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How Ramban Can Offer Hope in Dark Times for Israel’s Future
A report in January revealed that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) was experiencing significant mental health issues with some of their members as a result of the October 7th massacre and war in Gaza, with some requiring in-patient treatment. Most of the affected soldiers had been exposed to the gruesome aftermath of the Hamas attack in southern Israel, seeing tortured and mutilated bodies, as well as witnessing their friends dying or wounded in the effort to clear the area of Hamas operatives.
According to the January report, 90 soldiers were deemed unable to continue their service and had been discharged from duty. The IDF’s mental health experts also expressed concerns about the broader psychological repercussions of the massacre and war over time, particularly for reservists who needed to transition back to civilian life. They warned of the potential for “functioning difficulties” and a pervasive sense of meaninglessness in daily life after active service in urban warfare situations, and voiced concerns for the long-term welfare of those who were serving and continued to serve.
Three months later, the grisly six-month anniversary since October 7th has come and gone. Sadly, the situation has not improved, and indeed, it may have worsened. Moreover, with many of the reservists now back in civilian life, the predicted malaise has filtered its way into Israel’s population. Add to that those affected by the massacre and war through displacement and bereavement, plus the uncertainty of a war that isn’t over and a very uncertain political situation, and clearly Israel is not in a good place.
The bitter taste left by the audacious terrorism of the massacre itself, which exposed a vulnerability that most Israelis had convinced themselves had been mitigated by impenetrable defenses, has been compounded by months of war, IDF personnel killed, growing dissatisfaction with Israel’s leadership, and an acute awareness that the world-at-large is not on the same page as Israel regarding the threats it faces.
Early last month, it was announced that the official state ceremony for Israel’s 76th Independence Day in May will not feature the customary fireworks display due to the ongoing conflict. Miri Regev, the government minister overseeing the celebrations, explained that the adjustments to the ceremony’s format were in response to the October 7th massacre and the ongoing war. She also called on municipal leaders across Israel to omit fireworks from their local celebrations.
This week, Regev revealed that the official state-sponsored Independence Day ceremony will take place without a live audience, and will be pre-recorded. This set-piece event, usually held at Mount Herzl as the country transitions from Memorial Day to Independence Day, will be held in advance and then broadcast as Independence Day begins — the first time this has ever happened since Israel’s establishment in 1948, marking a significant departure from tradition.
Against this backdrop of strife and difficulty, we must reflect on the deeper spiritual and historical essence of Eretz Yisrael, the land of Jewish heritage that has been at the center of Jewish faith and identity for millennia, and at the same time, a place of immense sacrifice and suffering. To this end, Ramban (Nahmanides) offers a profound insight in his commentary on tzara’at, the malady described in detail in Tazria and Metzora.
Tzara’at can only occur in the Land of Israel — which means, says Ramban, that it is not a natural disease, but rather a miraculous manifestation of Divine providence, highlighting the unique spiritual stature of Eretz Yisrael, where Divine presence is most acutely felt. Ramban also mentions that tzara’at on houses only came into effect in Eretz Yisrael after the Israelites, led by Joshua, had completed the full fourteen years of conquest and division of the land after crossing the Jordan River following Moses’ death.
If you paused at that point in Ramban’s commentary, you might think that this rule is connected to his previous point — namely that tzara’at is a manifestation of the Divine status of Eretz Yisrael. Given that the full sanctity of the land wasn’t achieved until after 14 years had passed—a period after which regulations like tithes and offerings began to apply –you might assume that the laws regarding tzara’at on houses followed a similar pattern, appearing only when the land’s full sanctity had been established.
However, Ramban offers a far more meaningful insight to explain this phenomenon: the reason why afflictions on houses did not occur during the period of conquest was not due to a lack of sanctity, but because a heightened state of God-consciousness is essential for witnessing a divine intervention like tzara’at.
But in times of war, when survival dominates thought and action, achieving such a level of spiritual awareness is nearly impossible. The fog of war not only obscures the ordinary course of events in day-to-day life, it also puts up a barrier between us and God — and in that state we are incapable of being sensitive to the sanctity that is so obvious in times of peace.
Over the past few months, as the fog of war has descended upon us and clouded our minds, I have worried that the incredible miracle of Israel will recede from our consciousness. We are all in survival mode, even those who live in the Diaspora — all of us fielding unbridled hatred, and wondering how it will all end. In moments of doubt, we wonder what lies ahead for Israel in the long term, now that the existential threat has been revealed as ever-present and far more vigorous than we had ever previously imagined.
It is in exactly times like these that we must remember the resilient spirit and sacred essence of Eretz Yisrael. As we reflect upon our current hardships, we must draw strength from the profound wisdom of Ramban. His teaching regarding those 14 foundational years must remind us that even when the fog of war obscures the holiness of the land, that holiness remains, waiting to reemerge once peace is restored. Just as Joshua and the Israelites persisted through years of conquest so that they could bask in the land’s holiness and glory, we too must persevere, maintaining faith that the trials we face today are but temporary shadows over the enduring light of our nation.
Israel’s story is one of overcoming great adversities, the unbreakable spirit of its people, and the deep, abiding connection to Eretz Yisrael. The challenges of war and social discord cannot and will not diminish the sanctity of Eretz Yisrael, nor can they permanently cloud the divine providence that has guided our history. The current conflict, as harrowing as it is, presents an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to this sacred land, recognizing it as a source of strength and hope for us all.
As we approach the period in our Jewish calendar celebrating redemption and the formation of our nation, both in ancient history and in modern times, and while we endure the greatest challenges we have faced for generations, let this be a time of reflection and renewal.
We must hold fast to the belief that peace will return, and with it, the full expression of our land’s holiness and elevation. In the spirit of those who came before us, let us bear these trials with dignity and strength, looking forward to a future where Israel can once again shine as a light unto the nations, its sanctity fully rekindled.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
The post How Ramban Can Offer Hope in Dark Times for Israel’s Future first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘US/Zionist Attack’: Pro-Hamas Campus Groups Condemn Israeli Strikes on Iran

Rescuers work at the scene of a damaged building in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters Connect.
Pro-Hamas campus groups denounced Israel’s military strikes on Iran on Friday while declaring solidarity with the Islamic Republic in a series of social media posts which called on far-left extremists to flood the streets with riotous demonstrations, reprising a role they played following Hamas’s Iran-backed massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The Israel Defense Forces carried out preemptive strikes on Iran’s military installations and nuclear facilities to neutralize top military leaders and quell the country’s efforts to enrich weapons-grade uranium, the key ingredient of their nuclear program. The move appears to have been a success, as Iranian state-controlled media confirmed that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Hossein Salami — as well as several other senior military leaders — and nuclear scientists Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, are dead.
While many observers have cheered the strikes as a necessary act of deterrence which bolsters the credibility of the Western powers’ insisting that no measure will be spared to prevent Iran’s procuring nuclear weapons, pro-Hamas groups on US campuses accused both Israel and the US of inciting an unjust war.
“We reject the US/Zionist attack on Iran, and affirm Iran’s right to self-defense, sovereignty, and self-determination,” Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), one of higher education’s most notorious campus pro-Hamas student organizations, said on X following the strikes. “No to the imperialist was of encroachment — from Syria to Lebanon to Iran — and YES [sic] to the people’s struggle for Palestinian liberation.”
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) implored its followers to express their disapproval of the strikes by amassing at the John F. Kennedy Building in the Government Center section of Boston.
“No war with Iran, emergency rally,” the group said.
Meanwhile, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), SJP shared on Instagram a post by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which, in addition to holding documented ties to the US-designated terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), is a key organizer of anti-Israel campus activities.
“Reject the US-Israel war of aggression on Iran,” PYM wrote. “The Zionist occupation launches a series of air strikes across the Tehran [sic], an act of war that seeks to dramatically escalate Zionist and US aggression across the region.”
Off-campus groups embedded in the global network of pro-Hamas groups weighed in as well. In the United Kingdom, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) demanded that Parliament proscribe weapons transfers to Israel.
“As Israel carpet bombs and starves Gaza, intensifies its land grabs and attacks in the West Bank, and now launches major attacks in Iran, the responsibilities on the British government could not be clearer,” PSC said. “It must impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel.”
The statements are reminiscent of the hours following the Oct. 7 attack, in which pro-Hamas groups cheered the Palestinian terrorists and rooted for Israel to fail and be overrun by its enemies.
As scenes of Hamas terrorists abducting children and desecrating dead bodies circulated worldwide and invoked global outrage, dozens of SJP chapters at institutions such as Brown University, the University of Maryland, Tufts University, and UCLA described the attacks as a form of “resistance,” demanding acceptance what they said is “our right to liberate our homeland by any means necessary.”
Additionally, 31 student groups at Harvard University issued a statement blaming Israel for the attack and accusing the Jewish state of operating an “open-air prison” in Gaza, despite that the Israeli military withdrew from the territory in 2005.
“We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” said the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee. “In the coming days, Palestinians will be forced to bear the full brunt of Israel’s violence.”
These activities are facilitated by an array of methods the campus groups use for spreading their extremist worldview, according to a new report published by the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University, Bloomington.
The report — titled “Anti-Israel Campus Groups: Online Networks and Narratives” — explored the ways in which pro-Hamas student groups draw in the world beyond the campus to create an illusion of inexorable support for anti-Zionism. Key to this effort, the report explained, is a vast and ambitious network of non-campus anti-Israel organizations which ply them with logistical and financial resources that significantly boost their capabilities beyond those of normal student clubs.
“Social media platforms, particularly Instagram, play a critical role in mobilizing these groups, spreading radical narratives, and coordinating actions at both local and national levels,” report authors Gunther Jikeli and Daniel Miehling wrote. “Social media shapes perceptions of the Israel-Hamas conflict in significant ways, often through highly emotive and polarizing content that fuels activism and, at times, incitement.”
Social media, which has modernized the manufacturing and distribution of political propaganda by reducing complex subjects to “memes” — some involving humor or contemporary cultural references which appeal to the sensibilities of the youth — are the cheapest and most effective weapons in the arsenal of the pro-Hamas movement, the report went on, noting that this was true before the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel precipitated an explosion of anti-Israel activity online.
From 2013 to 2024, Students for Justice in Palestine, pro-Hamas faculty groups, and others posted over 76,000 posts on social media which were analyzed by the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. Over half, 54.9 percent, included only a single, evocative image.
“In contrast, Reels (5.3 percent) and Videos (4.9 percent) are used far less frequently,” the report continued. “Based on these descriptions, we see a strong preference among campus-based anti-Israel groups for static visual formats, suggesting that this type of bimodal content represents the highest form of shareability within activists networks.”
To boost their audience and reach, pro-Hamas groups also post together in what Jikeli and Miehling described as “co-authored posts,” of which there were over 20,000 between 2013 and 2024. The content they contain elicits strong emotions in the individual users exposed to it, inciting incidents of antisemitic discrimination, harassment, and violence, the report continued. Such outrages increase in proportion to the concentration of anti-Israel groups on a single campus, as the report’s data showed a relationship that is “particularly strong.”
Of all the groups responsible for fostering a hostile campus environment, SJP stands out for being “the most frequent collaborator with other anti-Israel organizations,” the report went on. The group’s closest ally appears to be the Palestinian Youth movement.
“This close collaboration not only broadens SJP;s audience but also suggests that PYM’s radical anti-Zionist rhetoric and visual language may shape elements of SJP’s discourse,” Jikeli and Miehling explained. “PYM’s posts frequently incorporate imagery associated with socialist iconography, national liberation movements, and Islamist martyrdom. Such content often features slogans that reject the legitimacy of the Israeli state, depict convicted Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israel as political prisoners, and glorify members of terrorist groups.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘US/Zionist Attack’: Pro-Hamas Campus Groups Condemn Israeli Strikes on Iran first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hezbollah Holds Fire After Israeli Strike on Iran, Signaling Weakened Posture Amid Pressure From Lebanese Gov’t

Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivers a speech from an unknown location, Nov. 20, 2024, in this still image from video. Photo: REUTERS TV/Al Manar TV via REUTERS.
The Iran-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah announced it will not carry out a retaliatory strike against the Jewish state in support of Tehran, following a warning from the Lebanese government not to drag the country into a wider confrontation.
“Hezbollah will not initiate its own attack on Israel in retaliation for Israel’s strikes,” the Lebanon-based Islamist group told Reuters.
Israel launched a broad preemptive attack on Iran overnight on Friday, targeting military installations and nuclear sites across the country in what officials described as an effort to neutralize an imminent nuclear threat as nuclear negotiations between the United States and Tehran appear on the brink of collapse.
In an unexpected turn, the choice of Hezbollah, which for decades has been Iran’s chief proxy force in the Middle East, to hold back from retaliating against Israeli strikes on the Islamic regime reveals just how weakened the group is following last year’s Israeli operations in Lebanon — despite its threat of retaliation once serving as a key deterrent against attacks on Iranian nuclear sites.
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 terrorist group.
In a statement released on Friday, Hezbollah condemned the Israeli attack on Iran, describing it as a dangerous escalation by “an enemy that understands only the language of killing, fire, and destruction.”
The Lebanese group also accused Washington of directly facilitating the attack and called on regional governments to show solidarity with the Iranian people.
“This aggression would not have taken place without direct US approval, coordination, and cover,” a Hezbollah official said in a statement, claiming the strikes are part of a broader effort to advance US and Israeli “hegemony.”
“Washington is now attempting to distance itself to avoid consequences,” the statement read. “If this aggression is not met with rejection, condemnation, and support for Iran and its people, this criminal entity will grow more aggressive and tyrannical.”
Iranian state television confirmed that the attack killed Hossein Salami, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri, along with several other high-ranking military officials.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also said that the entire top command of Iran’s air force was killed, as well as the IRGC commander responsible for overseeing last year’s drone and missile attacks against Israeli territory.
In a separate statement, Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem warned that Israel’s massive attack on Iran “will have major repercussions on the region’s stability, seeing as it will not pass without a response and punishment.”
“We in Hezbollah and our Islamic resistance and mujahid people are holding onto our approach and resistance, and we support the Islamic Republic of Iran in its rights and stance, and in any steps and measures it takes to defend itself and choices,” Qassem said.
According to the Saudi news outlet Al-Arabiya, Lebanon’s government 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.”
Before Israel’s military operations against Hezbollah last year, the terrorist group enjoyed major political and military influence across Lebanon.
The post Hezbollah Holds Fire After Israeli Strike on Iran, Signaling Weakened Posture Amid Pressure From Lebanese Gov’t first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Commends Israel for Striking Iranian Nuclear Sites, Says He Gave Tehran ‘Chance to Make a Deal’

US President Trump speaks to the media at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, Washington, DC, April 21, 2025. Photo: Andrew Leyden/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump commended Israel for its successful strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities and military leaders in social media posts on Truth Social.
“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done,” Trump wrote Friday morning.
Trump warned that Iran will face more attacks in the coming days if Tehran does not strike an agreement to suspend all uranium enrichment efforts.
“Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse! There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,” Trump continued.
In the early hours of Friday morning, Israel launched a large-scale military operation against Iran, named Operation Rising Lion, targeting key nuclear and military sites across the country. The strikes resulted in the deaths of several high-ranking Iranian officials, including Major General Mohammad Bagheri, Major General Hossein Salami, and two prominent nuclear scientists, Fereydoon Abbasi and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi. Explosions were reported in Tehran and other provinces, with significant damage to facilities in Natanz, Isfahan, Khondab, and Khorramabad.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) described the operation as a preemptive measure to prevent Iran from advancing its nuclear weapons program. In retaliation, Iran launched over 100 drones at Israel, most of which were intercepted. The United States condemned Iran’s actions and reaffirmed its commitment to Israel’s defense, while distancing itself from the Israeli strikes by saying it was not involved in the operation.
The strikes followed a series of negotiations between the US and Iran since April 2025 aimed at reaching a deal over the latter’s nuclear program, which many Western governments believe is ultimately meant to develop nuclear weapons. Iran claims its nuclear activities are for peaceful, civilina purposes. following a letter from President Donald Trump to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei initiating dialogue.
Despite five rounds of discussions, including meetings in Muscat and Rome, significant differences remained, particularly over Iran’s uranium enrichment levels and the scope of international inspections.
Last month, Trump warned that failure to reach an agreement could lead to severe consequences, emphasizing the urgency of a deal. However, Iran’s leadership expressed skepticism, with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei labeling US demands as “outrageous nonsense” and reiterating his opposition to Israel’s existence.
The failure to reach a nuclear agreement has led to heightened tensions in the Middle East, with both sides accusing each other of undermining the diplomatic process.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressed that the United States did not participate in the planning of the Israeli operation. “This evening, Israel acted independently in its strike on Iran. The United States played no role in the attack, and our foremost priority remains the safety of American personnel in the region,” Rubio said in a statement late Thursday.
However, Trump told Axios om Friday that he believes that the strikes might have improved the chances of the US striking a nuclear deal with Tehran.
“Maybe now they will negotiate seriously,” Trump said.
The post Trump Commends Israel for Striking Iranian Nuclear Sites, Says He Gave Tehran ‘Chance to Make a Deal’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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