The New Right’s Naftali Bennett says he believes there’s “a very, very high probability” Israel will go to a third election within a year due to the ongoing political gridlock and inability to form a government.
That eventuality is currently more likely than a coalition taking shape, he says on a newly launched podcast, unless Yisrael Beytenu’s Avigdor Liberman changes course and agrees to join a narrow right-wing religious government.
He warns that the right will likely suffer “a great blow” in such an election. “I’m very pessimistic,” he says.
Read more at Times of Israel.
{Matzav.com}

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey has captured Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s sister and wife in Syria, a week after the Islamic State leader was killed in a US operation.
Erdogan said that Baghdadi’s brother-law had also been apprehended.
It comes just a day after Turkish officials claimed that Turkish forces had captured Rasmiya Awad, 65, one of Baghdadi’s sisters along with her husband and daughter-in-law in the town of Azaz, just over the border from Turkey.
Read more at Independent.
{Matzav.com}

Unconfirmed reports have quoted other “unconfirmed reports” claiming that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, has reached out to the organizers of the 13th Siyum HaShas of Daf Yomi to inquire about the possibility of President Trump attending the Siyum.

The Siyum, organized by Agudath Israel of America, will be held on January 1 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

Matzav.com has spoken to event organizers, who say that, to their knowledge, this supposed correspondence never happened.

“It sounds like the typical story that people like to spread rumors about,” a source told Matzav.com.

Rav Chaim Kanievsky on Wednesday gave a brocha to two of  Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s advisers.
The advisers, Jonatan Urich and Boaz Golan, received a brocha for success “against the persecution by the Prosecutor’s Office and police.”
At the end of the meeting, Urich said: “With Hashem’s help and with the brocha of the Rav, we will see a yeshua very soon.”
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
{Matzav.com}

The mother of a young Israeli-American woman imprisoned in Russia has asked her lawyers to withdraw a petition to cancel the extradition of a Russian hacker whose case may have motivated Moscow’s decision to imprison her daughter.
Naama Issachar was arrested in April as she was transferring to a connecting flight in Russia while carrying a small amount of marijuana as she returned home to Israel from a trip to India. She was convicted of drug smuggling, a charge she denies, and sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison.

[COMMUNICATED]
Sometimes, letters just speak for themselves.  Like this email, received by Mosdos Kever Rachel’s gabbai tzedakah, Reb Yeedle:
 
Subject: Mazel Tov!
Reb Yeedle,
Baruch Hashem, after 17 years of waiting, we are making a bris on Monday exactly nine months after sponsoring a day at Kever Rachel.
I wanted to call you from the hospital after the birth, but unfortunately, my phone battery died.
Please call me.  I want to arrange tickets for you to fly in for the bris.  I would want you to be sandak, but my Rav said to give it to my father.  If you can come, I’d like you to say the brachos at the bris.
Please put me down to sponsor another day at Kever Rachel.

Tel Aviv-based online payments fraud prevention startup Riskified has completed a $165 million funding round, the company announced Tuesday. The round was led by New York-based General Atlantic according to a company valuation of more than $1 billion, the company said. Minneapolis-based Winslow Capital participated in the round, as did existing investors Qumra Capital, Entrée Capital, and Pitango Venture Capital.
Founded in 2013, Riskified’s products for online retailers utilize machine learning algorithms and user behavioral analytics to prevent account takeover, monitor payments, and detect fraudulent transactions. The company has raised $229 million to date.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government on Monday issued a harsh condemnation of death threats recently sent to two German politicians by a neo-Nazi group, the AFP reported.
Two leading Green Party politicians, Cem Ozdemir and Claudia Roth, received threatening emails on Oct. 27, according to the report.
“We are currently planning how and when to execute you. At the next rally? Or will we get you outside your home?” read the email sent to Ozdemir, according to the Funke media group.
According to Roth, the message she received said she was second on the group’s hit list.

[COMMUNICATED]
Rabbi Tzvi Kofman of Tzfat was a beloved and respected figure: A rosh kollel, a talmid chacham, a lawyer, a baal chesed, and the father of many children, he seemed to many to have the perfect life. Perfect until the fateful day when he was diagnosed with cancer. What followed was the painful struggle against disease and debt which has become all too common in today’s world. When Rav Kofman passed away, he left behind a widow and 16 children.