Israel Today

‘These projects gave Israel military superiority’
The Defense Ministry awards the 2026 Israel Defense Prize to five groundbreaking technological initiatives that provided Israel an edge over its enemies.

Elite intelligence gathering, rapid technological innovation, and live battlefield application will be recognized by the Defense Ministry this month during the prestigious Israel Defense Prize for the year 2026.

The prize committee recommended five primary defense initiatives that played a critical role in maintaining Israel’s qualitative and technological edge over its enemies during a historic, high-intensity, multi-front war that began on Oct. 7, 2023.

The awards ceremony, which will take place on June 10 at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, have all bridged operational capabilities to intelligence arrays, Brig. Gen. (res.) Hanan Gefen, a former commander of the signals intelligence unit known as Unit 8200 within the IDF Intelligence Directorate, told JNS.

“A prominent and common point to all the winning projects is the ability to integrate between operational arrays and intelligence arrays and advanced development arrays to create offensive and defensive opportunities, overt and covert,” Gefen stated. “They, with other projects, granted the State of Israel superiority in the critical stages of the war.”

According to the Defense Ministry, the first prize, going to the Israeli Air Force, the Defense Ministry and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, recognizes a unique weapons system that... [link in comments]
[photo - The Ofek 19 military reconnaissance satellite lifts off from central Israel aboard a Shavit rocket, marking a milestone in the Jewish state’s defense and space capabilities, Sept. 2, 2025. Credit: DDR&D Multimedia/Israel Ministry of Defense.]

Do Others Know Better Who We Are?
“Where do I come from? Who am I?” – On old myths, new theories, and the astonishing certainty of some that they know my origins better than I do myself.
Some time ago, an email was forwarded to me. A reader wrote that in Christian circles in Germany – and apparently on various Telegram channels as well – people were seriously debating whether today’s Jewish people are even identical to the Israel of the Bible. Whether the promises still apply. Whether the covenant still has an address. Or whether we might perhaps be a historical case of mistaken identity.

This debate is accompanied by the by-now familiar ingredients: Epstein Files, Rothschild, Rockefeller, allegedly corrupt elites who supposedly “built” the State of Israel in 1948. And of course it resurfaces again – the Khazar thesis. Today’s Jews are supposedly not descendants of the Israelites at all, but instead descended from a Turkic people from the Middle Ages.

You read that – and briefly wonder whether to laugh or shake your head.

I decided to do both.

My Path to Israel...
[photo - Back to the roots. Soldiers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Photo: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90]

Thoughts for Shabbat:
The parashah Shelach Lecha describes one of the most dramatic moments in the history of Israel.
Sometimes a person fails not because of the magnitude of the challenge before them, but because of the image they carry of themselves. That is exactly what the parashah “Shelach Lecha” is about. The people of Israel are already standing at the threshold of the Promised Land. The promise lies directly before them. Yet precisely at this decisive moment, they defeat themselves from within. It is not the giants in the land that become the greatest problem, but the “grasshopper consciousness” in their own hearts.

The parashah Shelach Lecha describes one of the most dramatic moments in the history of Israel. Years of the exodus from Egypt, of miracles, of guidance, of hope and of promise lead the people to the threshold of the Promised Land. Moses sends out twelve spies to scout the land, its cities, its inhabitants, and its fruits. They return with an enormous cluster of grapes, as testimony to the richness of the land. The land is good, fertile, and full of promise. Yet alongside this description comes a sentence that changes everything: “And there we saw the giants … and we were in our own eyes like grasshoppers, and so we were also in their eyes.”

Perhaps this is one of the most revealing verses in the Bible. For here the real problem of the spies — and probably of the entire people — is exposed... [link in comments]

Israel, Lebanon agree on plan to drive Hezbollah north of the Litani River
“We brought the people of Lebanon to the understanding that we’re not the enemy. Hezbollah is,” said Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s U.S. ambassador.

After a marathon negotiating session of over eight and a half hours at the U.S. State Department, Israel and Lebanon announced an agreement to “swiftly advance the creation” of so-called pilot zones to gradually drive out the Hezbollah terror organization from south of the strategic Litani River in southern Lebanon, and immediately replace control of those positions with Lebanese Armed Forces troops.

The agreement, brokered by the United States, came at the conclusion of the second day of the fourth round of the historic direct talks between Jerusalem and Beirut in Washington... [to read more click on link in comments section]

[photo: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio joins working-level peace talks with Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter and Lebanese Ambassador to the United States Nada Hamadeh Moawad at the Department of State in Washington, D.C., April 14, 2026. Credit: Freddie Everett/U.S. State Department.]

Netanyahu: Ties with Trump airtight, 100% agreement on core issues
The Israeli prime minister said that he and the U.S. president agree that Iran must neither possess nuclear weapons nor ever be in a position to threaten the Jewish state, the Middle East, America and the world.

In an interview with CNBC‘s Sara Eisen on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reassured that the U.S.-Israel relationship has never been better, and that he and U.S. President Donald Trump share the same aims vis à vis Iran.

The interview, which took place at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, came the same day that Trump confirmed reports to The New York Post that he had called Netanyahu “f***ing crazy” during a Monday phone call over Israel’s continuing operations in Lebanon against the terror group Hezbollah.

Photo: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump at the Knesset, Oct. 13, 2025. Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

“Tacheles” with Aviel – A Jewish State in the Mirror of the Pride Debate:
Few topics expose Israel’s identity crisis as mercilessly as the Pride Parade in Tel Aviv or the LGBT Festival at the Dead Sea.

Israel sees itself as a Jewish state whose existence is grounded in the Bible, history, and the promises of God. At the same time, Israel sees itself as a modern, liberal democracy that guarantees freedom and equal rights for all citizens. For some, Pride events are an expression of openness, human dignity, and democratic values. For others, they stand in direct contradiction to the biblical standards upon which the Jewish people and their return to the land are based. The real question, therefore, is not what one thinks of a parade or a festival. The real question is: What is Israel? A state that orients itself by the Bible, or a democracy that places individual freedom above all else? The answer is as simple as it is complicated: Israel is both. And therein lies the tension. Between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, between tradition and modernity, between God’s commandments and democratic reality, Israel has been wrestling with its identity since its founding.

Photo: Participants of the Pride Parade in Mitzpe Ramon in southern Israel on July 4, 2025. The event is representative of the societal debate about tradition, religion, and individual freedom in the Jewish state. Photo: Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90

When Leaders Stop Choosing –
From Pharaoh to TehranThere are moments in history when power no longer acts rationally. Moments when leaders no longer weigh their options, but simply press forward, even when the path leads directly into the abyss...

Photo: Propaganda poster in Tehran: Pictured are the now-DECEASED terror leaders (l. to r.) Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Photo: EPA/ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH

There often is no separation between civilian and terrorist in the Gaza Strip. A man who works as a doctor or journalist by day could be launching rockets or commanding terrorist gunmen by night.

That is the critical factor of this war often missed or deliberately concealed by the mainstream media.

This week, the IDF eliminated a senior Hamas commander in central Gaza. But you probably didn’t hear about that, because Jamal Abu Aoun also worked as a local doctor, and that’s the role the media will choose to focus on.

Full report at the link in the first comment.

Beaufort Castle is not just a medieval ruin in southern Lebanon.

It is high ground.

From that ridge, overlooking the Litani River and the approaches toward northern Israel, Hezbollah had one more strategic perch in its war against the Galilee.

Now the IDF has taken it.

The capture of Beaufort matters because geography still matters. Observation matters. Control of approach routes matters. And in this war, removing Hezbollah from commanding terrain is not symbolism — it is security.

Full article at the link in the first comment.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Much of today’s pro-Palestinian activism is not built on facts. It is built on five very durable hoaxes — repeated by legacy media, amplified by social media, and absorbed by people who often believe they are standing on the side of justice.

Humanitarian concern is real. Civilian suffering is real. But concern becomes manipulation when Hamas’s war strategy, Palestinian rejectionism, stolen aid, antisemitic indoctrination, and the repeated refusal of statehood are quietly edited out of the story.

Full analysis at the link in the first comment.