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Sep 2, 2026, 1:35 PM

They didn’t wake me. My hands aren’t clean.

“They didn’t wake me.” And my hands cannot be washed clean There are phrases that set out to explain a catastrophe and end up revealing something rather deeper. “They didn’t wake me” is one of them. Benjamin Netanyahu now maintains that, in...

Sep 1, 2026, 12:36 PM

What Reservists Bring Back From War

Alongside a group of reserve soldiers, and on behalf of “SOS Israel: Support Our Soldiers,” I had the privilege of discussing with Prime Minister Netanyahu the challenges facing reserve soldiers coming back from reserve duty. We shared with the...

Michael J. Salamon

Sep 1, 2026, 12:34 PM

From Auschwitz to Service & Pride

Eighty years have passed since prisoner 71153 was pulled from a cattle car by a liberating army, the sealed wooden doors groaning open to a world he could hardly believe still existed. The train had been bound from Auschwitz...

Sep 1, 2026, 8:19 AM

A Tribute to an Israeli Hero

Photo Credits: Sabine Sterk(AI)

Israel is a country full of heroes. Some of their names are known around the world. Many others will never be known at all. There are the heroes who rescued hostages from captivity, the people who gathered intelligence about Iran’s nuclear...

Aug 31, 2026, 7:13 PM

The war of two Israels

Image: ChatGPT

Let’s get this straight: The army jailed a handful of male soldiers for refusing to sit in an armored personnel carrier with a female paramedic. The soldiers were part of a regular combat unit, not an ultraorthodox one, and...

Aug 29, 2026, 9:29 AM

The Ship that Nearly Divided a Nation

The Altalena burns off the Tel Aviv coast on June 22, 1948, as civilians watch from the promenade.
Photo: Hans Pinn / Government Press Office, State of Israel

It was June of 1948. The State of Israel was barely five weeks old. Arab armies were attacking from every direction and the Jewish people were fighting for their very survival. It was then, on a beach in Tel Aviv,...

Aug 28, 2026, 6:21 PM

Article 5 Has a Map. Turkey Does Not Get to Redraw It.

An Israel–Turkey clash would be extraordinarily costly to both. But the decisive variables are not platform counts: who is attacked, where, which legal basis is activated, and who is obliged - or chooses - to enter. Cyprus sits at...

Joseph P. Rhinewine

Aug 26, 2026, 4:55 AM

Israel Won the Battles and Lost the Gaza War

Israel did not lose the Gaza war on the battlefield. The IDF killed much of Hamas’s senior command, dismantled organized military formations, destroyed large parts of the tunnel network, and seized strategically important ground. It made another October 7-style invasion...

Aug 24, 2026, 5:07 PM

The Lessons of the Altalena for Israel in 2026

The Altalena burning off the coast of Tel Aviv in 1948. Photo ©️ GPO, 2026

News of the rediscovery of the Altalena was headline news across Israel this week. Seventy-eight years ago, as the Altalena burned on the beachfront of Tel Aviv, the Jewish people were poised on the brink of civil war. In today’s polarizing times,...

Aug 23, 2026, 2:33 PM

Shaving my son’s hair

When he was little, he cried in protest while I cut his hair. This time, he asked for another round with the electric razor – and the tears were mine

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