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Shalom, Slurpee: Israel gets its first 7-Eleven in convenience store chain’s planned wave
(JTA) — Yoav Silberstein, 16, waited an hour and a half to get into 7-Eleven’s new flagship — and so far only — store in Israel. Located in the heart of Tel Aviv in Dizengoff Center, the store opening on Wednesday attracted throngs of mostly teenagers hoping to get a taste of America in the shape of a gallon-cup carbonated slushy called a Slurpee.
Silberstein was disappointed, though, to discover that the largest size on offer was a 650 ml (21 oz) cup. He has fond memories of Slurpees from visits with relatives in the United States, where the largest option is twice as big.
“I overheard people in the line calling it ‘barad,’” he said, using the Hebrew word for Israel’s version of slushies. “They have no idea about any of this.”
7-Eleven is the largest convenience store chain in the United States, with nearly 10,000 locations. But it is in some of its overseas markets where the chain really stands out — especially in Japan, where the more than 20,000 7-Elevens serve up everything from banking services to clothing essentials to high-end fresh and prepared foods. There, they can function as a person’s primary shopping destination.
With the store opening this week, Israel became the 19th country to welcome the megachain, and the first in the Middle East, after Electra Consumer Products inked a franchise deal in 2021. Thirty more stores are slated to open by the beginning of 2024; the company says several hundred will follow.
“It’s revolutionary,” Israel’s 7-Eleven CEO, Avinoam Ben-Mocha, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It’s more than a mini-market, it’s also a pizzeria, cafe and fast food restaurant all under one roof.”
The new stores will join more than 10,000 convenience stores already operating in Israel. In some big cities, including Tel Aviv, convenience stores that resemble New York’s bodegas can be found on every street corner, many of them open around the clock offering anything from cigarettes to diapers.
But the standard convenience stores known as makolets don’t serve coffee and hot food and are intended, like their American counterparts, for buying items in between larger shops at regular supermarkets. The am/pm chain of small-scale grocery stores gives off a 7-Eleven aesthetic but also does not serve fresh coffee or food. The closest things currently to a 7-Eleven in Israel are gas station stores that offer coffee and a range of sandwiches, salads and pastries, in addition to basic groceries.
At the new 7-Eleven, customers serve themselves Slurpees, Big Gulps and soft-serve ice cream (called American ice cream in Israel) as well as coffee from touchscreen machines that offer oat and soy milk alternatives at the same price. At 9 NIS ($2.60), the price is competitive locally but is still more than other 7-Elevens around the world, including the United States — reflecting Israel’s notoriously high cost of living.
In another innovation, the store’s cups have a barcode that allows customers to check themselves out. A mobile app, currently in a pilot phase, is meant to make it even easier for customers to grab and go.
Gabi Breier, one of only a few older customers at the store’s opening, hailed the self-serve, self-checkout policy.
“I’m walking around with this ice cream tub and wondering when someone is going to come and stop me and demand that I pay,” Breier said.
“It’s a new thing, this trust given to the customer. In the end, people will like it more than other places. It makes you feel like you’ve been invited.”
Asked if he thought an Israeli market might take advantage of this rare show of autonomy, Ben-Mocha was equanimous.
“Most of the kids here are getting it, but I’ve seen a few walk out of here with unpaid items and no one has stopped them,” he said. “But it’s part of the process and we’re on a learning curve too. Look, when you give the customer your trust, they will honor that.”
Israel has been an inhospitable home to some other foreign chains, notably Starbucks, which lasted less than two years before shutting its doors in 2003. Could the 7-Eleven venture be destined for the same fate?
“The problem with Starbucks was that they didn’t bother to understand the local taste profile,” Ben-Mocha said. “They just came with their own concept and tried to force it onto a market it wasn’t suited to.”
“Adapting to the local market is an inherent part of 7-Eleven’s DNA,” he said.
Israeli and American candies share the shelves at Israel’s new 7-Eleven, while the high-tech coffee stations are a novelty in the country. (Deborah Danan)
In Israel, that adaptation includes tweaks to the company’s signature operating hours — the “7” in the name refers to how many days per week the store is open — and to the way food is heated. The company initially said its Israeli stores would be closed on Shabbat, a requirement for food-service establishments that want to be certified as kosher. The Tel Aviv store’s fresh food is not kosher — it serves foods made with milk and with meat, heating them in the same ovens — but other branches will be, according to the company.
Out of around 2,000 products, just 80 are 7-Eleven branded products. Others reflect local tastes: Alongside 7-Eleven hot-food classics such as pizza, hot dogs and chicken nuggets, Israeli customers can also enjoy zaatar-and-spinach pastries and mini-schnitzels. In the candy aisle, American classics like Twizzlers and Mike and Ikes are juxtaposed with Israeli treats like fan favorite Krembo and Elite’s recently resurrected cow chocolate. And one striking import is that donuts will be sold year-round — a concept alien to Israelis, who typically only get to enjoy the fried dough confection when it’s sold around Hanukkah time.
It isn’t enough for everyone though.
“I hate this 7-Eleven, it’s totally fake,” said 16-year-old Moti Bar Joseph, who immigrated three years ago from the Bronx, in New York City. “It doesn’t have any of the real 7-Eleven feeling. There are no Lucky Charms, no Jolly Ranchers. It’s an Israeli bootleg version.”
Yuya Shimada, a Japanese national working in Tel Aviv, was more generous. Shimada came to the opening because he was familiar with the brand from his hometown of Nagoya. Asked if he was reminded of home, Shimada laughed. “No, not a bit. But this store is very stylish. I give it 8 out of 10.”
Asked whether his visit had been worth the wait, Silberstein, the teenager, said that it’s “always special to be first to something.”
He added, “But I stood four hours for the opening of the Lego store across the road so I’m probably not the right person to ask.”
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The post Shalom, Slurpee: Israel gets its first 7-Eleven in convenience store chain’s planned wave appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel Says It Kills Senior Hamas Commander Raed Saed in Gaza
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a car in Gaza City, December 13, 2025.REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
The Israeli military said it killed senior Hamas commander Raed Saed, one of the architects of the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, in a strike on a car in Gaza City on Saturday.
It was the highest-profile assassination of a senior Hamas figure since a Gaza ceasefire deal came into effect in October.
In a joint statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said Saed was targeted in response to an attack by Hamas in which an explosive device injured two soldiers earlier on Saturday.
The attack on the car in Gaza City killed five people and wounded at least 25 others, according to Gaza health authorities. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas or medics that Saed was among the dead.
HAMAS SAYS ATTACK VIOLATES CEASEFIRE AGREEMENT
An Israeli military official described Saed as a high-ranked Hamas member who helped establish and advance the group’s weapons production network.
“In recent months, he operated to reestablish Hamas’ capabilities and weapons manufacturing, a blatant violation of the ceasefire,” the official said.
Hamas sources have also described him as the second-in-command of the group’s armed wing, after Izz eldeen Al-Hadad.
Saed used to head Hamas’ Gaza City battalion, one of the group’s largest and best-equipped, those sources said.
Hamas, in a statement, condemned the attack as a violation of the ceasefire agreement but did not say whether Saed was hurt and stopped short of threatening retaliation.
The October 10 ceasefire has enabled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to Gaza City’s ruins. Israel has pulled troops back from city positions, and aid flows have increased.
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Hezbollah Chief: Disarmament Would Be ‘Death Sentence’ for Lebanon
Lebanon’s Hezbollah Chief Naim Qassem gives a televised speech from an unknown location, July 30, 2025, in this screen grab from video. Photo: Al Manar TV/REUTERS TV/via REUTERS
i24 News – Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said on Saturday that it was not the responsibility of the Shiite terror group “to prevent aggression,” but rather the Lebanese state’s, and it is the responsibility of Hezbollah to engage “when the state and army fail to do so.”
In a recorded televised statement, Qassem sarcastically posed the question whether it was not Hezbollah that should be demanding the Lebanese Army’s disarmament if the latter fails to stop “Israel’s ongoing aggression.”
On the issue of disarming Hezbollah, Qassem said that disarming it in the manner currently proposed is a death sentence for Lebanon.
“Even if the sky falls, we will not be disarmed, not even if the entire world unites against Lebanon. We will not allow this and it will not happen,” Qassem said.
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High schoolers’ ‘human swastika’ on football field shakes San Jose Jewish community
(JTA) — The photo spread swiftly after a student posted it on social media: Eight California high schoolers were lying on their school’s football field, their bodies arrayed in the shape of a swastika.
Alongside the picture was a quote from Adolf Hitler, threatening the “annihilation of the Jewish race.”
The incident at Branham High School in San Jose began on Dec. 3 and has roiled the local Jewish community in the days since, as the wrenching saga has ignited suspensions, recriminations and alarm from around the world.
The photograph and the response to it were first reported by J. Jewish News of Northern California.
“We don’t want to see hatred,” Cormac Nolan, a Jewish Branham senior, told the local Jewish newspaper. “We don’t want to see the idolization of one of the most evil men to ever walk the face of the Earth. We don’t want someone who spews out hatred like this on our campus.”
The school’s student newspaper reported that the students involved had been suspended, and that dozens of other students walked out to protest the incident.
The San Jose Police Department told J. that it is investigating the incident, and the school’s principal, Beth Silbergeld, who is Jewish, said the school was working with the Anti-Defamation League and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition, a local antisemitism advocacy group, “to ensure that we receive appropriate support and guidance as we work to repair the harm that’s been done to our community.”
Silbergeld told J. that she felt pressure to learn from the incident.
“I’ve been in education for a long time and have seen, sadly, lots of incidences of oppression and hate toward many groups,” she said. “I think that we always have a responsibility as schools to do what’s right and to take action and learn from the experiences of other other schools and other incidents as a way to hopefully eliminate actions like what we’ve experienced.”
The incident is not the first time Branham High School has faced controversy over antisemitism on its campus. In April, the California Department of Education ruled that the school had discriminated against its Jewish students by presenting “biased” content about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a 12th-grade ethnic literature curriculum.
It is also not the first instance of a “human swastika” roiling a school community. In 2019, nine middle schoolers in Ojai, California, also arranged themselves in a “human swastika” and faced disciplinary measures from the school.
Exactly what possessed the Branham students to do what they did is not clear. But psychologists told the J. that the teen years are a peak moment for transgressive behaviors that may or may not reflect deep-seated biases.
“It’s a developmental time where you’re doing new things, you’re trying new things, you’re making mistakes, you’re trying to fit in, you’re trying to get laughs and likes,” Ellie Pelc, director of clinical services at the Bay Area’s Jewish Family and Children’s Services, told the newspaper. “And you often do so in some hurtful or harmful ways that you don’t always have the capacity to think through in advance.”
The photo was met by condemnation by California State Sens. Scott Wiener, who wrote that antisemitism was “pervasive & growing” in a post on Facebook, and Dave Cortese, who said he was “deeply disturbed” by the incident in a statement.
“What happened at Branham High School was not a joke, not a prank, and not self-expression — it was an act of hatred,” wrote San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan in a post on X. “The fact that this was planned and posted publicly makes it even more disturbing.”
By Tuesday, the uproar had sparked a response from district leaders. In a post on Facebook, Robert Bravo, the superintendent for the Campbell Union High School District, wrote that the district “will respond firmly, thoughtfully, and within the full scope allowed by Board Policy and California law.” (Displaying a Nazi swastika on the property of a school is illegal in California.)
He added that the school district considered the incident an instance of “hate violence” based on California state education code, which allows for suspension or expulsion in such cases.
“Our response cannot be limited to discipline alone,” continued Bravo. “We are committed to using this incident as an opportunity to deepen education around antisemitism, hate symbols and the historical atrocities associated with them.”
The antisemitic post comes two months after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill creating a statewide office assigned to combatting antisemitism in California public schools. The office, which is the first of its kind in the country, was met with praise from local Jewish advocacy groups while some critics warned it could chill academic freedoms.
Marc Levine, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in the Central Pacific region, called the incident “repulsive and unacceptable” in a statement on X. The incident was also condemned by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area, which wrote in a statement that it had been working with the school about “how to ensure an effective response.”
The Bay Area Jewish Coalition also issued a statement on Tuesday, writing that the antisemitic act had “shaken Jewish families across Northern California and beyond.”
“We hope that what happened at Branham serves as a wake-up call for California and for the rest of the country to take the antisemitism crisis seriously and reverse the trend through real, meaningful action and long-term change,” the statement continued.
The post High schoolers’ ‘human swastika’ on football field shakes San Jose Jewish community appeared first on The Forward.