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The last hostage returned. Can Israel finally exhale?
Israelis went into this week preparing for the possibility of yet more military confrontation. A United States aircraft carrier and other warships were moving toward the Middle East, giving the sense that an attack on Iran might be imminent. Tehran was warning that any strike would be answered with missiles, and that Israel would be implicated whether it participated in U.S. action, or not.
And then came a moment of true peace — perhaps the first since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023. The last hostage came home.
Israelis have been holding their breath for nearly 28 months. With the return of the remains of Staff Sergeant Ran Gvili, they can finally stop.
Gvili’s tragic story is also almost uniquely heroic — and profoundly Israeli. Despite being in recovery for a fractured shoulder, the 24-year-old put on his uniform on the morning of Oct. 7, when news of the Hamas attack broke, and rushed south. He helped rescue civilians fleeing the Nova music festival. He fought at Kibbutz Alumim.
Then, wounded and surrounded, he was overpowered and murdered. His body was taken to Gaza.
Gvili embodied the most demanding and meaningful quality of Israeli citizenship: obligation. He went in first. He came out last.
The return of his body, which was reportedly discovered in a north Gaza cemetery, resolved one of the two war aims Israel set for itself in the aftermath of Oct.7 catastrophe: to bring every hostage home. It is a milestone worth celebrating. There has been something deeply revealing in how Israelis have spoken about the return of the remains of the last hostages: a refusal to accept that death dissolves social ties. A declaration that dignity does not end when life does.
This is a society obsessed with survival, but not indifferent to honor and human dignity.
Unfortunately, the other aim, the destruction of Hamas, remains disturbingly unfulfilled.
The hostage issue fostered a certain moral unity in Israel. The country was divided over everything else: the conduct of the war, the devastation in Gaza, the government’s competence, the international backlash, the collapse of trust after the judicial overhaul crisis.
But on the hostages there was something closer to consensus. For most, they were family.
Every Saturday night, hostage families gathered in the plaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum, which became known as Hostages Square. Joining them there — to protest in demand of the hostages’ return — became a ritual. My wife went there weekly, along with many thousands of others. For most Israelis, closely following the hostage talks — the rumors and leaks, partial releases and collapses — became part of daily life.
This meant that as the government continued to pursue the Gaza war, the hostages became a massive liability for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet. Long before military stalemate set in, by mid-2024, polls showed overwhelming support for a deal that would end the fighting after Hamas had been badly degraded in exchange for the return of all hostages.
The government did not listen. Hard-liners in the coalition, who controlled its fate, wanted the war to go on indefinitely. They even wanted Gazans forcibly expelled and the territory settled by Jews. Netanyahu basically had to have his arm twisted by President Donald Trump to strike a ceasefire deal in September.
In part because of that delay, today, virtually every poll suggests that forthcoming elections will produce a crushing defeat for Netanyahu’s coalition. Netanyahu rushed to the cameras Monday to declare Gvili’s return a great success, but my sense is that few Israelis are inclined to grant him credit. The state has completed an obligation, but the government has not redeemed itself.
That sense may have implications on the ground in Gaza, in the quest to rid the strip of Hamas once and for all.
The argument that movement toward a second phase of the Gaza framework must wait until the final hostage is returned is gone. The most likely first step is a partial reopening of the Rafah crossing into Egypt, which is as significant to Gazans as the hostage issue was to Israelis. If, as Israeli and American officials have suggested, that reopening moves forward, it will mean an end to the brutal, suffocating total siege of the strip. Coming days will see talks on who and what can get through, who has a role in checking for smuggling, and what limitations might be applied.
They will also see an intensification of discussion on the other main condition for moving forward: the disarmament of Hamas, which still controls large parts of Gaza. The militant group still believes time is on its side; it imagines that by returning the hostages it has purchased survival.
One thing is for sure: In a week when missiles may yet fly, when Israel may yet face costs far beyond its control, something quietly monumental happened. The country exhaled. The last hostage came home. In an cynical era of promises routinely broken, this one in a way has finally been kept.
The post The last hostage returned. Can Israel finally exhale? appeared first on The Forward.
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Board of Peace Members Have Pledged More Than $5 billion for Gaza, Trump Says
A drone view shows the destruction in a residential neighborhood, after the withdrawal of the Israeli forces from the area, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, in Gaza City, October 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas/File Photo
US President Donald Trump said Board of Peace member states will announce at an upcoming meeting on Thursday a pledge of more than $5 billion for reconstruction and humanitarian efforts in Gaza.
In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, Trump wrote that member states have also committed thousands of personnel toward a U.N.-authorized stabilization force and local police in the Palestinian enclave.
The US president said Thursday’s gathering, the first official meeting of the group, will take place at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, which the State Department recently renamed after the president. Delegations from more than 20 countries, including heads of state, are expected to attend.
The board’s creation was endorsed by a United Nations Security Council resolution as part of the Trump administration’s plan to end the war between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza.
Israel and Hamas agreed to the plan last year with a ceasefire officially taking effect in October, although both sides have accused each other repeatedly of violating the ceasefire. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, more than 590 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops in the territory since the ceasefire began. Israel has said four of its soldiers have been killed by Palestinian militants in the same period.
While regional Middle East powers including Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel – as well as emerging nations such as Indonesia – have joined the board, global powers and traditional Western US allies have been more cautious.
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Why a forgotten teacher’s grave became a Jewish pilgrimage site
Along Britton Road in Rochester, New York, a brick gatehouse sits across from ordinary homes. Beyond it lies Britton Road Cemetery, its grounds divided into family plots and sections claimed over time by Orthodox congregations and fraternal associations, past and present. Names like Anshe Polen, Beth Hakneses Hachodosh, B’nai Israel, and various Jewish fraternal organizations are found here.
On the east side of the cemetery, a modest gray headstone draws visitors who do not personally know the man buried there, who were never taught his name in school, and who claim no personal connection to his life. Some leave notes. Some light candles in a small metal box set nearby. Others whisper prayers and stand for a moment before going. They come because they believe holiness can be found here.
The grave belongs to Rabbi Yechiel Meir Burgeman, a Polish-born teacher who died in 1938. He did not lead a major congregation or leave behind an institution that bears his name. And yet, nearly a century after his death, people still visit.
Over time, Burgeman has come to be remembered as a tzaddik nistar, a hidden righteous person, whose holiness is known through their teaching and daily life rather than through any title or position. His grave has become a place of intercession. People come to pray for healing, for help in times of uncertainty, and for the hope of marriage. What endures here is not an individual’s biography so much as a practice: the belief that a life lived with integrity can continue to shape devotion, even after the body has been laid to rest.
In life, Burgeman was not known as a miracle worker or a public figure. He was a melamed, a teacher of children, living plainly among other Jewish immigrants in Rochester’s Jewish center in the early decades of the 20th century. At one point, he was dismissed from a teaching post for refusing to soften his instruction. He later opened his own cheder, or schoolroom. There was no congregation to inherit his name, no institution to archive his papers. When he died, he was buried in an ordinary way at Britton Road Cemetery, one grave among many.
What followed was not immediate.
Remembered in return
The meaning attached to Burgeman’s resting place accumulated slowly. Stories began to circulate. People spoke of his kindness, his discipline, his integrity. Over time, visitors came. The grave became a place not of answers, but of belief. For generations, this turning toward the dead has taken this same form. It is not worship. It is proximity. A way of standing near those believed to have lived rightly, and asking that their merit might still matter.
In Jewish tradition, prayer at a grave is a reflection on those believed to have lived with righteousness, asking that their merit accompany the living in moments of need. Psalms are traditionally recited. Words are often spoken quietly.
I have done something similar too. Years ago, before I converted to Judaism and before I had the means to travel, I sent a written prayer through a Chabad service that delivers letters to the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York. Someone else carried it. I cannot say with absolute certainty what happened because of it. Only that the practice itself made space for hope that I was seen, and that a prayer was later answered in ways that shaped my life and deepened my understanding of Judaism.
Burgeman’s grave functions in a similar register, though without any institutional frame. People come not because his name is widely known, but because the story has endured. Over time, that story gathered details. The most persistent involves a dog said to have escorted Jewish children to Burgeman’s cheder so they would not be harassed along the way by other youths. The dog then stood watch until they were ready to return home. The versions differ. Some are reverent. Some are playful. Some verge on the miraculous. The story endures because it names something children needed: care, in a world that could be frightening.
In recent decades, Burgeman’s afterlife has taken on a digital form. His name surfaces in comment threads and genealogical forums, passed along by people who never met him and are not always sure how they are connected. Spellings are debated. Dates are corrected. A descendant appears. A former student’s grandchild adds a fragment. Someone asks whether this is the same man their grandmother spoke of. No single account settles the matter. Instead, memory gathers. What once traveled by word of mouth now moves through hyperlinks.
The internet allows fragments to remain visible. Burgeman’s story survives not because it was officially recorded, but because enough people cared to remember it. In this way, his legacy resembles the man himself: quiet, unadorned, sustained by actions rather than declaration.
This story does not offer certainty. It is about remembering a life and asking if we might still learn from it and if, perhaps, it can bring us closer to faith. Burgeman left no grand monument. He left descendants. A grave. A life of Jewish values that continues to teach.
Burgeman did not seek recognition in life. After death, he became something else: a teacher still teaching, not through words, but through the way people continue to act on his memory. That is the lesson. Not any miracle. Not any legend. The quiet insistence that a life lived with integrity does not end when the casket is placed into the earth.
Some graves are instructions.
This one still asks something of us.
The post Why a forgotten teacher’s grave became a Jewish pilgrimage site appeared first on The Forward.
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Turkey Sends Drilling Ship to Somalia in Major Push for Energy Independence
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a ceremony for the handover of new vehicles to the gendarmerie and police forces in Istanbul, Turkey, Nov. 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Murad Sezer
i24 News – Turkey has dispatched a drilling vessel to Somalia to begin offshore oil exploration, marking what officials describe as a historic step in Ankara’s drive to strengthen energy security and reduce reliance on imports.
Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar announced that the drilling ship Çagri Bey is set to sail from the port of Taşucu in southern Turkey, heading toward Somali territorial waters.
The vessel will pass through the Strait of Gibraltar and around the coast of southern Africa before reaching its destination, with drilling operations expected to begin in April or May.
Bayraktar described the mission as a “historic” milestone, saying it reflects Turkey’s long-term strategy to enhance national energy security and move closer to self-sufficiency.
The operation will be protected by the Turkish Naval Forces, which will deploy several naval units to secure both the vessel’s route and the drilling area in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. The security arrangements fall under existing cooperation agreements between Ankara and Somalia.
The move aligns with a broader vision promoted by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, aimed at reducing Turkey’s dependence on foreign energy supplies, boosting domestic production, and shielding the economy from external pressures.
Bayraktar said Turkey is also working to double its natural gas output in the Black Sea this year, while continuing offshore exploration along its northern coastline. In parallel, Ankara is preparing to bring its first nuclear reactor online at the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, which is expected to begin generating electricity soon and eventually supply about 10% of the country’s energy needs.
The current drilling effort is based on survey data collected last year and forms part of Ankara’s wider plan to expand its energy exploration activities both regionally and internationally.