Author: David Leibermann

NITZAN B, Israel ((JEWISH REVIEW)) — Since Oct. 7, Benjamin Netanyahu has largely avoided face-to-face meetings with ordinary Israeli citizens. One exception occurred in mid-November, when the Israeli prime minister met with a group of Israelis evacuated from the Gaza border, including former Gaza Strip settlers who presented him with a request: to return to […]

((JEWISH REVIEW)) — A woman from a secular kibbutz on the Gaza border shouts the Shema as she celebrates the release of Israeli hostages. Hundreds of sets of ritual fringes — hanging off combat-green garments — are distributed to soldiers on the front. The mother of a rescued hostage attributes her return to a challah […]

((JEWISH REVIEW)) — Israel and Hamas appear set to restart indirect negotiations over releasing Israeli hostages, and a pause in the fighting in Gaza, days after Israeli troops mistakenly killed three hostages who were trying to escape the terror group. Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is in Israel with an agenda that includes pressing […]

((JEWISH REVIEW)) — The projectile landed when the kids were playing in the courtyard. Well, most of the kids. The 9-year-old was watching from the porch of the ramshackle Jerusalem home, tentative but curious. Suddenly he saw them stop playing. His older brother fell first. A second later his younger sister dropped. And then his […]

((JEWISH REVIEW)) — Rabbi Yael Ridberg recently returned from a four-day mission to Israel with the Jewish Federation of San Diego, which has a 25-year sister-city relationship with Sha’ar HaNegev, a municipality near the Gaza border. Their group witnessed firsthand the destruction and devastation left after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel’s south; among […]

((JEWISH REVIEW)) — Several months ago, before she met with the pope and Elon Musk, before her adopted home was thrust into war by a brutal attack, before she became one of the most prominent faces of a hostage crisis, Rachel Goldberg was desperately looking for luggage. It was March and hundreds of people had […]

((JEWISH REVIEW)) – The writer Masha Gessen will still receive a prestigious award named for Hannah Arendt, after the German foundation that administers the prize had initially said it would pull its support due to Gessen’s recent writing on Gaza. Gessen, a Jewish writer for The New Yorker magazine, published an essay last week comparing […]

((JEWISH REVIEW)) – Israeli soldiers accidentally killed three hostages during combat in Gaza, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman said. The soldiers mistakenly identified the hostages as a threat during fighting on Friday in Shejaiya, a neighborhood that is a Hamas stronghold in the Gaza City area, said Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesman. After combat in […]

((JEWISH REVIEW)) — Police in three European countries arrested seven men they said were planning terror attacks against Jews and Jewish sites on Thursday. Some of the men arrested were longtime Hamas members who began building a weapons cache in Berlin after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to German officials. Three of the […]

((JEWISH REVIEW)) — Israeli soldiers will be disciplimed after broadcasting Jewish prayers from a West Bank mosque during a military operation there, which the Israel Defense Forces said ran counter to the army’s rules and values. Multiple videos began circulating on Thursday showing the incident, which took place as the IDF conducted a three-day operation […]