Uncategorized
Rabbi Chaim Druckman, giant of Israeli settlement and Religious Zionist movements, dies at 90
(JTA) — Rabbi Chaim Druckman, whose mission was to unite the people of Israel, was father to a movement now poised to sow some of its deepest divisions in decades.
Druckman, who died Sunday at 90 after contracting COVID-19, was a giant in the religious Zionism movement, which sought to integrate the two preeminent philosophies that saw themselves as bulwarks against Jewish disintegration: Orthodox Judaism and Zionism.
In the 1950s, he established the hesder movement, which blended Torah study with military service. For tens of thousands of religious Jews, his innovation resolved a dilemma that had beset Israel’s founders: What was the most meaningful way for young Orthodox men to spend their first years of adulthood?
“We study Torah to fulfill our national obligation and serve in the army to fulfill our religious obligation,” Druckman often said.
Over the years, he led yeshivas and youth movements to extend that vision, and in 2012, he won the Israel Prize, Israel’s national award, for his lifetime of contributions to religious Zionist education.
Yet as much as he sought to bridge divides, he was as frequently positioned at their fault lines, in recent years disparaging non-Orthodox Jews and mentoring extremists who seek the marginalization of non-Jewish and non-Orthodox minorities in Israel. He also at least twice defended and sought to rehabilitate religious leaders convicted of sexual abuse, including of children.
Druckman was born in 1932 in Kuty, in what was then Poland and what is now Ukraine. He and his parents went into hiding during the Holocaust and then fled to the Soviet Union. He entered British Mandate Palestine in 1944 posing as the child of another couple and was reunited with his parents after the war.
He soon became a disciple of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the rabbi who helped shape the nationalist outlook of the National Religious Party. Kook’s teachings drove Druckman to become one of the first leaders of the religious Zionist movement to embrace the settlement of lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. He was at the seminal 1968 Passover seder in Hebron that is widely seen as the launch of the religious settlement movement and is believed to have coined the name of its principal body, Gush Emunim, which means bloc of believers.
Druckman became a figurehead of the settlement movement, although he lived most of his life in Mercaz Shapira, the Israeli village near Ashkelon where he ran the influential Or Etzion Yeshiva. He served in the Knesset in coalitions led by Likud and Labor prime ministers, from 1977 to 1988 and then from 1999 to 2003, with short periods in the opposition.
In the wake of the massive influx immigrants after the fall of the Soviet Union, Druckman as a senior religious court judge led an effort to ease conversion to Orthodox Judaism. His suasions backfired, leading haredi Orthodox judges to seek the nullification of thousands of conversions he had supervised.
However much he preached reconciliation among Jews, he stood hard and fast against any attempt to dismantle settlements, going so far as to advise soldiers to refuse orders to take part in the removal of settlements. He also stood by Jews accused and convicted of violent crimes associated with tensions over the settlements, including murder and terrorism, raising funds for those accused and welcoming them back into society.
He also stood by people who were accused of sexual abuse multiple times. He was rebuked in 1999 for failing to report credible reports of sexual assault by a yeshiva head he supervised, Zev Kopilevich, and he later championed another rabbi convicted of sexual abuse, Moti Elon. While he conceded in 2013 that the government was right to rebuke him, he also dismissed as “gossip” just this month multiple allegations of rape against another yeshiva head, Zvi Tau.
Until recently, Druckman championed Naftali Bennett and his Jewish Home Party as the natural heir to the National Religious Party tradition — but in 2021 when Bennett chose the path of reconciliation once championed by Druckman, joining a unity government with secular parties, Druckman cut him off and instead embraced the extremist Religious Zionist Party led by Bezalel Smotrich.
Druckman played a role in brokering the entry of the Religious Zionist Party into the government that Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to bring to power in coming days. The entry of Smotrich and a colleague, Itamar Ben-Gvir, into the government is likely to precipitate a crisis with Diaspora Jewry. They favor restricting Israeli laws to favor the Orthodox, annexing the West Bank and loosening laws that restrict troops from killing or physically harming Palestinians.
At Druckman’s funeral on Monday, Smotrich said Druckman “reproached” him frequently for his excesses, but in a recent interview with Yisrael Hayom, the nationalist daily, Druckman made clear that many of the ideas Smotrich champions had his blessing, including his proposal for a state based on religious law and his plans for anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
Tens of thousands of people attended Druckman’s funeral Monday in his home village of Mercaz Shapira. Israel’s leaders at his funeral remembered him as a unifier.
“All of us were your sons, all of us were your students,” President Isaac Herzog said, according to the Times of Israel.
—
The post Rabbi Chaim Druckman, giant of Israeli settlement and Religious Zionist movements, dies at 90 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Palestinian Terrorists Hand Over Body of Another Gaza Hostage
Palestinians walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Jabalia, northern Gaza Strip, November 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad handed over the body of a deceased hostage on Friday as part of the Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Saturday it had confirmed the body was that of Lior Rudaeff following an identification process.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that a coffin carrying the remains of a hostage had been handed over to Israeli security forces in Gaza via the Red Cross.
Islamic Jihad is an armed group that is allied with Hamas and also took hostages during the October 7, 2023, attack that precipitated the Gaza war. It said the hostage’s body was located in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
Under the October ceasefire deal, Hamas turned over all 20 living hostages still held in Gaza since the group’s attack on Israel, in return for nearly 2,000 Palestinian convicts and wartime detainees held in Israel.
The ceasefire agreement also included the return of remains of 28 deceased hostages in exchange for the remains of 360 militants.
Including Rudaeff, taken from the Kibbutz Nir Yitzchak, 23 hostage bodies have been returned in exchange for 300 bodies of Palestinians, though not all have been identified, according to Gaza’s health authorities.
The tenuous ceasefire has calmed most but not all fighting, allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to the ruins of their homes in Gaza. Israel has withdrawn troops from positions in cities and more aid has been allowed in.
Uncategorized
Iran’s Severe Water Crisis Prompts Pezeshkian to Raise Possibility of Evacuating Tehran
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
i24 News – As Iran is experiencing one of its worst droughts in decades, President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that the capital of Tehran might have to be evacuated if there were no rains in the next two months.
“If it doesn’t rain, we will have to start restricting water supplies in Tehran next month. If the drought continues, we will run out of water and be forced to evacuate the city,” the leader was quoted as saying.
Pezeshkian described the situation as “extremely critical,” citing reports that Tehran’s dam reservoirs have fallen to their lowest level in 60 years.
According to the director of the Tehran Water Company, the largest water reservoir serving the capital currently holds 14 million cubic meters, compared to 86 million at the same time last year.
Latyan Dam, another key reservoir, is only about nine percent full. “Latyan’s water storage is just nine million cubic meters,” Deputy Energy Minister Mohammad Javanbakht said recently, calling the situation “critical.”
On Saturday, Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi said “we are forced to cut off the water supply for citizens on some evenings so that the reservoirs can refill.”
The ongoing crisis is giving rise to increasing speculation that further shortages could trigger nationwide protests and social unrest.
Uncategorized
US Forces Working with Israel on Gaza Aid, Israeli Official Says
A Palestinian carries aid supplies that entered Gaza, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, in Zawaida in the central Gaza Strip. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
US forces are taking part in overseeing and coordinating aid transfers into the Gaza Strip together with Israel as part of US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan, an Israeli security official said on Saturday.
The Washington Post reported on Friday that the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) will replace Israel in overseeing aid into Gaza. It cited a US official and people familiar with the matter as saying Israel was part of the process but that CMCC would decide what aid enters Gaza and how.
The Israeli security official said that Israeli security services remain part of policy, supervision and monitoring with decisions made jointly, and that the integration of the CMCC was already underway.
A spokesperson for the US embassy in Jerusalem told Reuters that the US was “working hard, in tandem with Israel and regional partners, on the next phases of implementing” the president’s “historic peace plan.” That includes coordinating the immediate distribution of humanitarian assistance and working through details.
The US is pleased by the “growing contributions of other donors and participating countries” in the CMCC to support humanitarian aid to Gaza, the spokesperson said.
TOO LITTLE AID GETTING IN
Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas agreed a month ago to a first phase of a peace plan presented by Trump. It paused a devastating two-year war in Gaza triggered by a cross-border attack by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, and secured a deal to release Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
The CMCC began operating from southern Israel in late October, tasked with helping aid flow and stabilizing security in Gaza, according to the U.S. Central Command.
While the truce was meant to unleash a torrent of aid across the tiny, crowded enclave where famine was confirmed in August and where almost all the 2.3 million inhabitants have lost their homes, humanitarian agencies said last week that far too little aid is reaching Gaza.
Israel says it is fulfilling its obligations under the ceasefire agreement, which calls for an average of 600 trucks of supplies into Gaza per day. Reuters reported on October 23 that Washington is considering new proposals for humanitarian aid delivery.
The Israeli official said that the United States will lead coordination with the international community, with restrictions still in place on the list of non-governmental organizations supplying aid and the entry of so-called dual-use items, which Israel considers to have both civilian and military use.