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A week into ceasefire, Israelis’ storied resilience is tested by questions about what was gained
(JTA) — A week into the ceasefire in the Iran war, Israelis have settled into their old normal — sort of.
“Is anyone else completely struggling with the expectation that now that there is the ceasefire we are supposed to go back to work like nothing happened?” one mother wrote in a popular working parents Facebook group.
She described weeks of sleep punctuated by sirens and working from home while caring for children — then being told to return to the office immediately.
Children, too, were sent back to school just hours after the ceasefire began, after weeks of canceled classes and scattershot online learning. Cafes and beaches filled once again with ostensibly carefree Israelis, sometimes in sight of damage from Iranian missiles.
Behind the veneer of Israel’s famed resilience, darker feelings are simmering.
“We all have the jitters. PTSD. We need time to process the insanity. Never knowing if we can shower or go to the bathroom isn’t normal,” one parent responded in the Facebook group. Another asked, “Are we just supposed to pretend the past six weeks never happened?”
Then an even more pessimistic note crept in. “Can we all just get a paid spa day while our kids are in school before we go back to our bomb shelters?” one parent wrote. Another added, reflecting a view widely held across the country, “I’m trying to do as much as I can now before the war starts up again.”
Such is the condition of Israelis during the ceasefire foisted upon them by the United States. They are relieved that — at least in the majority of the country where Hezbollah rockets, still flying from Lebanon, do not reach — they no longer have to plan their lives around proximity to bomb shelters, and that restrictions on gatherings have been lifted. Many are embracing a return to normalcy.
But their feelings also include little sense of victory or stability, as well as a great deal of dread about what’s to come.
For good reason. Even as U.S. President Donald Trump says he believes he will reach a deal with Iran to end the war permanently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is emphasizing that he is ready to resume the fighting.
Signs of confidence about continued calm are fraying. Plans for Independence Day celebrations next week were reinstated and then swiftly scrapped again in multiple cities, not only in the north, where Hezbollah fire has continued despite the ceasefire, but also in southern cities such as Ashkelon.
Three-quarters of Israelis expect fighting with Iran to resume within the next year, a poll by the Institute for National Security Studies found.
Many Israelis believe a return to conflict with Iran, whose Islamic Republic regime, which remains intact, has sworn to destroy Israel, is needed. The same poll found that 61% of Israelis oppose the current ceasefire deal, while 76% say they believe negotiations underway now will not achieve the war’s stated objectives, including dismantling Iran’s ballistic missile system, halting its nuclear program and ending the rule of the ayatollahs.
Another poll, by the Kan public broadcaster, found that only a quarter of Israelis believed the United States and Israel won the war, versus 58% who said they hadn’t. A third, by Agam Labs and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, found that three-quarters of Israelis see the war so far as a failure — and that the ceasefire represents a U.S. concession to Iran.
For Israelis who bore the steep cost of the war in sleepless nights, lost work, terror and death, the tradeoff is hard to accept.
Merav Leviten, who works in high tech and who spent weeks running with her children to an outdoor bomb shelter, said that during the war she had believed the disruption would lead to a decisive outcome.
“It was one thing to be sitting in the shelters being like, oh my gosh, it’s going to be worth it, the Iranian people are going to be able to be free, I’m going to be able to visit Tehran, there’s going to be a whole new order in the Middle East,” she said. “Sure, yeah, I’ll sit in the shelters, I’ll do double time with childcare and work, but it’s all for a great purpose. And now you’re just kind of like, what?”
Paul Mirbach, a founder of Kibbutz Tuval in northern Israel, where he still lives, said that unlike earlier ceasefires that brought a sense of relief, this one left him feeling “less safe and more exposed” than before the war began, capturing a wider frustration among Israelis who endured weeks of disruption and casualties and are now asking what, exactly, was achieved.
Mirbach said he believes a confrontation with Iran was ultimately unavoidable, but argued that the timing was driven in part by political considerations by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the expectation that a military victory would translate into political capital ahead of an election. In doing so, he said, the government ignored the reality that Israeli society was already exhausted and the home front insufficiently prepared.
“We needed time to recover and recharge our batteries,” he said, pointing to worn-out reservists, declining morale and businesses still battered from more than two years of war.
“They have taken all we could throw at them and they’re still standing,” he said of Iran, adding that Tehran now appears less deterred and more capable of inflicting damage, with the added risk of retaliation for the killing of senior leadership including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He also pointed to Iran’s ability to disrupt global trade through the Strait of Hormuz as a sign that the strategic threat remains intact.
Others expressed a more conflicted view. Robert Strazynski, an American immigrant who runs a website about online poker, described the military campaign itself as both justified and necessary, arguing that Israel and the United States had achieved significant gains over the past six weeks and that the operation marked a long-overdue move from a reactive posture to a more proactive effort to change the trajectory of the region. He described the campaign as “critically necessary” to address a threat that had been allowed to fester.
“We aren’t warmongers, but if those who seek our annihilation won’t let us live in peace, then we take our destiny into our own hands, and will achieve peace the hard way,” he said.
But he warned that ending the fighting without a decisive victory risked rendering those gains temporary. Like Mirbach, he described the ceasefire as “kicking the can down the road.”
Whatever the prognosis for the current war and future threats from Iran, it’s clear that six weeks of fighting and disruption are complicating any effort to return to normalcy.
Cathy Lawi, a trauma specialist whose organization, EmotionAid, has been working with families, medical staff and first responders since the start of the war, said the effects are not primarily psychological but physiological. After weeks of disrupted sleep, repeated alarms and sustained threat, the body does not simply switch off, she said, leaving the nervous system in a state of heightened alert even as daily routines resume.
“Stress accumulates,” she said. “There is no way to reset after danger. We are constantly in a state of alertness. We’re getting used to not knowing what’s going to happen to us.”
At the same time, Lawi pointed to what she described as Israelis’ ability to hold opposing realities at once. Within hours of the ceasefire taking effect, cafes and bars in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were packed, as Israelis rushed back into public life — a capacity for rebound she described as remarkable.
“We find relative safety in a place of non-safety,” she said. She attributed that response in part to Israelis’ strong social ties, with people relying on one another for support.
Yet the threshold for coping has dropped sharply among those with pre-existing mental health conditions, a population that studies suggest has grown in the past three years, according to psychiatrist Yotam Ginati, who described a surge in acute cases at his clinic in Tel Aviv.
For much of the rest of the population, he said, the load is more likely to be suppressed than treated.
“We’re gaslighting our own distress,” Ginati said. “There’s sun outside, life goes on, and occasionally we run to the shelter. But we’re living with constant existential anxiety, and we keep pushing it away. That may be unavoidable, but it has a price.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post A week into ceasefire, Israelis’ storied resilience is tested by questions about what was gained appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump may be making a classic error in seeking peace with Iran
An assumption has shaped Western thinking about Iran for decades: that the Islamic Republic has similar goals to those of the West, and can therefore be incentivized to integrate into a more stable regional order.
Vice President JD Vance gave that assumption its latest expression when he said a potential new peace agreement between Iran and the United States could “fundamentally transform the Middle East for the next 50 years” — if Iran complies with the deal.
Perhaps he’s right, and Iran is in fact committed, this time, to never again pursuing the creation of nuclear weapons. But the Islamic Republic’s own rhetoric provides serious reasons for skepticism on that front.
Since 1979, the regime has presented itself as the standard-bearer of a revolutionary project. It is not merely a government. It is the self-appointed guardian of a worldview.
That worldview is often expressed through the concept of muqawama, which translates roughly to “resistance.” The term refers to far more than military opposition. It describes a political, religious and civilizational struggle against what the regime views as Western domination, American influence, Israeli sovereignty, and the regional order that emerged during the 20th century.
Ideologies shape behavior. A regime organized around economic growth behaves one way. A regime organized around the concept of revolutionary struggle behaves differently.
Western powers too often forget this truth when it comes to Iran, assuming that its leaders seek prosperity, stability, security and international acceptance. We assume that economic incentives and diplomatic agreements will eventually outweigh ideological commitments.
It is important to distinguish here between the regime and the people it governs. Iran is home to an ancient civilization, a sophisticated culture, and millions of citizens whose aspirations often appear very different from those of their rulers. For nearly half a century, many Iranians have lived under a system they neither created nor freely chose. Waves of protests and dissent have repeatedly suggested that large numbers of Iranians seek a different future — one characterized less by revolutionary struggle and more by ordinary human aspirations like freedom, dignity and connection to the wider world.
Viewed through the lens of muqawama, Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile program, proxy armies and regional interventions cease to look like products of separate policies. They become parts of a coherent strategy, manifestations of the same underlying vision: the transformation of the existing regional order.
The obvious question, then, is whether that vision has changed. And if it hasn’t, what does Iranian compliance with this new deal actually mean?
After all, one can honor the terms of an agreement while remaining fully committed to objectives that lie beyond the agreement’s reach. Iran has done so plenty of times in the recent past.
In 2018, Israeli intelligence agents removed a vast archive of nuclear documents from a secret warehouse near Tehran. The archive contained detailed records of weapons-related research and planning, suggesting that the regime viewed this knowledge as valuable, worth preserving and potentially applicable in the future.
Over the years, inspectors evaluating Iran’s nuclear capabilities have repeatedly encountered inconsistencies between Iran’s declarations about its efforts and the evidence before them. Each episode, by itself, may be explainable. Taken together, they paint a picture of a regime that has consistently viewed transparency as something to be managed rather than embraced.
Fordow, the infamous nuclear enrichment facility buried beneath a mountain, was designed by people expecting confrontation. Facilities intended to withstand intensive military attacks — as Fordow has — reveal something about the assumptions of those who build them.
Western policymakers often view negotiations as a path toward resolution. Iran tends, in contrast, to treat them as a strategic opportunity. Every round of talks creates opportunities to reposition and advance. Every agreement creates new debates about interpretation and enforcement that the regime can turn to its advantage.
It may be less useful to think in terms of bad faith than in terms of incentives. The issue is understanding the ambitions of the regime as it understands them. And there are reasons to doubt whether U.S. negotiators hammering out the details of this agreement understand those ambitions correctly.
This raises grave concerns for Israel, which is not a party to the new ceasefire. The nuclear issue is primary, but the ballistic missile program and satellite armies of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are all pressing problems for the Jewish state. A deal that fails to engage with all parts of that picture will leave Israel in danger.
The United States can afford strategic patience. It sits behind two oceans, far from Iran. Israel cannot. A nation smaller than New Jersey has little margin for catastrophic error. If American assumptions prove mistaken, American policy can be revised. If Israeli assumptions prove mistaken, the consequences are potentially fatal.
This is why many Israelis have expressed outrage at this ceasefire. They’re wondering: If the ideology remains intact; if the missile programs remain intact; if Hezbollah remains intact; if the regime’s revolutionary ambitions remain intact, what exactly has been resolved?
Near-term tension reduction has repeatedly served as a substitute for resolving the underlying threat from Iran’s radical regime. Sanctions relief following the 2015 nuclear deal brokered by then-President Barack Obama eased pressure on the regime while leaving its governing vision untouched. The underlying problem remained.
Muqawama is not merely resistance to particular policies. It is resistance as an organizing principle. Any agreement that ignores that reality risks confusing tactical restraint with strategic change.
The post Trump may be making a classic error in seeking peace with Iran appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump-backed Oklahoma congressional candidate supports Israel — and says the Antichrist will be Jewish
(JTA) — A pro-Israel pastor who inveighs against “sharia law” and wants Jews to accept Jesus is the favored candidate in a crowded congressional primary in Oklahoma on Tuesday.
Jackson Lahmeyer, the founder of Pastors for Trump and a political activist from the Tulsa area, secured the president’s endorsement ahead of Tuesday’s primary for the state’s solidly Republican 1st District House seat. Other big GOP endorsements soon followed, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, helping to pull Lahmeyer away from the other nine candidates vying for the nomination.
Much of Lahmeyer’s national profile has been defined by his regular invocations of “sharia law,” traditional Muslim doctrine often used as a right-wing shock tactic. One of his campaign platforms is “Ensuring That Sharia Law Never Takes Root In Our Nation.”
On Sunday, Lahmeyer also responded to allegations published by the Daily Mail that he had cheated on his wife, writing in a post on X that “this matter was already dealt with privately between me and my wife, Kendra, through counsel and prayer with God and spiritual advisors.”
Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District is home to a thriving Jewish community — one that has recently urged Jews from Canada to take up residence — as well as multiple large Jewish organizations including Schusterman Family Philanthropies.
Multiple representatives of the Jewish Federation of Tulsa declined to comment on Lahmeyer’s candidacy. But it’s clear that if elected, he will bring to Congress some specific ideas about Jews.
“The Antichrist will be a political leader of Jewish descent,” he told a livestream of his church on Oct. 8, 2024, a day after the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel. “That is how the Jews will worship him.”
During his sermon, Lahmeyer based the claim on his reading of biblical prophecy, arguing that the Antichrist will “speak great blasphemy” and will “have no regard for the gods of his fathers.”
Lahmeyer’s preaching about the Jewish Antichrist has also sparked concern among some Jewish voters.
“Jackson, I am appalled at this post. I’m Jewish. I supported you[r] run for office at every turn. I have children and grandchildren. Antisemitism is at an all time high. I’m scared for them. This is abhorrent,” one X user wrote in response to a February 2023 post on X by Lahmeyer claiming the Antichrist will be “Jewish” and a “homosexual.”
Lahmeyer pushed back on the response, replying to the user that “This is not anti-Semitic AT ALL. The Christ is Jewish. Scripture indicates that the Antichrist will also be Jewish.”
Despite those apocalyptic beliefs, Lahmeyer has repeatedly framed support for Israel as a key tenet of his faith, reflecting a Christian Zionist worldview that sees Jewish return to Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
“I stand with the Jewish people because God almighty stands with the Jewish people,” Lahmeyer said in an Oct. 9, 2025 post dismissing claims he had been paid by the Israeli government to post pro-Israel content. “So those of you who are out there saying I’m getting $7,000 a post, I wish that were true, but you’re an idiot and you’re wrong.”
Matthew Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, & Jewish Studies, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Lahmeyer’s statements about Jews and Israel reflect a typical strain of Christian Zionism.
“He’s pro-Israel in this very particular sense of he has a strong attachment to a theological conception of Israel,” Taylor said. “When it comes to questions about the Antichrist and whether the Antichrist is Jewish or not, that’s all pretty standard speculation within modern evangelicalism.”
Those views, once largely confined to Lahmeyer’s reach as a storefront pastor, have followed him into a larger political arena as he has transformed from a fringe activist into a political contender with presidential backing.
“It is my Great Honor to endorse MAGA Warrior, Jackson Lahmeyer, who is running to represent the fantastic people of Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District, and has been with me from the very beginning of our Movement to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Monday reaffirming his endorsement of Lahmeyer.
Trump praised Lahmeyer’s role in founding “Pastors for Trump,” which he launched in 2022 to organize evangelical pastors around getting Trump reelected. The same year, Lahmeyer lost his Republican primary bid to unseat Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, whom he called a “coward” for not backing Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Lahmeyer, who did not return a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for an interview, is a member of the White House Faith Office and Trump’s National Faith Advisory Board.
He has been cultivating relationships with the Trumps for years. In addition to backing the president’s election claims, Lahmeyer has hosted the president’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr., as well as FBI Director Kash Patel at his church and on podcast episodes.
Lahmeyer’s rise coincides with a growing movement of conservative Christians and right-wing influencers who have been increasingly critical of Israel and the U.S.-Israel alliance.
During an event marking the second anniversary of Oct. 7 titled “The Case for Israel,” Lahmeyer addressed the growing prominence of anti-Israel figures on the Christian right, including Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.
“Both Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, they’re Roman Catholics, so to them the church has replaced the Jewish people, the state of Israel, and that is why they can make these claims,” Lahmeyer said.
But Lahmeyer has stopped short of condemning Carlson’s rhetoric, despite criticism from Trump and evangelical members of his administration including U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
“Some very influential leaders, all of whom I like — Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene — have taken a very controversial stance in regards to the nation of Israel,” Lahmeyer told NPR in November.
Taylor said the fallout over Israel within the MAGA coalition between Christian antisemites, such as Carlson and Owens, and Christian philosemites, such as Huckabee, placed Lahmeyer in a precarious position as he seeks office.
White evangelicals show widespread support for Israel, with 72% reporting a positive opinion of the Jewish state according to an April 2025 poll by the Pew Research Center, but among Republicans under 50, positive sentiments about Israel have dropped in recent years, falling from 63% reporting a positive view in 2022 to 48% in 2025.
“A lot of young evangelicals are moving away from Zionism, and becoming less sympathetic with the state of Israel, both theologically and just in terms of world events, and the war in Gaza,” Taylor said. “So I think it’s a very complicated place that he’s in, trying to kind of run as a politician in this moment where MAGA is fracturing over some of the things he could be very publicly identified with.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Trump-backed Oklahoma congressional candidate supports Israel — and says the Antichrist will be Jewish appeared first on The Forward.
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UK appeals court upholds ban on Palestine Action as a terrorist organization
(JTA) — A British appeals court ruled Monday that the government acted lawfully in banning a prominent pro-Palestinian group as a terrorist organization.
Jewish groups welcomed the decision to maintain the ban on Palestine Action, which has staged multiple destructive attacks on military installations and weapons manufacturers in Britain.
The government banned Palestine Action in July 2025 after some of its members broke into an air force base and damaged two military aircraft as part of a protest against the U.K.’s relationship to Israel during the war in Gaza. The ruling meant that anyone displaying support for the group has been subject to arrest and imprisonment.
The British High Court declared the ban unlawful in February, concluding that the ban interfered with Palestine Action members’ rights to speech and assembly. Now, a five-judge U.K. Court of Appeal panel has ruled that the group’s activities met the legal standards for terrorism and the government’s decision to ban the group was justified and proportionate.
Sue Carr, England’s chief justice, said in a statement broadcast from the court that while many Palestine Action activities and affiliates were non-violent, the group’s materials and impact showed that violence was integral to its activities.
“It is not, as it claims, a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the suffragettes operating transparently in the open,” Carr said. “It is a covert organization operating with secret cells to avoid the detection and prosecution of those using violence to destroy the property of third parties.”
British Jewish groups applauded the decision. “The Court’s decision confirms the seriousness of Palestine Action’s activities,” Board of Deputies of British Jews Acting President Adrian Cohen said in an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Cohen noted that Palestine Action’s targets have included Jewish communal institutions and Jewish-owned businesses. He added, “At a time of record levels of antisemitism, division, and communal tensions, all those in public life should be clear: no cause justifies criminality, violence or the glorification of those who carry it out.”
The ruling comes days after four Palestine Action-affiliated activists were sentenced to lengthy prison terms in connection with an August 2024 break-in at the headquarters of Elbit Systems UK, the British outpost of an Israeli weapons company. The activists had previously been acquitted on some charges but were prosecuted again on others and convicted, including one on charges of striking a police officer with a sledgehammer..
More than 100 people were arrested on Friday after Palestine Action’s supporters rallied outside the sentencing. They joined more than 3,000 people who British media report have been arrested for showing support for Palestine Action since its ban. Other supporters include the writer Sally Rooney, who last year pledged proceeds from the BBC productions of her books to the group despite potential legal penalties.
The group is vowing to appeal its ban yet again. “We will not stop fighting for the ban to be lifted, the end of the use of terror legislation against us, and crucially, for a free Palestine,” co-founder Huda Ammori posted on X on Monday. “I will appeal to the Supreme Court and take it up to the European Court of Human Rights, if needs be.”
The ruling comes as Prime Minister Keir Starmer seeks new powers to ban state-backed groups, such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, as terrorist organizations. (British law currently reserves such bans for non-state actors.) The Campaign Against Antisemitism, a British advocacy group, said the ruling about Palestine Action “underscores the Home Secretary’s power to proscribe terrorist networks” and called for the IRGC and other groups to be banned.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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