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Nelson Cruz and other Hispanic MLB players visit Israel to promote Christian-Jewish relations
TEL AVIV (JTA) — On a recent Monday, the owner of a restaurant here captivated a group of 14 lunch patrons with stories of her life before and after moving to Israel from Ethiopia as a youngster. A family visiting from New York approached from another table, and the adult son asked if he could pose for pictures with some of the members of the big group.
After the group had left to walk to the shore nearby, the restaurant’s owner learned that she had just hosted a group of professional athletes and their entourage. She briefly considered running after them for a photo herself.
“I wish I’d known who they were,” she said.
The athletes — Nelson Cruz, Cesar Hernandez and Jeimer Candelario, all Major League Baseball players in the United States — were surprised by what they learned at lunch, too. For instance, they had not known of the existence of Black Jews, including the thousands of Ethiopians living in Israel.
The players and their significant others were brought to Israel for a week by the Philos Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that promotes Christian relations with Israel and other Middle Eastern countries. It was the organization’s first delegation to Israel involving Hispanic athletes, said Jesse Rojo, the Philos Project’s director of Hispanic affairs. The group toured Christian sites in Jerusalem and the Galilee and ran a baseball clinic for Jewish and non-Jewish youth in Raanana.
The visit also aimed to “proactively” combat antisemitism, Rojo said, “to show our baseball players that they can make a difference, not wait for someone to come out with an antisemitic tweet to do something.” The trip was organized well in advance of the recent antisemitism controversies involving American celebrities such as rapper Kanye West and NBA star Kyrie Irving.
But the players also expressed eagerness to learn about Israel and to impart their experiences upon returning to their homelands of the Dominican Republic and Venezuela — and to MLB clubhouses.
Cruz, from the Dominican Republic, is 39th on the MLB’s all-time home run list with 459. He hit only 10 homers this year and is 42 years old, but he said he’s hopeful a team will sign him to a contract for 2023. Hernandez, a second baseman who is also now a free agent, hails from Venezuela and is a former Gold Glove winner, earned for being named the best defender at his position in the American League. Candelario, born in New York but raised in the Dominican Republic, is also looking for a new team after playing six seasons at third base for the Detroit Tigers. Cruz and Hernandez played together on the Washington Nationals this past season.
On a minibus, before it set out for a day of touring, Cruz led a prayer of gratitude as everyone along for the ride bowed their heads. Members of the group uttered “amen” responses throughout. In Jaffa, Candelario expressed excitement at learning that the Bible’s Jonah had departed by ship from the ancient city’s port before being swallowed by a huge fish. At lunch, Candelario led the table in grace.
In separate interviews, each of the three visiting players said he had never heard anti-Jewish or anti-Israel views expressed by relatives, friends or acquaintances. Most of their compatriots, they said, think that Israel is constantly under enemy attack, a view they added was dispelled by their experience traveling around the country and feeling safe.
All attributed pro-Israel inclinations to their strong Christian beliefs, including regularly attending church services. They cited their mothers as devout women who raised them with Bible stories.
“We love God and the word of God. This is the land of our fathers,” said Candelario. “Whoever blesses Israel will be blessed,” he said, paraphrasing God’s promise to Abraham.
Rojo is organizing a charity softball game in the Dominican Republic between Dominican and Jewish-American MLB players in the coastal town of Susua — which was founded by refugees of Nazism who established still-operating dairy and sliced-meat factories. Funds raised through the event will pay to renovate both a baseball field and the town’s synagogue and to commemorate the Jewish immigrants’ roles in Susua’s history, Rojo said.
Cruz is trying to recruit fellow Dominican players to come on subsequent Israel trips and to play in next year’s Susua event. Superstar outfielder Juan Soto, Cruz’s former teammate on the Washington Nationals, considered participating in the recent delegation, but he reversed course after being traded mid-season to San Diego, Cruz said. Cruz also hopes to persuade the retired legends Albert Pujols and Manny Ramirez to come to Israel, too.
Back home, “we’ll share this experience, and definitely more players will be motivated to come,” Cruz said.
“Anyone who’s an opinion-maker from such countries helps us,” said Jonathan Peled, the Israeli foreign ministry’s deputy director general for Latin America. “They become ambassadors of good [will]. Whether a pastor, an athlete, a performer, a YouTuber – on every visit to Israel, there’s nothing like firsthand observation to see Israel in a more balanced, positive manner and less distorted.”
Jeimer Candelario, a third baseman for the Detroit Tigers, interacts with children at the Raanana field. (Nico Andre’ Duran)
Israel enjoys good relations throughout Latin America, with Venezuela an exception after it broke off diplomatic relations with the Jewish state in 2009, Peled said. “But we hope that [ties] will be renewed soon,” he said.
Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and Israel, coincidentally, will be competing (along with Puerto Rico and Nicaragua) in the same group at the upcoming World Baseball Classic, to be held in Miami in March. The teams will feature large contingents of major leaguers, with Israel’s roster consisting mainly of American Jews.
Baseball is not a top sport in Israel, but Team Israel’s periodic success on the world stage has helped promote the game. The Raanana site — dedicated in memory of Massachusetts native Ezra Schwartz, who was killed in a 2019 terrorist attack in Israel — is one of only a handful of baseball fields in the country. Other notable ones are at Kibbutz Gezer, in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park, and at the Baptist Village complex in Petach Tikvah.
At the group lunch, Hernandez said that he “would live here” in Israel in the off-season if he could obtain a visa. He was asked whether he meant it.
“Yeah, because it’s the Jesus country,” Hernandez said. “I asked my wife, and she said yes.”
Sitting beside him at the restaurant, Gabriela Hernandez nodded.
“Yes,” she said, “because of the significance it has for us.”
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The post Nelson Cruz and other Hispanic MLB players visit Israel to promote Christian-Jewish relations appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Lebanon Expels Iranian Ambassador as Israel Creates New ‘Security Zone’ in Campaign to Counter Hezbollah
Smoke rises after an Israeli strike, amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, as the US-Israeli conflict with Iran continues, in southern Lebanon, March 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Lebanon declared Iran’s new ambassador to the country, Mohammad Reza Sheibani, persona non grata on Tuesday and ordered him to leave by Sunday, as relations with Tehran sharply deteriorate amid tensions over the Iranian regime’s continued support for Hezbollah and interference in Beirut’s affairs.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi announced the decision, accusing Tehran of violating diplomatic norms and interfering in Lebanon’s security, amid the regime’s backing of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.
I instructed today the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants to summon the Iranian Chargé d’Affaires in Lebanon to inform him of the decision to withdraw the agrément for the designated Iranian Ambassador, Mohammad Reza Shibani, declare him persona…
— Youssef Raggi (@YoussefRaggi) March 24, 2026
Even though Sheibani served as Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon in the 2000s, he was only reappointed to the role in February and had not yet presented his credentials.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar praised Lebanon’s move, calling it a “justified and necessary step against the state responsible for violating Lebanon’s sovereignty, for its indirect occupation through Hezbollah, and for dragging [the country] into war.”
“We call on the Lebanese government to take practical and meaningful measures against Hezbollah, whose representatives still serve as ministers within it,” the top Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.
I welcome the decision of the Lebanese Foreign Minister to expel the Iranian ambassador-designate from Lebanon.
This is a justified and necessary step against the state responsible for violating Lebanon’s sovereignty, for its indirect occupation through Hezbollah, and for…— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) March 24, 2026
This latest diplomatic escalation comes after a week of high-level meetings between Lebanese officials and regional leaders, many from countries that have faced Iranian missile and drone attacks or uncovered Hezbollah-linked networks on their soil.
Experts say the move also serves as a diplomatic signal toward Israel, as Beirut seeks to show a firmer stance against the Iranian proxy’s terrorist activities within the country ahead of possible future negotiations with Jerusalem
Last week, Raggi condemned the discovery of Hezbollah terrorist cells in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, expressing Lebanon’s solidarity with both states and reiterating that all military and security operations conducted by the Iran-backed group remain banned under Lebanese government authority.
The Lebanese diplomat also condemned Iran’s attacks on Saudi Arabia, warning that continued escalation by Tehran risks widening instability across the Gulf and further threatening regional security and economic cooperation.
“By targeting Arab and Islamic countries, Iran is attempting to hijack their security and peace and trade them for its own opportunistic objectives,” Raggi said during a diplomatic visit to Riyadh.
“The most dangerous aspect of these attacks is that they are directed against countries that have consistently pursued a policy of de-escalation with Iran. These are countries that have always adhered to good neighborly relations, extended bridges of cooperation, and strived to prevent the region from sliding into conflict … What message is Iran sending to our region when moderation is rewarded with aggression?” he continued.
In an interview with Saudi outlet al-Hadath on Sunday, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam also condemned Iran’s role in the conflict, saying “the war was imposed on us,” and accused its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) of directing Hezbollah’s military operations from behind the scenes.
“These people have forged passports and entered the country illegally,” the Lebanese leader said.
“Is it our role to provoke [Israel] or to avenge the death of [Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]? That is not the role of Lebanon. This war is by definition the war of others on our soil,” Salam continued.
Earlier this month, the Lebanese government formally declared Hezbollah’s military operations illegal, though the army has so far refrained from intervening to halt the group’s military activity in the country’s southern region, even as Israeli strikes continue across the area.
“I am not calling for a confrontation with Hezbollah. On the contrary, I want to avoid such a confrontation. But I do not accept yielding to Hezbollah’s blackmail, and I ask the group to respect government decisions,” Salam told al-Hadath.
“Ending this conflict in Lebanon is our top priority, and we are deploying every necessary diplomatic effort, including our proposal for direct negotiations,” he continued.
On Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that Israeli forces will deploy across southern Lebanon up to the Litani River and crease a “security zone” until the threat of Hezbollah is removed, saying they would “control the remaining bridges and the security zone up to the Litani” and create a “defensive buffer.”
In recent weeks, Israel has conducted strikes targeting Hezbollah, particularly south of the Litani River, where the group’s operatives have historically been most active against the Jewish state.
For years, Israel has demanded that Hezbollah be barred from carrying out activities south of the Litani, located roughly 15 miles from the Israeli border.
According to Katz, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are now moving into Lebanon to establish what he described as a “forward defensive line,” targeting Hezbollah infrastructure and destroying buildings he said were being used as operational “terrorist outposts.”
“The principle is clear: Where there are terror and missiles, there will be no homes and no residents, and the IDF will be inside,” he said.
Since Hezbollah joined the conflict in support of Iran at the beginning of the month, Israeli officials report the group has carried out over 900 coordinated attacks, showing a notable rise in cross-border activity and an expansion of operations across the region.
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UK Announces Reforms to Accelerate Firings of Antisemitic Doctors
Wes Streeting, the British secretary of state for health and social care, is seen in Westminster as he appears on Sunday politics shows, London, England, United Kingdom, Oct. 26, 2025. Photo: Tayfun Salci/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
The United Kingdom on Tuesday announced a series of reforms to empower its General Medical Council (GMC), a key regulatory body, to act forcibly in removing bigots who endanger patients.
The move followed several high-profile cases both in the UK and around the world involving medical practitioners promoting antisemitic beliefs online and even threatening or boasting about their hate for Jewish people as well as Israelis.
John Mann, who serves in the House of Lords and as the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, was tasked in October with reviewing the severity of antisemitism in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and exploring methods to counter it in October.
“There are just too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said at the time, directing Mann to “root out this problem and ensure perpetrators are always held to account.”
The results of that investigation led to the new reforms unveiled on Tuesday — changes described by the UK government as “key” and “the most significant overhaul of the regulation of medical professionals since 1983.”
Specifically, UK Secretary Wes Streeting and his Department of Health and Social Care focused on three main changes.
First, the GMC should “retain its existing right to appeal decisions made by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) to the courts, ensuring there remains a robust check on fitness to practice outcomes.” The MPTS adjudicates on complaints made against doctors.
Second, the Professional Standards Authority (PSA), which oversees all health-care regulators, will gain expanded authority to challenge decisions from the MPTS.
Third, regulatory bodies must now share information with the PSA when requested, a move intended to provide greater scrutiny of regulatory decisions and potential times to intervene.
“Racism, including anti-Jewish racism, has no place in the health sector or our NHS, and those who engage in it should face swift and meaningful consequences,” Mann said in a statement. “For too long, the system has been too slow and too cumbersome to deliver that.”
The GMC’s chief executive and registrar, Charlie Massey, called the reforms a “long-awaited step” and explained how the changes would work.
“Patients rightly expect assurance that doctors, PAs, and AAs are safe to practice and can be held to account if serious concerns are raised,” Massey said. “These proposed reforms will allow us to respond more quickly and flexibly when patient safety is at risk. They will also allow us to further improve our efficiency and effectiveness, while at the same time enabling us to help patients navigate the complaints and concerns process more easily.”
Mann said the reforms “will help deliver change” and added he was “pleased” the government moved quickly to act on his recommendations.
The UK health-care system has been riddled with cases of alleged antisemitism over the past several months,
The case of Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, a trainee trauma and orthopedic surgeon, particularly drew public attention. In November, Aladwan was suspended from practicing medicine in the UK for 15 months over social media posts denigrating Jews and celebrating terrorism.
Aladwan had called online for the ethnic cleaning of Jews and celebrated the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. She also described Israelis as “worse than Nazis” and Hamas operatives as “oppressed resistance fighters, not terrorists.”
The anti-Israel activist also made explicitly antisemitic claims, such as labeling the Royal Free Hospital in London “a Jewish supremacy cesspit” and asserting that “over 90% of the world’s Jews are genocidal.”
On a Feb. 7, 2026, episode of the “Blood Brothers” podcast, Aladwan called on Muslims in the countries around Israel to wage a violent jihad.
British law enforcement had arrested Aladwan on Oct. 21, charging her with four counts related to malicious communications and inciting racial hatred.
Aladwan’s arrest followed the GMC’s clearing her to continue treating patients, finding that her conduct had not done anything to “undermine public confidence in the medical profession” and that her comments did not “amount to bullying or harassment.” The MPTS panel concluded that “a reasonable and fully informed member of the public would not be alarmed or concerned” by her being allowed to continue treating patients.
However, following widespread backlash, the GMC said it had re-referred Aladwan’s case to the MPTS for “an interim orders tribunal,” adding that such referrals are made when an interim order “is necessary to protect the public or public confidence in doctors during an investigation.”
The 15-month suspension came about two weeks after Streeting called it “chilling” that some members of the Jewish community fear discrimination within the NHS, amid reports of widespread antisemitism in Britain’s health-care system.
Other incidents in the UK included a Jewish family fearing their London doctor’s antisemitism influenced their disabled son’s treatment. The North London hospital suspended the physician who was under investigation for publicly claiming that all Jews have “feelings of supremacy” and downplaying antisemitism.
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Arabic Wikipedia Riddled With Terror Propaganda and Bias, New Investigation Shows
Avishek Das / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
Arabic-language Wikipedia is riddled with systemic bias and extreme terrorist propaganda, a new investigation shows, raising serious questions about the reliability of one of the world’s most widely used information sources and exposing millions of readers worldwide to potentially harmful content.
On Tuesday, the World Jewish Congress’s Institute for Technology and Human Rights released a report revealing that Arabic-language Wikipedia content repeatedly violates the platform’s core neutrality rules, specifically in articles covering the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Extremist influence runs deep in major Wikipedia articles, with 25 to over 50 percent of citations drawn from Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist propaganda sources, spreading radical narratives and terror-supporting content to millions of readers worldwide.
The World Jewish Congress (WJC)’s latest findings also reveal that the terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are often described as legitimate resistance factions, while attacks on civilians are labeled “martyrdom operations.”
Some articles go further, not only referring to designated terrorists as “martyrs” but also celebrating suicide bombings and attacks on civilians as historical “achievements.”
“This report demonstrates that one of the world’s most trusted knowledge platforms is being systematically manipulated to promote extremist narratives,” Yfat Barak-Cheney, executive director of WJC’s Institute for Technology and Human Rights, said in a statement.
“When terrorist propaganda and hate-driven narratives are allowed to masquerade as neutral information, the consequences extend far beyond Wikipedia itself. These distortions shape public understanding and views of Jews and Israelis across the Arabic-speaking world,” she continued.
In one of its most recent controversies, Wikipedia came under fire last month after a human rights group allegedly linked to Hamas began training Palestinians to edit pages on Israel and the war in Gaza, raising fears of anti-Israel propaganda and antisemitic content on the platform.
According to WJC, the newly released report shows that manipulated Wikipedia content is creating worldwide risks by influencing public discourse and the AI systems that millions rely on, allowing biased information to extend far beyond the site itself.
The report recommends that technology companies and search engines put safeguards in place when using Wikipedia content for AI training and search systems until meaningful reforms are implemented.
“We call on [the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates the Wikipedia website,] to take urgent action to restore neutrality and accountability on Arabic Wikipedia, including enforcing existing neutrality standards, removing administrators who enable extremist propaganda, and implementing centralized monitoring mechanisms for terrorism-related content,” the statement read.
Last year, the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, opened an investigation into the Wikimedia Foundation, demanding answers over concerns that hostile foreign actors are exploiting the online encyclopedia to insert anti-Israel or antisemitic framing designed to sway audiences.
Months earlier, the US Justice Department warned the Wikimedia Foundation that its nonprofit status could be jeopardized for possibly violating its “legal obligations and fiduciary responsibilities” under US law.
Specifically, US officials expressed concern about accusations that the online encyclopedia has spread “propaganda” and allowed “foreign actors to manipulate information” while maintaining a systemic bias against Israel.
“Wikipedia has long presented itself as humanity’s shared knowledge repository,” Barak-Cheney said in a statement on Tuesday. “Ensuring that this knowledge remains factual is particularly critical as emerging AI platforms increasingly rely on multilingual information sources to formulate responses to user queries.”