The Best Chapter

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Let our people go! Hamas tortures hostages in Gaza

It’s been 680 days since thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed Israel and killed 1,200 people amid acts of rape and brutality. It’s been 680 days since Hamas kidnapped 251 people into the Gaza Strip. Some are still there. Matan Angrest has lost function in his right hand from all the beatings. His face is disfigured. Alon Ohel, a talented musician, is going blind after brutal…

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Israel launches preemptive strike against Iran

At 3 a.m. this morning, June 13, 2025, my husband, Jonny, and I were catapulted out of our sleep by a jarring warning signal on our phones. Then sirens sounded in a long wail, alerting Israelis across the country – Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze, Circassians, Bedouins – to get ready for an Iranian missile attack. At about the same time, Israel launched a strike deep inside Iran that killed…

Israel launches preemptive strike against Iran

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Hamas kills children

All those aid trucks are going right to Hamas operatives. This is Ahmed who was killed by Hamas while trying to obtain food. There are countless stories like this. As Amjad Taha wrote on X, “Since October 7, 2023, Gaza has received more than 300,000 metric tons of humanitarian aid, delivered through over 22,000 trucks to a population of just 2.1 million people.” “If we turn #Gaza into a…

Hamas kills children

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Hezbollah terror leader killed: "justice for victims"

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Hezbollah terror group, who built a terror army larger than many countries has been killed. “It is justice for countless victims,” President Joe Biden said. The Washington Post called him a “moral compass.” Hardly. Nasrallah said it would be easier to kill Jews when they were in Israel. He said that Jews “are people with evil ideas.” He made Lebanon, once a…

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Israeli Track Stars Running for Oklahoma State and Defending their Country

Israeli track stars defending their Homeland

Stillwater, Oklahoma, a college town in the American Southwest, is a far cry from the central Israeli metropolis of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, says Adisu Guadie, an Israeli national running champion and holder of the under-20 and under-23 record in the 10,000-meter track runs. Nevertheless, Guadie, 21, from Tel Aviv-Jaffa, has settled in at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, where he’s getting a full…

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Caring for the Spiritually Wounded After Hamas' Deadly October 7 Massacre

Caring for the Spiritually Wounded

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Countering the Denial of October 7 Rapes and Massacres: The Israeli Witnessing Project

Witnessing the October 7 massacres in Israel.

Susan Sarandon denies the rapes of October 7 even happened. That’s the same as denying the Holocaust, and perhaps she does that, too, proving her anti-Semitic ignorance. In any event, there’s an Israeli group that began a few days after the October 7 genocide. That was when Hamas-led terrorists stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people, most of them…

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Despite Hezbollah Rockets, An Israeli Mushroom Forager Hunts for Fungi

Foraging for mushrooms despite rockets from Iranian-proxy terror group Hezbollah being shot into Israel

Well, we survived what might be only the first round of Iranian missiles shot into Israel on April 13 through April 14. Relief is an understatement. Meanwhile, last month, I had the pleasure of joining Nadim Faris, a mushroom forager from the Druze village of Hurfeish in the Galilee, on a walk in the woods despite the war for Times of Israel. The full article is here. Faris is known as the man…

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Israeli Arabs, Jews and Druze Play Chess Together During War

The news you might never hear about from Israel. This is not fake news. An Arab girl and a Jewish boy play chess in a tournament as a Druze girl looks on. Credit: Olga Volkov I love posting hopeful news from Israel. My article appeared in Times of Israel here. Amid the war against Hamas, 132 chess players ranging in age from 9 to 78 competed in the Israeli Open Championship from January 21…

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The Prayers of Two Mothers

Mothers grieving for their soldier sons.

I wrote this article for The New York Times in 2007 and I feel compelled to repost it. Hamas’ brutal massacre of men, women and children on October 7 left 1,200 dead and some 235 people dragged across the border where many of them are still being held hostage. The death toll for soldiers killed fighting ISIS-like terrorists is 225. So I was thinking of all the grieving mothers . . . I wrote the…

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Inching along, as she awaits his return, a sister of a Hamas hostage stays on course

“This is a fight between good and evil, between light and darkness, between truth and lies.” Adi Kikozashvili, the sister of Hamas hostage Shlomi Ziv by his photograph in Nahariya, Israel Here’s my article that appeared in Times of Israel here. Adi Kikozashvili says the only reason she can go on with her life is because it is what her older brother would want her to do. That brother,…

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Uprooted and Unsettled in Northern Israel

More than 120,000 people in Northern Israel are refugees, evacuated because of continual attacks by Iran-led Hezbollah terrorist fores in Lebanon.

Here’s my article from The Jerusalem Post about the more than 120,000 refugees within Israel who have been evacuated from the northern border with Lebanon because of Iran-led Hezbollah attacks. When Karin Nathans Gefen was evacuated with her children from Kibbutz Matzuva on October 18 due to possible attacks by Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon, she said that the “worst thing of all” was the…

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Jewish and Muslim Roommates (And Friends) Share a Group Home in Northern Israel

During the holiday season, it's good to find a spark of light.

Here’s a tiny shimmer of hope in a very dark time during the Israel-Hamas War. At this group home for young people with special needs, a Muslim young woman and a Jewish young man share a special friendship. From my article in Times of Israel, which you can read here. By the way, Times of Israel, published in Israel, has up-to-date news you won’t see in most other media sites. When the…

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Writing My Life Story During the Hamas War Against Israel

Writing my life story during the war

The war between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis and Iran and Syria continues. Meanwhile, I wrote this piece for the Jewish Book Council’s Paper Brigade Daily. You can read it here where there are other writers on the war or continue here. My library books are long overdue.  I took them out from a kib­butz library near where I live in the West­ern Galilee, a few weeks before the…

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Fighting for Israel on New York Streets, on Social Media, and On the Battlefield

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This article originally appeared in The Times of Israel here. Snir Dayan has fought for Israel on the streets of New York City and on social media. And now, the 29-year-old has left behind his successful New York business to return to Israel to fight once again in the Israeli Army. Dayan was watching the news at midnight on October 7 and saw that there had been a Hamas invasion from Gaza. At…

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We're on the Frontline in Northern Israel, Waiting for Hezbollah

In the early morning on my bike ride delivering coffee to Israeli soldiers, I ran into Daniel Shkolnik. He’ll be 80 in a few months. My husband and I met him in the early 2000s when he worked at Café Carter in the nearby town of Nahariya. He used to grind our coffee. In August, 2006, Hezbollah—Iran’s proxy terror army—fired Katyusha rockets into Nahariya. The rockets hit the store, with Danny…

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Celebrating Life in the Midst of Hamas' War Against Israel

Why we will never let Islamic terrorists destroy the spirit of the Jewish people.

Here’s an update on Hamas’ war against Israel and a spark of light in the middle of all this darkness! If you want to read the article on the Times of Israel website, look here. The Times of Israel is one of the best sources of news. Every morning at dawn, I ride my bicycle to deliver coffee and tea to the soldiers stationed along the beach near where I live in Israel’s Western Galilee. I’ve…

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