The Knesset Subcommittee on Foreign Policy and Public Diplomacy, led by Yesh Atid MK Moshe Tur-Paz, held a session on Wednesday to evaluate global perceptions of Israel following Operation Rising Lion, the military campaign against Iran.
Prior to the session, the committee reached out to the Harris-Harvard polling institute for data intended to gauge the effectiveness of Israel’s international messaging efforts. According to the committee, the purpose was “to understand the state of Israel’s public diplomacy, the challenges it faces, its successes in crafting effective campaigns, and how well it understands key target audiences in the US.”

The first astronauts in more than 40 years from India, Poland and Hungary arrived at the International Space Station on Thursday, ferried there by SpaceX on a private flight. The crew of four will spend two weeks at the orbiting lab, performing dozens of experiments. They launched Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. America’s most experienced astronaut, Peggy Whitson, is the commander of the visiting crew. She works for Axiom Space, the Houston company that arranged the chartered flight. Besides Whitson, the crew includes India’s Shubhanshu Shukla, a pilot in the Indian Air Force; Hungary’s Tibor Kapu, a mechanical engineer; and Poland’s Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, a radiation expert and one of the European Space Agency’s project astronauts on temporary flight duty.

New details are emerging about the extent of American involvement in Operation Rising Lion, Israel’s military campaign to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program and cripple its military might. It has now been revealed that U.S. Air Force refueling planes assisted the Israeli Air Force throughout the campaign, conducting mid-air refueling for Israeli fighter jets on their long-range missions to strike targets inside Iran. The American support helped ease the burden on Israel’s aging and limited fleet of aerial tankers as Israeli warplanes executed hundreds of sorties deep into enemy territory.

Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz said in a televised interview Wednesday night that Israel had been prepared to assassinate Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but never had a viable opportunity. “If he had been in our sights, we would have taken him out,” Katz told Channel 13. “We wanted to eliminate Khamenei, but there was no operational opportunity.” The comments mark the first public confirmation that the Israeli war cabinet seriously considered targeting Iran’s highest-ranking figure — a move that would have shattered diplomatic norms, likely triggered a regional war, and tested the outer limits of U.S.-Israeli coordination.

* Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell now heads into his next challenge: a potential threat that President Donald Trump could undermine his authority by soon naming his pick to head the central bank. * In the wake of the intense criticism, Wall Street has been buzzing over the potential for a “shadow chair,” or someone Trump could install as a central bank gadfly until Powell’s term expires. * A report indicated that Trump is considering naming the successor sooner than expected in an attempt to influence interest rate policy.

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Preliminary conversations are underway between the Prime Minister’s Office and the White House aimed at arranging a meeting between Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, according to two sources who spoke with The Jerusalem Post.
The sources clarified that while initial contacts have been made, a formal meeting has not yet been scheduled.
“There is no doubt that both sides have a shared interest in holding a ‘victory party’ after the war with Iran,” a senior Israeli official told Walla.