Recently found some family photos from the mid to late 1940s. Thought I would share a few here.

I am European and nonJewish. I am a staunch defender of Israel, though many in my family support the Palestinian cause. During heated debates, I have no trouble dealing with most of the opposing side's flawed arguments—such as claims of a "settler-colonial state," apartheid, the Gaza prison and such. I know the history well enough not to be thrown off balance. Incidentally, even Israel's most ardent opponents realize that Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran represent the worst aspects of radical Islam. However, now that it is harder for anti-Israel activists to constantly display a daily stream of emotionally manipulative war imagery from Gaza, I notice the focus shifting. It is now centering on the settlers in the West Bank. Instead of images from Gaza, there is now daily reporting on settler activities. And here, I have no counter-argument. When people claim this is clear evidence of Israel's imperialist motives and the Will to drive out the Palestinians, I have absolutely no argument to the contrary. In an ideal scenario, I would actually like to see Judea and Samaria become part of Israel, but in the current context, I cannot defend that position. Can anyone provide me with some arguments? This is in good faith, I am a friend of Israel.

During a wedding ceremony in Israel, Kurdish music is being played, and all the attendees are dancing to it.

Israeli media outlets say that the Jews have still preserved their heritage, and thanks to the Kurds there, this type of music is very popular at weddings.

The IDF Spokesperson announced the "completion of clearing Hezbollah's underground infrastructure in the Ali Taher ridge," and the military is now "working to neutralize them." According to the IDF, Division 36 forces operated to clear two underground routes in the Ali Taher ridge, "achieved operational control over the ridge area above and below ground and cleared the area of terrorists, with some eliminated and some fleeing." It was stated that "the operation to neutralize the underground infrastructure cleared of terrorists continues. After the operation is completed, the IDF will redeploy defensively according to the situation assessment." Earlier, Reuters reported that Iran warned the U.S. it would "respond forcefully" to an Israeli attack on the ridge, where Iranian military personnel were besieged alongside Hezbollah terrorists.

Avi Mayer’s speech at Oxford Union:

It falls to me to bring our case, and this debate, to a close.

My colleagues have ably set out the long history of Zionist and then Israeli efforts to achieve peace with the Palestinians: the compromises proposed, the territorial concessions offered, and the repeated willingness of Israeli leaders and the Israeli public to take extraordinary risks in pursuit of that goal — risks all too often paid for in Israeli blood.

Our opponents, for their part, have offered a very different story. We have heard painful accounts of dispossession — and they are indeed painful, Dr. Karmi. We have heard selective readings of history and arguments that deny any genuine Jewish claim to the land that both peoples call home. We have heard contortions of logic and inversions of truth that seek to explain away every Israeli overture, every negotiation, every concession, as something other than it appeared to be.

And that brings us to the real question before this House tonight.

Because we are not being asked whether Israeli governments have fallen short in their efforts to bring about peace. Some have, while others — including those described earlier — have offered dramatic and far-reaching concessions to bring peace about.

We are not being asked whether Israeli and Palestinian leaders have, at times, missed opportunities that might have brought peace closer. They have.

We are not even being asked whether Palestinians — and Israelis — have suffered due to the absence of peace. They have.

No, the motion before this House tonight is far more extreme. It posits that Israel never wanted peace with Palestine.

Never.

Never?

Not Rabin?

Not Peres?

Not Barak?

Not Olmert?

Not the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who filled public squares in support of peace?

Not the millions who voted for leaders promising territorial compromise?

Not the Israeli parents of every generation who, knowing all too well the cost of war, hoped and prayed and dreamed that their children would be the first to finally know peace?

Never?

Ladies and gentlemen, our opponents have spent this evening asking you to believe something striking: that when Israelis spoke of and prayed for peace, they didn’t mean it. That when Zionist and Israeli leaders offered concessions for peace, they didn’t mean it. That when millions of Israelis voted for peace, they didn’t mean it, either.

This is not an argument about Israeli policy. It is an argument about Israeli motives, about the Israeli soul.

And the difficulty for our opponents is that they have chosen the wrong people.

Because there is no value more essential to the Jewish national soul than peace.

The Jewish tradition is suffused with the quest for peace. It courses through our religious texts, animates our prayers, and inspires our vision of a more perfect world.

It was the prophet Isaiah who envisioned a future in which peace reigned among nations, uttering those immortal words:

“And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

Every single day, for two millennia, Jews have ended their daily prayers with supplications for peace. The Talmud goes so far as to say that shalom, peace, is one of God’s names, elevating it from an earthly aspiration to the realm of the divine.

It is no surprise, then, that when the earliest Zionist thinkers contemplated the Jewish state they sought to create, they envisioned it at peace.

Socialists and liberals, revisionists and traditionalists, they differed profoundly in their visions of the state to be. Yet across those divisions ran a remarkably consistent belief: that the Jewish national home should one day live at peace with its neighbors.

That aspiration found perhaps its clearest expression in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, issued as five Arab armies advanced upon the nascent state.

Even in that moment of existential peril, Israel’s founders proclaimed:

“We extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land.”

And indeed, for generations of Israelis, that aspiration has been not merely a line in a founding document. It has been a sought-after reality, a national ideal, and a deeply personal hope.

I am a relic of the 1980s.

The first word I learned on my first day of primary school in Jerusalem was shalom, peace — an experience shared by all Israelis, including those in this room, on both sides of this debate.

I remember watching, wide-eyed, as Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn, certain that a new era of peace was upon us.

I remember standing in a massive crowd with my father and younger sister as we were swept toward the gates of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to pay our respects to Rabin, felled by an assassin’s bullets in his pursuit of peace.

I remember the wave of Hamas suicide bombings that claimed the lives of hundreds of Israelis, including two young girls from my neighborhood — one year my junior — killed in a Jerusalem pizzeria.

And I remember how, even in the midst of that surge of murderous terror, even in the wake of a prime minister’s assassination, Israelis pivoted not to the right but to the left, electing a leader who had explicitly campaigned on a platform of territorial concessions for peace and granting Ehud Barak one of the largest margins of victory in Israeli history.

But Israel never wanted peace?

Never?

Really?

Ladies and gentlemen, that claim crumbles under the weight of documented history.

One can argue that peace has proven elusive.

One can argue that opportunities have been missed.

One can argue that terrible mistakes have been made.

One can even argue that, today, after October 7, the appetite for territorial concessions in the interest of peace is vastly diminished.

But to argue that Israelis never wanted peace is not a serious reading of history.

It is a denial of history.

Indeed, it requires us to believe that millions of people, across multiple generations, did not truly mean what they said — to one another, to their neighbors, and even to God — about one of their most heartfelt aspirations.

For if every expression of peace was merely a ruse, every offer a deception, every aspiration a lie, then we are left with a familiar accusation — that what Jews said was never what Jews meant.

But beneath much of what we have heard here tonight lies an even deeper, and darker, argument.

It is an argument that has animated not only some of the views expressed in this chamber, but too often the positions of Palestinian leaders throughout this conflict.

It is not really about peace negotiations.

It is not really about diplomatic proposals.

It is not really about Camp David or Oslo or Annapolis.

It is about legitimacy.

Because if one denies that the Jewish people have any genuine claim to this land, if one believes that Israel should never have come into being and should cease to exist today, then no Zionist or Israeli offer, no matter how sincere or expansive, can ever be enough.

Peace itself becomes impossible, because one side’s very existence is regarded as an affront, an injustice, a blight to be erased.

But that is not the motion before this House.

You are being asked whether Israel has ever truly wanted peace with Palestine.

And if millions of Israelis marched for peace, voted for peace, and were willing to take far-reaching and deeply painful risks for peace, then the answer to that question is self-evidently yes.

Ladies and gentlemen, the tragedy of this conflict is not that peace has never been sought.

The tragedy is that peace has been sought, and yet proven so painfully difficult to attain.

The tragedy is that two peoples with deep and abiding ties to the same land have so often found themselves unable to reconcile their competing aspirations.

That is a tragedy, and it is one that we should all hope and pray comes swiftly to an end, for the sake of all who live in that cherished land.

But it is not evidence that peace was never desired.

And it is certainly not evidence that an entire people spent generations engaged in an elaborate collective deception about one of their most deeply-held hopes — one that goes to the very depths of their national soul.

For all its mistakes, for all its failures, for all the opportunities lost along the way, Israel has wanted peace.

Jewish tradition says so.

History says so.

The lived experience of generations of Israelis says so.

And I hope this House will say so as well.

I urge you to reject the motion.

Thank you very much.

I can't find it anywhere, except for this דני שלוק nonsense.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/iaea-says-findings-at-syrian-site-hit-by-israel-consistent-with-a-nuclear-reactor/?utm_campaign=most_popular&utm_source=website&utm_medium=article_end&utm_content=4

And of course, the only reason to not report a nuclear reactor to the IAEA is making nukes.

Israel’s social contract does not ask Haredim to abandon their faith, dress, community or Torah study. It asks the state to respect Haredi distinctiveness—and asks Haredi society to share responsibility for the country as a whole, not only for itself.

by Israel Democracy Institute's Eliyahu Berkovits
https://www.jns.org/opinion/eliyahu-berkovits/yes-they-will-multiply

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited an Israel Defense Forces outpost near the Yellow Line demarcation boundary in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, according to the Prime Minister’s Office. He said Israel would maintain control of the area as it works to complete the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza.

“We control the territory. We are not withdrawing. We are staying on this line,” Netanyahu said during the visit, alongside IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and senior Southern Command officers.

https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/in-gaza-netanyahu-says-idf-will-retain-yellow-line-positions

I would love to support Chaiflicks with a subscription, but it seems to be unavailable outside of North America and the UK. I've tried accessing it with a VPN (NordVPN in case it matters), but still no luck. Does anyone have a way of accessing Chaiflicks?

I'm so tired of the people who push the one state solution and completely ignore how deep antisemitism runs in Palestinian society (Arab society in general), Attacks on innocent Jews happened way before Israel was even a thing, look at the Farhud or how Jews were pushed out of Arab countries, As an Ex-Muslim living in this world, I see how widespread this hatred still is.

Even the most left wing Israeli governments would never agree to a one state solution, There are seven million Jews in Israel who refuse to be ruled by an Islamist state, no matter what a few delusional people online think, look at what happened to David Ben Avraham, a Palestinian who converted to Judaism and was tortured by the PA just for his Jewish identity, most Palestinians view all Jews as colonizers, not just settlers in the WB.

A Palestinian state wouldn't suddenly become a democracy, when Israel pulled out of Gaza, it was turned into a launching pad for terror, Anti-Zionists want to destroy the one place where diaspora Jews can go, especially with global antisemitism exploding after Oct 7.

I hate how they think Israelis can just give up their homeland just because their favorite terrorists said so, the same terrorists who promised to kill all Jews in the world, the same people who celebrated the Oct 7 attack cannot coexist with people they want to kill

Hey guys,

So I’m moving back to Tel Aviv permanently after being away for about 15 years 😅

I’ve got around 2 years of experience as a Java backend developer (Java/Spring Boot) and I’m starting to look for a job.

Curious to hear from people in the industry — how bad/good is the market right now for someone with around 2 years of experience?

Also, how important is Hebrew really? I used to speak and read Hebrew, but after being away for so long I’ve forgotten quite a lot. 😅

Do most tech companies expect Hebrew, or is English usually enough?

And is Java/backend still a decent area to look for junior-ish positions, or should I be looking at other things too?

Would love to hear some honest experiences from people currently working in tech in Tel Aviv.

Also, if you have any tips about moving back in general, I’d love to hear them. Whether it’s finding an apartment, which areas are good to live in, dealing with bureaucracy, or anything else you wish you'd known before moving back. 😄

Thanks 🙏