Two Israelis killed in terror attack at Allenby Crossing with Jordan
(JNS) — A Jordanian terrorist killed two Israelis in a combined shooting and stabbing attack at Israel’s Allenby Crossing with the Hashemite Kingdom on Thursday afternoon, medical officials said.
The Magen David Adom medical emergency response group confirmed that its paramedics treated two men, one in his 60s and one in his 20s, for gunshot wounds. They were subsequently pronounced dead.
“Following the initial report regarding a shooting adjacent to the Allenby Crossing, a terrorist arrived in a truck transporting humanitarian aid from Jordan and opened fire,” the Israel Defense Forces stated.
“The security forces neutralized the terrorist at the scene,” it added.
The military said soldiers were conducting searches and encircled the city of Jericho in the Jordan Valley as part of its response to the attack.
An Israeli security source told Channel 12 that the terrorist was a civilian hired by the Jordanian Armed Forces to transport aid to Gaza. He was said to have attacked while waiting for his truck to be inspected.
90% of Gaza Envelope evacuees have returned home post-Oct. 7
(JNS) — Ninety percent of residents evacuated from the Gaza Envelope after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre have returned home, according to new figures released by the Tekuma Authority.
The government body, established after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack to oversee the rehabilitation of the border area, said that at least some residents have returned to 42 of the 47 evacuated communities.
In addition, more than 2,500 new residents have moved to the Western Negev since Oct. 7, most of them to the city of Sderot, the Tekuma Authority said.
Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, one of the closest communities to Gaza, has seen 88% of its residents return along with six new families, while Kibbutz Re’im reported a 95% return rate and 10 new families. Similar trends were reported in Kibbutz Sufa, Nir Yitzhak, Nirim, Ein HaShlosha and Netiv HaAsara.
However, at Kibbutz Nahal Oz — where 15 residents were murdered and eight kidnapped to Gaza on Oct. 7 — only about a third of families have returned, with many citing the trauma of the attack, the ongoing war and concerns for their children’s mental health.
Other communities devastated on Oct. 7 — including Nir Oz, Kfar Aza, Be’eri, Kissufim and Holit — also remain largely displaced, with some residents expected to remain in evacuation centers until 2027.
Prayer on Temple Mount honors slain US activist Charlie Kirk
(JNS) — Dozens of Christians and Jews gathered on Wednesday on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for a special prayer event honoring American conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated on Sept. 10.
The event, held at Judaism’s holiest site, was organized by Beyadenu — Returning to the Temple Mount, together with partner groups including Root Source, the Jerusalem Peace Fund, Israel Lighthouse and Shofar in Zion.
“Charlie understood that Israel is on the right side. He believed there is good and evil. And in Israel’s war against Hamas, Israel is good, and Hamas is evil,” former Knesset member Rabbi Yehudah Glick, who led the prayer session, told JNS on Thursday.
In 2014, Glick was shot four times by a Palestinian terrorist outside a conference focusing on the Temple Mount in the Israeli capital. He was hospitalized for weeks and endured nine surgeries to recover from the attack.
“I’m an assassination attempt survivor, and for me it was very powerful to realize how lucky I was. Charlie took one bullet to the neck from 200 yards and did not survive. On an existential level, I am very grateful to Hashem,” said Glick, who is chairman of the Shalom Jerusalem Foundation and president of Amitsim — The Israel Organization for Young Widows and Orphans.
Drama about Palestinian boy is Israel’s Oscar entry amid Hollywood boycott of Israeli film institutions
(JTA) — Israel’s culture minister says he will eliminate funding to the country’s version of the Oscars after a drama about a Palestinian boy won the top prize on Tuesday.
“The Sea” won the Ophir Award for best film during a ceremony in Tel Aviv where speakers condemned the ongoing war in Gaza and lamented the growing Hollywood boycott against Israeli film institutions. The Arabic-language drama becomes Israel’s automatic best international feature entry to next year’s Academy Awards.
It was produced with support from the Israel Film Fund, a public fund that is required to support artists without regard to their politics. A spokesperson for Film Workers for Palestine, the group behind the new boycott, told Variety this week that the Israel Film Fund meets its threshold for complicity.
The group’s pledge, which has drawn more than 4,500 signatures, names the Jerusalem Film Festival, where “The Sea” premiered in August, as among the institutions to boycott. It does not specifically name the Ophir Awards, but they have long benefitted from government funding.
Now, Culture Minister Miki Zohar says he will cut the Ophirs off starting next year, saying in a statement that the winning film “defames our heroic soldiers while they fight to protect us” and calling the awards ceremony “shameful.”
Two-thirds of a 15th-century Portuguese High Holiday prayer book were lost to history. Until now.
(JTA) — A rare 15th-century Portuguese Jewish manuscript, long incomplete after it was split into three parts, is whole again after the National Library of Israel reunited its final missing pieces.
The Lisbon Mahzor, which contains Sephardic prayers for the High Holidays, Three Festivals and more, was produced by the Lisbon school of Portuguese Jewry in the final years before the region’s Jews were forced to either convert or be expelled in 1496.
“It appears that even in their most difficult moments the Portuguese Jewish community did not give up its books — they took these cultural treasures along to their next destination,” Chaim Neria, the curator of the National Library of Israel’s Haim and Hanna Solomon Judaica Collection, said in a statement.
The small-format manuscript on parchment features artistic decorations throughout, including lace and geometric and floral motifs typical of Portuguese manuscript illumination.
At an unknown point in time, the mahzor was split into three parts, with the first, containing Sabbath prayers, being delivered to the National Library of Israel in 1957.
The final two parts had been lost to history until they recently came up for auction and were withdrawn and purchased on behalf of the library due to their historical significance.
“That this treasure has ‘come home’ just at the time of Rosh Hashanah is especially meaningful.
