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Yair Cherki is famous for making Israelis understand Haredim. Now he wants Haredim to understand that he’s gay.
(JTA) — Yair Cherki, the religion reporter for Israel’s Channel 12, gained a name for his sidecurls, his cheery demeanor and his rapid fire delivery as he has guided his viewers into the lives and homes of Israel’s Haredi community.
On Tuesday, he delivered a different sort of message — a wrenching personal statement posted to Facebook.
“I love guys. I love guys and the Holy Blessed One,” a religious term for God, Cherki wrote. “It’s not a contradiction, and it’s not new.”
He went on to describe how he had grappled with a secret that had tormented him.
“I have always lived with the clash between this sexual preference and faith,” he wrote. “There are those who solved the conflict by saying there is no God, and there are others who have said there are no gays. In my flesh, I know they both exist and I try to resolve this internal conflict in multiple ways.”
What may have been surprising, beyond the content of the announcement itself, was the outpouring of support for Cherki evinced across Israel’s political spectrum.
“I love you my dear brother,” former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is Orthodox, wrote on Twitter. “And I am very proud of you.”
Amir Ohana, the openly gay speaker of the Knesset from the Likud Party, responded with a heart emoji.
“This text is so beautiful and moving,” commented Meirav Michaeli, the leader of the left-wing Labor Party. “Thank you for giving it to all of us.”
Also flooding Cherki’s mentions were rivals from Israel’s usually cutthroat media world. “What a joy you are, Cherki,” wrote Shaul Amsterdamski, the finance reporter for the rival Kan network, Israel’s public broadcaster. (Channel 12 is privately owned.)
His public coming out comes at a time that far-right figures in Israel’s new government have shown an appetite for curbing the rights of the LGBTQ community.
Cherki said he would not quit his faith. “My community is still the religious community,” he wrote. “My tribe, my family and my friends. These are my beliefs.”
Not every Israeli was ready to understand, but some still spoke in loving terms.
“This post made me very sad,” commented Yehuda Glick, a former Likud lawmaker who leads a movement to allow Jewish worship on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. “It doesn’t change the fact that I love you not a single gram less than I loved you before I read it. But in total honesty, it’s a gut punch.”
Uriah Elkayam, a journalist, replied to Glick: “These kind of responses from you and your cohort crush souls and drain the lifeblood from people, because you think you are better Jews. This is a time to hug, or to shut up.”
Cherki, 30, rake-slim, generally sports a dark blue kippah and dark casual clothing.He recently cut off his payos, the sidecurls kept by haredi men.
Cherki made his mark in TV news by taking viewers into the homes of his fellow Haredim and asking them, in gentle, urgent tones, to explain why they believed what they believed.
He endeavored to keep Haredim from being reduced to cliches. A Haredi Knesset cafeteria worker who invited Cherki and another reporter into his home described his admiration for Bennett. The cafeteria worker also explained why he disagreed with Bennett profoundly on issues of national security, and was ready to vote for Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right, religious Zionist politician currently serving as Israel’s national security minister.
Cherki pointed at a cabinet stacked with the writings of the late Sephardic sage, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who founded the Haredi Shas Party. “A Shas house!” he said — a way of noting for viewers that parties which have traditionally represented Haredi Israelis no longer had a grip on their natural constituents.
Cherki’s job also led him into awkward encounters. In a segment on Haredi marriage, a matchmaker he interviewed chided him for not yet getting hitched.
He has been at pains to make clear that he is a believer. Last year, he explained how Haredim in B’nei Brak, a city north of Tel Aviv, were coping with the aftermath of a terror attack. Many believed that the heavily haredi city no longer had the protection of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, an eminent sage who had died days before the attack, and whom they believed protected the city.
The anchorman, Rafi Reshef, asked Cherki incredulously whether he bought into the “narrative” that Kanievsky had protected B’nei Brak.
Cherki shot him a pained look and said it was “a little bit of a private question.” Cherki said.
“I generally believe that the role of righteous people in the place where they live, there is significance,” he said. “The question of, if just because a rabbi died, at that moment, B’nei Brak is more vulnerable than before, is bigger than me. But I can understand and tell you the spirit and the thought processes of people who believe that.”
Reshef apologized. Cherki smiled.
Cherki also speaks to secular Israeli groups about the world of haredi Jews. “If I had to put in a single sentence what I’m trying to do on TV when I talk about Haredim, I want to say ‘They’re not all the same,’” he told a bar full of secular Israelis last month on a TV show that brings together different sectors of Israel’s deeply divided society..
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Lebanon Plans UN Complaint Against Israel Over Border Wall
A UN vehicle drives near a concrete wall along Lebanon’s southern border which, according to the Lebanese presidency, extends beyond the “Blue Line”, a U.N.-mapped line separating Lebanon from Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, as seen from northern Israel, November 16, 2025. REUTERS/Shir Torem
Lebanon will file a complaint to the U.N. Security Council against Israel for constructing a concrete wall along Lebanon’s southern border that extends beyond the “Blue Line,” the Lebanese presidency said on Saturday.
The Blue Line is a U.N.-mapped line separating Lebanon from Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israeli forces withdrew to the Blue Line when they left south Lebanon in 2000.
A spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general, Stephane Dujarric, said on Friday the wall has made more than 4,000 square meters (nearly an acre) of Lebanese territory inaccessible to the local population.
The Lebanese presidency echoed his remarks, saying in a statement that Israel’s ongoing construction constituted “a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 and an infringement on Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Dujarric said the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) had requested that the wall be removed.
An Israeli military spokesperson denied on Friday that the wall crossed the Blue Line.
“The wall is part of a broader IDF plan whose construction began in 2022,” the spokesperson said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
“Since the start of the war, and as part of lessons learned from it, the IDF has been advancing a series of measures, including reinforcing the physical barrier along the northern border.”
UNIFIL, established in 1978, operates between the Litani River in the north and the Blue Line in the south. The mission has more than 10,000 troops from 50 countries and about 800 civilian staff, according to its website.
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Iran Says US Is Not Ready for ‘Equal and Fair’ Nuclear Talks
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi speaks during a meeting with foreign ambassadors in Tehran, Iran, July 12, 2025. Photo: Hamid Forootan/Iranian Foreign Ministry/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Washington’s current approach toward Tehran does not indicate any readiness for “equal and fair negotiations,” Iran’s foreign minister said on Sunday, after US President Donald Trump hinted last week at potential discussions.
Following Israel’s attack on Iran in June, which was joined by U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, attempts at renewing dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program have failed.
The United States, its European allies and Israel accuse Tehran of using its nuclear program as a veil for efforts to develop the capability to produce weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
Tehran and Washington underwent five rounds of indirect nuclear talks prior to the 12-days-war, but faced obstacles such as the issue of domestic uranium enrichment, which the U.S. wants Iran to forego.
“The U.S. cannot expect to gain what it couldn’t in war through negotiations,” Abbas Araqchi said during a Tehran conference named “international law under assault.”
“Iran will always be prepared to engage in diplomacy, but not negotiations meant for dictation,” he added.
During the same conference, deputy foreign minister Saeed Khatibzadeh accused Washington of pursuing its wartime goals with “negotiations as a show.”
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Israeli Government Decides ‘Independent’ Commission to Investigate Oct. 7 Failures
The Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
i24 News – The Israeli government has approved the creation of an “independent” commission of inquiry to examine the failures that enabled the Hamas assault of October 7, 2023.
However, in a move sharply criticized by the opposition and contrary to the recommendation of the Supreme Court, the panel will not be a formal state commission of inquiry. Instead, its mandate, authorities, and scope will be determined directly by government ministers.
According to the decision, the commission will receive full investigative powers and must be composed in a way that ensures “the broadest possible public trust.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will form a special ministerial committee tasked with defining what the inquiry may investigate, the time periods to be reviewed, and the authority it will receive. The committee has 45 days to deliver its recommendations.
For the past year, the government has repeatedly resisted calls to establish a state commission, arguing at first that such a body could not operate during wartime. Later, some ministers accused Supreme Court President Isaac Amit of being incapable of appointing an impartial chairperson.
But on October 15, the High Court of Justice ruled that there was “no substantive argument” against forming a state commission, giving the government 30 days to respond.
Netanyahu maintains that responsibility for the October 7 failures lies primarily with Israel’s security agencies rather than with political leaders.
His critics accuse him of creating a weaker, government-controlled inquiry designed to limit scrutiny of his decisions, undermining the prospect of full accountability for the deadliest attack in Israel’s history.