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Journalist and scholar Aharon Ariel, 97, veteran of Israel’s war of independence and ‘walking encyclopedia’

(JTA) — In May 1948, a decommissioned U.S. Navy ship, the Marine Carp, was carrying passengers from New York to Haifa when, stopping in Beirut, it was met by 400 Lebanese soldiers. Israel had just declared its independence and war was underway — the Lebanese had no intention of allowing Jewish men of fighting age to sail on to the nascent Jewish state.
Among the 69 passengers removed from the ship and trucked to a former French military camp in the city of Baalbek was a Jerusalem-born polymath and former Haganah fighter named Aharon Ariel. Ariel had been studying history at Columbia University and Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary when the war broke out and quickly rushed home.
After the U.S. government brokered the release of the prisoners in late June, Ariel was sent back to the United States and tried again to get home. Eventually, he and a number of the detainees “found creative ways to get back to Israel,” as one history of the incident puts it, and he rejoined the Israeli military.
Still in his 20s, Ariel had already seemed to embody the history of Israel — a pattern he would sustain the rest of his life as a scholar, broadcaster, encyclopedia editor, translator and father of a son who would himself become a prisoner during the Yom Kippur war. He died June 20 in Jerusalem at age 97.
“My grandfather was a true son of Jerusalem,” a granddaughter, Tamar Ariel, wrote in a tribute posted shortly after his death. “Born just outside of Jerusalem in the Palestinian Mandate in 1925, the youngest of 6, and raised on King George St., he was a scholar and lover of Hebrew, history, and Jerusalem. “
Aharon Ariel worked as a journalist whose assignments, according to his granddaughter, included the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. He worked as editor of the “Encyclopedia Hebraica,” a monumental reference work issued between 1949 and 1983. His books include a historical lexicon, written with the historian Joshua Prawer in 1964, and a translation of “Annals of England” (1968) by the British historian George Macaulay Trevelyan.
The son of immigrants to Israel from Hamburg, Germany, he spoke a precise academic Hebrew and delivered a regular Hebrew lesson, “Rega shel Ivrit,” on Kol Yisrael, Israel’s main and then only radio station.
“This was before Israel had a television station, and … when it had just one radio station,” remembered another granddaughter, Yael Ariel-Goldschmidt.”I’ve never met or heard anyone speak better Hebrew. As a child I thought his job was … simply to speak Hebrew.”
In his youth he attended Ma’aleh, a religious high school in Jerusalem, where his best friend was Yehuda Amichai, who would come to be regarded as Israel’s greatest poet. At 14, he joined the Haganah, the general defense force of the pre-state Jewish community, eventually becoming a junior commander.
Aharon Ariel rides on the shoulders of his childhood friend, Yehuda Amichai, at left. The two attended the same high school in Jerusalem before Israel became a state. (Courtesy Yael Ariel-Goldschmidt)
He studied mathematics at Hebrew University before, in 1947, he went to New York City for his graduate studies.
When the war interrupted those plans, he joined the fighting that would last until March 1949. His units suffered major casualties, including a number of his close friends.
After the war he worked as a Hebrew teacher whose students included an American immigrant named Batya (Betty) Cohen, who had been raised on New York’s Lower East Side and came to Israel as a member of Hashomer Hatzair, the socialist Zionist youth group. The two married in 1951 in the United States, where Batya had returned for graduate studies, and returned to Israel to live. Batya died in 2021.
They had three sons and nine grandchildren, one of whom predeceased them.
During the Yom Kippur war, one of those sons, Yaakov, was wounded, captured and tortured by Syrian forces. He spent nine months as a POW; because the Syrians refused to release the names of prisoners, his parents knew he was alive only after they saw a photograph of him taken by a Turkish journalist. During his captivity Aharon and Batya lobbied in Israel and the United States for his release.
“My father, with a group of other parents, went to the United States and met with anyone willing to meet them,” recalled Yaakov Ariel, now a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition to withholding the names of the captured, Syria refused Red Cross visits or mail. “Many parents didn’t know what was going on.”
Once again the United States brokered a prisoner exchange. Afterwards, the elder Ariel rarely talked about his own captivity in 1948 nor his son’s ordeal, according to Ariel-Goldschmidt.
“My grandparents never spoke to me about this, except for once,” she recalled. “My friend Jordana came over on Shabbat for lunch and brought her little sister, who was just young enough and bold enough to ask questions no one else asked. My grandmother took out photo albums with newspaper clippings from when my father was MIA, from when he was a POW. That is how I learned that my grandfather was elected by the parents of the POWs to fly to the U.S. and campaign on their behalf, to urge the U.S. to exert pressure on Syria and broker a prisoner exchange, which the U.S. (and [Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger) eventually did.”
Her grandfather was forthcoming on many other topics.
“He was a connoisseur of whiskey, art, pescatarian food, and coffee,” wrote Tamar Ariel. “He and my grandmother introduced me to Impressionism, taking me to art museums across Israel, the U.S., and Europe from a young age.”
He could also expound on the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud and the history of the country whose biography parallelled his own.
“My grandfather was a walking encyclopedia,” wrote Ariel-Goldschmidt.
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The post Journalist and scholar Aharon Ariel, 97, veteran of Israel’s war of independence and ‘walking encyclopedia’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘With or Without Russia’s Help’: Iran Pledges to Block South Caucasus Route Opened Up By Peace Deal

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.
i24 News – Iran will block the establishment of a US-backed transit corridor in the South Caucasus region with or without Moscow’s help, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader was quoted as saying on Saturday by the Iran International website, one day after the historic peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
“Mr. Trump thinks the Caucasus is a piece of real estate he can lease for 99 years,” Ali Akbar Velayati said of the so-called Zangezur corridor, the establishment of which is stipulated in the peace deal unveiled on Friday by US President Donald Trump. The White House said the transit route would facilitate greater exports of energy and other resources.
“This passage will not become a gateway for Trump’s mercenaries — it will become their graveyard,” the Khamenei advisor added.
Baku and Yerevan have been at loggerheads since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous Azerbaijani region mostly populated by ethnic Armenians, broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia. Azerbaijan took back full control of the region in 2023, prompting or forcing almost all of the territory’s 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia.
Yet that painful history was put to the side on Friday at the White House, as Trump oversaw a signing ceremony, flanked by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
The peace deal with Azerbaijan—a pro-Western ally of Israel—is expected to pull Armenia out of the Russian and Iranian sphere of influence and could transform the South Caucasus, an energy-producing region neighboring Russia, Europe, Turkey and Iran.
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UK Police Arrest 150 at Protest for Banned Palestine Action Group

People holding signs sit during a rally organised by Defend Our Juries, challenging the British government’s proscription of “Palestine Action” under anti-terrorism laws, in Parliament Square, in London, Britain, August 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
London’s Metropolitan Police said on Saturday it had arrested 150 people at a protest against Britain’s decision to ban the group Palestine Action, adding it was making further arrests.
Officers made arrests after crowds, waving placards expressing support for the group, gathered in Parliament Square, the force said on X.
Protesters, some wearing black and white Palestinian scarves, chanted “shame on you” and “hands off Gaza,” and held signs such as “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action,” video taken by Reuters at the scene showed.
In July, British lawmakers banned Palestine Action under anti-terrorism legislation after some of its members broke into a Royal Air Force base and damaged planes in protest against Britain’s support for Israel.
The ban makes it a crime to be a member of the group, carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
The co-founder of Palestine Action, Huda Ammori, last week won a bid to bring a legal challenge against the ban.
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‘No Leniency’: Iran Announces Arrest of 20 ‘Zionist Agents’

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi addresses a special session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, June 20, 2025. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
i24 News – Iranian authorities have in recent months arrested 20 people charged with being “Israeli Mossad operatives,” the judiciary said, adding that the Islamic regime will mete out the harshest punishments.
“The judiciary will show no leniency toward spies and agents of the Zionist regime, and with firm rulings, will make an example of them all,” spokesperson Asghar Jahangiri told Iranian media. However, it is understood that an unspecified number of detainees were released, apparently after the charges against them could not be substantiated.
The Islamic Republic was left reeling by a devastating 12-day war with Israel earlier in the summer that left a significant proportion of its military arsenal in ruins and dealt a serious setback to its uranium enrichment program. The fallout included an uptick in executions of Iranians convicted of spying for Israel, with at least eight death sentences carried out in recent months. Hit with international sanctions, the country is in dire economic straights, with frequent energy outages and skyrocketing unemployment.
In recent weeks Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi affirmed that Tehran cannot give up on its nuclear enrichment program even as it was severely damaged during the war.
“It is stopped because, yes, damages are serious and severe. But obviously we cannot give up of enrichment because it is an achievement of our own scientists. And now, more than that, it is a question of national pride,” the official told Fox News.