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Most of Kherson’s Jews fled when Russia invaded Ukraine. A flood could force the rest to leave.
(JTA) — Intense flooding caused by the collapse of the Kakhovka dam in eastern Ukraine is threatening to force most of the remaining 600-700 Jews in the Kherson area to leave, according to the city’s chief rabbi.
Rabbi Yosef Wolff told the Times of Israel that about 80% of the region’s Jews had already left before this week. About 20 Jewish families have been directly affected by the flooding so far, and they are taking shelter in Jewish institutions. Kherson’s synagogue has not flooded because it sits at a high elevation, 20 meters, or 65 feet, above sea level.
Russia and Ukraine are trading blame for the dam collapse; Ukraine claims that Russia blew it up to slow an upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive in the area. Over 1,000 people on both sides of the Dnipro River have already fled their homes this week, but authorities say that the flooding could affect up to 40,000.
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, one of a number of Jewish groups providing aid in the area, said that its main service center building was flooded and inaccessible as of Thursday, but workers were still serving 382 Jews, providing them with food, water and other supplies. They also transferred people’s computers, generators, food and other emergency materials to the Kherson synagogue.
“Everything that I had is now under the water,” said a JDC volunteer named Oksana. “My home is gone. My life is gone. I do not know how to live now.”
Moshe Azman, one of multiple claimants to the title of chief rabbi of Ukraine, went viral on Thursday for a video in which he ducks for cover from Russian bombs while on an evacuation mission in Kherson.
Before falling to the ground for most of the minute-long video, Azman briefly explains that he was trying to evacuate people from the area.
Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Azman came under fire in #Kherson. pic.twitter.com/hZYWsv2J4c
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) June 8, 2023
Azman, who in 2019 was seen in a chummy photograph with Rudolph Giuiani during the Trump associate’s efforts to enlist Ukraine’s help in the 2020 election, founded and runs a village near Kyiv for Jewish refugees displaced from the past decade’s fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Other Jews in the Kherson area are getting aid from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. A group of Ukrainian Jews have boarded buses and fled for Poland, where Chabad of Poland is preparing to house them in Warsaw on Friday, the Hasidic movement announced on Thursday.
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“Because of the war, our brothers and sisters in the Kherson Oblast area have already lost so much,” said Rabbi Sholom Ber Stambler, director of Chabad of Poland. “We must do everything possible to help them during this difficult time and ensure that they don’t also lose their hope.”
The Chabad movement’s late rebbe, Menachem Mendel Scheerson, was born about 50 miles down the river, in Mykolaiv, which has not yet experienced flooding damage, the Times of Israel reported.
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Tucker’s Ideas About Jews Come from Darkest Corners of the Internet, Says Huckabee After Combative Interview
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – In a combative interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson made a host of contentious and often demonstrably false claims that quickly went viral online. Huckabee, who repeatedly challenged the former Fox News star during the interview, subsequently made a long post on X, identifying a pattern of bad-faith arguments, distortions and conspiracies in Carlson’s rhetorical style.
Huckabee pointed out his words were not accorded by Carlson the same degree of attention and curiosity the anchor evinced toward such unsavory characters as “the little Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes or the guy who thought Hitler was the good guy and Churchill the bad guy.”
“What I wasn’t anticipating was a lengthy series of questions where he seemed to be insinuating that the Jews of today aren’t really same people as the Jews of the Bible,” Huckabee wrote, adding that Tucker’s obsession with conspiracies regarding the provenance of Ashkenazi Jews obscured the fact that most Israeli Jews were refugees from the Arab and Muslim world.
The idea that Ashkenazi Jews are an Asiatic tribe who invented a false ancestry “gained traction in the 80’s and 90’s with David Duke and other Klansmen and neo-Nazis,” Huckabee wrote. “It has really caught fire in recent years on the Internet and social media, mostly from some of the most overt antisemites and Jew haters you can find.”
Carlson branded Israel “probably the most violent country on earth” and cited the false claim that Israel President Isaac Herzog had visited the infamous island of the late, disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“The current president of Israel, whom I know you know, apparently was at ‘pedo island.’ That’s what it says,” Carlson said, citing a debunked claim made by The Times reporter Gabrielle Weiniger. “Still-living, high-level Israeli officials are directly implicated in Epstein’s life, if not his crimes, so I think you’d be following this.”
Another misleading claim made by Carlson was that there were more Christians in Qatar than in Israel.
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Pezeshkian Says Iran Will Not Bow to Pressure Amid US Nuclear Talks
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2025, in Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025. Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that his country would not bow its head to pressure from world powers amid nuclear talks with the United States.
“World powers are lining up to force us to bow our heads… but we will not bow our heads despite all the problems that they are creating for us,” Pezeshkian said in a speech carried live by state TV.
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Italy’s RAI Apologizes after Latest Gaffe Targets Israeli Bobsleigh Team
Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Bobsleigh – 4-man Heat 1 – Cortina Sliding Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – February 21, 2026. Adam Edelman of Israel, Menachem Chen of Israel, Uri Zisman of Israel, Omer Katz of Israel in action during Heat 1. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
Italy’s state broadcaster RAI was forced to apologize to the Jewish community on Saturday after an off‑air remark advising its producers to “avoid” the Israeli crew was broadcast before coverage of the Four-Man bobsleigh event at the Winter Olympics.
The head of RAI’s sports division had already resigned earlier in the week after his error-ridden commentary at the Milano Cortina 2026 opening ceremony two weeks ago triggered a revolt among its journalists.
On Saturday, viewers heard “Let’s avoid crew number 21, which is the Israeli one” and then “no, because …” before the sound was cut off.
RAI CEO Giampaolo Rossi said the incident represented a “serious” breach of the principles of impartiality, respect and inclusion that should guide the public broadcaster.
He added that RAI had opened an internal inquiry to swiftly determine any responsibility and any potential disciplinary procedures.
In a separate statement RAI’s board of directors condemned the remark as “unacceptable.”
The board apologized to the Jewish community, the athletes involved and all viewers who felt offended.
RAI is the country’s largest media organization and operates national television, radio and digital news services.
The union representing RAI journalists, Usigrai, had said Paolo Petrecca’s opening ceremony commentary had dealt “a serious blow” to the company’s credibility.
His missteps included misidentifying venues and public figures, and making comments about national teams that were widely criticized.