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Israel Hits Nuclear Sites, Iran Strikes Hospital as War Escalates

Smoke rises following an Israeli attack in Tehran, Iran, June 18, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Israel bombed nuclear targets in Iran on Thursday and Iranian missiles hit an Israeli hospital overnight, as the week-old air war escalated with no sign yet of an off-ramp.

Following the strike that damaged the Soroka medical center in Israel‘s southern city of Beersheba, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tehran’s “tyrants” would pay the “full price.”

Defense Minister Israel Katz said the military had been instructed to intensify strikes on strategic-related targets in Tehran in order to eliminate the threat to Israel and destabilize the “Ayatollah regime.”

Israel‘s sweeping campaign of airstrikes aims to do more than destroy Iran‘s nuclear centrifuges and missile capabilities. It seeks to shatter the foundations of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s government and leave it near collapse, Israeli, Western, and regional officials said.

Netanyahu wants Iran weakened enough to be forced into fundamental concessions on permanently abandoning its nuclear enrichment, its ballistic missile program, and its support for terrorist groups across the region, the sources said.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, speaking to reporters outside the damaged hospital, said “regime change” in Tehran was not a goal the security cabinet had set “for the time being.”

US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has kept the world guessing about whether Israel‘s superpower ally would join it in airstrikes.

Israel said it had struck Iran‘s Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites. It initially said it had also hit Bushehr, site of Iran‘s only functioning nuclear power plant, but a spokesperson later said it was a mistake to have said this.

An Iranian diplomat told Reuters Bushehr was not hit and Israel was engaged in “psychological warfare” by discussing it. Any attack on the plant, near Arab neighbors and housing Russian technicians, is viewed as risking nuclear disaster.

Trump has veered from proposing a swift diplomatic end to the war to suggesting the United States might join it. On Wednesday, he said nobody knew what he would do. A day earlier he mused on social media about killing Iran‘s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, then demanded Iran‘s unconditional surrender.

A week of Israeli air and missile strikes against its major rival has wiped out the top echelon of Iran‘s military command, damaged its nuclear capabilities, and killed hundreds of people, while Iranian retaliatory strikes have killed at least two dozen civilians in Israel.

STRAIT OF HORMUZ

Iran has been weighing its options in responding to its biggest security challenge since the 1979 revolution. A member of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security Committee Presidium, Behnam Saeedi, told the semi-official Mehr news agency Iran could consider closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of daily global oil consumption passes.

Tehran has in the past threatened to close the strait. Shipping sources said on Wednesday that commercial ships were avoiding Iran‘s waters nearby.

Oil prices rose after Israel and Iran continued to exchange missile attacks overnight and Trump’s stance on the conflict kept investors on edge.

Iran was maintaining crude oil supply by loading tankers one at a time and moving floating oil storage much closer to China, two vessel tracking firms told Reuters, as the country seeks to keep a key source of revenue while under attack.

The conflict poses a fresh hurdle for Iran, which uses a shadow fleet of tankers to conceal their origin and skirt US sanctions reinstated in 2018 over its nuclear program.

Countries around the world are taking measures to evacuate their citizens from Israel and Iran and airspace in the region remains closed.

Earlier, the Israeli military said it targeted the Khondab nuclear site near Iran‘s central city Arak overnight, including a partially built heavy-water research reactor. Heavy-water reactors produce plutonium, which, like enriched uranium, can be used to make the core of an atom bomb. Iran‘s atomic energy agency said the attack caused no casualties.

The Israeli military also said it attacked launch sites in western Iran after attempts to restore them were detected.

Israel, which has the most advanced military in the Middle East, has been fighting on several fronts since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas triggered the Gaza war. It has severely weakened Iran‘s regional allies, Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and bombed Yemen’s Houthis.

The extent of the damage inside Iran has become more difficult to assess in recent days, with the authorities apparently seeking to prevent panic by limiting information.

Iran has stopped giving updates on the death toll, and state media have ceased showing widespread images of destruction. The internet has been almost completely shut down, and the public has been banned from filming.

Israel has issued evacuation orders for whole sections of Tehran, a city of 10 million. Thousands of residents have fled, jamming the highways out.

Inside Israel, the missile strikes over the past week are the first time a significant number of projectiles from Iran have pierced defenses and killed Israelis in their homes.

The director general of the Israeli hospital that was damaged in Beersheba, Shlomi Kodesh, told reporters at the site that a missile strike had destroyed several wards and wounded 40 people, mostly staff and patients.

Netanyahu, visiting the site, said he had issued instructions that “no one is immune” from Israeli attacks.

Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted Israeli military and intelligence headquarters near the hospital. An Israeli military official denied there were military targets nearby.

Missiles also hit a residential building in Ramat Gan, east of Tel Aviv.

Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement that missile and drone attacks have targeted military and industrial sites linked to Israel‘s defense industry in Haifa and Tel Aviv.

The post Israel Hits Nuclear Sites, Iran Strikes Hospital as War Escalates first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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From Iran Nukes to Europe-Israel Diplomacy, New York Times Can’t or Won’t Get the Context Right

The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The New York Times came in with a big editorial denouncing antisemitism and infuriating the Jew-hating readers who populate its comment section — but its news pages keep spreading falsehoods about Israel.

Three recent examples show how Times reporters lack historical or even recent context.

A Times news article about Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway imposing sanctions on Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich includes this passage:

“Britain has already tried once to prevent us from settling the cradle of our homeland, and we will not allow it to do it again,” Mr. Smotrich posted on social media in Hebrew, referring to Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The intended reference there actually seems to be not “Jewish settlements in the West Bank” but rather the infamous British “White Paper” of 1939 that sharply limited Jewish immigration into the British controlled mandate of Palestine. The White Paper capped Jewish migration at 75,000 over five years, during a moment when millions of Jews were desperately seeking to escape the Nazi onslaught. “After the period of five years, no further Jewish immigration will be permitted unless the Arabs of Palestine are prepared to acquiesce in it,” the White Paper said. It’s astonishing that this has somehow vanished from the Times‘ historical memory.

Another Times news article claimed, “The toll and imposition of a blockade, now partially lifted, in the territory [Gaza] have provoked growing international outrage, including among European states like France and Britain little inclined to sharp criticism of Israel in the past.” The idea that the outrage is “provoked” by Israeli actions rather than motivated by the growing and restive Muslim populations in France and Britain is questionable. There’s no outrage against Egypt, which also borders Gaza. And it’s inaccurate to say that France and Britain have been “little inclined to sharp criticism of Israel in the past.”

For example, in 2019 a French diplomatic statement said, “France condemns the decisions taken by the Israeli authorities on 5 and 6 August allowing for the construction of 2,304 housing units on the West Bank. These decisions come amid the troubling acceleration of settlement building on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. As stated in UN Security Council Resolution 2334, these settlements are contrary to international law. This policy further heightens tensions on the ground and gravely undermines the conditions for a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians based on a two-state solution.”

A brief for the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs reported, “For many years, France has been the driving force behind anti-Israel political attitudes in the EU. In addition, former Israeli UN ambassador Yehuda Blum noted, ‘The French at the UN were the leaders of every anti-Israel initiative originating in Europe throughout. Theirs was a totally unbalanced position. We counted them in the Arab camp.’”

In 2002, British and French foreign ministers met with Yasser Arafat at a time when George W. Bush was trying to freeze Arafat out.

A third example of Times cluelessness comes from the paper’s “live” news coverage of the war between Israel and Iran. “In his first television interview since Israel struck Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli intelligence found that Iran had enough uranium to build nine nuclear bombs but did not provide any evidence for that claim,” the Times said. The “did not provide evidence” phrase is a tic that the Times uses against people it doesn’t like in order to signal to readers that what those people say cannot be trusted.

The Times itself reported in December 2024, “Iran already has enough of a stockpile to make the fuel for four weapons in a matter of weeks or days.” Another recent Times article commented on Netanyahu’s claim of nine weapons by noting, “Other experts put the figure slightly higher, at 10, but the actual number would depend on how efficiently the Iranians prove to be at producing a warhead or a bomb.”

How much more evidence does the Times want? On June 9, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency spoke publicly about Iran, saying, “The agency cannot ignore the stockpiling of over 400 kg of highly enriched uranium.” An analysis put out the same day by the Institute for Science and International Security of the May 31, 2025, IAEA quarterly monitoring report says, “Iran can convert its current stock of 60 percent enriched uranium into 233 kg of WGU in three weeks at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP), enough for 9 nuclear weapons, taken as 25 kg of weapon-grade uranium (WGU) per weapon … Iran could produce its first quantity of 25 kg of WGU in Fordow in as little as two to three days … Breaking out in both Fordow and the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP), the two facilities together could produce enough WGU for 11 nuclear weapons in the first month, enough for 15 nuclear weapons by the end of the second month, 19 by the end of the third month, 21 by the end of the fourth month, and 22 by the end of the fifth month.”

I guess the Times could litigate that Netanyahu is eliding the conversion from highly enriched to weapon-grade, but he’s giving a wartime television interview, not a technical nuclear briefing.

So, when the Times complains that Netanyahu “did not provide any evidence,” the newspaper is just displaying its own bias and lack of knowledge about the context, as surely as it did in the other examples. One thing for which there is surely a lot of evidence: the Times‘s own weak grasp of basic details, history, and context for the events unfolding in the Middle East.

Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. He writes frequently at TheEditors.com. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.

The post From Iran Nukes to Europe-Israel Diplomacy, New York Times Can’t or Won’t Get the Context Right first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Antisemitic Incidents in Argentina Surge by 15% Amid Global Rise, New Report Finds

Argentina’s President Javier Milei attends a commemoration event ahead of the anniversary of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Martin Cassarini

Argentina experienced a 15 percent increase in reported antisemitic incidents last year, as the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing war in the Middle East sparked a rise in hate crimes, according to a report issued by the country’s Jewish umbrella organization on Thursday.

The Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA) presented the 2024 Annual Report on Antisemitism in Argentina, which recorded 687 anti-Jewish hate crimes — up from 598 antisemitic incidents in 2023 — marking a notable surge in antisemitic activity in the country.

According to the report, X and Facebook were the main platforms where hate messages were spread. However, antisemitic incidents also increased in public spaces, schools, and even neighborhoods.

“Hate may change its form, but it never truly disappears,” DAIA said in a post on X. “Behind every statistic is a story — a person, a community, a wound.”

The study indicates that 66 percent of the antisemitic incidents originated in the digital realm, with a significant rise in Nazi symbols and conspiracy theories.

There was also a 34 percent increase in reported physical assaults, with such hate crimes rising in schools and neighborhoods.

“At DAIA, we are committed every day to raising awareness, reporting, and eliminating antisemitism in all its forms,” the organization said in a statement. “Because staying silent is part of the problem.”

The report explains that the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel has triggered a surge in antisemitic expressions, with 39.5 percent of the hate crimes involving discourse related to the war in Gaza, followed by 23.5 percent involving Nazi symbolism.

Argentina has been hardly alone in reporting a surge in anti-Jewish crimes. According to the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel, there was a staggering 340 percent increase in total antisemitic incidents worldwide in 2024 compared to 2022.

For example, the United States reported a 288 percent increase in antisemitic atrocities last year compared to 2022, while Canada experienced a 562 percent surge over the same period.

In Europe, France saw a surge of over 350 percent in antisemitic incidents, while the United Kingdom recorded a 450 percent spike, with nearly 2,000 acts of antisemitism in just the first half of 2024.

In South Africa, antisemitic incidents rose by 185 percent, while Australia experienced a sharp increase of 387 percent.

At the global level, the report found that 41 percent of incidents involved antisemitic propaganda, 15.5 percent included acts of violence, and around 25 percent were related to Israel.

The research also revealed that online antisemitism surged, rising by more than 300 percent.

With Argentine President Javier Milei among the most vocal supporters of Israel, Argentina has become a key player in global efforts to combat antisemitism and terrorism, while defending democracy and Israel’s right to exist.

Last year, for example, more than 30 countries led by the United States adopted “global guidelines for countering antisemitism” during a gathering of special envoys and other representatives from around the globe in Argentina.

The post Antisemitic Incidents in Argentina Surge by 15% Amid Global Rise, New Report Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Massive Times Square Billboard Denounces ‘Free Palestine’ Movement for Contributing to Rise in Antisemitism

A digital billboard in Times Square organized by the Coalition for Jewish Values that condemns the “Free Palestine” movement. Photo: Provided

A Jewish organization representing more than 2,500 Orthodox rabbis launched a billboard campaign in Times Square on Wednesday that condemns the “Free Palestine” movement for fueling the deadly rise of antisemitism in the US after the attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, The Algemeiner has learned.

The 10-second digital advertisement, organized by the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), reads: “Free Palestine = Support for Hamas = Calling for Genocide of Jews. America, Wake Up. It Never Ends With the Jews!” The ad will appear multiple times per hour and be live in Times Square for 30 days, according to CJV.

“When students on college campuses chant ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ America itself is at risk,” said CJV Executive Vice President Rabbi Yaakov Menken in a released statement. “We call upon all Americans to join us in speaking clearly about who and what the bloodthirsty ‘Free Palestine’ movement stands for, and the need to stamp it out.” CJV is the largest rabbinic public policy organization in America.

The United States has recorded more than 10,000 antisemitic incidents since the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to data presented to the Israeli parliament’s Immigration, Absorption, and Diaspora Commission in January.

Since then, a terrorist set fire to the official residence of Jewish Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro because of the arsonist’s support for “Palestine” and the Palestinian people; two Israeli Embassy workers were murdered in Washington, DC, by a gunman who shouted “Free Palestine” before being arrested; and a man who threw Molotov cocktails at people rallying in Boulder, Colorado, for the Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip yelled “Free Palestine” during the terror attack.

At a congressional vigil last week for the two Israeli embassy employees murdered in May, US House Speaker Mike Johnson said “the ‘Free Palestine’ call has become a violent movement that collaborates with Hamas.”

“Too many Jewish organizations are afraid to say what Speaker Johnson finds obvious: the cry of ‘Free Palestine’ is the call of domestic terrorists,” said Menken. “Israel is the only free country in the Middle East. The one thing Israel is not free of is Jews, and that is what ‘Free Palestine’ aims to correct, in the model of Hitler’s Final Solution. They have no interest in building a nation but destroying one. They do not want to elevate Palestinian Arabs, but to eradicate Jews. This is classic antisemitism, and history proves that there is no greater danger to the continuity of a civilization.”

The post Massive Times Square Billboard Denounces ‘Free Palestine’ Movement for Contributing to Rise in Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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