the Red Sea since 2014, when they captured it in the midst of a civil war.
The post US Imposes New Sanctions on Houthis After Redesignating Iran-Backed Rebels in Yemen as Terror Group first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Barnard College President Blasts Anti-Zionist Columbia Group as Trump Sets Campus Antisemitism in Crosshairs
Pro-Hamas protesters at Columbia University on April 19, 2024. Photo: Melissa Bender via Reuters Connect
Barnard College president Laura Rosenbury has issued a scorching rebuke of the anti-Zionist campus group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), accusing it of causing $30,000 in damages during a recent protest and betraying “the goals and sanctity of higher education.”
Rosenbury — whose June 2023 ascension to Barnard’s presidency took place just months before anti-Israel activists upended higher education by staging mass, unauthorized demonstrations and other disruptive activities to express support for Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel — issued the censorious statements in an op-ed published on Monday by The Chronicle of Higher Education.
“They [CUAD] operate in the shadows, hiding behind masks and Instagram posts with Molotov cocktails aimed at Barnard buildings, antisemitic tropes about wealth, influence, and ‘Zionist billionaires,’ and calls for violence and disruption at any cost,” Rosenbury wrote, citing CUAD’s involvement in a January incident in which several of its members disrupted Columbia professor Avi Shilon’s course on modern Israeli history to spew pro-Hamas propaganda. “They claim Columbia University’s name, but the truth is, because their members wear masks, no one really knows whose interests they serve. Columbia has disavowed the group.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CUAD stormed and occupied the Milbank Hall administrative building at Barnard College last week to protest the expulsion of two students who participated in disrupting Shilon’s course. During the demonstration, a staff member was assaulted so severely as to require hospitalization, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
In Monday’s op-ed, Rosenbury enumerated a slew of other offenses the group allegedly committed.
“They broke into our Access Barnard offices, where first-generation, low-income, and international students come for academic and social support, food pantry access, and supplemental funding,” she continued. “They berated the dean of the college — who spent hours working in good faith to de-escalate —for simply seeking access to a bathroom. They caused $30,000 in damages to a building that houses not just the offices of the president and the dean of the college, but also multiple classrooms and the offices that seek to further diversity, equity, and inclusion at Barnard.”
She continued, “Even though all of the disruptors wore masks, we now know the identity of many of them and are continuing to identify the rest.”
The college president went on to assert her imperviousness to “enormous pressure groups,” defending her previous decision to expel the students and vowing to impose the same measure on anyone else who would “refuse to share our value of respect, inclusion, and academic excellence.”
Concluding one of the harshest commentaries on anti-Zionist demonstrations from an elite college official since Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, Rosenbury said, “Barnard had the courage to take a stand. To protect and defend higher education, others must do the same.”
Rosenbury’s op-ed came just one day before US President Donald Trump vowed to suspend federal funding to any educational institution that refuses to quell riotous demonstrations, a punitive measure which continues his administration’s pledge to crack down on campus antisemitism and the pro-Hamas activists fostering it. The administration also announced pending action against Columbia University, of which Barnard College is an affiliate while maintaining its status as a separate financial and legal entity.
“All federal funding will stop for any college, school, or university that allows illegal protests,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, the social media platform he founded in 2022. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.”
He continued, “No masks! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Hours earlier, a Task Force to Combat Antisemitism that the Trump administration created in January said that several federal agencies —including the departments of education and human and health service and the General Services Administration — will review over $5 billion worth of federal contracts, grants, and other financial support to Columbia University to “ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities.”
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, Columbia University remains one of the most hostile campuses for Jews employed by or enrolled in an institution of higher education. Since Oct. 7, 2023, it has produced several indelible examples of campus antisemitism, including a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, brutal gang-assaults on Jewish students, and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
“Americans have watched in horror for more than a year now, as Jewish students have been assaulted and harassed on elite university campuses — repeatedly overrun by antisemitic students and agitators,” US Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a press release announcing the pending action. “Institutions that receive federal funds have a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination. Columbia’s apparent failure to uphold their end of this basic agreement raises very questions about the institution’s fitness to continue doing business with the United States government.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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US Holds Secret Talks With Hamas on Gaza Hostages, Source Says
Demonstrators hold signs and pictures of hostages, as relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages kidnapped during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas protest demanding the release of all hostages in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Itai Ron
The Trump administration has been conducting secret talks with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on the possibility of releasing US hostages being held in Gaza, two sources briefed on the conversations told Reuters.
US special envoy for hostage affairs Adam Boehler has been holding the direct talks with Hamas in recent weeks in Doha, the sources said, confirming a report by Axios.
Until recently the US had avoided direct discussions with the Islamist group. The US State Department designated Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.
Such talks run counter to long-standing US policy against direct contacts with groups that Washington lists as terrorist organizations.
The previous US role in helping to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal in the Gaza war has been dealing with Israel and Qatari and Egyptian mediators but without any known direct communications between Washington and Hamas.
The Israeli embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Boehler’s office declined to comment.
It was unclear when or how the Israeli government was informed of the talks.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did representatives for Hamas.
The sources said the talks have focused on gaining the release of American hostages still held in Gaza, but one said they also have included discussions about a broader deal to release all remaining hostages and how to reach a long-term truce.
One of the sources said the effort includes an attempt to gain the release of Edan Alexander, of Tenafly, New Jersey, believed to be the last living American hostage held by Hamas.
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff plans to return to the region in coming days to work out a way to either extend the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal or advance to the second phase, a State Department spokesperson said on Monday.
The post US Holds Secret Talks With Hamas on Gaza Hostages, Source Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.