Uncategorized
Israel’s First Olympic Bobsled Team on ‘Nearly Impossible Task’ of Reaching Milan Games, Overcoming Adversity
The members of Israel’s Olympic bobsled team: (from left, clockwise) Omer Katz, Ward Fawarseh, Uri Zisman, AJ Edelman, Menachem Chen, Itamar Shprinz. With the team’s mascot Lulu. Photo: Provided
Israel is competing for the first time ever in Olympic bobsledding next week, and its team captain spoke with The Algemeiner about the many obstacles the athletes faced even before racing in the Milan Cortina Winter Games — including having to create a new team after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel and being robbed.
“Making the Olympics in bobsled as a team that hasn’t made it before is nearly unheard of,” Adam “AJ” Edelman, captain of the Israeli bobsled team, told The Algemeiner over the phone from Italy. “It just doesn’t happen unless you have an ‘Olympics credit card,’ like China for the Beijing Games, where they have guaranteed spots because they hosted. It is just nearly impossible to do … It is a massive accomplishment.”
The 31-year-old added that Israel’s bobsled team is the only one in this year’s Olympics whose members have not competed in the prior games.
“By making it into the [Winter] Games, Israel has done basically the impossible task of being within Olympic level, which is top 28,” he noted. “We’re very, very proud and content with knowing that in the four-man event especially we’re top 20, which is Olympic finals-worthy.”
On Saturday, Edelman revealed on X that the apartment where his teammates were staying during their final training for the 2026 Winter Games was robbed. Passports and “thousands of dollars” worth of personal belongings were stolen.
The team was training in the Czech Republic before heading to Italy when the incident took place, Edelman told The Algemeiner. He was in Italy at the time of the robbery and said his teammates have since replaced their passports but not their other belongings. The team has changed locations to continue training until their first Olympic competition on Feb. 16, which is a two-man event.
The team remains resilient despite the robbery and they are “just such a fine example of how we push forward in difficult circumstances,” Edelman, who is former Olympian in skeleton, wrote in a post on X.
“Such a gross violation — suitcases, shoes, equipment, passports stolen, and the boys headed right back to training today. I really believe this team exemplifies the Israeli Spirit [sic],” he added. He said in a separate post following the incident: “We are victors, never victims. Our journey is defined by moving forward, always. That’s the Israeli Spirit.”
The Israeli bobsled team is making history at the Olympics. Aside from Israel qualifying for the first time for Olympic bobsledding, Edelman is Israel’s first multi-sport Olympian, after competing previously in skeleton and now in bobsled. He said he is also the first Jewish bobsled pilot in the Olympic Games and one of his bobsled team members, 25-year-old Ward Fawarseh, is the first Druze Olympian.
Edelman — an American-Israeli from Brookline, Massachusetts — is the most decorated observant Jewish Olympian and is believed to be the first Orthodox Jew to ever compete in the Winter Games. The other members of his bobsled team are Menachem Chen, 25; Uri Zisman, 30; and Omer Katz, 25; with Itamar Shprinz as their coach. Their journey to the 2026 Winter Olympics — which has been dubbed “Shul Runnings,” a reference to the movie “Cool Runnings” that tells the story of the Jamaican national bobsled team making the 1988 Winter Olympics — faced obstacles from the start.
Edelman had handpicked members for a different bobsled team several years prior and in 2021 he talked to The Algemeiner about them hoping to secure a spot to compete in the 2022 Winter Olympics. But after the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, members of the team were called up to serve in the Israel Defense Forces as reservists and the team fell apart. Edelman was forced to create a new team and it was several years in the making.
“I just flew in different random people from Israel,” he explained. “People who were athletes who I thought, ‘Maybe let’s give them a try in the sled and if they’re good enough, they might come back.’ And I would tell them, ‘Hold the sled like a shopping cart and imagine that you’re running with a shopping cart.’ And they would do one race at a time and then fly back home. We kind of just pieced the seasons together in a pretty amazing fashion … It was a constant search for years of finding the right people to get into the sled. It was a six-year search.”
The team consists of a pole-vaulter, sprinter, shot-putter, and rugby player. Edelman said they bonded very quickly, despite their different sporting backgrounds.
“It’s been a long journey. It’s probably the most unique bobsled story ever,” Edelman said. “This is the sort of s–t that can only happen in Israel. I think that for Israel, making the [Olympic] Games for Israel in bobsled is far harder than for any other country because none of the things are set up that would give you any sort of help in bobsled. Bobsled requires such a complex infrastructure of logistic support, fundraising, publicity so people know that you exist, mechanics, coaches, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, a prior legacy with sleds and equipment and knowledge that could go down. All of that goes into making a bobsled program successful, and all of that just didn’t exist in the way that you want it to exist prior to now [in Israel].”
Edelman spoke to The Algemeiner during the team’s final training period in Europe before they make their Olympic debut. Aside from handpicking each member of the bobsled team, he also designed their bobsled. The theme for the design is “fire and ice,” and it is meant to represent “Israel is a hot country going down an icy track,” he told The Algemeiner.
He said he views himself as a “shliach” (messenger) for Israel, and that his efforts to help the Jewish state reach the Olympics in bobsled was always more for the country than for any personal gain for himself.
“For the longest period of time, I didn’t care much about being an Olympian or the Olympics itself. It was just about what I could accomplish for the country,” Edelman said. “The journey has always been so centered on what it can do for Israel and so there’s no pressure to represent Israel because that’s what it’s been since day one. And without representing Israel the journey means nothing.”
“There was a lot of pressure that I had post-10/7 to switch to the US team,” he revealed. “It would have been so much simpler and easier to make it on the US team … But there was only one reason to ever do this and it was to get Israel to the games in bobsled. And Israel truly deserves this.”
“I’m doing my part to do something that I think will be good for the people and the country,” Edelman explained. “I’ve always had a dream that the team would make it [to the Olympics] and it would necessitate or catalyze a change in the perception of how Israel and Jews perceive their place in sports in general and what we can accomplish. I just always believe that four-man bobsled being the premier event in the Winter Games … and Israel doing what is just essentially impossible for a country like Israel to do, to make it into the games in bobsled, is just such a phenomenal accomplishment … I truly believe that this is something that could have a hugely positive impact.”
Israel’s participation in the Olympics is taking place amid efforts to boycott or ban its presence in international sports, because of its military actions in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas war. Edelman was asked what he thought about the boycott efforts.
“I view Israeli athletes as ambassadors of the state; we carry the hopes and dreams of the state forward,” he replied. “As for other people who want to kick us out … I just don’t pay much attention to it. Who has time to go through all the haters?”
“I do hope and know that this is just going to continue to move [Israel] forward,” he added, referring to the Israeli bobsled team’s presence at the Winter Games. “Someone is going to take over from me, who is better than I was, and in the future Israel is going to be a force in the sport … The [bobsled] team stands for breaking ceilings, and when we break ceilings, we want to be the first but not the last. And I really hope that’s what we take from it; that’s what everyone takes from it.”
The Milan Cortina Winter Games kicked off on Friday night with an opening ceremony at San Siro Stadium. Israel’s delegation was booed during the procession. International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesperson Mark Adams said during a press conference on Saturday that he does not “like to see booing,” regardless of “whatever background” or “whatever country” an athlete or team represents.
“We want to see sportsperson-like behavior from everyone. It’s important that we support our athletes,” he added. “The whole idea, or one of the ideas of the Olympic movement, is that the athletes shouldn’t be punished for whatever their governments have done, and I think that’s really important, that we see the athletes and athletic performance for what that says about humanity.”
Uncategorized
Hezbollah Pays Steep Price in Battle to Reverse Its Fortunes
Workers remove a coffin with a body from temporary graves and prepare for transport for a funeral ceremony of four Hezbollah fighters and two civilians, amid a temporary ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, in Tyre, southern Lebanon, April 26, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Marko Djurica/File Photo
Hezbollah has paid a heavy price for going to war with Israel on March 2: Israel has occupied a chunk of southern Lebanon, displaced hundreds of thousands of its Shi’ite Muslim constituents and killed as many as several thousand of its fighters, according to previously unreported casualty estimates from within the group.
The move has brought severe political consequences, too. In Beirut, opposition has hardened to its status as an armed group, which domestic rivals see as exposing Lebanon to repeated wars with Israel.
In April, Lebanon’s government held face-to-face talks with Israel for the first time in decades, a decision Hezbollah firmly opposed.
However, more than a dozen Hezbollah officials told Reuters they see a chance to reverse deteriorating fortunes by aligning with Tehran in its war with Israel and the United States. The group, founded by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 1982, opened fire two days into the conflict, which began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28.
The group’s calculations are based on the assessment that its participation would force Lebanon onto the agenda of U.S.-Iranian negotiations, and that Iranian pressure can secure a more robust ceasefire than one that took effect in November 2024 following a conflict sparked by the war in Gaza, the officials said.
Hezbollah was mauled in the last war, which killed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, along with some 5,000 fighters, and weakened its long-dominant hold over the Lebanese state.
Rearmed with Iranian help, it has used new tactics and drones, surprising many with its capabilities after a fragile 15-month truce during which Hezbollah held fire, even as Israel continued to kill its members.
Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi denied the group was acting on Iran’s behalf when it resumed hostilities, as alleged by opponents. He told Reuters Hezbollah saw a window to “break this vicious cycle … where the Israelis can target, assassinate, bombard, kill, without any revenge.”
He acknowledged losses and damage in southern Lebanon but said “you don’t go into making calculations of how many are going to be killed” when “pride and sovereignty and independence” are at stake.
Hezbollah’s media office said the figure of several thousand fighters killed in the present war was false.
While a US-mediated ceasefire that took effect on April 16 has led to a significant reduction in hostilities, Israel and Hezbollah have continued to trade blows in the south, where Israel maintains troops in a self-declared “buffer zone.”
Yezid Sayigh, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said Hezbollah had “shown more resilience than many thought possible, but that was not a strategic gain in itself.”
“The only thing that will contain Israel is a comprehensive US-Iran deal,” he said. “Without a deal, there’s going to be a lot of pain for everyone. At best, a hurting stalemate.”
GRAVES FRESHLY DUG, AND QUICKLY FILLED
More than 2,600 people have been killed since March 2, around a fifth of them women, children and medics, Lebanon’s health ministry has reported. Its toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Three sources, two of them Hezbollah officials, said the ministry’s figures do not include many of the group’s casualties. They said several thousand Hezbollah fighters have been killed, though the group does not have the full picture yet.
In a statement to Reuters, Hezbollah’s media office denied the figures cited by the sources, and that the numbers published by Lebanon’s health ministry included its members killed in Israeli strikes.
One source, a Hezbollah commander, said scores of fighters had gone to the frontline towns of Bint Jbeil and Khiyam intending to fight to the death. Their bodies have yet to be recovered.
In the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, more than two dozen freshly dug graves were quickly filled with fighters’ bodies in the days after the ceasefire took hold. Simple marble tombstones identify some as commanders, others as fighters.
In one southern village alone, Yater, the council recorded the deaths of 34 Hezbollah fighters.
Lebanon’s Shi’ite Muslim community has borne the brunt of Israel’s attacks, forced to flee into Christian, Druze and other areas, where many blame Hezbollah for starting the war.
Israel has been entrenching its hold over a security zone stretching as far as 10 km (6 miles) into Lebanon and demolishing villages, saying it aims to shield northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah militants embedded in civilian areas.
An Israeli government official said Hezbollah had abrogated the November 2024 ceasefire by firing on Israeli citizens on March 2. The threat to northern Israel would be eradicated, the official said, adding thousands of Hezbollah militants had been killed, and Israel was steadily destroying the group’s infrastructure.
The Israeli military says Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel since March 2. Israel has announced 17 soldiers killed in southern Lebanon, along with two civilians in northern Israel.
Citing ongoing Israeli strikes, Hezbollah has called the April ceasefire meaningless and continued to attack.
IRAN ‘WILL NOT SELL’ THEIR FRIENDS
A diplomat who has contact with Hezbollah described its decision to enter the war as a big gamble and a survival strategy, saying it felt it needed to be part of the problem so it could be part of an eventual regional solution.
It has yet to be seen if the gamble will pay off.
Tehran has demanded that Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah be included in any deal on the wider war. But US President Donald Trump said last month that any deal Washington reaches with Tehran “is in no way subject to Lebanon.”
A spokesperson for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, Tahir Andrabi, referred Reuters to an April 16 statement in which he said peace in Lebanon was essential to the talks it is mediating between the U.S. and Iran.
A Western official said they saw a possibility the US and Iran might eventually reach a settlement that does not address the war in Lebanon.
Asked about this, the US State Department, Iran’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva and Lebanon’s government did not immediately comment.
Hezbollah’s Moussawi said a ceasefire in Lebanon continues to be a top priority for Iran, adding Tehran shares Lebanon’s objectives, including that Israel halt attacks and withdraw from Lebanon. Hezbollah has “full trust in Iran – that the Iranians will not sell their own friends”, he said.
The State Department referred Reuters to an April 27 interview Secretary of State Marco Rubio did with Fox News, in which he said Israel had a right to defend itself against Hezbollah’s attacks, and that he didn’t think Israel wanted to maintain its buffer zone in Lebanon indefinitely.
The United States has urged Israel “to make sure their responses are proportional and targeted,” he said.
When the April 16 ceasefire was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hezbollah’s disarmament would be a fundamental demand in peace talks with Lebanon.
Hezbollah has ruled out disarmament, saying the matter of its weapons is a topic for a national dialogue. Any move by Lebanon to disarm the group by force would risk igniting conflict in a country shattered by civil war from 1975 to 1990.
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam have sought Hezbollah’s peaceful disarmament since last year. On March 2, the government banned the group’s military activities.
Hezbollah has demanded the government cancel that decision and end its direct talks with Israel.
Lebanese officials have told Reuters they believe direct talks with Israel under the auspices of the US are the best way to secure a lasting ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops, as only Washington has enough leverage with Israel to achieve those aims.
Uncategorized
US President Trump Tells Israeli Media: ‘I Studied Iran’s New Proposal, It Is Not Acceptable to Me’
US President Donald Trump arrives to award the medal of honor to Master Sgt. Roderick ‘Roddie’ W. Edmonds, Staff Sgt. Michael H. Ollis, and retired Command Sgt. Maj. Terry P. Richardson during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 02 March 2026.
US President Donald Trump said he has reviewed Iran’s latest proposal and described it as “unacceptable” in an interview with Israeli broadcaster Kan News on Sunday. Trump added that ongoing efforts related to the conflict are “progressing very well,” without providing further details. He also renewed his call for clemency for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arguing that Israel needs a leader focused on wartime priorities rather than legal matters.
Uncategorized
Israel Court Extends Detention of Gaza Flotilla Activists
Activist Saif Abu Keshek, a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla detained by Israel, sits at a magistrate’s court for a detention extension hearing in Ashkelon, southern Israel, May 3, 2026. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
An Israeli court has extended by two days the detention of two activists arrested aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla that was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters near Greece, their lawyer said on Sunday.
Saif Abu Keshek, a Spanish national, and Brazilian Thiago Avila were detained by Israeli authorities late on Wednesday and brought to Israel, while more than 100 other pro-Palestinian activists aboard the boats were taken to the Greek island of Crete.
A court spokesperson confirmed that their remand had been extended until May 5.
The governments of Spain and Brazil issued a joint statement on Friday calling their detention illegal.
The activists were part of a second Global Sumud flotilla, launched in an attempt to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza by delivering humanitarian assistance. The ships had set sail from Barcelona on April 12.
Israeli authorities requested a four-day extension of their arrest on suspicion of offenses that include assisting the enemy during wartime, contact with a foreign agent, membership in and providing services to a terrorist organization, and the transfer of property for a terrorist organization, said rights group Adalah, which is assisting in the activists’ defense.
Hadeel Abu Salih, the men’s attorney, said that the two deny the allegations. Their arrest was unlawful due to a lack of jurisdiction, she told Reuters at the Ashkelon Magistrate’s Court after the hearing, adding that the mission was meant to provide aid to civilians in Gaza, not to any militant group.
Abu Salih said that Abu Keshek and Avila were subjected to violence en route to Israel and kept handcuffed and blindfolded until Thursday morning.
Asked for comment, the Israeli military referred Reuters to the Israeli foreign ministry, which said that staff were compelled to act to stop what it described as violent physical obstruction by Abu Keshek and Avila. All measures taken were lawful, it said.