The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.
From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."
Counterterrorism police also questioned a 26-year-old British national.
A British-Iranian national was arrested Thursday on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts in connection with an incident this past weekend near a U.S. air base in the United Kingdom.
The suspect, an unnamed 27-year-old male, was arrested in central London in connection with the incident Sunday morning outside the base, RAF Fairford, in Gloucestershire, in which police arrested five men who had been traveling nearby in white vans, according to The New York Times.
They were released on bail a day later after the authorities did not discover explosives in the vans.
The base has been used by United States bombers in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
Police also said they searched two areas near where the arrest was made Thursday,
Counterterrorism police also have questioned a 26-year-old British national, the authorities said in a statement.
The group added that, at the time, they were unsure whether any other members of the flight crew were in on the Omani attacker's plot to crash the plane.
PM Netanyahu meets with Yaniv Hayoun, Or Pardilov, and Dr. Shota Musayev and his wife, Sigalit on October 1, 2026.(photo credit: PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with four of the passengers from the hijacked flydubai flight who helped restrain the terrorist who attacked the pilot on Thursday.
Netanyahu met with Yaniv Hayoun, Or Pardilov, Dr. Shota Musayev, and Sigalit Musayev.
During the conversation with Netanyahu, the passengers revealed that they tied up the terrorist, an unidentified Omani pilot, with a headphone cable in the cockpit.
"We tied the stabbing pilot with the headphone cable. He was saying 'Kill me' – meaning that he failed at his mission and prefers to die," one passenger told the prime minister.
The group added that they told the attacker to speak English to the crew so they could all understand what he was saying, and that, at the time, they were unsure whether any other members of the flight crew were involved in the attack.
“We tried to maintain control over the situation, because we couldn’t trust anyone," one passenger said in a video released by Netanyahu's office.
PM Netanyahu meets with Yaniv Hayoun, Or Pardilov, and Dr. Shota Musayev and his wife, Sigalit on October 1, 2026. (credit: AMOS BEN GERSHOM/GPO)
Netanyahu says flydubai 'heroes' will light torch on Independence Day
Netanyahu repeated his call from earlier this week for Israelis to remain vigilant as the country heads to elections.
"I urge the citizens of Israel to learn from you, to keep their eyes open and be vigilant. We are in a very sensitive time. There is an intent of our enemies to harm us," Netanyahu said.
The prime minister also told the four that they would take part in Israel's Independence Day ceremony. “The whole world sees Israeli heroism. You will light a torch of civilian heroism on Independence Day," he added.
What happened during the flydubai hijacking?
On Wednesday, an Omani national began stabbing his co-pilot, Capt. Smit Machchhar while midflight from Dubai to Tel Aviv.
Machchhar managed to unlock the cockpit door during the attack, allowing several passengers and crew members to wound the Omani attacker and tie him up.
An additional flight crew on board the aircraft took over and landed the plane in Saudi Arabia, while Dr. Musayev was able to stabilize Machchhar and temporarily tend to his wounds.
So far, multiple sources have told The Jerusalem Post that the Mossad, Shin Bet, IDF, and the Transportation Ministry believe the hijacker was a lone wolf, not under orders from Iran or another terror group.
Will Gaza's reconstruction become part of a genuine transition toward stability, or will reconstruction take place alongside the reorganization of the same forces that brought the Hamas terrorists to power in the Gaza Strip and the region into war.
The chants matter because they reveal what speeches about peace and reconstruction conceal.
These slogans raise a fundamental question for anyone discussing the future of the Gaza Strip: What exactly has changed?
The answer is particularly important because the international framework for the Gaza Strip explicitly calls for something very different.
US President Donald J. Trump's 20-point peace plan states that Gaza is to become a "deradicalized terror-free zone" that poses no threat to its neighbors. The plan calls for the decommissioning of weapons, demilitarization and the establishment of an International Stabilization Force. It also envisages a process intended to change Gazan mindsets and narratives by emphasizing tolerance and peaceful coexistence.
On paper, the objective is peaceful coexistence. Public gatherings are proclaiming that Gaza belongs to Hamas and rejecting international forces.
This is the main problem facing any attempt to transform the Gaza Strip.
Reconstruction can rebuild buildings. It cannot dismantle an ideology.
The answer will determine whether Gaza's reconstruction becomes part of a genuine transition toward stability, or whether reconstruction takes place alongside the reorganization of the same forces that brought the Hamas terrorists to power in the Gaza Strip and the region into war.
Has the ideological and military foundation for another October 7 massacre actually been removed?
On the eve of the October 7 anniversary, the world should pay close attention when people in the Gaza Strip say they want the October 7 massacre to happen again.
It is crucial to remember what senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said shortly after the October 7 massacre: "The Al-Aqsa Flood [what Hamas calls the October 7 massacre] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight."
Chants can be heard in the streets of the Gaza Strip during funeral processions for Hamas commanders and members killed by Israel: "October 7 will return! It is coming back!" Pictured: The funeral procession for Hamas commanders Izz al-Din al-Beik and Mohannad Abu al-Foul in Gaza City on September 29, 2026. (Photo by Faiz Qreqa/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
Nearly three years after Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, murdered roughly 1,200 people and abducted 251, some of the voices emerging from the Gaza Strip are sending a disturbing message: October 7 is regarded by Hamas and its supporters as an operation they plan to repeat.
Chants can be heard in the streets of the Gaza Strip during funeral processions for Hamas commanders and members killed by Israel: "October 7 will return! It is coming back!"
Others include: "Eid [holiday] for you, Eid; October 7 is the day of the Eid," and "Gaza is all Hamas... Gaza is all Hamas."
At one recent funeral, Hamas supporters chanted: "Listen, listen, all the people, all of Gaza is for Hamas, no international forces, only eternal Hamas."
At another funeral they chanted:
"Put sword against sword... we are the men of Mohammad Deif!" (Referring to the slain commander-in-chief of the Al-Qassam Brigades).
"O martyr, rest, rest... we will continue the struggle!"
"Say Allah and raise your voices... either we liberate it [Palestine], or we die!"
At another procession, participants chanted: "Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews... October 7 will return," referring to the 628 CE Battle of Khaybar, an oasis near Medina inhabited by Jewish tribes who were besieged and defeated by forces under the Islamic Prophet Mohammed.
The chants matter because they reveal what speeches about peace and reconstruction conceal.
These slogans raise a fundamental question for anyone discussing the future of the Gaza Strip: What exactly has changed?
The answer is particularly important because the international framework for the Gaza Strip explicitly calls for something very different.
US President Donald J. Trump's 20-point peace plan states that Gaza is to become a "deradicalized terror-free zone" that poses no threat to its neighbors. The plan calls for the decommissioning of weapons, demilitarization and the establishment of an International Stabilization Force. It also envisages a process intended to change Gazan mindsets and narratives by emphasizing tolerance and peaceful coexistence.
The Board of Peace's July 30, 2026 roadmap, goes even further. It calls for the decommissioning of heavy weapons, military production sites, weapons depots and tunnels, and says that at the end of the process only the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza should hold, store, or control weapons in the Gaza Strip. The roadmap explicitly describes its objectives as a Gaza governed without Hamas control and without "rule by the gun," under the principle of "One Authority, One Weapon, One Law."
On paper, the international plan speaks about deradicalization. On the streets, the funeral chants coming from parts of the Gaza Strip present a dramatically different picture. Hamas supporters are chanting "October 7 will return."
On paper, the objective is peaceful coexistence. Public gatherings are proclaiming that Gaza belongs to Hamas and rejecting international forces.
This does not establish that every Palestinian in the Gaza Strip shares these views. Gaza contains many Palestinians with different experiences, opinions, and political loyalties -- and some perhaps afraid to express them. The continued public expression of these slogans nevertheless demonstrates that Hamas's ideological message remains capable of mobilizing thousands of supporters in the Gaza Strip.
It is significant that there has not been a sustained, broad-based public revolt to displace Hamas as the dominant armed and political force in the Gaza Strip. There have been expressions of anger and opposition to Hamas, including calls for protests, but Hamas has demonstrated an ability to mobilize supporters publicly.
The London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported that a planned June 26 mobilization against Hamas failed to attract significant participation, while Hamas continued to display flags and organize funerals for its members.
This is the main problem facing any attempt to transform the Gaza Strip.
Reconstruction can rebuild buildings. It cannot dismantle an ideology. New roads, hospitals, schools, housing projects, and economic opportunities cannot guarantee that the next generation will reject the ideology that produced October 7.
The deployment of international personnel cannot substitute for a fundamental change in the status of terrorist organizations such as Iran-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Has the ideological and military foundation for another October 7 massacre actually been removed?
On the eve of the October 7 anniversary, the world should pay close attention when people in the Gaza Strip say they want the October 7 massacre to happen again.
It is crucial to remember what senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said shortly after the October 7 massacre:
"The Al-Aqsa Flood [what Hamas calls the October 7 massacre] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight."
At a beachfront hotel in Tel Aviv, Tal reconstructs the moment he had to get two additional pilots to the controls, the efforts to secure the aircraft and the moment he thought about his children.
Tal, an Israeli businessman who was aboard the flydubai flight, is seen during the onboard crisis and later speaking to The Jerusalem Post in Tel Aviv on October 1, 2026(photo credit: ROI ABRAMOWITZ for THE JERUSALEM POST)
The cockpit was empty as the flydubai aircraft descended, Tal said, and the two additional pilots who could take its controls were still in the passenger cabin. While other Israelis fought the attacker at the front of the aircraft, he had to get those pilots forward.
A day later, Tal, an Israeli businessman who lives abroad, sat across from me at the beachfront Carlton hotel in Tel Aviv.
He spoke readily about the passengers who had fought and the dentist who had treated the wounded pilot. He made comparatively little of his own part in getting someone back to the controls.
The view, however, deserved some attention.
With the Tel Aviv skyline visible from where we sat on Thursday, Tal spoke about how extraordinary it felt to see the city from there. The previous day, he and the other passengers had been desperate to land and finally arrive in Israel. Now he could take in the buildings from a hotel by the beach.
Tal, an Israeli businessman at the door to the cockpit amid the attempted hijacking of flydubai flight to Tel Aviv, Israel. / Courtesy
His account of an empty cockpit was among the most consequential details to emerge from our second conversation.
During the confrontation aboard the Dubai-to-Tel Aviv flight on Wednesday, he said, there had been an interval when nobody was inside it. He understood that the two pilots traveling among the passengers had to take over.
“I had to shake them to get them to move to the front and take control of the plane, because it was diving,” he had told The Jerusalem Post in our initial exchange.
The aircraft eventually made an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. Flydubai confirmed that all passengers were safe and accounted for. Tal’s description of the empty cockpit remains an eyewitness account; the precise sequence inside it and the duration of that interval have not been independently established by the Post
In our correspondence from Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, he had already offered a description of his own contribution.
Others had physically subdued the attacker. He had dealt with the additional pilots and helped find restraints.
He called it “combat support” and added a smiley face.
Tal, an Israeli businessman who was aboard the flydubai flight, is seen during the onboard crisis and later speaking to The Jerusalem Post in Tel Aviv on October 1, 2026. (credit: ROI ABRAMOWITZ for THE JERUSALEM POST)
The two men near row six
Tal had been sitting in row six, immediately behind business class. Two additional flydubai pilots were close by. He said he recognized them when he boarded, although their clothing differed from that of the crew operating the aircraft. A frequent traveler, he had identified them before he had any reason to think he would need their help.
According to the account he sent the Post on Wednesday, one pilot had begun stabbing the other with a small knife and was trying to force the wounded man out of the cockpit. The wounded pilot resisted. Israeli passengers seated toward the front rushed into the confrontation as the aircraft descended.
Tal described several things happening at once. Passengers were trying to overcome the attacker. The injured pilot needed help. The additional pilots had remained in the cabin and, in his description, appeared frozen.
He shouted for them to move forward and take control. He then had to shake them, he said. One ultimately took control of the aircraft; the other took longer to recover from the shock.
The struggle near the cockpit and the effort to get pilots to the controls overlapped. Tal was close enough to see the confrontation while also knowing where the additional pilots were sitting. His account places him between those two groups, trying to get the men with the necessary skills to the place where they were needed.
He was precise in the original correspondence about allocating the credit. Three people had actually subdued the attacker, he wrote. He stood beside them and dealt with other tasks.
Among those tasks was finding something with which to bind the man they were fighting.
“Charging cables,” Tal replied when asked what they had used.
He followed it with a Hebrew expression: “In the desert, every thorn is a flower.”
An Israeli dentist, meanwhile, was treating the wounded pilot. Tal described the injuries as grave and credited the dentist with saving the man’s life. As he reconstructed the emergency, the dentist’s intervention figured alongside the passengers’ struggle and the effort to get the additional pilots forward. Different people had taken responsibility for different parts of a crisis unfolding within a few meters.
What the cabin video showed
At the Carlton, we watched footage from inside the aircraft. It gave our conversation a second reference point alongside his recollections: people visible on a screen, some of whom Tal could identify and whose movements he could explain.
There were flight attendants in checked shirts. A man with blood on his clothing passed through the frame. Tal himself was visible near the front.
“This is me looking at... trying to understand what’s going on,” he said.
I asked about the bloodied man. Tal identified him as one of the Israelis involved in the fight.
The footage showed only part of the cabin. Conversations overlapped and people moved through the shot. Tal’s explanation supplied information the images alone could not: what the passengers were discussing and what he was trying to arrange.
“All the Israelis are aligned that we should have only Israelis in key points,” he said.
“And that’s what we are also discussing. And that’s a point when I’m trying to make sure that you have an Israeli in the cockpit.”
The words described a further stage of the emergency. The passengers who had intervened were trying to determine how the aircraft would remain secure. Tal’s attention had moved from bringing pilots forward to making sure an Israeli passenger was also present in the cockpit.
The additional pilots had the task of flying the aircraft. The Israeli presence Tal described concerned security: passengers who had just intervened in a violent confrontation wanted someone they trusted to remain at critical positions.
In Wednesday’s messages, he had described taking that effort further. The Israelis told the cabin crew that they were now running the flight, he wrote, and positioned Israelis to watch crew members. His account conveyed the distrust and uncertainty among the passengers; it did not establish that other crew members had participated in the attack.
The new interview helped explain the scene visible in the footage. Tal was trying to work out who was where while discussing which positions the Israelis should occupy. The people moving through the cabin were still responding to an emergency, even as the physical struggle gave way to the work of securing the aircraft.
The phrase he used, “key points,” was characteristic of the conversation. He could describe an extraordinary situation in the language of an assignment that needed to be carried out.
The things he could remember
Tal’s account was detailed about some moments and much less certain about others. He could describe where he had been sitting, the men he had urged forward and the search for charging cables. He could not reliably say how much time had passed.
Asked about the duration of the descent and struggle in a separate television exchange, he said: “Frankly speaking, I can only quote on this one what other people say. I don’t have any sense of the time.”
He described himself as being “in acting mode,” occupied with doing things.
That was consistent with what he had written from Saudi Arabia before we met. Throughout the incident, he said, he had felt detached and continued carrying out tasks. He had yet to absorb what had happened and thought it would catch up with him after he landed in Israel.
His first instinct on making contact with the Post had been to correct what he believed were errors in the reporting. He asked to see the facts we had so he could identify what needed changing. We continued by WhatsApp because he felt uncomfortable talking with soldiers around him.
The exchange developed over several hours. His description became more specific as the questions moved from the general sequence to individual actions: how the cockpit had become accessible, who had fought, how the attacker had been restrained and what Tal himself had done.
He also distinguished between his understanding of the attack and a specific claim about what had been shouted during it.
Asked whether he had heard “Allahu akbar,” Tal said he had been standing close to the cockpit and had heard no such shout. Neither had the people beside him, he wrote.
“None of us heard it.”
He described the attacker as a terrorist throughout our correspondence. His certainty about that did not lead him to endorse a detail he could not confirm. His account rested on the repeated stabbing, the effort to force the other pilot out and what he had witnessed as the aircraft descended.
A daughter screaming for her father
There was one moment Tal said had interrupted his concentration on the tasks in front of him.
The flight carried children returning from vacations with their families. During the confrontation, he recalled, they had screamed that they did not want to die. One girl’s father was among the passengers fighting the attacker. She was screaming that she did not want him to die.
“That was the only moment when I stopped and thought about my own children,” Tal wrote.
He had been traveling alone. His children were abroad, and when we corresponded on Wednesday, he said they did not know what had happened. They did not speak Hebrew and did not have mobile phones.
In Saudi Arabia, he described doctors attending to children and passengers in distress. Food had been provided. He found the Saudis kind and understanding.
A senior Saudi figure, he said, approached the Israeli dentist and thanked him for saving the pilot. The man then took the dentist’s hand and walked with him. Tal explained the gesture as an expression of warmth.
These details had arrived in separate messages during an afternoon in which he was still waiting to reach Israel. We discussed the wounded pilot, the frightened children and the prospect of another flight. At 3:17 p.m., Tal wrote that they were boarding the plane back.
By Thursday, he was in Tel Aviv, looking out at the city he had wanted so badly to reach. Sitting opposite him, the understated description he had sent from Saudi Arabia seemed entirely consistent with the man: the people who fought deserved the credit, and he had carried out the work alongside them.
Even when our messages turned to his own family, he was reluctant to claim too much. I had congratulated him on his children’s lack of mobile phones. He attributed that largely to his wife.
The new designations strike “directly at the critical arteries Iran relies on to sustain its economy and evade sanctions,” the U.S. Treasury Department stated.
The Tehran–Qom highway, officially part of Freeway 7 (the Persian Gulf Highway), in Tehran, February 2011. Credit: Mostafa Meraji via Wikimedia Commons.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned “some of the last significant elements of Iran’s failing industrial infrastructure” on Thursday, including the regime’s railroad and automotive conglomerates.
With a U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz still in place and secondary sanctions all but shutting down Iranian air travel abroad, the “rail and automotive sectors represent some of the regime’s largest remaining sources of revenue and logistical capacity,” the department said.
The new designations strike “directly at the critical arteries Iran relies on to sustain its economy and evade sanctions,” the department stated.
Two companies representing some 90% of the domestic auto market were sanctioned, along with various subsidiaries and the country’s largest motorcycle manufacturer.
The department also sanctioned key auto parts exporters from Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Hong Kong that “continue to export key automotive parts to sustain Iran’s auto industry and evade U.S. sanctions.” So were key passenger and freight rail servicers, both state and privately owned.
The federal government also sanctioned domestic and foreign metals manufacturers and components of a steel and oil export network spanning China, Germany and the Dominican Republic.
The designations fall under “Operation Economic Outcast,” which the Treasury Department launched in late August, to isolate the Islamic Republic and choke its revenue streams.
“The Iranian regime’s ability to fund its war machine and inflict terror on the world has been severely diminished thanks to ‘Operation Economic Outcast,’” stated Scott Bessent, U.S. treasury secretary.
“Today’s action directly targets Iran’s enablers and lays the groundwork for the United States and our partners to drain the regime’s revenue once and for all,” he stated.
Under new work requirements imposed by the "The Big Beautiful Bill Act," able-bodied adults aged 18 to 64 who don't have dependents will be required to work. Previously, the age limit was 54.
Families applying for food assistance through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will, beginning Thursday, face changes to payments, eligibility requirements and how the benefits are administered.
Most families will initially see a slight bump in their monthly payments to support grocery purchases from a cost-of-living adjustment, but in the coming months, households will face stricter eligibility requirements, meaning fewer people will receive the benefits, ABC News reported.
Under new work requirements imposed by the "The Big Beautiful Bill Act," able-bodied adults ages 18 to 64 who don't have dependents will be required to work. Previously, the age limit was 54. Families with children age 14 or older are no longer exempt from the work requirements.
The "The Big Beautiful Bill Act" also requires states to pay for a larger share of SNAP administrative costs, and states with SNAP recipient error rates above 6% will be required to fund a portion of the benefits themselves.
Under the Trump administration, federal agencies have worked to curtail benefits available to illegal aliens to encourage self-deportation.
The Department of Justice on Thursday filed a complaint against the University of Delaware over its policy of providing in-state tuition to illegal aliens.
“This Department of Justice’s efforts will not cease until we have challenged every state law or university policy that gives preferential treatment to illegal aliens over our Nation’s own citizens,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr. said in a statement. “Congress long ago made clear that states cannot give reduced tuition to illegal aliens not available to all Americans. When a state Attorney General allows her own state to violate federal law, this department must step in to enforce it.”
The suit marks the 26th such action from the Trump DOJ against institutions offering in-state tuition to illegal aliens. The DOJ has previously brought cases in states across the country, securing court orders to end the practice in several.
Under the Trump administration, federal agencies have worked to curtail benefits available to illegal aliens to encourage self-deportation.
Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent at Just the News. Follow him on X.
“The fact that Newsom chose to sign the Eid law before the law that protected other religious observance speaks volumes about the direction he is moving as he eyes a 2028 run for the presidency,” the chair of Jewish engagement for the California Republican Party told JNS.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is pictured during a recorded interview with AFP in the Manhattan borough of New York City on Sept. 23, 2026. Credit: Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, drew criticism on Wednesday night when he signed a more focused bill recognizing Jewish and other holidays after appearing to have prioritized signing a more expansive bill about Muslim holidays days before.
A spokeswoman for Democratic state representative Jesse Gabriel, chair of the Jewish Legislative Caucus and the bill’s sponsor, confirmed to JNS late on Wednesday that Newsom signed AB 395 into law, designating Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Passover and days sacred to other faiths as state holidays to protect students and California employees from scheduling and other conflicts.
Elizabeth Barcohana, chair of Jewish engagement for the California Republican Party, told JNS that it is a “concerning sign” of the influence of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in U.S. politics that it sponsored the bill about Muslim holidays.
CAIR blamed Israel for being attacked shortly after Oct. 7. The Biden administration initially included it in an advisory role on the national strategy on Jew-hatred before dropping it.
“The fact that Newsom chose to sign the Eid law before the law that protected other religious observance speaks volumes about the direction he is moving as he eyes a 2028 run for the presidency,” Barcohana told JNS.
David Bocarsly, CEO of Jewish California, told JNS that AB 395 is the first time a Jewish holiday has been named in California state law.
“I’m really thrilled that California has recognized the Jewish community in this way,” he said. “There have been so many instances where Jewish community members, and I’m sure this is the case for others as well, were trying to attend a public meeting to make public comment because it impacts their lives and the meeting is scheduled on holiday, and they just are unable to.”
Bocarsly cited a “particularly egregious situation in Santa Ana,” in which “school board members were found in discovery to have texted each other, scheming to have a school board meeting on Passover so that Jews wouldn’t show up to give public comment on the ethnic studies curriculum.”
“There are some real impacts here on the betterment of Jewish engagement in civic life, which ultimately have long-standing impacts on what policy is made,” he told JNS. “I’m particularly excited about it.”
Newsom, who signed AB 2017 recognizing Muslim holidays Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha as statewide holidays earlier in the week, had until Sept. 30 to sign or veto AB 395. A spokeswoman for the governor previously told JNS that he had “until midnight to take action.”
AB 2017 allows schools to offer classroom instruction exploring the history of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha and allows the State Board of Education to adopt a model curriculum guide for Eid-related lessons, but AB 395 has no such provision for the Jewish and other holidays.
According to Bocarsly, the communities involved in the bills asked for different things.
“It looks different than what other communities are asking for, and that’s because we’re asking for something else that addresses the needs of our community,” he told JNS. “But both AB 2017 and AB 395 do one thing that is similar, which is acknowledge these holidays.”
“We’re proud that Jewish holidays are now part of state law,” he said.
Lisa Cusack, Republican chairwoman of California’s 44th Assembly district, told JNS that she is “OK with saying that you can take off the holiday of your faith without being punished” but is concerned that the Eid legislation, sponsored by the CAIR, allows educators to create classroom lessons about those holidays.
“Where I have a problem is bringing teaching about Islam into the school,” Cusack said.
“My father comes from Turkey. He was a Christian born in a Muslim country and faced persecution there,” she told JNS. “The left has been so determined to create a separation of church and state, between Christianity and the state. Instead, it’s taken the church out of the state and now appears to be replacing it with Islam.”
Barcohana told JNS that the “asymmetry between the bills” struck her.
“Eid receives all the same protections as Jewish holidays, plus more,” she said. “Schools can close for Eid, and they can develop curriculum to teach the ‘meaning and significance’ of Eid.”
“People may think this is alarmist, but this is an example of American laws adopting a Sharia law framework,” Barcohana told JNS. “Special protections no other religious observance receives, the option to shut down public institutions to observe the holiday that, until now, only Christian holidays received and curriculum in public schools that is religious in nature, notably about a religion that emphasizes conversion.”
Jessica Russak Hoffman is a reporter for JNS in Seattle.
The records came from National Archives productions tied to 87 White House phones, capturing journalist-source exchanges as Smith’s team pursued Trump over the 2020 election and classified documents.
Legacy media outlets that spent last week decrying President Donald Trump’s decision to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House access and pool duties largely shrugged Tuesday when Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, revealed that former special counsel Jack Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation swept up communications between government sources and nearly 50 journalists from more than a dozen news organizations.
"The partisan media is suffering from a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome. Jack Smith's weaponized investigation harmed thousands of Americans, including dozens of journalists, yet many in the partisan media still want to treat him like a folk hero," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told Just The News.
Grassley, who chairs the Senate Committee on the Judiciary where the Smith hearing took place continued: "Arctic Frost and Jack Smith were a generational scandal, and it's a disservice to the American people not to report on the rampant misconduct honestly."
Grassley’s whistleblower-backed disclosure listed outlets including CNN, Fox News, CBS News (including 60 Minutes), NBC, The Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and NPR.
The records came from National Archives productions tied to 87 White House phones, capturing journalist-source exchanges as Smith’s team pursued Trump over Trump's actions following the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents.
“What is a bigger threat to freedom of the press: revoking special access to the White House or weaponizing the government to spy on journalists," David Bozell, CEO of the Media Research Center, raised to Just The News.
"The media went up in arms about the former, but the broadcast networks dedicated exactly ZERO minutes to the latter."
Legacy media's inconsistencies
The contrast is not new. The same institutions that treated a pool rotation dispute as an existential First Amendment crisis have historically downplayed or delayed stories that cut against preferred narratives — from the Hunter Biden laptop dismissed as Russian disinformation before the 2020 election to early COVID-19 lab-leak questions labeled as conspiracy theories.
Smith’s team issued 197 subpoenas touching at least 430 Republican individuals and entities, obtained lawmaker call logs and donor financial data, yet the dominant coverage framed the hearing as Smith standing by “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” while a senator’s basketball error unraveled.
Smith doesn't just have the legal system to answer to when it comes to those Republican records. Senator Marsha Blackburn is suing Smith personally and the Justice Department, alleging he unlawfully and secretly subpoenaed her Verizon phone toll records during the Arctic Frost probe of January 6 and the 2020 election challenges without notifying her or the court that she was a sitting senator.
Blackburn alleges this violated the Speech or Debate Clause and other rights, argues his appointment was unconstitutional, and seeks a court declaration that the actions were unlawful, return or destruction of the records, and $1 in nominal damages.
Mark Chenoweth, President of the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), is representing Blackburn in the lawsuit and spoke exclusively to Just The News.
"If a member of of the current Department of Justice were to keep a federal district judge in the dark in this sort of deliberate way, in order to get a non-disclosure order in connection with a grand jury subpoena, I think that the media would think that was a really big deal. But that's exactly what Jack Smith and his team did, and I think that it's intolerable behavior," Chenoweth said.
However, Chenoweth is hopeful that the media double standard might not endure, at least in this instance: "I actually think that some of the media will come around. Maybe they all won't, but as these facts come to light, this is not some grand conspiracy that we're alleging here. This is a very particular set of unlawful behavior that violated a particular individual's rights, and I think that we're going to be able to prove that."
The journalists' identities and terrorist affiliations were verified using documents released by the terrorist organizations themselves and materials recovered by IDF troops during Gaza operations.
IDF reveals that 170 alleged "journalists" killed in Gaza were Hamas, PIJ terrorists.(photo credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)
The IDF revealed on Thursday that 170 individuals who were misleadingly presented as civilian “journalists” killed in strikes on Gaza were actually affiliated with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and other terrorist organizations.
The journalists' identities and terrorist affiliations were verified using documentation released by the terrorist organizations themselves and materials recovered by Israeli troops during Gaza operations, the military stated.
The IDF launched a website dedicated to compiling information regarding terrorists found to be misrepresenting themselves as civilian journalists and combating accusations that the IDF deliberately targets civilians working in the media.
Earlier on Thursday, the IDF released a statement highlighting ten journalists who doubled as Hamas and PIJ terrorists.
The terrorists, some of whom worked for news outlets such as Reuters, Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency, and Palestine Now News Agency, operated as snipers, commanders, trainers, and propaganda agents, among other roles.
Ten Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists misleadingly presented as civilian “journalists” killed in IDF strikes in Gaza. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)
According to the IDF, some of the alleged journalists infiltrated Israel and participated in Hamas’s October 7 massacre.
Deaths of Hamas, PIJ journalists cited in complaints against Israel
The deaths of the alleged civilian journalists were cited in complaints and condemnations launched against Israel.
Hamas terrorist Asem Adli Ahmed al-Barsh, an alleged journalist for Palestinian Al-Rai Radio, was named by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in a December 2023 complaint to the International Criminal Court.
RSF accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilian journalists and did not mention Barsh’s status as a Hamas terrorist in the complaint.
RSF also engraved the name of Mohammed Mahmoud Abdel Aziz Abu Sharia, a PIJ sniper who allegedly worked for Palestinian Shams News Agency, in a memorial dedicated to journalists who were killed between June 2024 and June 2025.
In 2024, then UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay condemned the killing of another Hamas terrorist, Mohammed Manhal Ahmed Abu Armana, whom the IDF identified as Hamas’s Rafah Brigade Propaganda Department Commander.
A number of the terrorists named by the IDF were included in the Committee to Protect Journalists' (CPJ's) database of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza since 2023.
