The 15,000 Jews living in Iran are living in what members of the kehilla describe as a state of existential dread in the wake of Israel’s launch of the war, Ynet reported. Jewish life in Iran has come to a standstill, sources familiar with the situation said. “People have vanished from the streets,” said one source. “They’re staying inside their homes, terrified. They’re not going to work. There are no gatherings, no tefillos in shuls—nothing. They’re simply afraid to show their faces.” According to the report, the main fear of Iranian Jews is not of the regime but of mob violence, of angry Iranians retaliating for the Israeli attacks and carrying out lynchings, chalilah.

A meeting of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER) that was scheduled to be held next week at a hotel in Sarajevo was cancelled after a Bosnian minister called to ban it, saying its presence in the “city of openness” would “morally humiliate our capital and country.” Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, President of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER), wrote, “The CER’s biannual Standing Committee meeting was due to be held at the Swisshotel in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, next week. Chief Rabbanim from all over Europe, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, were due to convene to discuss the most pressing issues facing European Jewish life today and matters of freedom of religion or belief.

Last week, the leaders of France, the UK, and Canada issued a joint statement slamming Israel for its handling of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, demanding that it halt military action in Gaza, and even threatening to implement sanctions on Israel if it doesn’t heed their orders. A day later, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot sharpened the rhetoric against Israel, claiming that it is turning Gaza into “a place of death, if not a cemetery.” “He who sows violence reaps violence,” Barrot said about Israel, and threatened to reevaluate the EU-Israel trade agreement. He also reiterated France’s commitment to recognizing a Palestinian state. “We can’t leave Gaza’s children with a legacy of hate and violence,” he said.

A 24-year-old man has been arrested after allegedly harassing students outside Yeshiva Toras Chaim Toras Emes in North Miami Beach in what authorities are investigating as a hate-motivated incident. Sources tell YWN that on Wednesday, May 1st, surveillance footage captured the suspect, Jose Garrido, walking near Yeshiva Toras Chaim Toras Emes just before 11:30 a.m. He was seen picking something up off the ground and throwing it onto the school’s field where students were playing. Moments later, he returned wearing black gloves and holding what appeared to be a whip. Garrido then approached two students and made an unintelligible remark before attempting to grab one of their yarmulkes. He allegedly took an aggressive stance while continuing to  harass them with the whip in hand.

A Turkish Jew who visited Israel last month was arrested, fired from his job at Turkish Airlines, and banned from flying abroad pending a trial, JNS reported. Umut Ataseven, 29, visited Israel as a tourist from April 6-12. During his visit, he posted a photo of himself next to an Israeli flag on a Tel Aviv beach. Someone then posted a screenshot of the photo on X and made false claims that Ataseven was dual citizen who was participating in the “genocide” in Gaza as an IDF soldier. Siyonist Avraham Levi/Umut Ataseven, Gazze’deki soykırımda asker olarak bulunduktan sonra çifte vatandaşlık hakkından elini kolunu sallayarak Türkiye’ye özgürce gelip gezdi.

Four of the eight suspects, including seven Iranians, who were arrested over the weekend in the UK for an alleged plot to attack an unspecified target in London, were “hours away” from committing a major attack, UK media outlets reported on Monday. According to the reports, speculation is rising that the target was a shul or another Jewish target. The government called the suspects the biggest “counter-state threat and counterterrorism” operations for years. It said the premises were being given “advice and support.” The Israel-based IntelliTimes blog reported that the UK confirmed that the attack was planned against a “major Jewish target,” adding that in such a case,  Israeli intelligence agents were likely involved in helping to foil the plot.

The explosion that rocked an Iranian port, killing at least 70 people and injuring more than 1,000 others, had its epicenter at a facility ultimately owned by a “charitable foundation” overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s office. That foundation, known as Bonyad Mostazafan, faces American sanctions over it helping the 86-year-old Khamenei “to enrich his office, reward his political allies and persecute the regime’s enemies,” the U.S. Treasury has said. Its top personnel also have direct ties to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which oversees Tehran’s ballistic missile arsenal and operations abroad targeting the Islamic Republic’s enemies.

Vandals broke into the Jewish cemetery in Damascus overnight Wednesday and vandalized the kever of Hamekubal HaRav Chaim Vital, Z’tl, one of the talmidim of the Ari, z’tl. The intruders dug a pit near the kever to look for remains. Bachour Simantov, one of the few remaining Jews in Syria, told Kan News that he informed local authorities about the incident and they promised to find those responsible for the incident. The Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic Countries issued a statement saying: “We are shocked and saddened by the desecration of the tomb of Rabbi Chaim Vital, z”tl this Thursday in Damascus.” “Jews have lived in Syria for thousands of years and are an integral part of its history.

The mayor of Amsterdam apologized Thursday for the role the Dutch capital played in the persecution of its Jewish citizens during World War II, saying the government at the time “let its Jewish residents down terribly.” Speaking at an event marking Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Mayor Femke Halsema said that civil servants in Amsterdam played an active role in the murder of some thousands of Jewish citizens of the city. Three-quarters of Dutch Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, a much higher percentage than in other Western European countries such as Belgium and France. Of the estimated 80,000 Jews who lived in Amsterdam at the outbreak of World War II, only some 20,000 survived, the highest number of victims in Western Europe.

Walter Frankenstein, who survived the Holocaust by hiding in Berlin with his wife and infant children and spent his later years educating young people to keep the events alive in memory, has died. He was 100. Klaus Hillenbrand, a close friend who wrote a book about Frankenstein, confirmed the death on Tuesday. He said Frankenstein died on Monday. The foundation that oversees Berlin’s Holocaust memorial also confirmed that he died Monday in Stockholm. Frankenstein was born in 1924 in Flatow in what is now Poland but was then part of Germany. Three years after the Nazis came to power, in 1936, he was no longer allowed to attend the town’s public school because he was Jewish.

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