The IDF and Shin Bet confirmed Thursday that Haytham Sheikh Khalil, commander of Hamas’s Shuja’iyya Battalion, was killed in an airstrike on a Hamas command center in Gaza City. Khalil played a central role in the October 7 attack on Nahal Oz and was responsible for directing assaults on Israeli forces, as well as overseeing Hamas’s explosives and tunnel operations. He assumed command of the battalion following the deaths of its previous leaders. The IDF said the targeted strike was carried out based on precise intelligence and surveillance, stressing its efforts to minimize civilian harm. Meanwhile, Israeli ground forces expanded operations across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, with a major focus on the Tel al-Sultan and Shaboura neighborhoods of Rafah, as well as the Morag Corridor.

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Israel would be the “leader” if the US and Israel strike Iran’s nuclear sites if talks between Washington and Tehran fail. Speaking at the White House, Trump responded to a question about whether he is considering using military means against Iran. “If it requires military, we’re going to have military,” he said. “Israel will obviously be very much involved in that — it’ll be the leader of that,” but then immediately clarifying: “Nobody leads us. We do what we want to do.” Trump also said that he has a deadline for talks, emphasizing that he won’t allow Tehran to drag out negotiations. Various media outlets reported that Trump is allowing two months for the talks. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as the Trump administration’s ambassador to Israel. Israel supporter John Fetterman was the only Democrat to join Republicans in voting for Huckabee, with the final vote tally 53 to 46. Huckabee, a religious Christian and a staunch supporter of Israel, insists on calling the “West Bank” by its popular biblical name of Yehudah and Shomron. A frequent visitor to Israel, he even expressed interest in the past in buying a vacation home in the Shomron.

An extraordinary moment took place on Thursday morning at the Bais Medrash of Caulfield in Sydney, Australia, as a Siyum Masechta was held — not just any Siyum, but one made by Reb Berysz Aurbach, who, at the remarkable age of 104, was mesayem Maseches Chagigah, allowing bechorim who participated to eat. Reb Berish, born Gimmel Elul 5680 (1920), hails from a Chassidishe family in Biala Podlaska, Poland — a town with deep roots in Gerrer Chassidus. He was raised in a home filled with warmth, Torah, and mesorah, together with his siblings — three older brothers, a sister, and a half-brother. He still remembers learning as a child in the local Talmud Torah — memories from a world that would soon be destroyed.

A growing number of Americans now view Israel in a negative light, according to a new Pew Research Center survey released Tuesday, with 53% expressing an unfavorable opinion of the Jewish state — rising from 42% in March 2022. The survey also found that confidence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains low, with just 32% of Americans trusting him to handle world affairs appropriately, while 52% say they have little or no confidence in his leadership. Partisan divides were evident in the results: 69% of Democrats hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53% in the 2022 survey. Among Republicans, the number of those viewing Israel negatively increased to 37%, compared to 27% three years ago. The shift has been especially pronounced among younger adults.

In an explosive revelation that could rewrite the timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic, a military report recently uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon indicates that seven American troops may have contracted COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in October 2019—months before China acknowledged the virus’s existence. The report, mandated by the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act and secretly withheld by the Biden administration for nearly two years, was uncovered and quietly made public in late March. It outlines that seven U.S. military service members fell ill with COVID-like symptoms after attending the World Military Games held in Wuhan in October 2019.

A senior Palestinian health official from Hamas’s Health Ministry admitted that Gaza’s war fatality counts have included individuals who died of natural causes—or were later found to be alive. The admission followed a detailed analysis highlighting major inconsistencies in the reported casualty figures. Speaking to Sky News, Zaher al-Wahidi, head of the statistics team at the Hamas-run Health Ministry, said, “We realized that a lot of people died a natural death.” He added that some individuals may have had heart attacks near explosions or suffered from conditions such as pneumonia or hypothermia, which he claims the ministry no longer attributes to the war.

Security officials confirmed in internal discussions that the IDF has destroyed only about a quarter of Hamas’s terror tunnels in the Gaza Strip, Channel 12 News reported on Wednesday morning. According to the report, defense officials also estimate that there is a significant number of smuggling tunnels that cross from Egypt into the Gaza Strip. The presence of these tunnels lies behind Israel’s refusal to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor. About a month and a half ago, Defense Minister Yisrael Katz said that Israel has no intention of withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor due to the threat of smuggling between Egypt and Gaza. “The Philadelphi  Corridor will remain a buffer zone just like in Lebanon and Syria,” Katz emphasized.

What was President Donald Trump’s motive when he requested that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu fly straight to Washington from Budapest, refusing a suggestion to delay the meeting until after Pesach? On the surface, the meeting was ostensibly about the 17% tariff the Trump administration imposed on Israel, with Netanyahu holding great hopes that he could negotiate a reduction. But Trump surprised Netanyahu, revealing to him the real reason for his urgent summons to Washington: not the tariff but the beginning of direct high-level negotiations between the US and Iran. Ynet reported that Trump wanted to personally inform Netanyahu about his intention to initiate direct talks with Tehran.

Nearly 200 family members of Americans slain in the October 7 Hamas massacre have filed a bombshell federal lawsuit against Bashar Masri — a celebrated Palestinian-American developer — accusing him of knowingly aiding and abetting the terrorist group behind the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Masri, long hailed in elite diplomatic circles as a “moderate” visionary and touted by 60 Minutes as a beacon of hope in the West Bank, is now facing explosive allegations that he helped build the very infrastructure Hamas used to wage war — including tunnels, rocket launch sites, and command centers hidden beneath his luxury hotels and industrial parks in Gaza. Filed in D.C.