Hourly Roundup 13:00 Israel · 12 Aug 2026
Stories in this hour
- How Israeli intel triggered top secret Trump plane ployWelcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world. US bureau chief Jacob Magid joins host Amanda Borschel-Dan for today's…
- Petition seeks to block yeshiva project for foreign students on east Jerusalem public landThe petitioners also asked the court, sitting as an Administrative Affairs Court, to freeze the plan while it considers their challenge
- Dozens of illegal structures demolished in northern SamariaCivil Administration forces carried out a major enforcement operation ahead of the planned return of Israeli families to Ganim and Kadim
- Likud court approves reserved Knesset slot for Haim Katz after freezing voteThe interim order was issued during Tuesday’s Likud Secretariat vote because Haim Katz had already registered for the August 17 primaries and begun campaigning
- Meet the Jewish women building businesses around their passionsFrom fitness to murals to nutrition advice, women are building businesses of their own and becoming their own bosses
- How a monument to a Jewish Confederate ended up in a storage unit, next to a vacuum cleanerBehind an orange roll-up door at a self-storage facility in New Orleans, sits a vacuum cleaner, some lighting gear and a cardboard box. Inside the box is a Confederate monument, one of the strangest Jewish…
- Nearly a fifth of 2026 Seattle hate crimes targeted Jews, who make up one per cent of the populationAn even more significant proportion of hate crimes in New York were recorded against Jews, according to recently released data
- Behind closed doors — what rabbis told the mayor of New YorkA group of New York rabbis met this week with the city's mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and urged him to consider the impact of his public statements about Israel on the safety of the Jewish community.…
- Scandal at Bank Hapoalim – what its employees were caught doingIsrael's financial sector is shaken by a new scandal related to the leak and protection of personal data. An inspection initiated by the Bank of Israel's banking supervisor department revealed flagrant violations in the activities…
- Karhi launches attack: 'Eisenkot was a bad chief of staff'Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi was interviewed on Radio 103fm and claimed that Netanyahu had to remain as prime minister after October 7 because leaving would be interpreted as abandonment. He claimed that Eisenkot was a…
- IDF’s Unusual Message to Gazans: ‘Hamas Urges You to Approach the Yellow Line’Against the backdrop of avoiding targeted killings in recent days, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories warns Gaza residents not to approach the yellow line and claims Hamas is urging them to do…
- The grenade exploded while a resident and a dog stood behind the door: Two young men accused of throwing grenades and setting a vehicle on fireThe Central District Attorney's Office filed an indictment against two young men, ages 21 and 23 from Modi'in, alleging that they threw fragmentation and stun grenades at the entrances of residential buildings in Rishon LeZion…
Torah perspective
When a community that is one percent of a city's population absorbs nearly twenty percent of its hate crimes, the disproportion is not a statistic but a mirror. The prophet Zechariah called Israel "the apple of His eye" (Zechariah 2:12), and the sages taught that the nations who afflict Israel do so precisely because of that closeness. The hatred is not incidental to who we are; it is a distorted recognition of the covenant. The response cannot be fear or retreat. The inner teaching is that the very quality that draws the arrow is the quality that deflects it: when Jews stand visibly and unapologetically in their identity, the protective light of that identity intensifies. The hate crime data is a call to deepen, not to hide.