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Some Thoughts on Israel’s Remarkable Next Generation
Israeli soldiers stand by a wall with names of fallen soldiers on Memorial Day, when Israel commemorates its fallen soldiers, at Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem May 4, 2022. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Since returning from Israel after my latest visit, I am constantly being asked – what was it that left the deepest impression? I imagine what people expect to hear is about one of the places we visited, or about one of the people we met who said something particularly memorable. And yes, there were numerous moments throughout our trip that were especially moving or striking in their own way.
For example, witnessing first-hand the dedication of the Lemaan Achai team was deeply inspiring. Lemaan Achai is a Beit Shemesh-based social welfare organization that has had to scale up in ways no one anticipated, so that they can take care of hundreds of displaced families across central and southern Israel, along with the spouses and children of soldiers deployed to the war zone.
The mayor of Beit Shemesh underscored the incredible work of Lemaan Achai’s indefatigable founder and director, Rabbi Avrohom Leventhal. His superhuman efforts defy imagination. But despite that, it wasn’t our visit to Lemaan Achai that left the deepest impression.
The time we spent at Kerem Shalom, meeting the security personnel who repelled Hamas terrorists pouring over the border on October 7th, yards away from the kibbutz perimeter, was truly shocking. Their candid accounts brought home the horrors of the evil Israel faced via the experiences of those who lived through and survived that terrible day.
We also visited the Nova rave music festival site, which was transformed into a scene of violent carnage on October 7th. Even months later, an atmosphere of horror still lingers. But it was neither of these two places that left the deepest impression.
We spent over an hour with Israel’s former chief rabbi, Rav Yisrael Meir Lau, a child Holocaust survivor who lost most of his family at the hands of the Nazis, and whose personal narrative is an inspirational rollercoaster of emotions, embodying the entire story of modern Israel. Rav Lau captivated our attention with his lucid account of the many wars Israel has faced since its founding, all of which he personally lived through and drew lessons from.
Rav Lau’s upbeat demeanor, despite the existential threats to Israel – as real now as they were when Israel came into being – was incredibly uplifting. But it wasn’t our time with Rav Lau that left the deepest impression.
Our visit to Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem – the oldest hospital in Israel, founded 130 years ago, in 1894 – lifted our spirits and gave us much hope for the future. The facility is gearing itself up for the mental health crisis Israel is expected to face in the wake of October 7th and the current war. The staff’s sensitivity and the mental health team’s dedication deeply reassured us. They are doing everything they can to mitigate the crisis’s traumatic impact in the coming period.
The staff also showed us the bombproof wards that they are currently completing in the basement in anticipation of an escalation of rocket attacks from Lebanon in the next few months. Work on these wards began just a few weeks ago, and, remarkably, they are almost ready. We were totally blown away. Nevertheless, it wasn’t Herzog Hospital that left the deepest impression.
What left the deepest impression on me, and I believe on all of those who joined our solidarity mission, was best expressed by my friend Douglas Murray, the heroic reporter whose daily dispatches from Israel since October 7th have become compulsory watching for everyone hungry for factual journalism in a world dominated by lies and distortion.
Douglas joined us for dinner on the mission’s second night, and after giving us his analysis of the current crisis, he shared a conversation he had had with an Israeli man in his 60s which stirred him emotionally in a way that nothing else has since he arrived in Israel in October.
“He said something to me that was incredibly moving,” Douglas revealed. “We were talking about what Israel is going through, and what his generation, people in their 60s, had been through – and he said to me, impromptu: ‘I owe the younger generation an apology, because over recent years I have thought, and used to say to people: they’re on Instagram, they’re on Twitter, they go to parties – they’re just after pleasure. But I owe them an apology, because they have stepped up – like my generation did, and like previous generations did.’”
That’s when it hit me. The thing that most impressed me in Israel during this visit, and on my two other visits since October 7th, was the younger generation. In which other Westernized country would kids in their teens and 20s clamor to go into battle to defend their homeland?
I vividly recall the exodus of military-age men from both Russia and Ukraine after war broke out between those two countries in early 2022. So much so, that both countries restricted movement for young men, stopping them at the border and preventing them from leaving. Israel’s experience has been the polar opposite, with young Israelis flying home from all over the world to join their military units and go into combat.
This, more than anything else, has left the deepest impression on me. Douglas called it: “one of the most amazing things about being in Israel.” At a recent Friday night dinner with friends, Douglas told us that had chatted with a friend’s daughter. He asked her how old she was. “Twenty-one,” was the response. “And what do you do?” Douglas asked her. “I am an expert on intelligence in Yemen,” she replied. It was an answer that rendered him speechless. Because, as he explained to us, while this barely adult young woman is at the forefront of tackling existential threats, her contemporaries in America “are being indoctrinated – their parents remortgage their houses to send them to universities to make them stupid and wicked!”
On the final night of our mission, we arranged a barbecue for soldiers at the IDF base in Hebron, a city plagued by extremism and radical Islamists. We fed over 500 soldiers – boys and girls, some of them fresh back from combat missions, in full combat gear.
As the barbecue came to an end, we had a surprise for them – Israeli singing sensation Ishay Ribo rolled in with his band and sound team and they performed.
But as the concert got underway, I wasn’t watching Ishay serenading the audience with his rich repertoire of tender songs. Instead, I was watching the audience, with tears in my eyes. I watched the fresh smiling faces of Israel’s next generation, brave heroes swaying to the music, voices raised in a chorus of melody.
Minutes earlier, the base commander had informed me that immediately after the concert many of the soldiers were going off on a dangerous mission to break up a Hamas terrorist cell located very close to Hebron.
But you couldn’t sense any kind of negative vibe. Rather, the atmosphere was one of superlative confidence and Jewish pride. These young soldiers were totally ready for what was expected of them. Nothing would hold them back. And it was this that left an impression on me that I will remember for as long as I live.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
The post Some Thoughts on Israel’s Remarkable Next Generation first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Brooklyn Woman Denied Bail, Claims She Didn’t Kill Anyone in Car Crash That Killed Jewish Mother, Two Daughters

An overturned auto in a car crash flipped on its roof landing on a mother and her three children, killing two children on March 29, 2025, in Brooklyn, New York. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
A Brooklyn woman denied killing anyone when she appeared in court on Thursday, less than a week after a Jewish woman and her two daughters died when she crashed her car into them at a crosswalk.
Miriam Yarimi, 32, appeared in Brooklyn Criminal Court via a video stream from her room in NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, according to the New York Daily News. She is undergoing a psychological evaluation at the hospital following Saturday’s deadly car crash.
After the crash, Yarimi told first responders she was “possessed” and believed the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was following her. She has made similar claims about being pursued by the CIA on social media several times in the past, The Algemeiner previously reported.
Yamini, who is also Jewish, faces a slew of charges that include three counts of second-degree manslaughter, three counts of criminal negligent homicide, and four counts of second-degree assault.
“The devil is in my eyes. I am haunted inside. I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t hurt anyone. Prove it. Show me the proof. You have no proof,” Yarimi said in a statement after Saturday’s crash, according to Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Nocella. “I need CT scans in my eyes. I need to get the scanning done now … Where’s my daughter? My daughter’s always in my heart.”
“People are out to get me,” added the single mother. “I need CT scans on my entire body. F— you. I need a whole work up to get whatever is in my body out of it. I did not hurt anyone. All the evidence is on my phone.”
Nocella called Yamini a flight risk and asked the judge that she be held without bail due to the “nature and severity” of the allegations, as reported by the Daily News. Judge Jevet Johnson agreed with Nocella and ordered Yamini to be held without bail. Nocella said prosecutors are prepared to present grand jury indictment on the manslaughter charges.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said his administration is “committed” to taking more action to prevent traffic violence and deaths following the fatal car crash that killed Natasha Saada, 35, along with her daughters Diana, 8, and Deborah, 5. Saada’s 4-year-old son Philip was injured in the crash and is still being hospitalized in critical condition.
Adams’ office announced on Wednesday that there were 41 traffic deaths during the first three months of 2025 — 24 fewer than last year and the second fewest since they started being recorded by the city. Despite the decline in traffic deaths, Adams admitted that more work needs to be done to keep New Yorkers safe on the streets, as evident by Saturday’s deadly car crash.
“In order to make New York City the best place to raise a family, we need to be safer at every level — including on our streets,” he said in a released statement on Wednesday. “Our administration’s investments in intersection safety improvements, treating traffic violence as the serious crime that it is, and our expanding automated camera enforcement are all helping ensure we’re leading the way toward a safer future for all New Yorkers — whether they are pedestrians, cyclists, or motorists.”
“We understand there is more work to do, as evidenced this past weekend’s tragic crash in Brooklyn because one lift [sic] lost to traffic violence is one life too many, but our administration remains committed to reducing traffic violence as much as any other form of violence,” Adams added.
On Saturday afternoon, Yarimi crashed her car into an Uber and then slammed into four members of the Saada family as they were trying to walk across the street at an intersection on Ocean Parkway in Midwood.
Yarimi was speeding at the time of the incident, “probably doing close to twice the speed limit,” and “ran a red light” just before the crash, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez revealed on Wednesday while speaking to Eyewitness News. Yamini was also driving on a suspended license and has accumulated almost 100 parking and camera violations, including 21 speed camera tickets and five red light tickets.
“It actually exceeds just being reckless, it’s almost being wanton, we’re not going to tolerate that,” Gonzalez told Eyewitness News. “Her vehicle had been ticketed many times by red light cameras and speed cameras, that car was a frequent violator of both speed laws and red-light laws, and there is no excuse for running a red light.”
Saada and her daughters were buried in Israel this week. Four-year-old Philip remains at the hospital for his injuries and is facing “tough straights,” Gonzalez said. “We expect him to make some kind of recovery, but it’s going to be a long road for him.”
The boy lost one of his kidneys during treatment at Maimonides Medical Center, according to New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. “It’s heartbreaking,” Lander said after he visited the home of the Saada family, according to the New York Post. “He’s still in critical condition. He lost one kidney but they are hopeful about his prognosis.”
Five people in the Uber hit by Yarimi’s car suffered minor injuries.
Supporters of a proposed state law that would stop repeat super speeders in New York have rallied together since the car accident on Saturday, calling for the passage of the bill that they said could have prevented the crash. The legislation would require speed limiters to be installed on vehicles owned by repeat reckless drivers, like Yarimi. The device automatically limits the vehicles to within 5 mph of the legal speed of the road. The “Stop Super Speeders” bill was sponsored by New York State Assembly Member Emily Gallagher and Senator Andrew Gounardes.
The New York City Comptroller, Brad Lander, supports the bill and criticized Adams for not already implementing such measures.
The post Brooklyn Woman Denied Bail, Claims She Didn’t Kill Anyone in Car Crash That Killed Jewish Mother, Two Daughters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hungary Announces Withdrawal From ‘Political’ ICC as Netanyahu Visits Country, Defying Arrest Warrant

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks to the media next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Budapest, Hungary, April 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo
Hungary on Thursday announced that it will withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the country welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the capital city of Budapest, defying an ICC arrest warrant against him over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.
Despite Hungary’s status as a signatory of the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, Netanyahu was not taken into custody upon his arrival in Budapest. Instead, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban welcomed his Israeli counterpart with full military honors.
GREAT meeting with a GREAT friend, @PM_ViktorOrban. Together, we’re making the GREAT alliance between
and
even stronger! pic.twitter.com/Svphzb61Gn
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) April 3, 2025
Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary, which is scheduled to last until Sunday, is his first trip to Europe since the ICC issued an arrest warrant against him last year. In February, he made his first foreign trip altogether since the ICC’s decision to the United States, where he met with US President Donald Trump.
As Orban and Netanyahu met to discuss regional developments and bilateral cooperation, Hungarian Minister Gergely Gulyas released a statement announcing that “the government will initiate the withdrawal procedure” from the ICC, which could take a year or more to complete.
After their meeting, Orban said he believes the ICC is “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”
“I am convinced that this otherwise important international judicial forum has been degraded into a political tool, with which we cannot and do not want to engage,” Orban said during a press conference.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar praised Budapest’s decision to withdraw from the international court, highlighting the country’s “strong moral stance alongside Israel and the principles of justice and sovereignty.”
“I commend Hungary’s important decision to withdraw from the ICC,” Saar wrote in a post on X. “The so-called ‘International Criminal Court’ lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defense.”
I commend Hungary’s important decision to withdraw from the ICC. FM Péter Szijjártó and I dealt with this matter extensively. The so-called “International Criminal Court” lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for…
— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 3, 2025
In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which until a recently imposed blockade had provided significant humanitarian aid into the enclave throughout the war. Israel also says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
After the court issued the warrant against Netanyahu, Orban rejected the decision by inviting the Israeli leader to Budapest and accusing the court of “interfering in an ongoing conflict for political purposes.”
During Thursday’s news conference, Netanyahu commended Hungary’s withdrawal from the ICC, calling it a “bold and principled action” as “the first state that walks out of this corruption and this rottenness.”
“The ICC directs its actions against us fighting a just war with just means,” Netanyahu said. “I think [this decision will] be deeply appreciated, not only in Israel but in many, many countries around the world.”
After the Israeli leader was welcomed in Budapest, Hamas issued a statement calling on the Hungarian government to reverse its decision and extradite Netanyahu to the ICC to stand trial, calling the decision an “immoral stance that shows collusion with a war criminal who is running away from justice.”
In a post on X, Israel’s top diplomat reiterated his support for Hungary’s decision, arguing that Hamas’s statement only proves the country is taking the correct stance in this matter.
“Whoever needed further proof as to how justified, moral and necessary Hungary’s decision to withdraw from the ICC is: Hamas just condemned it,” Saar wrote.
“Hamas is defending the politicized and twisted so-called ‘International Criminal Court.’ And that’s the whole story.”
Whoever needed further proof as to how justified, moral and necessary Hungary’s decision to withdraw from the ICC is: Hamas just condemned it.
Hamas is defending the politicized and twisted so-called “International Criminal Court”.
And that’s the whole story.— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 3, 2025
After the ICC’s decision to issue the warrants, several countries, including Hungary, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, France, and Italy, have said they would not arrest Netanyahu if he visited.
US and Israeli officials issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2o23.
The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
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Jewish Individualism Will Not Work, But Solidarity Must
During the events of Purim, Haman approached King Xerxes I and said, “There is a certain race of people scattered through all the provinces of your empire who keep themselves separate from everyone else. Their laws are different from those of any other people, and they refuse to obey the laws of the king. So, it is not in the king’s interest to let them live.”
Queen Esther’s solidarity with her dispersed people in Persia, and her profound loyalty to her Jewish identity, saved them from Haman’s genocide and secured their self-defense when she courageously revealed her heritage to Xerxes I.
Today, Israeli Jews are once again fighting for their Jewish and Zionist survival. Since Oct. 7, 2023, this Jewish Armageddon has extended anew to Diaspora Jews, who have felt the past’s chilling draft. Antisemitism has reawakened, infecting non-Jews and Jews alike. Few people contribute to antisemitic attitudes more than “self-loathing” Jews. These “self-loathing” Jews, who cynically reveal only the negative aspects of their Jewishness, believe they can avoid antisemitic attacks if they condemn Israel. But they achieve only self-betrayal, gaining neither acceptance nor respect from those who hate all Jews. Jews are a nation of people who question, not people who answer.
Questions pervade the Jewish mind to such a degree that the adage, “two Jews, three opinions,” has become a common characteristic of Jewish identity. Moreover, the pursuit of an answer often serves as a springboard for further inquiry. For us, as Jews, the ultimate answer, akin to the messianic ideal, remains a distant, undefined future. This traditional perspective has granted Jews a sort of perpetual license to disagree. Jews enjoy engaging in debate with others, but they sometimes find particular delight in debating amongst themselves, which allows their intellects to roam and their sardonic wit to playfully engage with each other’s vulnerabilities, finding humor without causing offense.
This love for discourse, for questioning everything in sight, including Hashem himself, is by no means the only puzzle that makes up our Jewish identity. Another crucial element of our makeup is solidarity. In times of major upheavals, we have always stood together against the masses who rose against us. To our enemies, we Jews — atheists, nihilists, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Haredi, religious Zionists, non-religious Zionists, or undecided — look, taste, and feel the same. They care nothing for our ingrained liberalism. Our enemies seek cracks within our communities in order to break us apart and cause irreparable damage.
Years of relative peace and prosperity since the Holocaust have allowed us to gather again and engage in countless polemics over the fate of Israel, Jews, Judaism, and Zionism. However, we have failed to notice that we are at war again, and that our enemies eagerly exploit the divisions within a nation that comprises only 0.2% of the world’s population. These enemies — radical Islamists and progressive Western leftists who view Jews and Israel as white oppressors and colonizers — avidly listen to Jewish internal squabbles and criticisms of the Israeli government.
Despite the significant progress the Shin Bet and IDF have made in dismantling much of Hamas’s leadership and terrorist infrastructure, destroying its complex network of tunnels and command centers, and weakening Hezbollah, in addition to eliminating tens of thousands of Hamas terrorists, many Jews remain critical of, and disagree with, what Israel represents today. Aware of government problems, Israelis desire improvement. However, their rage and almost addictive pattern of anti-government protests have provided their adversaries with more opportunities to exploit perceived weaknesses.
This has resonated with some Jews worldwide. In New York, some Jewish intellectuals have defended “free-Palestine” and pro-Hamas protesters harassing Jewish students, invoking freedom of speech. They appear to have fallen prey to what they perceive as the lies of progressive anti-Zionist media, which systemically omits crucial facts about Israel. This includes the IDF’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties, and its role in eliminating thousands of Hamas terrorists and dismantling their terror network, which posed a significant threat to Israel (and innocent Palestinians themselves).
These “romantic” progressive Jews also forget that no matter how critical they are of that “brutal” IDF, it is still fighting on their behalf, because it is fighting on behalf of every Jew. Civilian deaths do occur, but they are either unfortunate incidents of war or, more often, a direct result of Hamas’s cruelty, as Hamas terrorists purposefully embed themselves within the civilian population. I once sat at dinner in Israel with a wealthy American Jewish couple who came on a sympathy tour a few months after Oct. 7. Nevertheless, the husband was convinced that the IDF was deliberately killing Palestinian children.
Those were wealthy, educated American Jews who thought they were charitable because they donated to Jewish causes, and therefore, believed they had the right to express their views on everything. This is where I, a Soviet Jew who grew up deprived of Judaism yet targeted by antisemitism, felt differently. To begin with, the husband was completely wrong. Second, in times of existential crisis, we, as Jewish people, must set aside our irresistible urge to disagree and criticize Israel on basic premises such as Israel’s fight to ensure Jews don’t live through a second genocide. The freedom to speak our minds has been ours for thousands of years. We conversed with Hashem, we obeyed Him, we sacrificed for Him, and then we quickly learned to disobey and question Him, even before we began arguing amongst ourselves.
Still, throughout our dotted and punctured history, it wasn’t our tongues or our disagreeable minds that kept our small nation together; it was our solidarity. In solidarity, we walked out of Egypt. In solidarity, tens of thousands of Eastern European Jews came to their promised land as early as the 1920s and began to build from nothing. In solidarity with his orphans, Dr. Janusz Korczak, despite being given the chance to save himself, chose to march with them, hand in hand, through the ghetto to the deportation point, on their way to Treblinka, where they met their final hour. In solidarity with other Jews across the Soviet Empire, Soviet Jews secretly tried to remember who they were, despite years of persecutions and purges.
In solidarity with their Soviet brethren, powerful American Jewry fought for Russian Jews to be able to emigrate to Israel and the United States. One of the main reasons our small nation has not disappeared into the abyss is because, in Diaspora, across oceans, and through impenetrable iron curtains, we never ceased to support one another. We knew we could not afford the luxury of neglecting our faith, traditions, and, most importantly, we could never abandon defending ourselves against our enemies.
Caesar’s “Divide et impera” (“Divide and Conquer”), though a cliché, is particularly relevant here. Seeing fractures within our communities, our enemies have intensified these divisions through incessant anti-Zionist and antisemitic propaganda and violence. Therefore, only as an undivided people, united by a single purpose — eradicating our enemies and protecting our promised land — do we stand a chance of survival. Perhaps only then will the day come when Jewish people gather on virtual street corners to argue and ask questions to which they seek no answers.
Anya Gillinson is an immigration lawyer and author of the new memoir Dreaming in Russian. She lives in New York City. More at www.anyagillinson.com.
The post Jewish Individualism Will Not Work, But Solidarity Must first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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