Jewish immigration to Israel has not slowed over the past year despite the ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza, according to the chairman of the World Zionist Organization.

Yaakov Hagoel told The Algemeiner in an interview that since Oct. 7, when Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists invaded southern Israel and launched the war, more than 29,000 people have made aliyah, the process of Jews immigrating to Israel.

Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack — in which the Palestinian terror group killed 1,200 people, took another 251 hostage, and committed rampant sexual violence — began a war “not only against the State of Israel, but also against the entire Jewish people,” Hagoel said. He added that the onslaught, the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, “caused the Jewish community in Israel and around the world to feel less safe and secure.”

Since Oct. 7, antisemitism around the world has spiked to alarming levels. The Anti-Defamation League released a report in April showing antisemitic incidents in the US rose 140 percent last year, reaching a record high. Most of the outrages occurred after Oct. 7, during the ensuing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Meanwhile, such outrages have also skyrocketed to record highs in several other countries around the world, especially in Europe, since the Hamas atrocities. In France,for example, Jewish leaders have expressed concern about the safety of their community if French Jews don’t leave the country.

Consequently, Hagoel continued, “Jews around the world are looking for something more secure that they can rely on to raise their children and to link them to the Jewish traditions. And there’s no doubt that the interest in aliyah since Oct. 7 is related to it and hasn’t happened in many, many years.”

According to data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of annual immigrants to Israel since 2010 has ranged from almost 75,000 people to just 13,000 — with most years between 15,000 and 30,000. This would make the year after Oct. 7 relatively consistent with the past decade and a half.

However, Hagoel said he expects 100,000 new olim — the Hebrew term for immigrants who move to Israel — to come after the Israel-Hamas war is over.

Because of the war, Hagoel explained, “the expectation is that they would fall dramatically and they haven’t done that.”

But the reason people are coming is not just because of the war, he said. It is also because “anyone that makes aliyah is fulfilling a dream of returning home. So, the security situation around the world is a trigger to expedite that will to come home.”

In fact, Hagoel added, “there has been a dramatic increase in numbers in the opening of files to express an interest in aliyah and to begin the process — that’s increased by around 300 percent since the same period last year.” 

After a recent plane of new olim came from France, Hagoel said it “demonstrates that the Jewish people are determined to continue building their future in our homeland, the land of Israel. This unprecedented aliyah is a testament to the recognition of the global Jewish community that Israel is not just a refuge, but a beacon of hope and faith.”

Asked about a message he had for the Jewish world, Hagoel emphasized the responsibility he felt to Jews across the world, regardless if they will make aliyah, and how important it is to help them.

He said he and his organization feel a “responsibility for all the Jews who live in Israel, those who will live in Israel, and those who will never live here.”

The post World Zionist Organization Chair: Immigration to Israel Has Not Slowed Since Oct. 7, 100,000 New Olim Expected first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

JNS.org — Israel Police officers on Monday arrested 13 suspects and were checking a suspicious vehicle they stopped on the busy Route 6 highway near the Horeshim interchange.

The Horeshim interchange is in the southern Sharon Plain, close to Samaria.

“All the occupants of the vehicle were detained for questioning,” said the statement, adding that sappers were searching for explosives.

שוהה בלתי חוקי פלסטיני נעצר בכביש 6 בחשד שתכנן לבצע פיגוע, השב”כ מעורב בחקירה. כביש 6 נחסם ממחלף חורשים צפונה@Doron_Kadosh pic.twitter.com/RHKjCv1frD

— גלצ (@GLZRadio) September 9, 2024

On Sept. 2, Israeli security forces neutralized a car bomb outside the entrance to the Jewish community of Ateret in the Binyamin region of Samaria.

Police and military sappers used a robot to inspect the vehicle, which was carrying two large gas tanks connected to an operating mechanism.

There were no casualties in the incident, which Israel Ganz, the head of the Binyamin Regional Council, called a “great miracle.”

Days earlier, the Hamas terrorist group hailed a “double heroic operation” after car bombers wounded three Israelis in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank.

Last month, Hamas leader abroad Khaled Mashaal called for a return to suicide terrorist attacks against Israelis in the West Bank.

During a video address to a conference in Istanbul, Mashaal said, “Resistance operations in the West Bank are escalating despite the harsh conditions,” CNN Arabic reported.

“We want to return to martyrdom operations. This is a situation that can only be addressed by open conflict. They are fighting us with open conflict, and we are confronting them with open conflict,” he continued.

On Aug. 19, the “military””wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad both claimed responsibility for a failed suicide bombing in south Tel Aviv.

In a statement, Hamas vowed to continue to carry out suicide attacks “as long as Israel continues its massacre and policy of assassinations in Gaza.”

The post Israel Police Search for Bombs After Stopping Vehicle on Highway first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi hopes to hold talks with new Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian by November on improving Iran‘s stalled cooperation with his agency, he said on Monday.

Several long-standing issues are dogging relations between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including Tehran’s barring of uranium-enrichment experts on the inspection team and its failure for years to explain uranium traces found at undeclared sites.

“It has been more than three and a half years since Iran stopped implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, more commonly known as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal], including provisionally applying its Additional Protocol, and therefore, it is also over three and a half years since the Agency was able to conduct complementary access in Iran,” Grossi said in a statement to a quarterly meeting of his agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors.

“Consequently, the agency has lost continuity of knowledge in relation to the production and inventory of centrifuges, rotors and bellows, heavy water and uranium ore concentrate,” Grossi added. “Iran says it has declared all nuclear material, activities and locations required under its NPT Safeguards Agreement. However, this statement is inconsistent with the agency’s findings of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at undeclared locations in Iran. The agency needs to know the current location(s) of the nuclear material and/or of contaminated equipment involved.”

Despite saying there “has been no progress” in resolving several issues concerning Iran’s nuclear violations and lack of cooperation with the IAEA, Grossi said he and Iran’s president would meet in the near future.

“He [Pezeshkian] agreed to meet with me at an appropriate juncture,” Grossi said in his statement, referring to an exchange after Pezeshkian’s election in July.

“I encourage Iran to facilitate such a meeting in the not-too-distant future so that we can establish a constructive dialogue that leads swiftly to real results,” he said.

With nuclear diplomacy largely stalled between the Iranian presidential election and the US one on Nov. 5, Grossi said he wanted to make real progress soon.

Asked at a news conference if his reference to the “not-too-distant future” meant before or after the US election, Grossi said: “No, hopefully before that.”

IAEA board resolutions ordering Iran to cooperate urgently with the investigation into the uranium traces and calling on it to reverse its barring of inspectors have brought little change, and quarterly IAEA reports seen by Reuters on Aug. 29 showed no progress.

Iran responded to the latest resolution in June by announcing an expansion of its enrichment capacity, installing more centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, at its Natanz and Fordow sites.

At its Fordow site dug into a mountain where it is enriching to up to 60 percent purity, close to the 90 percent of weapons grade, it installed two of the eight new cascades, or clusters, of advanced IR-6 centrifuges within days of informing the IAEA of its plan. Two weeks later, it had installed another two.

By the end of the quarter, the latest IAEA reports showed Iran had completed installation of all eight new cascades but still not brought them online. At its larger underground site at Natanz, which is enriching to up to 5 percent purity, it had brought 15 new cascades of other advanced models online.

“What we see is that there is some work, but nothing that indicates a rush to a fast implementation of a big increase in terms of enrichment production,” Grossi said.

Iran has stepped up nuclear work since 2019, after then-US President Donald Trump withdrew from an agreement reached under his predecessor Barack Obama under which Iran agreed to temporary restrictions on its nuclear activities in return for the lifting of international sanctions.

Western diplomats say there are plans for talks on fresh restrictions should Democrat Kamala Harris win the election.

The post IAEA Chief Grossi Says Iran Stopped Cooperating With Nuclear Watchdog, Hopes to Hold Talks With Tehran by November first appeared on Algemeiner.com.