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Team Israel beats Nicaragua 3-1 after thrilling comeback in World Baseball Classic opener
MIAMI (JTA) — It was a familiar narrative: Israel, ever the underdog, was down and running out of time. Then, just when it seemed hopeless, they pulled off a thrilling comeback.
It wasn’t Purim, or Passover, or even Hanukkah. It was Team Israel’s opening game in the World Baseball Classic.
Israeli-American pitcher Dean Kremer, a member of the Baltimore Orioles, took the ball for Israel against Nicaragua Sunday in its first game of the World Cup-style tournament. Kremer kept the opposing bats quiet over four innings, striking out four while giving up three hits and one walk.
Nicaragua took the lead in the top of the fifth inning on a double from shortstop Steven Layton, who was then thrown out at third to end the inning.
Down 1-0 in the bottom of the eighth, Israel’s bats came alive at just the right time, first on a line-drive single from Toronto Blue Jays prospect Spencer Horwitz that brought pinch-runner Jakob Goldfarb in to score and tie the game.
Then, with two outs and the bases loaded, Philadelphia Phillies backup catcher Garrett Stubbs, who was playing third base for Israel, lifted the ball to left field for a game-winning ground-rule double, bringing in two runners to make it 3-1.
The entire sequence came against Jonathan Loáisiga, a member of the New York Yankees and Nicaragua’s best pitcher.
Garrett Stubbs gives Team Israel its first lead of the game in the bottom of the 8th! #WorldBaseballClassic pic.twitter.com/H4wjfoWwSQ
— World Baseball Classic (@WBCBaseball) March 12, 2023
“Coming into this, I didn’t know what to really expect, this being my first time playing for Team Israel,” Horwitz said. “It’s living up to everything that people are saying. That environment we were just in was definitely electric.”
While the Nicaraguan fans clearly outnumbered Israel’s contingent in both numbers and volume at loanDepot Park, where the Miami Marlins play, there were Israeli flags flying in the stands. And after key plays for Team Israel, the Israeli pop song “Mahapecha Shel Simcha” (“A Revolution of Joy”) blasted from the speakers.
“Playing for Team Israel, anytime I get to put on that uniform is special for me,” said Kremer, who grew up speaking Hebrew and has spent time living in Israel. “It’s like another home. So every time I get to represent it’s one of the better feelings.”
“It’s like being at home” – @DJ_KREY6 is loving seeing Israeli flags in the stands and hearing Hebrew music at the ballpark. pic.twitter.com/tRzGKdarZ4
— Jacob Gurvis (@jacobgurvis) March 12, 2023
So how did Israel pull off the game-winning rally?
“I have no idea,” manager Ian Kinsler joked after the game. “I don’t know what happened there.”
He continued: “We put up some good at bats, we were fighting. That’s what I expect of my team, is to play all 27 outs and fight until the end. Today we were lucky enough to be on the right side.”
The victory was crucial for Israel for a number of reasons.
With stiff competition in Pool D — or the “pool of death,” as Stubbs called it — any win Israel can manage is critical. Only two teams will advance to the next round. Israel will play Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, in order, over the next three days.
The top four teams (out of five) in each pool will automatically qualify for the 2026 WBC, meaning even if Israel does not advance, finishing anywhere but last will secure a spot in the next tournament, without needing to compete in the qualifying round.
“When you’re playing one game [against each opponent], as opposed to a series, anything can happen,” Kinsler said. “The team understands that. It’s not necessarily the best team that wins the game, it’s the team that plays the best that day. So we have just as good a shot as anybody and we’re gonna give our best shot and try to make things interesting in Pool D.”
One of the ways Israel is giving its all is by being creative on defense. Israel has been alternating its two catchers, Stubbs and veteran Ryan Lavarnway, behind the plate, with the other playing third base — which neither has previously done professionally.
“I think anybody on this team is willing to do whatever we need to win a game in any situation, any position,” Stubbs said after the game. “Obviously, it’s very fresh for me. I’ve never played third base ever in my life, all the way dating back to I don’t know how long, but it’s been a lot of fun.”
So far, it’s worked. But with a formidable Puerto Rico team coming up Monday night, the games will only get harder from here.
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The post Team Israel beats Nicaragua 3-1 after thrilling comeback in World Baseball Classic opener appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Mistrial Declared in Case of Students Charged After Stanford Anti-Israel Protests
FILE PHOTO: A student attends an event at a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at Stanford University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Stanford, California U.S., April 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
A judge declared a mistrial on Friday in a case of five current and former Stanford University students related to the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests when demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the school president’s office.
Twelve protesters were initially charged last year with felony vandalism, according to prosecutors who said at least one suspect entered the building by breaking a window. Police arrested 13 people on June 5, 2024, in relation to the incident and the university said the building underwent “extensive” damage.
The case was tried in Santa Clara County Superior Court against five defendants charged with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. The rest previously accepted plea deals or diversion programs.
The jury was deadlocked. It voted nine to three to convict on the felony charge of vandalism and eight to four to convict on the felony charge to trespass. Jurors failed to reach a verdict after deliberations.
The charges were among the most serious against participants in the 2024 pro-Palestinian protest movement on US colleges in which demonstrators demanded an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and Washington’s support for its ally along with a divestment of funds by their universities from companies supporting Israel.
Prosecutors in the case said the defendants engaged in unlawful property destruction.
“This case is about a group of people who destroyed someone else’s property and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. That is against the law,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement, adding he sought a new trial.
Anthony Brass, a lawyer for one of the protesters, told the New York Times his side was not defending lawlessness but “the concept of transparency and ethical investment.”
“This is a win for these young people of conscience and a win for free speech,” Brass said, adding “humanitarian activism has no place in a criminal courtroom.”
Protesters had renamed the building “Dr. Adnan’s Office” after Adnan Al-Bursh, a Palestinian doctor who died in an Israeli prison after months of detention.
Over 3,000 were arrested during the 2024 US pro-Palestinian protest movement, according to media tallies. Some students faced suspension, expulsion and degree revocation.
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Exclusive: FM Gideon Sa’ar to Represent Israel at 1st Board of Peace Meeting in Washington on Thursday
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar speaks next to High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas, and EU commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica as they hold a press conference on the day of an EU-Israel Association Council with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
i24 News – Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar will represent the country at the inaugural meeting of the Gaza Board of Peace in Washington on Thursday, i24NEWS learned on Saturday.
The arrangement was agreed upon following a request from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will not be able to attend.
Netanyahu pushed his Washington visit forward by a week, meeting with US President Donald Trump this week to discuss the Iran situation.
A U.N. Security Council resolution, adopted in mid-November, authorized the Board of Peace and countries working with it to establish an international stabilization force in Gaza and build on the ceasefire agreed in October under a Trump plan.
Under Trump’s Gaza plan, the board was meant to supervise Gaza’s temporary governance. Trump thereafter said the board, with him as chair, would be expanded to tackle global conflicts.
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Two Men Jailed in UK for Islamic State-Inspired Plot to Kill Hundreds of Jews
Weapons seized from the home of Walid Saadaoui, 38, who along with Amar Hussein, 52, has been found guilty at Preston Crown Court of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community, in Britain, in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on December 23, 2025. They are due to be sentenced on Friday. Photo: Greater Manchester Police/Handout via REUTERS
Two men were jailed on Friday for plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired attack on the Jewish community in England, a plan prosecutors said could have been deadlier than December’s mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, were both convicted after a trial at Preston Crown Court, which began a week after an unrelated deadly attack on a synagogue in the city of Manchester, in northwest England.
Prosecutors said the pair were Islamist extremists who wanted to use automatic firearms to kill as many Jews as they could in an attack in Manchester.
They were found guilty little more than a week after a mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in which 15 people were killed.
Prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu said on Friday that, had Saadaoui and Hussein carried out their plan, it “could have been very much more serious” than the attacks in Australia and Manchester.
Judge Mark Wall sentenced Saadaoui to a minimum term of 37 years and Hussein to a minimum term of 26 years, saying: “You were very close to being ready to carry out this plan.”
Hussein refused to attend his sentencing, having refused to attend most of his trial, which Wall said reflected Hussein’s cowardice, describing him as “brave enough to plan to threaten an unarmed group with an AK-47 but not sufficiently courageous to face up to what he did.”
POTENTIALLY ONE OF DEADLIEST ATTACKS ON UK SOIL
Saadaoui had arranged for two assault rifles, an automatic pistol and almost 200 rounds of ammunition to be smuggled into Britain through the port of Dover when he was arrested in May 2024, Sandhu told jurors at the trial.
He added that Saadaoui planned to obtain two more rifles and another pistol, and to collect at least 900 rounds of ammunition.
“This would likely have been one of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever carried out on British soil,” Wall said.
Unbeknown to Saadaoui, however, a man known as “Farouk,” from whom he was trying to get the weapons, was an undercover operative who helped foil the plot.
Walid Saadaoui’s brother Bilel Saadaoui, 37, was found guilty of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism. He was sentenced to six years in jail.