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Anti-Hamas Militias Step Up Attacks Across Gaza, Targeting Terror Leaders and Expanding Operations
The head of an anti-Hamas faction, Hussam Alastal, fires a weapon in the air as he is surrounded by masked gunmen, in an Israeli-held area in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, in this screenshot taken from a video released Nov. 21, 2025. Photo: Hussam Alastal/via REUTERS
Anti-Hamas militias across Gaza appear to be taking concrete, coordinated steps to disrupt the ruling terrorist group, carrying out targeted attacks and expanding their operations in a bid to weaken Hamas’s hold on the territory.
This past weekend, the Popular Forces armed group captured Hamas commander Adham al-Akar in Israeli-held Rafah, in southern Gaza, as militia forces ramp up efforts to curb the Islamist group’s influence and prevent it from regaining control in the war-torn enclave.
In a social media video released after the operation, militia leader Ghassan al-Duhaini is seen with Akar, sending a warning to the Palestinian terrorist group that its fighters will be “punished like the victims of the Spanish Inquisition.”
Following a successful operation in southern Gaza, the Popular Forces handed Akar over to Israeli authorities, the Israeli broadcaster Kan News reported.
According to Joe Truzman, senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based think tank, this latest development adds to growing evidence that militia forces are carrying out offensive operations against Hamas while seeking to expand their influence in the territory.
“It’s only in the past few months that we’ve started to observe these militias actively carrying out attacks against Hamas,” Truzman told The Algemeiner. “We’re seeing increasing evidence that they are actively going after Hamas, targeting both members and senior leadership with some success.”
Last month, Hussam al-Astal, leader of the Counterterrorism Strike Force – another prominent anti-Hamas militia based in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza – claimed responsibility for killing Mahmoud al-Astal, head of the city’s criminal police unit and a senior Hamas member.
The group also took responsibility for an offensive operation in the Abu al-Saber area of Shaboura Camp in Rafah, which left two Hamas members dead and a third in custody.
Even with notable successes against the Palestinian terrorist group, Truzman warned that these militia forces could face significant strategic challenges in the near future.
“My concern is how they will do beyond their current areas of operation. So far, I haven’t seen any indication that these militias are entering Hamas-controlled territory,” Truzman told The Algemeiner.
“At the end of the day, they are making progress, but will it be enough to bring down Hamas? Not in this way,” he continued. “They need much more support — money, weapons, and fighters — to make a real impact against Hamas. I’m skeptical, but I do see that they are making progress.”
With the region preparing to implement the second phase of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will be expected to withdraw slowly from its current positions if Hamas fulfills its obligations to disarm — a step the terrorist group has repeatedly refused to take.
Truzman argued that such Israeli pullbacks would leave anti-Hamas militias — currently operating in Israeli-controlled areas — at a strategic disadvantage.
“In my opinion, these militias are able to survive because they operate under the IDF’s protection, either directly or indirectly,” Truzman told The Algemeiner.
Under Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan, a multinational peacekeeping force — the International Stabilization Force (ISF) — is supposed to oversee security in Gaza and replace the IDF’s current role once it forms. However, Truzman warned that this force will not be focused on supporting the anti-Hamas militias, ultimately undermining their position and leaving them more vulnerable to the terrorist group’s violence.
“The situation will allow Hamas and its allies the freedom to operate in territory where they were previously restricted by the ceasefire agreement and the presence of the IDF,” Truzman said.
“This gives Hamas and other terror groups the advantage they need to go after these militias,” he continued.
However, the analyst also expressed skepticism about how the Israel-Hamas ceasefire will play out, noting that much depends on Hamas’s disarmament, which is crucial for the militias and their protection against attacks.
“I don’t think Hamas will give up its arms in any meaningful way,” Truzman told The Algemeiner.
“And if they don’t, the IDF could end up staying in their current positions, which would actually benefit these militias by giving them the cover they need to continue fighting Hamas,” he added.
Some experts have even suggested the possibility of these groups joining the ISF in a post-war Gaza scenario, integrating them into the force and potentially giving them the protection they need against Hamas and its brutal crackdown on dissent.
Even with an uncertain future, anti-Hamas militias across the enclave have recently intensified their offensive operations, shifting their approach with new tactics to fight the Islamist group, including targeting officers in Hamas’s security services and members of its armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, near their homes, according to a report by Saudi outlet Asharq Al-Awsat.
In response, Hamas has reportedly increased alert levels and tightened personal security, warning members to remain vigilant, vary their routes, minimize phone use to avoid tracking, and be on the lookout for potential surveillance.
Shortly after the US-backed ceasefire to halt fighting in Gaza took effect last year, Hamas moved to reassert control over the war-torn enclave and consolidate its weakened position by targeting Palestinians who it labeled as “lawbreakers and collaborators with Israel.”
Since then, Hamas’s bloody crackdown has escalated dramatically, sparking widespread clashes and violence as the group moves to seize weapons and eliminate any opposition.
Social media videos widely circulated online have shown Hamas members brutally beating Palestinians and carrying out public executions of alleged collaborators and rival militia members.
As they continue to come under attack, both the Popular Forces and the Counterterrorism Strike Force vowed to unite against the Islamist group, emphasizing that both had “agreed the war on terror will continue.”
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The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration
ס׳האָט זיך לעצטנס געשאַפֿן אַ נײַער סאָרט לייענקרײַז דורך פֿייסבוק, וווּ מע לערנט תּורה אויף ייִדיש צוזאַמען.
אינעם לייענקרײַז, וואָס הייסט „די ייִדישיסטישע ישיבֿה“, לייענט מען חומש מיט רש״י — סײַ אויפֿן אָריגינעלן לשון־קודש סײַ אויף ייִדיש־טײַטש. „די גרופּע איז אָפֿן פֿאַר אַלע מינים מענטשן,“ האָט דערקלערט דער לינגוויסט און ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט לייזער בורקאָ, וועלכער האָט אָרגאַניזירט די גרופּע. „פֿרויען און מענער, ייִדן און נישט־ייִדן, געי און ׳גלײַך׳. נײַע תּלמידים דאַרפֿן פֿאַרשטיין ייִדיש גוט, אָבער זיי דאַרפֿן נישט האָבן קיין תּורהדיקן הינטערגרונט.“
די גרופּע טרעפֿט זיך יעדן דינסטיק דורך פֿייסבוק. נאָך מער פּרטים אָדער כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן, שטעלט זיך אין קאָנטאַקט מיט בורקאָ, אויפֿן אַדרעס leyzertag@gmail.com אָדער דורך פֿייסבוק.
The post The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration appeared first on The Forward.
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A century-old Jerusalem photo album sparks search for forgotten images of the Western Wall
(JTA) — When David Freedman discovered a long-forgotten photo album in his parents’ Montreal basement last year, he found nearly 100 pages of century-old photographs from his grandfather’s year in British Mandate Palestine, capturing Jerusalem street scenes, market stalls and holy sites.
The photographs were not only century-old and in near-perfect condition, but included figures who would later become central to Jewish medical and political history, among them Israel’s future first president Chaim Weizmann, Jerusalem ophthalmologist Abraham Ticho, malaria researcher Israel Kligler, future British prime minister Winston Churchill and Herbert Samuel, Britain’s first high commissioner for Palestine.
David Freedman said he knew he had “struck gold” when he found the album, which had been untouched for decades. “I realized in disbelief I was looking at extraordinary images of Jerusalem,” he said.
Though Freedman said the album showed his grandfather’s “passion for skillful, impromptu photography,” it was images of a site that epitomizes endurance that are having the broadest impact.
Freedman’s pictures of the Western Wall has inspired a public appeal by the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum, which is asking people to look through old albums and attics for photographs, postcards and other visual material that could help expand the historical record of Judaism’s holiest site.
The request comes ahead of a major exhibition opening in 2027 marking 60 years since the 1967 Six-Day War brought the wall, known in Hebrew as the Kotel, under Jewish control for the first time in nearly two millennia.
Although the Western Wall is now one of the most photographed sites in the world, museum curators say the visual record of earlier decades remains surprisingly fragmented, with many of the most intimate images likely still tucked away in private collections and family albums.
“The Western Wall, the Kotel, in its simplest form, is a structure of ancient stones. Yet its true meaning has never resided in the stones alone — it has been shaped and elevated by the countless individuals who have stood before it over the centuries,” Eilat Lieber, the museum’s director and chief curator, said in a statement.
Next year’s exhibition, titled “Eyes on the Wall” and curated by Shimon Lev and Yael Brandt, will be the first large-scale exhibition dedicated entirely to the Western Wall, the museum said, and will trace its transformation over nearly 2,000 years. It will be one of the major exhibitions staged by the Tower of David Museum since it reopened in 2023 after a $50 million renovation of its ancient citadel complex.
The wall, the exposed section of an ancient retaining wall around the Temple Mount, the site of the biblical Jewish temples, has long been Judaism’s most sacred places of prayer and pilgrimage. From 1948 until the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel captured the Old City and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Jews were barred from going there.
Among its most iconic images was David Rubinger’s photograph of three Israeli paratroopers standing at the wall shortly after its capture, looking upward in a mixture of awe and disbelief. The picture was taken 59 years ago this week.
Abraham Orkin Freedman, a Canadian physician and Zionist activist, took his photographs before the site was so contested. He arrived in Palestine in July 1920, just as Britain was replacing military rule with a civil administration, and stayed until 1922, serving during that period as managing director of Hadassah Hospital. His grandson David, also a doctor, said the album’s timing gives it much of its historical value, with photographs that capture people in the streets, as well as the terrain and buildings of Jerusalem during the nascent years of the British Mandate.
Among the images Freedman uncovered, the one that struck him most was a photograph of women praying side by side with men at the oldest part of the Western Wall, a scene far removed from the gender-separated prayer sections at the site today. The question of mixed-gender prayer at the Wall remains politically charged, with a recent High Court order to advance the egalitarian section followed by Knesset moves to strengthen Chief Rabbinate control over prayer at the site.
After recognizing the album’s significance, Freedman met with his family who decided collectively to give it to the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum for safekeeping, research and public access. Freedman said the family was proud the album had found “a new home, not many meters from where my grandfather once stood.”
Lev said he hoped the appeal would bring more discoveries like Freedman’s into public view, expanding the visual record of the Western Wall beyond official archives.
“There is something profoundly moving in the moment when an intimate private photograph transcends its original purpose and becomes an important historical testimony,” Lev said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post A century-old Jerusalem photo album sparks search for forgotten images of the Western Wall appeared first on The Forward.
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5th man charged in March arson of London’s Hatzola ambulances
(JTA) — Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service announced Tuesday that an 18-year-old man has been charged in connection with the March arson attack that destroyed four ambulances owned by Hatzola, a Jewish volunteer emergency service.
Subhan Ahmed, a British national, was charged on Monday with “assisting an offender” in connection with the arson.
The ambulances were set ablaze in the early morning of March 23 in Golders Green, a heavily Jewish neighborhood in London. The incident spurred increased patrols in Jewish communities.
The charge is the latest development in an investigation being led by the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism unit.
Four others have already been charged in connection with the attack.
Three British nationals — 20-year-old Hamza Iqbal, 19-year-old Rehan Khan and 18-year-old Judex Atshatshi — along with a 17-year-old dual British and Pakistani national were all charged in April with “committing arson, destroying or damaging property, and being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.”
The four have remained in custody ahead of a trial planned for January. Ahmed, meanwhile, was released ahead of a June 16 court date.
The ambulance arsons came at the early edge of a wave of incidents that have put London Jews on edge and induced the city’s police force to step up their presence in Jewish communities. The incidents have included multiple incendiary devices placed near synagogues as well as the stabbing in April of two Jewish men in Golders Green. The Metropolitan Police reported last week that antisemitic hate crimes in the capital rose 72% in May.
Following the announcement of Ahmed’s charge, the Community Security Trust, a Jewish organization, thanked the police and the Crown Prosecution Service “for their ongoing work investigating this attack and other arson incidents targeting the Jewish community.”
It added in a statement, “These are very serious allegations, and it is right that those responsible are being held accountable.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post 5th man charged in March arson of London’s Hatzola ambulances appeared first on The Forward.
