IndustryStandard

Someone take away his Twitter account.

Rivka Lafair is a "facilitator of workshops, meet-ups and group sessions on yoga themes, teacher of feminine yoga and personal development." She lives in the settlement of Shiloh in the southern West Bank and terms herself a "proud Jew" who "thinks outside the box." Lovely. Also, she also wants to annihilate and expel two million human beings in the Gaza Strip.

Lafair belongs to a stream within Israeli Judaism that can be described as "YogiNazis": people whose spiritualism underpins their Nazism. They are a relatively new sub-stratum – albeit with deep roots in the local culture – that has gained popularity since October 7, largely because of its ability to weld together concepts that, on the surface, seem like polar opposites: spirituality and annihilation, empowerment and expulsion, yoga and starvation, retreats and carpet bombing.

And to make it clear that by "enemy" she doesn't mean only Hamas terrorists, she clarifies: "We are committed to take revenge and destroy Gaza. From infant to old woman." She tops it off with an appropriate Bible verse: "Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget."

Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, who edged out New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) for a top Democratic post in December before stepping down, died from esophageal cancer on Wednesday, becoming the third Democrat to die in office this term.

The late congressman made headlines in December when, with support from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he defeated AOC to lead the House Oversight Committee, despite reportedly violating stock trading laws, according to Raw Story. AOC would have been the youngest Democrat to chair a House committee at 35 years old.

Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, who edged out New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) for a top Democratic post in December before stepping down, died from esophageal cancer on Wednesday, becoming the third Democrat to die in office this term.

The late congressman made headlines in December when, with support from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he defeated AOC to lead the House Oversight Committee, despite reportedly violating stock trading laws, according to Raw Story. AOC would have been the youngest Democrat to chair a House committee at 35 years old.

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During the second semi-final of Eurovision 2025, RTVE commentators Tony Aguilar and Julia Varela discussed the need to open a debate about Israel's presence in the festival. They highlighted that the Gaza invasion by Tel Aviv has resulted in over 50,000 civilian casualties, including nearly 16,000 children. They used the introduction video of Yuval Raphael's song, the Israeli representative, to clarify the public broadcaster's stance, one of the few openly advocating for a review of the Middle Eastern country's participation in the contest.

The Israeli public broadcaster protested, and on Friday, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) threatened RTVE with "punitive fines" if any reference to the situation in Gaza is repeated. "It is essential that your commentators adhere to these rules without exception [...] to preserve Eurovision's apolitical nature and comply with the ethics and standards established in the rules. We expect full cooperation from RTVE to prevent recurrence. Any further breach may result in punitive fines according to the rules," warned a statement signed by the president of the Eurovision Reference Group, Swiss Bakel Walden, and Swedish Martin Osterdahl, the festival's executive supervisor.

A lot of legal professionals have to defend the indefensible as part of their jobs, but arguing that rampant lawlessness is legal — as government attorneys now do in many of the 240-plus lawsuits filed against the current Trump administration — requires a particular flair for impudence.

The effort to deport Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil offers a case in point. The Trump regime abducted Khalil, a green card holder, in the lobby of his New York apartment building in March, and has since held him in a sprawling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana.

A growing number of the world’s leading genocide scholars believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, according to an investigation by Dutch newspaper NRC.

The paper interviewed seven renowned genocide researchers* from six countries - including Israel - all of whom described the Israeli campaign in Gaza as genocidal. Many said their peers in the field share this assessment.

“Contrary to public opinion, leading genocide researchers are surprisingly unanimous: the Netanyahu government, they say, is in that process - according to the majority, even in its final stages,” the investigation concluded. “That is why most researchers no longer speak only of 'genocidal violence', but of 'genocide'.”

Tehran, Iran – Iran’s political and military leaders are pointing the finger back at Donald Trump after the United States president sharpened his rhetoric during his first major tour of the Middle East.

“The level of those remarks is so low that they are a disgrace for the one who uttered them and a disgrace to the American nation,” he said, to chants of “Death to America” and others from the crowd.

Khamenei added that Trump “lied” when he said he wants to use power towards peace, as Washington has backed “massacring” Palestinians and others across the region. He called Israel a “dangerous cancerous tumour” that must be “uprooted”.

The Israeli military has killed at least 125 Palestinians, including children sleeping in tents, as it unleashed a wave of air strikes across the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Sunday.

At least 36 people were killed and more than 100 wounded after Israeli warplanes bombed a tent camp sheltering displaced Palestinians in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, medical sources told Al Jazeera.

Horrific verified videos from the scene showed many bodies, including some on fire. The dead and wounded were taken to a nearby field hospital and the Nasser Medical Complex.

The Yemeni group’s military spokesman Yahya Saree says the ballistic missile fired at the airport near Tel Aviv has caused thousands of Israelis to rush to shelters and halted air traffic for nearly an hour.

“The operation was carried out with two missiles, one a hypersonic Palestine 2 missile and a Zulfiqar missile,” Saree said during a televised news conference, adding that the attack “successfully achieved its goal”.

“We renew our call to the sons of the nation: Will the nation of two billion Muslims fail to save two million Muslims from the threat of genocide and famine?” he said.

“Abandonment and incompetence will only encourage the enemy to persist in its aggression against all peoples and all countries.”