*OUTRAGE ON DELTA FLIGHT AFTER JEWISH FAMILY IS KICKED OFF-* A group of Hasidic men were forced to deplane a Delta flight from Miami International Airport to LaGuardia, Wednesday night. Initial reports say that the incident unfolded after an elderly Chassidish man took off his mask, allegedly for a brief moment to eat something. Video shows the apparent son, saying that his father has heart issues, and that he has trouble breathing, “So he took off his mask for a minute,” the video shows. Moments before departure from Miami, the flight crew instructed all passengers to depart from the aircraft.

A yeshivah student in Yitzhar fended off an Arab terrorist armed with a knife who attempted to stab him in the Shomron on Wednesday morning. Binyamin Cohen was waiting at a hitchhiking post at the Yitzhar junction near the town of Yitzhar when the terrorist approached him wielding a knife. Cohen successfully fought him off by kicking and punching him [while holding his kippah in one hand], and then escaped around a car that had approached the area. The terrorist fled the scene toward a nearby Arab village. IDF forces launched a manhunt for the terrorist, closing off all the entrances to Palestinian villages in the area. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

The Jerusalem court overseeing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial has delayed the opening of the dramatic evidentiary stage until after March 23 elections. The three-judge panel issued a statement late Monday saying the proceedings, which have been repeatedly delayed due to legal wrangling and coronavirus restrictions, would begin on April 5 and take place three days a week. Netanyahu had pushed to delay the witness stage of the trial until after the election, saying that allowing the testimonies before then would amount to “interference” in the political process. A number of former aides have agreed to testify against him as prosecution witnesses. Netanyahu has been charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases.

At least 11 people who were on-board the El Al rescue flight from New York to Israel have tested positive for COVID-19. The flight, which originated in New York landed in Ben Gurion on Tuesday, where all of the passengers underwent a mandatory COVID -19 test. During the test, 11 passengers were found to be infected with the virus. It was also reported that some of the passengers, many being Chareidi, were bragging on the flight about having forged their documents to show that they were negative for Covid-19. The report said that some passengers, after hearing the bragging, approached flight attendants to complain. The staff said that at that point, there was nothing they could do regarding the forging of documents.

The Minerva Helen, a Greek-owned crude oil tanker, is suspected of being responsible for the massive oil spill that has polluted the majority of Israel’s beaches in what is believed to be the worst ecological disaster in Israel’s history, Kan News reported. The tanker, currently anchored off Cartagena in Spain, was involved in a previous major oil spill off of Copenhagen, Denmark, in January 2008. Following petitions by a number of media organizations, the Haifa Magistrates Court on Tuesday revoked the seven-day gag order it had approved at the request of the Environmental Protection Ministry on Monday. כך היא נראתה באותם ימים.

A non-religious man threatened to kill a Chabad photographer on the first evacuation flight of Israelis from New York back to Israel on Monday. The photographer, Chaim Tweeto, was standing in the aisle near the non-religious passenger. According to testimonies from other passengers that were published by BeChadrei Charedim, the non-religious passenger sat in the back of the plane and began antagonizing a number of Chabad men who were sitting in their seats, even before the plane took off. The passenger told the Chabad Chassidim that they weren’t sitting 2 meters away from one another. They responded and said that they had been together for the past month, and there was no issue with them sitting close together on the flight as well. The man began to yell at them to get away.

The Lufthansa LH690 rescue flight for Israelis stranded abroad took off on Tuesday evening with only half of the 160 passengers who were slated to board the plane, stranding 80 Israelis in the Frankfurt airport, mainly Chareidim, including a young avraich from Belgium whose family was waiting for him in Israel to begin his mother’s levaya. The flight, which had been approved by the Israeli government, was scheduled to leave at 6:55 p.m. on Tuesday evening but due to a delay caused by bureaucratic difficulties and a lack of clarity on the part of Lufthansa staff of the documents the Israelis were required to present, boarding only opened 40 minutes before the scheduled takeoff time.

In a move that some may see as controversial, United Hatzalah Founder and President Eli Beer has instructed the chapter heads of all regions in Israel, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian, both secular and religious, to make sure that all of the volunteers under their jurisdiction have received the Coronavirus vaccine, or are recovering patients, by March 7th. Should a volunteer decide not to receive the vaccine, they will be suspended from all duties, and after a grace period, removed from the organization altogether. “I don’t see this as controversial,” said Beer. “I see it as our duty in saving lives. As medical personnel and first responders, we are at risk, and we can endanger others if we aren’t vaccinated.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel won’t rely on the Biden administration’s efforts to return to a nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic. “On Erev Purim, I say to those who seek to destroy us: Iran and its proxies in the Middle East: 2,500 years ago, another Persian tyrant tried to destroy the Jewish nation and just like he failed then, you’ll fail today,” the prime minister said. “We won’t allow your extremist and aggressive regime to acquire nuclear weapons.

In an effort to rebuild the right-wing bloc of parties that aided him in previous elections, Prime Minister Netanyahu succeeded at securing an agreement from both of the Charedi parties UTJ and Shas, that they would only support a government being led by the Prime Minister. Both parties signed an agreement that they will not independently join a government led by any party other than Likud after the March 23rd elections. Netanyahu had been pressuring Betzalel Smotrich and his Religious Zionism party to sign the document as well, but Smotritch refused to do so, claiming that previous such agreements failed to produce right-wing governments.