The U.S. mission to the United Nations is skipping a United Nations tribute on Thursday for Ebrahim Raisi, the late president of Iran who died in a helicopter crash on May 19.
“The UN should be standing with the people of Iran,” said Nate Evans, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, who noted that Washington wouldn’t participate “in any capacity.”
“Raisi was involved in numerous, horrific human rights abuses, including the extrajudicial killings of thousands of political prisoners in 1988,” Evans said. “Some of the worst human rights abuses on record took place during his tenure.”
A U.S. envoy was one of many diplomats at the global body who stood during a moment of silence for Raisi, known as the “butcher of Tehran,” at the United Nations.

Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party submitted a bill on Thursday to dissolve the Knesset, in an attempt to topple the government led by Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.
The proposal to dissolve Israel’s parliament was submitted by National Unity lawmaker MK Pnina Tamano-Shata.
“October 7 is a disaster that obliges us to return and receive the trust of the nation; to establish a broad and stable unity government that can lead us with confidence in the face of major challenges in terms of security, the economy and especially in Israeli society,” said Tamano-Shata.

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu hosted US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) at the Prime Minister’s Office in Yerushalayim. Netanyahu expressed gratitude for Graham’s fifth visit to Israel since the war began, acknowledging him as a steadfast ally of Israel and the Jewish People.

The Jewish state lacks a plan for the day after the war in Gaza, so Israel faces either an “enduring insurgency on its hands” or a vacuum that “jihadis” who are worse than Hamas will fill, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday.
Speaking alongside Maia Sandu, the Moldovan president, at a press conference in the East European nation’s capital city Chișinău, Blinken fielded several questions about the Jewish state.
The U.S. secretary called recent civilians deaths in Rafah “horrific” and said that Washington awaits what he hopes will be a “deliberate but also fast investigation” by Israel. He noted that the Jewish state has said that it used targeted munitions as it sought to kill Hamas terrorists.

Addressing graduates at Yeshiva University’s commencement on Wednesday, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) noted that he was last at a graduation “literally a quarter century ago,” when he graduated from Harvard University.
The pro-Israel senator’s reference to the Ivy League school, which has been accused of silence concerning Jew-hatred, drew some boos from the audience.

A Pakistani American man, reportedly with a history of mental illness, allegedly sought to run over yeshiva students and a rabbi with his car and was said to have yelled “I’m gonna kill all the Jews” on Wednesday.
Asghar Ali, 58, was arrested and “faces more than a dozen charges including attempted murder, attempted assault and hate crimes charges,” the New York Post reported.
The suspect allegedly tried to drive his 2011 white Crown Victoria into the Jews near Mesivta Nachlas Yakov.
Boro Park Shomrim aided police in the investigation and helped find the suspect, it added.

JNS

The war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip will last at least until the end of the year, Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi declared on Wednesday.
“We expect another seven months of fighting in order to deepen the accomplishments and achieve what we have defined as ‘the destruction of the governmental and military capabilities of Hamas,’” said Hanegbi.
The former Cabinet minster stressed that Jerusalem has no choice but to act in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah and stop Hamas from smuggling weapons, funds and terrorists into the Strip from Egypt’s Sinai.
“No one will volunteer to look after us, and we will have to look after ourselves,” Hanegbi said in the interview with Kan Reshet Bet radio.

On Thursday morning, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit released information regarding the tragic deaths of two soldiers in a ramming attack near Shechem on Wednesday evening: Staff Sergeant Eliya Hilel, 20, from Tel Zion, and Staff Sergeant Diego Shvisha Harsaj, 20, from Tel Aviv.
Both soldiers were part of the Nachshon Battalion within the Kfir Brigade.
Additionally, the IDF confirmed that Staff Sergeant Yedidya Azugi, 21, from Revava, was killed in action in the northern Gaza Strip.
A soldier from the 101st Battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade sustained serious injuries during the engagement in which Azugi was killed.
Moreover, two soldiers from the 601st Battalion were critically injured in the fighting in the southern Gaza Strip.

By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz
In the days of old, when the Jewish people were blessed with leaders who were able to discern and portray the Hand of Hashem in all that transpired, people weren’t as confounded as they are now by the goings-on at home and abroad. In the times of the nevi’im, quite often, the people would be forewarned before a calamity would strike so that they could accept upon themselves teshuvah and prevent the tragedy. And even if they did not do so before, once the catastrophe took place, they were explained that it was the Yad Hashem that had hit them and would engage in whatever was necessary to rectify their ways.

The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday published the names of three soldiers killed in action in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip the previous day.
They were named as Staff Sgt. Amir Galilove, 20, from Shimshit, near Nazareth; Staff Sgt. Uri Bar Or, 21, from Midreshet Ben-Gurion, located adjacent to Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev; and Staff Sgt. Ido Appel, 21, from Moshav Tzofar in the central Arava.